“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”
—Francis Drake
On January 1, 1594 the blow of Essex fell upon his enemy. Dr. Lopez, Queen Elizabeth I’s principal physician, a Court favourite and a friend of the great Lord Treasurer, found himself a prisoner. Nothing whatever of an incriminating character was found in his house; and when he was taken before the Lord Treasurer, his son, Robert Cecil, and the Earl of Essex, at Burghley House in the Strand for examination, his answers seemed so satisfactory that the Cecils, at all events, were convinced that he had no part in any sinister designs. Burghley knew, of course, that he was in communication with Spanish agents, for he had become one of his own principal spy-masters. The Cecils also knew from their examination of Andrada all about the peace negotiations of two years before, and were persuaded that the new matter was a prolongation of the same intrigue, for the purpose of ‘cosining’ the King of Spain and gaining knowledge of his intention.
“Essex, whose watchfulness over the life of his sovereign was remarkable, whilst his intelligences were comparable in extent and accuracy to those of Walsingham himself was the first to give notice of the atrocious plot. At his instance Lopez was apprehended, examined before himself, the Treasurer, the Lord Admiral and Robert Cecil and committed to custody in the Earl’s house. But nothing decisive appearing on his first examination, Robert Cecil took occasion to represent the charge as groundless; and her Majesty, sending in heat for Essex, called him ‘rash and temerarious youth,’ and reproached him for bringing on slight grounds so heinous a suspicion upon an innocent man.” 1
So, as soon as Sir Robert Cecil could get away from the examination of Lopez, he rode in haste to the Queen at Hampton Court, and told her how Essex had arrested her body-physician, and that on examination the Doctor had proved his innocence of offence. Elizabeth was in a fury. She had been squabbling with Essex ever since Christmas, and this was another grievance against him. When he appeared at Court she railed at him vigorously. How dared he, ‘a rash temerarious youth,’ to bring these grave accusations of high treason, or, of sheer malice, against a faithful servant of hers? She knew that Lopez was innocent, and it touched her honour now to see that justice was done. Cecil, the prim, sly, little hunchback, whom he hated, stood by whilst the haughty favourite was thus rebuked; and when Essex flung out of the chamber, with flaming face and violent gesture, to sulk for the next two days, it touched his honour thenceforward to bring the Jew Lopez to the gallows, guilty or innocent.
Not a word up to this point had been said about poisoning the Queen, the alleged charge on Lopez, but in the excited state of public feeling against Spain, already described, a mere hint of such a plan attributed to Lopez was sufficient to turn everyone against him. The hint was not long coming, and it came from the quarter where it might have been expected. Standen, one of Essex’s Catholic spies, went to Hampton Court on January 24, and wrote to Francis Bacon on January 30 an account of Lopez’s first examination in London on January 21, and the Queen’s rage with Essex. He then says that
“Lopez had been detected of a design to poison the Queen.” 2
The following day Faunt, another of Essex’s hangers-on, wrote from London to Francis Bacon, saying that
“it was most true that Dr. Lopez was most deeply touched in the particular working of the Queen’s destruction, and was discovered to have been the King of Spain’s pensioner for seven years past. The Queen had forbidden all access to her, except only of four persons, besides Councilors and ladies.”
The day before this was written, Lopez was taken to the Tower, and Essex himself wrote to his spy-master, Antony Bacon:
“In haste this morning.
I have discovered a most dangerous and desperate treason. The point of conspiracy was her Majesty’s death. The executioner should have been Dr. Lopez; the manner poison. This I have so followed as I will make it appear as clear as noonday.” 3
On February 11, Faunt wrote to Bacon some news he had heard secretly from Waad about the Lopez case, which he now mixed up vaguely with the Collen, Annias, and Polwhele. Then he goes on to say:
“The inquiry is still very strict, and Dr. Lopez used great arts to elude it, and swore and forswore himself for that purpose. However, he has already confessed that many letters had been sent to him from the King of Spain’s Ministers with large offers, but that he had always forborne to make answer, and entered not into promise. Yet one letter was found, in which he offered all his service to the King, saying that he only stayed in England to do him some acceptable service, which, being done, he would think himself happy to retire and die in his Majesty’s dominions.”
Lopez, he said, asserted that all this was in pursuance of a plan he had arranged with Walsingham to gain over as a spy one of the assistants of Idiaquez, the Spanish Secretary of State.
“But that shift,” continued Faunt, “will not serve. This will prove the most resolute attempt, and most deeply advised, of the Court of Spain, if Lopez be well sifted, who is a most vile person, and void of all shame and common humanity. Thus much in great secret.” 4
All this, be it recollected, was from the various creatures of Essex. The letter to which he refers from Lopez, offering his services to Spain, is not now forthcoming, and Faunt’s hearsay assertion of its existence is not conclusive; but there is no doubt that such letters had been written by Ferreira at Lopez’s dictation. Ferreira confessed on February 18 that ten months previously he had received from Lopez two letters to be delivered to Don Christobal de Moura. These letters were written by Ferreira himself, at the dictation of Lopez, and professed the latter’s willingness to do all that the King of Spain desired, though, said Ferreira, the wording was purposely obscure. In answer, evidently, to a leading question, Ferreira confessed at the same time that, in his opinion,
“the Doctor would have poisoned the Queen if required.”
This is an instance of the way in which the evidence was built up. From these extorted admissions to the confident statement that Lopez had written to the Spaniards offering to kill the Queen was but a step. In the same confession Ferreira said that Andrada had told him, shortly before he left England in 1593, that if the King of Spain wished, Lopez would poison either the Queen or Don Antonio. This speech Ferreira said he had afterwards repeated to Lopez himself, who replied,
“As for the King (Don Antonio), he shall die with the first sickness that shall happen to him, but for the Queen we have no answer as yet from the other side.” 5
This, however, is no proof that such offers as they contained related to the murder of the Queen. The first presumption, indeed, is to the contrary, as the unquestionable negotiations laid bare in the papers from the Paris archives.
Essex, Waad, and Robert Cecil (for the latter was as anxious now as the Earl himself to sift the matter; it was the Cecil method never to champion an unpopular cause) followed up ceaselessly the clues thus gained, with the object of ‘making it appear clear as noonday’ against Lopez. Tinoco’s admissions were used as levers for still further opening the lips of Ferreira; and the two prisoners were so cleverly handled with fears of torture, and by a desire to ingratiate themselves with their examiners, that the story soon looked circumstantial enough to ensure the hanging of Lopez.
1 Lucy Aikin. Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Vol. II., P. 352, 1819
2 Birch
3 Birch. Vol. I., P. 152. It is not plain from where the original hint came from about Lopez killing the Queen, but it seems probable that it arose out of an important exclamation which Ferreira afterwards confessed he had made to his guard, the young Portuguese called Pedro, to the effect that he had no doubt that Lopez would poison either the Queen or Don Antonio if he was paid sufficiently for it
4 Birch
5 See Ferreira’s confession, State Papers, Domestic, and in Yetswirt’s book
The Earl of Essex
(1566–1601)
When the evidence, such as it was, was pieced together, it appeared from the declarations that the reference to ‘peace’ and ‘service’ really meant the murder of the Queen by Lopez. Tinoco confessed on February 26:
“The letters I wrote to Ferreira by Gomez d’Avila concerning the joint which speaketh of pearls, and the price of them, was to give him to understand that the news which he had sent that Dr. Lopez would kill the Queen were very greatly accepted, and much esteemed of Count de Fuentes and Secretary Ibarra. And touching the point concerning musk and amber, the Count de Fuentes did tell me that he did look for a resolution of the King of great importance; and when it came there should be a great matter” 6
It will be seen by these confessions that Tinoco’s avowals were all directed to prove his own innocence at the expense of Lopez and Ferreira, whilst the latter sought to shift the principal burden upon Lopez. Tinoco’s further confession on February 22 that Fuentes and Ibarra had summoned him to a secret chamber, and taking his hands in theirs, made him pledge himself to inviolable secrecy.
“After I had given them my word and faith, they told me that Ferreira had written to them that Lopez had offered and bound himself to kill the Queen of England by poison, on condition that the King of Spain should recompense his services according to their quality. This passed at the house of Count de Fuentes in Brussels, and as far as I remember on the 9th December last.”
Both the prisoners, however, admitted the main point, namely, that the conspiracy really aimed at the Queen’s death; and the final triumph for Essex was to wring some sort of admission from Lopez himself. All the avowals of Tinoco and Ferreira were dangled before him daily in the Tower. First he indignantly denied his guilt; then, in terror or distress, he admitted that he had made a promise to the Spaniards to poison the Queen, but that his object was simply to cheat Philip out of a large sum of money and then to expose him. Although it is often asserted that this confession was made on the rack, this does not appear to have been the case. But however obtained, it sufficed; and on February 28, 1594 Lopez was tried at Guildhall by special commission, including Essex and Cecil. Tinoco and Ferreira told their story again, with all the damning details. In accordance with the usual procedure in such cases, the accused was browbeaten and abused unmercifully by his judges and prosecutors. The various letters mentioned were made the most of, though of themselves without the declarations they would have proved nothing against Lopez, except perhaps the little notes that had passed between him and Ferreira when the latter was first arrested. The Doctor solemnly asserted that he was innocent; and on being confronted with his own partial confession, he said that it had been made out of fear of the rack.
It must be recollected that the letters purporting to be written by Andrada in Calais to Count Fuentes connecting Lopez directly with the plot to kill the Queen were only recited on the recollection of Tinoco, who asserted that they had been shown to him in Brussels by the secretary of Count Fuentes. Flimsy evidence from Tinoco’s memory. Enough to find a man guilty and then to be executed? It seems so.
Lopez, confronted with Tinoco and Ferreira, he could only protest passionately that their evidence was all false, and he was in turn told by them that he lied. Lopez, guilty or innocent, was doomed long before, and on his own statement he was condemned to death as a traitor. Cecil was as eager as Essex now to wash his hands of sympathy with the fallen wretch, and directly he left Guildhall he wrote to a friend that
“the vile Jew said that he did confess indeed to it that he had talk of it, but now he might tell further he did belie himself; and did it only to save himself from racking, which, the Lord knoweth on my souls witness, to be most untrue: and so he was told home: and the most substantial jury I have seen have found him guilty in the highest degree of all treasons; and judgment passed against him with the applause of all the world.” 7
Ferreira and Tinoco were put upon their trial a fortnight afterwards, and, notwithstanding their prayers for mercy and their engaging frankness, there was no clemency for them.
For some reason or other the Queen hesitated to sign the death-warrant. Lopez begged humbly for himself, his wife and children, but without avail so far as he was concerned. All England was in a ferment of indignation, owing to the revelations made by Ferreira and Tinoco, and the heat introduced into the accusations against Philip and his Ministers by the Essex party; and at length, early in June 1594, the three poor wretches, bound to hurdles, were dragged up Holborn to Tyburn, and the penalty for treason was paid by all of them, with a sickening barbarity exceeding even the usual awful rites.
It is related, though no authority is quoted, in Dr. Lee’s The Church under Queen Elizabeth, that one of the three, probably Tinoco, as he was the youngest, recovered his feet after the hanging, and, mad with pain and desperation, attacked the executioner. The crowd applauding his pluck broke through the guard and made a ring to witness the fight. Two burly ruffians came to the executioner’s help, but one was immediately felled by a blow from the prisoner, who kept the other two at bay for some time. The half-strangled creature was at length stunned with a blow on the head, and the disemboweling then proceeded.
Lopez in vain tried to speak to the vast scoffing crowd that faced him. Almost speechless with agitation, he solemnly protested his innocence: mocking laughter and ribald interruption alone greeted his despairing cry. He was unfortunately inspired to say that he loved his mistress better than Jesus Christ; and this, coming from a Jew, so incensed the multitude that the tumult silenced all else, and Guy Lopez went to his death, and left his final secret to be guessed by others.
The proofs against Lopez are absolutely confined to the declarations of his two accomplices, and especially Tinoco, who confessed himself a perjurer, and both of them would probably have sworn to anything desired of them to save their necks. The evidence of Philip’s complicity is for the most part demonstrably false, whilst that against Fuentes and Ibarra, so far as the plot to murder Elizabeth is concerned, rests likewise on extremely unsubstantial foundations.
The whole of the original documents produced in the case were compatible with the objects of the conspiracy being:
- the simulation of peace negotiations to obtain information
- the winning over of Don Antonio’s eldest son and his adherents
- the ‘cozening’ of King Philip, for the benefit of the conspirators
- the murder of Don Antonio or of Antonio Perez
It is unwise to pronounce a dogmatic opinion on so very doubtful a case, but on a review of the quality of the whole evidence, one is inclined to believe that one or more of these objects were those really aimed at. It is not at all necessary to believe that Essex purposely and knowingly sacrificed an innocent man, but the Earl’s evident desire to incriminate Lopez would naturally influence the statements of the two prisoners, anxious for their own pardon, upon whose evidence mainly Lopez died.