Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/154

Rh bequeathed, kept it (apart from some temporary alienations in the 14th century) as part of their patrimony throughout the 15th and 16th centuries Lake Pleshchéevo was the scene of Peter the Great’ss first attempts (1691) at creating a fleet. PEREZ, ANTONIO (c. 1540–1611), for some years the favourite minister of Philip II. of Spain and afterwards for many more the object of his unrelenting hostility, was by birth an Aragonese. His reputed father, Gonzalo Perez, an ecclesiastic, has some place in history as having been secretary both to Charles V. and to Philip II., and in literature as author of a Spanish translation of the Odyssey (La Ulyxea de Hornero, Antwerp, 1556). Antonio Perez, who was legitimated by an imperial diploma issued at Valladolid in 1542, was, however, believed by many to be in reality the son of Philip’s minister, Ruy Gomez de Silva, prince of Eboli, to whom, on the completion of a liberal education at home and abroad, he appears at least to have owed his first introduction to a diplomatic career. In 1567 he became one of the secretaries of state, receiving also about the same time the lucrative appointment of protonotary of Sicily, and in 1573 the death of Ruy Gomez himself made room for Perez’s promotion to be head of the “despacho universal,” or private bureau, from which Philip attempted to govern by assiduous correspondence the affairs of his vast dominions. Another of the king’s secretaries at this time, though in a less confidential relation, was a friend and contemporary of Perez, named Juan de Escovedo, who, however, after the fall of Tunis in 1574, was sent off to supersede Juan de Soto as secretary and adviser of Don John of Austria, thus leaving Perez without a rival. Some time after Don John’s appointment to the governorship of the Netherlands Perez accidentally became cognisant of his inconveniently ambitious “empresa de Inglaterra,” in which he was to rescue Mary Queen of Scots, marry her, and so ascend the throne of England The next step might even be against Spain itself. This secret scheme the faithful secretary at once carried to Philip, who characteristically resolved to meet it by quietly removing his brother’s aider and abettor. With the king’s full cognisance, accordingly, Perez, after several unsuccessful attempts to poison Escovedo, succeeded in procuring his assassination in a street of Madrid on the 31st of March 1578. The immediate effect was to raise Perez higher than ever in the royal confidence and favour, but, wary though the secretary had been, he had not succeeded in obliterating all trace of his connexion with the crime, and very soon a prosecution was set on foot by the representatives of the murdered man. For a time Philip was both willing and able to protect his accomplice, but ultimately he appears to have listened to those who, whether truly or falsely, were continually suggesting that Perez had had motives of his own, arising out of his relations with the princess of Eboli, for compassing the assassination of Don John’s secretary, be this as it may, from trying to screen Perez the king came to be the secret instigator of those who sought his ruin. The process, as such matters often have been in Spain, was a slow one, and it was not until 1589 that Perez, after more than one arrest and imprisonment on a variety of charges, seemed on the eve of being convicted and condemned as the murderer of Escovedo. At this juncture he succeeded in making his escape from prison in Castile into Aragon, where, under the ancient “fueros” of the kingdom he could claim a public trial in open court, and so bring into requisition the documentary evidence he possessed of the king’s complicity in the deed This did not suit Philip, who, although he instituted a process in the supreme tribunal of Aragon, speedily abandoned it and caused Perez to be attacked from another side, the charge of heresy being now preferred, arising out of certain reckless and even blasphemous expressions Perez had used in connexion with his troubles in Castile. But all attempts to remove the accused from the civil prison in Saragossa to that of the Inquisition raised popular tumults, which in the end led to Perez’s escape across the Pyrenees, but unfortunately also furnished Philip with a pretext for sending an army into Aragon and suppressing the ancient “fueros” altogether (1591). From the court of Catherine de Bourbon, at Pau, where he was Well received, Perez passed to that of Henry IV. of France, and both there and in England his talents and diplomatic experience, as well as his well-grounded enmity to Philip, secured him much popularity While in England he became the “intimate coach-companion and bed companion” of Francis Bacon, and was also much in the society of the earl of Essex. The peace of Vervins in 1598 greatly reduced his apparent importance abroad, and Perez now tried to obtain the pardon of Philip III., that he might return to his native country. His efforts, however, proved vain, and he died in comparative obscurity in Paris on the 3rd of November 1611.

Perez’s earliest publication was a small quarto, dedicated to the earl of Essex, written and apparently printed in England about 1594, entitled Pedazos de historza, and professedly published at Leon. A Dutch translation appeared in 1594, and in 1598 he published his Relaciones, including the Memorial del hecho de su causa, drawn up in 1590, and many of his letters. Much has been done, by Mignet (Antonzo Perez et Philippe II, 1845; 4th ed., 1874) and by Froude (“An Unsolved Historical Riddle,” Nineteenth Cent, 1883) among others, towards the elucidation of various difficult points in Perez’s somewhat perplexing story. For the murder of Escovedo, see Andrew Lang’s discussion of it in his Historical Mysteries (1904); and the Españoles é angleses (1903) of Major Martin Hume, who had access to various newly discovered MSS.

PÉREZ GALDÓS, BENITO (1845–), was born at Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, on the 10th of May 1845. In 1863 he was sent to Madrid to study law, drifted into literature, and was speedily recognized as one of the most promising recruits on the Liberal side. Shortly after the Revolution of 1868 he abandoned journalism, and employed fiction as the vehicle for propagating advanced opinions. His first novel La Fontana de oro, was printed in 1871, and later in the same year appeared El Audaz. The reception given to these early essays encouraged the writer to adopt novel-writing as a profession. He had already determined upon the scheme of his Episodios nacionales, a series which might compare with the Comédie humaine. Old charters, old letters, old newspapers were collected by him with the minuteness of a German archivist; no novelist was ever more thoroughly equipped as regards the details of his period. Trafalgar, the first volume of the Episodios nacionales, appeared in 1879; the remaining books of this first series are entitled La Cort de Carlos IV., El 19 de marzo y el 2 de mayo, Bailén, Napoleón en Chamartin, Zaragoza, Gerona, Cadiz, Juan Martin el Empecinado and La Batalla de Arpiles. As the titles suffice to show, the author’s aim was to write the national epic of the 19th century in prose; and he so completely succeeded that, long before the first series ended in 1881, he took rank among the foremost novelists of his time. A second series of Episodios nacionales, beginning with El Equipage del rey José and ending with a tenth volume, Un Faccioso más y algunas frailes menos, was brought to a close in 1883, and was, like its predecessor, a monument of industry and exact knowledge, of realism and romantic conception; and he carried on the Episodios nacionales into a fourth series, raising the total of volumes to forty. In fecundity and in the power of creating characters, Pérez Galdós vies with Balzac. Parallel with his immense achievement in historical fiction, Pérez Galdós published a collection of romances dealing with contemporay life, its social problems and religious difficulties. Of these the best known, and perhaps the best, are Doña Perfecta (1876); Gloria (1877); La Familia de Léon Roch (1878); Marianela (1878); Fortunata y Jacinta (1887); and Angel Guerra (1891). Nor does this exhaust his prodigious activity. Besides adapting several of his novels for stage purposes, he wrote original dramas such as La Loca de la casa (1893), San Quintín (1894), Electra (1900) and Mariucha (1904); but his diffuse, exuberant genius