There was little to fear in the world now, however, from Philip III., who in the intervals of his bodily anguish was occupied solely in his panic-stricken intercessions for pardon. His room was encumbered with ghastly remains of saintly humanity, and the sacred offices succeeded each other day and night: but around the bed worldly ambitions were raging bitterly. In the morning of the 30th March a consultation of physicians pronounced the end to be near; and the Duke of Uceda, as principal minister and first chamberlain, announced his intention of conveying the news to the Prince. Then the Duke of Infantado, secure in the favour of Olivares, to whom only two days before he had betrayed the secrets of the death chamber, broke out tempestuously: "No, indeed; that is my place, for the Prince has specially ordered me to go." Uceda knew his day was past, and meekly bent his head: and thus, in the midst of greedy bickering, his nerveless hand grasping to the last the rough crucifix that had comforted the glazing eyes of his grandfather the Emperor, and his father Philip II., the third Philip passed the dread divide, revered and beloved by the people whom his ineptitude had ruined, because he had still upheld throughout Europe the claim of his house to impose Christian orthodoxy upon the world, and had purged the sacred soil of Spain of the taint of Moorish blood, to his country's permanent undoing.
Olivares had played his cards cleverly. For weeks he had feigned a desire to seek retirement in his home at Andalusia, knowing well that young Philip, in the welter of difficulties and intrigues that surrounded him, looked to him alone for guidance; and the adviser had only to hint at a wish to retire for the Prince to assent to whatever he demanded. As the King lay dying Uceda had met Olivares in the corridor. "How goes it," he asked, "in the Prince's chamber?" "All is mine," replied the Count. "All!" exclaimed the Duke of Uceda ruefully; "Yes, without exception," retorted Olivares; "for his Highness overrates me in all things but my goodwill."[[39]] Before many hours had passed Uceda and his kin knew to their cost that Olivares had not boasted in vain. All was indeed his, and the strong hand fell ruthlessly upon those who had ruled and plundered Spain since the greatest of the Philips had passed his heavy crown to his weak son twenty-two years before.
[[1]] See a curious contemporary, unpublished, account by Don Geronimo Gascon de Torquemada. Add. MSS. 10,236 British Museum. He says that the Town Council scattered 12,000 silver reals in the plaza on Saturday, 9th April, and that 30,000 wax candles, with as many sheets of white paper to wrap round them for torches, were distributed to the poor; the whole population of the city at the time being between 50,000 and 60,000.
[[2]] Narrative of Matias de Novoa, Documentos Ineditos, vol. lx.
[[3]] The vehement protest of Ribera is reproduced in extenso in Gil Gonzalez Davila's Vida y Hechos de Phelipe III. Original MS. in possession of the author. Also published, Madrid, 1771. Ribera it was who principally promoted the expulsion of the Moriscos a few years later.
[[4]] Gongora's sonnet, for instance, which is thus Englished by Churton—
"Our Queen had borne a Prince. When all were gay,
A Lutheran envoy came across the main.
With some six hundred followers in his train,—
All knaves of Luther's brood. His proud array
Cost us, in one fair fortnight and a day,
A million ducats of the gold of Spain,
In jewels, feasting crowds, and pageant play.
But then he brought us, for our greater gain,
The peace King James on Calvin's Bible swore.
Well! we baptized our Prince; Heaven bless the child!
But why make Luther rich, and leave Spain poor?
What witch our dancing courtiers' wits beguiled?—
Cervantes, write these doings: they surpass
Your grave Don Quixote, Sancho and his ass."
See also Cervantes' ballad of the Churching of Queen Margaret, in his Exemplary Novel of The Little Gipsy, written, however, some years after the event.
[[5]] Don Juan Fernandez de Velasco, hereditary Great Constable of Castile, Duke of Frias, who in the previous year, 1604, had gone to England to conclude with James I. the Treaty of Peace.
[[6]] So at least say the eye-witnesses; though it can hardly have been a more violent downpour than that which overtook the present writer on the same spot, and at a similar date, in a recent year, when, with hardly five minutes' notice, the road was converted into a rushing torrent several inches deep, though previously no rain had fallen for months.