the ports of New Spain to trade and intercourse with all nations.
The persons who with Alonso de Ávila appeared as chiefs in the plan were Baltasar and Pedro de Quesada, Cristóbal de Oñate, the younger, and the prebendary of the cathedral, Ayala de Espinosa. They now resolved to invite the marqués del Valle to their leadership, and Alonso de Ávila was to bring their plan to his knowledge; he felt certain that Cortés in his present state of mind would readily assent to it. In the process afterward instituted against the brothers Ávila, there is nothing to show how Cortés received the proposal. But Alonso de Ávila's last confession clearly indicates that the marquis pronounced the plan impracticable, one evidently devised by hot-headed men, a "cosa de burla," one which would not only bring upon its authors the vengeance of Philip, but the ill-will of the natives whose servitude they were thus thriving to perpetuate. Thus far the revolutionists could count only on their own limited resources, and the aid of a few adventurers from Peru.
In truth, Cortés had no thought of joining the insurgents. There was present first of all too much of the father's innate loyalty for the son to turn traitor. It would add nothing to the glory of the name to seize the government of the land won by his father for the crown; and above all, the marquis was clever enough to see that it would be madness for him to risk his present proud position, second in this country only to royalty, and cast his wealth and destiny in with a band of adventurers having comparatively little to lose in case of failure. But for all this there were those who from this hour did not cease to proclaim the disloyalty of the marqués del Valle.[1]
Ayala de Espinosa, during a short absence of Ávila
- ↑ Some say that he temporized with them in order to learn their secrets that he might divulge them to the king, and thus, like his father, secure the country to the Castilian crown. But by a strange fatality the authorities after a time began to feel hostile to the marquis. Peralta, Not. Hist., 198-9.
