this new disturber of the public tranquillity; but on the approach of the troops Alvares and his followers took to the mountains.  The cardinal’s representative, unable to pursue them into their inaccessible fastnesses, left the alcalde of Torres Vedras at Ericeira with instructions to capture the impostor dead or alive, and himself set out for Lisbon.  He had scarcely reached the plain when Alvares, at the head of 700 men, swooped down upon the town and took the alcalde and his soldiers prisoners.  He next wrote to the cardinal regent, ordering him to quit the palace and the kingdom.  He then set out for Torres Vedras, intending to release the criminals confined there, and with their assistance to seize Cintra, and afterwards to attack the capital.  On the march he threw the unfortunate alcalde and the notary of Torres Vedras, who had been captured at the same time, over a high cliff into the sea, and executed another government official who had the misfortune to fall into his clutches.  The corregedor Fonseca, who was not far off, hearing of these excesses, immediately started at the head of eighty horsemen to oppose the rebel progress.  Wisely calculating that if he appeared with a larger force Alvares would again flee to the hills, he ordered some companies to repair in silence to a village in the rear, and aid him in case of need.  He first encountered a picked band of 200 rebels, whom he easily routed; and then, being joined by his reinforcements, fell upon the main body, which his also dispersed.  Alvares succeeded in escaping for a time, but at last he was taken and brought to Lisbon.  Here, after being exposed to public infamy, he was hanged amid the jeers of the populace.

Nine years later, in 1594, another impostor appeared, this time in Spain, under the very eyes of King Philip, who had seized the Portuguese sovereignty.  Again an ecclesiastic figured in the plot; but on this occasion he concealed himself behind the scenes, and pulled the strings which set the puppet-king in motion.  Miguel dos Santos, an Augustinian monk, who had been chaplain to Sebastian, after his disappearance espoused the cause of Don Antonio, and conceived the scheme of placing his new patron on the Lusitanian throne, by exciting a revolution in favour of a stranger adventurer, who would run all the risks of the rebellion, and resign his ill-gotten honours when the real aspirant appeared.  He found a suitable tool in Gabriel de Spinosa, a native of Toledo.  This man resembled Sebastian, was naturally bold and unscrupulous, and was easily persuaded to undertake the task of personating the missing monarch.  The monk, Dos Santos, who was confessor to the nunnery of Madrigal, introduced this person to one of the nuns, Donna Anna of Austria, a niece of King Philip, and informed her that he was the unfortunate King of Portugal.  The lady, believing her father-confessor, loaded the pretender with valuable gifts; presented him with her jewels; and was so attracted