Guillén de Lampart

Guillén de Lampart

Guillén de Lampart, William Lamport, Guillén Lombardo or Lombardo de Guzmán (Wexford, Ireland, 1611 – Mexico City, New Spain, November 19, 1659) was an Irish adventurer, conspirator, soldier, revolutionary and mystical poet who traveled to the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Lampart wrote a Proposal to King Philip IV for the Liberation of Ireland, in which the rebels would offer the Spanish King to make Ireland an autonomous Spanish protectorate. He also wrote an Insurrectional Proclamation for New Spain, passing himself off as the natural son of Philip III of Spain with the outlandish idea of usurping power and naming himself King of the territory. He was tried by the tribunals of the Inquisition, which also found him guilty of practicing sorcery and making a pact with the Devil, and he was therefore sentenced to die at the stake.

Biography

Studies and voyages as a privateer

His parents were Richard and Anastasia, and his grandfather was Patrick, all impoverished Catholic nobles and rebels against the Protestant English occupation of Ireland. His grandfather took part in the Battle of Kinsale and passed on to his grandson the same patriotism and his royalist techniques. He received his early education from the Augustinians and Franciscans in Wexford, and was later educated by the Jesuits in Dublin, studying rhetoric and Latin.

He traveled to London, and while he was a student there he was sentenced to death for writing against the invasion of Ireland, so he had to abandon his studies and flee by sea, listening to a sailor's stories about the injustices against Catholics under the tyrannical government of Oliver Cromwell. On reaching Portsmouth, he enlisted on another ship holding a letter of marque and for several months took part in pirate raids and boardings. He decided to abandon that activity and landed in La Coruña, changing his name to Guillén Lombardo. Like many of his compatriots, he enlisted in the so-called Wild Geese of the Tercios of Flanders and took part in the battles of Nördlingen and Fuenterrabía.

Stay in Spain

He settled in Santiago de Compostela. He asked the Marquis of Mancera, governor of the province, for a scholarship, which he finally obtained, to study at the Colegio de San Patricio, a Jesuit college in the town. On completing those studies, he went to the Colegio de San Patricio of the University of Salamanca. With another scholarship he went to the college of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Madrid (1634), where he had access to its great library, and he also frequented the Reales Estudios de San Isidro, likewise run by the Jesuits, among whom he was especially influenced by the mystical writer Juan Eusebio Nieremberg. In the course of time, Guillén de Lampart himself would compose, in his moments of leisure in the prison of the Inquisition, almost a thousand psalms in excellent humanist Latin. After having served in the Irish regiments, he joined the Spanish Army as a Captain. He took part in the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634 and in the siege of Fuenterrabía in 1638. He became adviser and swordsman to the Duke of Olivares, who prepared him to serve as his spy in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

New Spain

In 1640 he traveled to New Spain in the retinue of the Viceroy Diego López Pacheco. Although he sent a report to the Count-Duke on the various corrupt practices he found in his government, Lampart concealed the idea that this territory should not belong to King Philip IV, since he considered that "it was neither his, nor had he conquered it legitimately." In 1642 Lampart devised a plan that he intended to carry out the following year in which, by forging documents, he would pass himself off as the natural son of Philip III, with the purpose of usurping the post of Viceroy in order to seize power for himself. Lampart had confided his plans to Captain Felipe Méndez, but the latter denounced him to the Inquisition on October 26, 1642. The tribunals of the Holy Office also found him guilty of practicing sorcery and making a pact with the Devil. The case was even examined by the Council of the Indies and reached the ears of the King, who left the matter in the hands of the Inquisition. When his house was searched, various writings kept in a chest from Michoacán were seized. Among them were the Proposal to King Philip IV for the Liberation of Ireland, the Insurrectional Proclamation for New Spain and the Proclamation of the Just Judgments of God, May He Punish Whoever Removes It.

The first is the draft of a document delivered by the Irish nobility to Olivares in which the rebels offer the Crown of Castile to make Ireland an autonomous Spanish protectorate.

In the second, he proposes the separation of New Spain from the Spanish Empire, which according to some Mexican historians makes him a precursor of the independence of Mexico. Among the clauses of the Proclamation are the following:

"That although in these matters no one could be admitted better than us, taking into account our long experience in matters of government, still, for greater success in everything, I wish there to be consent and communication of the interested parties themselves, for it will be necessary that they regard it with the same zeal and vote for it with the same spirit ... clear and certain, we pledge to convene Cortes so that, it being seen as convenient and necessary, in remuneration and reward for our labor and in consideration of our valor, they may elect us as their King and prince, and our successors, or whomever seems best to them, with the provision that in said Cortes the natives and the freedmen shall have voice and vote equally with the Spaniards."

"The natives, free and freed, if they deserve habits, shall be given them with sufficient splendor and property to sustain them, and their inquiries shall be made without any scruple, as it is well known that they do not partake of any Jewish or heretical race. And the Spaniards who deserve them shall have, by our dispensation, license to make their inquiries here in these kingdoms, without going to those of Castile, and we shall afterwards beg His Holiness to deign to grant us the same bulls, graces and indulgences as to that of Castile, and the faculty to appoint them and confirmation of those already given. Likewise the inquiries, and those for the Holy Office, shall be made with exactness here, and the rest."

After 8 years of captivity, he escaped from the inquisitorial prison by digging with a bar from the prison and nailed his Proclamation of the Just Judgments of God, May He Punish Whoever Removes It (a denunciation of the crimes of his executioners) on the cathedral of Mexico, even managing to introduce it into the chamber of the Viceroy and spreading various other copies. However, he was captured again on the way to San Lorenzo de los Negros (today Yanga, in the State of Veracruz), a settlement made up of fugitive slaves or maroons, legitimized by the Viceroy Luis de Velasco in 1630. He still tried to escape once more, but he was executed by being burned alive at the stake on November 19, 1659.

Works

• Proposal to King Philip IV for the Liberation of Ireland.
• Insurrectional Proclamation for New Spain.
• Proclamation of the Just Judgments of God, May He Punish Whoever Removes It.
• Christian Amends and Retractions.
• 918 Psalms in humanist Latin.

Legacy

Although historians do not consider Lampart's actions to be a direct antecedent of the Independence of Mexico, there is a statue of the Irishman inside the mausoleum of the Monument to Independence in Mexico City. The statue, which depicts Lampart tied to the scaffold in such a way that he seems to guard the mortal remains of the insurgents, has always been a source of controversy.

The writer and historian Vicente Riva Palacio published the work Memorias de un impostor. Don Guillén de Lampart (1872) in the style of the pseudo-historical adventure novels of Alexandre Dumas. In 1919, the New York journalist Johnston McCulley wrote The Curse of Capistrano, inspired by Riva Palacio's novel, but the central character adopted the name of a Mexican landowner who actually lived in the 19th century: Diego de la Vega, who was transformed into "Zorro". In 1908, Luis González Obregón wrote the book Don Guillén de Lampart: La Inquisición y la independencia en el siglo XVII.

The Zacatecan writer and essayist Gonzalo Lizardo recovered one of his prison manuscripts in 2017: Cristiano desagravio y retractaciones de don Guillén Lombardo, which was composed in prison to defend himself against the charges the Holy Office had brought against him. Three years later, Lizardo published the novel Memorias de un Basilisco (Martínez Roca 2020), in which he sets out his own hypothesis about the figure. According to Ramón Alvarado, with this novel Lizardo "manages to give voice to Guillén Lombardo, and through the crossing of voices and stories the task of passing judgment is left to the reader. A novel that rescues the character, that stirs curiosity about historical truth and that shows with ease the past, so present, of our New Spanish history."

Later, in 2020, Raul Salinas completed the major research work "Guillén de Lampart. Un reclamo de justicia", a compendium of 6 volumes and more than 1,000 pages on Guillén de Lampart.

See also

• Carlos Ometochtzin

Bibliography

• CREWE, Ryan Dominic. 'Lamport, William (Guillén Lombardo) (1610-1659)' in Irish Migration Studies in Latin America 5:1 (March 2007), pp. 74-76.
• GONZÁLEZ OBREGÓN, Luis (1908), D. Guillén de Lampart. La Inquisición y la Independencia en el siglo XVII. Mexico: Líbrería de la Vda. de C. Bouret.
• ISIDRO VÁZQUEZ, Olivia (2018), Veinte poemas inéditos latino-mexicanos. Himnos de Guillén Lombardo y elogios en tesis novohispanas, Mexico City: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM. ISBN: 978–607–30–0064–2.
• LIZARDO, Gonzalo (2017). Cristiano desagravio y retractaciones de don Guillén Lombardo, Zacatecas: Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas. ISBN 978-607-8368-55-6.
• LIZARDO, Gonzalo (2020). Memorias de un Basilisco, Mexico: Martínez Roca ISBN 978-607-07-6322-9.
• MARTÍNEZ BARACS, Andrea (2013). Don Guillén de Lampart, hijo de sus hazañas (in español). Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• MÉNDEZ PLANCARTE, Gabriel (1948). Don Guillén de Lamport y su "Regio Salterio". Manuscrito inédito de 1655. Mexico: Ábside.
• MUÑOZ SALDAÑA, Rafael (2009). México independiente. El despertar de una nación (in español). Mexico: Editorial Televisa Internacional. ISBN 978-968-5963-25-1. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• RIVA PALACIO, Vicente (1946). memorias de un impostor: Don Guillén de Lampart, rey de México. Mexico: Porrúa.
• RONAN, Gerard (2004). "The Irish Zorro". The Extraordinary Adventures of William Lamport (1615-1659). London: Brandon.
• SALINAS DE GORTARI, RAUL. (2020). Guillén de Lampart. Un reclamo de justicia. Mexico: Rodrigo Porrúa.
• TRONCARELLI, Fabio (2000). El mito del "Zorro" y la Inquisición en Mèxico. La Aventura de Guillén Lombardo, Lleida: Milenio.

External links

• Guillén de Lampart, "Proclama por la liberación de la Nueva España de la sujeción a la Corona de Castilla y sublevación de sus naturales" at the Biblioteca Digital Mexicana