The historian Cabrera, official panegyrist of Philip the Second, speaks of the death of Carlos as a natural one, but leaves a dark kind of mystery about the symptoms of his disease.  He states, that the Prince was tried and condemned by a commission or junta, consisting of Spinosa, Ruy Gomez, and the Licentiate Virviesca, but that he was carried off by an illness, the nature of which he does not describe.

Llorente found nothing in the records of the Inquisition to prove that the Holy Office had ever condemned the Prince or instituted any process against him.  He states that he was condemned by a commission, but that he died of a sickness which supervened.  It must be confessed that the illness was a convenient one, and that such diseases are very apt to attack individuals whom tyrants are disposed to remove from their path, while desirous, at the same time, to save appearances.  It would certainly be presumptuous to accept implicitly the narrative of de Thou, which is literally followed by Hoofd and by many modern writers.  On the other hand, it would be an exaggeration of historical scepticism to absolve Philip from the murder of his son, solely upon negative testimony.  The people about court did not believe in the crime.  They saw no proofs of it.  Of course they saw none.  Philip would take good care that there should be none if he had made up his mind that the death of the Prince should be considered a natural one.  And priori argument, which omits the character of the suspected culprit, and the extraordinary circumstances of time and place, is not satisfactory.  Philip thoroughly understood the business of secret midnight murder.  We shall soon have occasion to relate the elaborate and ingenious method by which the assassination of Montigny was accomplished and kept a profound secret from the whole world, until the letters of the royal assassin, after three centuries’ repose, were exhumed, and the foul mystery revealed.  Philip was capable of any crime.  Moreover, in his letter to his aunt, Queen Catharine of Portugal, he distinctly declares himself, like Abraham, prepared to go all lengths in obedience to the Lord.  “I have chosen in this matter,” he said, “to make the sacrifice to God of my own flesh and blood, and to prefer His service and the universal welfare to all other human considerations.”  Whenever the letter to Pius V. sees the light, it will appear whether the sacrifice which the monarch thus made to his God proceeded beyond the imprisonment and condemnation of his son, or was completed by the actual immolation of the victim.

With regard to the Prince himself, it is very certain that, if he had lived, the realms of the Spanish Crown would have numbered one tyrant more.  Carlos from his earliest youth, was remarkable for the ferocity of his character.  The Emperor Charles was highly pleased with him, then about fourteen years of age, upon their first interview after the abdication.  He flattered himself that the lad had inherited his