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physician, but that as Lopez was poor and laden with debt, a high price
would be required for his work. Hereupon Fuentes received orders from the
King of Spain to give the Jew all that he could in reason demand, if he
would undertake to poison the queen.

It now became necessary to handle the matter with great delicacy, and
Fuentes and Ybarra entered accordingly into a correspondence, not with
Lopez, but with a certain Ferrara de Gama. These letters were entrusted
to one Emanuel Lewis de Tinoco, secretly informed of the plot, for
delivery to Ferrara. Fuentes charged Tinoco to cause Ferrara to encourage
Lopez to poison her Majesty of England, that they might all have "a merry
Easter." Lopez was likewise requested to inform the King of Spain when he
thought he could accomplish the task. The doctor ultimately agreed to do
the deed for fifty thousand crowns, but as he had daughters and was an
affectionate parent, he stipulated for a handsome provision in marriage
for those young ladies. The terms were accepted, but Lopez wished to be
assured of the money first.

"Having once undertaken the work," said Lord Burghley, if he it were, "he
was so greedy to perform it that he would ask Ferrara every day, 'When
will the money come? I am ready to do the service if the answer were come
out of Spain.'"

But Philip, as has been often seen, was on principle averse to paying for
work before it had been done. Some delay occurring, and the secret, thus
confided to so many, having floated as it were imperceptibly into the
air, Tinoco was arrested on suspicion before he had been able to deliver
the letters of Fuentes and Ybarra to Ferrara, for Ferrara, too, had been
imprisoned before the arrival of Tinoco. The whole correspondence was
discovered, and both Ferrara and Tinoco confessed the plot. Lopez, when
first arrested, denied his guilt very stoutly, but being confronted with
Ferrara, who told the whole story to his face in presence of the judges,
he at last avowed the crime.

They were all condemned, executed, and quartered at London in the spring
of 1594. The queen wished to send a special envoy to the archduke at
Brussels, to complain that Secretary of State Cristoval de Moura, Count
Fuentes, and Finance Minister Ybarra--all three then immediately about
his person--were thus implicated in the plot against her life, to demand
their punishment, or else, in case of refusals to convict the king and
the archduke as accomplices in the