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.