from which he had never for an instant swerved.  His whole demeanor was noble, submissive, and Christian.  “In every essential,” said Fray Hernando, “he conducted himself so well that we who remain may bear him envy.”  He wrote a paper of instructions concerning his faithful and bereaved dependents.  He placed his signet ring, attached to a small gold chain, in the hands of the ecclesiastic, to be by him transmitted to his wife.  Another ring, set with turquois, he sent to his mother-in-law, the Princess Espinoy, from whom he had received it.  About an hour after midnight, on the morning, therefore, of the 16th of October, Fray Hernando gave notice that the prisoner was ready to die.  The alcalde Don Alonzo then entered, accompanied by the executioner and the notary.  The sentence of Alva was now again recited, the alcalde adding that the King, “out of his clemency and benignity,” had substituted a secret for a public execution.  Montigny admitted that the judgment would be just and the punishment lenient, if it were conceded that the charges against him were true.  His enemies, however, while he had been thus immured, had possessed the power to accuse him as they listed.  He ceased to speak, and the executioner then came forward and strangled him.  The alcalde, the notary, and the executioner then immediately started for Valladolid, so that no person next morning knew that they had been that night at Simancas, nor could guess the dark deed which they had then and there accomplished.  The terrible, secret they were forbidden, on pain of death, to reveal.

Montigny, immediately after his death, was clothed in the habit of Saint Francis, in order to conceal the marks of strangulation.  In the course of the day the body was deposited, according to the King’s previous orders, in the church of Saint Saviour.  Don Eugenio de Peralta, who superintended the interment, uncovered the face of the defunct to prove his identity, which was instantly recognised by many sorrowing servants.  The next morning the second letter, prepared by Philip long before, and brought by Don Alonzo de Avellano to Simancas, received the date of 17th October, 1570, together with the signature of Don Eugenio de Peralta, keeper of Simancas fortress, and was then publicly despatched to the King.  It stated that, notwithstanding the care given to the Seigneur de Montigny in his severe illness by the physicians who had attended him, he had continued to grow worse and worse until the previous morning between three and four o’clock, when he had expired.  The Fray Hernando del Castillo, who had accidentally happened to be at Simancas, had performed the holy offices, at the request of the deceased, who had died in so catholic a frame of mind, that great hopes might be entertained of his salvation.  Although he possessed no property, yet his burial had been conducted very respectably.