But it was not long before the guilty agent became as unwelcome to his guilty master as their victim had been. A change in their relations followed, cautiously brought on by the unscrupulous king, but deep and entire. At first, Philip permitted Perez to be pursued by the kinsmen of the murdered man, and afterwards, contriving plausible pretexts for hiding his motives, began himself to join in the persecution. Eleven long years the wretched courtier was watched, vexed, and imprisoned, at Madrid; and once, at least, he was subjected to cruel bodily tortures. When he could endure this no longer, he fled to Aragon, his native kingdom, whose freer political constitution did not permit him to be crushed in secret. This was a great surprise to Philip, and, for an instant, seems to have disconcerted his dark schemes. But his resources were equal to the emergency. He pursued Perez to Saragossa, and finding the regular means of justice unequal to the demands of his vengeance, caused his victim to be seized by the Inquisition, under the absurd charge of heresy. But this, again, in the form in which Philip found it necessary to proceed, was a violation of the ancient privileges of the kingdom, and the people broke out into open rebellion, and released Perez from prison;--a consequence of his measures, which, perhaps, was neither unforeseen by Philip nor unwelcome to him. At any rate, he immediately sent an army into Aragon, sufficient, not only to overwhelm all open resistance, but to strike a terror that should prevent future opposition to his will; and the result, besides a vast number of rich confiscations to the royal treasury, was the condemnation of sixty-eight persons of distinction to death by the Inquisition, and the final overthrow of nearly every thing that remained of the long-cherished liberties of the country. Meantime, Perez escaped secretly from Saragossa, as he had before escaped from Madrid, and, wandering over the Pyrenees in the disguise of a shepherd, sought refuge in Bearn, at the little court of Catherine of Bourbon, sister of Henry the Fourth. Public policy caused him to be well received both there and in France, where he afterwards passed the greater part of his long exile. During the troubles between Elizabeth and Philip, he instinctively went to England, and, while there, was much with Essex, and became more familiar with Bacon than the wise and pious mother of the future chancellor thought it well one so profligate as Perez should be. Philip, who could ill endure the idea of having such a witness of his crimes intriguing at the courts of his great enemies, endeavoured to have Perez assassinated both in Paris and London, and failed more from accident than from want of well-concerted plans to accomplish his object.