The numerous effigies which figure in the autos indicate those who were compromised in the confessions of the penitents, and who succeeded for a time in eluding arrest. As a rule it may be said that this was but a temporary reprieve from the all-pervading vigilance of the Inquisition. Sooner or later, it gathered them in despite change of residence and name, and all the precautions of the hunted against the hunter. This is well illustrated in the vicissitudes of a colony of Portuguese, some twenty or thirty in number, in the little town of Beas (Jaen), which throw a vivid light on the miseries of these unfortunates. They had succeeded in living there obscurely for ten years or more, supporting themselves by such industries as they could follow, when some imprudence, or the watchfulness of some neighbor, drew upon them the attention of the tribunal of Cuenca, which arrested thirteen of them. From these the names of nine others were obtained, for whom warrants of arrest were issued but, when these were sent for execution, in April, 1656, it was found that they had left Beas secretly in February, abandoning their property. Five of them were traced to Málaga; the other four were said to have gone to Pietrabuena, but there the track was lost. All were duly prosecuted in absentia and their effigies formed part of the Seville auto of 1660.
The party that went towards Portugal was a family group of five--Diego Rodríguez Silva, his wife Ana Enríquez, her father Antonio Enríquez Francia, and her brother and sister-in-law, Diego Enríquez and Isabel Rodríguez. They pushed through without stopping to Rioseco, where they rested four days and then, hiring a guide, they traversed the mountains of Portugal, travelling only by night. Settling in Villa Pinhel, they tried to mend their broken fortunes, Ana Enríquez by keeping a shop and Diego Rodríguez by turning his hand to whatever he could find to do--at one time we hear of him as driving a thousand sheep to Lisbon for sale. Apparently by way of precaution, they appeared spontaneously before the tribunal of Coimbra, which treated them mercifully, imposing no fines but ordering them not to leave Pinhel without permission. Misfortune pursued Diego and, in 1671, he returned to Spain, stopping at Talavera de la Reina, whence he sent for his wife and children and father-in-law, telling the rest to remain. He took the name of del Aguila for himself and de los Rios for his wife, and settled for two years in Seville, where his father-in-law died. Thence they removed to Daimiel, where the Inquisition found them at last and arrested them, February 18, 1677, some seventeen years after they had been burnt in effigy in Seville. As two or three of the Beas fugitives, who had gone to Málaga, were on trial at Toledo in 1667, it is probable that none escaped save those who remained in Portugal. Two years and a half were spent on the trials of Diego and Ana, ending with a sentence of irremissible prison and sanbenito. Ana had broken down under this wandering life of incessant vicissitudes and anxiety; she had become the victim of epilepsy, melancholia and hypochondria, when her pitiless judges sent her to prison for life in vindication of a religion of infinite love and charity.[814]