The Duke of Richmond was accompanied to Southampton by Inigo Jones and old Alleyn, the player, who were to employ their talents for the occasion; but who could, as the great news-teller writer of that period, Chamberlain, observes, “have done just as well without so many Privy Counsellors;” “but we must,” he adds, “shew our obsequiousness in all that concerns her” (the Infanta). At Gravesend, Lord Kelly, in the King’s barge, went to meet the new Spanish ambassador, the Marquis Inojosa, to whom cloths of estate, an honour never permitted to ambassadors in Queen Elizabeth’s time, were conceded, and when the haughty grandee landed at Dover, and was saluted with shot from the castle, he vouchsafed a nod from his coach, but, Spaniard-like, gave not one penny of money.[[8]]

In spite of all the journeyings to and from Spain, nothing was done, whilst the Prince, whose firmness met with the highest commendations, was written to by the Pope, and “nibbed at with orations by the English seminaries in Spain, in order to effect his conversion.” The expenses at home and abroad could now only be supported by extraordinary devices, such as knighting a thousand gentlemen at a hundred pounds a-piece; ten or twelve serjeants-at-law at five hundred pounds a-piece; but the fees arising from the elevation of these luminaries were to be given to the Lord Keeper or to Sir Francis Crane, to further his tapestry works at Mortlake, or to pay off some scores owed him by Buckingham.[[9]]

Whilst all these minor difficulties were harassing the King at home, Charles was beset with a far greater difficulty. When the Puritans were blaming him for answering in a polite and conciliatory tone the Pope’s letters, without the permission of his royal father, he was displaying the firmness which could only be the result of a careful and learned education; for faith in those times was, as in ours, feeble without sound knowledge; and it was requisite for him to repel zealous efforts to convert him at all convenient times. Between the dazzling scenes of splendid shows and diversions, made at such times and intervals of repose, Olivares was attacking the Prince with the argument best suited to the character of the romantic youth, telling him how sure a way to the Infanta’s heart his conversion would be; and by hinting that difference of creed could not but be a great obstacle to their union. And when answered that such an apostasy would raise a rebellion in Protestant England, the embarrassed but steadfast Prince was assured that if such were the case, he should have an army from Spain to quell such an insurrection. Even Lord Bristol, who was a great friend and favourite of Charles’s, “strove, with a gentle hand, to allure him that way,” by the specious argument that none but Roman Catholic monarchs had ever been great as sovereigns; whilst the Pope, encouraged by all this subtle working of a hidden machinery, wrote a letter to the Bishop of Conchen, Inquisitor-General of Spain, desiring him not to let such an opportunity of conversion slip out of his hands.[[10]]

Buckingham did not, it appears, escape the zeal of the Jesuits, but acquitted himself, in reply to the energetic attacks upon his faith, with a prompt decision; and, as far as he was concerned, the attempt seems to have ceased, although he was afterwards incessantly reproached with a leaning to Romanism.

Like others, Buckingham became, at length, weary of the subject of the Palatinate, and not only still more weary of his long residence in Spain, but anxious to leave the political management of the affairs to those who best understood those intricate matters.[[11]] To his precipitate conduct, and his impatience of delay, it was said the whole failure might be ascribed; and that, had it not been for his impetuous temper, Charles and the Infanta would have been married before the Christmas of 1623.

Whilst all went smooth, or appeared to do so, with the treaty, the diplomatists were at variance among themselves.

“When we were here in the heighth of discontents,” wrote Simon Digby,[[12]] “nothing so much spoken of as the Prince, his sudden departure, reinfectâ, all our wranglings and disputes were, when no man suspected and expected any such matter,[[13]] shut up like a comedy, and the match declared and published for concluded.”

At home, the Marquis Inojosa was making representations which he was ordered to lay before the King, through Don Carlos Colonna, complaining of the East India Company’s ships at the taking of Ormus. In the ship called the London, were, it was alleged, goods stolen from the King of Spain to the amount of five hundred thousand pounds. The very dishes used by the lowest men in that ship were of silver, taken from some of the very best families in Portugal, whom the English had plundered and slain, and had then stamped their plate with their own arms. Jewels of inestimable value had also been seized. It was therefore demanded that these ships should be put into sequestration. It is a curious proof how completely a feeling against the Spanish marriage had, by this time, possessed every class, that, upon the arrival of these vessels in port, the crews, hearing a report that the marriage with the Infanta was to be broken off, shot off their artillery, and threw their caps into the sea for joy.[[14]]

Whilst the wooer, as the Prince was still styled, was murmuring at delays and obstacles, others less lofty were sending complaints to England, coupled with assurances of conjugal fidelity, which were more suspicious than satisfactory. Amongst Buckingham’s most confidential servants was Endymion Porter, who generally acted as his interpreter. Porter, according to Arthur Wilson, "had been bred up in Spain when he was a boy, and had the language, but found no other fortune there than brought him to be Mr. Edward Villiers’s man in Fleet Street, before either his master or the Marquis was acceptable at Whitehall." “It is not intended,” adds the historian, "to vilify the persons, being men (in this world’s lottery) as capable of advancement as others; but to shew in how poor a bark the King ventured the right freight his son, having only the Marquis to steer his course."

It was, indeed, remarkable that the agents most employed in the Duke’s service were men who had raised themselves from all but menial stations. Sir Robert Graham, whose name so often occurs in the correspondence of this period, was “an underling of low degree” in Buckingham’s stable. Cottington was originally a clerk to Sir Charles’s Cornwallis’s secretary, when Cornwallis was ambassador in Spain. The letters of Endymion Porter, also raised from mediocrity, are very characteristic of the confidential servant of a great man, who, like himself, was of easy principles. Among expressions of affection and grief for absence from his wife, Olive, and allusions to their little son George, are mingled a protestation that Endymion did not kiss the innkeeper’s daughter at Boulogne. “Alas! alas! sweet Olive!” thus he writes, "why should you go about to afflict me! Know that I live like a dying man, and as one that cannot live long without you. My eyes grow weary in looking upon anything, as wanting that rest they take in thy company and sight of thee.