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.

[Sidenote: AUTOS DA FE.]

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 prosel