Philip IV at the age of 55.
From a portrait by Valazquez in the National Gallery, London.
The Court of
Philip IV.
SPAIN IN DECADENCE
BY
MARTIN HUME
EDITOR OF THE CALENDARS OF SPANISH STATE PAPERS
(PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE)
LECTURER IN SPANISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE
PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Vuestras augustisinas Soberanias vivan, O GRAN
FELIPE, inclitamente triunfantes, gravadas en los Anales
de la Fama, pues sois sólida columna y mobil Atlante de
la Fe, unica defensa di la iglesia, y bien universal de
vuestras invencibles reinos
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1907
PREFACE
"I lighted upon great files and heaps of papers and writings of all sorts.... In searching and turning over whereof, whilst I laboured till I sweat again, covered all over with dust, to gather fit matter together ... that noble Lord died, and my industry began to flag and wax cold in the business."
Thus wrote William Camden with reference to his projected life of Lord Burghley, which was never written; and the words may be applied not inappropriately to the present book and its writer. Some years ago I passed many laborious months in archives and libraries at home and abroad, searching and transcribing contemporary papers for what I hoped to make a complete history of the long reign of Philip IV., during which the final seal of decline was stamped indelibly upon the proud Spanish empire handed down by the great Charles V. to his descendants. I had dreamed of writing a book which should not only be a social review of the period signalised by the triumph of French over Spanish influence in the civilisation of Europe, but also a political history of the wane and final disappearance of the prodigious national imposture that had enabled Spain, aided by the rivalries between other nations, to dominate the world for a century by moral force unsupported by any proportionate material power.
The sources to be studied for such a history were enormous in bulk and widely scattered, and I worked very hard at my self-set task. But at length I, too, began to wax faint-hearted; not, indeed, because my "noble Lord had died"; for no individual lord, noble or ignoble, has ever done, or I suppose ever will do, anything for me or my books; but because I was told by those whose business it is to study his moods, that the only "noble Lord" to whom I look for patronage, namely the sympathetic public in England and the United States that buys and reads my books, had somewhat changed his tastes. He wanted to know and understand, I was told, more about the human beings who personified the events of history, than about the plans of the battles they fought. He wanted to draw aside the impersonal veil which historians had interposed between him and the men and women whose lives made up the world of long ago; to see the great ones in their habits as they lived, to witness their sports, to listen to their words, to read their private letters, and with these advantages to obtain the key to their hearts and to get behind their minds; and so to learn history through the human actors, rather than dimly divine the human actors by means of the events of their times. In fact, he cared no longer, I was told, for the stately three-decker histories which occupied half a lifetime to write, and are now for the most part relegated, in handsome leather bindings, to the least frequented shelves of dusty libraries.
I therefore decided to reduce my plan to more modest proportions, and to present not a universal history of the period of Spain's decline, but rather a series of pictures chronologically arranged of the life and surroundings of the "Planet King" Philip IV.—that monarch with the long, tragic, uncanny face, whose impassive mask and the raging soul within, the greatest portrait painter of all time limned with merciless fidelity from the King's callow youth to his sin-seared age. I have adopted this method of writing a history of the reign, because the great wars throughout Europe in which Spain took a leading part, under Philip and his successor, have already been described in fullest details by eminent writers in every civilised language, and because I conceive that the truest understanding of the broader phenomena of the period may be gained by an intimate study of the mode of life and ruling sentiments of the King and his Court, at a time when they were the human embodiment, and Madrid the phosphorescent focus, of a great nation's decay.
The ground was practically virgin. John Dunlop, three-quarters of a century ago, wrote a stolid history of the reign, mainly concerned with the Spanish wars in Germany, Flanders, and Italy. But that was before the archives of Europe were accessible; and, creditable as was Dunlop's history for the time in which it was written, it is obsolete now. The Spanish reproduction in recent years, of seventeenth-century documents, for the most part unknown in England, has added much to recent information; whilst numerous original manuscripts, and old printed narratives and letters of the time, in Spanish, English, and French, have also provided ample material for the embodiment in the text of first-hand descriptions of events. The book as it stands is far less ambitious than that originally projected; but it contains much of the contemporary matter which would have provided substance for the wider history; and though it is limited in its scope, it may nevertheless render the important period it covers human and interesting to ordinary readers who seek intellectual amusement, as well as intelligible to students who read for information alone.
The book—"a poor thing, but mine own"—owes nothing to the labours of previous English historians, except that in describing the Prince of Wales' visit to Madrid I have referred to two documents published by the Camden Society under the editorship of the late Dr. Gardiner. With these exceptions the material has been sought in contemporary unpublished manuscripts and printed records and letters, in most cases now first utilised for the purpose. Whatever its faults may be—and doubtless the critical microscope may discover many—it is the only comprehensive history of Philip IV. and the decadent society over which he reigned that modern research has yet produced. May good fortune follow it; for, as the Bachiller Carasco sagely said: "No hay libra tan malo que no tenga algo bueno," and I hope that in this book, at least, the "good" will be held to outbalance the "bad."
MARTIN HUME.
LONDON, October 1907
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY—PHILIP'S BAPTISM, 1605—THE ENGLISH EMBASSY—EXALTED RELIGIOUS FEELING—DEDICATION OF PHILIP'S LIFE TO THE VINDICATION OF ORTHODOXY—STATE OF SPAIN—EFFECTS OF LERMA'S POLICY—POVERTY OF THE COUNTRY—EXPULSION OF THE MORISCOS—PHILIP'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH—HIS BETROTHAL—FALL OF LERMA—THE PRINCE AND OLIVARES—DEATH OF PHILIP III.
ACCESSION OF PHILIP IV.—OLIVARES THE VICE-KING—CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY—MEASURES ADOPTED BY THE NEW KING—RETRENCHMENT—MODE OF LIFE OF PHILIP AND HIS MINISTER—PHILIP'S IDLENESS—HIS APOLOGIA—DISSOLUTENESS OF THE CAPITAL—VILLA MEDIANA—THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE KING AND COURT—A SUMPTUOUS SHOW—ARRIVAL OF THE PRINCE OF WALES IN MADRID—HIS PROCEEDINGS—OLIVARES AND BUCKINGHAM
STATE ENTRY OF CHARLES INTO MADRID—GREAT FESTIVITIES—HIS LOVE-MAKING—ATTEMPTS TO CONVERT THE PRINCE—THE REAL INTENTION OF OLIVARES—HIS CLEVER PROCRASTINATION—CHARLES AND BUCKINGHAM LOSE PATIENCE—HOWELL'S STORY OF CHARLES AND THE INFANTA—THE FEELING AGAINST BUCKINGHAM—ANXIETY OF KING JAMES—HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH "BABY AND STEENIE"—CHARLES DECIDES TO DEPART—FURTHER DELAY—THE DIPLOMACY OF OLIVARES—BUCKINGHAM AND ARCHY ARMSTRONG—DEPARTURE OF CHARLES—HIS RETURN HOME, AND THE ENGLISH DISILLUSION
FOREIGN WAR RENDERED INEVITABLE BY OLIVARES' POLICY—ITS EFFECTS IN SPAIN—CONDITION OF THE COURT—WASTE, IDLENESS, AND OSTENTATION OF ALL CLASSES—EXTRAVAGANCE IN DRESS—PHILIP'S EFFORTS TO REFORM MANNERS—RETRENCHMENT IN HIS HOUSEHOLD—THE SUMPTUARY ENACTMENTS—THE GOLILLA—THE INDUSTRY OF OLIVARES—HIS CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE—HIS MAIN OBJECT TO SECURE POLITICAL AND FISCAL UNITY IN SPAIN—THE DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF THIS—THE COMEDIES—THEATRES IN MADRID—PHILIP'S LOVE FOR THE STAGE—AN AUTO DE FE—LORD WIMBLEDON'S ATTACK ON CADIZ—RICHELIEU'S LEAGUE AGAINST SPAIN—SPANISH SUCCESSES—"PHILIP THE GREAT"—VISIT OF THE KING TO ARAGON AND CATALONIA IN 1626—DISCONTENT AND DISSENSION—PHILIP'S LIFE TRAGEDY
RISE OF THE PARTY OPPOSED TO OLIVARES—THE QUEEN AND THE INFANTES CARLOS AND FERNANDO—OLIVARES REMONSTRATES WITH PHILIP FOR HIS NEGLECT OF BUSINESS—PHILIP'S REPLY—ILLNESS OF THE KING—FEARS OF OLIVARES—PHILIP'S CONSCIENCE—ASPECT OF MADRID AT THE TIME—HABITS OF THE PEOPLE—A GREAT ARTISTIC CENTRE—MANY FOREIGN VISITORS—VELASQUEZ—PHILIP'S LOVE OF ART, LITERATURE, AND THE DRAMA—CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTION OF A PLAYHOUSE—PHILIP AND THE CALDERONA, MOTHER OF DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA—BIRTH AND BAPTISM OF BALTASAR CARLOS—PHILIP'S FIELD SPORTS—GENERAL SOCIAL DECADENCE
RENEWED WAR WITH FRANCE, LATE IN 1628—RECONCILIATION WITH ENGLAND—THE PALATINATE AGAIN—COTTINGTON IN MADRID—HIS RECEPTION AND NEGOTIATIONS WITH OLIVARES AND PHILIP—FETES IN MADRID FOR BIRTH OF THE PRINCE OF WALES—DEATH OF SPINOLA—TREATY OF CASALE—A "LOCAL PEACE" WITH FRANCE—SPAIN AND THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR—POVERTY AND MISERY OF THE COUNTRY—UNPOPULARITY OF OLIVARES—HIS MONOPOLY OF POWER—HIS GREAT ENTERTAINMENT TO THE KING—HIS INTERVENTION IN PHILIP'S DOMESTIC AFFAIRS—"DON FRANCISCO FERNANDO OF AUSTRIA"—THE BUEN RETIRO—HOPTON IN MADRID—HIS DESCRIPTIVE LETTERS—THE INFANTES—PHILIP'S VISIT TO BARCELONA—DISCONTENT OF THE CORTES—THE INFANTE FERNANDO LEFT AS GOVERNOR—DEATH OF THE INFANTE CARLOS—DEATH OF THE INFANTA ISABEL IN FLANDERS—THE INFANTE FERNANDO ON HIS WAY THITHER WINS BATTLE OF NORDLINGEN—GREAT WAR NOW INEVITABLE WITH FRANCE
INTRIGUES TO SECURE ENGLISH NEUTRALITY—HOPTON AND OLIVARES—SOCIAL LAXITY IN MADRID—CHARLES I. APPROACHES SPAIN—THE BUEN RETIRO AND THE ARTS—WAR IN CATALONIA—DISTRESS IN THE CAPITAL AND FRIVOLITY IN THE COURT—PREVAILING LAWLESSNESS—THE RECEPTION OF THE PRINCESS OF CARIGNANO—SIR WALTER ASTON IN MADRID—THE ENGLISH INTRIGUE ABANDONED
FESTIVITIES IN MADRID—EXTRAVAGANCE AND PENURY—NEW WAYS OF RAISING MONEY—HOPTON AND WINDEBANK—BATTLE OF THE DOWNS—VIOLENCE IN THE STREETS OF MADRID—REVOLT OF PORTUGAL—FRENCH INVASION OF SPAIN—REVOLT OF CATALONIA—PHILIP'S AMOUR WITH THE NUN OF ST. PLACIDO—THE WANE OF OLIVARES—PHILIP'S VOYAGE TO ARAGON—INTRIGUES AGAINST OLIVARES—FALL OF OLIVARES
DEATH OF RICHELIEU AND OF THE CARDINAL INFANTE—PHILIP'S GOOD RESOLUTIONS—HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE NUN OF AGREDA—PHILIP WITH HIS ARMIES—DEATH OF QUEEN ISABEL OF BOURBON—THE WAR CONTINUES IN CATALONIA—DEATH OF BALTASAR CARLOS—PHILIP'S GRIEF—HE LOSES HEART—INFLUENCE OF THE NUN—HIS SECOND MARRIAGE WITH HIS NIECE MARIANA—HIS LIFE WITH HER—DON LUIS DE HARO—NEGOTIATIONS WITH ENGLAND—CROMWELL'S ENVOY, ANTHONY ASCHAM—HIS MURDER IN MADRID—FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN PHILIP AND THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH—CROMWELL SEIZES JAMAICA—WAR WITH ENGLAND
MORAL AND SOCIAL DECADENCE IN MADRID—PHILIP'S HABITS—POVERTY IN THE PALACE—VELAZQUEZ—THE MENINAS—BIRTH OF AN HEIR—THE CHRISTENING—THE PEACE OF THE PYRENEES—PHILIP'S JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER—MARRIAGE OF MARIA TERESA—CAMPAIGNS IN PORTUGAL—DON JUAN—DEATH OF HARO—PHILIP BEWITCHED—DEATH OF PHILIP PROSPER—BIRTH OF CHARLES—FANSHAWE'S EMBASSY—LADY FANSHAWE AND SPAIN—ROUT OF CARACENA IN PORTUGAL—PHILIP'S ILLNESS—THE INQUISITION AND WITCHCRAFT—DEATH OF PHILIP
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[PHILIP IV. AT THE AGE OF 55] . . . Frontispiece
From a portrait by VELAZUEZ in the National Gallery, London.
[ISABEL DE BOURBON, FIRST WIFE OF PHILIP IV]
From a portrait by VELAZQUEZ in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq.
From a contemporary portrait in the possession of His Grace the Duke of Wellington, at Strathfieldsaye.
[CASPAR DE GUZMAN, COUNT-DUKE OF OLIVARES]
From a portrait by VELAZQUEZ in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq.
[PRINCE BALTASAR CARLOS ON HORSEBACK]
From a picture by VELAZQUEZ at the Prado Museum.
From an etching reproducing a contemporary portrait in the Franciscan Convent of St. Domingo de la Calzada.
[MARIANA DE AUSTRIA, SECOND WIFE OF PHILIP IV.]
From a portrait by VELAZQUEZ at the Prado Museum.
Portrait of the Infanta Margaret; from a picture by VELAZQUEZ at the Prado Museum.
THE COURT OF PHILIP IV.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY—PHILIP'S BAPTISM, 1605—THE ENGLISH EMBASSY—EXALTED RELIGIOUS FEELING—DEDICATION OF PHILIP'S LIFE TO THE VINDICATION OF ORTHODOXY—STATE OF SPAIN—EFFECTS OF LERMA'S POLICY—POVERTY OF THE COUNTRY—EXPULSION OF THE MORISCOS—PHILIP'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH—HIS BETROTHAL—FALL OF LERMA—THE PRINCE AND OLIVARES—DEATH OF PHILIP III
The mean city of Valladolid reached the summit of its glory on the 28th of May 1605. Seven weeks before—on Good Friday, the 8th April—there had been born in the King's palace an heir to the world-wide monarchy of the Spains, the first male child that had been vouchsafed to the tenuous reigning house for seven-and-twenty years; and the new capital, proud of the fleeting importance that the folly of Lerma had conferred upon it, curtailed its lenten penance, and gave itself up to sensuous devotion blent with ostentatious revelry. King Philip III. and his nobles, in a blaze of splendour, had knelt in thanksgiving to sacred images of the Holy Mother bedizened with priceless gems; well-fed monks and friars had chanted praises before a hundred glittering altars; and famished common folk, in filthy tatters, snarled like ravening beasts over the free food that had been flung to them, and fought fiercely for the silver coins that had been lavishly scattered for their scrambling.[[1]] From every window had flared waxen torches; for the hovels of beggars were illumined as well as the palaces of nobles,—nay, the courtly chronicler records that the very bells in the church tower of St. Benedict, seventeen of them, "melted in glittering tears of joy" when, to put it more prosaically, the edifice was gutted by a conflagration accidentally caused by the torches.[[2]] Cavalry parades, bull fights, and cane-tourneys by knights and nobles had alternated with banquets and balls during the fifty days that had been needed to bring together in the city of the Castilian plain the chivalry of Philip's realms. One after the other grandees and prelates, with long cavalcades of followers as fine as money or credit could make them, had crowded into the narrow streets and straggling plazas of Valladolid; and as the great day approached for the baptism of the Prince, who had been pledged by his father at his birth to the Virgin of San Llorente as the future champion of Catholic orthodoxy, news came that a greater company than that of any grandee of them all was slowly riding over the mountains of Leon to honour the festival, and to pledge the most Catholic King to lasting peace and amity with heretic England, that in forty years of bitter strife had challenged the pretension of Spain to dictate doctrine to Christendom; and had, though few saw it yet, sapped the foundation upon which the imposing edifice of Spanish predominance was reared.
Howard in Spain
Then grave heads were shaken in doubt that this thing might be of evil omen. Already had the rigid Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia,[[3]] solemnly warned the King and Lerma of their impiety in making terms with the enemies of the faith; lamentations, as loud as was consistent with safety, had gone up from churches and guardrooms innumerable at this tacit confession of a falling away from the stern standard of Philip II. But now that Lord Admiral Howard, Earl of Nottingham, who had defeated the great Armada in 1588, and had commanded at the sack of Cadiz in 1596, was to ruffle and feast, with six hundred heretic Englishmen at his heels, in the very capital of orthodox Spain, whilst the baby prince whom God had sent to realise the dream of his house was baptized into the Church, offended pride almost overcame the stately courtesy and hospitality which are inborn in the Spanish character. But not quite: for though priests looked sour, and soldiers swaggered a little more than usual when they met the Englishmen in the cobbled streets, yet to outward seeming all was kind on both sides; and even the biting satires of the poets were decently suppressed until the strangers had gone their way.[[4]]
Howard's reception
Howard and his train were lodged on the night of the 25th May in the castle and town of Simancas, on its bold bluff seven miles from the city; and betimes in the morning the six hundred and more British horsemen, all in their finest garb, set forth over the arid sandy plain on the banks of the Pisuerga, to enter in stately friendship the capital of the realm that they and theirs had harried by land and sea for two score years. For seven months no drop of rain had fallen on the parched earth; and as the noble figure of the old earl, in white satin and gold, surrounded by equally splendid kinsmen, passed on horseback to the appointed meeting place outside the walls of the city, the dust alone marred the magnificence of the cavalcade. For two hours the Englishmen were kept waiting under the trees, where the Grand Constable, the Duke of Frias,[[5]] and the other grandees were to meet them; for Spanish pride was never at a loss for a device to inflict a polite snub upon a rival. This time it was a diplomatic illness of the Duke of Alba that delayed the starting of the great crowd of nobles who were to greet the English ambassador, and it was five o'clock in the afternoon before the Spanish horsemen reached their waiting guests. Then, as if by magic, the heavens grew suddenly black as night, and such a deluge as few men had seen[[6]] descended upon the gaudy throng; "heaven weeping in sorrow at their reception," said the bigots. In vain the Constable of Castile besought the stiff old Lord Admiral to take shelter in a coach. He would not balk the people of the sight, he said, and the costly finery of both English and Spanish received such a baptism as for ever spoilt its pristine beauty. Wet to the skin, their velvets and satins bedraggled, their plumes drooping, and their great lace ruffs as limp as rags, the thousand noble horsemen passed through dripping, silent, but curious crowds to their quarters.
English peculiarities
Howard himself was lodged in seven fine rooms in the palace of Count de Salinas, hard by the yet unfinished palace; and his six hundred followers were billeted in the houses of nobles and citizens.[[7]] Fifty English gentlemen of rank dined together that evening in Howard's lodging, and their manners, dress, and demeanour furnished food for curious discourse in Spain for many days to come. How tall and handsome they were, though some of them were spoilt by full beards! said the gossips; how careful to show respect for the objects of worship in the churches, although only fourteen of the whole number were avowed Catholics. Many of them spoke Spanish well, as did Howard himself, and their dress was, on the whole, adjudged to be handsome; "though their ornaments were not so fine as ours." But what amused their critics more than anything else was their industrious poking about the city in search of books, and a curious fashion they had of breaking off in their discourse—or in a pause of the conversation—and practising a few steps of a dance, the tune of which they hummed between their teeth.[[8]] In the innocence of their hearts, too, they imagined that they were paying a compliment to the Spaniards by saying how little real difference there was between their own creed and that of their hosts; a view which the latter received in courteous silence in their presence, but rejected with scorn and derision behind their backs.[[9]] Brave doings there had been, too, the next day, when Howard had his first interview with Philip III. Surrounded by the King's Spanish and Teuton guard, in new uniforms of yellow and red, the Lord Admiral was led by the Duke of Lerma into the presence of the King. Of the genuflections and embraces, of the advances on each side, measured and recorded to an inch by jealous onlookers, of the piled-up sumptuousness of the garments and the gifts, it boots not here to tell in full, but the King's new liveries alone on this occasion are said to have cost 120,000 ducats; and Howard excused himself for the poverty of his country when he handed to Queen Margaret an Austrian eagle in precious stones worth no more than the same great sum.[[10]]
All this, however, was a mere foretaste of the overwhelming magnificence of the following day, Whit Sunday, the 28th May, for ever memorable in the annals of Valladolid as the greatest day in its long history; for then it was that in solemn majesty, and lavish ostentation without example, there was dedicated to the great task in which his ancestors had failed, a babe with a lily-fair skin and wide open light blue eyes, upon whom were centred the hopes and prayers of a sensitive, devout people, who had seen in a few years their high-strung illusions vanish, their assurance of divine selection grow fainter and fainter, the cause they thought was that of heaven conquered everywhere by the legions of evil, and their own country reduced to chronic penury; burdened with a weight beyond its strength, yet too proud to cast the burden down or to acknowledge its own defeat.
The almost despairing cry that constant disaster had wrung from Philip II: "Surely God will in the end make His own cause triumph," still found an echo in thousands of Spanish hearts; and this child of many prayers was greeted as an instrument sent at last from heaven, on the most solemn day in the Christian year, to put all things right when he should grow to be a man.[[11]] The presence of the "heretic" peace embassy seemed of no good omen, though some men even affected to interpret it as such when Howard knelt before the King and was raised and embraced by him; but, as if to banish every doubt, and mark for all the world that the vocation of the Prince was irrevocably fixed beforehand, there was brought in solemn pomp, from the remote village of Calguera, the crumbling little font in which, five hundred years before, had been baptized the fierce firebrand St. Dominic, scourge of heresy and founder of the Holy Inquisition, whose work it was to make all Christians one, though blood and fire alone might do it.
Philip and the Dominicans
Nothing was omitted that could connect the Prince with the Dominican idea. Early in the morning of the day of the baptism, the King, who was to take no public part in the later christening ceremony, walked in state with all his Court[[12]] in a great procession of six hundred monks of Saint Dominic from their monastery of San Pablo to the cathedral, there again solemnly to dedicate his infant heir to the vindication of the Church; and at the dazzling ceremony which took place the same afternoon in the Dominican church of San Pablo a similar note was struck. The fair infant, with its vague blue eyes, was borne in triumph by the Duke of Lerma, a half dozen of the proudest dukes in Christendom carried the symbols and implements of the ceremony, cardinals and bishops in pontificals received the baby with royal state at the church porch, the populace pressed in thousands around with tears and blessings to see their future King; all that lavish extravagance and exuberant fancy could devise to add refulgence to the solemnity was there; but, looking back with understanding eyes, we can see that the two significant objects which stand forth clearly in antagonism from all that welter of gew-gaws are the humble rough font of St. Dominic under its jewelled canopy, supported by great silver pillars, and the stately white-haired figure of the "heretic" ambassador with his prominent eyes bowing gravely, yet triumphantly, in his balcony, as the pompous procession swept by.
Other less important things there were which must have told their tale and cast their shadow as plainly to those who witnessed them as to us. The two black-browed Savoyard cousins, who walked in the place of honour, the eldest of them as chief sponsor, must have been but skeletons at the feast, for the birth of the Prince had spoilt their cherished hope of the great inheritance; and, as we shall see in the course of this history, Victor-Amadeus of Savoy and his kin brought, therefore, abounding sorrow to his god-son and to Spain. When the infant, too, was denuded of his rich adornments for the ceremony, and they were deposited upon the solid silver bed that had been erected in the church for the purpose, some of the great personages, who alone could have had access to the precious objects, stole them all, and the heir of Spain, Prince Philip Dominic, who entered the church with his tiny body covered with gems, left it as unadorned as ascetic St. Dominic himself could have wished.[[13]]
Philip's dedication
Thus, in a whirlwind of squandering waste, surrounded by pompous pride, unscrupulous dishonesty, and ecstatic devotion, Philip from his birth was pledged to the hopeless task of extirpating religious dissent from Christendom: the task that had been too great for the Emperor and his steadfast son, that had drained to exhaustion the wealth of the Indies, had turned Castile into a wilderness, and was to drag the Spanish Empire to ruin and dissolution under the sceptre of the babe whose christening we have witnessed. The life-story of the unhappy monarch which we have to tell is one of constant struggle amidst the antagonistic circumstances that surrounded his baptism; against the impossibility of reconciling the successful performance of the work, to which devotional pride and not national interest had bound him, with the poverty and exhaustion that had forced Philip III. and Lerma to seek peace with Protestants, and had made the victor of the Invincible Armada an honoured guest when the heir of Catholic Spain was dedicated to the ideal of Dominic. For, in good truth, it was from no lack of either devotion or pride that Philip III. had been forced to parley with the thing that he had been taught to look upon as accursed of God. Almost the only policy in which he was ever vehemently energetic was the attempt in the first days of his reign to invade Ireland in the interests of the Catholics, and to secure the control of the Crown of England by means of the anti-Jacobite party.[[14]] He was, as Llorente truly says, more fit himself for a Dominican friar's frock than a regal mantle; and if rigid obedience to the directions of his spiritual guides had enabled him to root out Protestant dissent from Christendom, as he rooted out the Moriscos from his realms, Philip III. would have succeeded where his greater father and grandfather failed.
The Philips compared
But devotion was not enough to secure the triumph of Spain; fervent belief in the divine approval was not enough. Both Philip II. and the Spaniards of his time possessed those qualities to excess, and yet they had failed. What was needed now, even to avert catastrophe, were orderly organisation, industry, celerity in council and in action, economical adaptation of ways and means, ready resource and a flexible conscience; in short, statesmanship,—and these were the very qualities which Philip III. conspicuously lacked. With the accession of Philip III. (1598) the weak point in the system of the Emperor and his son had come out; and their laboriously constructed political machine had broken down. Under Philip II. himself, in his later recluse years, it had grown rusty and sluggish, but whilst the mainspring, the monarch, had laboured ceaselessly, treating his ministers as clerks, and raising them from the gutter that they might be his tools alone, the wheels at least went round; but when the monarch in whom all motion was centred left off working, and did nothing but dance and pray alternately, then came paralysis and consequent disaster. "Ah! Don Cristobal; I fear they will rule him," groaned Philip II. on his agonised deathbed; and, though too late, he had guessed his son's character aright. Thenceforward the favourite, Lerma or another, was monarch in all but name; and each problem of government as it arose, or was submitted to the King, was considered by Philip III. not in its broad political aspects, but as a case of private conscience to be quibbled over by confessors and theologians, and finally decided with timorous heart-searching on grounds apart from national interests or expediency.
Philip II. himself had all his life been sternly conscientious, according to his lights, and his inflexibility had been one of the main causes of the partial failure of his policy and the exhaustion of his country. He was a strong, slow, persistent man, unwavering in his methods, as he was consistent in his objects; but he was withal a statesman of vast ability, with the power of self-persuasion that all great statesmen must possess, and he played the game of international politics with mundane pieces, though he convinced himself and others that they were divine. His son and grandson, as will be seen in the course of this book, had not his power of self-conviction; they lived in an age of growing national disillusionment, and were swayed mainly by sentimental, traditional, and devotional considerations. They were for ever unlocking with trembling hands the secret closet of their conscience, to assure themselves that indeed no stain rested there. Having seen that all was spotless in their own breasts, they were content to sit with crossed hands, in almost Oriental fatalism, throwing the whole responsibility for what happened, or failed to happen, upon the divine decrees. They had satisfied their confessor and their conscience in the course they had taken, and if things went awry after that it was not their fault.[[15]] This was no doubt all very saintly and good; but it meant calamity as a system of government when its professors were pitted against rivals unhampered by such scruples and limitations.
It may seem paradoxical to assert that the more purely religious character of the motives that swayed Philip III. and Philip IV., than of those which influenced Philip II., resulted from a weakening of the exalted devotional faith that had dominated Spain during the greater part of the sixteenth century; and yet, if it be carefully considered, such will prove to be the case. A faith so fervent as that which carried the men-at-arms and explorers of the Emperor and his son triumphant through the world left no room for doubt. What they did could not be wrong, because they were chosen to do God's own work; and for that all means were sanctified. They did not need to be for ever pulling their consciences up by the roots to satisfy themselves that the fruit was good. If Philip II. ordered murder to be committed, or the Emperor seized private or ecclesiastical property for his own purposes; if hundreds of inconvenient political persons were consigned to a living tomb in the galleys and dungeons of the Inquisition, we may be assured that no qualms of conscience were felt in consequence by the first two sovereigns of the Spanish house of Austria; for the spiritual fervour, which was the secret of the unity and power of their realms, made all things right which were done in furtherance of objects which were considered sacred: and throughout the Reformation period the Spanish sovereigns quite honestly and unhesitatingly employed religious forms and professions to attain purely political ends.[[16]] But after the accession of Philip III. disillusion and faintness of faith set in, and the assurance of divine selection grew weaker. People in Spain were, it is true, more outwardly devout than ever, for the Inquisition increased in strength as it became more independent and less a political engine in the hands of the weak monarch; but the constant timid misgivings of governors and people, the universal recourse of gentle and simple to priests, friars, and nuns for guidance, consolation, and reassurance, were of themselves a proof that the old robust self-sufficing faith was declining; and in the course of this history we shall see how the process continued hand in hand with the national decadence; the devotional influence upon political action increasing as religious faith grew less positive and conscience more clamorous.
We have seen the wasteful splendour with which young Philip's infancy was surrounded: it will be necessary now for us to examine the state of the country at the time, in order that we may be able to trace in future pages the consequences of Philip's action and character when he came to the throne. Most of the contemporary chroniclers of the reign whose works remain to us, men like Novoa, Davila, Porreño, Cabrera, Malvezzi, and Torquemada, courtiers or placemen all, lose themselves in hyperbolical ecstasy at the colossal riches and greatness of the sovereign who could afford to spend in feasts and shows such vast sums as those squandered on the christening of Prince Philip Dominic and similar celebrations: but they were too much taken up with the pomp and glitter of their patrons, and in recording the interminable lists of high-sounding titles and glittering garments, to give much attention to the reverse side of the picture. For that we must turn to other authorities, especially to the narratives of foreign visitors, and to the remonstrances of the unfortunate members of the Cortes of Castile, who, between the despairing and indignant orders of their constituents, and the ceaseless pressure of the sovereign for fresh supplies of money, were obliged to speak plainly, though fruitlessly, of the ruin that impended unless matters were reformed.[[17]]
State of Spain in 1600
The first Cortes of the third Philip's reign (1598), when Lerma demanded the previously unheard-of vote of eighteen million ducats, spread over six years, to be raised by a tax on wine, oil, meat, etc., earnestly prayed the King to attend to their long-neglected petitions for a readjustment of expenditure and taxation. When the sum was voted, the King's promise of reform was, as usual, broken, and the Cortes then told the King that his country was already ruined and could pay no more. "Castile is depopulated, as you may see; the people in the villages being now insufficient for the urgently necessary agricultural work: and an infinite number of places formerly possessing a hundred households are now reduced to ten, and many to none at all."[[18]] The common people were starving: the formerly prosperous cloth-weaving industry was rapidly being strangled by the terrible "alcabala" tax, imposed upon all commodities every time they changed hands by sale. The price of necessary articles was enormously and constantly rising, owing to the tampering of Lerma with the currency, the dwarfing of industry by the alcabala, town tolls, local octrois, and the greatly increasing demand for commodities by America. Whilst the sternest decrees were issued in rapid succession against luxury in dress and living, the advent of Lerma and the host of greedy aristocrats to power had caused a perfect frenzy for magnificence in attire; and the vast amounts of money spent in costly stuffs and precious embroideries, etc., were almost entirely sent abroad, inasmuch as the Spanish manufacturers and dealers in such wares were not only impeded in the production and distribution of them by the economical causes mentioned, but were practically the only classes punished for infraction of the sumptuary decrees. Thus the great sums that arrived in Seville every year from the Indies to a large extent never penetrated Spain at all, but were transhipped at once to other countries, either in exchange for foreign commodities which unwise sumptuary decrees and faulty finance prevented from being produced in Spain, or else to pay the Genoese and German loan-mongers,—asentistas, as they were called,—who on usurious terms were always ready to provide money against future revenue for the wasteful shows by means of which the idea of Spain's abounding wealth and power was kept up. What portion of the American gold and silver did reach the Spanish people themselves was mostly hoarded or buried to keep it from the grasp of tax-farmers, thieves, and extortioners of all sorts, to whom a man of known wealth was simply looked upon as fair prey. The copper money, genuine and forged, with which the country was flooded[[19]] was the only sort commonly current, and this had been by decree (1603) raised to double its face value, again increasing the price of articles of prime necessity to the poorer purchaser; whilst the nobles and other wealthier people who possessed hoarded silver and gold lived comparatively cheaply.
Spain at Philip's birth
In the very year 1605, when, as we have seen, money was squandered in Valladolid without limit, every source of national revenue had been pledged for years in advance; and a year or two previously the King's officers had been forced to beg from door to door for so-called voluntary contributions of not less than fifty reals, for the daily expenses of the royal household. The revenue in this year was stated to be nominally 23,859,787 copper ducats of the value of 2s. 5-1/3d. each,—more than enough, if it had been received, to meet every necessary expenditure; but peculation and corruption were so universal, contraband and evasion so general, that according to the Venetian ambassador, every branch of the administration was starved, the national defences in a deplorable condition, and the King unable to raise an army of more than 20,000 or 30,000 men in Spain.[[20]] In the meanwhile Lerma and his family and friends and their respective adherents were piling up possessions and riches beyond computation. The first act of Philip III. on his accession had been to give to his favourite the right to receive what presents were offered to him, and Lerma had exercised the privilege to the full. What the chief minister did the subordinates imitated. Rodrigo Calderon, the favourite of the favourite, and Franquesa, the clerk of the council of finance, were found in their subsequent disgrace to have hoarded immense quantities of gold and silver; and every one of the twenty Viceroys, forty-six Governor-Generals, and their infinite underlings, robbed as much money as he could grasp, the sooner to come and swagger in the Court amidst a squalid, starving population, of which every man was striving within his limits to imitate his betters, and to share in the easily won riches of official corruption.[[21]] The one prosperous trade was the service of the King or the service of his servants; and thus, whilst the sovereign himself was blind and deaf to all but his innocent frivolities, and the superstitious awe that constituted his religion, Spain grew yearly poorer and more miserable as a nation, and the favoured classes, the nobles and the clergy, practically exempt from taxation, waxed ever fatter, more insolent, and more lavish.
Spain's responsibilities
The policy and aims of Philip II. had kept his realms at war for a generation. The fatal possession of the Flemish and Dutch territories of the House of Burgundy and the traditions of Catholic unity had cursed poor Castile with a European policy, and had driven Spain into constant war with Protestant England, her natural ally; but Philip II. on his deathbed had done his best to lighten his son's burden. Flanders was left to his dear daughter Isabel, and her destined husband, the Cardinal-Archduke Albert, with reversion, unfortunately, to Spain, in the probable case of failure of issue from the Infanta. To this extent Spain was relieved. There was no longer any material need for her to spend her blood and money in fighting the Protestants, either for the Emperor or for the new Archduchess of Flanders; who herself, and especially her husband, were content to let the Protestant Dutch go their own way, whilst she enjoyed in peace her inherited Catholic Belgic sovereignty. The exhaustion of Spain and his own avarice had tended to make Lerma pacific; and, as we have seen, peace was arranged both with France and England: it must be confessed, on extremely favourable terms for Spain, as early in the reign of Philip III. as was practicable. The war with the Dutch in support of the Infanta still dragged on; for the Spaniards would bate not a jot of their pride, and Maurice of Nassau and his Hollanders were in no submissive mood after holding their own for forty years. The Infanta and her husband ardently longed for peace, and were ready to acknowledge the independence of Holland; but Philip III. was full of scruples of conscience as to the morality of formally ceding territory to Protestants, even when he could not hold it himself, and it was 1609 before the punctilious haggling ended, and the famous truce of twelve years was signed, practically giving the stout Dutchmen the independence for which they had fought so well.
Spain was then at peace for the first time within most men's memory; and, with prudence, economy, and good government, might yet have repaired the disasters that had befallen her. The promotion of production, the rehabilitation of labour, a return to the frugal, honest life which prevailed before the nation was led to its splendid hysteria by the imperial connection, would have enabled the great revenues from the Indies to be kept in Spain, whose shipping was now for a time free from the depredations of privateers. But we have seen how demoralised the whole people had grown. Long wars in foreign lands, usually against Protestants or infidels, the craze for discovery and profitable adventure in the Indies, and the dwarfing of industry, except for the very poor, humble, plodding folk, had made the vast majority of Spaniards scornful of labour; and in any case it would have been hard to set men to work again. The attempt even was never seriously made. Peace for Philip III. and his people did not mean an opportunity for setting their house in order and reorganising the nation, because they did not even yet fully recognise the hopelessness of the national dream of domination through the unity of Christendom on Spanish Catholic lines.
The Moriscos
For the realisation of this dream absolute unity of faith in Spain itself was the first necessary condition. The country was peopled by several unamalgamated racial and political elements, and had been artificially unified by the religious exaltation resulting from the conquest of Granada and the fierce doctrinal pride fostered by the Inquisition, artfully utilised for political ends by Ferdinand the Catholic and his successors. The weak point of the sacred bond that held Spaniards together was the large hard-working Moorish population scattered over the Peninsula, and especially numerous in the south-west. In spite of pledges and promises of toleration, Christian baptism had been forced upon these people. Taxes and disabilities of all sorts had been piled upon them, insulting and oppressive rules had been made to their detriment, alternate cruelty and persuasion had been resorted to in vain: the Moriscos at heart remained true to their own faith, however humbly they conformed to the Christian rites imposed upon them. They were still the most thrifty toilers; the carrying trade of the Peninsula was almost entirely in their hands, and their means of inter-communication were thus better than those enjoyed even by Christian Spaniards. How to deal with this alien element so as to eliminate the danger that existed from their presence in a Christian state, the realisation of whose great ambition depended upon unbroken religious unification, had puzzled the minds of Spanish statesmen for years. It had been practically decided at one time (1581) by Philip II. to take the whole Morisco population out to sea and sink the ships that carried them; Gomez Davila of Toledo urged Philip III. in 1598 to massacre the whole of them, whilst others more humane advocated the forcible abduction of all the children, the sterilisation of the males, and other heroic measures. For a time also the milder spirits, such as Father Las Casas, prayed that gentler methods might be tried; but the attitude of the Moriscos themselves and the bigotry of the churchmen soon silenced the voice of mercy.
For years the Moriscos had been plotting with Spain's enemies; with Henry IV. of France, with Elizabeth of England, with the Duke of Savoy, with the Sultan, with the King of Fez, or whoever else would promise them aid to break up the Spanish monarchy; and the very day that the Prince Philip Dominic was born (8th April 1605) was fixed for the great Moslem rising at Valencia which should deliver Eastern Spain to the French King. The plot was discovered in time, and this frustrated treason had added to the religious fervour of the baptism, which has been described at the beginning of this chapter. Thenceforward the black cloud that loomed over the folk of Moorish blood grew ever darker. Not the religious bigots alone, but statesmen too, intent only on the immediate problem before them, urged that if unity of Christendom was the necessary condition of Spain's greatness, then the faith within her own realms must be made pure and solid beyond all question or doubt, let the sacrifice be what it might.[[22]] Racial jealousy, economical rivalry, and envy of the superior financial position of the frugal Moriscos over that of their Christian neighbours, aided the forces of religious bigotry and political expediency: and, just as the baptism of Prince Philip had coincided in point of time with the discovery of the Moorish treason, so did the next ceremony of his infant life coincide with the fatal decision to exterminate root and branch from Spain all those in whose veins was known to flow the blood of the Moslem races. For the attainment of the views of both statesmen and churchmen of the day, purblind as they were to the larger issues, the resolution to expel the Moriscos was necessary, but, as will be seen later, it was disastrous industrially and economically.
In accordance with the condition of political science of the time, the results of the measure were indeed neither considered nor understood in the latter aspects.[[23]] It was discussed in the King's Council, first as a point of conscience, and secondly as a political necessity, and the breathing time given to Spain by the peace with the Protestants after forty years of strife, instead of being employed in the repair and recuperation of national forces, was seized upon by those who yet pursued the chimera of domination by religious unification, to deplete still further the already exhausted country by the expulsion of the principal productive element of its population, amidst the fervent applause of the idle and thriftless majority.
And still the frenzy of waste and magnificence in all classes went on, for no men saw fully yet that ruin was the inevitable result of a state of society in which luxurious idleness, or the pretence of it, was alone regarded as honourable, and where the honey was seized by the drones of the hive before workers had stored it. On the 13th January 1608 the ceremony of swearing allegiance to the child Philip as heir to the Crown of Spain was celebrated in the church of St. Geronimo in Madrid,[[24]] with a lavishness that almost rivalled that of his baptism. Once more the King, in white satin and spangles and overloaded with gems, walked in procession with the fair-haired fragile Queen, even more splendidly bedight than he;[[25]] once more the lavish Lerma led the baby Prince as sponsor, and the courtiers who followed vied with the favourite in the magnificence of their attire; once more Cardinal Sandoval de Rojas with a crowd of prelates invested the act with all the solemn state of which the Church was capable, and in the courtly fashion of his house substituted a kiss for the canonical blow in the ceremony of confirmation.[[26]] Madrid was ablaze with light, and the ball in the palace at night surpassed anything that the now deposed Valladolid could show; but over all the glitter the black cloud hovered, and even whilst the ceremony of homage was being celebrated, the Council of State, despairing now of the conversion of the Moriscos by softer methods, and alarmed at the prospects of a great invasion from Morocco, practically decided to clear the soil of Spain of the descendants of its former conquerors.
Of the details of the expulsion this is not the place to speak. We are principally concerned with it here to show that Philip IV. was bound from his earliest infancy to an inherited policy, and that the seeds of social and national decadence were sown before his time. He was no Hercules to root them out, but was forced with bitter anguish to witness the riches and power of his realms choked and destroyed by the noxious growth which grew to maturity in his time: whilst he wept and prayed for the miraculous remedy that never comes, or sought forgetfulness in vicious indulgence that added private remorse to his public sorrow.
Philip's childhood
Young Philip's education and the surroundings of his childhood were not calculated to increase his self-reliance or independence of judgment. His devout, delicate, Austrian mother died in childbirth when he was but six years old, and his father's awestricken devotion thereafter grew more mystic than ever. Friars surrounded him, dictating the most trifling as well as the most important acts of his life; supernatural visions and heavenly voices assured him of divine favour in his intervals of terrified despair which reduced him almost to lunacy,[[27]] and the little boy who was to be the heir of his gilded misery was left to the care of cloistered churchmen, whose ideal of goodness was the suppression of all natural impulse and the extinction of personal initiative as opposed to the dread fatalism which made them supreme.
Beyond dull, ceremonious visits to the royal convent of the Discalced Carmelites, hard by the palace of Madrid, the little Prince saw no relaxation from prayers and lessons, but an occasional stage play or masque performed by himself and his young courtiers of similar age. Even as a small child this was young Philip's sole delight; and so long as he could declaim verse before his father's Court, or listen to the declamation of others, he was content. On one occasion, in 1614, it is recorded in a gossiping letter of the time, that the Prince, who was then nine years old, represented the character of cupid before the King and his family in the room in the palace devoted to such shows; and as he had to make his entry upon the stage in a high ornamental chariot, the jolting of the vehicle made the poor child seasick; and the God of love, when he advanced to the footlights, was reduced to a most unlovely plight in face of the dignified audience, though we are told that he "performed his part very prettily." There were those who shook grave heads, especially some of the friars, at this early indulgence of the heir of Spain in his passion for a pastime so little in accord with the traditional dignity of the royal house;[[28]] but little Philip himself very soon learnt his lesson, for he was an apt pupil, and even as a youth assumed a staid gravity on all public and ceremonious occasions entirely at variance with his demeanour in private.
In the meanwhile the country was sunk in the most abject misery. Corruption and plunder of the national resources by Lerma and his favourites and their hangers-on had at last aroused the resentment, or perhaps the jealousy, of rival self-seekers. Spain was at war again, and a league of all liberal Europe under Henry IV. of France was pledged to humble finally the inflated pretensions of the house of Austria; but just as Lerma's star was waning, and the prompt ruin of Spain seemed imminent, a circumstance happened that gave a new lease of life to the proud dreams of the Philips, and made the subsequent downfall during the reign we have to record the more complete.
In May 1610 the dagger of a crazy fanatic ended the glorious life of "Henry of Navarre"; and the coalition against Spain broke down, and gave way to a struggle between his widow Marie de Medici and James I. of England to secure the friendship of the decadent power which still loomed so large and asserted its high claims so haughtily. The Queen Regent of France, papal and clerical as she was, succeeded where crafty, servile James Stuart failed; and in 1612 the eldest daughter of Spain, the Infanta Ana, was betrothed in Madrid by proxy to the boy King of France, Louis XIII., and young Philip, Prince of Asturias, became the affianced husband of Isabel of Bourbon, the elder daughter of Henry IV., the great Béarnais. Of the lavish splendour that accompanied the betrothals in Madrid this is not the place to speak,[[29]] but when Lerma's fall was at last approaching, engineered by his own son the Duke of Uceda, in 1615, King Philip III. and his pompous Court travelled north in an interminable cavalcade to exchange the brides on the frontier.
Philip's betrothal
Prince Philip remained at the ancient Castilian capital of Burgos, whilst the dark-eyed young beauty who was destined to be his wife rode, surrounded by Spanish nobles, from the little frontier stream through San Sebastian and Vittoria to meet her eleven year old bridegroom. The boy and his father rode a league or two out of Burgos to greet the girl, who it was fondly hoped would cement France and Spain together for the fulfilment of the impossible old dream of Christian unity dictated from Madrid; and eye-witnesses tell that the pale little milksop Prince, with his lank sandy hair and his red hanging under-lip, gazed speechless in admiration of the pretty bright-eyed child, in unbecoming Spanish dress, who was destined to be the companion of his youth and prime. The next day Burgos was in a blaze of splendour to welcome the future Queen, who rode on her white palfrey and her silver sidesaddle through the narrow frowning streets to the glorious cathedral; and then, from city to city, through stark Castile, the little bride, smiling and happy, and her pale boy bridegroom, followed by the most splendid Court in Christendom, slowly made their way to the crowning triumph of the capital.[[30]]
In the gorgeous crowd of courtiers that accompanied the King on his long journey to and from the French frontier, intrigue and falsity were rife. The Duke of Lerma's favourite, Calderon, had languished in a dungeon already for five years, and the spoilt favourite himself knew that his fall had been plotted long since by his son and the powerful clerical clique that swayed the timorous soul of Philip III. But Lerma was making a brave fight for his dignity and vast wealth. Philip III. was kind and tender-hearted, and the habit of subjection to his favourite was hard to break, so that his enemies had to tread warily. Their plan was to place gradually around the King and his heir nobles whom Lerma had failed to satisfy with sufficient bribes. One of them was a young man of twenty-eight, perhaps the most forceful of them all, Caspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, son of that proud minister of Philip II. who had bullied and hoodwinked Sixtus V. into supporting the Armada in 1588. For years Caspar de Guzman, and his father before him, had fruitlessly besought Lerma to convert their peerage of Castile into a grandeeship of Spain; and on the journey to France with the King, the Count, though his branch of the great Guzman house was less rich than noble, had striven to show by the splendour of his train that if he was not a grandee he was magnificent enough to be one.[[31]]
Philip III. loved lavishness, especially to dazzle the French at this juncture, and was easily persuaded by Lerma's false son to make the Count of Olivares a gentleman of the chamber to the Prince. At first young Philip disliked his masterful attendant, whose imperious manner and stern looks frightened the sensitive boy; but gradually, as the latter grew older and more curious, the address and cleverness of Olivares asserted their influence over the weaker spirit of the Prince. Olivares was supposed by Uceda to be acting entirely in his interest, and had persuaded the latter to give him complete control of the Prince's household, which he took care to pack with friends pledged to himself. When Lerma was finally dismissed with a cardinal's hat and all his riches, young Philip was anxious to know why so great a minister had been disgraced. Olivares was always ready to enlighten the lad, and would spend long periods chatting with him alone as the Prince lay in bed, or as he was riding. In answer to Philip's questions about Lerma, he impressed upon him the insolence of favourites generally, their noxious public influence, their evil effect upon monarchs, and much more to the same purport, pointed at Uceda the new minister quite as much as at his fallen father. The sufferings of the people were described vividly to the sympathising boy, who was told of the vast plunder held by Lerma and his family from the national resources, and the noble task awaiting a monarch who would govern his realm himself and redress the wrongs of his subjects. Young Philip's youthful ambition was aroused, and thenceforward he listened to his mentor eagerly; whilst he ostentatiously frowned in public upon the Duke of Uceda.[[32]]
Results of Lerma's rule
Spain, notwithstanding the change of favourites, went from bad to worse. The vast sums spent by the King upon the building of new convents and in sumptuous shows were still wrung from the humblest classes, who alone did any profitable work, and in vain was the sainted image of the Virgin of Atocha carried in regal state through the streets of the capital, in the hope of averting widespread famine. Lerma at least, in his long ministry, had managed to conceal from the indolent King the utter ruin that threatened; but the ineptitude of the new favourites made the misery patent even to him. The knowledge overwhelmed his feeble spirit, and his long spells of despair were but rarely relieved now by the frivolities that formerly delighted him. Ill and failing as he was, and his poor spirit broken, he prayed the Council of Castile to tell him the truth as to the condition of his people, and to suggest remedies for their ills. The report, which reached him in February 1619, finally opened his eyes, now that it was too late, to the appalling results of his rule; and, stricken with panic fear that he would be damned eternally for his life-long neglect of duty, the poor King broke down utterly. He knew that his strength was ebbing, and forgiveness for himself was his first thought, and then to pray that his son might do better than he had done.
To distract him, his favourites persuaded him to make a royal progress to Portugal, with all the old lavish splendour, to witness the taking of the oath by the Portuguese Cortes to young Philip as heir to the throne. For months the cities of Portugal were the scene of prodigal pomp and devotion, that once more drove out of the muddled brain of the King all thought of the misery he had left behind him in Castile; and as he sat, on the 14th July 1619, under his gold and silken canopy in his palace at Lisbon, dressed in white taffeta and gold, and surrounded by the nobles of Portugal and Spain, it seemed as if the lying fable that made him personally the master of boundless wealth must be true, and that his stark and ruined realm was overflowing with happy abundance.[[33]] By his side sat his hopeful son Philip, a tall slim lad of fourteen, wearing a white satin suit covered with gold and gems, and surmounted by a black velvet shoulder-cape a mass of bullion embroidery; and as the representatives of the Portuguese nation bent the knee and swore to accept him as King when his father should die, in exchange for his assurance that their ancient rights should be respected, little thought any of the glittering throng that the pale long-faced boy with the loose lower lip would, out of indolent amiability, cause rivers of blood to run between Portugal and Spain, and that all the oaths sworn that day on both sides would be broken. Little dreamed they, either, that the dark-visaged man with the big square head, who stood behind the Prince's chair, was to be the mover of this calamity, and of the final disruption of his young master's great inheritance. Olivares, secure in his hold now over the Prince, left Lisbon to go to the home of his house in Seville for a time, knowing well that the jarring rivals around the boy would soon make his return to Court the more welcome. The King was ill and like to die on his way back to Madrid,[[34]] and Olivares was near the Prince at the critical time, more influential than ever.
Death of Philip III.
Philip was precocious, and Olivares encouraged his precocity. By his influence it was decided that the married life of the fifteen and a half year old Prince and his pretty French bride should commence in November 1620, at the suburban palace of the Pardo; and thenceforward, whilst the poor King, in alternate fits of agonised remorse and hysterical hope, clung to his mouldering relics of dead saints for comfort, and to the frocks of his attendant friars for reassurance against the wrath of the Most High, his son Philip was yearning impatiently for the coming of the time when he might as King carry into effect the lessons his mentor Olivares had whispered to him; banish the whole brood of Sandoval y Rojas, and revive, as by magic, the potency of his country and the happiness of his people.
Through the month of March 1621, King Philip III. lay dying in his palace at Madrid, overlooking the bare Castilian plain.[[35]] He was not much over forty years of age, but though his malady was slight his vitality had fled, and all desire to prolong his disillusioned life. His remorse and horror of heaven's vengeance were terrible to behold, though during all his reign his habits had been those of a frivolous friar rather than of a bad man, which he certainly was not.[[36]] On the 30th March young Philip took a last farewell of his father. "I have sent for you," said the King, "that you may see how it all ends"; and he gave the weeping lad similar advice to that given by his own greater father, Philip II., to him on his deathbed, counsel to be treated in a similar way. He was to marry his sister Maria to the German Emperor, and to set his face sternly against all temptations to make a less Catholic alliance for her; for James of England had been striving hard, seconded by Gondomar, to win her for Charles, Prince of Wales, and to secure the Palatinate of the Rhine for his son-in-law Frederick. The dying Philip urged his son to strive for the happiness of his people, cherish his sisters and brothers, to avoid new counsellors, and to stand steadfast to the faith of Spain; but when the young Prince left the room Uceda and his crew knew that it was to go straight and take counsel of Olivares and his supporters for making a clean sweep of all those who had not bent the knee to the cadet of the house of Guzman, the dark man with the bent shoulders, the big square head, flashing fierce black eyes, and brusque imperious manner, who was already assuming the airs of a master.
For many months the palace had been a swarming hive of intriguers, where hate, jealousy, and uncharitableness reigned supreme; but one by one the friends of the Sandovals had been pushed into the background, and no one but Olivares and his creatures were now allowed to approach the lad who was soon to be King of Spain. It was clear to Uceda that he was not strong enough to resist the coming storm alone; perhaps the father he had ousted, the Cardinal Duke of Lerma, who had acted on the death of Philip II. as Olivares was acting now, might with his experience and prestige yet win the day. The dying King had already raised the exile of all the other courtiers who had been banished from Court; though on their return they had been excluded by Olivares from access to the Prince; and now, in the last days of the King's life, Uceda obtained from him a decree recalling the Duke of Lerma.
Like a thunderbolt the news fell in the camp of the Guzmans. Olivares summoned his kin, headed by the wisest of them, old Baltasar de Zuñiga. From this meeting Olivares went to the Prince and told him that as his father was dying it was necessary to look ahead and take measures for securing prompt obedience when the crucial moment came. Young Philip acquiesced, for he was as wax in the hands of his imperious mentor; and Olivares, thus reinforced, proceeded to the King's apartments, where by cajolery and threats he obtained from the two great nobles on duty, the aged Duke of Infantado and the Marquis of Malpica, not only a knowledge of the provisions of the King's will, but also a promise that prompt information of everything that passed in the death chamber should be sent direct to the Prince's adviser. The Cardinal Duke was hurrying across Castile towards Madrid, full of hope for a revival of his greatness; for young Philip, whom he had dandled as a babe, always liked him, and had wept for his "Gossip," as he called him, when he had been banished from Court. If once the Duke reached Madrid, Guzman was in danger, and no time was to be lost. So the Prince, at the bidding of Olivares, took the bold and dangerous course of assuming sovereign power to countermand his father's orders whilst yet the King lived.
Young Philip was alone in the dusk of the evening in his panelled chamber in the old palace of Madrid, when the president of the Council of Castile, the highest functionary in Spain and Archbishop of Burgos, stood bowing before him in obedience to his call. The Prince, who lounged against a carved oak sideboard, was dressed in black, and his long sallow face had assumed the haughty immobility that for the rest of his life was his official mask of majesty. "I have sent for you, he mumbled to the Archbishop in slow, measured tones, to direct you to despatch a member of the Council to forbid the Duke of Lerma from entering Castile, and to command him to return immediately to Valladolid to await my orders."[[37]] The Archbishop knelt and promised obedience, though he knew, we are told, that if the King recovered he would have to suffer for his weak compliance with an illegal command.[[38]]
There was little to fear in the world now, however, from Philip III., who in the intervals of his bodily anguish was occupied solely in his panic-stricken intercessions for pardon. His room was encumbered with ghastly remains of saintly humanity, and the sacred offices succeeded each other day and night: but around the bed worldly ambitions were raging bitterly. In the morning of the 30th March a consultation of physicians pronounced the end to be near; and the Duke of Uceda, as principal minister and first chamberlain, announced his intention of conveying the news to the Prince. Then the Duke of Infantado, secure in the favour of Olivares, to whom only two days before he had betrayed the secrets of the death chamber, broke out tempestuously: "No, indeed; that is my place, for the Prince has specially ordered me to go." Uceda knew his day was past, and meekly bent his head: and thus, in the midst of greedy bickering, his nerveless hand grasping to the last the rough crucifix that had comforted the glazing eyes of his grandfather the Emperor, and his father Philip II., the third Philip passed the dread divide, revered and beloved by the people whom his ineptitude had ruined, because he had still upheld throughout Europe the claim of his house to impose Christian orthodoxy upon the world, and had purged the sacred soil of Spain of the taint of Moorish blood, to his country's permanent undoing.
Olivares had played his cards cleverly. For weeks he had feigned a desire to seek retirement in his home at Andalusia, knowing well that young Philip, in the welter of difficulties and intrigues that surrounded him, looked to him alone for guidance; and the adviser had only to hint at a wish to retire for the Prince to assent to whatever he demanded. As the King lay dying Uceda had met Olivares in the corridor. "How goes it," he asked, "in the Prince's chamber?" "All is mine," replied the Count. "All!" exclaimed the Duke of Uceda ruefully; "Yes, without exception," retorted Olivares; "for his Highness overrates me in all things but my goodwill."[[39]] Before many hours had passed Uceda and his kin knew to their cost that Olivares had not boasted in vain. All was indeed his, and the strong hand fell ruthlessly upon those who had ruled and plundered Spain since the greatest of the Philips had passed his heavy crown to his weak son twenty-two years before.
[[1]] See a curious contemporary, unpublished, account by Don Geronimo Gascon de Torquemada. Add. MSS. 10,236 British Museum. He says that the Town Council scattered 12,000 silver reals in the plaza on Saturday, 9th April, and that 30,000 wax candles, with as many sheets of white paper to wrap round them for torches, were distributed to the poor; the whole population of the city at the time being between 50,000 and 60,000.
[[2]] Narrative of Matias de Novoa, Documentos Ineditos, vol. lx.
[[3]] The vehement protest of Ribera is reproduced in extenso in Gil Gonzalez Davila's Vida y Hechos de Phelipe III. Original MS. in possession of the author. Also published, Madrid, 1771. Ribera it was who principally promoted the expulsion of the Moriscos a few years later.
[[4]] Gongora's sonnet, for instance, which is thus Englished by Churton—
"Our Queen had borne a Prince. When all were gay,
A Lutheran envoy came across the main.
With some six hundred followers in his train,—
All knaves of Luther's brood. His proud array
Cost us, in one fair fortnight and a day,
A million ducats of the gold of Spain,
In jewels, feasting crowds, and pageant play.
But then he brought us, for our greater gain,
The peace King James on Calvin's Bible swore.
Well! we baptized our Prince; Heaven bless the child!
But why make Luther rich, and leave Spain poor?
What witch our dancing courtiers' wits beguiled?—
Cervantes, write these doings: they surpass
Your grave Don Quixote, Sancho and his ass."
See also Cervantes' ballad of the Churching of Queen Margaret, in his Exemplary Novel of The Little Gipsy, written, however, some years after the event.
[[5]] Don Juan Fernandez de Velasco, hereditary Great Constable of Castile, Duke of Frias, who in the previous year, 1604, had gone to England to conclude with James I. the Treaty of Peace.
[[6]] So at least say the eye-witnesses; though it can hardly have been a more violent downpour than that which overtook the present writer on the same spot, and at a similar date, in a recent year, when, with hardly five minutes' notice, the road was converted into a rushing torrent several inches deep, though previously no rain had fallen for months.
[[7]] Cabrera (Documentos Ineditos) says that care was taken that no sacred pictures were placed in the rooms, for fear of offence, though they were hung with fine tapestries. Three new beds, he says, were bought for Howard and his sons, etc. As an instance of the great care taken on both sides to avoid offence, Davila mentions that Howard, having learnt that two of his gentlemen had brought English Bibles with them, insisted upon their being returned to the ship; and Gascon de Torquemada asserts that the Englishmen were forbidden to dispute with Spaniards, right or wrong, on pain of death.
[[8]] "Todos tienen lindos trajes y altos cuerpos; y en habiendo entrado en conversacion con nosotros se apartan luego, y hacen cabriolas, cantando entre dientes: y aunque entre ellos usan esto no lo usava el Almirante." Gascon de Torquemada's MS B.M., Add. MSS. 10,236. Cabrera de Cordova (Relacion de las Cosas Sucedidas desde 1599 hasta 1614) also mentions the "cabriolas" or skipping of the English gentlemen in the grand ball given in their honour on the 16th June by the King. The passion for dancing "high and disposedly" was at the time considered peculiarly English, and Englishmen are frequently referred to in Spanish letters of the time as being naturally volatile and mercurial, in marked contrast with their latter-day descendants.
[[9]] See Geronimo Gascon de Torquemada's MS. B.M., Add. MSS. 10,936.
[[10]] Full accounts of Howard's reception may be found in Torquemada's MS. already quoted, in Novoa's relation (Documentos Ineditos, 60 and 61), in Cabrera de Cordova, in Davila already quoted, and in Yepes' Felipe III. Madrid, 1723.
[[11]] Cervantes thus writes on the subject—
"This pearl that Thou to us hast given,
Star of Austria's diadem:
What crafty plans, what high designs,
Are shattered by this peerless gem.
What hopes within our breasts are raised,
What soaring schemes have come to nought,
What fears are by his birth aroused.
What havoc with ambition wrought!"
MacColl's translation of "The Exemplary Novels."
[[12]] With him, we are told, walked the Princes of Savoy and all the grandees and prelates present in Valladolid, the household of each parsonage being dressed in new liveries for the occasion, those of the royal servants being white and crimson trimmed with gold. The English ambassador Howard witnessed the procession, as he did later in the day that of the baptism, from a corner balcony in Count Rivadavia's house, his garments glittering with diamonds, and the collar of the Garter on his shoulder. It was noticed that when the King passed beneath the Englishman doffed his bonnet and made a deep reverence. Porreño, Vida y Hechos de Phelipe III.
[[13]] Cabrera, Relacion de las Cosas Sucedidas desde 1599 hasta 1614. In addition to the authorities already quoted, there is a curious account of the celebrations referred to, sometimes attributed to Cervantes, called Relacion de lo Subcedido en la Ciudad da Valladolid, etc. Published at Valladolid in 1605.
[[14]] A detailed account of these attempts will be found in Treason and Plot, by the present writer, and in the fourth volume of his Calendars of Spanish State Papers of the Reign of Elizabeth.
[[15]] When the capital of Spain was again transferred to Madrid in 1606, Queen Margarita was much opposed to and distressed at the change. Porreño relates that she went to take leave of her favourite nuns at Valladolid with tears in her eyes, and when asked by the nuns why she did not persuade the King to remain at Valladolid, which agreed so well with his wife and children, she replied that "nothing on earth could move the King now, as the removal of the capital to Madrid had now been presented to him as a case of conscience." "Thus," says Porreño, in admiration, "he was ready to sacrifice the welfare of his wife and children, and all earthly considerations, for his conscience' sake!" Spaniards of the period thought that no higher praise than this could be given to any man.
[[16]] For instance, Charles' unblushing manipulation of the Council of Trent in 1545-46, the juggle with Paul III. about the Italian principalities, and the clever hoodwinking of Sixtus V. as to the real objects of the Armada of 1588.
[[17]] It must be borne in mind that the Cortes of Castile (which comprised Castile, Leon, Andalucia, etc., and consisted of thirty-six deputies for eighteen cities) had, after the abortive rising of the Comuneros early in the reign of Charles V., in a great measure allowed the control of supply to slip from its hands, and was rapidly becoming effete; all the members being bribed and influenced by grants and favours of the Court. The three Cortes of the Crown of Aragon, however, still held their own purse-strings, and always made supply a matter of bargain. For this reason practically the whole of the growing national burden rested upon wretched Castile.
[[18]] Danvila y Collado, El Poder Civil en España, vol. 6. In this petition the Cortes told the King that, whereas it had cost twelve years previously 60 ducats to maintain a student and his servant at Salamanca for a year, it now cost 120. Wages had risen for a bricklayer from 4 reals to 8, and for a labourer from 2 reals to 4; a trimmed felt hat which had previously cost 12 reals now cost 24. Segovia cloth, of which the price was formerly 3 ducats a piece, now fetched nearly double. The ducats quoted are the so-called copper ducat of 2s. 5-1/3d., the real being the silver real worth about 6d.
[[19]] The quantity of copper coin in circulation increased in five or six years from 6 millions of ducats' worth to 28 millions.
[[20]] Contarini to the Doge and Senate of Venice (Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneziani).
[[21]] Navarrete says, speaking of the luxury of the Court at this period—and we shall see that it was exceeded later—"The smallest hidalgo insisted upon his wife only going out in a carriage, and that her equipage should be as showy as that of the greatest gentleman at Court. Not even a carpenter or a saddler, or any other artizan, was seen but he must be dressed in velvet or satin like a nobleman. He must needs wear his sword and his dagger, and have a guitar hanging on the wall of his shop." When it is remembered that the production and distribution in Spain itself of the precious stuffs mentioned were hampered at every point, it will be understood how great and constant the drain of wealth was from a country which now exported little but the products of its soil.
[[22]] For details of the expulsion see, inter alia, Fray Jaime Bleda's Cronica de los Moros de España (Valencia, 1618); The Moriscos of Spain, by C. H. Lea (London, 1901); Memorable Expulsion, etc., by Guadalajara (Pamplona, 1614); and Porreño's Felipe III.
[[23]] The wise minister of Philip II., Idiaquez, in 1595 almost alone saw the economical evil of the expulsion. In an important letter to a colleague (MS. Loyola No. 1., 31, Royal Academy of History, Madrid) he rebuked the general idea that Spain would be richer for the expulsion of the Moriscos, and pointed out that they almost alone were creating national wealth by their industry, frugality, and skill in agriculture. "But all this," he says, "is of no consideration in exchange for putting away from our throat the knife which threatens it so long as these people remain amongst us in their present condition and we in ours."
[[24]] The ancient church in the Prado where this ceremony always took place, and where the young King of Spain and his English bride were married recently.
[[25]] "His Majesty wore a white doublet and trunks with a grey satin cloak, all embroidered with bugles and gold spangles and lined with ermine. White shoes and a black velvet cap with strings of pearls and diamonds and a plume of white feathers sprinkled with magnificent diamonds; a sword beautifully chased and an embroidered belt; a ruff with crimson silk ribs and the grand collar of the Golden Fleece." See a curious contemporary MS. account of the ceremony. British Museum MSS., Egerton, 367.
[[26]] The Prince was nevertheless so frightened that the silken bands necessary in the ceremony meant an intention to bleed him, and he cried so much in consequence, that he had to be led to a little chair at his mother's knee before he could be pacified; and there his sister, the Infanta Ana, weighed down by her stiff gorgeousness, knelt and did homage, to be followed by the cardinal, the nobles, and the Cortes. Ibid.
[[27]] Gil Gonzalez de Avila, in his MS. Historia de Phelipe III., gives many admiring instances of the King's mystic communications with the heavenly powers, and of his attacks of religious panic. (Original MS. in my possession.)
[[28]] Cabrera de Cordova, Cosas Sucedidas a la Corte, etc., desde 1599 á 1614.
[[29]] A full account of the crazy magnificence on the occasion will be found in Documenios Ineditos, lxi.
[[30]] An unpublished account of the progress by an eye-witness is in Add. MSS. 102,36, British Museum. See also Queens of Old Spain, by Martin Hume, and Documenios Ineditos, lxi.
[[31]] Malvezzi, Historia de Felipe III., Yañez.
[[32]] Matias de Novoa, Felipe III. Doctimentos Ineditos, lxi. This writer was a chamberlain of Philip IV. and an agent of Olivares; but receiving from the latter no reward, he wrote a series of bitter attacks upon him.
[[33]] The King's and the Prince's splendid dresses and adornments on this occasion are described fully by Porreño in Dichos y Hechos de Don Felipe III.
[[34]] His recovery from this grave illness after the doctors had given up hope was ascribed to the miraculous effect produced by the dead body of the newly beatified Saint Isidore of Madrid, which was brought to his bedside at Covarrubias. The King kissed and embraced the corpse, and improved from that hour.
[[35]] The ridiculous story, related by entirely untrustworthy French travellers, of the cause of Philip's fatal illness being the Court etiquette, which forbade any attendant but a high noble who happened to be absent to remove a brazier from too close proximity to the King, may be dismissed as a fable. Anything which exaggerated the strangeness, the romance, and the inflation of Spanish manners found ready belief in seventeenth-century France, and has done so ever since. The absurd ideas relative to Spain even at the present time are mainly due to this insistence on the part of French writers in seeing everything Spanish through the coloured medium of the romantic school. Madame D'Aulnoy's overdone "local colour" and evidently invented stories are largely responsible for this, aided by Bassompiere Saint Simon, Mme. Villars, and the later romantic school of French novelists.
[[36]] Terrible accounts of Philip's awful deathbed are given by Gil Gonzales de Avila, his chronicler and friend, in his Historia de Felipe III., original MS. in my possession, in Yañez's additions to Malvezzi, and in Novoa, Documentos Ineditos, lxi.; all contemporaries.
[[37]] Novoa, Documentos Ineditos, lxi.
[[38]] Novoa says that when the Archbishop signed the order he broke into tears and cast away the pen he had used.
[[39]] Fragmentos Historicos de la Vida de D. Caspar de Guzman, etc. Unpublished contemporary MS. biography of Olivares in my possession; the work of his partisan Vera y Figueroa, Count de la Roca.
CHAPTER II
ACCESSION OF PHILIP IV.—OLIVARES THE VICE-KING—CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY—MEASURES ADOPTED BY THE NEW KING—RETRENCHMENT—MODE OF LIFE OF PHILIP AND HIS MINISTER—PHILIP'S IDLENESS—HIS APOLOGIA—DISSOLUTENESS OF THE CAPITAL—VILLA MEDIANA—THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE KING AND COURT—A SUMPTUOUS SHOW—ARRIVAL OF THE PRINCE OF WALES IN MADRID—HIS PROCEEDINGS—OLIVARES AND BUCKINGHAM
Prince Philip lay in his great square tentlike bedstead in the palace of Madrid, at nine o'clock on the morning of the 31st March 1621, when an usher announced his Dominican confessor, Sotomayor. The friar entered, and, kneeling by the bedside with a grave face, saluted his new sovereign as King Philip IV. For a moment the boy was overwhelmed at the long-looked-for news, and bade the attendants draw the curtains close that he might indulge his grief unseen. But soon the eager worshippers of the risen sun flocked into the room to pay their court to the new monarch when he should deign to show his face. Anon there was stir in the antechamber, and the crowd divided, bowing low as the stern, masterful man who was now lord over all stalked through the room, accompanied by his aged uncle the white-haired Don Baltasar de Zuñiga, destined by him to be nominally the King's chief minister, behind whom Olivares might rule unchecked. Advancing to the King's bed, Olivares threw back the curtains and peremptorily told Philip that he must get up, for there was much to be done. Uceda was still officially first minister and great chamberlain, with right of free access to the Sovereign; but when, a few moments later, he and his secretary entered the antechamber, amidst the scarcely concealed sneers of the courtiers, and the whisper reached Philip that they were coming, the King leapt from his bed and cried out that no one else was to be admitted until he was dressed.
The rise of Olivares
Dressing on this occasion was a long process, for the young King broke down with grief and excitement several times whilst his attendants were preparing him for public audience; and Uceda, in the antechamber, fumed and fretted at the insult put upon him by the King, who thus disregarded his father's dying injunctions in the first moments of his bereavement. Whilst Uceda awaited the King's pleasure, Olivares, leaving the bed-chamber, met his falling rival face to face, and a violent altercation took place as to the premature action of Philip in ordering the Duke of Lerma, a Prince of the Church now, and immune from lay commands, to stay his journey to Madrid. Pointing to the State papers, seals, and keys in the hands of the secretary who accompanied him, Uceda asked who but the Duke of Lerma was worthy of taking charge of them. "My uncle, Don Baltasar de Zuñiga is here," replied Olivares, "to do so, and to give to the State the advantage of his long experience, and wisdom second to none." Uceda was then notified that the King, being dressed, would receive him; and entering the room, he knelt and proffered to Philip the seals and papers of his office. Pouting and frowning, the King waved his hand towards the sideboard, and said, "Put them there," and Uceda went out unthanked, to weep his now certain ruin and disgrace.[[1]]
Whilst the King was busy condoling with his young wife and sister and his two brothers Carlos and Fernando, and receiving the homage of his nobles, the preparations were hastily made in the great hall of the Alcazar for the lying in state of the body of Philip III. in his habit as a friar of St. Francis. And as the muffled death bells boomed from the steeples of the capital, one man at least there was whose heart fainted at the sound. "The King is dead, and so am I," cried Don Rodrigo de Calderon from the prison where he had suffered and languished for years, the scapegoat for others, borne down by accusations innumerable, from theft to witchcraft and regicide. In his pride and power he had piled up wealth beyond compute, as his master Lerma had done, but it is clear now that the other charges against him were mainly false. His long trial had resulted in no mortal crime being proved, and had Philip III. lived he would doubtless have been pardoned; but he had belonged to the old greedy gang, and Olivares had no mercy upon them. Before Philip's nine days mourning reclusion in the monastery of St. Geronimo was ended a clean sweep was made of the men who had surrounded the dead King. Calderon's head fell on the scaffold in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid; the great Duke of Osuna, who had ruled Naples with so high a hand as to be accused of the wish to make himself a King, was incarcerated and persecuted till his proud heart broke; Uceda met with a similar fate; the powerful confessor Aliaga was disgraced and banished; and even Lerma was not spared, though he fought stoutly for his plunder; and all the clan of Sandoval and Rojas were trampled under the heels of the Guzmans and their allies.
Olivares supreme
The state of things which the new Sovereign had to face was positively appalling. The details of the abject penury and misery universal throughout Spain, except amongst those who managed the public revenues and their numerous hangers-on, sound almost incredible. Idleness and pretence were everywhere. Insolent gentlemen in velvet doublets and no shirts, workmen who strutted and clattered in ruffs and rapiers, seeking prey as sham soldiers instead of earning wages by honest handicrafts, led poets, and paid satirists, gamesters, swindlers, bravos and cutpurses, pretended students who lived like the rest of the idle crew on alms and effrontery, crowds of friars and priests whose only attraction to their cloth was the sloth which it excused; ladies, rouged and overdressed, who deliberately and purposely aped the look and manners of prostitutes,—these were the prevailing types of the capital, as described by eyewitnesses innumerable, as well as by the romancers who revelled in the colour, movement, and squalid picturesqueness of such a society.[[2]] And to maintain the real and false splendour in Madrid the starving agriculturists, who had not abandoned their holdings in sheer despair, were ground down to their last real by the crushing alcabala tax, by local tolls and octrois, and by the heartless extortions of the tax farmers.
There is no doubt that, so far as their light extended, both the King and Olivares sincerely wished to reform abuses of which the results were patent to all. Young Philip himself was good hearted and kindly, as his father had been, but far more sensual and less devout in his habits. Though in public he assumed the marble gravity traditional thenceforward in Spanish kings, he was gay and witty in private discourse with those whose society he enjoyed, especially writers and players. His love of books, music, and pictures, as well as of poetry and the drama, made him, as time went on, the greatest patron of authors and artists in Spain's golden age of social and political decadence. But idleness marred all his qualities, and the lust for pleasure which he was powerless to resist made him the slave of favourites and his passions all his life. A man such as this, endowed with a gentle heart and a tender conscience, was doomed to a life of misery and remorse in the intervals of his thoughtless pleasures; and in the course of this book we shall see that sorrow ever followed close on joy's footsteps in the life of the "Planet King," until final ruin overtook the nation, cursed with the gayest and wickedest Court since that of Heliogabalus, and all was quenched in a great wave of tears.
Philip and his minister
The man to whom Philip handed his conscience, as has been described, on the first day of his reign, was nearly twenty years his senior. An indefatigable worker, with an ambition as voracious as his industry, Olivares was the exact reverse of the idle, courtly, conciliatory Lerma. His greed was not personal, as that of Lerma had been, though his love of power led him to absorb as many offices as he. He was vehement and voluble, arrogant and impatient even with the King, and impressed upon Philip incessantly the need for exertion on his own part.[[3]] Able as he unquestionably was, he appraised his ability too highly, and contemned all opinions but his own; whilst his attitude towards the foreign Powers was insolent in the extreme, and quite unwarranted by Spain's position at the time. From an economic point of view, Olivares, though he began his rule by cutting down expenses in drastic fashion, was no wiser than his predecessors; though his ruling idea that the political unity of Spain was the thing primarily needful was sage and statesmanlike. But in this he was before his time, and his disregard for provincial traditions and rights in his determination to force unity of sacrifice upon the country, led to his own ruin and the disintegration of Spain. The portraits of him by Velazquez enable us to see the man as he lived,—stern, dark, and masterful, with bulging forehead and sunken eyes and mouth, his massive shoulders bowed by the weight of his ponderous head, we know instinctively that such a man would either dominate or die. He was the finest horseman in Spain, and he treated men as he treated his big-boned chargers, breaking them to obedience by force of will and persistence.
Such was the man who led Spain during the crucial period which was to decide, not only whether France or Spain should prevail politically, but whether the culture and civilisation of Europe should in future receive its impulse and colour from Spanish or French influences. In that great contest Spain was beaten, not so much because Olivares was inferior to Richelieu, as because of the old tradition that hampered Spain at home and abroad and pitted a decentralised country, where productive industry had been stifled and the sources of wealth choked, against a homogeneous nation where active work was fostered, and whose resources were at the command of the central authority.[[4]]
Olivares made a grandee
This much it was necessary to say in order to make clear the manner of men that in future ruled the Court of which we have to write: a King to whom pleasure was a business; and a minister to whom business alone was pleasure, who loved the reality of rule whilst his master loved the ceremonial of it. Not many days passed before the ambition of the Guzmans for the grandeeship was satisfied. The King was still passing his first days of mourning in the monastery of St. Geronimo when the sermon of the day, either by chance or design, inculcated the need for properly rewarding services done to us. The sermon over, Philip went to dinner, the room being crowded with nobles, amongst whom was Uceda, not yet finally banished. When the King had finished his meal and the cloth was drawn, Olivares entered very unobtrusively, and sidled against the wall behind the other nobles in attendance, well knowing, probably, what was coming. The King, catching his eye, said: "Let us obey the good friar who preached to-day; Count of Olivares, be covered!" This was the form used in the raising of a peer to the grandeeship, and Olivares, putting on his wide-brimmed hat, threw himself at the King's feet with his uncle and those of his kin who were in the room, overjoyed at the honour done to their house; and their joy was increased when, a few hours later, Uceda was told that he must surrender to Olivares at once one of his two great offices in the household.
Offices and honours thenceforward crowded upon the favourite, who was soon made Duke of San Lucar and principal chamberlain. Almost ostentatiously he professed a desire to leave politics entirely to his uncle, and to confine himself to the duties of his household offices near the King. Nobody was deceived by his apparent modesty, for even before Zuñiga's death, which happened in a year, it was known that his nephew's long personal conversations with the King, facilitated by his courtly palace duties, were mainly concerned with questions of Government and State. The Count-Duke, as he came to be called universally, would allow nothing to be done for the King but by himself. Before Philip was out of bed the minister was the first to enter the room, draw the curtains and open the window. Then on his knees by the bedside he rehearsed the business of the coming day. Every garment that the King put on passed first through the hands of Olivares, who stood by whilst Philip dressed. After the midday meal, at which Olivares was often present, the minister was wont to amuse the King by entertaining chat, detailing the gossip of the capital, and late in the evening he attended to give him an account of the despatches received, and consult him as to the answers, after which he saw the monarch to bed.[[5]] This constant attendance upon the King made it impossible for any person not an absolute creature of Olivares to approach Philip's ear with doubt as to the policy of the favourite in political matters.
State of Spain
When Philip's first parliament met, a few months after his accession, it was stated in the assembly that so terrible was the distress that "people had abandoned their lands and were now wandering on the roads, living on herbs and roots, or else travelling to provinces where they had not to pay the awful food excises and alcabalas"; whilst every source of revenue was anticipated for years to come on usurious terms.[[6]] Philip himself, in an important original paper hitherto unpublished (British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338), gives the following account of the state of affairs he had to face on his accession, whilst complaining of the little help he had received from his officers: "I found finance so exhausted (apart from the dreadful state it had been left in at the death of Philip II., who had pledged it deeply) that all resources were anticipated for several years, and my patrimony had been so reduced that in my father's time alone 96,000,000 crowns had been granted in gifts, etc.; besides what had been spent in the other realms (i.e. Aragon, Catalonia, etc.), from which no returns have been received. The currency had been raised to three times its face value, an unheard-of thing in any realm.... Ecclesiastical affairs were in such disorder, that it was asserted from Rome that innumerable dispensations for simony had been obtained for archbishoprics, bishoprics, prebends, etc.... As for justice, on the very first day of my reign I was obliged to put my foot down, as will be recollected, ... for the ministers who received bribes were more numerous than those who did not ... My State, too, was so discredited that in the truce that the Dutch had made with my father they were treated as independent sovereigns, although every minister, from the King my father and the Archduke downward, refused to acknowledge such a claim.... I had only seven ships of war in the fleet.... India and the Indies were well-nigh lost.... The truce with Flanders was just expiring.... German affairs were more pressing than ever.... The marriage of the Prince of Wales with my sister was so far advanced that it seemed impossible to avoid it without a great war, which, indeed, followed, as we could not give way on the religious point.[[7]] Portugal was discontented with the Viceroy, ... whilst all the other parts of the monarchy was neglected or misgoverned.... We were at war with Venice; the Kingdom of Naples was almost in revolt, and the money there was utterly corrupted. All this was from no fault of my father, nor of his predecessors, as all the world knows, but simply because God so ordained it."
This document, written by Philip himself a few years afterwards for his own justification, proves how pressing was the need for an abatement of untenable claims on the part of Spain to interfere with the affairs of other nations, and the absolute necessity for a policy of retrenchment. And yet at the bidding of Olivares, against the opinion even of wise old Zuñiga, the first minister, the interminable war with the Dutch for the assertion of Spain's sovereignty over Holland was resumed as soon as the truce ended, only a few months after the young King's accession.
Philip's policy
In his address to his first Cortes, Philip struck the unwise note of Dominican intolerance and pride which had pervaded his baptism, setting forth in the midst of the miserable state of things just described that his first duty as a Spanish sovereign was, "with holy zeal befitting so Catholic a Prince, to undertake the defence and exaltation of our holy Catholic faith; ... to aid the Emperor in Bohemia; to fight the rebel Hollanders again, and to defend everywhere our sacred faith and the authority of the Holy See." So, whilst Olivares made efforts to stop the peculation of high officers of State, to compel restitution of past plunder, to prevent further alienation of national property, and to reduce to a minimum the cost of the royal establishment, and whilst he passed ferocious sumptuary laws enjoining modesty and economy in dress, the real root of the evil was not touched; for taxation continued to strangle production and fell mainly upon the poor, and the wasteful drain of unnecessary wars for an exploded idea continued as if Spain was still wallowing in wealth. Good, therefore, as the intentions of Olivares may have been, it is clear that he was a disastrous adviser for an inexperienced, idle young sovereign of sixteen.
And if his political influence was unfortunate, his social and moral influence was no less evil. There exists, for instance, in manuscript in various collections, and notably in the British Museum (Egerton MSS. 329), a pregnant correspondence between the Archbishop of Granada, Philip's tutor, and Olivares, written shortly after the accession, in which the Archbishop indignantly reproaches the favourite, who was certainly old enough to know better, for taking the young King out into the streets of the capital at night, and introducing him into evil company. "People," says the prelate, "are gossiping about it all over Madrid, and things are being said about it which add little to the Sovereign's credit or dignity." Madrid is, even now, fond of scandal, but early in the seventeenth century, isolated as it was from the world, Philip's capital found its most piquant pursuit from morn till night in slander and tittle-tattle, both in the form of malicious satirical verses that passed from hand to hand, and in whispered immoralities touching high and low. The long raised walk by the side wall of the Church of St. Philip at the entrance of the Calle Mayor (High Street), from the Puerta del Sol, opposite the still standing Oñate Palace, was the recognised centre of such confidences, and came to be called by the appropriate name of the Mentidero (Liars' Walk). The Archbishop in his letter proceeds to say that not only have these people begun to whisper things about the King's proceedings which were better unsaid; but the example shown of a young monarch and his principal minister scouring the streets at night in search of adventure is a bad one for the people at large; and he reminds Olivares of the great grief and anxiety of the late King on this very account, and of his dread that his youthful heir was already before his death being inducted into dissipation. The answer to the bold prelate's remonstrance is just such as might have been expected from the arrogant favourite. He tells him, in effect, that he is an impertinent meddler, and ought to be ashamed, at his age and in his high position, to trouble him with the vulgar gossip of the streets! "The King is sixteen," he says, "and he (Olivares) is thirty-four, and it is not to be expected that they are to be kept in ignorance of what is going on in the world. It is good that the King should see all phases of life, bad as well as good. Besides, he never trusts the King with anyone else"; and the favourite's letter ends with a barely concealed threat that if the Archbishop does not mind his own business in future, ill might befall him.
Philip's early profligacy
Early, however, as was Philip's introduction into the profligacy that was the curse of his life, and the endless subject of his remorse in later years, he was a gallant young husband to his pretty French wife, though with the fall of her mother, Marie de Medici, and her Italianate crew the political object of the marriage had already failed, and France and Spain, once more at issue, were rapidly drifting into war. Scandalous and notorious as Philip's infidelity to his wife very soon became, he appears to have been devotedly attached to her, and was violently jealous of any appearance of special love or homage to her beauty. She, on her part, true daughter of the gallant Béarnais as she was, was gay and debonair in her bearing, and followed, though decorously, the fashion in Spain of her time, which allowed women an amount of licence of speech with gallants impossible in other countries or at other periods.[[8]] As with all other ladies of the Court, there was unkind tittle-tattle about the gay young Queen; but apparently without the slightest foundation, though a supposed passion for her on the part of one of the most brilliant nobles of the Court led to tragic results for the gallant.
ISABEL DE BOURBON, FIRST WIFE OF PHILIP IV.
From a portrait by Velazquez in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq.
At a royal bull-fight—one of the earliest shows to celebrate the King's accession in the summer of 1621—the Count of Villa Mediana, Don Juan de Tassis, rode into the arena at the head of his troop of cavaliers, bearing as his device a mass of silver coins called "reals" (or royals), and above them the audacious motto of "My loves are ——," which was taken to mean, in conjunction with his daring glances and marked salutes, that his love was set upon the Queen. The Count was over forty years of age, and no beauty; and his malicious satirical verses had been aimed at everybody in Court, from the King downward. He was therefore well provided with enemies, who were ready to place the worst construction on his acts. It is now proved—as far as any such thing can be proved[[9]]—that the real object of the Count's regards was a lady named Doña Francisca de Tavara, with whom the King was carrying on an intrigue at the time. But in either case the young King's jealousy was aroused, and his annoyance was increased by an innocent remark of his wife that "Villa Mediana aimed well." "Ah!" replied Philip crossly, "but he aims too high"; and soon the ill-natured story with due embellishments was being whispered all over Madrid.[[10]]
Count de Villa Mediana
But in the following spring of 1622 there was a great series of festivals at Aranjuez, where the Court was then in residence, to celebrate Philip's seventeenth birthday. Already the glamour of the stage had seized upon Philip and his wife, and one of the attractions of the rejoicings was the representation in a temporary theatre of canvas erected amidst the trees on the "island garden," and beautifully adorned, of a comedy in verse by Count de Villa Mediana dedicated to the Queen. The comedy was called La Gloria de Niquea, and Isabel herself was to personate the goddess of beauty. It was night, and the flimsy structure of silk and canvas was brilliantly lit with wax lights when all the Court had assembled to see the show; the young King and his two brothers and sister being seated in front of the stage, and the Queen in the retiring-room behind the scenes. The prologue had been finished successfully, and the audience were awaiting the withdrawing of the curtain that screened the stage, when a piercing shriek went up from the back, and a moment afterwards a long tongue of flame licked up half the drapery before the stage, and immediately the whole place was ablaze. Panic seized upon the splendid mob, and there was a rush to escape. The King succeeded in fighting his way out with difficulty, and made his way to the back of the stage in search of his wife. In the densely wooded gardens that surrounded the blazing structure he sought for a time in vain, but at last found that Villa Mediana had been before him, and that the half-fainting figure of the Queen was lying in the Count's arms. Whatever may have been the truth of the matter, this, at all events, made a delightful bonne bouche for the scandal-mongers, who hated Villa Mediana for his atrabilious gibes, and it soon became noised abroad that the Count had planned the whole affair, and had purposely set fire to the theatre that he might gain the credit of having saved the Queen, and enjoy the satisfaction of having clasped her in his arms, if but for a moment.
Murder of Villa Mediana
Four months afterwards, in August 1622, Villa Mediana was returning home in his coach soon after dark, when, from an archway in the Calle Mayor, opposite the alley leading to the Church of St. Gines, there darted the cloaked figure of a man, who discharged at him a bolt from a crossbow which pierced his chest. The Count had just time to leap from the coach and draw his sword, shouting "It is done," when he fell dead upon the road. Villa Mediana had been noted in a splendid Court as the most splendid and extravagant courtier. Amongst men to whom gallantry was an obsession, he was looked upon as the most gallant; in a society of literary and artistic dilettanti, he was held to be the most critical and refined; and his murder, almost at his own door in the midst of the capital, caused a profound sensation. Murders in the open streets, it is true, had become scandalously frequent, mostly, it was said, prompted by private vengeance, and rarely punished; but the killing of Villa Mediana in the circumstances related set tongues wagging in a way that had not been equalled since that luckless secretary of Don Juan of Austria, Escovedo, had been assassinated nearly fifty years before by the secret orders of Philip II. As if by common consent, all fingers pointed at young King Philip as the instigator of the crime.[[11]] It was asserted that the man who struck the blow was one Alonso Mateo, a crossbowman of the King; but though hundreds affirmed it, neither he nor any other was ever prosecuted for the crime, and the immortal Lope de Vega, who firmly believed that the young Sovereign connived at the murder of the Duke of Lemos, the former minister of his father, in November 1622, only interpreted the general belief in the capital, if it was indeed he who wrote that whoever struck the fatal blow at Villa Mediana, "the impulse that guided it was sovereign."
Whilst murders such as this were of frequent occurrence in the capital, whilst war was looming daily closer, whilst industry lay ruined and the fields unproductive, whilst poverty and famine stalked unchecked through the land, the nobles and officials dependent upon the Court grew richer in plunder and more insolent in ostentation, notwithstanding the sumptuary decrees and the frantic efforts of Philip and Olivares to impose strict economy in one direction, as a counterbalance to lavish squandering in others. Almost any pretext was good enough for Philip to seize for a wasteful show. In after-times people blamed Olivares for purposely leading the lad into these frivolous extravagances, with the set object of diverting him from his duty; but I am inclined to believe that this view is an unjust one as regards the beginning of the reign. Olivares, of course, wished to please and flatter his master; but whilst he worked like a giant himself, and behind a perfect multitude of boards and juntas contrived to keep in his own hands supreme control of national affairs, he unquestionably urged Philip again and again to apply himself diligently to work and to spend less time in pleasure.[[12]]
Devotions and diversions
Philip's own inclinations led him to idle and profitless pleasures, especially those which lent themselves to theatrical display or ostentatious decorations. The bull-fights, combats between wild beasts, equestrian parades, cane tourneys, masques, balls, comedies and banquets, alternated with religious processions and church ceremonies. In these rejoicings Philip and his wife took equal pleasure. It was the Augustan age of Spanish literature, and the drama of intrigue which Spaniards had invented to delight Europe in future was then in its full flood of malicious fertility. From October 1622 every Sunday and Thursday, except during the height of summer, dramas were performed by regular actors and actresses in the private theatre of the palace, the Queen being nominally the principal patron of the pastime. Some of the comedies then first represented may be mentioned as indicating the taste of the time. "The Scorned Sweetheart," "Jealousy of a Horse," and "The Loss of Spain" were three plays by Pedro Valdes, for which the Queen paid 300 reals, or £6 each. "The Fortunate Farmer," "The Woman's Avenger," "The Husband of his Sister," and "The Power of Opportunity" were other plays paid for by the Queen; and the total number of new dramas represented in the Queen's apartments in the palace during the winter of 1622-23 was forty-three, the fees for which reached 13,500 reals, equal to £270.[[13]]
The favourite convent of the Discalced Carmelites, by the Church of St. Martin, was the scene of constant royal visits and semi-religious dissipations, and one of the most pompous of the ceremonious festivities that beguiled the dazzled crowd at the beginning of the reign was the series of shows that celebrated the canonisation of three of the most popular of Spanish saints in 1622, when all Madrid, in alternating devotional ecstasy and frivolous jollity, followed the King and his wife in honouring St. Isidore, the husbandman, now the patron of Madrid, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Accompanied by the bull-fights and ceremonial trials of accused heretics, called autos-de-fe, which specially delighted the crowd, this canonisation fete also revived an ancient Spanish diversion, which thenceforward became under Philip's patronage one of the most highly appreciated of the pleasures of his literary Court, namely, the Literary Academies, as they were called, and Floral Games, or poetical competitions, in which the poetasters tried their mettle one against the other, in hope of gaining the ear of powerful patrons for their verses. It was a struggle of keen wits; for in no time or court was poetry, especially satirical and dramatic poetry, ever so fashionable; and that it degenerated later into preciosity, extravagance, and affectation was the natural result of the universal struggle to gain a hearing in a chorus of verse.
An equestrian masque
There are abundant and for the most part tedious contemporary descriptions of these various courtly festivities, descriptions usually as pompous and dry as is to our taste the affected frivolity of the festivities themselves.[[14]] But though these turgid productions cannot be quoted to any great length in a book like the present, which is intended to suggest a general picture of the Court and times rather than a series of minute sectional photographs, an idea may be gained of the scale upon which the festivities were arranged, by giving a rigidly condensed translation of the account of a great masque and equestrian display given by Philip and his brother Carlos on the 26th February 1623.[[15]]
"All the Court was anxious for the day when his Majesty and the Infante Don Carlos should honour and delight it with the promised feast. It took place on Palm Sunday, with a magnificent mask notable not only for its beauty, its ingenuity, and costly garments, and the high nobles and gentlemen who took part, but also because his Majesty and his Highness appeared in it.
"Four enclosed courses had been made; the principal one before the palace, and the others before the Convent of Discalced Carmelites, in the Plaza Mayor, and at the Gate of Guadalajara,[[16]] many (side) streets being barricaded and occupied by mounted alguacils (constables), and no coaches being allowed in the streets. The best horses Andalucia could breed or the world could see were brought out that day, with glittering trappings and harness, liveries, devices and accoutrements, richer than had ever been beheld. The King had ordered all the maskers to be ready mounted at the Convent of the Incarnation[[17]] at one o'clock, a stage and canopy having been erected there from which his Majesty was to mount. At about two o'clock the Spanish and German Guards arrived,[[18]] very smart and handsome, under Don Fernando Verdugo and the Marquis de Rentin; and soon afterwards the royal horses came, having gone in procession through the streets where the maskers were to pass. This was the order in which they came. First twelve drummers, thirty trumpeters, and eight minstrels, all on horseback, and dressed in white and black velvet; after them came the pioneers on foot, and then the royal grooms, and thirty-six splendidly caparisoned horses covered with housings of crimson velvet fringed with gold, bearing upon each a crown of cloth of gold and a cipher of "Philip IV." They were led by thirty-six lackeys, some in black and some in crimson, their garments being trimmed with frizzed velvet, like embroidery. The farriers came next, distinguished from the lackeys by wearing caps instead of hats. Thirty-six postillions followed, dressed like slaves in silvered plush on a black ground, with hats to match....
An equestrian parade
"The first noble to put in an appearance (i.e. at the Incarnation) was Don Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, general of the Spanish cavalry. He was dressed in black, with cape and bonnet, and bore the insignia and baton of a general. With him came twelve lackeys in liveries of black velvet trimmed with gold, and twelve pages dressed similarly, but with white plumes in their caps. In like guise came the Marquis of Flores D'Avila, chief equerry of the King, whose noble presence and snowy hair, even if he had been alone, would have sufficed to dignify the feast. When the greater part of the nobles, the flower of Spain, had collected, the sun, to speak in poetical terms, envious of so much splendour and majesty, summoned up dark clouds which for a long time ceased not to pour water upon the festival. The feelings on the matter of the rain were divided. First it was a pity if the show were spoilt, the preparations being more beautiful and costly than had ever been made for a masquerade at Court, there being forty-eight pairs of horsemen, each with different liveries, besides his Majesty and his brother. The livery of the King and the Count of Olivares was steel grey with white plumes, whilst those of the Infante and the Marquis de Carpio were black and white with plumes to match. The second emotion aroused by the rain was rejoicing at the good it would do to the poor people who needed it so much for their crops, even though the maskers and merry-makers had to take shelter under the eaves. But soon the sky cleared, and the rain ceased; so that all were satisfied. The clarions by and by rang out and announced that the King and the Infante had mounted, and the maskers did the same. Then Don Fernando Verdugo and the Guards clearing the way, Don Pedro de Toledo led the cavalcade to the palace, where the course ended in front of the balcony in which our lady the Queen with the Infanta Maria, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, the Infante Fernando, were seated, the ladies in waiting occupying the rest of the balconies of the royal apartment. If I described the precious stones, the gold, the rich dresses and the wealth displayed, this work would be a long one. The first to run was Don Pedro de Toledo, with his accustomed gravity and dignity; and, having reached the end of the course, he bowed low to the Queen and their royal Highnesses, and then made a signal for the rest of the maskers to follow one another along the course. (Here follow the resounding names of the ninety-six Spanish nobles, dukes, marquises, and counts who formed the company.) The last pair to run were his Majesty the King and the Count of Olivares, with the dexterity and gallantry to be expected of them. The effect was strange and brilliant in the extreme, for each pair of horsemen wore different colours and devices. The splendid squadron was closed by the Spanish and German Guards and other troops, led by Verdugo. All the horsemen rode with great rapidity, but the Infante Carlos and the Marquis of Carpio went by like a flash of lightning, to the astonishment of everyone. This pair had hardly covered half the course when the Queen and the Infanta and the Cardinal Infante stood up in their balcony, because they saw that the King and the Count of Olivares were starting out, they being the last to run. They swept by, not on steeds, as it seemed, but on the wind itself, wafted onward by the blessings of those who saw them. Again they covered the course thus, and then the whole cavalcade rode to the plaza before the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites."
At various parts of the capital the same sumptuous show was repeated; the most popular and crowded exhibition being in the great square (the Plaza Mayor) then recently built, and but little altered since that time. The King, we are told, rode a beautiful bay stallion presented to him by the Marquis of Carpio; and when the running was over and night fell the horsemen still paraded the streets, which were illuminated by thousands of torches, the cost of the feast having amounted to more than 200,000 ducats.
Two strangers in Madrid
But ten days after the wasteful ostentation just described an event happened which not only stirred Spain and all Europe, but was an occasion for the display of lavishness by Philip that threw into the shade all the festivities that had gone before it. Between five and six in the evening of the 7th March 1623, as the twilight began to fall, two young Englishmen, travel-stained and unaccompanied, rode into the noisome, unpaved streets of Madrid. Inquiring the way to the house of the English ambassador, the Earl of Bristol, they were directed to the "house of the seven chimneys," lying in a retired street off the Calle de Alcalá. When they arrived there, the elder of the two travellers was told, in answer to his summons at the wicket, that his Excellency the ambassador was busy, and could not be disturbed. The visitor persisted, and sent word that he brought an important letter from Sir Francis Cottington, who was on his way from England, and had broken down on the road a day's journey away. At length, upon being admitted, the cloaked and dishevelled stranger, shouldering a small valise that formed their only luggage, left his younger companion in the shadow of the wall across the way to guard the horses during his parley with the ambassador.
Lord Bristol (Sir John Digby) was full of care, for matters were not going very smoothly with the difficult negotiation upon the successful issue of which his whole future depended, as well as great international issues. For twelve years he had been backwards and forwards to Spain as King James' ambassador to bring about a marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta Maria. James Stuart was a cunning fool, who was easily beaten in diplomacy, because he flattered himself that he could beat everybody else in duplicity. Most of his life, from long before he inherited the English crown, he had been playing the same game: trying to make other men his tools by pretending to agree with them. He had professed himself both Catholic and Protestant so often that now no one believed or trusted him, least of all the Catholics, whom he had deceived again and again.
The English match
When it had been necessary for Philip III. and Lerma to divert England from a threatened coalition with France, they had feigned to listen to the British King's advances, which they had previously repelled with scorn. Though insincere, they always had in view the prospect of gaining great immediate advantages for the Catholics of England, and subsequently they hoped the re-entry of Great Britain into the fold of the Church. The King of Spain and his minister had also been somewhat led astray by the sanguine hopes in this direction, given by their own ambassador in London, Count de Gondomar, whose diplomatic position was as much at stake as that of the Earl of Bristol. Gondomar, confident, as well he might be, of his power to bend King James ultimately to his will, had, there is no doubt, systematically minimised for years the obstacles to the match on both sides, and had led both his own Government and King James to believe that the other side would ultimately make concessions, which we now see clearly would have been impossible for either. James or his son dared not become openly Catholic, nor could they force the English Parliament to reverse the whole religious policy of the last half century at the bidding of a foreign Power; whilst, with their traditions behind them, it was equally impossible for Philip and Lerma to mate their Princess with a "heretic." In order to keep James from breaking away from Spain, the intrigue had for some years past been transferred to Rome, where a dispensation from the Pope for the marriage was being interminably discussed.
This was the position when Philip IV. ascended the throne, and it is quite certain that, whatever may have been the real intentions of the ministers of Philip III. at an earlier period, neither Philip IV. nor Olivares, with their revived arrogant claims for Spain as the dictatress of Europe, meant to marry the Infanta to the English Prince against the dying injunction of Philip III., unless, indeed, and even that is doubtful, upon terms quite impossible for the English to accept.[[19]] Bristol had been sent once more to Madrid as ambassador in June 1622. He had found Olivares and Philip full of soft words about the match, though he promptly guessed that their real aim was still to delay matters, whilst securing Catholic concessions from England, and he urged King James to insist upon a settlement of the points at issue.[[20]]
Whilst he was labouring at his impossible task, and almost despairing of success, an underhand intrigue was carried on behind his back by those who thought that his diplomatic caution stood in the way of a settlement of the affair. James badly wanted ready money in form of a dowry for his son's bride, and a guarantee that the Palatinate should be restored by the Emperor to his son-in-law, Frederick. Olivares wanted to lead England on to the slope of Catholicism, and to ensure Spain's hegemony over Europe. Gondomar, who had returned to Spain, and Buckingham, whom he had bought, wanted to gain the honour and profit of having effected so important a match. So, at Gondomar's instance, Buckingham sent his half-Spanish secretary, Endymion Porter, a late page of Olivares, to Madrid with secret orders to promise religious concessions, which, had they been known in England, would have caused serious trouble, and to hint that the Prince himself might come to Spain to fetch his bride. Porter, who was no diplomatist, saw Olivares early in November 1622, and bluntly asked for assurance that in return for the concessions promised, Spain would at once consent to the marriage and force the Emperor to restore the Palatinate to the Elector, at which Olivares haughtily scoffed, and said that, as for the match, he did not know what Porter meant.[[21]] Bristol soon heard of this, and quite lost heart, but he did not know that Endymion took back to London a private message from Gondomar to Buckingham, telling him that the only way to make the match was for the Prince to come suddenly to Madrid incognito and force the hands of the slow-moving diplomatists, who would be unable to draw back when the honour of England was so far pledged.
Poetic and romantic Prince Charles was soon won over to so compromising and dangerous a course; but King James wept and slobbered like a frightened infant when "Baby" and "Steenie" wrung from him unwilling permission to undertake so hare-brained an adventure.[[22]] Only Cottington and Porter were to go with them to Spain, and the former at least, who knew Spain well, was dead against the voyage; but Buckingham's violence gained the day. Distancing all posts, and riding for a fortnight an average of sixty miles a day, through France and over the rough mule tracks in the north of Spain, the little party pushed onwards. Cottington and Porter were distanced and left behind a day's journey from Madrid; and when the man with the valise, who gave his name as Thomas Smith, entered Lord Bristol's study, and, throwing aside his cloak and hat, disclosed the handsome face of "Steenie," the Marquis of Buckingham, the King's favourite, the ambassador was in dismay, increased almost to terror when he learnt that the Prince of Wales, the only son of King James, masquerading under the name of John Smith, was holding the horses on the other side of the dark street.[[23]]
Charles and Buckingham
What was to be done? The presence of the heir of England could not be hidden for many hours from gossiping Madrid, for the couriers from Paris, where he had been recognised, were following close upon his heels. A voyage to Spain in those days was a far greater adventure than an expedition to Thibet would be now, and the temerity, nay the foolhardiness, of putting such a pledge as the Prince of Wales unconditionally in the hands of the Spaniards, who if they chose to detain him could exact what terms they liked as the price of his safe return, struck the harassed ambassador with alarm. "My Lord Bristol in a kind of astonishment brought him (i.e. Prince Charles) up to his chamber, where he presently called for pen and ink, and despatched a post that night to England to acquaint his Majesty how in less than sixteen days he was come safely to the Court of Spain."[[24]]
After grave discussion in Bristol's room, it was decided to send at once for Gondomar, to whom, as Buckingham well knew, the arrival of the Prince would cause no surprise. It was past nine o'clock at night when Gondomar entered the "house with the seven chimneys," full of glee at the success of his bold diplomacy; and not long afterwards he was at the door of Olivares' rooms' in the palace, anxious to give to the favourite the first news of the great event. The Count-Duke was seated at supper as Gondomar entered the apartment. The famous Spanish ambassador in England owed much of his success to the assumed bluff jocosity with which he was wont to cover his cunning; but when he bounced into the Count-Duke's supper chamber on this occasion, he was so exuberant in his joy that grave Olivares looked up in surprise, and said: "Ah, Count! what brings you here at such an hour as this? You look as jolly as if you had the King of England himself in Madrid." "If we have not the King," chuckled Gondomar, "we have the next best thing to him,—the Prince of Wales."[[25]]
Olivares was far from sharing Gondomar's delight. To him the news meant infinite anxiety, danger, and expenditure; for not only must the Prince be entertained lavishly, but somehow he must be got rid of without marrying the Infanta, and if possible without a national war with England for the slight put upon the Prince. The Count-Duke hurried to the King's apartments with the great news, and Philip was as much taken aback as his minister, for young as he was he fully understood the gravity of the situation. One thing, however, he was quite determined upon. Already the adulation of which he had been made the object, and the high hopes aroused by the new measures and men that had been introduced upon his accession, had convinced the lad he was the heaven-sent instrument destined to restore to Spain its proud supremacy over a united Christendom, and religious exaltation had claimed him henceforth for its own, however ungodly his daily life might be. When Olivares had laid before him the difficulties that arose from the unexpected descent of Charles Stuart upon them, Philip rose, and walking to where a figure of Christ crucified hung at the head of his bed, he kissed the feet of the figure, and burst out into the following impassioned oath: "O Lord! I swear to Thee by the human and divine alliance crucified that in Thee I adore, and upon whose feet I seal this pledge with my lips, that not only shall the coming of this Prince be powerless to make me concede one point in the matter of the Catholic religion, not in accordance with what Thy Vicar the Pontiff of Rome may resolve, but even if I were to lose all the realms I enjoy, by Thy grace I will not give way a single iota." Then turning to Olivares (who says that this was one of the only two oaths he ever knew the King to take), Philip told him they must nevertheless fulfil the duties of hospitality that the Prince had thrown upon them.[[26]]
For the greater part of that night the minister worked hard laying out all the plans for the entertainment of the Prince, and for avoiding without giving mortal offence the marriage he sought. At eight o'clock next morning a meeting of high councillors, with Gondomar and the King's confessor, met in the Count-Duke's room in the palace, the result of their deliberations, being highly characteristic: namely, "first, to offer public prayers to God in thanks for the event, and in supplication for His guidance"; and secondly, to instruct Gondomar to sound Buckingham and Cottington (who was expected to arrive that day) as to how far the King of England might be squeezed, "in order to bring this visit to be a great and very signal service to the Church."[[27]]
Olivares meets Buckingham
A dozen knotty points of etiquette had to be settled, and Gondomar was busy all day speeding backward and forward between the palace and the "house with the seven chimneys";[[28]] but at last it was arranged that the pride of Olivares should be saved from making the first visit, by the device of an apparently chance meeting with Buckingham. Already Madrid was agog with the news that some great personage, the King of England some said, had arrived in disguise; and when, late on Saturday afternoon, the great swaying gilded coach of Olivares, with its leather curtains, its six gaudily decked mules, and its crowd of liveried servants and pages around it, was seen threading the green alleys of the gardens below the palace on the banks of the Manzanares, all the idlers on "Liars Walk" knew that the Count-Duke was going to meet, "by chance," the Admiral of England, the favourite of his King. When the carriages met, Olivares alighted and greeted Buckingham half-way between their coaches, where, with carefully arranged politeness and high-flown compliments, as false as they were pompous, the great Guzman first measured his strength with brilliant, rash, unscrupulous George Villiers.
After many professions of delight on both sides, the Count-Duke entered the English coach with Buckingham, Bristol, and Cottington, and for an hour they drove in close confabulation. On their return they entered the palace gateway, and Olivares secretly led Buckingham into the King's presence, where again the compliments were repeated. There is no doubt that the Spaniards, from the King downward, were flattered with the embarrassing visit, which was a patent proof, it was proudly claimed, of the reality of Spain's regained power and superiority under the new régime, when the heir of England came wooing her at so great a risk. So Philip was all smiles to Buckingham; and when the latter returned to the "house with the seven chimneys," Olivares insisted upon accompanying him to greet the Prince personally in the King's name, the Spanish narratives say that the Count-Duke performed his part with all the dignity and splendour characteristic of him; but Howel, who was in Madrid at the time, and knew Porter well, writes that the Count-Duke "knelt, and kissed his (i.e. the Prince's) hands and hugged his thighs, and delivered how immeasurably glad his Catholic Majesty was at his coming, and other high compliments, which Mr. Porter did interpret."[[29]]
During the interview Charles expressed his ardent desire to see his lady love, the Infanta—"to discover the wooer," as Buckingham called it; and it was agreed that on the next day, Sunday, 9th March, the coaches of the royal family should parade the Prado, where the Infanta should be distinguished by a blue ribbon tied round her arm; and the Prince in Bristol's coach might meet the royal party as if by chance, and incognito. Little enough of incognito there was about the affair, when, at four o'clock in the afternoon the ambassador's coach with the Prince, Buckingham, Aston, Gondomar, and Bristol in it, stood in the narrow street of the Puerta de Guadalajara in the Calle Mayor to await the coming of the King's party. Every foot of the streets was crowded with sightseers, and the pride and joy of the show-loving Madrileños knew no bounds. By and by the long line of coaches accompanying the King rumbled by, and at last young Philip with his pretty dark-eyed girl wife, his two young brothers, Carlos and Fernando, almost exact replicas of himself, with their lank sandy hair, their long white faces, thick red lips, under-hung jaws and great pale eyes. In the door-seat of the carriage sat the Infanta Maria. She was much like her brothers: "a very comely lady, rather of Flemish complexion than Spanish, fair haired, and carrying a most pure mixture of red and white in her face. She is full and big lipped, which is held a beauty rather than a blemish."[[30]] As the King's carriage passed that of the Prince, Philip, who was not supposed to see Charles, bowed low, as did his brothers, to Lord Bristol; but it was noticed that the Infanta first flushed and then turned deadly pale as her lover's eyes fell upon her.
The poor girl, indeed, was getting seriously alarmed. She was, of course, devout and ignorant. To her heretics were an abomination, and the prospect of living amongst such was worse than death. Her monkish confessor painted in lurid colours the horror of the fate that threatened her; worse than hell it was, he said, to lie by a heretic's side, and bear heretic children. Only that morning she had sent her confidential lady, Margaret Tavara, to Olivares, passionately protesting against the marriage being seriously negotiated. She would, she said, take refuge in the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, and assume the nun's veil the moment she heard that the capitulations were signed. Charles on his part appears to have been really smitten with the pink and white charms of the little lady, and played the eager wooer well. The Prince and Buckingham writing to their "Dear Dad and Gossip" (the King) calls this first meeting "a private obligation hidden from nobody; for there was the Pope's Nuncio, the Emperor's ambassador, the French, and all the streets filled with guards and other people. Before the King's coach went the best of the nobility, after followed by the ladies of the Court. We sat in an invisible coach, because nobody was suffered to take notice of it, though seen by all the world."[[31]] The cavalcades then wended their ways by different roads to the Prado, where, parading up and down, the Prince had several opportunities of looking upon his blushing sweetheart. Soon Olivares came and entered the Prince's coach; and again fulsome compliments passed as they drove back to the English embassy.[[32]]
Buckingham, indeed, was fairly dazzled and deceived, for both he and Charles believed now that the match was as good as completed. Alas! they did not know Olivares or Spanish methods so well as Bristol did.
"Steenie's" letter to James I.
"If we can judge by outward shows," wrote Charles and Steenie to the King, "or general speeches, we have reason to condemn your ambassadors for rather writing too sparingly than too much. To conclude, we find the Conde de Olivares so overvaluing our journey, he is so full of real courtesy, that we can do no less than beseech your Majesty to write the kindest letter of thanks and acknowledgment you can unto him. He said, no later to us than this morning, that if the Pope would not give a dispensation for a wife they would give the Infanta to thy Baby as his wench,[[33]] and hath this day written to Cardinal Ludovico, the Pope's nephew, that the King of England hath put such an obligation upon this King in sending his son hither, that he entreats him to make haste of the dispensation, for he can deny nothing that is in his kingdom.... The Pope's Nuncio works as maliciously and as actively as he can against us, but receives such rude answers that we hope he will soon weary on't. We make this collection that the Pope will be very loth to grant a dispensation, which, if he will not do, then we would gladly have your directions how far we may engage you in the acknowledgment of the Pope's special power, for we almost find, if you will be contented to acknowledge the Pope as chief head under Christ, that the match will be made without him."[[34]]
It is difficult to know what to condemn most in this astounding letter,—whether the simplicity that made Buckingham so easy a dupe of Olivares' soft speeches, or the proposal at the end, which, as the reply shows, was too much even for King James, that the latter should abandon the main condition upon which he held the Protestant crown of England. It is clear that the intention of Olivares was to cast upon the Pope the whole of the blame for the failure of the match, and this, at least from the Spanish point of view, was a statesmanlike policy, although the full falsity of it is evident to us now that we have before us the communications that passed between Madrid and Rome on the subject.[[35]]
Charles in Madrid
Leaving Charles at the embassy after the drive, Olivares and Buckingham, with Porter as their interpreter, re-entered a coach and drove off in the gathering darkness to the gardens behind the palace, to arrange the details of the coming private interview to be held that night between Philip and the English Prince. Whilst the coach, with Olivares and Buckingham, was in the green alleys of the garden, a man, unaccompanied, with his cloak masking his face, and sword and buckler by his side, was seen walking towards them. "This is the King," said Olivares, to Steenie's intense astonishment. "Is it possible," exclaimed Buckingham, "that you have a King who can walk like that? What a marvel!" and, leaping from the carriage, he knelt and kissed the young King's hand. Entering the coach again, the party, accompanied now by the King, were driven through the quiet streets of the unlit capital, for it was ten o'clock at night, to the Prado, where the Prince, with Gondomar, Bristol, Aston, and Cottington, in another coach, awaited their coming. Descending and embracing warmly, the King and Prince then re-entered the carriage with Bristol alone, and for more than half an hour discoursed amiable banalities in the darkness under the overhanging trees of the promenade.
Thenceforward Buckingham and Olivares by agreement changed offices, the former constituting himself chief equerry in waiting to Philip, whilst Olivares attended Prince Charles. In pursuance of this idea, the suite of apartments in the palace occupied by Olivares as master of the horse were hastily prepared with great magnificence for the occupation of the English Prince; and whilst their redecoration and furnishing were being accomplished, Charles was invited to transfer his lodging to the rooms in the monastery of St. Geronimo in the Prado, to which the Kings of Spain usually retired in times of mourning, and previous to state entries to the capital, an invitation which he did not accept.
In the week that followed the first meeting of Charles and his host, until Sunday the 16th March,[[36]] which was the day fixed for his public entry into the city, Madrid was astir with excitement. The pragmatic decrees recently promulgated forbidding starched and fluted ruffs, embroidered dresses, and the use of gold in tissues, and generally suppressing extravagance of living, were all suspended by proclamation during the visit of the Prince; the streets were ordered to be swept and garnished, and the houses on the line of route richly adorned; and Madrid, by the morning of the day fixed for the public entry, had covered its squalor and dirt by an overcoating of finery. All the gaols, too, were emptied of prisoners, by way of welcoming the English guest.[[37]]
In the week of waiting Charles sought permission to visit Philip privately in return for the interview in the Prado on Sunday night, and he and Buckingham gave the following account of the meeting to their "Dear Dad and Gossip."
"The next day your Baby desired to kiss the King's hand privately in the palace, which was granted, and thus performed. First, the King would not suffer him to come to his chamber, but met him at the stair-foot, then entered into the coach and walked in his park. The greatest matter that passed between them was compliments, ... and then by force he would needs convey him (i.e. Charles) half way home, in which doing they were both almost overthrown in brick pits. Two days after we met his Majesty again in his park with his two brothers; they spent their time in seeing his men kill partridges flying and conies running with a gun."[[38]]
In the meanwhile the people with pride and delight had quite satisfied themselves that the coming of the Prince meant the intended conversion of himself to Catholicism and the return of England to the fold of the Church,[[39]] and Olivares pressed this point so persistently and publicly upon Charles, that Buckingham himself began to take fright. He noticed that whenever the Count-Duke found himself near Charles, which indeed was continually, he turned the conversation towards the Catholic religion. Charles was young, the son of a Catholic mother, and was certainly for the time smitten by the Catholic Infanta: his father had professed himself Catholic again and again; and at this moment was writing thus to his "Sweet boys": "I send you, my Baby, two of your fittest chaplains for this purpose, Mawe and Wren, together with all stuff and ornaments fit for the service of God. I have fully instructed them, so as all their behaviour and service shall, I hope, prove decent and agreeable to the service of the primitive Church; and yet as near the Roman form as can lawfully be done; for it hath ever been my way to go with the Church of Rome usque ad aras." But whatever may have been the tendencies of Charles himself, Buckingham in his saner moments, and certainly Bristol, must have seen the pitfall laid for the Prince, and thus early, in the midst of all the complimentary billing and cooing before the state entry, the young adventurers began to realise the difficulty of the task, which looked so easy from a distance.
On the day following the state entry, Charles and Buckingham wrote to the King—
"For our chief business, we find them by outward shows as desirous of it as ourselves, yet they are hankering upon a conversion; for they say that there can be no firm friendship without union in religion, but they put no question in bestowing their sister, and we put the other quite out of the question, because neither our conscience nor the time serves for it."[[40]]
Delay, as they said, was the worst denial; for King James was in a hurry,—in a hurry to get his heir married, in a hurry for the Infanta's dowry, and in a hurry to get the Palatinate back for his son-in-law; and as yet the priests were still squabbling over the dispensation in Rome, and Olivares, equally with his master, was determined to delay until either England became practically Catholic, or the English themselves broke off the negotiations by refusing the terms upon which Rome, prompted by the Spanish agents, alone would consent to the match. This, indeed, as Olivares saw, was the only slender chance of preventing war with England, and to avoid throwing James into the arms of France.
[[1]] Novoa, who was present at the scene described, Documentos Ineditos, lxi.
[[2]] Especially Gil Blas, Guzman de Alfarache, Marcos de Obregon, Estevanillo Gonzales, and El Diablo Cojuelo.
[[3]] This was constantly denied by his many enemies, but original documents, to which I shall refer later, will prove that in this as in so many other things they did him an injustice, whatever his real aim might have been.
[[4]] Cambridge Modern History, vol. iv. "Spain," by Martin Hume.
[[5]] Fragmentos Historicos MSS., by Vera y Figueroa, also Novoa, and Yañez,; and Relazioni degli Ambassciatori Veneti, British Museum MSS., Add. 8701.
[[6]] Discursos y Apuntamientos, by Lison y Biedma, a member of this Parliament. (Secretly printed book of the period in my possession, which gives a sad picture of affairs.)
[[7]] There are two letters in Cabala—the first from Philip to Olivares, and the second the minister's reply to the King—which show that there was never any intention on their part of carrying the English match through. The long letter from Olivares to the King is an adaptation of a Spanish original which is well known, and to which I shall refer later, proposing the marriage of Charles with the Emperor's daughter; but the King's letter which produced Olivares' reply is not, to my knowledge, printed elsewhere.
"The King my father declared at his death that his intention never was to marry my sister the Infanta Doña Maria with the Prince of Wales, which your uncle Don Baltasar well understood; for he so treated this match with an intention to delay it, notwithstanding it is so far advanced that, considering with all the averseness unto it of the Infanta, it is high time to seek some means to divert the treaty which I would have you discover, and I will make it good whatsoever it may be; but in all other things procure the satisfaction of the King of Great Britain, who hath deserved very much, and it shall content me, so that it be not the match." This must have been written before Charles' arrival in Madrid.
[[8]] Nearly all foreigners who visited Madrid during the reign of Philip IV. remarked the extraordinary liberty which existed in the demeanour of the women, even ladies of high birth and position, no doubt a reaction from the conventual strictness with which they had been kept during the two previous reigns. There is no need to multiply authorities; but the following passage, from the report of the Venetian ambassador in Spain at the time of Olivares' fall, will give an idea of the prevailing laxity—even in the royal entourage. "In the royal palace the gentlemen are permitted to carry on with the ladies of the Queen the relations they call 'gallanting,' in which lavishness, ostentation, and expenditure are carried to such an extraordinary excess as to be beyond belief, although here it is considered the most ordinary thing in the world, for rivalry and competition do away with all moderation. Those who go the greatest lengths are held in the highest esteem, not only by the courtiers in general, but also by the royal personages, who make quite a recreation of hearing the accounts of the presents given and attentions paid to them, that the ladies narrate daily to their Majesties." British Museum MS., Add. 8701.
[[9]] Address; by J. E. Hartzenbusch, Transactions of the Royal Spanish Academy, 1861.
[[10]] It is fair to say that this story depends upon the very untrustworthy evidence of Mme. D'Aulnoy.
[[11]] The tradition that this was the case existed from the first, and has never been lost; although most of the stories of the relations of Villa Mediana with the Queen are quite unsupported by serious contemporary evidence. Lord Holland, in his Lope de Vega, says that only a few days after Philip's accession, the Prime Minister Zuñiga, Olivares' uncle, warned Villa Mediana that his life was in danger. The tradition that Philip was involved in the murder from motives of jealousy is too firm and long-standing to be ignored, though whether his jealousy concerned his wife is very doubtful.
[[12]] Transcripts (contemporary) of these letters, etc., to which reference will be made later, are in British Museum, Egerton MSS. 338.
[[13]] Historia del Arte Dramatica en España, from the German of A. F. Schack.
[[14]] Especially in the MS. of the Royal Academy of History, Madrid by Soto y Aguilar, one of the courtiers and writers of the time, and in the MS. at the National Library at Madrid (M. 299) called Noticias de Madrid. These are contemporary news letters from 1621 to 1627.
[[15]] From the Soto y Aguilar MS. already mentioned.
[[16]] This was a narrow street forming part of the line of the Calle Mayor, in which it is now incorporated. It is quite close to the other three courses.
[[17]] A tremendous and costly monastic house (of which the church still stands in the Calle Mayor) upon which Philip III. and his wife had squandered incredible sums.
[[18]] This is very Spanish. The whole of the company had been ordered to be ready mounted at one o'clock, and yet the royal guard which was to keep the space and maintain order did not appear until an hour later, the maskers of course coming later still.
[[19]] In a document quoted on page 51, it will have been noticed that Philip refers to the match as being one that it was necessary to avoid, even at the cost of a war with England. In a notable document in Spanish in the British Museum (MSS. Add. 14,043), reproduced by the Camden Society under the editorship of Dr. Gardiner (El Hecho de los Tratados de Matrimonio, etc.), there is a long memorandum written by Olivares for Philip's information in 1622, proposing as a way out of the difficulty the marriage of the Infanta to the son of the Emperor, the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Emperor's elder daughter, and the betrothal of the Palatine's eldest son Maurice to the second daughter on condition that the Prince was sent to Vienna to be brought up as a Catholic, the Palatinate being restored to him after his marriage. This solution, however, it is quite evident, would have been unacceptable to James for many reasons. In any case it is quite clear that when Charles appeared in Madrid, Olivares had no intention of allowing the Infanta to marry him, unless indeed England became Catholic.
[[20]] The Earl of Bristol's defence. Camden Society Miscellany, vol. vi.
[[21]] A very interesting and, as I believe, unpublished contemporary manuscript account of the proceedings of Charles and Buckingham in Madrid, and of the events that followed their return to London, so far as regards the Spanish match, has been brought to my notice whilst this chapter is being written. The manuscript, evidently an original, appears to have been the work of someone who accompanied the Prince in his journey. Many expressions in it are the same as those which I have quoted from other sources, especially from certain letters of Endymion Porter in the Record Office, and from those of Buckingham to the King, most of which were written by Porter. I am therefore led to the conclusion that this interesting new document, which is the property of Dr. Rosedale of the Royal Society of Literature, is the work of Endymion Porter. I am informed that it will shortly be published by the Society.
[[22]] Clarendon, Great Rebellion.
[[23]] Howel's Familiar Letters. Howel was in Madrid at the time.
[[24]] Howel's Familiar Letters.
[[25]] Fragmentos Historicos de la Vida de Caspar de Guzman, etc. MS. by Count de la Roca in my possession.
[[26]] Fragmentos Historicos, etc. MS. by Count de la Roca, the great friend and confidant of Olivares.
[[27]] Hecho de los Tratados, etc., British Museum MS., Add. 14,043, and Camden Society.
[[28]] Gondomar had been raised to the Council of State during the early morning sitting, and on his first visit that day (Saturday) to the English embassy he came rushing to the Prince in his usual boisterously jocose fashion, saying that he had a strange piece of news to convey. "An Englishman had been sworn a Privy Councillor of Spain," meaning, as Howel (who tells the story) says, himself, who, he professed, was an Englishman at heart. This was the kind of joke by which he had managed to dominate King James.
[[29]] Familiar Letters. The sequence of events, meetings, etc., as given in Life and Times of James I., is untrustworthy.
[[30]] Howel.
[[31]] Hardwicke, State Papers. Charles and Buckingham to the King.
[[32]] We are told that on this occasion Olivares, notwithstanding the Prince's remonstrance, insisted upon taking the humble seat at the carriage doorstep; and that throughout the whole visit he treated Charles with the same honours as he did the King, kneeling when he spoke to him, kissing his hand, etc. Charles, on the other hand, appears to have been equally polite to Olivares; but Buckingham soon got tired of an attitude so unusual to him, and behaved himself with extraordinary rudeness and ill-breeding, as will be told later. Hecho de los Tratados, etc.
[[33]] Lord Bristol, in his defence (Camden Miscellany, vi.) gives an account of a conversation in the coach when the Prince, Bristol, Gondomar, Olivares, Buckingham, and Aston were waiting for the royal party to pass on the Sunday referred to in the text. This shows how entirely Olivares had convinced them all of his sincerity. Gondomar in boastful mood had asked Olivares if he was not justified now in all he had written from England about the real desire of King James for the marriage; and whether Bristol and himself had not proved themselves honest men. "Yes," replied Olivares, "you may both say your Nunc Dimitis now, and trouble no more about it, except to claim the reward of success." No blame, he said, could attach to them in any case.
[[34]] Hardwicke, State Papers.
[[35]] Hecho de los Tratados, etc. B.M. MSS. Add. 14,043.
[[36]] The dates given throughout are old style, according to the English calendar of the time. The Spanish dates are ten days later.
[[37]] MSS. Soto y Aguilar.
[[38]] Hardwicke, State Papers.
[[39]] Most of the poets and poetasters of the Court were convinced of this, and the romantic love-making of the Prince, who for the sweet eyes of the Infanta was to make England Catholic, inspired many verses. Howel sends to a friend in England one stanza of such a poem written at this time, he says by Lope de Vega—
Carlos Estuardo, soy,
Que siendo amor mi guia.
Al cielo de España voy.
Par ver mi estrella Maria.
Charles Stuart, here am I,
Guided by love afar
Into the Spanish sky,
To see Maria my star.
Gongora's fine sonnet, translated by Churton, is worth quoting entire—
Fair from his cradle springs the star of day,
Rock'd on bright waves fair sinks his parting light:
Such be thy course, in sunlike beauty bright,
Daughter of kings and born to be as they.
The world's majestic wonder. Lo! thy ray
Hath called a royal bird, in venturous flight,
From realms where keen Arcturus fires by night
The polar skies: from regions far away
He wheels on swiftest wing: within thy sphere
Secure his bold eye drinks the soft clear fires.
Now Heaven and Love be kind; and both ordain
What time his suit shall win thy beauty's ear.
The Northern Eagle won with chaste desires,
By Truth's pure light may live to God again.
[[40]] Hardwicke, State Papers.
CHAPTER III
STATE ENTRY OF CHARLES INTO MADRID—GREAT FESTIVITIES—HIS LOVE-MAKING—ATTEMPTS TO CONVERT THE PRINCE—THE REAL INTENTION OF OLIVARES—HIS CLEVER PROCRASTINATION—CHARLES AND BUCKINGHAM LOSE PATIENCE—HOWEL'S STORY OF CHARLES AND THE INFANTA—THE FEELING AGAINST BUCKINGHAM—ANXIETY OF KING JAMES—HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH "BABY AND STEENIE"—CHARLES DECIDES TO DEPART—FURTHER DELAY—THE DIPLOMACY OF OLIVARES—BUCKINGHAM AND ARCHY ARMSTRONG—DEPARTURE OF CHARLES—HIS RETURN HOME, AND THE ENGLISH DISILLUSION
All being ready for the public entry of Charles on Sunday, 16th, the Prince, though he declined the invitation to sleep the previous night at the monastery of St. Geronimo, as was customary with Spanish sovereigns who entered the capital in state, went thither early in the morning, and was entertained at a sumptuous banquet by the Count Gondomar, as near as he could manage it in English fashion. Then, as was also the usage with Spanish sovereigns, all the members of the numerous Councils and juntas rode in full state, accompanied by their officers and escorts, to pay their respects to the Prince. Charles received this glittering crowd, numbering some hundreds, standing by a velvet-covered table beneath a canopy of silver tissue in the royal apartment of the monastery, the empty throne being behind him, and the walls of the chambers covered with rich hangings and pictures, amongst which were portraits of King James and his councillors. As each pompously named official knelt and begged permission to kiss the Prince's hand, Charles gracefully threw his arms upon their shoulders instead, and raised them from the ground.[[1]] The impression generally produced by the Prince now and during his stay was excellent, and it was noticed throughout that he never took advantage, as Buckingham and the crowd of noisy English courtiers who soon arrived in Spain did, of the Spanish politeness which places everything at the disposal of a guest. The behaviour of these courtiers, indeed, and especially Buckingham's insolence, very soon produced disgust amongst the grave, courteous Spaniards.
The state entry
At midday, when the councils had retired and taken their places on the line of route, a flourish of drums and pipes heralded the coming of the Spanish Guard in orange and scarlet to the monastery, followed by the German Guard, in crimson satin and gold with white sleeves and plumed caps; then came the municipality of Madrid, with a great following of town officers dressed in orange satin with silver spangles. Nobles and princes followed in pairs, led by Prince Edward of Portugal and the Count of Villamor, each pair of high gentlemen resplendent in satin, velvet and gold, jingling and flashing on their showy Andalusian horses. Following these and a hundred other ostentatious groups, the mention of which would fill pages, King Philip left his palace as the great clock in the courtyard—one of the marvels of Madrid—struck the hour of one, and reached a side door of the monastery in his coach by a circuitous route. Until three o'clock Charles and Philip chatted in friendly converse, and then the signal was given for the cortege to start, the King and Prince mounting their horses at the same moment.
The drums, pipes, clarionets, and trumpets led off followed by judges, officials, courtiers, and nobles, heralds, guards, pages, lacqueys, and grooms by the hundred, upon whose grand dresses Soto y Aguilar dwells with tedious minuteness. Then came the King and the Prince, under a canopy of white damask and gold, mounted upon silver poles borne by six officers of the corporation, the Prince riding on the right hand of his host. They must have looked a gallant pair, for they were mere youths, and both fine horsemen. Olivares and Buckingham side by side followed them, and then came a great troop of Spanish grandees with the English ambassadors and officers. Through the streets, decked lavishly, and crowded with cheering people, flattered at the coming conversion of England by means of Spain the cavalcade rode by the Puerta del Sol and Calle Mayor to the ancient Alcazar upon the cliff, which looks across the arid plain to the snow-capped Guadarramas. On the line of route national dances and the eternal comedies were played until the Prince approached, when special dances were performed in his honour, at which, we are told, he was much delighted. Upon entering the palace the King himself conveyed the Prince to his apartments, and surpassed himself in courtly welcome to his guest; and that same night the Queen sent to the Prince a great present of white linen for table use and personal wear, with a rich dressing gown and toilet paraphernalia in a scented casket with gold keys.[[2]] It was all as Howel wrote, "a very glorious sight to behold, for the custom of the Spaniard is, tho' he go plain in his ordinary habit, yet upon some great festival or cause of triumph there's none goes beyond him in gaudiness."[[3]]
The next day the municipality of Madrid celebrated a royal bull-fight on a scale of magnificence rarely approached. The great Plaza Mayor of Madrid, 340 feet square, was surrounded by stagings, and every one of the hundreds of balconies of the high houses overlooking the plaza was hung with crimson silk and gold, and filled with noblemen and ladies whose names were as splendid as the clothes, of which Solo y Aguilar[[4]] spares us no detail. The royal balcony was erected on the first floor of the municipal bakery (still standing), and must have been a mass of crimson and cloth of gold, with its hangings, its canopies, its curtains, and its balustrades. Every council and board, and under Olivares they were infinite, had its special tribune. Nobles, officials, officers, and foreign representatives, all of whose fine garb the literary quarter-master details for us until his description produces but a vague impression of sumptuous stuffs without end, smothered in bullion, arrived in procession to occupy their places as spectators or actors in the glittering show. The English visitors were accommodated in a special stand occupying the opening of the Street of Bitterness (Calle de Amargura), which gave rise to much satirical comment. When all was ready, and around the vast plaza a packed mass of bedizened humanity had assembled, the royal coaches entered and drove around the arena to the central entrance of the Queen's balcony before the bakehouse. Here Isabel alighted, dressed, we are told, like the Infanta, who accompanied her, in brown silk embroidered with gold, and covered with gems, the plumes of their jaunty toques being white and brown, sprinkled with diamonds. With them came the two Infantes, Carlos, in black velvet and gold, with diamond chains and buttons, and the boy Cardinal Infante Fernando, in the purple of his ecclesiastical rank. Behind them came scores of ladies, and then officers of the Guards, and finally a "great company of Spanish and English gentlemen, courtiers, grandees, and attendants."
The Prince of Wales was very beautifully dressed in black with white plumes, and was mounted on a bright bay horse, whilst the King, also in sober brown, for it was Lent, rode a silver grey charger, "both horses showing by their majestic port that they were conscious of the preciousness of their burdens." After them rode the Admiral of England (i.e. Buckingham) and the Count of Olivares, with the English ambassador, councillors of state, gentlemen-in-waiting, and archers of the guard.... The Queen and Infanta sat in the right-hand balcony, and separated only by a rail from them in the next balcony were Don Carlos, the King, the Prince of Wales, and the Cardinal Infante Don Fernando; the Marquis of Buckingham, the Count of Olivares, and the other English and Spanish gentlemen being in the balcony on the left. The trumpets sounded, and when a hundred lacqueys, in brown jerkins and floating silver ribbons, had cleared the arena, the Duke of Cea pranced in on a grey horse, preceded by fifty lacqueys in doublets of cloth of silver and fawn-coloured breeches, wearing silver thread caps, and followed by a group of famous bull-fighters. The Duke bowed low before the royal balcony, whereupon Prince Charles uncovered. Then came the Duke of Maqueda, with his gallant party, who performed the same courtly ceremony as the Duke of Cea, "looking like a Cæsar," as Soto y Aguilar says. And so noble after noble, each with his glittering train of mounted gentlemen and host of servants, passed before the King and his English guest, until, in the written description of the scene, gorgeous fabrics, fine colours, and precious metals seem to lose their separate significance, so lavish is the repetition of them.
Then came the many bulls, each despatched by a grandee's spear (rejon); many hairbreadth escapes being recorded, but no noble killed. When the feast was ended the rain was falling heavily, and we are told by the courtly chronicler "that amidst the falling torrents there fell a torrent of pages with torches who inundated with light the realms of darkness." It would be tedious to give particulars of the many such shows provided for Prince Charles, but at one subsequent bullfight, more splendid still, described by Soto, no less than twenty bulls were done to death by noble bull-fighters on horseback, and prodigality itself ran riot to show the English Prince how rich Spain was.