Читать книгу The Court of Philip IV.: Spain in Decadence - Martin A. S. Hume - Страница 5

Table of Contents

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.