t the
head of 700 men, swooped down upon the town and took the alcalde and
his soldiers prisoners. He next wrote to the cardinal regent,
ordering him to quit the palace and the kingdom. He then set out for
Torres Vedras, intending to release the criminals confined there, and
with their assistance to seize Cintra, and afterwards to attack the
capital. On the march he threw the unfortunate alcalde and the notary
of Torres Vedras, who had been captured at the same time, over a high
cliff into the sea, and executed another government official who had
the misfortune to fall into his clutches. The corregedor Fonseca, who
was not far off, hearing of these excesses, immediately started at the
head of eighty horsemen to oppose the rebel progress. Wisely
calculating that if he appeared with a larger force Alvares would
again flee to the hills, he ordered some companies to repair in
silence to a village in the rear, and aid him in case of need. He
first encountered a picked band of 200 rebels, whom he easily routed;
and then, being joined by his reinforcements, fell upon the main body,
which his also dispersed. Alvares succeeded in escaping for a time,
but at last he was taken and brought to Lisbon. Here, after being
exposed to public infamy, he was hanged amid the jeers of the
populace.

Nine years later, in 1594, another impostor appeared, this time in
Spain, under the very eyes of King Philip, who had seized the
Portuguese sovereignty. Again an ecclesiastic figured in the plot; but
on this occasion he concealed himself behind the scenes, and pulled
the strings which set the puppet-king in motion. Miguel dos Santos, an
Augustinian monk, who had been chaplain to Sebastian, after his
disappearance espoused the cause of Don Antonio, and conceived the
scheme of placing his new patron on the Lusitanian throne, by exciting
a revolution in favour of a stranger adventurer, who would run all the
risks of the rebellion, and resign his ill-gotten honours when the
real aspirant appeared. He found a suitable tool in Gabriel de
Spinosa, a native of Toledo. This man resembled Sebastian, was
naturally bold and unscrupulous, and was easily persuaded to undertake
the task of personating the missing monarch. The monk, Dos Santos, who
was confessor to the nunnery of Madrigal, introduced this person to
one of the nuns, Donna Anna of Austria, a niece of King Philip, and
informed her that he was the unfortunate King of Portugal. The lady,
believing