One of them was Don Carlos de Seso, a noble Florentine, who had stood high in the favor of Charles the Fifth. Being united with a lady of rank in Castile, he removed to that country, and took up his residence in Valladolid. He had become a convert to the Lutheran doctrines, which he first communicated to his own family, and afterwards showed equal zeal in propagating among the people of Valladolid and its neighborhood. In short, there was no man to whose untiring and intrepid labors the cause of the Reformed religion in Spain was more indebted. He was, of course, a conspicuous mark for the Inquisition.
During the fifteen months in which he lay in its gloomy cells, cut off from human sympathy and support, his constancy remained unshaken. The night preceding his execution, when his sentence had been announced to him, De Seso called for writing materials. It was thought he designed to propitiate his judges by a full confession of his errors. But the confession he made was of another kind. He insisted on the errors of the Romish Church, and avowed his unshaken trust in the great truths of the Reformation. The document, covering two sheets of paper, is pronounced by the secretary of the Inquisition to be a composition equally remarkable for its energy and precision.[444] When led before the royal gallery, on his way to the place of execution, De Seso pathetically exclaimed to Philip, "Is it thus that you allow your innocent subjects to be persecuted?" To which the king made the memorable reply, "If it were my own son, I would fetch the wood to burn him, were he such a wretch as thou art!" It was certainly a characteristic answer.[445]
At the stake De Seso showed the same unshaken constancy, bearing his testimony to the truth of the great cause for which he gave up his life. As the flames crept slowly around him, he called on the soldiers to heap up the fagots, that his agonies might be sooner ended; and his executioners, indignant at the obstinacy--the heroism--of the martyr, were not slow in obeying his commands.[446]
The companion and fellow-sufferer of De Seso was Domingo de Roxas, son of the marquis de Poza, an unhappy noble, who had seen five of his family, including his eldest son, condemned to various humiliating penances by the Inquisition for their heretical opinions. This one was now to suffer death. De Roxas was a Dominican monk. It is singular that this order, from which the ministers of the Holy Office were particularly taken, furnished many proselytes to the Reformed religion. De Roxas, as was the usage with ecclesiastics, was allowed to retain his sacerdotal habit until his sentence had been read, when he was degraded from his ecclesiastical rank, his vestments were stripped off one after another, and the hideous dress of the _san benito_ thrown over him, amid the shouts and derision of the populace. Thus apparelled, he made an attempt to address the spectators around the scaffold; but no sooner did he begin to raise his voice against the errors and cruelties of Rome, than Philip indignantly commanded him to be gagged. The gag was a piece of cleft wood, which, forcibly compressing the tongue, had the additional advantage of causing great pain, while it silenced the offender. Even when he was bound to the stake, the gag, though contrary to custom, was suffered to remain in the mouth of De Roxas, as if his enemies dreaded the effects of an eloquence that triumphed over the anguish of death.[447]