If He Found The Governor Still Alive, He Was Only To Assume The Title Of Judge, To Maintain The Appearance Of Acting In Concert With Him, And To Guard Against Giving Any Just Cause Of Offence To A Man Who Had Merited So Highly Of His Country.

But, if Pizarro were dead, he was entrusted with a commission that he might then produce, by which he was appointed his successor in the government of Peru.

This attention to Pizarro, however, seems to have flowed rather from dread of his power, than from any approbation of his measures; for at the very time that the court seemed so solicitous not to irritate him, his brother Ferdinand was arrested at Madrid, and confined to a prison where he remained above twenty years[7]."

"Vaca de Castro, who left Spain in 1540, was driven by stress of weather in 1541, after a long and disastrous voyage, into a small harbour in the province of Popayan; and proceeding from thence by land, after a journey no less difficult than tedious, he reached Quito. In his way he received accounts of Pizarro's death, and of the events which followed upon it, as already mentioned. He immediately produced his commission appointing him governor of Peru, with the same privileges and authority which had been enjoyed by Pizarro; and his jurisdiction was acknowledged without hesitation by Benalcazar, adelantado or lieutenant general for the emperor in Popayan, and by Pedro de Puelles, who had the command of the troops left in Quito in the absence of Gonzalo Pizarro. Vaca de Castro not only assumed the supreme authority, but shewed that he possessed the talents which the exercise of it at that juncture required. By his influence and address, he soon assembled such a body of troops as not only set him above all fear of being exposed to any insult from the adverse party, but enabled him to advance from Quito with the dignity that became his character. By dispatching persons of confidence to the different settlements in Peru, with a formal notification of his arrival and of his commission, he communicated to his countrymen the royal pleasure with respect to the government of the country. By private emissaries, he excited such officers as had discovered their disapprobation of Almagro's proceedings, to manifest their duty to their sovereign by supporting the person honoured with his commission. Those measures were productive of great effects. Encouraged by the approach of the new governor, or prepared by his machinations, the loyal were confirmed in their principles, and avowed them with greater boldness; the timid ventured to declare their sentiments; the neutral and wavering, finding it necessary to choose a side, began to lean to that which now appeared to be the safest, as well as the most just[8]."

Don Diego had hardly got two leagues from Lima, in 1542, when secret orders arrived there from Vaca de Castro, addressed to F. Thomas de San Martin, provincial of the Dominicans, and Francisco de Barrionuevo, to whom he committed the direction of public affairs till his own arrival.

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