He accordingly entered into correspondence with Antonio Perez, the King's most confidential Secretary of State at that period.

That the Governor was plotting no treason is sufficiently obvious from the context of his letters: At the same time, with the expansiveness of his character, when he was dealing with one whom he deemed has close and trusty friend, he occasionally made use of expressions which might be made to seem equivocal.

This was still more the case with poor Escovedo.

Devoted to his master, and depending most implicitly upon the honor of Perez, he indulged in language which might be tortured into a still more suspicious shape when the devilish arts of Perez and the universal distrust of Philip were tending steadily to that end.

For Perez--on the whole, the boldest, deepest, and most unscrupulous villain in that pit of duplicity, the Spanish court--was engaged at that moment with Philip, in a plot to draw from Don John and Escovedo, by means of this correspondence, the proofs of a treason which the King and minister both desired to find.