Page:Vol 1 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/162

42 might deny that his was the advent of a new Messiah, though the deluded monarch, at the first, sorrowfully hailed him as such. The father, Martin Cortés y Monroy, was of that poor but prolific class who filled Spain toward the close of the Moorish wars, and who, although nothing in particular, were nevertheless permitted to call themselves hidalgos, sons of something. Some give him the title of escudero, others place him still higher in the scale of fighting men. The mother, Catalina Pizarro y Altamirano, likewise, with poverty, claimed noble blood.

Hernan was a sickly child, and probably would have died had not his good nurse, María de Estévan,