portrait by VELAZQUEZ in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq.

PRINCE BALTASAR CARLOS ON HORSEBACK

From a picture by VELAZQUEZ at the Prado Museum.

THE NUN SOR MARIA DE AGREDA

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.

THE MAIDS OF HONOUR

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