Great preparations were made for the entrance of the Queen and her consort into London. The signs of vengeance had been cleared away, and the city was as bright and gay as paint and gilding could make it. The "galluses," from which dangled the fifty dead bodies of the London trainbandsmen who had deserted to Wyatt at Rochester Bridge, were cleared away from the doors of the houses in which their families lived, and the grinning skulls of the higher offenders were taken from the gates and from London Bridge; but London, for all its seeming welcome and for all its real loyalty to the Queen herself, was more deeply resentful of the Spanish intrusion than any city in the realm, and the few Spaniards who still remained with Philip repaid with interest the detestation of the Londoners towards them. "We enter London (narrative No. 4) on Saturday next, but, considering their treatment of the Spaniards already there, we ought to stay away. Not only will they give them no lodgings,[[26]] but they affront them on every opportunity, as if they were barbarians, maltreating them and robbing them in the taverns to their hearts' content. The friars brought by his Majesty had better not have come, for these English are so godless and treat them so vilely that they dare not appear in the streets."
Only a few days before this letter was written from Richmond (August 19th) two Spanish noblemen of the highest rank, Don Pedro and Don Antonio de Cordoba, ventured to walk in the streets of London in their habits as knights of Santiago, with the great crimson cross embroidered on their breasts, as they are worn in Spain to this day, and this attracting the derisive attention of the irrepressible London street boy of the period, the two gentlemen were soon surrounded by a hooting crowd, who wanted to know what they meant by wearing so outlandish an ornament, and tried to strip the offending coats from their backs. The affair nearly ended in bloodshed, and the Spaniards had to fly for their lives. The very few Spanish ladies who came with Philip were as resentful as their spouses, and we are told that "Donna Hieronima de Navarra and Donna Francisca de Cordoba have decided not to wait upon the Queen, as there is no one to speak to them at Court, these English ladies being so badly behaved; and the Duchess of Alba will not go to Court again, as she had been so discourteously treated."
With all this grumbling, however, the country itself extorted the admiration of the visitors; the books of chivalry, we are told, have only stated half the truth. The palaces, rich and splendid with the unhallowed spoils of the monasteries; the flowery vales, gushing fountains, enchanted woods, and lovely houses far exceed even the descriptions in Amadis; but there are "few Orianas and many Mavilias amongst the ladies," and the romancers have said nothing about the strange, uncouth beings who inhabit the enchanting land. "Who ever saw elsewhere a woman on horseback alone, and even riding their steeds well, and as much at home on their backs as if they were experienced horsemen?" And after confessing the beauty of the country itself, the narrator concludes that the disadvantages of it outweigh the advantages, and wishes to God that he had never seen the place or the sea that led to it. And things got worse as time went on. The Londoners themselves were in an exaggerated panic, that explains their hard treatment of their guests. The author of the "Chronicle of Queen Mary," who lived in the Tower of London, and faithfully set down from day to day the news he heard, reflects the terror inspired by the presence of Philip's suite in the capital. We have seen that at the utmost the number of Spaniards of all ranks who landed from the fleet did not exceed 500, of whom four-fifths had left for Flanders and Spain before the King entered London, and yet the diarist, writing about this time, says, "At this tyme ther was so many Spanyerdes in London that a man shoulde haue mett in the stretes for one Inglisheman above iiij Spanyerdes to the great discomfort of the Inglishe nation.... The halles taken up for Spanyerdes.' And, again, as showing how complete was the panic, fomented, no doubt, by Noailles and the Protestants, there is an entry in the "Chronicle of Queen Mary" of September 8th, as follows: "A talke of XII. thowsand Spanyerdes coming more into this realm, they said the fetch the crowne." It is not surprising, with such a feeling as this current in the city, that the courtier's next letter, written from London on October 2nd, should be more despondent than ever. They were all ill and home-sick; some had almost died, and the country did not agree with them.
"God save us and give us health, and bring us safely home again. The country is a good one, but the people are surely the worst in the world. I verily believe if it were not for the constant prayers and processions for us in Spain we should all have been murdered long ago. There are slashings and quarrels every day between Englishmen and Spaniards, and only just now there was a fight in the palace itself, where several were killed on both sides. Three Englishmen and a Spaniard were hanged for brawling last week. Every day there is some trouble ... God help us, for these barbarous, heretical people make no account of soul and conscience; disobey God, disregard the saints, and think nothing of the Pope, who they say is only a man like themselves, and can have no direct dominion over them. The only Pope they recognise is their sovereign."
The futility of the marriage, from a national point of view, rankled in the breasts of the disappointed courtiers as much as did their personal discomfort. They felt that the trouble they had undergone, and the humble pie they had eaten, had added nothing to the power of their country or their sovereign, and their prevailing idea was how soonest and best to wash their hands of an ungrateful and profitless business in which all their sacrifices had been in vain.
"We Spaniards," says the narrator, "move about amongst all these Englishmen like so many fools, for they are such barbarians that they cannot understand us, nor we them. They will not crown the King nor recognise him as their sovereign, and say that he only came to help govern the kingdom and beget children, and can go back to Spain as soon as the Queen has a son. Pray God it may be soon, for he (Philip) will be glad enough, I am sure, and our joy will be boundless to be away from a land peopled by such barbarous folk. The King has forgiven the Queen 2,250,000 ducats she owed him, and has distributed 30,000 ducats a year in pensions to these lords of the Council, to keep them in a good humour. All this money is taken out of Spain. A pretty penny this voyage and marriage have cost us, and yet these people are of no use to us after all."
Bitter disappointment is the note struck all through. The English lords who had been so heavily bribed were ready enough to take all they could get; but they were as patriotic as they were greedy, and did not sell their country's interests for their pensions. Renard for once had made a mistake. He was ready to assent to any conditions the English liked to propose on paper, trusting to the personal influence of Philip on his queen after the marriage was effected. But he forgot that the Queen herself was a mere puppet in the hands of her nobles, as the narrator I have quoted soon discovered, and, whatever ascendency the young bridegroom might obtain over his half-Spanish bride; her councillors, from the stern Gardiner downwards, were Englishmen before everything, to whom the over-weening power of the Emperor had been held up as a terror since their childhood. And so the whole splendid plot failed, and the magnificent nuptials had hardly been forgotten before Philip, recognising that his sacrifices had been in vain, and that he could never rule in England, made the best of an unfortunate speculation, and with all gravity, courtesy, and dignity left Mary to die of a broken heart, alone, disappointed, and forsaken.
[[1]] The English Historical Review, April, 1892.
[[2]] This curious and rare tract was reprinted by the Camden Society, 1849, and is the groundwork of Foxe's and Hollingshed's accounts of the events related therein.