Catalogue description Luisa Gonzalez to Duchess of Bejar [?]. Petition from Dukes Bejar and Infantado  ...

Luisa Gonzalez to Duchess of Bejar [?]. Petition from Dukes Bejar and Infantado

Requesting assistance with obtaining her husband, Antonio Mendez's, liberty; he being wrongfully accused [she says] of stealing a damask covered mattress at El Escorial where they live. Details of the situation. Mention of a Mercedarian Priest of the Redemptionists, the Administrator of the Hospice in Algiers. [Note in Grantham's hand; wrote to Governor Boyd 21 May.

L 30/14/193/1 (In Spanish: translated)

From: Luisa Gonzalez, (forwarded by Duke Bejar)

To: [Lady Grantham]

Most excellent Lady, Madam,

Luisa Gonzalez, native of El Escorial, wife of Antonio Mendez, a prisoner in Algiers these eleven years, is given the opportunity, undoubtedly through Divine Providence, to present herself in great humility to Your Ladyship trusting to obtain through your charitable and magnanimous heart the liberty of her husband which would be impossible through other means.

The fact, dear Lady, is that living in El Escorial in our own home and with some assets which my husband had earned through his work and dedication, one day close to my home a small damask covered mattress was found, apparently blown by a strong wind or placed there by the malice of someone who did not wish him well.

My husband did not hesitate to collect the mattress until its owner appeared, who we discovered later is one of His Majesty's Ministers, and it had been left to dry by a window. The following day we found ourselves faced by the Adjudant and soldiers who identified the house as it if had been that of a criminal, took the mattress away and my husband prisoner in spite of his having related sincerely what had happened and offering to prove it by all means possible. They immediately sent him prisoner to the gaols in Madrid with orders that he be taken in the first chain gang to the prison in Oran for six years and I was unable through such limited means as my faculties permitted to stop that sudden order being carried out since I was surprised and confused at someone being charged with a crime when he had not a shadow of guilt.

My husband arrived in Oran being treated ignominiously as appropriate to a felon such as he was attributed to be and after being there for some time he was persuaded by a Genoese shipowner who arrived with a cargo of timber that for 20 pesos he would take him and other prisoners back to Spain if they waited for him beyond the limits of the fortress in one of the inlets of that coast. They found means to escape to await their luck which was that having evaded the Moors they subsisted in that place on grasses and roots for four days, the Genoese having cheated them, not appearing but taking their money and leaving them no choice but to return to the fortress rather than suffer the rigorous penalty of dishonour and double confinement. From there he was taken to Algiers where he has been for some years with no food other than a certain measure of wheat served daily with water and salt.

You can imagine the impression this kind of news, communicated by letter via Marbella, makes on the mind of a poor woman whose whole consolation was the esteem in which her husband held her, who has been obliged without cause to abandon her home and, unknown, to work as servant, as she is now doing to earn a living and from her meagre wages help her unfortunate husband through the intermediary of a Mercedarian priest of the Redemptionists, the Administrator of the Hospice of Algiers.

Latterly, Madam, having sounded out the Redemptionist Fathers, they cannot arrange a ransom because they are unable to prove whether he really returned to the Moors or whether they took him prisoner and even if they did prove it, he would deserve capital punishment for having escaped form the fortress unless the ransom could take him to Spain. Disconsolate and full of affliction I throw myself on the mercy of Your Ladyship begging that moved by your great pity and compassion for me and for my husband's hardships, you will see if there any means through France or other foreign power that my poor husband may escape from the infidels and obtain some relief through your magnanimity for which both he and I will be eternally grateful praying to God to preserve the valuable life of Your Ladyship.

1775 Petition from Duke Bejar and Infantado

Wrote to Governor Boyd concerning it 21 May