REPORT OF LOPEZ S TREASON. 29.3 



infinite difficulties, in the very obtaining of an oppor 

 tunity to execute this horrible act ; and, besides, 

 cannot but see present and most assured death 

 before their eyes, and therefore must be, as it were, 

 damnable votaries if they undertake it : this man, in 

 regard of his faculty, and of his private access to her 

 majesty, had both means to perpetrate, and means 

 to conceal, whereby he might reap the fruit of his 

 wicked treason without evident peril. And for his 

 complices that practised with him, being Portuguese, 

 and of the retinue of king Antonio, the king of 

 Spain s mortal enemy, they were men thereby freed 

 and discharged from suspicion, and might send 

 letters and receive letters out of Spain without jea 

 lousy ; as those which were thought to entertain 

 intelligences there for the good of their master. 

 And for the evasion and mask that Lopez had pre 

 pared for this treason, if it had not been searched 

 and sifted to the bottom, it was, that he did intend 

 but to cozen the king of Spain, without ill meaning ; 

 somewhat in the nature of that stratagem which 

 Parry, a most cunning and artificial traitor, had pro 

 vided for himself. 



Nevertheless this matter, by the great goodness 

 of God, falling into good hands, of those honourable 

 and sufficient persons which dealt therein, was by 

 their great and worthy industry so handled and 

 followed, as this Proteus of a disguised and trans 

 formed treason did at last appear in his own likeness 

 and colours, which were as foul and monstrous as 

 have been known in the world. For some of her 



