"We live very honest, and think of nothing but our wives. I thought to have sent you a token of some value, but find my purse and my goodwill could not agree, and considering that my letter would be welcome to you, I leave to do it only this ring, which I hope you will esteem, if it be not for love, I think for charity. The conceit is that it seems two as you turn it, and ’tis but one.
“Sweet Olive! remember what it is to be sad, and forget not home. In our poverty, we will live as richly as they that have the greatest plenty, and bread with thy company shall please me better than the greatest dainties in the world without it.”[[15]]
Olive Porter was, it seems, a humble relation of the Duchess of Buckingham, who addresses her as “Cousin,” and who appears, by Endymion’s letters, to have provided for Mistress Porter, since, in one of his singular epistles, after hoping that there may be nothing more said of any unkindness between them, Endymion sends his wife a jewel worth some hundred pounds, telling her that “she might pawn it if she had no more credit, but that Lady Buckingham had promised to supply her wants.” Certain conduct of Mrs. Porter’s prompts jealousy, and Endymion hints that, in his absence, “his wife has been merry with other young men,” a charge which not even the most scandalous could adduce against the pensive and irreproachable Duchess of Buckingham.
It was the lot of Endymion Porter to accompany Prince Charles on a very interesting occasion; in the month of July, whilst the dispensation was daily expected, Charles grew weary of the uniform Court gaieties, during which he saw nothing but the Infanta, on whom his eyes were incessantly fastened, as the inquisitive courtiers remarked.
“I have seen,” James Howell wrote from Madrid to Captain Porter, the brother of Endymion, “the Prince have his eyes immovably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together, in a thoughtful, speculative posture, which sure would needs be tedious, if affection did not succeed it.” Lord Bristol, not very elegantly, remarked that Charles “watched her as a cat does a mouse.” Still the royal pair were not allowed to be on the terms of lovers; and the possibility, even at this last stage, of the treaty never being concluded, kept these young persons apart. Nothing could exceed the magnificence and courtly hospitality continually shown to the “wooer;” everything was done to satisfy the Prince and his suite. Nevertheless, whilst King Philip’s own servants waited upon the royal guest at the palace, there were some among the English “who did jeer at the Spanish fare, and use other slighting speeches and demeanour,” which, of course, were reported, and occasioned ill will. Once a week comedians came to the palace where the Prince was lodged, and Charles, seated, with Don Carlos, on the right hand of the Queen, the Infanta being in the middle, between her brother and his consort, taking the chief place as Prince of England, feasted his eyes upon that fair but soon forgotten face. The youthful King Philip was then under twenty, and his brother, Don Fernando, a boy of twelve, nevertheless Archbishop of Toledo and a Cardinal, was of all this royal family the only one who had the true Spanish complexion; and seems to have been, on that account, more beloved by the people, who were often heard to sigh and say:--"Oh, when shall we have a king again of our own colour?"
Marked out thus for popularity by the true Spanish type, Don Carlos was endowed with no office, dignity, nor title; he was only the King’s “individual companion, dressed in similar garments, from top to toe,” with the King, and when the King had new robes, others were always provided for him; he was, in short, His Spanish Majesty’s shadow.[[16]]
Thus fenced round with guardians and etiquette, the Infanta could only publicly converse with Charles, and that through an interpreter, the Earl of Bristol, “Our cousin, Archy” (King James’s fool) “hath,” says the writer in Howell’s letters, “more privilege than any, for he goes with his fool’s coat where the Infanta is with her meninas and maidens of honour, and keeps a blowing and a blustering, and flirts out what he lists. One day they were discoursing what a marvellous thing it was that the Duke of Bavaria, with less than 15,000 men, after a long toylsome march, should dare to encounter the Palsgower’s army, consisting of about 25,000, and give them an utter discomfiture, and take Prague presently after; wherefore he archly answered, that he would tell them a stranger thing than that. ‘Was it not a stranger thing,’ quoth he, ‘that in the year eighty-eight, there should come a fleet of one hundred and forty sails from Spain to invade England, and that ten of these should not go back to tell what became of the rest.’”[[17]]
At last Charles was resolved to gain a private interview with her whom he supposed to be his destined wife. Understanding that the Infanta was in the habit of going early in the morning to the Caso del Campo, on the other side of the river, to gather May-dew, he rose early, and went thither, accompanied by Endymion Porter. “They were,” says Howell, “let into the house, and into the garden, but the Infanta was in the orchard, and there being a high partition wall between, and the door doubly bolted, the Prince got on the top of the wall, and sprung down a great height, and so made towards her; but she, spying him first of all the rest, gave a shriek, and ran back. The old Marquis that was then her guardian, came towards the Prince and fell on his knees, conjuring him to retire, in regard he hazarded his head if he admitted him to her company; so the door was opened, and he came out under that wall under which he had got in.”
Often did the Prince watch “a long hour together,” in a close coach in an open street, to see the Infanta, as she went abroad; and this conduct appears to have been either the curiosity felt by a young man who earnestly desires to love the individual chosen to be his wife, or a gallantry natural to the age, and then the fashion in both nations, for Charles soon either forgot the Infanta, or became indifferent to the marriage. His affections were destined to rest ultimately upon one of a very different character, as far as we can gather from the perhaps too flattering accounts given by historians of the Infanta, to that of the Spanish Princess.
Still, both the Prince and Buckingham sent encouraging accounts of the progress of the treaty, and even inspired the poor King with a hope that they should bring the Infanta over to England at Michaelmas. This was almost the last letter in which such expectations were held out: it was dated on the fifteenth of July. On that very day, the Archbishop Laud stated in his diary of a violent and destructive tempest, which many, says Camden, “took occasion to interpret as an ill-omen, but God forbid.” It was a “very fair day,” the Archbishop records, "till towards five at night; then great extremity of thunder and lightning, and much hurt done; the lanthorn at St. James’s House blasted, the vane heading the Prince’s arms beaten to pieces."