Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/480

460 sympathy; his enemies were many and his friends few. According to Mota Padilla the latter took less interest in him than the former, who did not leave him in ignorance of the joy with which his imprisonment was generally regarded.

An appeal to the India Council brought him a temporary relief. On the 4th of October, 1537, a royal cédula was issued, ordering him to surrender himself to the officers of the Casa de Contratacion at Seville, by which body he would be transferred to the India Council. Hence, on the 30th of June, 1538, after an incarceration of nearly a year and three quarters, Guzman walked out of his prison and made preparations to return to Spain.

Neither the date of his departure nor that of his arrival in the peninsula is known. Indeed, the last years of his life were passed in obscurity and misery. The king, whose indignation was roused by the report from the audiencia, would have inflicted extreme punishment but for the influence of powerful friends. But the monarch refused to see him, and assigned Torrejon de Velasco as his future abiding-place, where,