I inquired very carefully how they were so cruelly murdered (because many people believed them alive when the king entered Naples), and I was told by their principal servants that they were horribly and villanously knocked on the head by a Moor of Africa, who, immediately after their execution, was dispatched into Barbary, that no notice might be taken of it. I was informed he did not even spare those ancient princes, some of whom had been kept in prison for four or five-and-thirty years. Never was any prince more bloody, wicked, inhuman, lascivious, or gluttonous than he. Yet his father was more dangerous, because no man knew when he was angry or pleased; for he would betray men in the midst of his entertainments and caresses, as he betrayed Count James[333], whom he caused on a sudden to be apprehended, and put to a horrible death, though he was in the quality of an ambassador at his court from Francis, Duke of Milan, whose natural daughter he had married; but to that barbarous action Francis was consenting, for they were both afraid of his courage and interest with the Bracci[334], for he was son to Nicolo Piccinino.[335] In the same manner (as report goes) he served several others; for this Ferrand had nothing of tenderness or compassion in him, as I have been informed by his nearest friends and relations, nor was he ever known to take the least pity of his own necessitous subjects in relation to their taxes. The whole trade of buying and selling he engrossed to himself all through his kingdom. He delivered hogs to his people to feed, and required them to make them fat, that they might fetch a good price; and if any of them chanced to die, the people were forced to pay for them. In Apulia and other countries which are plentiful in olives, he and his son bought up all the oil, almost at their own price; the same they did with their corn, buying it at a cheap rate before it was ripe, and then selling it again as dear as they could; but if the price of any of their commodities happened to fall in the meantime, they obliged the people to take them off their hands; and whilst they were disposed to sell, nobody durst buy of any one else.