I have been looking over the batch of Galignanis, and have many thanks to give you for having preserved them for me; any you can henceforth spare for Seville pray send me. I saw nothing worth writing to you about on my tour in political matters. There are about two thousand men at Zamora, and, altogether, I should reckon the Spanish force to be about twelve thousand men—good troops and well appointed with everything. The general feeling everywhere is that they will not pass the frontier.
Madrid, Tuesday, 17th [July 1832].
I am off this night per Malle de Poste to Seville. I am very sorry that we have not met in Madrid, but hope in the autumn we may meet in the marble court of my house in the sweet south. You will do well to come down and dissipate a little after your fatigues with Dom Pedro. Dulce est desipere in Seville. Will you be so kind as to forward the enclosed to the Duke of Wellington, whenever you have a safe conveyance? It contains a letter which a friend of his gave me at Salamanca.
A Mr. Lewis,[28] a clever artist whose father I know well, has been recommended to me by Henry Wellesley. He is about to make a sort of picturesque tour of Spain, having orders for young ladies’ albums and from divers booksellers who are illustrating Lord Byron. Will you be so good as to get his passport viséd in manner that he may not be shot or hung as a spy? I think, if it were viséd in your Embassy in Spanish, it would be quite sufficient in a sort of form like this:—
“El contenido artista Ingles viaja en España con el unico objeto de estudiar y debujar y siendo sujeto de confianse se le recommienda a las auctoridades civiles y militares de su Transitu.”
I had a sort of visé like this from Quesada, which operated like magic. To be sure, they took me for your Excellency in disguise, or at least for a Field-Marshal. This place is very hot, dusty and glaring, and I shall be glad to repose under my orange trees and vines in the shade, and listen to the splashing of waters, the domestic details of my spouse, and the crying of my children, all which pass a single gentleman’s belief.
I see nothing new except the Velazquez, which are more extraordinary every time I meet them.
Ford missed seeing Addington at Madrid, because the Ambassador was in attendance on the Court at La Granja, where momentous events were taking place which affected the destiny of Spain for the next half-century.
In May 1713 the first Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V., had decreed the establishment of a modified form of the Salic law of succession. Women were not absolutely excluded from the throne; but, only if male heirs failed, could they succeed to it. As the law stood, thus modified, Don Carlos, the brother of Ferdinand VII., was the legal heir, rather than Ferdinand’s daughter Isabella.
But in 1789, on the accession of Charles IV., the Cortes was summoned to take the oath of allegiance. When they assembled, the President informed them that the King desired them to exercise their constitutional rights, and to request him to decree the abolition of the Salic law of 1713. The restoration of the old Spanish law of succession, which allowed females to succeed, failing male heirs of the same degree, was welcome to a nation which remembered the reign of Queen Isabella. The Cortes therefore begged Charles IV. to abolish the Salic law and to restore the ancient rule. But the enactment was never perfected by publication.