Note 521 — Chapter VI · MEXICO. (continued 2)

Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 28, fol. 272, 276.

Obregon (op. cit., p. 227) relates an anecdote of this period which would seem incompatible with the existing discredited position of the Inquisition. One Ash Wednesday, when the canons of the cathedral called upon the Marquis de Croix, as customary, to present him with ashes, he kept them waiting in his antechamber, to the intense indignation of those dignified personages. They complained to the inquisitors, who summoned the viceroy to appear before them. He obeyed, but he went attended by a guard and some pieces of artillery. He was haughtily received until he took out his watch and casually remarked that he hoped the audience would be brief for, if he was not back in the street in ten minutes, the cannon would open on the building and reduce it to ruins. The dignity of the inquisitors disappeared; they promptly dismissed him and were in agony as he leisurely sauntered forth.

If such an occurrence took place it is attributable with more verisimilitude to the period of the Marquis de Croix in Mexico than to the earlier time of the Marquis de Castelfuerte in Peru, of whom a precisely similar story is told, except that he gave the tribunal an hour for consideration. In his case the summons to appear is ascribed to his rough treatment of the Franciscans, July 5, 1731, when two of them were killed in a disturbance at the execution of Dr. Joseph de Antequera.—Palma, Añales de la Inquisicion de Lima, p. 184 (Madrid, 1898).