HIS FALL ERRORS OF PHILIP II. 



157 



crawl to eminence and power which they only used to gratify 

 vindictive selfishness or to glut their inordinate avarice. 



Philip the II. could not, at first, believe the accusations of the 

 oidores against the family of Cortez and the distinguished noble- 

 man whom he had sent to represent him in Mexico. He resolved, 

 therefore, to wait the despatches of the viceroy. But the oidores 

 had been too watchful to allow those documents to reach the court 

 of Spain ; and Philip, therefore, construing the silence of Don 

 Gaston de Peralta, into a tacit confession of his guilt, sent the 

 Licenciados Jaraba, Munoz, and Carillo to New Spain, as Jueces 

 Pesquisidores, with letters for the viceroy commanding him to yield 

 up the government and to return to Spain in order to account for 

 his conduct. 



These men immediately departed on their mission and arrived 

 safely in America without accident, save in the death of Jaraba 

 one of their colleagues. As soon as they reached Mexico, they 

 presented their despatches to the viceroy, and Munoz took posses- 

 sion of the government of New Spain. The worthy and noble 

 Marques de Falces was naturally stunned by so unprecedented and 

 unexpected a proceeding; but, satisfied of the justice of his cause 

 as well as of the purity of his conduct, he left the capital and 

 retired to the castle of San Juan de Ulua, leaving the reins of 

 power in the hands of Munoz whose tyrannical conduct soon 

 destroyed all the confidence which hitherto had always existed, at 

 least between the Audiencia and the. people of the metropolis. 1 

 It was probably before this time that the Marques del Valle was 

 released ; — and deeming the new empire which his father had 

 given to Spain no safe resting place for his descendants, he 

 departed once more for the Spanish court. The viceroy himself, 

 had fallen a victim to deception and intrigue. 



It seems to have been one of the weaknesses of Philip the 

 Second's character to have but little confidence in men. With 

 such examples as we have just seen, it may, nevertheless, have 

 been an evidence of his wisdom that he did not rely upon the 

 courtiers who usually surround a king. He had doubted, in 

 reality, the actual guilt of the Marques de Falces, and was, there- 

 fore, not surprised when he learned the truth upon these weighty 

 matters in the year 1568. The government of Munoz, his visita- 

 dor, was, moreover, represented to him as cruel and bloody. The 

 conduct of the previous Audiencia had been humane when com- 



Liceo Mexicano vol. 1, p. 263, et seq. 

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