“The professed beards having been thus made, or trimmed, as they call it in jollity, fire is set to the furze, which are at the bottom of the stake, and above which the professed are chained so high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they sit on; and if there happens to be a wind, to which that place is much exposed, it seldom reaches so high as their knees: so that though, if there be a calm, the professed are commonly dead in about half an hour after the furze is set on fire; yet, if the weather prove windy, they are not after that dead in an hour and a half, or two hours, and so are really roasted, and not burnt to death. But though, out of hell, there cannot possibly be a more lamentable spectacle than this, being joined with the sufferers (so long as they are able to speak) crying out, ‘Miserecordia por amor de Dios, Mercy for the love of God;’ yet it is beheld by people of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of joy and satisfaction, as are not on any other occasion to be met with.” Dr. Gedde’s Tracts, vol. I. p. 447, &c. Thus far Dr. Geddes. When Mr. Wilcox, afterwards the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Rochester, was minister to the English factory at Lisbon, he sent the following letter to the then Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Gilbert Burnet, dated at Lisbon, Jan. 15, 1706, N. S. which I publish by his lordship’s allowance and approbation, and which abundantly confirms the foregoing account. “My Lord, “In obedience to your lordship’s commands, of the 10th ult. I have here sent all that was printed concerning the last Auto de Fe. I saw the whole process, which was agreeable to what is published by Limborch and others upon that subject. Of the five persons condemned, there were but four burnt; Antonio Tavanes, by an unusual reprieve, being saved after the procession. Heytor Dias, and Maria Pinteyra, were burnt alive, and the other two first strangled. The execution was very cruel. The woman was alive in the flames half an hour, and the man above an hour. The present king and his brothers were seated at a window so near, as to be addressed to a considerable time, in very moving terms, by the man as he was burning. But though the favour he begged was only a few more faggots, yet he was not able to obtain it. Those which are burnt alive here, are seated on a bench twelve feet high, fastened to a pole, and above six feet higher than the faggots. The wind being a little fresh, the man’s hinder parts were perfectly wasted; and as he turned himself, his ribs opened before he left speaking, the fire being recruited as it wasted, to keep him just in the same degree of heat. But all his entreaties could not procure him a larger allowance of wood to shorten his misery and dispatch him.” Thus far the Letter.