ated the other
story to prove that her relations with Perez, though intimate, were
innocent. They are a pretty set of people!

As for Escovedo, he and Perez had been friends from their youth
upwards. While Perez passed from the service of Gomez to that of
Philip, in 1572 Escovedo was appointed secretary to the nobly
adventurous Don John of Austria. The Court believed that he was
intended to play the part of spy on Don John, but he fell under the
charm of that gallant heart, and readily accepted, if he did not
inspire, the most daring projects of the victor of Lepanto, the Sword
of Christendom. This was very inconvenient for the leaden-footed
Philip, who never took time by the forelock, but always brooded over
schemes and let opportunity pass. Don John, on the other hand, was all
for forcing the game, and, when he was sent to temporise and
conciliate in the Low Countries, and withdraw the Spanish army of
occupation, his idea was to send the Spanish forces out of the
Netherlands by sea. When once they were on blue water he would make a
descent on England; rescue the captive Mary Stuart; marry her (he was
incapable of fear!); restore the Catholic religion, and wear the
English crown. A good plot, approved of by the Pope, but a plot which
did not suit the genius of Philip. He placed his leaden foot upon the
scheme and on various other gallant projects, conceived in the best
manner of Alexandre Dumas. Now Escovedo, to whom Don John was
devotedly attached, was the soul of all these chivalrous designs, and
for that reason Philip regarded him as a highly dangerous person.
Escovedo was at Madrid when Don John first went to the Low Countries
(1576). He kept urging Philip to accept Don John's fiery proposals,
though Antonio Perez entreated him to be cautious. At this date, 1576,
Perez was really the friend of Escovedo. But Escovedo would not be
advised; he wrote an impatient memorial to the King, denouncing his
stitchless policy (_descosido_), his dilatory, shambling, idealess
proceedings. So, at least, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell asserts in his
_Don John of Austria_: 'the word used by Escovedo was _descosido_,
"unstitched."' But Mr. Froude says that _Philip_ used the expression,
later, in reference to _another_ letter of Escovedo's which he also
called 'a bloody letter' (January 1578). Here Mr. Froude can hardly be
right, for Philip's letter containing that vulgar expression is of
July 1577.

In any case, in 1576 Philip was i