Free ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history by Lytton Strachey

declared that the Doctor had been for years in the pay of Spain. There was a plot, he said, by which Don Antonio's son and heir was to be bought over to the interests of Philip; and the Doctor was the principal agent in the negotiations. He added that, three years previously, Lopez had secured the release from prison of a Portuguese spy, named Andrada, in order that he should go to Spain and arrange for the poisoning of Don Antonio. The information was complicated and strange; the authorities took a careful note of it; and waited for further developments.
     
    At the same time, Gomez d'Avila was shown the rack in the Tower. His courage forsook him, and he confessed that he was an intermediary, employed to carry letters backwards and forwards between Ferreira in England and another Portuguese, Tinoco, in Brussels, who was in the pay of the Spanish Government. The musk and amber letter, he said, had been written by Tinoco and addressed to Ferreira, under false names. Gomez was then plied with further questions, based upon the information obtained from Ferreira. It was quite true, he admitted, that there was a plot to buy over Don Antonio's son. The youth was to be bribed with 50,000 crowns and the musk and amber letter referred to this transaction. Ferreira, examined in his turn, confessed that this was so.
     
    Two months later Burghley received a communication from Tinoco. He wished, he said, to go to England, to reveal to the Queen secrets of the highest importance for the safety of her realm, which he had learnt at Brussels; and he asked for a safe-conduct. A safe-conduct was despatched; it was, as Burghley afterwards remarked, "prudently drafted"; it allowed the bearer safe ingress into England, but it made no mention of his going away again. Shortly afterwards Tinoco arrived at Dover; upon which he was at once arrested, and taken to London. His person was searched, and bills of exchange for a large sum of money were found upon him, together with two letters from the Spanish governor of Flanders, addressed to Ferreira.
     
    Tinoco was a young man who had been through much. For years he had shared the varying fortunes of Don Antonio; he had fought in Morocco, had been taken prisoner by the Moors, and after four years of slavery had rejoined his master in England. Destitute and reckless, he had at last, like his comrade Ferreira, sold himself to Spain. What else could such creatures do? They were floating straws sucked into the whirlpool of European statecraft; they had no choice; round and round they eddied, ever closer to the abyss. But for Tinoco, who was young, strong, and courageous, a life of treachery and danger had, perhaps, its attractions. There was a zest in the horror; and, besides, Fortune was capricious; the bold, unscrupulous intriguer might always pull some golden prize from the lottery, as well as some unspeakably revolting doom.
     
    The letters found on his person were vague and mysterious, and some sinister interpretation might well be put upon them. They were sent to Essex, who decided himself to interrogate the young man. The examination was conducted in French; Tinoco had a story ready - that he had come to England to reveal to the Queen a Jesuit plot against her life; but he broke down under the cross-examination of the Earl, prevaricated, and contradicted himself. Next day he wrote a letter to Burghley, protesting his innocence. He had been, he said, "confused and encumbered by the cunning questions of the Earl of Essex"; with his small knowledge of French, he had failed to understand the drift of the inquiry, or to express his own meaning; and he begged to be sent back to Flanders. The only result of his letter was that he was more rigorously confined. Again examined by Essex, and pressed with leading questions, he avowed that he had been sent to England by the Spanish authorities in order to see Ferreira and with him to win over Dr. Lopez to do a service to the King of Spain. Dr. Lopez once more!