old; and
at the other was placed the effigy of his accomplice, Joseph Policarpio
de Azevedo, who had made his escape. The marchioness of Tavora, being
brought upon the scaffold between eight and nine in the morning, was
beheaded at one stroke, and then covered with a linen cloth. Her two
sons, and her son-in-law, the count of Attouguia, with three servants
of the duke de Aveiro, were first strangled at one stake, and afterwards
broke upon wheels, where their bodies remained covered; but the duke
and the marquis, as chiefs of the conspiracy, were broken alive, and
underwent the most excruciating torments. The last that suffered was
the assassin Alvarez, who being condemned to be burned alive, the
combustibles which had been placed on the scaffold were set on fire,
the whole machine with their bodies consumed to ashes, and these ashes
thrown into the sea. The estates of the three unfortunate noblemen were
confiscated, and their dwelling-houses razed to the ground. The name
of Tavora was suppressed for ever by a public decree; but that of
Mascarenhas spared, because the duke de Aveiro was a younger branch of
the family. A reward of ten thousand crowns was offered to any person
who should apprehend the assassin who had escaped: then the embargo was
taken off the shipping. The king and royal family assisted at a public
_Te Deum_, sung in the chapel of Nossa Senhoro de Livramento; on
which occasion the king, for the satisfaction of his people, waved his
handkerchief with both hands, to show he was not maimed by the wounds he
had received. If such an attempt upon the life of a king was infamously
cruel and perfidious, it must be owned that the punishment inflicted
upon the criminals was horrible to human nature. The attempt itself was
attended with some circumstances that might have staggered belief, had
it not appeared but too plain that the king was actually wounded. One
would imagine that the duke de Aveiro, who was charged with designs on
the crown, would have made some preparation for taking advantage of
the confusion and disorder which must have been produced by the king's
assassination; but we do not find that any thing of this nature was
premeditated. It was no more than a desperate scheme of personal
revenge, conceived without caution, and executed without conduct; a
circumstance the more extraordinary, if we suppose the conspirators were
actuated by the councils of the Jesuits, who have been ever famous for
finesse an