"Whereas the treason of John (formerly duke) de Braganza, is a fact of the utmost notoriety; now I wish to make alike public his detestable intention of accusing the trusty house of Guzman of disloyalty, a house which has remained for centuries back, and will remain for ever obedient to its king and master; and this it has proved by the blood of all its relatives and dependants shed in his cause. This tyrant has poisoned the minds of foreign princes, and likewise those of the misguided Portugueze, who have embraced his party; and in order to give credit to his own wickedness, to animate them in his favour, and (although in vain) to injure me in the opinion of my master, (whom God preserve,) he has persuaded them that I am of his party; founding and establishing his preservation on the report he had himself circulated, and with which he had infected the minds of every one; thus flattering himself, that could he succeed in making the king of Spain suspect my loyalty, he should not meet with so much opposition from me in the execution of his designs, as he has done elsewhere. For this purpose he has made use of a franciscan friar, sent from the corporation of the town of Aïamonte, to Castro-Marin in Portugal, to obtain the liberty of a Spanish prisoner, which friar, being himself sent prisoner to Lisbon, has been worked upon to declare me of his party, and to that end has even published some letters which confirm his assertions, and accuse me of intending to favour the entrance of all foreign troops which might approach the coast of Andalusia, for the purpose of facilitating the means of obtaining the supplies he had demanded from the said foreign princes. And would to God it had been the case! since I should then have called the world to witness my zeal by destroying their fleet, a fate they must have experienced, according to the orders I had issued in case of such an attempt. The above are some of my motives for this appeal; but the principal subject of my griefs is his wife's being allied to me by blood, which blood, being corrupted by this rebellion, I am desirous of shedding, thinking myself bound to prove to my king and master, by this action, the grateful sense I have of his having expressed himself satisfied of my loyalty; and also to remove from the minds of the public, the suspicions they most probably had imbibed, from the false impressions made upon them by the traitor.