by sea when it should be no longer feasible to keep them. Escovedo
shared in the sentiments and entered fully into the schemes of his chief.
The plot, the secret enterprise, was the great cause of the advent of
Don John in the uncongenial clime of Flanders. It had been, therefore,
highly important, in his estimation, to set, as soon as possible, about
the accomplishment of this important business. He accordingly entered
into correspondence with Antonio Perez, the King's most confidential
Secretary of State at that period. That the Governor was plotting no
treason is sufficiently obvious from the context of his letters: At the
same time, with the expansiveness of his character, when he was dealing
with one whom he deemed has close and trusty friend, he occasionally made
use of expressions which might be made to seem equivocal. This was still
more the case with poor Escovedo. Devoted to his master, and depending
most implicitly upon the honor of Perez, he indulged in language which
might be tortured into a still more suspicious shape when the devilish
arts of Perez and the universal distrust of Philip were tending steadily
to that end. For Perez--on the whole, the boldest, deepest, and most
unscrupulous villain in that pit of duplicity, the Spanish court--was
engaged at that moment with Philip, in a plot to draw from Don John and
Escovedo, by means of this correspondence, the proofs of a treason which
the King and minister both desired to find. The letters from Spain were
written with this view--those from Flanders were interpreted to that end.
Every confidential letter received by Perez was immediately laid by him
before the King, every letter which the artful demon wrote was filled
with hints as to the danger of the King's learning the existence of the
correspondence, and with promises of profound secrecy upon his own part,
and was then immediately placed in Philip's hands, to receive his
comments and criticisms, before being copied and despatched to the
Netherlands. The minister was playing a bold, murderous, and treacherous
game, and played it in a masterly manner. Escovedo was lured to his