Long discussions with the Council of State and with Olivares kept Hopton busy in Madrid for months; the while the great betrayal proposed was kept from the Secretary of State and all the responsible ministers in England, a good foretaste of the policy that led Charles Stuart to ruin and the block. To the official Secretary of State, Hopton had much to say about the great preparations being made in Spain for war, but no word about the secret plan for England to join in it on the Catholic side. Great loans and levies are constantly being raised, he reported in April 1634.
"This great ship," he wrote, meaning of course Spain, "contains much water (i.e. money), but many leaks, and is always dry. It is certain that they have made loans this year for 13 millions (of ducats), and are still treating of more, yet at the end of the year they will neither have money in their purse, nor army paid, nor nobody contented; which is to be attributed to the hard terms wherewith they do their business. For being masters of the mines of gold and silver, and withal having but few friends, nobody will serve them but for their interests: and their own subjects are so well conceited of themselves, as they think they cannot be paid enough."[[14]] "In their present levies," he continues, "though they are sorry men, they give them 3 reales a day, which is 18 pence English, and yet have all they can do to keep them from running away. Subjects are fearfully hardly pressed. The hard usage of business men in the Indian trade has made concealment general, which has greatly reduced the revenue of the crown. Great measures were taken to discover unregistered treasure in the last fleet, and they found 600,000 ducats, and will yet find more. But this again will stop trade."
Approach of war
Everything possible was done by Olivares to please the English at this juncture. The prisoners of the Inquisition at Cadiz were released, Hopton was made much of, King Charles was the most popular potentate amongst the idlers of Madrid; whilst the French ambassador, stoned and insulted in the streets, was fain to take refuge in a monastery twelve miles away to avoid scandal. "They want our friendship now," wrote Hopton, "and we may make our market." The English ambassador had his head quite turned by so much attention, and, to the anger of King Charles, was drawn by the superior diplomacy of Olivares into going beyond his instructions in his promises to the Spaniards. The King of England had been bitten too often by Spanish plausibility not to be distrustful; and Windebank's letter to Hopton, in May 1634, was almost violent in its scolding. Hopton had gone so far as to say that the English had decided to put a powerful army in the field to punish the insolence of the Dutch, whereas King Charles had only broached it as a proposition, and Nicolalde in the meanwhile was pledging the Spaniards to nothing. When Olivares was pressed for guarantees in return for the English aid he craved, the usual story was told; and by the middle of July Hopton wrote to Windebank—
"The business, as I expected when I saw them haggling, has come to naught. They only want to keep us neutral; and the affair is at an end. I am not sorry, unless the Palatine might be made secure. When I said they would oblige the gratefullest prince living, Olivares replied: 'No hay gratitud entre Reyes' (There is no gratitude between kings)."[[15]]
Olivares was beset on all sides. Detested by the nobles, with nearly all of whom he was at feud;[[16]] feared and dreaded by the commercial community, whom he had ruined; overworked, and at his wits' end to face the vast present and prospective drains upon the national resources, striving not only to do all the work of State himself and to direct everything, but also to keep the King in a good humour by providing an endless series of amusements for him, the Count-Duke was "so spent with the burden of business that lies upon him," as Hopton wrote, "as to deserve pity, if he would only pity himself." There was no class of people now that did not feel the crushing weight of the war expenditure, even before the great war with France had begun. In June 1634, Hopton reports that "a new tax had been imposed of one-eighth of the value of all wine sold in Madrid, with no exception allowed, and one twenty-fourth of all that is sold in the Castilian realms. All the shops that sell wine are shut, so that all stock may be registered and an account be rendered of sales. They think thus to charge the retailer under great penalties. It is like to be a great trouble, and the greater part of the benefit will be consumed in officers and false accounts." "I doe much doubte," he continues, "that by degrees those impositions will first be laid upon all things of home fabric and growth, and afterwards upon those things imported from abroad; and your Honour (Coke) may guess to what immoderation the revenues of this crown will grow by this means."[[17]]
The good, simple ambassador made no allowance for the self-stultifying operation of oppressive taxation, and if he had reviewed the state of affairs a few years later, he would have seen, as we shall in the course of this book, that, so far from benefiting Philip's treasury, these blighting impositions on the exchange of commodities ended in a decrease of the revenue. But whilst the citizens were groaning under impossible burdens, and the curses of a whole nation were following the careworn Count-Duke, the King, as much afflicted with the troubles of his people as anyone, but looking upon them as a visitation of providence, must needs seek in pleasure distraction from his vicarious sorrow which the oppressed citizens themselves could not escape.
"All the Court is at the new house" (i.e. the Buen Retiro) "for a fortnight," wrote Hopton in July 1634, "which time hath been spent in all manner of entertainments and much to their Majesties' contentment, wherein the Count of Olivares took great pains, all things being ordered by himself; and so well, as it savoured of his excellent judgment in all things, especially in the furniture of the house, which was such as not to be thought there had been so many curiosities in the whole kingdom; and this at very little expense, for it was for the most part done by presents. Howbeit the things that were bought were dearly and punctually paid for, inasmuch as nobody can wisely complain."
Furnishing the Buen Retiro