I have transcribed these lines at length, because they show in vivid terms how the suicidal system of finance was ruining every class of the community. The workers, agricultural and urban, especially the former, had been the first to go under, then the smaller tradesmen, crushed by the alcabala tax on all sales, and the tampering with the currency; and the turn now had come of the great merchants and bankers; whilst even the nobles and churchmen had been bled freely by the last "voluntary donation."[[1]] In these circumstances it is not surprising that the dissatisfaction became almost clamorous in its intensity. Such pasquins passed from hand to hand on Liars' Walk that people said that the ghost of Villa Mediana must surely be walking his old haunts again, so bitter were they. Olivares, it was whispered, had poisoned the Infante Carlos, and had tried to send Fernando by the same road. The French were ready with great armies to devastate Spain, only because Olivares was coquetting with the rebel Orleans. Even the Pope, said the gossips, was being insulted and flouted by this minister, who was but an ill-born Jew in disguise.[[2]] "If you heard," wrote Hopton to Cottington, in August 1632, "the libels and foolish inventions of the people against the Conde, you would never desire to be a favourite."[[3]]
Olivares' difficulties
Thus affairs in the capital went from bad to worse. Fanaticism spent itself upon the loan-mongers, mostly Genoese and Jews with Portuguese names, who served Olivares in extremity, and many of them, and the richest, fell into the hands of the Inquisition. There were frequent hints, uttered beneath bated breath, that if all men had their due Olivares himself would be burnt in a sambenito outside the gate of Fuencarral, for he had risen by the devilish arts of sorcery, and kept the King in his power by witchcraft.[[4]] Enormous difficulty was experienced in levying troops for the war, for the country was half depopulated, and many able-bodied men fled: the old spirit of confidence in a sacred mission was gone, and they had now no stomach for a fight provoked by the King's favourite. The Catalans looked on in sulky suspicion, believing that Olivares needed the soldiers to rob them of their liberties; whilst in Madrid itself, though there were only eight companies of troops, "and more idle men to be spared than in half Spain."[[5]] The shirkers flocked by thousands into ecclesiastical and noble service, or in that of the Inquisition, with little or no pay, in order to escape enlistment.[[6]] News came daily, too, of reverses in Flanders, and serious riots in Biscay against the salt tax; and in the meanwhile the French armies were mustering upon the Pyrenean frontier to menace Spanish territory when the dread hour should strike. No spot of brightness indeed appeared anywhere.
Olivares had opened secret negotiations direct with Charles I. for an offensive and defiance alliance against France, in union with the party of Marie de Medici and the Duke of Orleans; and again the English were sure for a time that now the Palatinate would be restored,—too late, however, in any case, for poor Frederick, who had just died. But soon another cause for dispute changed Olivares' tone towards England. Behind the amiable talk about the Palatinate large bodies of men for the Spanish service had been raised in Ireland. This, it was seen, would not do. Charles I. was willing to oblige Spain in return for concessions in the matter of the Palatinate; and Scottish, or even English, mercenaries, he said, might be obtained. But Catholic Irishmen, "utter rebels"! Olivares was told plainly that he could not have; "for if ever Spain meant to do us harm it would be by means of the Irish." So the new Irish troops were stopped by England before they were embarked, and Olivares, in a violent rage, said he had been betrayed and ruined, and would never trust an Englishman again. England, indeed, at last was learning what manner of man Olivares was. Suave and diplomatic when it served his turn, but, whilst gaining everything, giving nothing but vague promises in exchange. English shipmasters were still being disgracefully despoiled; not a step had really been taken for the restoration of the Palatinate; and Charles was more than justified in insisting upon practical proofs of Spanish friendship before he stretched a point to help Olivares.
A dissolute court
Through all this gathering trouble, with deep discontent at home and menace on all sides, the trivial life in Madrid went on in the usual way. "The King hath been very sensible of the losse of Rheinsberg," wrote Hopton in June 1633; "and the Conde hath endeavoured to divert him with playes and maskes at a new house (Buen Retiro) he hath built near the St. Geronimo monasterie: a thing of noe great expense for such a King, yet murmured at by the people, who will allow to governors in times of misfortune nothing but care."[[7]] As time went on, Philip had grown more idle and dissolute than ever; and the tone of the Court had followed the fashion of the King. The newsletters of the period from Madrid are simply a collection of atrocious scandals touching the honour of the highest people in the Court. The blame for this also was laid, though not very justly, upon Olivares, who, having lost his only daughter, the Marchioness de Heliche, to his enduring grief, had now cast the whole of his affection upon his bastard son Julian, whom he subsequently legitimated, and rechristened Enrique Felipe de Guzman, to the fury of the nobles who were opposed to him. But this fact, although it contributed ostensibly to his fall, as the Queen was persuaded that he had induced Philip to legitimate his own favourite bastard Don Juan in order that he, Olivares, might have a good precedent to do likewise with his, was really but a venial fault in a Court so corrupt as this.
A budget of scandal
In his private letters to Cottington, Hopton occasionally allowed himself to tell some of the current scandal concerning courtiers, who were, of course, well known to Cottington. He appears in one of his letters to have hinted at a terrible misfortune as having happened to some highly placed ladies in Madrid, but without giving details. Charles I. saw the letter, and was much offended apparently that the scandal should be mentioned vaguely. Hopton (26th October 1633) wrote an abject letter of apology to King Charles, beseeching pardon, and saying that he had only mentioned scandal and avoided particulars in order to save the lady's honour; but in obedience to his Majesty's orders he would now tell the whole story.
"The tragedy began in Cardinal Zapata's house, where there is a niece of his, daughter of his sister the Countess de Valenzuela, a very fine lady, and exceedingly well beloved by her uncle, who married her about two years ago to the eldest son of the Count de Sevilla, with whom she lived about a year, and, being left a widow, returned to the protection of the Cardinal, her uncle. In the house there lived a favourite servant of the Cardinal, one Joseph Cabra, who had entered the service at Zaragoza as a page, but now occupied the post of highest trust in the household. The Count of Sevilla's son was jealous of this man before he died; but since his death the Count his father has proceeded criminally against the young Countess and Cabra, for living in adultery together and murdering the husband. It is now certain that since she became a widow she lived with Cabra and had a child by him, which made them resolve on a secret marriage. This was concealed for some months, and divulged at last through a slip of Cabra's, who failed to pay sufficiently handsomely the officers of the church where they were married. The whole business then came out. Cabra fled to his own country, where he thought he would be safe; and there he published something vindicating his quality. There was no reason, he argued, why his marriage with the Countess should be considered strange. Others of greater inequality had been married before; for instance, the Duchess of Peñaranda and her steward Avellaneda. He knew this, he said, by his having had access to the secret books of Toledo Cathedral. The Duchess of Peñaranda was a younger daughter of the Cardinal Duke of Lerma; and she was known in her youth to have been free, but all passed under her high spirits. The Duke of Lerma had a page called Avellaneda, who, being a favourite, was appointed to wait upon his daughter in those liberties she assumed, and to be the instrument of justification to her and him. The Duke of Lerma having died, the page was appointed steward, and although he was already married, she (the Duchess) had a child by him, who is now five years old. Eighteen months ago, Avellaneda's wife died, and the Duchess married him. When the bans were published, her son, the present Duke of Peñaranda, happened to be present; but the names being common ones he did not suspect, though he mentioned the matter to his mother as a curious coincidence. This marriage being discovered by the disclosures in Cabra's pamphlet, threw all the town in a turmoil. The Duke of Peñaranda assembled in the house of his sister, the Marchioness of Villena, his confidential kindred, to consult them as to what had to be done. There it was decided that he must first kill Avellaneda. When this news reached the palace, the King sent for the Duke of Peñaranda, and ordered him to do nothing as he (the King) would take the matter into his own hands. He sent to Illescas, where Avellaneda was, and had him brought in a cart to the common prison here; the Duchess being sent to the royal convent of nuns of St. Domingo el Real,[[8]] where she still remains. Cabra, who had caused all this trouble, was also imprisoned, and his wife as well, though she in her justification said: 'Why punish me, who try to live in the grace of God?—let them look to those who live like strumpets'; and amongst those who did so she mentioned the Dowager Duchess of Pastrana. The affair has caused dreadful scandal, but has been hushed up. The good old Cardinal (Zapata) has taken so much to heart the misfortune of his niece, who, after having been committed to the custody of an Alcalde de Corte, has been sent to a nunnery, that ill-meaning people say that she is really his daughter. He is so troubled about it that he has moved to six different houses in six months, and much mistrust exists. Another thing has arisen out of the affair. The great distaste to the house of Peñaranda has caused the Duke to retire from Court. The King was quite willing for him to go, but did not like his wife to go with him. She is the daughter and heir to the Marquis of Valdonquilla, the uncle of the Admiral (of Castile), who, without taking any notice of the King's displeasure, forced her to follow her husband. But they say the commerce is established."
This budget of scandal sent to the King of England shows how utterly rotten was the moral condition of the Court, when it sufficed for one disgraceful episode to be made public for a whole string of others to follow touching the honour of those who stood highest. This scandalous immorality, arising apparently from the absolute degeneration of religion into a formula, and of its ceasing to be a guide of conduct, extended to all classes of society, and terrified stories were told of horrible irreligious rites being carried on in the conventual houses themselves by a secret society called the "illumined ones" (alumbrados). The particulars of one awful scandal of the sort, which was investigated by the Inquisition at this time (1633), caused great excitement in Madrid. It related to the proceedings of the nuns of St. Placido of Madrid, who were pronounced by the Benedictine chaplain, Fray Garcia, to be nearly all possessed of the devil; and on the pretext of exorcising them he was with them almost day and night. This went on for three years, when the fact that twenty-eight out of the thirty nuns in the convent were said to be possessed appeared so strange and suspicious, that the Inquisition intervened; and, in the course of a long inquiry and much torture of the chaplain, uncovered an appalling story of sacrilege, black magic, and immorality combined, for which all the persons implicated were severely punished; though a few years afterwards (1638) an attempt was made to whitewash the condemned.[[9]]