From Segovia the Grand Inquisitor replied, urging very pressing business to which he proposed to give his personal attention, wherefore he begged them to permit him to postpone his response to their summons.[174] * * * * * He quitted Segovia at about this time to repair to Avila, where the work upon the church and monastery of St. Thomas was well advanced; so well advanced, indeed, that already he was able to take up his residence in the monastery. We may assume that the pressing business he had urged to the Sovereigns as an excuse for postponing his journey into Andalusia was the business of inquiring into the alleged crimes of these Hebrew prisoners. For we know that he had intended having them brought before himself at Avila, but that being unable to dispose of the matter before the end of August or to postpone beyond that time his departure to rejoin the Court, he was compelled to entrust the matter to his delegates--the Dominican Frey Fernando de Santo Domingo, and the sometime Provisor of Astorga, Dr. Pedro de Villada, with whom, no doubt, he would leave--as he says himself--the fullest instructions. So much we are justified in assuming from the tenor of the following letter, which he delivered to them under date of August 27, to serve them as their warrant to remove the prisoners from Segovia and bring them to Avila for trial. He wrote as follows: “We, Frey Tomás de Torquemada, Prior of the Monastery of Holy Cross of Segovia, of the Order of Preachers, Confessor and Councillor to the King and Queen, our Sovereign lords, Inquisitor-General of heretical pravity and apostasy in the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and all other Dominions of their Highnesses, so deputed by the Holy Apostolic See, Make known to you, Reverend and Devout Fathers, D. Pedro de Villada, Doctor of Canon Law ... Juan Lopes de Cigales, Licentiate of Holy Theology ... and to you, Frey Fernando de Santo Domingo ... Inquisitors of heretical pravity in the said City and Bishopric of Avila, That we, by certain and legitimate information received, ordered the arrest of the persons and bodies of Alonso Franco, Lope Franco, Garcia Franco, and Juan Franco of the neighbourhood of La Guardia in the Archbishopric of Toledo, and of Yucé Franco, a Jew of the neighbourhood of Tenbleque, and of Mosé Abenamias, a Jew of the City of Zamora, and of Juan de Ocaña and Benito Garcia, of the neighbourhood of the said place of La Guardia, and the sequestration of all their property for having practised heresy and apostasy and for having perpetrated certain deeds, crimes, and offences against our Holy Catholic Faith, and we ordered them to be taken to and held in the prison of the Holy Inquisition of the City of Segovia until their cases should be fully known to and decided by us or by such person or persons to whom we consign them upon being so acquainted.