A most elaborate attempt upon the life of Queen Elizabeth early in this year came near being successful.  A certain Portuguese Jew, Dr. Lopez, had for some time been her physician-in-ordinary.  He had first been received into her service on the recommendation of Don Antonio, the pretender, and had the reputation of great learning and skill.  With this man Count Fuentes and Stephen Ybarra, chief of the financial department at Brussels, had a secret understanding.  Their chief agent was Emanuel Andrada, who was also in close communication with Bernardino de Mendoza and other leading personages of the Spanish court.  Two years previously, Philip, by the hands of Andrada, had sent a very valuable ring of rubies and diamonds as a present to Lopez, and the doctor had bound himself to do any service for the king of Spain that might be required of him.  Andrada accordingly wrote to Mendoza that he had gained over this eminent physician, but that as Lopez was poor and laden with debt, a high price would be required for his work.  Hereupon Fuentes received orders from the King of Spain to give the Jew all that he could in reason demand, if he would undertake to poison the queen.

It now became necessary to handle the matter with great delicacy, and Fuentes and Ybarra entered accordingly into a correspondence, not with Lopez, but with a certain Ferrara de Gama.  These letters were entrusted to one Emanuel Lewis de Tinoco, secretly informed of the plot, for delivery to Ferrara.  Fuentes charged Tinoco to cause Ferrara to encourage Lopez to poison her Majesty of England, that they might all have “a merry Easter.”  Lopez was likewise requested to inform the King of Spain when he thought he could accomplish the task.  The doctor ultimately agreed to do the deed for fifty thousand crowns, but as he had daughters and was an affectionate parent, he stipulated for a handsome provision in marriage for those young ladies.  The terms were accepted, but Lopez wished to be assured of the money first.

“Having once undertaken the work,” said Lord Burghley, if he it were, “he was so greedy to perform it that he would ask Ferrara every day, ’When will the money come?  I am ready to do the service if the answer were come out of Spain.’”

But Philip, as has been often seen, was on principle averse to paying for work before it had been done.  Some delay occurring, and the secret, thus confided to so many, having floated as it were imperceptibly into the air, Tinoco was arrested on suspicion before he had been able to deliver the letters of Fuentes and Ybarra to Ferrara, for Ferrara, too, had been imprisoned before the arrival of Tinoco.  The whole correspondence was discovered, and both Ferrara and Tinoco confessed the plot.  Lopez, when first arrested, denied his guilt very stoutly, but being confronted with Ferrara, who told the whole story to his face in presence of the judges, he at last avowed the crime.