As the veinticuatro Juan Pérez de Herrasti lay dying in the early morning of 6 September 1578, two key figures were summoned to his bedside: the priest of his parish of San Pedro, who would administer the last rites, and the notary who would draw up his will. ‘The household was divided into two factions’, the family chronicler recalled: the kinsmen of Doña Leonor de Gadea, Juan's first wife, and her son Andrés, and those of Doña Melchora de Bocanegra, the second wife, desirous of safeguarding the interests of her offspring Baltasar and Lorenzo. ‘Little groups gathered here and there, muttering in whispers’, including the chaplain, the children's tutor, the steward, two page boys, and an assortment of grooms, porters and maids – all those ‘loyal and devoted servants, who would be found at the deathbed of the master’. Then there were the visitors from outside the house – priests from the parish and the cathedral, two doctors and the notary, several aldermen, Don Fernando de Mendoza (‘of the house of the Count of Tendilla’, the Captain General), and the chief secretary of the town council as representative of the corregidor (‘who, learning of the poor state of Juan Pérez, sent along a selection of powders’). All was to no avail, and the great fiestas in the main square that afternoon were interrupted for an announcement of the passing of a great ‘commonwealth man’ who had died, aged only forty-five, of a fever brought on by the frenzied racing of his horses.