After grave discussion in Bristol's room, it was decided to send at once for Gondomar, to whom, as Buckingham well knew, the arrival of the Prince would cause no surprise. It was past nine o'clock at night when Gondomar entered the "house with the seven chimneys," full of glee at the success of his bold diplomacy; and not long afterwards he was at the door of Olivares' rooms' in the palace, anxious to give to the favourite the first news of the great event. The Count-Duke was seated at supper as Gondomar entered the apartment. The famous Spanish ambassador in England owed much of his success to the assumed bluff jocosity with which he was wont to cover his cunning; but when he bounced into the Count-Duke's supper chamber on this occasion, he was so exuberant in his joy that grave Olivares looked up in surprise, and said: "Ah, Count! what brings you here at such an hour as this? You look as jolly as if you had the King of England himself in Madrid." "If we have not the King," chuckled Gondomar, "we have the next best thing to him,—the Prince of Wales."[[25]]
Olivares was far from sharing Gondomar's delight. To him the news meant infinite anxiety, danger, and expenditure; for not only must the Prince be entertained lavishly, but somehow he must be got rid of without marrying the Infanta, and if possible without a national war with England for the slight put upon the Prince. The Count-Duke hurried to the King's apartments with the great news, and Philip was as much taken aback as his minister, for young as he was he fully understood the gravity of the situation. One thing, however, he was quite determined upon. Already the adulation of which he had been made the object, and the high hopes aroused by the new measures and men that had been introduced upon his accession, had convinced the lad he was the heaven-sent instrument destined to restore to Spain its proud supremacy over a united Christendom, and religious exaltation had claimed him henceforth for its own, however ungodly his daily life might be. When Olivares had laid before him the difficulties that arose from the unexpected descent of Charles Stuart upon them, Philip rose, and walking to where a figure of Christ crucified hung at the head of his bed, he kissed the feet of the figure, and burst out into the following impassioned oath: "O Lord! I swear to Thee by the human and divine alliance crucified that in Thee I adore, and upon whose feet I seal this pledge with my lips, that not only shall the coming of this Prince be powerless to make me concede one point in the matter of the Catholic religion, not in accordance with what Thy Vicar the Pontiff of Rome may resolve, but even if I were to lose all the realms I enjoy, by Thy grace I will not give way a single iota." Then turning to Olivares (who says that this was one of the only two oaths he ever knew the King to take), Philip told him they must nevertheless fulfil the duties of hospitality that the Prince had thrown upon them.[[26]]
For the greater part of that night the minister worked hard laying out all the plans for the entertainment of the Prince, and for avoiding without giving mortal offence the marriage he sought. At eight o'clock next morning a meeting of high councillors, with Gondomar and the King's confessor, met in the Count-Duke's room in the palace, the result of their deliberations, being highly characteristic: namely, "first, to offer public prayers to God in thanks for the event, and in supplication for His guidance"; and secondly, to instruct Gondomar to sound Buckingham and Cottington (who was expected to arrive that day) as to how far the King of England might be squeezed, "in order to bring this visit to be a great and very signal service to the Church."[[27]]
Olivares meets Buckingham
A dozen knotty points of etiquette had to be settled, and Gondomar was busy all day speeding backward and forward between the palace and the "house with the seven chimneys";[[28]] but at last it was arranged that the pride of Olivares should be saved from making the first visit, by the device of an apparently chance meeting with Buckingham. Already Madrid was agog with the news that some great personage, the King of England some said, had arrived in disguise; and when, late on Saturday afternoon, the great swaying gilded coach of Olivares, with its leather curtains, its six gaudily decked mules, and its crowd of liveried servants and pages around it, was seen threading the green alleys of the gardens below the palace on the banks of the Manzanares, all the idlers on "Liars Walk" knew that the Count-Duke was going to meet, "by chance," the Admiral of England, the favourite of his King. When the carriages met, Olivares alighted and greeted Buckingham half-way between their coaches, where, with carefully arranged politeness and high-flown compliments, as false as they were pompous, the great Guzman first measured his strength with brilliant, rash, unscrupulous George Villiers.
After many professions of delight on both sides, the Count-Duke entered the English coach with Buckingham, Bristol, and Cottington, and for an hour they drove in close confabulation. On their return they entered the palace gateway, and Olivares secretly led Buckingham into the King's presence, where again the compliments were repeated. There is no doubt that the Spaniards, from the King downward, were flattered with the embarrassing visit, which was a patent proof, it was proudly claimed, of the reality of Spain's regained power and superiority under the new régime, when the heir of England came wooing her at so great a risk. So Philip was all smiles to Buckingham; and when the latter returned to the "house with the seven chimneys," Olivares insisted upon accompanying him to greet the Prince personally in the King's name, the Spanish narratives say that the Count-Duke performed his part with all the dignity and splendour characteristic of him; but Howel, who was in Madrid at the time, and knew Porter well, writes that the Count-Duke "knelt, and kissed his (i.e. the Prince's) hands and hugged his thighs, and delivered how immeasurably glad his Catholic Majesty was at his coming, and other high compliments, which Mr. Porter did interpret."[[29]]
During the interview Charles expressed his ardent desire to see his lady love, the Infanta—"to discover the wooer," as Buckingham called it; and it was agreed that on the next day, Sunday, 9th March, the coaches of the royal family should parade the Prado, where the Infanta should be distinguished by a blue ribbon tied round her arm; and the Prince in Bristol's coach might meet the royal party as if by chance, and incognito. Little enough of incognito there was about the affair, when, at four o'clock in the afternoon the ambassador's coach with the Prince, Buckingham, Aston, Gondomar, and Bristol in it, stood in the narrow street of the Puerta de Guadalajara in the Calle Mayor to await the coming of the King's party. Every foot of the streets was crowded with sightseers, and the pride and joy of the show-loving Madrileños knew no bounds. By and by the long line of coaches accompanying the King rumbled by, and at last young Philip with his pretty dark-eyed girl wife, his two young brothers, Carlos and Fernando, almost exact replicas of himself, with their lank sandy hair, their long white faces, thick red lips, under-hung jaws and great pale eyes. In the door-seat of the carriage sat the Infanta Maria. She was much like her brothers: "a very comely lady, rather of Flemish complexion than Spanish, fair haired, and carrying a most pure mixture of red and white in her face. She is full and big lipped, which is held a beauty rather than a blemish."[[30]] As the King's carriage passed that of the Prince, Philip, who was not supposed to see Charles, bowed low, as did his brothers, to Lord Bristol; but it was noticed that the Infanta first flushed and then turned deadly pale as her lover's eyes fell upon her.
The poor girl, indeed, was getting seriously alarmed. She was, of course, devout and ignorant. To her heretics were an abomination, and the prospect of living amongst such was worse than death. Her monkish confessor painted in lurid colours the horror of the fate that threatened her; worse than hell it was, he said, to lie by a heretic's side, and bear heretic children. Only that morning she had sent her confidential lady, Margaret Tavara, to Olivares, passionately protesting against the marriage being seriously negotiated. She would, she said, take refuge in the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, and assume the nun's veil the moment she heard that the capitulations were signed. Charles on his part appears to have been really smitten with the pink and white charms of the little lady, and played the eager wooer well. The Prince and Buckingham writing to their "Dear Dad and Gossip" (the King) calls this first meeting "a private obligation hidden from nobody; for there was the Pope's Nuncio, the Emperor's ambassador, the French, and all the streets filled with guards and other people. Before the King's coach went the best of the nobility, after followed by the ladies of the Court. We sat in an invisible coach, because nobody was suffered to take notice of it, though seen by all the world."[[31]] The cavalcades then wended their ways by different roads to the Prado, where, parading up and down, the Prince had several opportunities of looking upon his blushing sweetheart. Soon Olivares came and entered the Prince's coach; and again fulsome compliments passed as they drove back to the English embassy.[[32]]
Buckingham, indeed, was fairly dazzled and deceived, for both he and Charles believed now that the match was as good as completed. Alas! they did not know Olivares or Spanish methods so well as Bristol did.
"Steenie's" letter to James I.