Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
And thus having gotten from our own mouths matter sufficient for them
to proceed in judgment against us, they caused a large scaffold to be
made in the midst of the market-place in Mexico, right over against the
head church, and fourteen or fifteen days before the day of their
judgment, with the sound of a trumpet, and the noise of their
attabalies, which are a kind of drums, they did assemble the people in
all parts of the city, before whom it was then solemnly proclaimed that
whosoever would upon such a day, repair to the marketplace, they should
hear the sentence of the Holy Inquisition against the English heretic
Lutherans, and also see the same put in execution. Which being done,
and the time approaching of this cruel judgment, the night before they
came to the prison where we were, with certain officers of that holy
hellish house, bringing with them certain fools' coats which they had
prepared for us, being called in their language St. Benitos, which
coats were made of yellow cotton and red crosses upon them, both before
and behind; they were so busied in putting on their coats about us and
in bringing us out into a large yard, and placing and pointing us in
what order we should go to the scaffold or place of judgment upon the
morrow, that they did not once suffer us to sleep all that night long.
The next morning being come, there was given to every one of us for our
breakfast, a cup of wine, and a slice of bread fried in honey, and so
about eight of the clock in the morning, we set forth of the prison,
every man alone in his yellow coat and a rope about his neck, and a
great green wax candle in his hand unlighted, having a Spaniard
appointed to go upon either side of every one of us; and so marching in
this order and manner towards the scaffold in the market-place, which
was a bow-shot distant or thereabouts, we found a great assembly of
people all the way, and such throng, that certain of the Inquisitors'
officers on horseback were constrained to make way, and so coming to
the scaffold we went up by a pair of stairs, and found seats ready made
and prepared for us to sit down on, every man in order as he should be
called to receive his judgment. We being thus set down as we were
appointed, presently the Inquisitors came up another pair of stairs,
and the Viceroy and all the chief justices with them. When they were
set down and placed under the cloth of estate agreeing to their degrees
and calling, then came up also a great number of friars, white, black,
and grey, about the number of 300 persons, they being set in the places
for them appointed. Then was there a solemn Oyes made, and silence
commanded, and then presently began their severe and cruel judgment.
The first man that was called was one Roger, the chief armourer of the
Jesus, and he had judgment to have 300 stripes on horseback, and after
condemned to the galleys as a slave for ten years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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