ABSTRACT
It took Stukeley little time to prepare for the journey. His situation had deteriorated quickly in the last few months, and nothing kept him bound to Spain. On 29 October 1574, for instance, Edward Woodshaw had informed Burghley that Stukeley had been ‘ordered to stay in a village, and not come to the court of Spain’. 1 Before making his exit, however, he had time for mischief in conjunction with an old friend. On 16 November 1574, Roger Bodenham, an English merchant married in Seville, 2 reported from San Lucar that a number of men had been arrested by the Inquisition. Three, one ‘Segar BlacknoP, ‘a young man from Bristol’, and ‘a servant of the Duchess of Feria’s’, had been ‘carried away at midnight out of their lodgings’. Two more, ‘Alderman Lee’s son’ and somebody ‘that named himself Lord Audley’, had also been taken prisoner, the accusation this time being that they were ‘spies that came to kill the King’. Bodenham had few doubts as to the people behind the arrests: ‘Stuckley and the counterfeit Don John de Mendosa, who came out of Ireland, were their accusers.’ 3 Nothing indicates that the charges were founded on truth. On the contrary, they were a fabrication intended not only to show the Spanish monarch how useful Stukeley could still be, but also to avoid the worst: a shameful exit.
