This much it was necessary to say in order to make clear the manner of men that in future ruled the Court of which we have to write: a King to whom pleasure was a business; and a minister to whom business alone was pleasure, who loved the reality of rule whilst his master loved the ceremonial of it. Not many days passed before the ambition of the Guzmans for the grandeeship was satisfied. The King was still passing his first days of mourning in the monastery of St. Geronimo when the sermon of the day, either by chance or design, inculcated the need for properly rewarding services done to us. The sermon over, Philip went to dinner, the room being crowded with nobles, amongst whom was Uceda, not yet finally banished. When the King had finished his meal and the cloth was drawn, Olivares entered very unobtrusively, and sidled against the wall behind the other nobles in attendance, well knowing, probably, what was coming. The King, catching his eye, said: "Let us obey the good friar who preached to-day; Count of Olivares, be covered!" This was the form used in the raising of a peer to the grandeeship, and Olivares, putting on his wide-brimmed hat, threw himself at the King's feet with his uncle and those of his kin who were in the room, overjoyed at the honour done to their house; and their joy was increased when, a few hours later, Uceda was told that he must surrender to Olivares at once one of his two great offices in the household.
Offices and honours thenceforward crowded upon the favourite, who was soon made Duke of San Lucar and principal chamberlain. Almost ostentatiously he professed a desire to leave politics entirely to his uncle, and to confine himself to the duties of his household offices near the King. Nobody was deceived by his apparent modesty, for even before Zuñiga's death, which happened in a year, it was known that his nephew's long personal conversations with the King, facilitated by his courtly palace duties, were mainly concerned with questions of Government and State. The Count-Duke, as he came to be called universally, would allow nothing to be done for the King but by himself. Before Philip was out of bed the minister was the first to enter the room, draw the curtains and open the window. Then on his knees by the bedside he rehearsed the business of the coming day. Every garment that the King put on passed first through the hands of Olivares, who stood by whilst Philip dressed. After the midday meal, at which Olivares was often present, the minister was wont to amuse the King by entertaining chat, detailing the gossip of the capital, and late in the evening he attended to give him an account of the despatches received, and consult him as to the answers, after which he saw the monarch to bed.[[5]] This constant attendance upon the King made it impossible for any person not an absolute creature of Olivares to approach Philip's ear with doubt as to the policy of the favourite in political matters.
State of Spain
When Philip's first parliament met, a few months after his accession, it was stated in the assembly that so terrible was the distress that "people had abandoned their lands and were now wandering on the roads, living on herbs and roots, or else travelling to provinces where they had not to pay the awful food excises and alcabalas"; whilst every source of revenue was anticipated for years to come on usurious terms.[[6]] Philip himself, in an important original paper hitherto unpublished (British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338), gives the following account of the state of affairs he had to face on his accession, whilst complaining of the little help he had received from his officers: "I found finance so exhausted (apart from the dreadful state it had been left in at the death of Philip II., who had pledged it deeply) that all resources were anticipated for several years, and my patrimony had been so reduced that in my father's time alone 96,000,000 crowns had been granted in gifts, etc.; besides what had been spent in the other realms (i.e. Aragon, Catalonia, etc.), from which no returns have been received. The currency had been raised to three times its face value, an unheard-of thing in any realm.... Ecclesiastical affairs were in such disorder, that it was asserted from Rome that innumerable dispensations for simony had been obtained for archbishoprics, bishoprics, prebends, etc.... As for justice, on the very first day of my reign I was obliged to put my foot down, as will be recollected, ... for the ministers who received bribes were more numerous than those who did not ... My State, too, was so discredited that in the truce that the Dutch had made with my father they were treated as independent sovereigns, although every minister, from the King my father and the Archduke downward, refused to acknowledge such a claim.... I had only seven ships of war in the fleet.... India and the Indies were well-nigh lost.... The truce with Flanders was just expiring.... German affairs were more pressing than ever.... The marriage of the Prince of Wales with my sister was so far advanced that it seemed impossible to avoid it without a great war, which, indeed, followed, as we could not give way on the religious point.[[7]] Portugal was discontented with the Viceroy, ... whilst all the other parts of the monarchy was neglected or misgoverned.... We were at war with Venice; the Kingdom of Naples was almost in revolt, and the money there was utterly corrupted. All this was from no fault of my father, nor of his predecessors, as all the world knows, but simply because God so ordained it."
This document, written by Philip himself a few years afterwards for his own justification, proves how pressing was the need for an abatement of untenable claims on the part of Spain to interfere with the affairs of other nations, and the absolute necessity for a policy of retrenchment. And yet at the bidding of Olivares, against the opinion even of wise old Zuñiga, the first minister, the interminable war with the Dutch for the assertion of Spain's sovereignty over Holland was resumed as soon as the truce ended, only a few months after the young King's accession.
Philip's policy
In his address to his first Cortes, Philip struck the unwise note of Dominican intolerance and pride which had pervaded his baptism, setting forth in the midst of the miserable state of things just described that his first duty as a Spanish sovereign was, "with holy zeal befitting so Catholic a Prince, to undertake the defence and exaltation of our holy Catholic faith; ... to aid the Emperor in Bohemia; to fight the rebel Hollanders again, and to defend everywhere our sacred faith and the authority of the Holy See." So, whilst Olivares made efforts to stop the peculation of high officers of State, to compel restitution of past plunder, to prevent further alienation of national property, and to reduce to a minimum the cost of the royal establishment, and whilst he passed ferocious sumptuary laws enjoining modesty and economy in dress, the real root of the evil was not touched; for taxation continued to strangle production and fell mainly upon the poor, and the wasteful drain of unnecessary wars for an exploded idea continued as if Spain was still wallowing in wealth. Good, therefore, as the intentions of Olivares may have been, it is clear that he was a disastrous adviser for an inexperienced, idle young sovereign of sixteen.
And if his political influence was unfortunate, his social and moral influence was no less evil. There exists, for instance, in manuscript in various collections, and notably in the British Museum (Egerton MSS. 329), a pregnant correspondence between the Archbishop of Granada, Philip's tutor, and Olivares, written shortly after the accession, in which the Archbishop indignantly reproaches the favourite, who was certainly old enough to know better, for taking the young King out into the streets of the capital at night, and introducing him into evil company. "People," says the prelate, "are gossiping about it all over Madrid, and things are being said about it which add little to the Sovereign's credit or dignity." Madrid is, even now, fond of scandal, but early in the seventeenth century, isolated as it was from the world, Philip's capital found its most piquant pursuit from morn till night in slander and tittle-tattle, both in the form of malicious satirical verses that passed from hand to hand, and in whispered immoralities touching high and low. The long raised walk by the side wall of the Church of St. Philip at the entrance of the Calle Mayor (High Street), from the Puerta del Sol, opposite the still standing Oñate Palace, was the recognised centre of such confidences, and came to be called by the appropriate name of the Mentidero (Liars' Walk). The Archbishop in his letter proceeds to say that not only have these people begun to whisper things about the King's proceedings which were better unsaid; but the example shown of a young monarch and his principal minister scouring the streets at night in search of adventure is a bad one for the people at large; and he reminds Olivares of the great grief and anxiety of the late King on this very account, and of his dread that his youthful heir was already before his death being inducted into dissipation. The answer to the bold prelate's remonstrance is just such as might have been expected from the arrogant favourite. He tells him, in effect, that he is an impertinent meddler, and ought to be ashamed, at his age and in his high position, to trouble him with the vulgar gossip of the streets! "The King is sixteen," he says, "and he (Olivares) is thirty-four, and it is not to be expected that they are to be kept in ignorance of what is going on in the world. It is good that the King should see all phases of life, bad as well as good. Besides, he never trusts the King with anyone else"; and the favourite's letter ends with a barely concealed threat that if the Archbishop does not mind his own business in future, ill might befall him.
Philip's early profligacy
Early, however, as was Philip's introduction into the profligacy that was the curse of his life, and the endless subject of his remorse in later years, he was a gallant young husband to his pretty French wife, though with the fall of her mother, Marie de Medici, and her Italianate crew the political object of the marriage had already failed, and France and Spain, once more at issue, were rapidly drifting into war. Scandalous and notorious as Philip's infidelity to his wife very soon became, he appears to have been devotedly attached to her, and was violently jealous of any appearance of special love or homage to her beauty. She, on her part, true daughter of the gallant Béarnais as she was, was gay and debonair in her bearing, and followed, though decorously, the fashion in Spain of her time, which allowed women an amount of licence of speech with gallants impossible in other countries or at other periods.[[8]] As with all other ladies of the Court, there was unkind tittle-tattle about the gay young Queen; but apparently without the slightest foundation, though a supposed passion for her on the part of one of the most brilliant nobles of the Court led to tragic results for the gallant.