e criminals from the pulpit of the church of St. Augustine,
on the nineteenth of September, 617, before all the people, who had
congregated to witness a spectacle so extraordinary. Immediately they
took from him the cowl, and left them with only some short cassocks
such as are worn by clergymen. They delivered them to the bishop,
who was already prepared for the degradation. He immediately began to
degrade them, and then delivered them over to the secular arm. They
were taken to jail by the strong guard of soldiers that had been in the
church ever since the criminals had been removed from the prisons to
hear the sentence. But it was possible to execute this sentence against
three only, because Fray Andres Encinas had escaped the night before,
in company with a lay brother who was guarding him. With chains and
all, the lay brother removed him from the prison at twelve o'clock at
night, and, placing him upon his back, carried him along an unfinished
wall of the convent, with great danger to both of falling and killing
themselves. He took from him the chains and, together with another
lay brother of their order, they jumped from the wall and fled in
great haste. On the twenty-second of September of the same year,
617, the secular tribunal pronounced the sentence of death upon the
three. They were taken from the jail amid a great retinue of religious
of all orders, who were assisting, and of soldiers who were guarding
the prisoners. At ten o'clock in the morning they were hanged in the
square before the largest assembly of people, I think, I have ever seen
in my life. They died with suitable preparation. I am unwilling to omit
the account of a very peculiar circumstance. Twenty years ago they were
hanging in Madrid that Augustinian friar because he wished to make a
pastry-cook king of Portugal, and to marry him to Dona Ana de Austria,
the mother of Fray Juan de Ocadiz. She was watching the proceeding,
and all at once she began to scream and weep. When asked the cause
of this she replied that she fancied she saw on the gallows her son,
who was an Augustinian friar. Followed by a large crowd they took the
bodies of these three men who had been hanged, to the convent of San
Agustin for interment, where they will remain with their provincial
until God calls them to judgment. The friars then very diligently
searched for the one who had fled, in order to execute upon him
the same sentence. At first they did not find him. And afterw