Details

Subjects:

Pérez, Antonio, -1611.
Escobedo, Juan de, 1530-1578.
Philip II, King of Spain, 1527-1598.
Alamos de Barrientos, Baltasar, approximately 1555-approximately 1644.
Spain -- History -- Philip II, 1556-1598.
Spain.
History.

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Biographies (literary works)
Manuscripts, Spanish.
Manuscripts, European.

Language:

Spanish.

Summary:

Account of the case brought against Antonio Pérez, secretary to Philip II, precipitated by his role in the murder of Juan de Escobedo, secretary to John of Austria. Pérez, who at one time had enjoyed the King's confidence, had recommended that Escobedo be assigned to John of Austria in order to spy on him. When Escobedo turned out to be more loyal to John of Austria, who was the King's half-brother and Governor General of the Low Countries, Pérez leveraged his position as secretary for the affairs of the Low Countries by altering documents and correspondence in an effort to arouse suspicion against Escobedo, and indirectly, of John of Austria. His plan seems to have worked for the King eventually tacitly agreed to Escobedo's extrajudicial murder, which Pérez appears to have arranged in 1578. This account deals with the period after the King realized he had been manipulated by Pérez and had him arrested in 1579. It primarily illustrates the bureaucratic side of the more than ten-year-long process of bringing charges against Pérez. It includes multiple letters from Pérez to the King; his confession made under torture; a brief account of the sentence carried out against Baltasar Alamos de Barrientos in 1590, a Pérez loyalist who seems to have been arrested for this reason; and the death sentence against Pérez also in 1590, issued by the president of Castile, Rodrigo Vázquez de Arce. Due to the fact that Pérez had escaped from several Castilian prisons, with the help of loyalists like Alamos, and ended up in his native Aragon, his extradition to Castile was hampered by Castilian and Aragonese antagonism. By the time royal troops were able to occupy Zaragoza in 1591, Pérez had fled to France, where he lived in exile until his death in 1611.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from caption title (f.1r).
For another manuscript of the case of Antonio Pérez, see Ms. Codex 1406, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.
Foliation: Paper, ii + 85 + ii leaves; 62-146; [1-85]; near-contemporary foliation in ink, upper right recto; modern foliation in pencil, lower right recto. An earlier foliation scheme, 101-185, crossed out, upper right recto. References are to modern foliation.
Layout: Written in 22-25 long lines.
Script: Written in a cursive script.
Watermark: Unidentified watermark consisting of a cross inside an oval, flanked on either side by a griffin, with a crown above and possibly two circles below.
Binding: Quarter morocco (Zacour-Hirsch). Previous foliation shows this to be at least the third binding.
Origin: Probably written in Spain in the 17th century.

Penn Provenance:

Formerly owned by Henry Charles Lea (bookplate inside upper cover).

Cited in:

Described in Zacour, Norman P. and Hirsch, Rudolf. Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania to 1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), p. 178 (Ms. Lea 151).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 1407

Contributor:

Lea, Henry Charles, 1825-1909, former owner.

OCLC:

310421373