This letter was dated on the twenty-third of March, the anniversary of King James’s coronation.
“My sweete boyes,” the King wrote, on the following day, “God bless you both, and reward you for the comfortable news I resaived from you yesterday[[1]] (quhiche was my coronation daye), in place of a tilting. My shippe is readdie to make saile, and onlie stayes for a faire winde; God send it her! But I have, for the honour of Englande, curtailed the traine that goes by sea of a number of raskalls.”[[2]]
There was, meantime, much difficulty, from the inefficient state of the navy, in furnishing even a small fleet to fetch home the heir-apparent. Not only ships, but mariners, were wanting; the sailors had gone away, and hidden themselves. In vain were two proclamations issued to call them home; for proclamations and commissions had become so frequent that no one attended to their purport. At length, on the twenty-eighth of June, a small fleet of ten or twelve ships was equipped, and appeared in the Downs, ready to depart; but the expense of supporting them, which exceeded three hundred pounds a day, was loudly complained of by those at the head of affairs.
The King, meantime, was harassed with debts, and disturbed by apprehensions. He begged “his babie” to be as sparing as possible, since his agents had great difficulty in raising the five thousand pounds required for his use. The Prince’s “tilting stuff” was to come to three thousand pounds more, and those employed to get that sum knew not how to procure it. “God knows,” wrote the King, “how my coffers are alreadie drained.” He could think of no remedy, he added, except to obtain in advance the payment of the hundred and fifty thousand pounds promised as the Infanta’s dower, which he thought “his sweete gossepe, that is now turned Spaniarde, with his golden keye,”[[3]] would be able to get, and then he should have a fine ship speedily to bring him home to his “deare dade.”
The tender father was too full of fears lest his “babie” should be hurt in tilting. He also begged of his “sweete boyes to keep themselfs in use of dawincing privatlie, though they showlde quhaffsell and sing one to another, like Gakke (Jack) and Tom, for faulte of bettir musike.”
Finally, James desired them, even should the dispensation not arrive, to press the Prince’s suit bravely, and to get him married without it, since numbers of "Catholic Romans and Protestants married in the worlde without the Pope’s dispensation," as he had been informed by the Austrian ambassador.
Meantime, the university of Oxford was vying with the metropolis in demonstrations of joy for the Prince’s safe arrival in Spain. In the beautiful church of St. Mary’s, now chiefly appropriated to deep theological discourses, a sermon was preached in honour of that event, and an oration to the same effect delivered in the schools.[[4]] Yet, even now, the feeling of the country began to appear. It was rumoured, and only too truly, that things were not going well in Spain; whilst the enormous sums of money taken out of the treasury and regalia in jewels excited general indignation. As everything familiar, as well as important, became, in those times, the theme of preachers, even from pulpits, the draining of the kingdom of money was blamed. Dr. Everard, the rector of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, was committed for “saying too much;” and another preacher was, in the midst of his unpleasant strictures on the same subject, “sung down with a psalm before he had half done his sermon.”
On the twenty-sixth of May, the Earl of Rutland, Buckingham’s father-in-law, received James’s private instructions to have the “ships sweet, and well provided with victuals, to chuse good captains, and to defer to the authority of Buckingham as Lord Admiral, should he come on board; to avoid quarrels, which the King thought very dangerous when persons were crowded together on shipboard;--in going, to make for the Groyne, in returning to land at in returning to land at Southampton,”[Southampton,”][[5]] the high-ways of which were even then being repaired for the reception and convenience of the expected bride. Yet still the fleet was unaccountably detained in port, and nothing was really done.
The Court, at this time, was gratified by a letter from Lady Kensington, commending the resistance of the Prince and Duke to proposals made by the Spanish Court, derogatory to them; and stating, after extravagant encomiums on the newly-made Duke, that Buckingham “shed tears” on account of his absence from the King.[[6]] Complaints, however, were made at home, not only of the export of so many valuables to Spain, but of the expense of supporting the table of the Spanish ambassador, who was treated here as a guest, during Charles’s sojourn in Spain. Eighty pounds a day was the charge to which the ambassador’s table at first amounted. His repasts were eventually cut down to thirty dishes--all that King James permitted himself to display on his own table--and the cost was thus reduced to twenty pounds daily.[[7]]
Reports, indeed, came to console the anxious minds at home, stating that the Prince and Duke were “royally treated,” but it was soon surmised that Charles was becoming weary of his detention. June had arrived; the Duke of Richmond, and six other noblemen, as commissioners, had already gone to Southampton to prepare a reception, with pageants, for the Prince; yet still Lord Rochford, who was expected to arrive with news of the wedding-day being fixed, did not make his appearance.