CHAPTER XXXIV

_Concludes the former chapter down to the imprisonment of the

Licentiate Vaca de Castro._

The Viceroy was not ignorant of what was passing in the city, and the

great tumult showed him that the citizens were very unquiet. He came out

of his room declaring that any who said that Gonzalo Pizarro had not

rebelled, would presently be given a flogging of a hundred lashes

publicly. In these days Vaca de Castro always went to visit the Viceroy,

who was so angry with him that one day he ordered him to be arrested and

imprisoned in the old room of the house of the Marquis, where the

Viceroy lodged. He was there for eight days, feeling the treatment he

was receiving from the Viceroy very acutely, and he regretted that he

had not gone at once to render an account to the King of his government.

The Bishop Don Jeronimo de Loaysa was much distressed that the Viceroy

should have thrown Vaca de Castro into prison. He besought him to

release his prisoner, which the Viceroy did at the Bishop’s request. But

he proclaimed that anyone who had been aggrieved by Vaca de Castro was

to send in his complaints in order that he might be punished if he had

acted without justice. After a few days he again arrested Vaca de Castro

and imprisoned him on board a ship. This imprisonment, according to what

the Viceroy published, was due to a suspicion that Vaca de Castro

meditated something against the Viceroy’s person.

Lorenzo de Aldana had come from the province of Xauxa to see the

Viceroy, having first written the letter already mentioned. The Viceroy

thought that the letter had been taken from him and was in a furious

rage. For this and because his authority was great and he had always

been a friend of the Pizarros, the Viceroy ordered him to be arrested on

suspicion, and he was sent on board another ship as a prisoner. He was

there several days and then released, the reasons being given why the

orders had been issued for sending him on board.

At this time the Viceroy ordered that there should be a fleet on the

sea. He appointed his brother-in-law Diego Alvarez de Cueto to be

Captain-General, and Jeronimo Zurbano to be captain.

The War of Quito · 第 34 / 55 章