The Edinburgh Review Volume . 197

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ...preaching sedition somewhere else, was apprehended and thrown into prison. There was perhaps some hesitation about bringing a clerical dignitary to trial, the more so as the Pope had granted him a pardon, but the bishop himself found a way out of the difficulty. 'The fierce old man, despairing of liberty, enticed the governor of the prison to his cell and brought him to the ground with a large pebble concealed in the leather bag which professedly contained his breviary. He completed the murder with a knife, tied the body by the leg to his bed, and then summoned the victim's son, who only escaped his father's fate by precipitate retreat. Acuna was for this crime incontinently hanged by secular authority, without respect for pope or bishop, and it was not at once that Charles received absolution for this breach of clerical privilege. The Bishop's end was a dramatic denouement to the tragedy of the communal revolt. The king's severity in the punishment of the rebels and in Acufia'a execution has been commonly stigmatised as a blot upon his fame, but no Valois, and certainly no Tudor, would have so lightly chastised so dangerous a rebellion.' The revolt which broke out in Valencia at almost the same time as that in Castile was mainly social, fought by the democracy against the nobles and landed gentry; but it took the form of a sanguinary attack on the Moriscos, who were preferred by the gentry as tenants because they were tied to the soil, and paid twice as much as Christians did. Thus the Moorish peasantry, in their own defence, fought for their masters, and, wherever the democracy got the upper hand, they were either slaughtered or forcibly converted--sometimes, indeed, converted first and slaughtered 'afterwards.' Of those that were left...