judges. They were carried to such a length, that the former was put under arrest, to be sent back, to Spain; but afterwards recovered his liberty and the exercise of his prerogatives. He, as well as his adversaries, met with a tragical end: he fell, by the hand of a negro, in 1546, at the battle of Anaquito. The licentiate Zepeda, having been sent prisoner to Spain by the president Gasca, perished in a jail. Lison De Texada was drowned in the straits of Bahama. Alvarez, in recovering from the wounds inflicted on him at Anaquito, received, at the abode of his companion Zepeda, a mortal bite from a reptile, in a grove of almond trees; and Zarate was poisoned by certain powders which Gonzalo Pizarro administered to him as a remedy.
To return to the division between the president and the judges. It originated on their landing at Panama, and became generally known on the imprisonment of the former, Blasco, after which event, Zepeda and Zarate took possession of the royal seal. The viceroy having, however, retained Alvarez in his company, and having been furnished with a royal schedule, which imported that an audience might be holden with one or two judges only, ordered a new seal to be opened by one of the regidors of Piura, who was afterwards, on that very account, put to death by Francisco Carvajal. It thus happened, as was observed by the historian Zarate, who was an eye-witness of these contentions, that "there were two audiences in Peru, the one in the capital of Lima, the other with the viceroy at Piura; and it frequently occurred, that two provisions, in direct opposition to each other, were made in the same affair."
The audience established at Piura was dissolved by the
