Chapter II (2)

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, {78} 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 {79} 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.

[Sidenote: "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] {80} 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 {81} 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]

[Sidenote: 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.

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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 {83} 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 {84} 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 {85} 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_.

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