letter three other letters, which in my opinion are

even more valuable, because of the position of the supposed author, were found in the Escorial library. The first is a printed tract in the form of a diary and is entitled "Transcript of a Letter sent from England to this City of Seville, in which is given a Relation of the Events of the Voyage of our Lord the Prince Don Philip, from his Embarkation in the Coruña, a Port of Spain, to his Marriage to the Serene Queen of England. 1554." The book bears the well-known device, although not the name, of the celebrated Sevillian printer Andres de Burgos. In the same library was found a manuscript letter taking up the narrative where the last-mentioned tract ended--namely, after the marriage at Winchester at the end of July--and carrying it to August 19th, when the Court was at Richmond. No printed copy of this continuation is known to exist, but it is almost certainly written by the same hand, and contains many remarks and opinions which would probably have been suppressed if the letter had been published. A continuation of this, again, was also found in the Escorial, written apparently by the same person, bringing the narrative down to October 2nd, and is dated from London, where the King and Queen then were. These three letters, which I shall distinguish by the numbers 3, {135} 4, and 5, were published, together with Muñoz's narrative (No. 2), by the Society of Bibliophilists of Madrid in 1877, under the editorship of Don Pascual de Gayangos.

In inquiring into the probable authorship of these three extremely valuable and interesting letters Señor de Gayangos gives good reason for supposing that they were written by a young courtier named Pedro Enriquez, one of Philip's stewards. He is known to have had a perfect mania for writing relations of what he saw and heard, and has been called the Spanish Tacitus.[9] He was a brother of the Marquis of Villanueva and a relative both of the Duke and Duchess of Alba, of whose movements he gives a very minute account in the above letters. He also identifies himself as a steward of the King in one of his complaints of the exclusive service of Philip by Englishmen, and is known to have been one of the very few Spanish noblemen who remained with Philip in London. His style, moreover, is peculiar, and I have had a former opportunity of commenting upon it in connection with a rapid and industrious piece of historical transcription of his, executed in the following year in Ghent;[10] and I have no doubt that Don Pedro Enriquez was the author of the three letters I am speaking of. Few people could have had better opportunities of observation than he. He accompanied Philip everywhere; his rank and his relationship to the all-powerful Alba brought him within the inner circle of the Court, and the {136} feelings he expresses are those of the nobles who surrounded the King and not the gossip of the servants' hall or a valet's list of his master's finery. With these four letters the Society for Bibliophilists printed another by a different author, addressed from London at the end of December, 1554, giving a very full account of the reception of Cardinal Pole; but as this does not touch the subject in hand I omit any further reference to it.

In the British Museum there is a small tract in Italian, apparently printed in Milan in 1554, called "The Departure of the Serene Prince with the Spanish Fleet, and his Arrival in England, with the Order observed by the Queen in his Highness's Reception, and the most Happy Wedding; with the Names of the English, Spanish, and other Lords and Gentlemen who were present, and the Liveries, Festivities, and other Things done at the Wedding." It is signed "Giovanni Paulo Car," and the writer was a servant of the Marquis of Pescara. A paraphrase or adaptation of the letter also exists in the Museum, and appears to have been published in Rome in the same year, but it is not signed, and contains many additional particulars. The contents of these two tracts, again, appear to have been blended into a narrative published in the following year, probably in Rome, in which the person to whom the letter is addressed is described as the "illustrious Signor Francesco Taverna Cracanz," and although it is not signed by Car it evidently is by him, as he speaks of the Marquis of Pescara all through the narrative as his master. I propose in referring to this narrative to call it No. 6. We have thus a mass of contemporary evidence from persons {137} who were certainly attached to Philip's suite, by the aid of which and the authorities already known a more minute and trustworthy account than any hitherto presented of the events in question may be constructed.

Renard had first broached the subject of the marriage to Mary in August, 1553, and all the attempts of Noailles to inspire fear and hatred of the match in the breasts of the Queen and her people had only made her more determined to carry out the wishes of her heart, and, as she no doubt herself thought, to enhance the happiness and prosperity of her people. Egmont and his glittering train had been snowballed by the London 'prentices when he came formally to offer Philip's hand to the Queen in January, 1554. A whirlwind of passion and panic had passed over southern England at the thought of a Spanish consort ruling in the land, and at about the time that gallant Wyatt and his dwindling troop of "draggle-tayles" were wearily toiling up Fleet Street, only to find that the Queen's courage and their leader's irresolution had wrecked their enterprise, a dusty courier clattered into Valladolid with the premature news that Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Bedford, and another English lord had started for Spain with the contract that was to make Philip king of England. His Highness was hunting at umbrageous Aranjuez, a hundred miles off, and the messenger, just alighting to kiss the hand of poor lame little Prince Carlos, went scouring over the tawny plains again, bearing his pregnant tidings.

The courting had all been done by the Emperor through clever Renard; and the Prince, dutiful {138} son as he was, bent to his father's will without even knowing the terms of the bargain by which he was to be bound for life. The conditions imposed by the patriotism of Mary and her Council were hard for the most powerful monarch on earth to brook for his son. Philip's power was so fenced round by limitations and safeguards that it was plain to see the English nobles meant his sceptre to be a shadowy one, and the sombre, sensitive pride of the Prince was wounded to the quick at the light esteem in which they seemed to hold him; but, as Sandoval says, "he, like a second Isaac, was ready to sacrifice himself to his father's will and the good of the Church." And he did so gracefully and with dignity. No sooner had the courier delivered his message at Aranjuez than Philip set off on his return to Valladolid with his gaudy escort of horsemen in their red and yellow doublets. In hot haste the old Castilian capital put on its holiday garb to celebrate the event; the great square, standing much as it stands to-day, was bravely adorned, and costly hangings covered all one side of it where the Prince sat to see the jousts, tourneys, cane-play, and fireworks, and where he sat, alas! the next time he saw Valladolid, on his return five years afterwards, to watch unmoved the hellish fireworks of the great _auto de fé_.

The wedding rejoicings had hardly begun when they were changed to mourning by the news of the death of Don Juan of Portugal, the husband of Philip's sister Juana; and the narrator, Muñoz, breaks off in the midst of his rapture over the splendour of Valladolid's joy to relate the pompous grandeur of its sorrow--how between the screen {139} and the altar of St. Paul's there were 3,000 candles of white and yellow wax, and how all the solemnity of previous exequies paled before these. In the meantime Philip had sent one of his stewards, Don Gutierre Lopede Padilla, to receive the English envoys at Laredo. After waiting there for a month with the Prince's guard to pay them due honour, he found that the news sent had been premature, and that the marriage treaty had not yet even been ratified, and was not, indeed, until Egmont's second visit to England in March. So Padilla found his way back again to Valladolid by the end of March, and they decided to take the matter in more leisurely fashion in future. But in a few weeks came news from the Emperor himself that the contract was ratified, and then the Marquis de las Navas was ordered to take the Prince's first present to his bride. We are told that the Marquis fitted himself out for his mission regardless of cost, and his splendour appears to have been equalled by the princely gifts of which he was the bearer, and the noble hospitality extended to him in England.[11] Philip's offering to Mary consisted of "a great table diamond, mounted as a rose in a superb gold setting, valued at 50,000 ducats; a collar or necklace of 18 brilliants, exquisitely worked and set with dainty grace, valued at 32,000 ducats; a great diamond with a fine large pearl pendant from it (this was Mary's favourite jewel, and may be seen on her breast in most portraits). They were (says narrative No. 2) the most lovely pair of gems ever seen in the world, and were worth 25,000 ducats. Then comes {140} a list of pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies of inestimable value, and other presents without number for the Queen and her ladies. Eighty fine horses and fifty hackneys were sent on to Corunna to await the Prince's coming, and all Castile and Aragon, not to speak of Leon, were alive with artificers of the gorgeous garb and trappings to fit out the proud nobles who were to follow their Prince, each, with true Spanish ostentation, bent upon outstripping the others in the richness and splendour of themselves and their train.[12] Muñoz, in narrative No. 2, gives a list of the clothes made for each of the principal grandees, which it would be tedious and unnecessary to repeat here.

The Prince, great as he was, was only first among his peers, and if he could be magnificent so could his train, and Alba and Medina-Celi, Egmont and Aguilar, Pescara and Feria vied with their master in their finery. Each great noble--and there were twenty of them--took his train of servants in new liveries, and the Prince had a Spanish guard of 100 gentlemen in red and yellow, 100 Germans in the same uniform, but with silk facings, "as their custom is to go bravely dressed," 100 archers on horseback, and 300 servants in the same gaudy colours of Aragon. All this splendid apparatus was a comparatively new thing for Spaniards at the time; the homely, unceremonious relations between sovereign and people had only been put aside for the pompous etiquette {141} of the house of Burgundy, on the coming of Philip's grandfather from Flanders with his Spanish bride to take up the sceptre dropped by the dead hand of Isabel the Catholic, and the gold of the Indies had since that time poured into Spain and spread a thirst for showy pomp even amongst the frank, honest, homely gentlemen who had formed a majority of the Spanish hidalgo class. The changed taste, however, was new enough still to attract the attention of the crowd who had not yet become accustomed to so much splendour.

All these elaborate preparations being completed, Philip, with nearly 1,000 horsemen, glittering and flashing in the pitiless Castilian sun, left Valladolid on the 14th of May--not for England yet, but far down on the Portuguese frontier, at Alcantara, to meet his widowed sister, who had been forced to come out of her bitter grief to govern her father's kingdom during Philip's absence. He accompanied her five days on her journey to Valladolid, and then turning aside to take a last leave of his mad grandmother, Juana la Loca, bent his course towards Benavente, on the high road to Santiago, arriving there on the 3rd of June, covered with dust of travel, but gracious, as he could be, to those who had entertained his boy Carlos, who had preceded him.

Next day there was a grand bull-fight in the plaza, which Philip and Carlos saw from Pero Hernandez's flower-decked house. The return of the Princes to Count Benavente's castle was not quite so dignified as it might have been, as one bull was so "devilish" that it refused to be killed, and held the plaza victoriously against all comers until the next morning, whereupon Philip and his son had to slip out {142} by Pero Hernandez's back door and reach the castle by a roundabout way. The day after there was a hunt and a tourney, and then after supper the Princes mounted on a high scaffold, richly dight, to see "a procession of beautiful and strange inventions." Torches blazed all round them, and each device was led by one of the neighbouring squires with twenty pikemen and drummers and fifers, each detachment in a separate livery. Elephants manufactured out of horses and pasteboard, castles with savages inside, a green tabernacle with a lovely maiden borne by savages, a model of a ship dressed with English and Spanish flags, and, strangest of all, a girl in a coffin complaining of Cupid, who came behind on horseback. When the device reached the middle of the plaza the god of love was suddenly hoisted on high by a rope round his middle, and let off fireworks, to the delectation of the crowd. As a relief to this foolery the great Lope de Rueda then represented "a sacred play with comic interludes," which, no doubt, was better worth seeing than the "conceits and fireworks" that pleased the narrator so much. The next day, after bidding good-bye to the son who was afterwards to hate him so bitterly, the Prince started in the cool of the summer night on his way to the sea.

At Astorga a splendid reception had been prepared for him, but he could not stay, and pushed on with all possible speed, news having reached him that the Earl of Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter were already awaiting him at Santiago. There he arrived on the vigil of St. John, the 23rd of June, and there as usual golden keys were offered by kneeling citizens; silks and satins, velvets and brocades {143} flaunted in the sun, and in the upper window of a house on the line of route sat the two English lords, their mantles before their faces, watching the progress of their future king to worship at the shrine of the Spanish patron saint, St. James. The next morning Philip sent a party of his highest nobles to bring Bedford and Fitzwalter to him, and "being advised of their coming, his Highness came out of his chamber into a great hall, strangely hung with rich tapestries, and on the lords half-kneeling and doffing their bonnets the Prince received them graciously, with his hat in his hand. The principal ambassador (_i.e._, Bedford), a grandee and a good Christian, produced the marriage contract, the conditions of which his Highness accepted before all present. As the contents were only known to the Prince and his Council, we were unable to learn them. The English nobles then kissed hands in turn, and as they went out one said to the other in his own tongue, 'Oh! God be praised for sending us so good a king as this.' The remark was made so quietly that it would not have been noticed, only that a Spanish gentleman who understood their language stood close to them and happened to hear it."

The envoys had some reason to be pleased with their Queen's future consort, for after accompanying him to the cathedral the next day Bedford received as a gift what is described as being one of the finest pieces of gold ever seen, of exquisite and elaborate workmanship, chased with grotesque figures, and standing a yard and a half high, of solid gold. The narrator (No. 2) says that 6,000 ducats' worth of gold was employed in the making of it, and the handiwork cost more than 1,000. The twenty {144} English gentlemen who accompanied the envoys all received splendid gifts, although their appearance was already sufficiently rich with their "thick gold chains and great copiousness of buttons," which last characteristic of English fashion at the time seems to have attracted most of the Spanish observers. Four days were spent in rest and rejoicing at Santiago, and then a three days' ride brought them to Corunna, where there were more rejoicings. Kneeling aldermen at the gate presented golden keys as usual; a marvellous canopy was held over the Prince's head; triumphal arches spanned the way; and the local poet had contrived to evolve the following couplet, which was held aloft by five nymphs--

"No basta fuerza ni maña Contra el principe de España,

which may be rendered--

"Force and cunning both in vain Strive against the Prince of Spain."

The narrator (No. 2) airs his historical knowledge in describing an allegorical group containing a figure of Hercules, whom he speaks of as having been "a King of Spain before Christ, and having built many great edifices in the country, such as the Pillars of Hercules at Cadiz and the tower at the entrance to the port of Corunna, where there is a marvellous mirror showing ships that are far off at sea."

With all pomp, and with a naked sword of justice borne before him by his master of the horse, the Prince was conducted to the shore to see the gallant {145} fleet riding at anchor awaiting him. Drawn up on the beach were 600 Guipuzcoan sea warriors armed with lances, and as the fleet and castle thundered out their salutations the townsfolk, we are told, feared their dwellings would all be shaken down, and "for an hour and a half neither heaven nor earth was visible." Thence the Prince went round by the castle to the little dock, where forty Biscay fisher boats were ready with their glistening cargoes of fine fish to cast at the feet of their beloved Philip. The English ambassadors begged as a favour that the new consort would make the voyage in one of the British ships that had brought them over, but this was not considered prudent by Philip's cautious councillors, and as a compromise the English envoys were allowed to choose from amongst all the Spanish ships the one that was to convey the Prince. Their choice fell upon a fine merchant vessel commanded by the bravest and best of those bold Biscay mariners who are the pride of Spain, Martin de Bertondona, and the next morning Philip and his Court went to inspect it. A splendid sight it must have been with its towering carved and gilded poop and forecastle. It was hung, we are told, from stem to stern with fine scarlet cloth, and aloft on every available spot were coloured silk pennons. The forecastle was hung with crimson brocade painted with golden flames. A royal standard, thirty yards long, of crimson damask, with the Prince's arms painted on it, hung from the mainmast, and a similar flag from the mizzenmast. The foremast had ten pointed silk flags painted with the royal arms, and there were thirty other similar flags on the stays and shrouds. Three hundred sailors in red uniforms {146} formed the crew, and we are assured that the effect of the ship was that of a lovely flower-garden, as well it might be, and the cost of the decorations was 10,000 ducats. The English ships were then inspected and admired, and the ship that had carried the Marquis de las Navas over to England with the jewels was visited, and its captain related how the good Queen was anxious for her consort's arrival, and how she had ordered 1,000 gentlemen to await him with as many horses, as she thought no horses would be brought from Spain. All next day is spent in hunting, and the favourite, Ruy Gomez, preceding his master on his return into the town, is saluted by the fleet instead of the Prince by mistake, much to the latter's amusement. The next day heralds announced that every one was to be examined by the Prince's alcalde before embarking, and that no woman was to go without her husband. Muñoz says that 12,000 soldiers were shipped in the hundred ships (some of which carried 300 bronze pieces) and thirty sloops that formed the fleet, but this seems to be an exaggeration, as narrative No. 6 gives 6,000 soldiers and as many sailors as going in the main squadron that convoyed Philip (consisting of about 100 sail); and Noailles, who would minimise it as much as possible, says 4,000. Don Luis de Carvajal remained behind with about thirty sail to take the troops that had not arrived (Noailles says 2,000) and bring up the rear.

On the 12th of July Philip and his Court embarked in a sumptuous galley of twenty-four oars, manned by sailors in scarlet and gold, with plumed hats of scarlet silk, and, amidst music, singing, and daring {147} gymnastic feats of the mariners, went on board Martin de Bertondona's ship the _Espiritu Santo_. The next day, Friday, at three in the afternoon they set sail, the dense crowd on shore crying to God to send the travellers a safe voyage, and in the same breath hurling defiance to the French. There was a slight swell and wind until next day at dinner, when the weather fell dead calm, "which looked as if it might last a month," but raised the spirits of those who were depressed by "marine vomitings." The next day a delightful fair breeze sprang up, and on a smooth sea the splendid fleet ran across the bay, sighting Ushant on Sunday. On Wednesday a Flemish fleet of eighteen galleons, which was cruising in the Channel, hove in sight, and convoyed them past the Needles with some ships of the English navy, and into Southampton Water, where on Thursday, the 19th of July, at four o'clock, the combined fleet anchored amid the royal salute from the English and Flemish fleets of thirty sail that were assembled to receive them. The English and Flemish sailors had not got on particularly well together during the time the two fleets had awaited the arrival of Philip. Renard had complained to the Emperor that the Flemish sailors were hustled and insulted whenever they set foot on shore, and Howard, the lord admiral, had mocked at their ships and called them cockle shells;[13] but I can find no contemporary authority for the extremely unlikely story of the English admiral having thrown a shot across the bows of the Prince's fleet to compel it to salute the English flag.

{148}

Philip, however, was determined to gain over the jealous hearts of his new subjects by his courtesy and graciousness. Renard's recommendations and the Emperor's instructions had been very definite on the point, and every account, Spanish, English, and Italian, with the sole exception of Baoardo's, quoted by Froude, agrees that the Prince's demeanour was kindly, courteous, and frank. Damula, the Venetian ambassador to the Emperor, writes to the Doge,[14] saying that on disembarking the Prince treated everybody with great graciousness and affability, without any pomp or royal ceremony, mixing with people as a comrade; and Cabrera, speaking of his arrival, says: "Some of the English were inclined to be sulky, but the King won them over with his prudence and affability, and with gifts and favours, together with his family courtesy." (Our narrative No. 6 specially mentions the Prince's _cortesia e gentilezsa di parlore._[15])

As soon as the anchors were down the English and Flemish admirals went on board the _Espiritu Santo_ to salute the Prince, and the Marquis de las Navas put off from Southampton with the six young {149} noblemen who were to be the new King's lords-in-waiting. The Prince dined and slept on board, and the next day there came off to him the Emperor's ambassador, the Marquis de las Navas, Figueroa ("the ancient ambassador with the long white beard"), Pescara, and the Earls of Arundel, Derby, Shrewsbury, and Pembroke (?). Noailles was probably wrong as regards the last-named nobleman, as the Spanish narratives agree that he arrived at Southampton from the Queen next day, with a splendid escort for the new sovereign. He was also wrong in asserting that the King was invested with the Garter on board his vessel, for it appears to have been given to him in the barge before he stepped on shore by Arundel, probably assisted by Sir John Williams--Lord Williams of Thame[16]--to whom one of our narratives says the Prince gave the wand of chamberlain, whilst the other narratives say the office was conferred on "the man who brought him the Garter." The future consort received these high personages on board the _Espiritu Santo_ cap in hand, and after presenting them to his principal courtiers went on board the splendid barge awaiting him, accompanied by the English nobles and by Alba, Feria, Ruy Gomez and four chamberlains, Olivares, Pedro de Cordoba, Gutierre Lopez de Padilla, Diego de Acevedo, Egmont, Horn, and Bergues. No sign was made to the rest of the fleet, and the mass of courtiers only obtained leave to land after the royal party had approached the shore. No soldier or man-at-arms, however, was {150} to land, on pain of death, for not only had Philip learnt from Renard the agony of distrust of the Spanish arms felt by the English people, but he had received news of his father's reverse in the Netherlands and urgent orders to send him all the troops and money he had or could obtain. The Spanish fleet were not even allowed to enter the port of Southampton, but after some delay, and great discontent of the Spaniards at what they considered such churlish treatment, were sent to Portsmouth to revictual for their voyage to Flanders.

After the presentation of the chain and badge of the Garter Philip stepped on English soil, and the first to greet him was Sir Anthony Browne, who announced in a Latin speech that the Queen had chosen him for her consort's master of the horse, by whom her Majesty had sent him the beautiful white charger housed in crimson velvet and gold that was champing the bit hard by. The Prince thanked his new grand equerry, but said he would walk to the house prepared for him; but Browne and the lords of the household told him this was unusual, and the former "took him up in his arms and put him on the saddle," and then kissing the stirrups walked bare-headed by the side of his master. All the English and Spanish courtiers preceded them, and amidst apparent rejoicing they slowly passed through the curious crowd to the Church of the Holy Rood. The Prince must have looked an impressive figure with his dapper, erect bearing, his yellow beard and close-cropped yellow head, dressed as he was in black velvet and silver, his massive gold chains and priceless gems glittering in his velvet bonnet and at his neck and wrists. {151} Browne was no unworthy pendant to his prince. He was dressed in a suit of black velvet entirely covered with gold embroidery and a surcoat of the same with long hanging sleeves.[17] When the Prince had returned thanks for his safe voyage he was conducted to the lodgings prepared for him, which we are told were beautifully adorned, particularly two rooms, a bedroom and presence chamber hung with gold-worked damask with the name of King Henry on it; but none of our narrators say anything about Baoardo's story of the dismay caused by the words _Fidei defensor_ on the hangings. All the English archers and the guard and porters about the Prince wore the flaming colours of Aragon, and the Spanish attendants and courtiers looked on with jealous rage at the attendance on him of English servants. The dinner and supper were private, but the meals were ostentatious, ceremonious, and too abundant for the Spanish taste. On Saturday, the next day, the same programme was gone through: to Mass in the same order as before, the Spanish courtiers being obliged to leave before the service was over, in order to banish the idea that they were in official attendance on the Prince, who came out surrounded by Englishmen only. It rained so hard that his Highness, who had no hat or cape, had to borrow them of an Englishman near him, although the church was just opposite his lodging.

Southampton is described in glowing terms. It is said to be a beautiful port with 300 houses, which were filled to their utmost capacity by the courtiers {152} and the 400 Spanish servants who landed the day after the Prince. The Queen at Winchester had learnt post-haste of the landing of her future husband, and an active interchange of messengers were soon scouring backwards and forwards through the pitiless rain of the next three days. Early on Saturday morning the Earl of Pembroke arrived from the Queen with an escort for the Prince of 200 gentlemen dressed in black velvet with gold chains and medals, and 300 others in scarlet cloth with velvet facings, all splendidly mounted. Then Egmont posts off to kiss the Queen's hand, and meets Gardiner coming to Philip with a costly diamond ring from her Majesty. The next day twelve beautiful hackneys come from the bride to her affianced husband, and after that the well-beloved Ruy Gomez is dispatched with a ring to thank her, and this interchange of courtesy and compliment is thus kept up until all things are arranged for the journey to Winchester.

Before Philip left Southampton, however, better news came from Flanders. The French had not followed up their victory at Marienberg, and the Imperialists could breathe again. The 600 jennets that came from Spain were therefore disembarked and remained in England, as well as Philip's own horses, "which," says Pedro Enriquez (No. 3), "the master of the horse took to his own stable; not a bad beginning to try and keep them altogether in the long run." On Sunday, the day before he left Southampton, Philip dined in public for the only time there. He was served with great ceremony by the English, but Alba, although he took no wand of office in his hand, insisted on handing his master the napkin, and the Spanish courtiers looked {153} on with ill-disguised contempt at what they considered the clumsy service of their successors. The courtier who wrote narrative No. 3 bursts out at this point with his complaint: "My lady Doña Maria de Mendoza was quite right when she said we should be no more good. We are all quite vagabonds now and of no use to any one. We had far better go and serve the Emperor in the war. They make us pay twenty times the value of everything we buy." The next morning in the pouring rain the royal cavalcade set out for Winchester, 3,000 strong. The nobles and gentry had been flocking in for days with their retainers in new liveries; Pembroke's escort, with 200 halberdiers of the guard and as many light-horse archers, dressed much as are the beefeaters of to-day, guarded the Prince's person, the Spanish guard, to their chagrin, being still on board the ships. On the road 600 more gentlemen, dressed in black velvet with gold chains, met his Highness, and when nearing Winchester six of the Queen's pages, beautifully dressed in crimson brocade with gold sashes, with as many superb steeds, were encountered, who told his Highness the Queen had sent the horses to him as a present. But not a word anywhere of Baoardo's sensational story, embellished by Froude, of the breathless messenger from the Queen, the terror-stricken Prince, and the gloomy resolve to consummate his sacrifice even if he got wet in doing it.

Philip was surrounded by the English nobles Winchester, Arundel, Derby, Worcester, Bedford, Rutland, Pembroke, Surrey, Clinton, Cobham, Willoughby, Darcy, Maltravers, Talbot, Strange, Fitzwalter, and North, and by about fifteen Spanish {154} grandees, whose names will have less interest for English readers. He was dressed, when he started, in a black velvet surcoat adorned with diamonds, leather boots, and trunks and doublet of white satin embroidered with gold; but this delicate finery had to be covered by a red felt cloak to protect it from the rain. Notwithstanding this it was too wet for him to enter Winchester without a change, so he stayed at a "hospital that had been a monastery one mile from the city," and there donned a black velvet surcoat covered with gold bugles and a suit of white velvet trimmed in the same way, and thus he entered, passing the usual red-clothed kneeling aldermen with gold keys on cushions, and then to the grand cathedral, which impressed the Spaniards with wonder, and above all to find that "Mass was as solemnly sung there as at Toledo."

A little crowd of mitred bishops stood at the great west door, crosses raised and censers swinging, and in solemn procession to the high altar, under a velvet canopy, they led the man whom they looked upon as God's chosen instrument to permanently restore their faith in England. Then, after admiring the cathedral, Philip and his Court went to the dean's house, which had been prepared for his reception, in order to allay the maiden scruples of the Queen with regard to his sleeping under the same roof with her at the bishop's palace before the solemnisation of the marriage. After Philip had supped, and presumably was thinking more of going to bed than anything else, the Lord Chamberlain[18] and the Lord Steward[19] came to him, it being ten o'clock at night, {155} and said the Queen was waiting for him in her closet, and wished him to visit her secretly with very few followers. He at once put on another gorgeous suit, consisting of a French surcoat embroidered in silver and gold, and a doublet and trunks of white kid embroidered in gold, "and very gallant he looked," says Muñoz's informant (No. 2). The party traversed a narrow lane between the two gardens, and on reaching a door in the wall the Lord Steward told the Prince he could take with him such courtiers as he chose. Philip did not seem disposed to run any risks, and construed the invitation in a liberal spirit, taking into the garden Alba, Medina-Celi, Pescara, Feria, Aguilar, Chinchon, Horn, Egmont, Lopez-Acevedo, Mendoza, Carillo, and others. They found themselves in a beautiful garden with rippling fountains and arbours, which reminded them, they say, of the books of chivalry. Indeed, nothing is more curious than the grave seriousness with which all the Spanish narrators refer to England as the land of Amadis and of Arthur and his knights, and their attempts to identify localities and characteristics of England with the descriptions they have read of the land of romance, which they firmly believe to be England and not Brittany.

The Prince and his party entered by a little back door, and ascended a narrow, winding staircase to the Queen's closet. She was in a "long narrow room or corridor where they divert themselves," surrounded by four or five aged nobles and as many old ladies, the Bishop of Winchester being also with her, and the whole party, we are told, was marvellously richly dressed, the Queen herself wearing a {156} black velvet gown cut high in the English style without any trimming, a petticoat of frosted silver, a wimple of black velvet trimmed with gold, and a girdle and collar of wonderful gems. She was walking up and down when the Prince entered, and as soon as she saw him went quickly towards him and kissed her hand before taking his. In return he kissed her on the mouth "in the English fashion," and she led him by the hand to a chair placed by the side of her own under a canopy. The Queen spoke in French and her future husband in Spanish, and they thus made themselves well understood. Whilst they were in animated converse the Lord Admiral (Lord William Howard), "who is a great talker and very jocose," risked some rather highly flavoured jokes, which the free manners of the time apparently permitted. The two lovers sat under their brocade canopy chatting for a long time; but this probably seemed somewhat slow to the bridegroom, who, after asking the Queen to give her hand for all his Spaniards to kiss, as they loved her well, begged to be allowed to see her ladies, who were in another room. The Queen went with him, and as the ladies approached two by two he kissed them all "in his way" with his plumed cap in his hand, "so as not to break the custom of the country, which is a very good one." Whether the Queen thought it good on this occasion is not clear; but when her lover wanted to leave directly the extensive osculation was over she would not let him go, but carried him off for another long talk with her. "No wonder," says the narrator (No. 2), "she is so glad to get him and to see what a gallant swain he is." When he had to leave {157} her she playfully taught him to say "Good-night," and he made this the excuse for going to the ladies again to say it to them; but when he reached them he had forgotten the outlandish words, and had to come back to the Queen to ask her, "whereat she was much pleased," but probably less so when he found it necessary to go back once more to the ladies to salute them with "God ni hit," Car, the Marquis of Pescara's servant (narrator No. 6), in describing this interview says that the Queen's governess told the Prince she thanked God for letting her live to see the day, but asked his pardon for not having reared a more beautiful bride for him. According to one of the Italian variants of the same narrative the Queen is still less complimentary to herself, and in reply to Philip's thanks to her after the marriage says it is she who is grateful to him for taking an old and ugly wife[20] (_brutta e vecchia_). The courtier's narrative (No. 4) speaks of the Queen in somewhat less unfavourable terms and says: "Although she is not at all handsome, being of short stature and rather thin than fat, she has a very clear red and white complexion. She has no eyebrows, is a perfect saint, but dresses very badly."

This narrator is very critical about the ladies' dresses and is quite shocked at some of the English fashions. He says:--

"They wear farthingales of coloured cloth without silk; the gowns they wear over them are of {158} damask, satin, or velvet of various colours, but very badly made. Some of them have velvet shoes slashed like men's, and some wear leather. Their stockings are black, and they show their legs even up to the knees, at least when they are travelling, as their skirts are so short. They really look quite indelicate when they are seated or riding. They are not at all handsome, nor do they dance gracefully, as all their dancing only consists of ambling and trotting. Not a single Spanish gentleman is in love with any of them[21] ... and they are not women for whom the Spaniards need put themselves out of the way in entertaining or spending money on them, which is a good thing for the Spaniards."

When the same narrator reaches London he speaks with somewhat more experience, but his opinion is not much modified. He says, when speaking of the vast numbers of ladies that served the Queen:--

"Those I have seen in the palace have not struck me as being handsome; indeed, they are downright ugly. I do not know how this is, because outside I have seen some very beautiful and attractive women. In this country women do not often wear clogs and wraps, as they do in Spain, but go about the city and even travel in their bodices. Some of them walk in London with veils and masks before their faces, which makes them look like nuns, who do not wish to be known. Women here wear their skirts {159} very short, and their black stockings are trim and tightly gartered; the shoes are neat, but are slashed like men's, which does not look well to Spanish eyes."

Philip, we are told, slept late next morning, and as soon as he was up the Queen's tailor brought him two superb dresses, one made of very rich brocade profusely embroidered with gold bugles and pearls, with splendid diamonds for buttons, and the other of crimson brocade. His Highness went to Mass in a purple velvet surcoat with silver fringe and white satin doublet, and then after his private dinner went in great state to see the Queen. She received him in the great hall of the palace, with the courtiers ranged on a raised platform on each side. The great officers of state preceded her, and she was followed by fifty ladies splendidly dressed in purple velvet, "but none of them pretty," and having met her consort in the middle of the hall she led him to the daïs, where he stood in sweet converse with her for some time. But fickle Philip "went, as usual, to talk to the ladies, and we, about twelve of us, kissed the Queen's hand." "We" also seem to have been talking to the ladies before that, but do not appear to have got on very well, as "we could hardly understand each other." Then Philip went to Vespers and the Queen to her chapel, and after supper they met again, and Figueroa privately read the Emperor's abdication, which made Philip king of Naples, and all the ambassadors, except Noailles, paid homage to the new sovereign, who received them bareheaded.[22]

{160}

The wedding ceremony next day is fully described by the English authorities already mentioned, and the narratives before us, although extremely minute in detail, do not vary much from the accepted accounts. The ancient cathedral was all aflame with splendid colour, and the world has rarely seen so gorgeous and so rich a company as was there assembled. All the pomp that regal expenditure could buy in an age of ostentation was there. All the impressive solemnity that the Roman Church could give to its ceremonies was lavished upon this. The Queen, we are told, blazed with jewels to such an extent that the eye was blinded as it looked upon her; her dress was of black velvet flashing with gems, and a splendid mantle of cloth of gold fell from her shoulders; but through the Mass that followed the marriage service she never took her eyes off the crucifix upon which they were devoutly fixed. Her fifty ladies were dressed in cloth of gold and silver, and "looked more like celestial angels than mortal creatures." Philip matched his bride in splendour. He too wore a mantle of cloth of gold embroidered with precious stones, and the rest of his dress was the white satin suit the Queen had sent him the day before, and he too was a blaze of jewels. The Earl of Derby, who preceded the Queen with a sword of state, appears to have greatly impressed the imaginations of the Spaniards, as several references are made to his power and splendour. He is spoken of as the "king of Mongara (Man), who wears a leaden crown," and it is easy to see that much of the interest in him is caused by the supposed identification of his kingdom with scenes of the romances of chivalry.

{161}

After the ceremony the King and the Queen walked through an immense crowd to the palace side by side, and entered the great hall,[23] which the narrator (No. 2) calls the "hall of Poncia," for the wedding banquet. A high table, eight yards long, was placed on a daïs, and at it sat the King and Queen, the latter being on the right and in a finer chair than her husband. Gardiner sat at the end of the high table, and on the floor were four other tables, where the nobles, to the number of 158, partook of the feast. Before the King and Queen stood Lords Pembroke and Strange with the sword and staff of state, and all the courtly ceremony of saluting the dishes as they are brought in, and doffing bonnets to the throne, even in the absence of the Queen, is set forth with admiring iteration by the form-loving Spaniards. Their jealous eyes, too, do not fail to notice that the Queen takes precedence in everything. Not only has she the best chair, but she eats from gold plate, whilst her consort eats from silver. This, they say, is no doubt because he is not yet a crowned king, and it will be altered later. All the tables are served with silver, except some large dishes; and great sideboards of plate stand at each end of the hall. The buffet behind the high table had over a hundred great pieces of gold and silver plate, with a "great gilt clock half as high as a man," and a fountain of precious marble with a gold rim. There were four services of meat and fish, each service consisting of thirty dishes,[24] {162} and minstrels played during the feast, whilst the solid splendour and pompous ceremony appear to have impressed all the Spaniards with wonder not unmixed with envy. It is, indeed, here that the jealousy of the courtier narrator (Nos. 3, 4, and 5) first bursts out. The only Spaniard who was allowed to serve the King was Don Iñigo de Mendoza, son of the Duke of Infantado, who was cup-bearer, and four yeomen of the mouth, who helped; but "as for any of the Prince's own stewards doing anything, such a thing was never thought of, and not one of us took a wand in our hands, nor does it seem likely we ever shall, neither the controller nor any one else, and they had better turn us all out as vagabonds." The Earl of Arundel presented the ewer with water for the King's hands, and the Marquis of Winchester the napkin. The ewer, we are {163} told (narrative No. 6), contained "not water, but white wine, as is the custom here."

Then, after the Queen had pledged all her guests in a cup of wine, and a herald had proclaimed the titles of Philip as King of England, France, Naples, and Jerusalem, Prince of Spain, and Count of Flanders, the royal party retired to another chamber, with the English and Spanish nobles, where the time passed in pleasant converse, the Spaniards talking with the English ladies, "although we had great trouble to make out their meaning, except of those who spoke Latin, so we have all resolved not to give them any presents of gloves until we can understand them. The gentlemen who speak the language are mostly very glad to find that the Spaniards cannot do so."

When all was ready the ball began, but as the English ladies only danced in their own fashion and the Spanish courtiers in theirs, the latter were rather left out in the cold, until the King and Queen danced a measure together in the German style, which was known to both. After dancing until nightfall, supper was served with the same ceremony as dinner, and then more talk and gallant compliment, and so to bed.

The next day the King only was visible, and dined alone in public, and on the succeeding day the same; but on the third day (Saturday) the Queen heard Mass in her private pew and received the Duchess of Alba, who had arrived from Southampton after the marriage. The reception of this proud dame was ceremonious enough for anything; but from the bitter complaints of her kinsman, who probably wrote three of the letters before us, it is {164} clear that she, in common with the rest of the Spanish nobles, was deeply dissatisfied with her position in this country, so different from what they expected. The Duchess was conducted to the palace by the Earls of Kildare and Pembroke and all the Court, and when she entered the presence the Queen came almost to the door to meet her. The Duchess knelt, and the Queen, failing to raise her, courtesied almost as low and kissed her on the mouth, "which she usually does only to certain ladies of her own family." She led the Duchess to the daïs and seated herself on the floor, inviting her guest to do likewise, but the latter begged her Majesty to sit on the chair before she (the Duchess) would sit on the floor. The Queen refused to do so, and sent for two stools, upon one of which she sat, whereupon the Duchess, instead of accepting the other, sat beside it on the floor. The Queen then left her stool and took her place on the floor also, and finally, after much friendly wrangling, both ladies settled on their respective stools side by side. The Queen understood Spanish, but spoke in French, and the Marquis de las Navas interpreted to the Duchess, who only understood Spanish. When the Earl of Derby was presented to the Duchess, he greatly shocked her by offering to kiss her on the mouth, according to the universal English fashion, and she drew back to avoid the salute, but not quite in time, although she assured the Spaniards that the earl had only managed to kiss her cheek.

But the chagrin of the proud, dissatisfied Spaniards was growing deeper as they saw their hopes of domination in England disappear. The {165} men-at-arms and bodyguard, cooped up in their ships at Portsmouth and Southampton, forbidden to land under pain of death, were becoming restive; the courtiers and their followers, scoffed at and insulted in the streets, and waylaid and robbed if they ventured into the country, were forced to put up with everything silently, by order of the King; but they could relieve their minds by writing to their friends in Spain an account of their sorrows. Writing from Winchester, narrator No. 2 says:--

"After all this weary voyage, these people wish to subject us to a certain extent to their laws, because it is a new thing for them to have Spaniards in their country, and they want to feel safe. The Spaniards here are not comfortable, nor are they so well off as in Castile. Some even say they would rather be in the worst stubble-field in the kingdom of Toledo than in the groves of Amadis."

The courtier who wrote No. 3 is even more emphatic. He says:--

"Great rogues infest the roads and have robbed some of our people, amongst others the chamberlain of Don Juan de Pacheco, from whom they took 400 crowns and all his plate and jewelry. Not a trace has been found of them, nor of the four or five boxes missing from the King's lodgings, although the Council is sending out on all sides. The friars have had to be lodged in the college for safety and bitterly repent having come."

But dissatisfied as the Spaniards were, there was still sufficient novelty in their surroundings during their stay at Winchester in the last days of July to keep them amused. The wonderful round table of King Arthur in the castle, where the twelve peers {166} are still enchanted, and their names written round in the places where they sat, claims the wondering attention of the visitors. The curious beer made with barley and a herb, instead of wheat, as in Flanders, is discussed; and the strange habit the ladies, and even some gentlemen, have of putting sugar in their wine, and the never-ending dancing going on amongst the ladies of the palace excite remark. On the last day of July most of the English lords and squires had gone home for the present; the Spaniards were distributed about Winchester and Southampton; the admiral of Spain was under orders to take a part of the fleet back again; and the bulk of the Spanish troops were only awaiting a fair wind to take them to Flanders, and the King and Queen, with a small suite, set out for Basing, the Lord Treasurer's[25] house, fifteen miles off. Most of the accounts before us end at this point but the two interesting letters to which I have given the numbers 4 and 5, written respectively from Richmond and London, show clearly the gradual exacerbation of the dislike between the Spanish and English as time went on, in spite of the diplomatic attempts to connect Philip's name at every opportunity with acts of clemency and moderation.

On the 19th of August, which is the date of the letter from Richmond, the royal honeymoon seems yet not entirely to have waned:--

"Their Majesties are the happiest couple in the world, and are more in love with each other than I can say here. He never leaves her, and on the {167} road is always by her side, lifting her into the saddle and helping her to dismount. He dines with her publicly sometimes, and they go to Mass together on feast days."

This letter from Richmond gives the following curious account of the lavish scale on which the royal establishment was maintained:--

"All the rejoicings here consist only of eating and drinking, as they understand nothing else. The Queen spends 300,000 ducats (a year?) in food, and all the thirteen councillors and the Court favourites live in the palace, besides the lord steward, the lord chamberlain, the chancellor, and our people, with their servants. The ladies also have private rooms in the palace, with all their servants, and the Queen's guard of 200 men are also lodged there. Each of the lords has a separate cook in the Queen's kitchens, and as there are eighteen different kitchens such is the hurly burly that they are a perfect hell. Although the palaces are so large that the smallest of the four we have seen is infinitely larger, and certainly better, than the Alcazar of Madrid, they are still hardly large enough to hold the people who live in them. The ordinary (daily?) consumption of the palace is 100 sheep (which are very large and fat), twelve large oxen, eighteen calves, besides game, poultry, venison, wild boar, and a great number of rabbits. Of beer there is no end, and they drink as much as would fill the river at Valladolid."

The writer is very indignant at the scant courtesy paid to his great kinsfolk the Albas, and at the fact that they have had to put up with lodgings that are considered below their dignity even in the villages. {168} "It is not enough," he says, "to deprive them of their office, but they must needs give them bad quarters as well.... These English are the most ungrateful people in the world, and hate the Spaniards worse than the devil, as they readily show, for they rob us in the town itself, and not a soul dares to venture two miles on the road without being robbed. There is no justice for us. We are ordered by the King to avoid dispute and put up with everything whilst we are here, enduring all their attacks in silence. They therefore despise us and treat us badly. We have complained to Bibriesca and the ambassador, but they say it is for his Majesty's sake that we must bear everything patiently."

It was no wonder that under such circumstances these proud hidalgos begged to be allowed to join the Emperor in Flanders for the war. Medina-Celi was the first to revolt at his treatment, and no sooner had he obtained leave to go than eighty other gentlemen followed him with their suites, and so by the middle of August the only Spanish nobles in attendance on Philip were Alba, Feria, Olivares, Pedro de Cordoba, Diego de Cordoba, and three gentlemen, amongst whom was Pedro Enriquez, the supposed author of the letters. The insults upon the Spaniards personally were bad enough; but what was more galling even was the disappointment they felt at the political effect of the match. Instead of a submissive people, ready to bow the neck at once to the new king and his followers, they found a country where even the native sovereign's power was strictly circumscribed, and where the foreigner's only hope of domination was by force of arms; and {169} this they saw in the present case was impossible. Enriquez, if he be the author, says: "The marriage will indeed have been a failure if the Queen have no children. They told us in Castile that if his Highness became king of England we should be masters of France; but quite the contrary has turned out to be the fact, for the French are stronger than ever and are doing as they like in Flanders.... Kings here have as little power as if they were vassals, and the people who really govern are the councillors; they are not only lords of the land, but lords of the kings as well. They are all peers, some of them raised up by the Church revenues they have taken and others by their patrimonial estates, and they are feared much more than the sovereign. They publicly say they will not let the King go until they and the Queen think fit, as this country is quite big enough for any one king."

Great preparations were made for the entrance of the Queen and her consort into London. The signs of vengeance had been cleared away, and the city was as bright and gay as paint and gilding could make it. The "galluses," from which dangled the fifty dead bodies of the London trainbandsmen who had deserted to Wyatt at Rochester Bridge, were cleared away from the doors of the houses in which their families lived, and the grinning skulls of the higher offenders were taken from the gates and from London Bridge; but London, for all its seeming welcome and for all its real loyalty to the Queen herself, was more deeply resentful of the Spanish intrusion than any city in the realm, and the few Spaniards who still remained with Philip repaid with interest the detestation of the Londoners {170} towards them. "We enter London (narrative No. 4) on Saturday next, but, considering their treatment of the Spaniards already there, we ought to stay away. Not only will they give them no lodgings,[26] but they affront them on every opportunity, as if they were barbarians, maltreating them and robbing them in the taverns to their hearts' content. The friars brought by his Majesty had better not have come, for these English are so godless and treat them so vilely that they dare not appear in the streets."

Only a few days before this letter was written from Richmond (August 19th) two Spanish noblemen of the highest rank, Don Pedro and Don Antonio de Cordoba, ventured to walk in the streets of London in their habits as knights of Santiago, with the great crimson cross embroidered on their breasts, as they are worn in Spain to this day, and this attracting the derisive attention of the irrepressible London street boy of the period, the two gentlemen were soon surrounded by a hooting crowd, who wanted to know what they meant by wearing so outlandish an ornament, and tried to strip the offending coats from their backs. The affair nearly ended in bloodshed, and the Spaniards had to fly for their lives. The very few Spanish ladies who came with Philip were as resentful as their spouses, and we are told that "Donna Hieronima de Navarra and Donna Francisca de Cordoba have decided not to wait upon the Queen, as there is no one to speak to them at Court, these English ladies being so badly behaved; and the Duchess of Alba will not go to Court again, as she had been so discourteously treated."

{171}

With all this grumbling, however, the country itself extorted the admiration of the visitors; the books of chivalry, we are told, have only stated half the truth. The palaces, rich and splendid with the unhallowed spoils of the monasteries; the flowery vales, gushing fountains, enchanted woods, and lovely houses far exceed even the descriptions in Amadis; but there are "few Orianas and many Mavilias amongst the ladies," and the romancers have said nothing about the strange, uncouth beings who inhabit the enchanting land. "Who ever saw elsewhere a woman on horseback alone, and even riding their steeds well, and as much at home on their backs as if they were experienced horsemen?" And after confessing the beauty of the country itself, the narrator concludes that the disadvantages of it outweigh the advantages, and wishes to God that he had never seen the place or the sea that led to it. And things got worse as time went on. The Londoners themselves were in an exaggerated panic, that explains their hard treatment of their guests. The author of the "Chronicle of Queen Mary," who lived in the Tower of London, and faithfully set down from day to day the news he heard, reflects the terror inspired by the presence of Philip's suite in the capital. We have seen that at the utmost the number of Spaniards of all ranks who landed from the fleet did not exceed 500, of whom four-fifths had left for Flanders and Spain before the King entered London, and yet the diarist, writing about this time, says, "At this tyme ther was so many Spanyerdes in London that a man shoulde haue mett in the stretes for one Inglisheman above iiij Spanyerdes to the great discomfort of the {172} Inglishe nation.... The halles taken up for Spanyerdes.' And, again, as showing how complete was the panic, fomented, no doubt, by Noailles and the Protestants, there is an entry in the "Chronicle of Queen Mary" of September 8th, as follows: "A talke of XII. thowsand Spanyerdes coming more into this realm, they said the fetch the crowne." It is not surprising, with such a feeling as this current in the city, that the courtier's next letter, written from London on October 2nd, should be more despondent than ever. They were all ill and home-sick; some had almost died, and the country did not agree with them.

"God save us and give us health, and bring us safely home again. The country is a good one, but the people are surely the worst in the world. I verily believe if it were not for the constant prayers and processions for us in Spain we should all have been murdered long ago. There are slashings and quarrels every day between Englishmen and Spaniards, and only just now there was a fight in the palace itself, where several were killed on both sides. Three Englishmen and a Spaniard were hanged for brawling last week. Every day there is some trouble ... God help us, for these barbarous, heretical people make no account of soul and conscience; disobey God, disregard the saints, and think nothing of the Pope, who they say is only a man like themselves, and can have no direct dominion over them. The only Pope they recognise is their sovereign."

The futility of the marriage, from a national point of view, rankled in the breasts of the disappointed courtiers as much as did their personal {173} discomfort. They felt that the trouble they had undergone, and the humble pie they had eaten, had added nothing to the power of their country or their sovereign, and their prevailing idea was how soonest and best to wash their hands of an ungrateful and profitless business in which all their sacrifices had been in vain.

"We Spaniards," says the narrator, "move about amongst all these Englishmen like so many fools, for they are such barbarians that they cannot understand us, nor we them. They will not crown the King nor recognise him as their sovereign, and say that he only came to help govern the kingdom and beget children, and can go back to Spain as soon as the Queen has a son. Pray God it may be soon, for he (Philip) will be glad enough, I am sure, and our joy will be boundless to be away from a land peopled by such barbarous folk. The King has forgiven the Queen 2,250,000 ducats she owed him, and has distributed 30,000 ducats a year in pensions to these lords of the Council, to keep them in a good humour. All this money is taken out of Spain. A pretty penny this voyage and marriage have cost us, and yet these people are of no use to us after all."

Bitter disappointment is the note struck all through. The English lords who had been so heavily bribed were ready enough to take all they could get; but they were as patriotic as they were greedy, and did not sell their country's interests for their pensions. Renard for once had made a mistake. He was ready to assent to any conditions the English liked to propose on paper, trusting to the personal influence of Philip on his queen after the marriage {174} was effected. But he forgot that the Queen herself was a mere puppet in the hands of her nobles, as the narrator I have quoted soon discovered, and, whatever ascendency the young bridegroom might obtain over his half-Spanish bride; her councillors, from the stern Gardiner downwards, were Englishmen before everything, to whom the over-weening power of the Emperor had been held up as a terror since their childhood. And so the whole splendid plot failed, and the magnificent nuptials had hardly been forgotten before Philip, recognising that his sacrifices had been in vain, and that he could never rule in England, made the best of an unfortunate speculation, and with all gravity, courtesy, and dignity left Mary to die of a broken heart, alone, disappointed, and forsaken.

[1] _The English Historical Review_, April, 1892.

[2] This curious and rare tract was reprinted by the Camden Society, 1849, and is the groundwork of Foxe's and Hollingshed's accounts of the events related therein.

[3] Edward Underhyll was one of the gentlemen pensioners, and his quaint narrative of the accession of Mary and the subsequent events, now amongst the Harleian manuscripts, was largely used by Strype and others.

[4] Ambassades de Noailles. Leyden, 1763.

[5] To these may be added the slight but interesting narrative existing in manuscript at Lotivain, and printed by Tytler in his "Edward VI and Mary," and the letters of the Venetian ambassador in Flanders to the Doge and Senate, for which see Calendar of State Papers (Venetian) of the date in question.

[6] He was equally at sea at the beginning of Mary's reign, when he vigorously aided Northumberland's conspiracy to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, and repeatedly told his master that Mary's cause was an absolutely hopeless one. On the ignominious collapse of Dudley, Noailles excused his own want of prescience by saying that nothing but a direct miracle from heaven could have brought about such a change.

[7] I am of course aware that the ambassador had previously sent his brother François de Noailles to request the Queen to stand godmother to his newly born son, but François only arrived at Winchester from London on the day the Queen received news of the arrival of the Prince off the Isle of Wight, which could not have been earlier than the 19th, and was back in London again in time for the child to be christened, with the Countess of Surrey as the Queen's proxy, on the 22nd, which would certainly leave him no time to go to Southampton to witness the landing. See "Ambassudes de Noailles," iii. 282.

[8] Mr. Prescott is the only historian writing in the English language who refers to Spanish accounts at all, and his reference is confined to a single mention of Cabrera's bald and stolid history and one or two quotations from Sepulveda, who appears to have derived what little information he gives from one of the narratives now before me. Simon Renard's letters to the Emperor in the Granvelle papers are naturally also referred to by most historians of the period in question, but, important as they are from many points of view, they only give a purely official and diplomatic account, and are Flemish and imperial rather than Spanish and personal in their interest.

[9] Cabrera, "Relaciones," and Nicolas Antonio, "Biblioteca Nova."

[10] "Chronicle of King Henry VIII. of England." London: Bell and Sons. 1889.

[11] See letter from Lord Edmund Dudley to the Council, quoted in Tytler, "Edward VI. and Mary."

[12] This was in despite of Renard's recommendation to Philip: "Seulement sera requis que les Espaignolez qui suyvront vostre Alteze comportent les façons de faire des Angloys et soient modestes, confians que vostre Alteze les aicarassera par son humanité costumiere."

[13] Renard to the Emperor, quoted in Tytler, "Edward VI. and Mary."

[14] July, Calendar of State Papers, Venetian.

[15] Soriano, the Venetian ambassador in Madrid, says that the gentle courtesy he adopted in England was continued after his return to Spain, and that, whilst maintaining his natural gravity and dignity, his kindness and graciousness were remarkable to all persons. Michaeli, the Venetian ambassador in London, who had sided with Noailles in his opposition to the match, is emphatic in his testimony of Philip's affability whilst in England, and says that his conduct towards his wife was enough to make any woman love him, "for in truth no one else in the world could have been a better or more loving husband." These and many other similar contemporary assurances prove that Philip acted all through the business like an honest, high-minded gentleman.

[16] He died in 1559, and a magnificent alabaster monument, with the recumbent figures of himself and his wife, exists in fine preservation in the chancel of Thame church, of which he was a liberal benefactor.

[17] Probably the dress in which he is represented in the magnificent painting of him belonging to the Marquis of Exeter at Burghley (No. 236, Tudor Exhibition).

[18] Sir John Gage.

[19] The Earl of Arundel.

[20] In the narrative signed by Car (British Museum) the Queen is described in this interview as "chatting gaily, and although she is a little elderly she displays the grace befitting a queen."

[21] Don Pedro Enriquez was wrong here. One of the greatest of the Spanish nobles, Count de Feria, had fallen madly in love with Jane Dormer, one of the Queen's maids of honour, and soon afterwards privately married her.

[22] Baoardo, quoted by Mr. Froude, says "he raised his hat to nobody," but these narratives often mention his being uncovered.

[23] Narrator No. 6 says, "The hall, which is beautifully hung with cloth of gold and silk, measures forty of my paces long and twenty wide."

[24] Underhyll (Harleian Manuscript, 425, f. 97) gives a very quaint account of his share in this banquet. "On the maryage daye the kynge and queue dyned in the halle in the bushop's palice sittynge under the cloth of estate and none eles att that table. The nobillitie satte att the syde tables. Wee (_i.e._, the gentlemen pensioners) weare the cheffe sarueters to cary the meate and the yearle of Sussex ower captayne was the shewer. The seconde course att the maryage off a kynge is gevyne unto the bearers; I meane the meate butt nott the dishes for they were off golde. It was my chaunce to carye a greate pastie of a redde dere in a great charger uery delicately baked; which for the weyght thereoff dyuers refused; the wyche pastie I sentt unto London to my wyffe and her brother who cherede therewith many off ther trends. I wyll not take uppon me to wryte the maner of the maryage, off the feaste nor of the daunssyngs of the Spanyards thatt day who weare greatly owte off countenaunce specyally King Phelip dauncynge when they dide see me lorde Braye, Mr. Carowe and others so farre excede them; but wyll leve it unto the learned as it behovithe hym to be thatt shall wryte a story off so greate a tryoumffe." The Louvian Chronicle (Tytler) says:--"The dinner lasted till six in the evening, after which there was store of music, and before nine all had retired."

[25] This was the Marquis of Winchester, not, as Señor Gayangos supposes, Sir Edward Peckham, who was Treasurer of the Mint.

[26] The Spaniards had to be quartered in the halls of the City guilds.

{175}

_THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPANISH ARMADA._

{177}

_THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPANISH ARMADA._

Perhaps no character in history has been more misjudged and misrepresented than Philip II. For three centuries it has pleased English writers particularly, to portray him as a murderous ogre, grimly and silently plotting the enslavement of England for thirty years before the great catastrophe which reduced his vast empire to the rank of a harmless second-rate power. As a matter of fact he was a laborious, narrow-minded, morbidly conscientious man, patient, distrustful, and timid; a sincere lover of peace and a nater of all sorts of innovations. He was born to a position for which he was unfitted, and was forced by circumstances stronger than himself to embark upon gigantic warlike enterprises which he disliked and deplored.

For ages it had been considered vital in the interests both of England and Spain that a close alliance should exist between the two countries, in order to counterbalance the immemorial connection between Scotland and France; and that the Flemish dominions of the house of Burgundy should under no circumstances be allowed to fall under the sway {178} of the French. It is easy to understand that with France paramount over the North Sea ports and in Scotland, England would never have been safe for a moment; whilst the principal continental seat of English foreign trade would have been at the mercy of England's secular foe. At the same time all central Europe would have been cut off from its Atlantic seaboard, whilst the principal maritime powers, Spain and Portugal, would have been excluded from all ports north of Biscay, except on the sufferance of their jealous rival. This was the tradition to which Philip had been born; inheriting as he did the dominions both of Spain and the house of Burgundy, and almost at any cost he was forced, as his forefathers had been, to cling to the connection between his country and England. Henry VIII. had known full well that he might strain the cord very tightly without breaking it when he flew into the face of all Christendom, and contemptuously cast aside for an ignoble passion the aunt of the Emperor, a daughter of the proudest royal house in Europe. Charles V. dared not, and did not, break with England in consequence; for Henry had taken care to draw close to Scotland and France, and the very hint of such a combination was sufficient to render the Emperor all amiability.

For a time it looked as if the alliance had been rendered proof against all attack by the marriage of Philip and Mary, and it is highly probable that it would have been so if Renard's plan to marry Elizabeth to the Duke of Savoy had been carried out; but here again circumstances were too strong for persons. The marriage would have been useless unless Elizabeth were first legitimised, and Mary {179} could not legitimise her without bastardising herself, which she obstinately refused to do, notwithstanding all the entreaties of Philip and his friends. But Philip ostentatiously favoured his young sister-in-law, in the hope that when she came to the throne he might have some claim upon her gratitude, and induce her to maintain the friendship which was so necessary for his interests. It was no question of Catholic or Protestant yet. He would have supported her--as indeed he did--however firm a Protestant she might be; for the next Catholic heir to the crown, Mary Stuart, was practically a Frenchwoman, married to the heir of the French throne, and with her as Queen of England and France, Spain and the house of Burgundy would have been ruined.

Elizabeth knew as well as any one how vital it was for Philip to be friendly with England; and during a long course of years she traded unscrupulously upon her knowledge that she might assail, insult, plunder, and make more or less veiled war upon him, and yet that he dared not openly break with her whilst France was greedily eyeing his Flemish harbours. From the first moment that Elizabeth's reform policy became evident it was seen by Spanish statesmen that either the government of England must be changed, so as to bring it back to the old cordial alliance, or else Spain must seek new combinations of powers, in order to redress the balance. For the first alternative to be successful promptness was necessary, and the government of the Queen changed whilst the country was yet unsettled and divided. Feria wrote from London to Philip only a day or two after Mary's death that {180} the country must be dealt with sword in hand rather than by cajolery, unless it were to be allowed to slip through their hands; and thenceforward for years all of Philip's agents, one after the other, pressed upon their master the necessity of using force, either by aiding the Catholics to revolt or by a direct attack on England. Angry, almost contemptuous, references to the King's hesitancy and timidity are constantly occurring in the letters of the various Spanish ambassadors in England, but beyond occasional money aid to the English Catholics nothing could be obtained from the King.

Of all things slow-minded, unwarlike Philip desired peace, almost at any price, and he saw, as his advisers did not, the dangers that surrounded him. Marriage designs, cajolery, and other peaceful methods having failed to bind Elizabeth to him, he attempted to form a new combination. He married the French king's daughter as his third wife; and doubtless even thus early had evolved in his mind the idea of a league of the Catholic powers as a counterbalance to Elizabeth's friendship with Denmark, Sweden, and the German Protestant princes. He knew that overt assistance from him to the English Catholics to depose the Queen and stifle Protestantism would increase the enmity of the allied Protestants of the Continent, and perhaps let loose the storm of which the mutterings were already audible in Flanders. So, in answer to Feria's advice and Bishop Quadra's arguments in favour of force, he insisted upon a policy of soft words, pacification, and palliation; and again and again told his ambassadors, "You _must_ keep principally in view by all ways and means to avoid a rupture ... the importance of which is so {181} great that I cannot be satisfied without repeating it so many times."

But if he thus deprecated open warfare he was at all times, after Mary Stuart's French husband was dead, ready enough to subsidise plots to assassinate or depose Elizabeth; and large sums were sent to England for that purpose. In vain his agents continued to tell him how useless it was to expect that the English Catholics would pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him, unless they were assured of his armed support. But this assurance he would not give. A marriage of his son Carlos with the widowed Mary Stuart, simultaneously with a Catholic rising in England, was an expedient after his own heart, but even here his timidity was so great that he would run no risk of firing a shot in favour of a project in which he would have been the principal gainer. He writes (June 15, 1563) to Bishop Quadra: "With regard to the adherents that the Scots will have in England, and the increase of their number if necessary, you will not interfere in any way further than you have done, but let them do it all themselves, and gain what friends and sympathy they can for their opinions amongst the Catholics and those upon whom they depend. _I say this because if anything should be discovered they should be the persons to be blamed and no one in connection with us._" He was told plainly that the negotiations could not be carried on in this way, which pledged everybody but himself, but it was all useless: his instructions were firm and undeviating: under no circumstances was he to be drawn into war with England.

In 1564 the English Protestants were almost {182} openly sympathising with the growing discontent in the Netherlands, and flocks of refugees from Holland were daily crossing to England. Spanish ships were being pillaged on every sea by English privateers, and a war of tariffs and commercial prohibitions was being carried on between England and Spanish Flanders; and Philip's advisers told him that an open war with England would not injure him so much as his present inactivity was doing. But withal when he sent a smooth-tongued ambassador, Diego de Guzman, to mollify the English, his secret instructions were that he was to tell Elizabeth that "his orders were to endeavour to please her in all things, _as in effect we wish you to do, using every possible effort to that end; and striving to preserve her friendship towards us and our mutual alliance._"

In August, 1568, Philip sent a new ambassador to England, Gerau de Spes. Relations at the time were extremely strained between the two countries, owing to the expulsion of the English ambassador from Spain for some offence against the Catholic religion; and Alba's cruelty in the Netherlands had aroused a bitter feeling in England against Spain, which was increased by the plots which were known to be in progress between the Guises and Alba in favour of Mary Stuart. And yet Philip's orders to his new ambassador were, "that he was to serve and gratify Elizabeth on every possible occasion, _as in fact I wish you to do, trying to keep her on good terms, and assuring her from me that I will always return her friendship as a good neighbour and brother._"

When Elizabeth a few months afterwards seized Philip's treasure-ships, which had been driven to take refuge in English ports to escape from the {183} privateers, he pursued the same peaceful policy. Fiery de Spes was all for war and retaliation, but beyond seizing English shipping in Spanish and Flemish harbours, Philip would not go. He was driven for money and sorely beset on all sides, his commerce well-nigh swept from the seas, his credit diminished, and his rebellious subjects in Flanders blockading his own coasts against him. Mary Stuart was urging him to action, his own ministers were assuring him ceaselessly that the only way to check English aggression was to "set the fire to Elizabeth's own doors by raising troubles in England or Ireland if he was not prepared to go to war." But in the face of all provocation, in the face of Alba's assurance that his prestige was being ruined by his tame submission, he could only say after long delay (December 16, 1569) that if Elizabeth's hardness of heart continued he should really have to consider what could be done. "We here think that the best course will be to encourage with money and secret favour the Catholics of the North, and to help those in Ireland to take up arms against the heretics and deliver the crown to the Queen of Scotland, to whom it belongs by succession." And the only outcome of it all was the futile aid to the plots of Norfolk and Ridolfi.

It was the same again twelve years later when Drake's appalling atrocities on the South American coasts had aroused the fury of all Spain; and England was enriched by the plunder of sacred shrines and peaceful merchantmen. English troops were in arms against him in Flanders, and public money had been flowing over to the aid of the rebels with the thinnest possible disguise, but still {184} Philip clung obstinately to the English alliance, hoping against hope that at last Elizabeth would become friendly with him. The most he would do, as before, was to help the Irish Catholics in their revolt, in order to hamper the English queen and prevent her from injuring him further. Certainly in all these years he had never entertained for a moment the idea of the subjugation of England; he only sought either by removing Elizabeth or by diverting her attention to troubles at home to draw her country back again to the old alliance and friendship.

Up to this period (1580) the principal reason, beyond Philip's natural love of peace, which had caused him to follow his long-suffering policy was the fear of finding himself opposed both to England and France. Catharine de Medici was as facile as Elizabeth herself, and could generally, when it suited her, patch up a reconciliation between Huguenots and Catholics and unite them, for a short time at least, under a national banner. But in January, 1580, an event happened which for the first time seemed to hold out hopes that he might be able to revenge himself upon Elizabeth without the fear of France before his eyes. Archbishop Beaton, Mary Stuart's ambassador in Paris, secretly told Philip's ambassador there that he _and the Duke of Guise_ had prevailed upon the Queen of Scots to place herself, her son, and her realm entirely in the hands and under the protection of the King of Spain, and would send James VI. to Spain to be brought up and married there to Philip's pleasure. This meant the detachment of the Guises from the French interest, and Vargas, the Spanish ambassador, at once saw its importance. He sent off a special {185} courier to Philip, urging him now to action: "Such is the state of things there," he says, "that if even so much as a cat moved the whole edifice would crumble down in three days. If your Majesty had England and Scotland attached to you, directly or indirectly, you might consider the States of Flanders conquered, and ... you could lay down the law for the whole world."

Guise's adhesion to Spain made all the difference, and Philip welcomed the idea of deporting James Stuart to Spain as a preliminary measure. Mary herself was in high hopes, and Beaton said she was determined to leave her prison only as Queen of England. Her adherents, he asserted, were so numerous in the country, that if they rose the matter would be easy without assistance, "but with the aid of your Majesty it would soon be over." The plan was shelved for a time in consequence of the death of Vargas; and James' deportation became unnecessary on the fall of Protestant Morton, and the accession to power of D'Aubigny, Earl of Lennox, who had already sent Fernihurst to Spain to assure Philip of his devotion; but in April of the following year Mary Stuart opened negotiations with Tassis, the new Spanish ambassador in Paris. "Affairs," she assured him, through Beaton, "were never better disposed in Scotland, than now to return to their ancient condition, so that English affairs could be dealt with subsequently." The King, her son, she said, was quite determined to return to the Catholic religion, and inclined to an open rupture with the Queen of England.

Philip, however, wished to be quite sure that {186} James was really to be a Catholic before helping him to the succession of the English crown. Father Persons and five or six Jesuits were busy in Scotland with Spanish money plotting for the restoration of the Catholic religion, and the young King himself told them, "that though for certain reasons it was advisable for him to appear publicly in favour of the French, he in his heart would rather be Spanish." Even thus early James' duplicity was the subject of wonder to those who surrounded him; and in January, 1582, Mary wrote rather doubtfully about his religion to Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in England. "The poor child," she said, "was so surrounded by heretics that she had only been able to obtain the assurance that he would listen to the priests she sent him." But she assures the Spaniard that she will bind herself and her son exclusively to Philip in future, and begs that the Scottish courtiers should be bribed in his interest. The Catholic revival in Scotland was being vigorously worked by the Jesuits and the nobles, and it soon became evident to them also that James was too slippery to be depended upon. So they sent Father Holt to London in February with some important proposals. The rank and file of the Jesuits had no idea that their Catholic propaganda in Scotland had been contrived and paid for by Spain with a political object, and Holt was astounded when the person to whom he was directed in London took him to Mendoza. His message was that the Scottish nobles had decided, as a last resource, if James continued obstinate, to depose him, and either convey him abroad or hold him a prisoner until {187} his mother arrived in Scotland. They besought the guidance of the King of Spain in the matter, and begged that 2,000 foreign troops might be sent to them to carry out their plans. This message was repeated in a softened form to Mary Stuart in her English prison, and Mendoza urged his master to send the troops requested, "with the support of whom the Scots might encounter Elizabeth, and the whole of the English north country would be disturbed, the Catholics there being in a majority; and the opportunity would be taken for the Catholics in the other parts of the country to rise, when they knew they had on their side the forces of a more powerful prince than the King of Scotland."

Philip was on the Portuguese frontier at the time, and affairs in Madrid were being managed by the aged Cardinal de Granvelle, who sent to the King notes and recommendations on all letters received.

He warmly seconded Mendoza's recommendations that the troops requested by the Scots nobles should be sent, and says: "The affair is so important both for the sake of religion, and to bridle England, that no other can equal it; _because by keeping the Queen of England busy we shall be ensured against her helping Alençon or daring to obstruct us in any other way._" Somewhat later Granvelle repeats the same note. Speaking of the fear of the Scots nobles that the landing of a large foreign force might threaten their liberties, he says: "This is not what his Majesty wants, nor do I approve of it, but that we should loyally help the King of Scots and his mother to maintain their rights; and by promoting armed disturbance keep the Queen of England and the French busy, at a comparatively {188} small cost to ourselves, and so enable us to settle our own affairs better. If it had no other result than this it would suffice, but very much more when we consider that it may lead to the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in those parts. It is very advantageous that the matter should be taken in hand by the Duke of Guise, as it will ensure us from French obstruction. _Since we cannot hope to hold the island for ourselves, Guise will not try to hand it over to the King of France to the detriment of his near kinswoman._" He also speaks of the probability of Elizabeth's coming to terms with Spain on being secured to the throne during her life, and the re-establishment of the old alliance between the two countries.

Thus far, then, the aims of Spain were legitimate and honest under the circumstances; and Philip had no avowed intention, or thought, of the conquest of England for himself. We shall see how he was gradually forced by circumstances and the jealousy between the English and Scottish Catholics to adopt a different attitude.

So long as Mary and Mendoza kept the direction of the conspiracy in their own hands all was done wisely and prudently, but as soon as Lennox and the Jesuits had a hand in it a complete muddle was the result. Tassis, the Spanish Ambassador in France, and Guise had been quite outside the new proposition of the Scots nobles, but in March, 1582, Lennox wrote a foolish letter to Tassis, which he sent by Creighton to Paris, laying bare the plan and giving his adhesion to it, but making all manner of inflated and exaggerated demands.

Creighton had promised him, he said, 15,000 {189} foreign troops, of which he was to have command, and he asked in addition for a vast sum of money and a personal guarantee against loss of fortune in any event. Creighton also went to Guise and brought him into the business, and Jesuit emissaries were to go to Rome and Madrid to crave aid from the Pope and Philip. Mary and Mendoza were furious at the ineptitude of Lennox and the priests, and Mary particularly that her name should be used by them as being the head of the conspiracy. Creighton had no authority whatever to promise 15,000 men, and the idea that Lennox was to have command was absurd from a Spanish point of view. Philip was alarmed too at the large number of persons who were now concerned in the affair, and directed that no further steps should be taken. The inclusion of Guise in the project soon produced its result. He wanted naturally to take a large and prominent part, and travelled to Paris to meet Tassis secretly at Beaton's house. He was full of far-reaching, ill-digested plans; but his main desire evidently was to prevent Spanish troops from being sent to Scotland, for fear, he said, of the jealousy of the French. His idea was that a large mixed force should be sent from Italy under the papal flag, whilst he made a descent with Frenchmen on the coast of Sussex. But all these fine plans were soon frozen under the cold criticism of Philip and de Granvelle. Philip, it is true, did not yet think of conquering England for himself, but Mary and James must owe the English crown to him alone, and be bound to restore the close alliance between England and Spain, or the change would be of no use to him: and this could hardly {190} be hoped for if there were too many French and Italian troops concerned in the business, or if Guise had the main direction of the enterprise.

Sir Francis Englefield was in Madrid as Philip's adviser on English affairs, and both he and the numerous English Catholic refugees in France, Flanders, and Spain soon made it clear that their national distrust and enmity of the French was as keen as ever, whilst they looked sourly upon any project which should make the Frenchified Scots paramount over England. This feeling they were careful to urge upon the Spaniards upon every occasion, and it is not surprising that Philip at last came to believe their assurances that all England would welcome a Catholic restoration if it came from their old friends the Spaniards, and not from their old enemies the French.

From that time a change was apparent in Philip's policy. When he heard of the Raid of Ruthven and the flight of Lennox he saw that English Protestant intrigue had conquered, and that the Scottish-Catholic enterprise was at an end for a time. Guise was to be flattered and conciliated, but it is clear that henceforward Philip wished to confine his (Guise's) attention to France. He was told how dangerous it would be for him to leave France with his enemies, the Huguenots, in possession, and was emphatically assured of Spanish support in his own ambitious plans at home.

Guise was flattered, but he could hardly be expected to look upon Scottish affairs from Philip's point of view. So he got one of his adherents, young de Maineville, sent to Scotland to revive the idea of the landing of foreign troops there. {191} Beaton, who was thoroughly French, was just as anxious to keep the matter afoot in Paris, but Philip had lost faith in the enterprise, and only kept up an appearance of negotiation in order to maintain his hold upon the Guises and prevent them from undertaking anything except under his patronage. De Maineville soon got on intimate terms with James, but the Protestant lords were holding him at the time, and Guise was informed by his agent that the time was not now propitious for a Catholic descent upon Scotland.

Guise thereupon came to the Spaniards in May, 1583, with a fresh plan. He had decided, he said, to begin with the English Catholics. Elizabeth was first to be murdered and the country raised, whilst he landed on the coast, but Philip and the Pope must provide 100,000 crowns to pay for it. His plans, as usual, however, were vague and incomplete, and the English Catholics, as well as Philip, looked coldly upon them. Father Allen and the English exiles were in deadly earnest, "and thought all this talk and intricacy were mere buckler-play." Mendoza in Paris reports to Philip that "they suspected a tendency on the part of the Scots to claim a controlling influence in the new empire, and as the Scots are naturally inclined to the French, they would rather the affair were carried through with but few Spaniards, whilst the English hate this idea, as their country is the principal one ... and they think it should not lose its predominance."

The English Catholics had a plan of their own which they urged upon Philip. The English North Country was to be raised simultaneously with the {192} landing of a Spanish force in Yorkshire, accompanied by the Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Dacre, and other nobles, with Allen as Nuncio and Bishop of Durham, and some of the extreme Catholic party, even in Scotland, distrusting the French, favoured some such plan as this under purely Spanish auspices.

Guise appears finally to have adopted a combination of this plan and his own. The Spanish forces were to land at Fouldrey, Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, whilst the English North Country was to be raised, and the Catholic Scots on the border were to co-operate with the Spaniards. Guise at the same time was to land in the south of England with about 5,000 men. James VI., who had thrown himself into Falkland and had assumed the reins of government, was in complete accord with Guise about it, but the latter, as usual, was for pushing matters on far too rapidly to please Philip. He (Guise) took upon himself to send a priest named Melino to the Pope to ask him to furnish some funds for the expedition and to explain the whole of the particulars, and this deeply offended the King of Spain, who had no idea of having matters arranged over his head by such a bungler as Guise. The latter also sent Charles Paget in disguise to England in August, 1583, to inquire as to the amount of support he might expect when he landed on the south coast, and when Philip in due course saw the instructions taken by Paget, it became clear to him that he must somehow eliminate Guise from the project. On the margin of the instructions Philip scribbled sarcastic remarks as to the futility of Guise's projecting a landing and sending full {193} particulars of his plans to the Pope _before_ he had ascertained what support he could depend upon when he _did_ land. What opened Philip's eyes more than anything else was that the English "were to be assured on the faith and honour of Guise that the enterprise is being undertaken with no other object or intention than to re-establish the Catholic religion in England and to place the Queen of Scotland peacefully on the throne of England, which rightly belongs to her. When this is effected the foreigners will immediately retire from the country, and if any one attempts to frustrate this intention _Guise promises that he and his forces will join the people of the country to compel the foreigners to withdraw._"

Well might Philip underline this and scatter notes of exclamation around it, for it marked the parting of the ways, and showed that Guise was more anxious for his family aggrandisement and personal ambition in placing his kin upon the English throne than to serve the interests of Spain by securing a close union between the two countries to the exclusion of France, which was Philip's main object.

Guise was therefore told that he must not be precipitate, and the matter was kept in suspense; but from that moment Philip decided to undertake the matter alone. Allen and the English Catholics had never ceased to urge upon him that his troops should be landed first in England, and not in Scotland; and this now obviously suited Philip best, as he was growing more and more doubtful about James' religious sincerity. Another fact must have also influenced him greatly in the same direction. His great admiral, Santa Cruz, had just brilliantly {194} routed the French mercenary fleet in the service of the Portuguese pretender at the Azores, and in the flush of victory had written to Philip begging to be allowed to direct his conquering fleet against England. "Do not miss the opportunity, sire," he wrote, "and believe me I have the will to make you king of that country and others besides." The grand old sailor made light of the difficulties, and besought the King to let him go and conquer England in the name of God and Spain. But Philip was not ready for that yet, and the idea was only now being forced by events into his slow mind that perhaps he might be obliged, after all, to claim England for his own, since the English Catholics were for ever saying they wanted no French or Scotsmen; and not a single English pretender was otherwise than Protestant. So Santa Cruz was told that the King would consider the matter, and in the meanwhile provide for eventualities by ordering large supplies of biscuits, and by gradually sending men to Flanders. At the same time he wrote to his ambassador in Paris, telling him in confidence that he intended in due time to invade England from Flanders, but no one was to learn this until the preparations had advanced too far to be concealed; "and even then they (the French) must be told in such terms as may not make them suspect an intention of excluding the French from the enterprise."

But what is of more importance still, Philip gave directions in the same letter to Tassis in November, 1583, that his own claim to the English crown as a descendant of Edward III. should be cautiously broached. If England was to remain in close {195} alliance with Spain, it is difficult to see what other course Philip could have taken. James as a successor to his mother was now out of the question, so far as Spanish interests were concerned, for he was playing false all round. No sooner did the Scots Catholics gain the upper hand than he intrigued with Elizabeth and the Protestants for their overthrow, and immediately the English and Protestant faction became paramount he wrote beseeching letters for aid to Guise and the Pope. All this, of course, Philip knew, for he knew everything, and although he intended to put Mary Stuart on the throne, from this time he was determined that her son should not succeed her.

The discovery of the Throgmorton plot and Guise's wild plans in connection therewith threw the whole project into the background for a time, and confirmed stealthy Philip in the idea that in future he must manage matters himself. When Tassis, his ambassador in Paris, was withdrawn from his post, in the spring of 1584, he wrote an important memorandum to his master setting forth at length the arguments on both sides for and against a landing in England or Scotland, by which it is clear that the English and Scottish Catholic factions in France were now bitterly at issue on the subject. As the English plan had gained ground, James had once more considered it advisable to feign a desire to become a Catholic; and Guise had again urged the adoption of the plan of a landing in Scotland, with the invasion of England over the Scots border, James himself being the figurehead. Tassis says that such is the jealousy of the Scots in England that if an army crossed the Border the {196} English Catholics themselves might resist it. "The English," he says, "would not like to be dominated by Scotsmen, and if the crown of Scotland is to be joined to theirs, they still wish to be cocks-of-the-walk, as their kingdom is the larger and more important one. On the other hand the Scots may be unduly inflated with the opposite idea, so that imperfections may exist on both sides." As Mary Stuart had drawn closer to Spain she had grown distrustful of Beaton and Tassis, whom she considered too much wedded to French ideas; but withal Tassis in this document very emphatically leans to the English view, which he knew was that now held by his master. The full plan for a great armada was evidently slowly germinating in Philip's mind, but the vast expense had first to be provided for. When Guise's envoy, Melino, had gone on his meddling mission to the Pope his Holiness had offered to subsidise the expedition to a moderate amount, and in answer to the second appeal from James VI. himself he had said that he would stand by his previous promise. But this did not suit Philip, and he let the Pope know promptly that he was willing to undertake the great task for the glory of God and the advance of the Church, but that the Pope must subscribe very largely indeed, "and must find ways and means through his holy zeal to do much more than has yet been imagined." He was also warned that Guise ought not to be allowed to leave France, where he might serve the Catholic cause so much more effectively than elsewhere. And so Guise and the Scotsmen are pushed further and further into the background, Philip's aim being evidently to raise civil {197} commotion in France, which was always easy enough to do, and so to paralyse Henry III. and the Huguenots from helping Elizabeth, whilst Guise would be powerless to promote the interest in England of his kinsman James.

When it became apparent that the Pope was to have a large share in the business the intrigue was transferred from Paris to Rome. Sixtus himself was wise, frugal, and moderate, and had no great desire to serve Philip's political aims, but only to signalise his own pontificate by the restoration of England to the Church; but he was surrounded by cardinals who represented the different interests. Medici, D'Este, Gonzaga, Rusticucci, Santorio, and others represented the French view, which was in favour of an arrangement with Elizabeth and James, and desired to exclude Spanish influence from England. Sanzio watched Guise's interests, whilst the Secretary of State Caraffa, Sirleto, Como, Allen, and the Spanish ambassador, Olivares, craftily forwarded Philip's wishes, the Pope himself being carefully kept in the dark as to the ultimate object in view. The cause of religion was invoked all through as being Philip's only motive; inconvenient points were left indefinite, with the certainty that Caraffa would interpret them favourably to Spanish designs; and by the most extraordinary cajolery the Pope was induced to promise a million gold crowns to the enterprise. He was not brought to this without much haggling and misgiving on his part, and was very cautiously treated with regard to Philip's intention to claim the English crown. "His Holiness," writes Olivares, "is quite convinced that your Majesty is not thinking of the crown of England {198} for yourself, and told Cardinal D'Este so. I did not say anything to the contrary. He is very far from thinking your Majesty has any such views, and when the matter is broached to him he will be much surprised. However deeply he is pledged to abide by your Majesty's opinion, I quite expect he will raise some difficulty." Philip's constant orders were that the Pope should be plied with arguments as to the inadvisibility of the heretic James being allowed to succeed, and the need for choosing some good Catholic to succeed Mary. The person that Philip had decided to make sovereign of England was his favourite daughter, Isabel Clara Eugenia, but this was not to be mentioned to the Pope. "But if at any time the Pope moved by his zeal should talk about any other successor, you will remind him, before he gets wedded to his new idea, that he is pledged to agree to my choice in the matter."

In the meanwhile Allen, Persons, and the other English Catholics, were ceaseless in their steady propagation of the idea of Philip's own right to the crown, in consequence of the heresy of James, and the same view was forced upon Mary Stuart by Mendoza and her English confidants in Paris, all of whom were pensioners of Spain. At length Mary was convinced, and wrote to Mendoza at the end of June, 1586, saying she had disinherited her son in favour of Philip.

The full plan of the Armada had now assumed definite form. The King was in possession of Santa Cruz's marvellously complete estimate of cost and requirements of all sorts--a perfect monument of technical knowledge and forethought; the {199} Pope was pledged to find about a third of the necessary funds, and to leave Philip a free hand with regard to the English succession and the time for the carrying out of the enterprise; whilst Philip's position with regard to his claim to the English crown was regularised by Mary's will in his favour.

Guise, Beaton, and the Scots had thus been routed all along the line, but it was not to be supposed that they would accept their defeat without a struggle. Their next move was within an ace of being successful, and nearly changed the whole plan of the Armada. In July, 1586, Guise wrote to Mendoza that a plan he had long been concocting had at last been brought to a head, and Beaton was commissioned to tell Mendoza what the scheme was. A Scottish gentleman named Robert Bruce had been sent to France with three blank sheets, signed respectively by Lords Huntly, Morton, and Claude Hamilton, which Guise was to fill up over the signatures with letters to Philip, appealing to him to aid the Scots Catholics. They asked for 6,000 foreign troops for one year and 150,000 crowns to equip their own men, and in return promised to restore Catholicism, release James and his mother, compel the former to become a Catholic, and, most tempting of all, to deliver to Philip one or two good ports near the English Border to be used against the Queen of England. Bruce went to Madrid to lay the Scots' appeal before the King, but when he arrived the failure of the Babington plot and the collapse of the Catholic party in England was known to Philip, and he had lost hope of effecting the "enterprise" except with {200} overwhelming forces of his own. He did not wish, moreover, for Guise's interference, and was coolly sympathetic and no more. And yet, in the face of Santa Cruz's advice that he should secure some ports of refuge for the Armada in the North Sea, the offer of the Scots lords to give him two good Scotch harbours was one not to be lightly refused, so whilst he sent Bruce back with vague promises, he instructed Parma and Mendoza to report fully on the scheme. Parma was cold and irresponsive. He would give no decided opinion until he knew what Philip's intentions were. He was apparently jealous that he was not taken fully into his uncle's confidence, and perhaps angry that his son's claims to the English crown, which were better than those of Philip and his daughter, were being ignored. But Mendoza, an old soldier, the last pupil of Alba, as he called himself, was indignant at Parma's doubts, and wrote to Philip an extremely able paper strongly advising the invasion of England through Scotland, instead of risking everything in a vast fleet, to which one disaster would cripple Spain for ever. In prophetic words he foretold the possibility of the very catastrophe which subsequently happened, and prayed Philip, ere it was too late, to close with the Scots lords' offer. But Philip and Parma were slow and wanted all sorts of assurances; so Bruce was kept in France and Flanders for many months, whilst his principals lost hope and heart. At last, when they were on the point of going over to the Protestant side, on a promise of toleration for their religion, Bruce was tardily sent back with 10,000 crowns to freight a number of small boats at Leith to send over to Dunkirk for {201} Parma's troops, and the 150,000 crowns demanded by the lords were promised when they rose.

During all this time the juggle in Rome was going on. Gradually Sixtus was familiarised with the idea that Philip could not go to war for the sake of putting heretic James on the throne; then Allen took care that he saw the genealogical tree showing Philip's claim, and at last, in the summer of 1587, it was cautiously hinted to him that, though Philip would not add England to his dominions, he might perhaps appoint his daughter to the throne. Sanzio, Mendovi and the French cardinals were straining every nerve to persuade the Pope that the King of Scots might be converted, and the Capuchin monk Bishop of Dunblane, amongst others, went to Scotland for the purpose of forwarding this view.

The result of Bruce's appeal at Madrid was concealed from Guise, but of course he learnt it indirectly, and was greatly indignant at his exclusion from a project of which he was the originator. It was really no secret, however, for in July, 1587, Father Creighton, sent by Guise, arrived in Rome full of it; he, like other Scotsmen, being in favour of James' conversion and his acceptance by Spain as King of England. But Allen, Persons, and the rest of them, soon silenced Creighton, with threats, cajolery, and money.

When Catharine de Medici got wind of the business she seems to have thought it a good opportunity for getting rid of Guise and checkmating Philip at the same time, and urged him (Guise) to go himself to aid his kinsman James to the crown, in which case she would largely subsidise him; and Guise himself was so incensed at the way {202} Philip had treated him that he threatened to divulge the whole of Bruce's plot to James, and very probably did so. Elizabeth, too, sent young Gary to warn James of what was going on, so that when Bruce arrived in Scotland the King was fully prepared for him; and although he appeared to acquiesce in the hint from Bruce that the Spaniards would aid him to avenge his mother, he was now surrounded by ministers favourable to the Protestant interest, who saw that James had more to hope for from Elizabeth than from Philip, and the matter was deferred indefinitely. It was late in autumn when Bruce arrived in Scotland, too late in the season to freight ships, and he suggested that in the following summer ships for the transport of Parma's 6,000 men to Leith should be freighted in Flanders. This was impossible--in fact, the long delay whilst Philip and Parma were hesitating had ruined the project, which was now public and consequently impracticable, though Bruce and the Scottish lords continued to clamour for Spanish men and money until the Armada appeared. And so again Philip's want of promptness lost this chance, which might have saved the Armada.

By this time, late in the year 1587, the final plan of the Armada had been settled. Parma had received his full instructions from Philip some months before; all Spain and Catholic Christendom were ringing with preparations for the fray, and the great fleet--or what Drake had left intact of it on his summer trip to Cadiz--was mustering at Lisbon under gallant old Santa Cruz, who was already dying broken-hearted at the neglect of his wise precautions, at the confusion, waste, and ineptitude which foreboded the crowning disaster.

{203}

With the subsequent mishaps and catastrophe this study is not concerned. My object has been to show how circumstances drove Philip to adopt the course he did, both with regard to the invasion itself and his claim to the English crown; and to demonstrate that the ostensible prime object of the Armada, the conversion of England to Catholicism, although undoubtedly desired by Philip, was mainly used as a means to his real end--namely, a close political alliance with England, without which Spain was inevitably doomed to the impotence which eventually fell upon her.

{205}

_A FIGHT AGAINST FINERY._

{207}

_A FIGHT AGAINST FINERY._

(A HISTORY OF THE SUMPTUARY LAWS IN SPAIN.)

It is a curious reflection that whilst all the serious acts and surroundings of civilised life have been rendered amenable to the law, whilst the very instincts inherent in the nature of mankind have been dominated and regulated by authority, utter failure has attended the persistent efforts of rulers to cope with the trivial follies of fashion, or to limit the vanity and extravagance of personal adornment. For long ages men, and particularly women, have insisted upon making themselves absurd and uncomfortable, at great cost and in an infinite variety of ways, in obedience to dictates or impulses springing from nobody knows where, and have only consented to forego each succeeding caprice when the taste for it has worn itself out and has given place to another, perhaps still more preposterous than its predecessor.

It has been from no fault of the rulers that they have {208} been beaten in their fight with fashion, for they have tried their hardest for centuries. Our Plantagenet and Tudor sovereigns made many attempts to regulate the dress and adornment of their subjects, but the motive which mainly prompted them was the desire to differentiate the classes and prevent the humbler citizens from emulating, in appearance at least, their social superiors. In a state of society which depended upon the subjection of the majority by the privileged classes, this motive was perfectly reasonable; as was also the alternative one of protecting a particular national industry, which, in Tudor times especially, often furnished a reason for the imposition of sumptuary enactments; but both of these motives, from their very nature, were necessarily more or less ephemeral and artificial, because, on the one hand, the continual social development, the growing wealth of the traders and the emancipation of the labourers made the classes interdependent; and, on the other, the extended seaboard of England and the maritime enterprise of the inhabitants made the protection of a particular industry by prohibiting foreign competition impossible for any great length of time. The attempted interference, therefore, of English sovereigns with the dress of their lieges was intermittent and spasmodic, and was, at a comparatively early period, admitted to be useless.

Such, however, from various reasons was not the case in Spain. There the fight against finery was kept up persistently for nearly six centuries, and hardly a decade passed during that time without one or more petty and ridiculous attempts being made to interfere with the dress, food, {209} personal habits, and surroundings of the people. The ostensible motives were usually different from those which operated in England. The separation of the classes has never been so complete in Spain as elsewhere in Europe, owing to the fact that from a very early period in the history of the country all Christians were banded together and dependent upon one another for protection against the common enemy, the infidel. Manual industry, moreover, was never a strong point with Spanish Christians, and the main reason for the various attempts to exclude foreign goods was the dread that Spanish gold would be sent out to pay for them. Nothing is more striking, indeed, than the absolutely murderous effect upon Spanish industry exerted by most of the paternal attempts at interference with trade, but political economy was even more of a dead letter amongst that nation of warriors than with our own ancestors. The earliest object of the great mass of sumptuary laws in Spain was to restrict the dreaded taste for luxury and splendour which was felt to be a characteristic of the hated Moor, who had been conquered bit by bit by people who were content to live roughly, feed frugally, and dress plainly. But with victory came wealth, with peace came intermixture, and the subtle, refined, Oriental blood, with its love of pomp and brilliancy, gradually permeated the rough Gothic-Iberians, until its manifestations alarmed rulers whose power still largely depended upon the self-sacrificing frugality and hardy endurance of their subjects. Thus it was that the attempt was made to keep people frugal and homely whilst they were growing rich, and the tendency continued during all the centuries that the struggle against Spanish luxury {210} went on, although during the last three centuries of the period the original motive had disappeared, and the usual excuse for the interference of the King with the dress of his subjects was the desire to prevent them from spending so much money upon themselves, in order that they might spend more upon him.

But, whatever the motives may have been, the fight against extravagance was carried on as persistently as fruitlessly until quite recent times, and there exists a mass of information with regard to the dress and manners of the people in the Spanish sumptuary enactments unequalled elsewhere. The decrees usually took the form of a representation from the Cortes to the sovereign, setting forth in a preamble the particular abuses to be remedied, and then proposing a remedy which the sovereign usually confirmed by what was called his "pragmatic sanction," and the decree was then proclaimed and had the force of law. A large number of these decrees or "pragmatics" of the highest interest will be found in the British Museum manuscripts (MSS. Add. 9933 and 9934), and many more are set forth in Sempere's "Historia de las leyes suntuarias" (Madrid, 1788), whilst the familiar and festive traditions of old Madrid teem with quaint stories of ingenious evasions and jovial defiance of the laws under the very noses of the sable-clad Acaldes and Alguaciles, whose grave and solemn duty it was to clip lovelocks and measure frills and furbelows.

The first vicious extravagance which seizes upon a hardy, simple people who find themselves safe after a period of struggle is naturally that of {211} gluttony; and the earliest sumptuary decrees of the Castilian kings were directed against this particular excess.

In point of date the first decree extant in Spain of a sumptuary character was that issued by Don Jaime (El Conquistador) of Aragon in 1234. He was extremely devout and ascetic himself, and was shocked at the growing extravagance of his subjects, who having in his remote mountain kingdom finally expelled the Moors, turned their attention to tourneys, shows, and mimic warfare, at which great sums were spent both in feasting and adornment. The Jews too, who at the time nearly monopolised Spanish trade, encouraged the growing taste for the fine stuffs and precious ornaments, from the sale of which they derived so large a profit. So in 1234 Don Jaime decreed from his capital of Zaragoza that no subject of his should sit down to a meal of more than one dish of stewed, and one of roast meat, unless it were dried and salted. As much game as they pleased might be eaten, on condition that it had been hunted by the eater, but otherwise only one dish of game might be served. No jongleur or minstrel might eat with ladies and gentlemen, and no striped or bordered stuffs were to be worn. Gold and silver, as well as tinsel, were prohibited, and ermine and other furs were only to be used as a trimming to hoods and hanging sleeves. Jaime since his childhood had been trying to crush the rising power of his feudal nobles, and had already embarked on that long career of conquest by which he subdued the Moorish kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia, so that, although he himself was now safe in his mountain realm from invasion, his decree was as much prompted by his {212} dread of the softening effect of luxury upon his subjects as by his own rough, simple tastes.

His kinsman of Castile was in worse case, for his dominions were more open to the Moor. Saint Ferdinand conquered the splendid Moorish city of Seville in 1248, where he died four years later, leaving his son, Alonso the Wise, to succeed him as King of Castile. Oriental luxury surrounded the frugal Castilians on all hands. The wealth of plundered cities, the spoils of Moslem palaces were to be had for the grasping, so that it was natural that extravagance in attire and eating should soon threaten to soften the Christian conquerors dwelling in the midst of the gentler, vanquished Moor. Alonso the Wise, in 1256, therefore issued in Seville his first great sumptuary enactment. By it no saddles were allowed to be covered or trimmed with plush. No gold or silver tinsel was to adorn them, excepting as a border of three inches wide, the saddle itself being of uncovered leather. Gold and silver might be used on caps, girdles, quilted doublets, saddle-cloths or table-covers, but not for draping shields or cuirasses. No jingling bells were to be used as trimmings, except on the saddle-cloths at the cane-throwing tourneys, but even then no device was to be embroidered on the cloths. Bosses upon the shields were not to be allowed, but the latter might be adorned with a painted or gilded-copper device. No milled cloth was to be worn, nor were the garments to be cut and pinked in fanciful shapes, or trimmed with ribbons or silk cords; the penalty for infringing any of these regulations being the loss of one or both thumbs by the offender, which of {213} course meant his disgrace and ruin in the career of arms. Women were allowed a little more latitude, but not much. They might wear ermine and otter fur to any extent, but they were forbidden to adorn their girdles with beads or seed-pearls, or to border their kirtles or wimples with gold or silver thread, or to wear them of any other colour than white.

With regard to eating, Alonso the Wise held similar notions to those of his neighbour Don Jaime, and ordered that his lieges should not have upon their tables more than two dishes of meat and one of bought game, and on fast days not more than two kinds of fish. As if recognising the difficulty of enforcing this, the King solemnly undertook to comply with his own regulations. Great extravagance had arisen in wedding feasts, which were said (as in Oriental countries they do to-day) to often ruin the contracting families, and Alonso made strict rules to limit the excess in this direction. No presents of breeches were to be given, and the entire cost of a wedding outfit was not to exceed 60 maravedis, whilst not more than five men and as many women might be invited to the wedding banquet by each of the contracting parties. The money spent upon marriage rejoicings, indeed, had become so great that Alonso made this reform a great point in his decree, and provided against evasion by strictly limiting the time during which the feast might continue and wedding presents be given. Moors were said to be dressing like Christians, and this was rigidly forbidden. They were to wear no red or green clothes, and no white or gold shoes, and their hair was to be parted plainly in the middle of the head, {214} with no topknot, whilst they were enjoined to wear their full beard, which made the distinction between them and the shaven-chinned Christians the more marked. The penalties imposed for disobeying this decree of 1256 were savage in the extreme, varying from loss of a thumb and a fine for the first offence, to death for the third; but savage as they were, they can hardly have been effectual, except perhaps in Seville, for only two years later, in 1258, Alonso came out with a perfect code of conduct for his subjects, far too minute to even summarise here, but of which some specimens may be given, as they served as a model for subsequent decrees for many years afterwards. Alonso had apparently got tired of his self-denying ordinance and says the King may eat and dress as he pleases, but agrees to limit his daily table expenditure to 150 maravedis a day, which in spending power would represent about £40 at the present time at least. But he orders his "ricoshomes," ruling men, to eat more sparingly and to spend less money. None of the members of the royal household, squires, scribes, falconers, or porters, except the head of each department, were allowed to wear white fur or trimmings, or to use gilt or plated saddles or spurs. They were forbidden to indulge in breeches of scarlet cloth, gilt shoes, and hats of gold or silver tissue. Priests, it appears, had been reducing the size of their tonsures and ruffling in fine colours, so as to be undistinguishable from laymen, and they are sternly ordered to have their tonsures the full size of their heads, gird themselves with a rope, and eschew red, green, and pink garments. The old regulations about eating were {215} repeated with the addition of one plate of meat for supper, and the prohibition of fish on meat days. No man, however rich, was to buy more than four suits of clothes in a year, and no ermine, silk, gold or silver tissue, no slashes, trimmings, or pinked cloth might be worn by men. Two fur mantles in a year, and one rain-cape in two years was the limit of extravagance allowed to a man in this direction; and the King alone was to wear a red rain-cape. Lawn and silk for outer garments were confined to royalty, but the "ricoshomes" might employ them as linings. No crystal or silver buttons were to be allowed, nor was shaving or other signs of mourning permitted, except to vassals who had lost their overlord and to widows. Jews and Moors are cruelly treated in this decree, and their offences and those of the poorer classes are to be punished by torture or death, whilst those of the "ricoshomes" are left to the King's discretion. Ermine, vair, and otter furs would appear to have been amongst the principal articles of luxury, as the wearing of them is very strictly regulated, and white furs seem to come next in estimation after them.

For ninety years these laws of Alonso the Wise were repeated and reimposed with slight variations, but apparently ineffectually; since in 1348 the Cortes of Alcalá made a presentment to Alonso XI. of Castile bewailing the luxury and extravagance of the age, and proposing a new code of sumptuary rules, which in due course the King confirmed. These rules are very interesting because they demonstrate the great strides which had been made in luxury, refinement, and civilisation since the issue of the decrees {216} of Alonso the Wise nearly a century before. No gold ornaments, no ermine or grebe-neck trimmings, no seed-pearl embroidery, gold or silver buttons or wire, and no enamels were to be worn except by nobles. No gold tissue or silk was allowed except for linings, and no man below the rank of a knight might wear vair fur or gilt shoes. Even the princes of the blood were strictly limited in their dress, and were ordered to use tapestry cloth or silk, but without gold or trimming of any sort. The Spartan wedding regulations of Alonso the Wise had now become obsolete with the advance of wealth, but the new rules, although wider, were to be enforced with equal or greater severity. No gentleman was to give his bride within four months after marriage more than three suits of clothes, one of which might be of gold tissue, and one embroidered with seed-pearls to the value of 4,000 maravedis, an enormous sum when we consider that ninety years before 150 maravedis were the limit of the monarch's daily expenditure, and that at this date, 1348, the value of a sheep was only eight maravedis. The bride's trousseau is regulated down to the smallest details, and the penalty for exceeding them is the loss of one-quarter of his land by the too-generous gentleman who does so. The decree sets forth that some women are wearing trains, "which are both costly and useless," but in future they are to be confined to those ladies who are travelling in a litter--a privilege limited to nobles. All other women are to wear pelisses without trains, just reaching the ground, "or at least not to drag more than two inches upon it." Ladies who broke this rule were to be fined 500 maravedis. Great stress is again laid upon the limitation {217} of extravagance in wedding feasts, and burials, but the cost still allowed shows to what an excess luxury had been carried. The bride's wedding clothes might cost 4,000 maravedis and the groom's outfit 2,000; and thirty-two people were now allowed at the wedding feast. Much more latitude was permitted in the use of seed-pearls, gold, and silver, to people above the rank of knights, but the principal point to be noted in these decrees of Alonso XI. is the incidence of the penalty. In the decrees of Alonso the Wise, as has been shown, the most savage penalties were imposed upon the poorer classes, whilst the punishment of the nobles was left to the King's discretion. But much more even justice is dealt out by Alonso XI. The nobles who break the law are to lose one-quarter of their land, the knights one-third, the citizens 500 maravedis, whilst the poorer classes for slight offences against the sumptuary rules are condemned to lose the offending garment and its cost in money.

But whatever the penalty might be, extravagance, checked in one direction, broke out in another, and Peter the Cruel, the son of Alfonso XI., only a few years after the date of the decree just mentioned, issued a complete sumptuary code in which the punishments were positively ferocious. Fines, scourging, mutilation, and banishment for first and second offences, and death for the third, were imposed for the smallest infraction. Peter was particularly hard on priests, who were said to be swaggering about with women, tricked out in gay finery, and they were ordered in future to be sober and frugal, wearing no ornaments of any kind, and only sad-coloured garb. Workmen, too, were to {218} labour from sunrise to sunset for a fixed wage on pain of punishment as severe as those imposed by our own labour laws. The King, moreover, fixed stringently the cost which was to be incurred by cities and towns in entertaining him when he visited them. The dietary scale appears a pretty generous one from the point of view of to-day, consisting as it does of 45 sheep at 8 maravedis each, 22 dozen of dry fish at 12 maravedis a dozen, 90 maravedis worth of fresh fish, with pork, grain, wine, &c.; the total value of the feast being limited to 1,850 maravedis. Villages and nobles were not to spend more than 800 maravedis on a similar occasion.

In 1384 Peter the Cruel's nephew, John I. of Castile, was well beaten by the Portuguese at the battle of Aljubarrota, and marked his sorrow by issuing a decree prohibiting the use in any form of dress of silk, gold, silver, seed-pearls, precious stones, or ornaments of any kind, and everybody was ordered to don a simple mourning garb. When, four years after this, John of Gaunt's daughter Catharine came to marry the heir to the crown of Castile, she brought something else with her besides the wide, pointed coif which Spanish widows wore for the next three hundred years. Part of her dower consisted of great herds of merino sheep, which crossed and thrived so well in Spain that the coarse duffel, which had been the only native cloth, gave place in a few years to beautiful fine woollen textures which could vie with those of England and Flanders.

Intercourse between nations, the growth of wealth, the spread of learning, and the advance of civilisation were moving with giant strides. The soft arts of peace were practised with greater success than ever, now {219} that the Moslem and the Christian were fast merging into one people in Seville and Toledo, and the refinement of the one was strengthened by the energy of the other. Beautiful stuffs, stiff with gold and gems, gauzy silk, soft cloths, and fine linens, had no longer to be brought from the Moors or the kingdoms across the sea. Seville, Toledo, and Cordova could produce everything that the most luxurious extravagance could desire, and the sumptuary laws for a time were forgotten.

In 1452 the Cortes of Palenzuela presented a petition to John II. asking that the stringent sumptuary code of Alonso XI. should be re-enforced. The King, in reply, admitted that the law was a dead letter, and that the extravagance in dress was greater than ever. He says that gold tissue and silks are now ordinary wear, and that gold trimmings and marten-fur linings are used even by people of low estate. "Actually working women," he says, "now wear clothes that are only fit for fine ladies; and people of all ranks sell everything they possess in order to adorn their persons." Still the remedy proposed to him of a revival of the stern code of a hundred years before he saw was an impossible one, and the matter was held in suspense. He died soon afterwards, and his feeble successor, Henry IV., was equally powerless to stem the rising tide of industry and wealth with their natural consequences.

In 1469, during the interregnum which followed the deposition of Henry, the Master of Santiago issued a proclamation deploring the growing extravagance of the age, and enjoining more moderation. Amongst other similar things it says, {220} "Such is the pomp and vanity now general, even amongst labourers and poor people in their dress and that of their wives, that in appearance they seek to vie with persons of rank, whereby they not only squander their own estates but bring great poverty and want to all classes." But it was useless: and luxury went unchecked until Ferdinand and Isabel the Catholic were firmly seated on the twin throne of a united Spain and the last Moslem stronghold had fallen. Then, in 1495, a "pragmatic" was issued which superseded all previous obsolete sumptuary codes and established a new one, which formed the model for similar decrees for the next two centuries. Probably a more economically unwise decree under the circumstances was never penned. All other previous pragmatics had forbidden the wearing of extravagant apparel, and this did the same, especially severely as regarded the precious metals; but it did more than this. It absolutely forbade the introduction and sale of every sort of gold and silver tissue, and rendered criminal the exercise in Spain of the industry of embroidering or weaving gold, silver, and every other metal. The Christianised populations of the south of Spain were greatly excelling already in this industry. Their gold embroideries on velvet were in great demand for church vestments and royal trappings all over Europe. The taste for chivalrous splendour was not confined to Spain, and the beautiful half-Oriental tissues of Andalusia were eagerly sought for in every Court; gold was just beginning to find its way direct to Spain from the new-found Indies, and if the industry had remained untrammelled there was no reason why the country should not have provided the world {221} with textile splendours to its own great advantage. The ingenious, industrious people--for they were industrious until the strangling of their handicrafts made them idle--did their best to avert ruin. In 1498, only three years afterwards, the Cortes made a presentment to the Queen saying that things were worse than ever. It was true that gold brocade was no longer made and the wicked waste of the precious metal was thus avoided, but all sorts of strange devices and novelties were being introduced in the manufacture of silks, whereby the people were tempted to squander their money on useless finery. The Spanish silk factories were then the finest in Europe, and great quantities of raw silk were raised in the south-east of the Peninsula: and yet a "pragmatic" was issued the next year, 1499, stringently forbidding the manufacture, sale, or use of silk, except for lining. It was a staggering blow to a flourishing industry, and in order to prevent total ruin a decree was given that no raw silk from abroad was to be introduced into the country, and only Spanish-grown silk used. But this was not enough, and some of the silk-making provinces, reduced to desperation, petitioned for the relaxation of the law. Their prayer was granted, as if in irony, to the extent of allowing them to wear silk against the law. But they did not want to wear silk, but to make it for other people to wear, and their industry languished, never entirely to recover.

By the time Isabel the Catholic had died the Spanish silk industry was nearly at an end, and the skittish young Bearnaise princess, Germaine de Foix, who succeeded her as old Fernando's wife, came too late to do it much good. It is true she snapped {222} her slender fingers and threw up her pretty chin at the straitlaced sumptuary laws, and surrounded herself with silks and velvets, gold brocade and gems, wherever she went; but unfortunately they mostly came from the looms and workshops of Southern France, and gave no work to Spanish hands. Money, of course, had to be sent out of Spain to pay for the finery, and in 1515 the Cortes of Burgos complained of this to Jane the Mad, Isabel's nominal successor, who thereupon issued a decree entirely forbidding brocades and gold or silver embroidery and trimmings to be worn at all, and strictly limiting the wearing of silk in any form to people of rank.

But Jane's power was the merest shadow; Spain was in the throes of a great struggle for its democratic institutions, which it lost, and no notice was taken of poor Crazy Jane's decree. If she understood it she probably had as little sympathy with it as her young stepmother, for she had lived for years with her handsome husband Philip as head of the most pompous and splendid Court in Europe, in busy Flanders, surrounded by all the traditional magnificence of the house of Burgundy, and her young son, the coming Emperor Chares V., Fleming as he was by birth and instinct, was even less likely than she to revert willingly to the simple, democratic, and patriarchal traditions of the Spanish Court.

He came to his new country with a whole host of Burgundian, Flemish, and German nobles, whose taste for finery had never been checked; and whatever decrees Charles might issue for the dress of his people, he and his Court were the first to {223} disregard the letter and spirit of his precepts. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that they were not obeyed for long together by any one else. The initiative, moreover, did not come from the King or his courtiers, but from the Cortes of Castile, who were naturally swayed entirely by Spanish ideas, of which Charles had at this time, boy as he was, but little knowledge or sympathy. This was so clearly recognised that when he was about to leave Corunna in 1520 to assume the imperial crown, the Cortes held there petitioned him at least to order that the sumptuary laws with regard to silks, brocades, gold embroideries, and gold and silver lace, should be strictly enforced during his absence from Spain, since they saw that, with such a Court as his, they would not be enforced in his presence. But the example of the Court had struck too deeply, and the fury for splendour had now really taken hold of the Spaniards, who in their ages of struggle had been so simple and homely.

In the pragmatic of 1537 it is said that during the Emperor's absence the use of brocades, silks, and precious embroideries had increased more than ever, and they are absolutely prohibited, and the rigid law of 1498 again repeated. The preamble of the decree of 1537 says that this law against gold embroidery was generally evaded by making the gold lace and devices separately and then stitching them on to the cloth, which cost much more even than embroidery would have done; and the making of such adornments was consequently prohibited altogether. Only nine years afterwards, in 1548, the Cortes of Valladolid made a presentment to the Emperor saying that things {224} were worse than ever, and the cost of clothes had been increased instead of decreased by the ingenuity of tailors, who had taken to the plan of cutting out the most elaborate patterns of coloured cloth with fine scissors and sewing them on to the cloth garments, almost covering the latter with delicate lace-like snippet work of applied cloth. In face of this abuse the Cortes prayed the Emperor to forbid the use of any and every sort of trimming, lace, or adornment on the garments, both of men and women, which might give an excuse for the wicked tailors to charge extravagant prices. Charles V. thought this too sweeping, but in 1552 he issued a "pragmatic" prohibiting the applied snippet work, and also the use or manufacture of gold and silver lace and ornaments, the wearing and making of velvets, silks, and satins being also rigidly limited. Spain, flooded with the precious metals from the Indies, richer perhaps in actual bullion than ever a country was before or since, with home-grown silk in abundance, and the most deft and tasteful weavers in the civilised world, was therefore obliged to import its manufactured gold and fine stuffs from abroad, whilst its own humbler citizens languished amidst the wealth they were not allowed to earn. No decrees could prevent rich people from squandering their money on dress, least of all when the Emperor and his Court were in a constant blaze of magnificence.

Philip II., who in his later years usually wore black velvet trimmed with jet or bugles, with the simple chain of the Golden Fleece about his neck, was in his youth as splendid as his father; and the preparations for his voyage to England to marry Mary {225} Tudor in 1554 included the making of more solid magnificence in the way of dress than probably was ever made for one event in modern history. His son's valet[1] was of a literary turn of mind, and has left us a precise description of the dresses and trappings made for Philip and his army of courtiers--the flower of Spain--in which the language of extravagance is exhausted. Horse furniture, bed-hangings, canopies, quilts, and upholstery, as well as dress, were all of satin or velvet covered with gold embroidery and seed-pearls. There were twenty great nobles, Spaniards, Flemings, and Italians, each with scores of followers, all dressed in silks and satins with gold chains. Philip's German bodyguard, even, of 100 troopers, wore facings of silk on the gaudy red and yellow uniform of Aragon, and the common sailors of the fleet had crimson silk caps with white plumes. Some few amongst Philip's numerous suits may be mentioned as an example of the dresses then in vogue, although many of his nobles appear to have fully rivalled him in splendour. For some years, as has been shown, gold-embroidered dresses had been strictly prohibited; and Muñoz, in his description of the sartorial wonders prepared for the wedding, mentions the revival of gold embroidery as a novelty. Prince Philip had one suit consisting of surcoat, doublet, trunk-hose, and jacket of crimson velvet covered with little lozenges formed of twisted gold chains, the interstices being filled with a running sprig of silver braid, the leaves formed of silver filigree. The surcoat was lined with silver cloth of satin, embroidered in the same way. Another surcoat was of grey satin covered with alternate stripes {226} of applied gold chains and silver bugles. It was lined with stamped cloth of silver, and the doublet, trunks, and jacket were of white satin ornamented in the same way. Another "pretty suit," we are told, consisted of a French surcoat of black velvet embroidered all over with gold and silver bugles, the trunks and jacket being of crimson velvet, and the doublet of crimson satin with the same embroidery. One of his dresses consisted entirely of white silk velvet covered with a costly embroidery of gold filigree; and another had a surcoat of black velvet with a border of gold bugles and heavy twisted silver cords, the garment itself being almost hidden under a closely embroidered running sprig in gold, the leaves being filled in with silver filigree, and in the spaces between the sprigs were slashes of white satin. With this gorgeous coat went a suit of white velvet and gold. Precious stones were worn at the neck and wrists, and gold chains and gems were looped around the hat. Heavy gold chains rested on the shoulders, and arms and housings flashed with riches inestimable, the spoils of the two Indies.

This will give some faint idea of the fashions of a time when the rulers were fruitlessly trying to repress extravagance in dress amongst their subjects. Most of this finery was prepared in the city of Valladolid, whence Philip left on his journey, and it is not entirely surprising that in the following year 1555, the Cortes of Castile, sitting in that place, boldly presented a petition asking that the sumptuary laws should be done away with altogether. They say that they are entirely a dead letter, and are consequently a scandal, as well as {227} being useless and vexatious. Their petition was not granted, for Philip and his father still thought that all the growing wealth of the country should come to them, instead of being used for decking the undistinguished persons of private citizens.

There had been no finer flax than that of Galicia, and no better linens than those made from it, but the trade had been crippled by the sumptuary restrictions, and the business had already fallen into the hands of Flemings and Frenchmen, who got paid for their stuffs with Spanish gold. The wool industry was still more cruelly treated. Thanks to the merino stock, the manufactory of fine cloths, serges, and friezes had been very prosperous, and Spain could, and did, export these textiles largely; but in 1552 the export of such goods was strictly prohibited, and even wool in the fleece might not be sent out of the country except on condition that for every twelve sacks exported two pieces of foreign cloth and one bale of foreign linen should be introduced to prevent the export of gold.

The silk growers of Valencia and elsewhere had been ruined, but the looms remained, and the weavers attempted to obtain raw silk from Italy and France. The introduction of raw silk was thereupon forbidden, and most of the weavers went the way of the growers, to idleness and ruin, or across the seas to the Indies. The Cortes of 1555 saw the evil that was being done and, as usual, made a presentment on the subject. They pointed out the paralysis of Spanish industry and the large sums of coin sent out of the country to pay for French and Flemish linens, and ascribed the evil to its secondary and not its primary reason. They {228} say flax-growing is neglected and decayed, and suggest that public lands, where suitable, should be cultivated, and every landowner forced to plant a certain proportion of flax on his estate. It was useless and absurd, of course, as the sumptuary laws limiting the making or wearing of lawns and fine linens had killed the industry, and the coarse linens were still spun and woven at home; so nothing came of it.

But the acme of absurdity and political perverseness was reached in the Cortes of 1552, which presented a petition begging that the export of manufactured goods of all sorts to the new Spanish empire in America should be strictly prohibited. They say that the people there are getting their money so easily and becoming so rapidly rich, that they buy such great quantities of Spanish goods as to raise the prices in the Peninsula, "_whereby we who work here cannot live._"

The Cortes of 1560 reported that the nation was fast being ruined by extravagance in dress, and begged that a "pragmatic" should be issued forbidding every sort of ornament or tissue in which metal entered, and strictly limiting the trimming of garments to a plain piping round the edge. This pragmatic was duly granted, but during the next few years a considerable change was seen. Philip had married the beautiful young French Princess Elizabeth of Valois, who had been brought up with Mary Stuart in that light-hearted court that Brantome described so well. She had no patience with the rigid puritanism and peddling interference of stern authority with beauty's armoury, and French fashions for ladies became general. A "pragmatic" {229} was published in 1563, ostensibly re-enforcing that of 1537 (which, as has been shown, prohibited the use of gold lace or embroidery in any form), but really relaxing the regulations greatly, for the benefit of the ladies. They might in future wear sleeves of point lace in gold or silver, gold or silver gauze, or silk shot with gold, and their jackets might be made of similar stuffs, whilst they might deck their coifs, wimples, stomachers, and under-linen with as much gold as they pleased. Gold, silver, or crystal buttons could now be worn, but not on the skirt, and only on the head, bosom, bodice, and sleeves; whilst the hat might be trimmed with gold gimp. Some concessions were made to their spouses as well, for they were permitted to clothe their nether limbs in silk hose, and their trunks might be slashed and trimmed with silk, and, generally speaking, the wearing of silk was greatly extended.

Contemporary writers are full of the great extravagance in dress which followed this period. Moncada says that it was not uncommon for a man's dress to cost 300 ducats a suit, whilst the abuse of precious stones, both by men and women, was carried to a ridiculous excess. Contemporary portraits show that things were bad enough in this respect in England at the time, but they were much worse in Spain.

Only one year after the proclamation of the pragmatic just mentioned, namely, in December, 1564, another elaborate decree was issued, on the pretext that the previous one had left several points in doubt, and the authorities had consequently been lax in enforcing it. The decree of 1563 had said that {230} one year's grace was to be given for garments already made, and this concession had served as a loophole for the evading the regulations altogether. The authorities are therefore ordered strictly to enforce the decree; but the opportunity is taken of elucidating doubtful points and still further modifying the severity of the orders. It is now explained that the prohibition of gold, silver, and silk stitching, gimp, or trimming of any sort on the garments, referred only to applied trimmings, and was not meant to include the weaving of gold or silk threads or stripes in the textures, or even the sewing of stripes of silk or leather on to the garment, which stripes might be bordered by a piping and held by two rows of ornamental backstitch on each side, provided that no other sort of adornment is used. Silk gimp even may be applied on garments for indoor wear, whilst silk frogs may be sewn on to overcoats and travelling cloaks. Fringes were also allowed on horse furniture and harness now, and swordbelts and baldricks might be worn as rich as the taste and extravagance of the owners cared to make them. Some doubt is said to exist as to the legality of stuffing the trunk-hose with baize to extend them, and whether the slashes might be lined with baize for the same purpose, and these practices are strictly forbidden, "nor may piping be inserted like farthingales, nor may threads, nor wires, nor gummed silk be employed to extend the trunks unduly, as we are informed has fraudulently been done." The previous pragmatic had imposed the same penalties for infraction of the decree by people in their own houses as in public, which appears to have caused much vexation by the {231} invasion of domiciles by inferior officers, on pretext of searching for forbidden garments, and the right of search was now abolished.

An attempt to shame ladies into obeying the law was made for the first time, of many, in these pragmatics of 1563-4 by giving to women of bad character the right to deck themselves in prohibited finery in their own houses. But Madrid was already commencing upon the downward career which made it for more than a century the most dissolute place in Europe, and women of rank even were proud of their effrontery, so that no attempts to induce them to obey the law by appeals to their modesty ever succeeded. The brazen-faced impudence of the Madrileñas, which so shocked foreigners in the seventeenth century, still remains as a cherished tradition of the fast-disappearing race of _majas_ and _manolas_ of Lavapies and other low neighbourhoods of the capital, and is encouraged in them as a national trait by their social betters.

In 1568 Philip lost both his beautiful young wife and his only son. Defeat and disappointment met him on all sides, and his gloom, deepened by fanaticism, became heavier as the years rolled on. Henceforward he and his Court dressed in black, and the fashions of his people followed him, to the extent of relinquishing almost entirely the use of gold tissues and embroidery on their garments. But poor as was the King's exchequer, and in despite of Drake and the buccaneers, gold still poured into Spain from the Indies, and luxury, if checked in one direction, was certain to break out in another. Coaches had been brought {232} by Charles from Flanders when he came to Spain, and by the end of the sixteenth century a perfect rage for coaches had seized upon the people of the capital--a form of extravagance which for the next century at least was carried to a ridiculous excess, and even now remains the principal foible of the Madrileños. The new taste was supposed to threaten the art of horsemanship and the breed of horses; so for some years pragmatics were issued ordering that no coach or wheeled litter or chariot was to be drawn by less than four horses. To encourage men to ride on horseback, doctors, lawyers, and licentiates of universities were authorised in 1584 to use long housings to their steeds, and whilst mules were still to be housed with plain harness, horses might be decked with velvet saddles, gold and silver fringes, gimp and nails, and made as smart as possible, in order to encourage their use.

In 1593 Camillo Borghese was sent to Madrid by the Pope, and has left behind him for our enlightenment a minute account of the fashions of his day,[2] by which we may see the effects that had been produced by the "pragmatics" we have described. "The dress of this country," he says, "is as follows. The men wear long breeches, with a surcoat and hat, or else a cloak and cap, as it would be a great breach of decorum with them to wear a hat and cloak together. This costume would certainly be very pretty if the breeches were not cut so long as to be disproportionate. Some men have taken to wearing hose in the Seville style, which they call {233} galligaskins, and with these it is proper to wear a cloak and hat instead of a cap. The ladies, like the men, usually dress in black, and have a veil round their faces like nuns, their heads being enveloped by their mantillas in such a way that their faces are hardly visible. Indeed if it were not for the pragmatic issued by the King on the subject they would still cover their faces completely, as they used to do a few years ago. When they do not wear these veils over their faces, they have on collars with enormous ruff pleats. They are naturally dark-skinned, but the use of paints is so common that they all look fair, and though small in stature their high pattens make them look tall, so that it may be truly said that all Spanish ladies turn themselves from little and dusky to big and bright. The main street of Madrid would be fine if it were not unutterably filthy and almost impassable on foot, and the better class of ladies are always in carriages or litters, whilst the humbler ones ride on donkey-back or pick their way through the mire. They (the ladies) are naturally impudent, presumptuous, and off-handed, and even in the street go up and talk with men whom they do not know, looking upon it as a kind of heresy to be introduced properly. They admit all sorts of men to their conversation and are not a bit scandalised at the most improper proposals being made to them.

"The gentlemen now rarely ride on horseback but often go in carriages. They are preceded in the streets by a group of pages and a couple of servants they call lacqueys, the pragmatic not allowing them more, although the grandees may be {234} attended by four. The pragmatics only allow saddle cloths to be worn from October to March, but for the rest of the year velvet saddles may be used. The one pastime of these people is to drive up and down the Calle Mayor (High Street) from midday to midnight."

The good churchman was much shocked at the effrontery of the people and their filthy habits, but this branch of the subject is foreign to the present article. Rough magnificence, side by side with boorish rusticity, seems to have been the characteristic of the Spain of Philip II. In the same year that Borghese wrote, a very severe pragmatic had been issued prohibiting the use of silver ornaments on household furniture, which, it says, had reached a pitch of extravagance which could no longer be endured. Decrees were issued in 1586, 1590, and 1594, which are interesting as showing that the inevitable extravagance of dress had now turned into the direction of the starched ruff. "No man," says the last-named pragmatic, "may wear either at his neck or wrists on any sort of ruff or frill, fixed or loose, any trimming, fringe ravelling, or netting, starch, rice, gums, rods, wires, gold or silver threads, or any 'alchemy' or anything else to extend or support them, but only a plain Holland or linen ruff with one or two little pleats, on pain of forfeiture of shirt and ruff and a fine of 50 ducats." Great resistance was offered to this, and it was found, somehow or other, whether by "alchemy" or what not, the "lettuce-frill" ruffs still stood stiffly from the neck, and the Council of State gravely considered the matter, with the result that the decree of 1594 insists upon the law being {235} enforced, the ruffs to be as described, and not more than three inches wide from the band to the hem, the colour to be pure white. The penalties for infraction were tremendous--for a first offence, 20,000 maravedis fine, for the second, 40,000, and for the third, 80,000 and a year's banishment.

This was not by any means the only sumptuary law promulgated in this year of 1594; a much relaxed code of dress was issued with regard to gold and fancy silk textures, of which the universal use of unadorned black for so many years had greatly decreased the manufacture in Spain. Women were now allowed to wear fine cloth or silk jackets, and cover the seams thereof with gold or silver braid or scrolls, whilst their dresses and mantles might be trimmed as profusely as they pleased with the same ornaments. Doublets, jackets, and waistcoats were now allowed to be of quilted silk, satin, or taffety; whilst the trunk hose of the men might be slashed, and double-stitched at the edge of the slashings. The said breeches, moreover, might be stiffened by a single thickness of baize and all the fine stuffs used for gentlemen's garments could now, for the first time for many years, be stamped with patterns. New and more severe measures were adopted at the same time to keep up the breed of horses, which animals were thought to be almost in danger of extinction, as horsemanship was less than ever indulged in, and mules were preferred for drawing the coaches.

In the same year, 1594, a curious pragmatic was proclaimed dealing with the extravagant abuse of honorific titles. It commences in the King's name by saying that, although it is unnecessary to {236} make rules for himself or his family, he will begin at the top for regularity's sake. The King must be addressed in writing simply as "Sir" at the head of the letter, which must end with "God guard the Catholic person of your Majesty," at the bottom. The heir to the crown was to be addressed in the same way, but with "Highness" substituted for "Majesty," the Princes of the blood being given the style of Highness, but "his Highness" alone standing for the heir to the crown. The rest of the Princes were to be addressed on the outside of a letter, "To his Highness the Infante Don So-and-so." The titles "Excellency" and "Illustrious Sir," which had become very general forms of courtesy, were forbidden, and "Most Reverend Sir" was only to be applied to Cardinals and the Primate of Spain, the Archbishop of Toledo. The highest grandees, bishops, and members of the Council of State were in future to be addressed by the inferior title of "Señoria," or Lordship, whilst, out of courtesy and at the option of the person speaking or writing, the same title could be given alone to Marquises, Counts, Presidents of Councils, and Grand Commanders. All letters of every kind were ordered to begin at the top with a cross, and then to state the business without any address or name, ending with "God guard your lordship"--or other title--and the date, place, and signature of the writer. Absolutely no further compliment was to be permitted, no matter what the relationship or rank of the parties. As a further attempt to enforce simplicity, the same pragmatic provides that in future, on pain of a fine of 10,000 maravedis, no coronet may surmount any coat of arms, except {237} such as are borne by Dukes, Marquises, and Counts.

The proclamation of this pragmatic caused a dreadful fluttering of the dovecotes of the Calle Mayor. "Liars' parade" (the raised terrace before the church of St. Philip), the favourite lounge of the gilded youth, rose in revolt, the cadets of the Cordobas, the Mendozas, the Maquedas, the Leivas, the Manriques, and the rest of them, who had been called "Excellencies" and "Lordships" from their cradles, turned like the worm at last. Dress without gold they might, but they, the sons of Dukes, to be addressed with no more ceremony than dustmen--perish the thought! that they would not stand. So they and the rest of the rufflers, led captains, kept poets, bullies, and blacklegs, swept down the Calle Mayor carrying the grave Alcalde and all before them. Shops were shut, water was boiled to throw out upon the base "Corchetes," who dared to call such gallants plain "Mister," and the gloomy recluse in the Alcazar at the end of the street himself heard the row. When he was told the cause of it, he only remarked, so the chronicles say: "Bah! what does it matter to me what they are called? Let them be Lordships, or what they will, so long as they serve me well." And the pragmatic thus died on the day it was born, for no attempt was ever made to enforce it, and "Señorias" in the Calle Mayor remained as plentiful as blackberries in an English hedgerow.

The isolation of Philip II. in his gloomy old age, together with the relaxation of the enactments already mentioned against the use of gold and silver tissues, had allowed luxury in dress {238} practically to go unchecked during the last years of the sixteenth century, and when the King died, in 1598, he left Spain, and particularly the capital, in a perfect frenzy of prodigality. The most brazen dissoluteness accompanied the blindest religious fanaticism; the exchequer was bankrupt, the fields untilled, the aforetime busy workshops of the south silent and abandoned, the people starving or flocking across the seas in search of the easily won gold that was ruining them; and when the coveted gold came to the few who survived the pursuit, it was lavished in insensate waste on the adornment of their outer persons--for they always fed frugally in that lean land--and most of the wealth left the country as fast as it entered it, the idleness it engendered being its net result to the country that won it.

For the next hundred years the same process went on. The monarch of Spain and the Indies was reduced to beg his subjects in the name of charity to provide food for himself and his family, whilst the mines of Peru and Mexico were sending millions. The splendour of the polished Court of Philip IV. was only rivalled by that of his nephew, the Grand Monarque, but it was soaked to the core in sloth and squalor, whilst the humbler people found the purchasing power of gold grow less and less as the metal poured in and the workers, dazzled by wealth so lightly won, ceased to produce commodities for consumption. Philip III. was a narrow bigot without his father's industry or intellect, but he was well-meaning and sorely beset, and was unequal to the propping up of the great empire into which his father's narrow and halting policy had {239} introduced the dry rot. The regulation of dress, however, and the repression of profane extravagance was just the task which appealed to his tastes and sympathies, and he set about it as soon as he mounted the throne.

His pragmatic of 1600 was a new departure in many things and was the pattern of all similar enactments for the next hundred years. It is very minute, but a few of its provisions are worth preserving, as they throw much light on the tastes of the time. The King in his preamble sets forth that he is informed that the sumptuary pragmatics are quite disregarded, and seeing that the great excess and extravagance in dress constitutes a national scandal which must be moderated, he has conferred with his wisest councillors and has decided to issue a new pragmatic which shall supersede all previous ones.

To begin with, the following sweeping order is given: No one of whatever rank, except the King and his children, shall wear any sort of brocade or cloth of gold or silver, or stuff shot with gold or silver, or silk in which metal is woven. No cord, gimp, ornamental stitching or quilting, either of silk or metal, is to be permitted, excepting on religious vestments and uniforms, and no precious stones or pearls are to be worn on housings or accoutrements in any shape. There is an absolute prohibition of the employment of lute-string, twist, ruchings, flat braid, cording, chainlets, crewels, cross-stitching, through-stitching, tangle trimming, puffs, and any sort of bead or steel trimmings; and the following dress is alone prescribed: The cape or other over-garment may be {240} of any sort of silk with stripes, on each edge of which may be an ornamental stitching. Surcoats and ropillas (a sort of half-tight over-jacket with double sleeves, the outer ones hanging loose from the shoulder) may be also of silk and trimmed in the same way, and, if desired, a piping of another sort of silk, but not the same, may be put between the stripes. The inside of the capes may have similar stripes of silk, satin, or taffety, but not velvet. Shoulder capes may be made of velvet, and the hoods of riding-cloaks or rain-capes may be lined with the same. Silk gimp and frogs may be sewn on to duffel cloaks, &c. The trunks may be worn of any kind of silk, and each slashing may be edged with a velvet or silk piping and an "eyelash" border. If the slashing is a wide one this edging may be worn on both sides of it, but if otherwise only on one side. The slashings may be lined with taffety. Silk gimp or braid of any sort may be worn on the trunks excepting lutestrings or crewels. Galligaskins may also be made of silk, but with no trimming but a row of gimp on each side and at the opening. Dressing-gowns for women and men may be of any material or fashion, so long as gold or silver is not used. Doublets, ropillas, or trunks made of satin may be ornamented by silk stitching of any colour, but on no account may the stuff be pinked, ravelled, or fringed. The rules generally apply to women as well as men, but the former are allowed to wear jackets of light cloth of gold or silver, which may be trimmed with a braid of the same over the seams, and the whole jacket may be covered with "whirligigs" or scrolls of gold or silver, so long as there is no working in the stuff {241} itself. The frills and flounces of these garments may also be ornamented in the same fashion. Hats, belts, baldricks, &c., were all treated in the same way; gold or silver gimp, braid, and lace were allowed to be sewn on, but not embroidered or woven in, the texture.

A rather curious point in this decree of 1600 is the distinction in it of different classes of citizens. Thus women of known evil life were allowed to wear what they liked inside the houses, but were to conform to the law in the streets; pages might dress in silk jackets, coats, trunks, and caps, but their capes were to be of cloth or frieze; no lackeys were to have silken clothes or velvet scabbards, but they were allowed to wear taffety caps. The punishments for the breaking the orders seem severe but unequal. Offending wearers were to lose the peccant garment and pay a sum equal to its value for pious uses, but tradesmen who made or sold the goods were to be condemned to four years' exile and a fine of twenty maravedis for a first offence, double the punishment for a second, and the pillory and ten years' exile from Spain for a third. All this sounds very severe, but there were plenty of ways out of it. For instance, garments already made might be worn for four years by men and six by women, although they were not in accordance with the law. This pragmatic was proclaimed with the usual ceremony by one of the Alcaldes de Casa y Corte with the sound of drum and trumpet in the High Street of Madrid on the 8th of June, 1600. The month must have been a busy one for the dignified officials in question; for during the first fortnight of it decrees regulating almost every conceivable subject were issued. The {242} rigid and unpopular decree about courtesy titles was superseded, and nearly everybody of position might now be called Señoria. No gold or silver in any form was to be used in furniture or household decoration, "as the King is shocked at the waste of the estates of his subjects in such superfluities, and considers it high time that the money were employed in useful and necessary things." Velvet or silk might be employed in upholstery, but no gold or silver except a gold fringe on the edges. The same rule applied to the lining of carriages and litters, but no silk was to be used on the outside of vehicles.

The regulation of jewellery was just as minute and severe, and to judge from that which was in future to be allowed, the excess in this respect must have been very great, since after pages of prohibitions with regard to the fashions of jewellery, and the limitation of enamels and precious stones, men were still allowed to wear as many rings as they liked, chains and girdles of gold pieces, sets of cameos mounted in gold, and strings of pearls in their caps. The use of silver plate is also much limited, but still side-saddles might be made of silver, if plain, and the harness and horse-cloths covered with the same metal. Here, again, the same loophole for evasion was given; for all things already made were exempt if registered within six months.

Attempts were made at the same time, as on many subsequent occasions, to suppress the ostentatious promenading up and down the Calle Mayor, which grew more scandalous as the years went on, until it reached its apogee in the reign {243} of Philip IV., and for which the taste has never yet quite died out. No women of loose life were to promenade in coaches, nor might coaches be hired for the purpose on pain of confiscation. No person but a grandee might have more than two torches carried before him under penalty of one hundred ducats fine, and if any person hired a lackey by the day, or for less than a month, he was to be put in the pillory and exiled for four years. The reasons for these regulations will be well understood by those who have studied the characteristic picaresque novels of the period, and have smiled at the amusing subterfuges adopted by impecunious scamps to pass themselves off as noble hidalgos, the better to prey upon their fellow-creatures.

Amongst other things Philip III. in his youthful zeal tried to deal with the vexed subject of ruffs. He made no attempt to stand against starch any longer--indeed, to judge from his portraits, no one ever wore such stiff or extensive ruffs as he did himself, but he sternly draws the line at trimming. There must be no lace edges or ravellings; they must be pure white, with two little pleats only, and not more than 4½ inches wide, half as wide again as had been allowed by his father. For the next few years pragmatics positively rained in Madrid, altering, restricting, relaxing this or the other detail of the various decrees; but all to no purpose apparently, for in 1611 Philip came out with another long proclamation, saying that the extravagant abuse of dress being worse than ever, he has consulted discreet experts and has decided to alter the rules. The use of gold and silver thread {244} and foil, and of coloured silks, is more restricted than ever, the only exceptions being for church vestments and the dresses of officers actually engaged in war. In other respects, however, the trimmings allowed appear to be exceedingly elaborate, and in the pragmatic of 1611 about a dozen different specimen trimmings of trunks alone are described with all the finnicking minuteness of a modern Court dressmaker's bill; the sum total of it all being that the employment of silk, velvet, and other fine stuffs, stamped and plain, was now almost unrestricted, whilst bullion was more severely forbidden than before, except for ladies' jackets and a few of their trimmings.

Another desperate attempt was made in the same year to restrict the unprofitable idling in the streets with carriages and an order was issued that no new coaches were to be made without a license from the President of the Council, and no man was to ride in a coach without leave, "as the King is informed that gentlemen are forgetting how to ride." Women also are to refrain from covering up their heads and faces, in order that they may be seen and recognised, and they may only be accompanied by their husbands, fathers, sons, or grandfathers. The girls of a family may ride in a coach without the mistress of it, and the owners of coaches may be accompanied by a friend, but with this exception no coach is to go out without its owner, and may not be lent, exchanged, or sold without special license.

Ruffs had now apparently become general with all classes, as a pragmatic was issued in 1611, saying that, notwithstanding the former prohibition of the {245} use of long-lawn and muslin for ruffs, frills, and collars, poor people would insist upon wearing them, and they consequently might now be made of those cheaper materials as well as of fine linen.

In March, 1621, Philip III. died, leaving luxury and extravagance in his capital more rampant than ever, and Philip IV., a mere boy, at once set to work to grapple the evil with as much confidence as if he were the first to attempt it. If economy had ever been needed it was so now, for the public treasury was empty, the people ruined with oppressive taxation, ecclesiastical extortion and official peculation, and the country was rapidly becoming depopulated. A curious pamphlet is still in existence which contains a series of exhortations addressed to the King in the year of his accession by a noble member of the Cortes of Castile, setting forth the various evils from which the country was suffering, and proposing remedies for them.[3] There is much plain speaking and boldness on many matters therein, and, amongst others, on the eternal question of sumptuary extravagance. The representation on this subject has so direct a bearing upon what has already been said as to the inoperativeness of the pragmatics, that some of it is worth transcribing.

"Your subjects spend and waste great sums in their abuse of costly garb with so many varieties of trimmings that the making costs more than the garments themselves, and as soon as they are made there is a change of fashion and the money has to be spent over again. When they marry, the {246} vast wealth they squander on dress alone ruins them, and they are in debt for the rest of their lives; and although this expenditure may be voluntary, it has become, so to speak, obligatory, and such is the excess that the wife of an artisan nowadays needs as much finery as a lady, even though she and her husband have to get the money for it by dishonest means, to the offence of God. Many weddings, indeed, are prevented by the excessive cost and the vassals are therefore unable to serve your Majesty as they ought. They are unable to pay their debts, the costs incurred in the recovery of which still further reduce their fortunes.... As for collars also, the disorder in their use is very great, for a single one of linen, with its making and ravelling, will cost over 200 reals, and six reals every time it is goffered, which at the end of the year doubles the cost of them and much money is thus wasted. Besides this, many strong young men are employed in goffering them, who might be better employed in work necessary for the commonwealth or in tilling the soil. The servants, too, have to be paid higher wages in respect of the money they have to spend in collars, which consumes most of what they earn, and a great quantity of wheat is wasted in starch, which is wanted for food. In addition to this, the fine linens to make these collars are brought from abroad, and money has to be sent out of the country to pay for them. With respect to coaches, great evil is caused and offence given to God, seeing the disquiet they bring to the women who own them, as they never stay at home but leave their children and servants to run riot with the bad example of the mistress being always {247} abroad. The praiseworthy and necessary art of horsemanship too is dying out, and those who ought to be mounted crowd, six or eight of them together in a carriage, talking to wenches rather than learning how to ride. It must be evident how different gentlemen must grow up who have all their lives been rolling about in coaches instead of riding, besides which the breed of horses is deteriorating and money is being squandered by the keeping of coaches often by people of moderate means who can ill afford it but who are over-persuaded by their wives, who say that because So-and-so, who is no better off than they, have a coach they must have one as well, and so the bad example spreads."

Don Mateo proposed some very drastic remedies, and, whether in consequence of this or not, the King and his favourite, the masterful Count-Duke of Olivares, put their heads together during the first few weeks of the reign, and came out with tremendous series of pragmatics repeating the most stringent provisions of the decree of 1611 with regard to the use of gold or silver, either in dress, furniture, saddlery, or upholstery. No trimmings were to be allowed of any sort, and no silk capes, cloaks, or overalls were to be worn, cloth, frieze, and duffel being substituted in those garments. Above all Don Mateo's suggestion about the ruffs was adopted. No person was permitted, on pain of the pillory and exile, to pleat or goffer linen in any shape. Starch was placed in the _index expurgatoris_ again, and ruffs were to be for ever suppressed in favour of the large, square, flat Walloon collar, which fell over the shoulders and breast like a bib.

The expenses of the palace were cut down to {248} a minimum, and Philip himself, the most prodigal and lavish of men in after years, went on short commons. Amongst other efforts at economy made by him one originated a fashion which became deeply rooted in the Spanish character, and which the Italian minister of another Philip--the Frenchman--a hundred years afterwards, said had a large share in making Spaniards the leisurely and dignified people they were. The wide, falling Walloon collar, with little or no stiffening,--as will be seen in portraits of the time--was apt to wrinkle round the neck and very soon became dirty; so an ingenious tailor in the Calle Mayor submitted to the young King and his brother Carlos a new device, consisting of a high square collar of cardboard covered with light-coloured silk inside and with the same stuff as the doublet outside. By means of heated rollers and shellac the cardboard was permanently moulded into a graceful curve which bent outwards at the height of the chin.[4] Philip was pleased with the novelty and ordered some of the new "golillas," as they were called, for himself and his brother. The tailor, in high glee, went to his shop to make them, but alas! heated rollers turned with handles and smoking pots of shellac were suspicious things in those days, and the spies of the Council promptly haled the tailor and his uncanny instruments before the President, who sagely decided that there was some devilish witchcraft behind it all; and if not--well, the accursed {249} things he was making were lined with light blue silk in violation of the pragmatic, so he must be punished anyhow. A bonfire was made of the poor man's stock before his door and he was put under lock and key; but when Olivares heard of it he was furious. He and the Duke of Infantado sent for the President and rated him soundly as a meddling old fool for burning the King's new collars. The President declared his ignorance that they were for the King, but pointed out how outrageous they were in shape, and how they sinned against the pragmatic; but he was soon silenced by the Count-Duke, who told him they were the best and most economical things ever invented, as they did away with the need for constant washing of collars, and would last ten years without further expense or trouble.

The golilla "caught on" with high and low. It is true that heads had to be carried stiffly and turned slowly, but Spanish heads were intended so to be used and no complaint was made. No more pragmatics against ruffs, moreover, were ever needed again, and the costly, cumbrous fashion went out for good. This was in 1623, the same year as Charles Stuart went on his hairbrained trip to Madrid, and during his stay all the pragmatics were suspended, in order that he might see how splendid the Madrileños could be if left to themselves. They did their best to sustain their reputation and the poverty-stricken country was again plunged into the maddest vortex of prodigality that even dissolute Madrid had ever seen, and flaunting Buckingham himself was outshone in brilliancy and lavishness by the nobles of Philip's Court. The strict law of Charles V. limiting the {250} wearing of jewellery and precious stones had been re-imposed, but the list of gems displayed, given, and received as presents during Charles' visit, and the sumptuous dresses worn, has been left on record, down to the smallest detail, by one of the King's attendants;[5] and shows an inconceivable lavishness which naturally would, and did, make it difficult to revert in Madrid to the severe orders of the pragmatics again.

The tendency of the time, however, was against barbaric splendour, and gradually the taste for gold and silver tissues and embroideries in civil costume was modifying itself, but new extravagancies sprang up as old ones languished. Philip's sister Anna had married Louis XIII. of France in 1615 with great pomp, and all the Spanish Court had assembled on the historic ford of the Bidasoa which marked the French frontier. They brought back some new fashions with them, caught from the Parisians. Since Charles V., for good reasons, was obliged to have his curls cropped at Barcelona, Spaniards of all classes had worn the hair short, and parted as it is in England at present. The French wore it longer and the Spaniards now followed their lead. But not all at once. They first adopted the mode of having two ugly locks like long, limp Newgate-knockers, called "guedejas," hanging before the ears, the back of the head being cropped and the top surmounted by a twist or curl called a "copete." In the early portraits of Philip IV. this style of headdress may be seen.

{251}

Another fashion brought from France was much more objectionable, but took a stronger hold in Spain than elsewhere. Round hoop-skirts or farthingales had been common in most parts of Europe for over fifty years before, but the new refinement, called a "guarda-infante," was a very large, farthingale flattened back and front so as to stick out inordinately at the sides, particularly at the hips. The jaunty Madrileñas added to it a new feature, which made it worse than ever, namely, a metal section or facing to the bottom hoop which resounded against a similar plate on the heels of their clogs, or clanked upon the ground, so that a musical clickety-click accompanied them wherever they went; even as it did that aged equestrienne of Banbury famed in English nursery lore. As the bold wenches minced along they prided themselves upon the eccentric or rhythmical effects they produced. They would be neither shamed, coerced, nor persuaded to abandon the foolish caprice until they tired of it themselves, but Don Philip did his best by pragmatics to suppress it. In 1639 the famous fulmination against female extravagance in dress was issued, part of which ran as follows:

"His Majesty orders that no woman, whatever her quality, shall wear a guarda-infante; which is a costly, superfluous, painful, ugly, disproportionate, lascivious, indecent article of dress, giving rise to sin on the part of the wearers and on that of men for their sakes. The only exception to this rule shall be public prostitutes.

"No skirts shall consist of more than eight yards of silk or a proportionate quantity of other stuff, nor shall they measure more than four yards round; the {252} same rule shall apply to polonaises, over-skirts, hen-coop skirts and petticoats.

"No woman wearing shoes shall have a bottom hoop, farthingale, or anything else in the skirt for the purpose of making a noise, and bottom hoops or farthingales shall not be worn except with pattens at least five inches high.

"No woman shall wear low-cut bodices except women of known evil life. Any person guilty of infraction of this pragmatic shall lose the offending article of dress and pay a fine of 20,000 maravedis for the first offence, and for the second double that amount, with exile from the Court."

The unfortunate dressmakers who made the garments were to be much more severely punished than the fair wearers, and four years' penal servitude was their sentence for a second offence.

The offended Madrileñas did not put up tamely with such tyranny, and, led by three frisky damsels, the daughters of a famous judge, they came out the day after the pragmatic was proclaimed, swaggering and jingling up and down the Prado in the widest guarda-infantes, the most outrageous farthingales, and the noisiest of hoops; and dared the scandalised alguaciles to touch them, since they could hardly arrest all the rank and beauty of the Court; and the fair ones practically had their own way, for Philip only issued a grave and sorrowful remonstrance against the indelicacy and expense of their constantly changing caprices, and begging them to conform to their duty. But they pleased themselves as usual, although it is said that their three fair ringleaders did no go quite scot-free, as their father the judge, scandalised that his own daughters {253} should be the first to break the law, condemned them to dress in nun's garb of the coarsest frieze. Nothing daunted, the recalcitrant "Gilimonas,"[6] as they were called, managed, with nods and winks and frisking skirts, to look more deliciously provocative than ever in their penitential garb, and their pastors and masters were glad enough to get them back again into their clicking farthingales to avoid the scandal.

Nor were the gallants of the other sex more submissive about their lovelocks. An order was proclaimed at the same time, saying, "His Majesty orders that no man shall wear a topknot, or lovelock before the ears, or any curls upon his head--and barbers who dress the hair in this fashion shall be fined 200 maravedis and be imprisoned for 10 days." Men who wore the offending curls were to be excluded from Court and all public offices. "Liars' Parade" was as much upset about this as about titles, and made a desperate attempt to resist. It was in the very heyday of poetry in Spain--Calderon, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and a host of others were for ever firing off poetical squibs and satires at the foibles of the age, the "Liars' Parade" being the central exchange for the "good things" of poets, big and little, from the monarch downwards. A cloud of barbed poetical arrows from scores of poetical bows were consequently shot at the royal decree against topknots and guedejas; and ridicule and satire were poured out unsparingly upon those who were responsible for it. But to be shut out from the presence of king and ministers, to have the public service closed against them, was {254} too hard to be borne by the noble swaggerers and kept poets of the Calle Mayor, so they gave way and took to the long, lank, straight hair all round, which Philip himself wore for the rest of his life, though others, particularly away from the Court, still clung to the guedejas and short backhair.

When Philip IV. had been gathered to his fathers in the jasper vault of the Escorial, and his sickly son had married a French princess, Spain began to conform its fashions to those which ruled in the Court of the Roi-soleil, but somehow the three-cornered plumed hat, so general in France and England, never became popular in Spain. The large flap-brimmed hat with feathers still lingered when the Queen Regent Mariana, during her rivalry with her bold step-son, Don Juan José of Austria, raised a regiment of Swiss and German mercenaries. These soldiers wore a very broad-brimmed hat, flat all round, and slightly turned up at the edge, much like the wideawakes of to-day. This hat caught the fancy of the Spaniards, who dubbed it "Chambergo," a Spanish variant of "Schomberg," after whom the regiment was called, and this hat has to this day never lost its hold upon the Spanish populace, although they had to raise a revolution to keep it, as will be related presently.

A very absurd craze at the end of the seventeenth century, which official remonstrance was powerless to put down, was the universal wearing of great horn-rimmed spectacles, such as may be seen in the portrait of Quevedo, facing page 256; men and women of fashion insisted upon wearing these ugly appendages, whether they needed them or not, and {255} literary fashion though it was in a literary age, much sport was given to the poetasters in attacking it.

By the time Charles the Bewitched had grown up, French fashion ruled in Madrid, with the sole exceptions of the golilla (somewhat changed in shape to suit the long backhair) and the round-brimmed hat, which resisted all attempts to displace them; but the old vice of extravagance still continued in spite of changed fashions, and in 1674 a pragmatic was issued deploring again the costly excess in dress, the abuse of adornment of equipages, and the idle luxury of the time. The severe decrees of Philip IV. are re-enacted, and a code of permissible dress laid down, in which velvets, silks, satins, taffeties, of all colours, stamped and plain, are allowed, but foreign textures are to be equal in weight and fineness to Spanish goods.

The pragmatics now, however, had altered their tone. They were exhortatory rather than comminatory during the last years of the House of Austria. A change came with the advent of the first Bourbon Philip V. The Spaniards were sensitive, and resented the inferiority implied by the adoption by the Court and society of the French fashions, high heels, wide-skirted coats, full-bottomed wigs, and the rest; so the mass of the people clung to their cropped back-hair, their broad-brimmed hats, long cloaks, and above all their stately stiffened "golillas." Philip was too wise to run atilt against the golilla at first, and indeed adopted it himself, as may be seen in his portrait as a youth in the Louvre. But he wrote an anonymous pamphlet against it, and lost no opportunity of pointing out its unfitness for working people and soldiers. Alberoni, with his caustic {256} Italian wit, was for ever sneering at it, so that when Philip abandoned it and took to a collar and white lace cravat public opinion was prepared for the change and the golilla fell, after a reign of a hundred years.

When Philip was firm upon his throne after his long struggle, he issued a pragmatic, in 1723, once more trying to stem the tide of extravagance, precisely as if it had never been tried and failed before. No gold or silver either in texture or trimming was to be worn. No gold, glass, pearl, or steel buttons were to be allowed. No precious stones, real or false, might be used in trimming or fastenings, there were to be no foreign ornaments, and sham gems and jewellery were strictly prohibited. No silk might be worn but such as was of Spanish manufacture. Servants were to be clothed in plain cloth and woollen stockings, and no person but a grandee was allowed to keep more than two lackeys; and no silk was to be used on harness or the outside of coaches. No person might drive more than four horses in the capital, and no lawyer, notary, or tradesman was permitted to keep a coach. Doctors and priests alone might ride a pacing mule, all other men were bidden to mount horses only. Artisans and workmen were to dress exclusively in baize, serge, or frieze; their cuffs alone might be of silk. The pains and penalties in this great pragmatic were many and severe, but the decree aimed at doing too much. So many fine and delicate doubtful points arose with regard to its provisions, that for years after fresh proclamations were constantly being made to elucidate this pragmatic of 1723; and through the many loopholes offenders escaped, and the act became a dead letter.

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Indeed, sumptuary laws were already growing out of date, even in Spain; the courtiers copied the latest fashions from Paris, and the common people, more out of patriotism and mute resentment than anything else, made their cloaks longer and longer and their hats wider and wider. The long ends of the cloaks had to be put out of the way somehow, so they were thrown across the face to the opposite shoulder, and, what with the broadbrim over the brow and the cloak over the mouth, none of the face was seen but the eyes.

Spain during the greater part of the eighteenth century had the ill-fortune to be governed by foreign ministers, mostly Italians, and one after the other they tried to cut stubborn Spain to the same pattern as the rest of the world. The more they tried the more sulky and determined became the people, and it resolved itself into a national article of faith to resist all change; things Spanish being better than things elsewhere. When Philip's younger son, Charles III., came from Naples to rule them he brought with him his Neapolitan ministers. Grimaldi said that the Spaniards all looked like conspirators slinking about in the darkness with their covered faces. An attempt was made to light the streets with oil-lamps, but the people resented such a foolish foreign fad, and smashed the lamps as fast as they were put up. The offenders could not be identified with their covered faces and slouch hats, so the King was persuaded by the Marquis of Squillaci (Esquilache, as the Spaniards called him) to issue a new pragmatic. Its tone was more one of sorrow than of anger. The King was shocked for foreigners to see such a boorish fashion in his {258} capital, and had determined that in future no long cloaks or round-brimmed hats were to be worn. Either a short cape or a skirted coat was allowed, and men might wear either their own hair or a wig, but they must cover it with a three-cornered hat and not a Chambergo, and the face must not be hidden in any way.

This order was proclaimed on the 4th of March, 1766, and police were posted in the principal places with shears to curtail cloaks and lop hat-brims. It happened that a man pursued by alguaciles for wearing the forbidden garments took refuge in the precincts of the church of the Trinity, where he was followed by the officers and beaten, in defiance of sanctuary. An infuriated crowd collected and overpowered the authorities, who were dismayed at the feeling evinced, and withdrew their men. For the next few days men all over Madrid ostentatiously flaunted their cloaks and broad-brims before the barracks and police posts, and there is no doubt that the feeling was taken advantage by politicians for their own ends to goad the people to fury against the Italian ministers. Matters came to a head on the 23rd of March, when a soldier attempted to seize a man with his face covered. A crowd, ready for mischief, collected immediately, and the authorities were overpowered. The mob swept up the Calle de Leon across the Calle de Alcalá to Squillaci's house (the famous "house with the seven chimneys") which they wrecked, although the minister had fled. With broad-brimmed hats on the top of poles they scoured the streets, making all men they met uncock their hats. Overpowering all resistance, they assembled {259} before the palace. The guards used force in vain, and that night the capital was in the hands of the mob. The gaols were opened, houses wrecked, foreigners assailed and killed, the King's Walloon Guard especially being singled out for vengeance. Squillaci and Grimaldi had fled, and the Spanish ministers, either out of timidity or sympathy, practically sided with the rioters. The rising spread rapidly to the provinces, old grievances were raked up again, and a dangerous revolution was in progress, when the King surrendered unconditionally. People were to wear what they pleased, food and oil were to be reduced in price, and the Italian ministers were smuggled away, never to return.

That practically ended the fight for sumptuary control. Finery was triumphant in the long struggle, and the strong arm of authority was obliged to confess itself powerless to dictate on the question of personal adornment. Half-hearted attempts were made after this to interfere in sumptuary matters by Spanish sovereigns, but the effects of their decrees were hardly felt outside their own households. In 1780, for instance, a pragmatic as severe in form as ever was issued, minutely regulating the wearing of mourning and prohibiting mourning coaches, but little notice was taken of it after the first few weeks; and later still a curious mild little decree was issued by Charles IV. limiting the number of dishes which, according to custom, many officials were entitled to receive daily from the royal kitchens. It is a long drop from Alfonso the Wise to the silly dodderer who handed over his kingdom to Napoleon because his son had offended him; but the same feeling, almost the {260} same phraseology, pervades the first pragmatic we have quoted and the last. Both deplore the lavishness and luxury of the people, and exhort them to correct the excess and superfluity which characterises their tables; and in both of them the King promises that he himself will rigidly conform to his own decree and reform the extravagance of his private repasts.

Custom, taste, and perhaps necessity, have done what five hundred years of "pragmatics" failed to do. The Spaniards are the most sober and frugal-feeding nation in Europe, and certainly do not exceed in the matter of gaudy or ostentatious raiment. The only traits left to them perhaps by the extravagant old fashions we have described, are their consuming love for driving about the streets in a fine carriage, however much they may stint in all else; and the grave stiff-necked dignity which a century of the golilla left behind it.

[1] Andres Muñoz' MSS., National Library, Madrid.

[2] "L'Espagne au 16me et 17me siècles," par Morel Fatio. Paris, 1878.

[3] "Discursos y apuntamientos de Don Mateo de Lison y Biedma." Secretly printed in 1622.

[4] As first invented, the golilla opened in front, as shown in the portrait of Quevedo, facing page 256, but later, when the hair was worn long, it was made square in front and was fastened behind, as shown in the portrait of Charles the Bewitched.

[5] Manuscript of Don Diego de Soto y Aguilar in the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, transcript in the author's possession.

[6] Their father's name was Gil Imon de la Mota.

{261}

_A PALACE IN THE STRAND._

{263}

_A PALACE IN THE STRAND._[1]

Probably not one person out of a thousand of those who hurry along the busiest part of the Strand notices even the existence of a closed iron gate by the side of a public-house opposite the Vaudeville Theatre. If you peer through the grating you will only see a dark, narrow court, now blocked up by the building operations connected with the Hotel Cecil, and you will have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that this avenue, which has been gradually going down in the world for the last two centuries, is destined before very long to be blotted out altogether. For this was an important thoroughfare once, called Ivy Lane, one of the three public roadways by which access was obtained from the Strand to the river and the boats, the other two being Milford Lane and Strand Lane, the entrance to which latter still exists, a mere passage between two shops opposite Catherine Street. Down the centre of Ivy Lane ran a brook, over which the roadway of the Strand was carried by a bridge called Ivy Bridge. This lane, which separates the liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster from the city of {264} Westminster, ran sloping down to the river between the garden walls of two of the great Strand palaces which, erected, as they all were at first, by bishops, were subsequently grabbed by kings and courtiers for their own use. To the east stood, on the Savoy demesne, the house of the Bishop of Carlisle, which was granted to the Elizabethan Earl of Bedford, and subsequently came into the possession, by exchange, of Robert Cecil, afterwards the first Earl of Salisbury, second son of the great Burleigh, whose own house stood nearly opposite, on the site of Exeter Hall; and on the west, covering all the space now occupied by the Adelphi as far as Coutts' bank, there rose the ancient mansion which for centuries was the town palace of the prince-bishops of Durham, known to history as Durham Place.

In the lawless times, when these mansions were first founded, it would have been dangerous for any but ecclesiastics to have resided outside of the protection afforded by the City boundaries, and so it came about that all the way from the Temple to Whitehall, along the banks of the silent highway, which then was the principal thoroughfare of London, there ran a string of bishops' palaces and religious foundations. Their outhouses and stable gates opened on to the rough country road we still call the Strand--a road which even in the time of Mary, we are told, was filthy and unseemly, and remained so, indeed, until the great nobles made these palaces their homes. Many books have been written about the Aldelphi and its site, and Durham Place, which was by far the most important of the Strand palaces until the Protector built Somerset House, has come in for its own full share of notice, but the writers {265} upon the subject have copied each other with slavish fidelity, errors and all. The same set of facts and assumptions has invariably done duty in all descriptions of Durham Place. I wish in the present article to break new ground, and relate some hitherto unnoticed episodes in its history.

Stow has not much to tell of Durham Place, except of the great festival of 1540, when the future rivals, Dudley and Seymour, with Poynings, Carew, Kingston, and Richard Cromwell, challenged all Europe to a tourney, and held open house with regal lavishness for a week at Durham Place, lent to them for the purpose by the King, who rewarded each of them, moreover, with an income for ever of a hundred marks a year and a house out of the plunder of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. The State Papers now and again give us a ray of side-light on the history of Durham Place. We know how Somerset granted it to Elizabeth for her life after he had beheaded his brother, who there had coined the doubloons with which he thought to bribe his way to the throne. We know on Somerset's fall how jealous Northumberland gave to the Princess the great unfinished palace of the dead Protector, and took for his own town house Durham Place, in which, although it was nominally hers, she had never lived. We know something, but not much, of the fastuous splendour of Dudley's life during the three years he lived here, of Jane Grey's ill-starred wedding in the house, of the plotting of her father-in-law, verily a lath painted like a sword, and the weaker time-servers around him, to perpetuate their rule and confirm them in their ill-gotten gains, of the pitiably crumbling down of the {266} house of cards when the supreme moment came; and how Northumberland went forth from the Tower to the scaffold, never to see Durham Place again, hoping in his craven soul, till the axe fell, that his abject recantation would purchase his worthless life.

The Egerton Papers (Camden Society) tell us somewhat in detail of the arbitrary expulsion of Raleigh from Durham Place, where, by the grace of his mistress, he had lived happily and splendidly for nearly twenty years. These facts and some others in the subsequent history of the house are recited by every writer who has touched upon the subject, and I have no desire to repeat at length incidents which are already well known. One error into which most writers have fallen has been to jump at the conclusion that whenever recorded history is silent on the subject of Durham Place, the house reverted to the possession of the See of Durham. Such does not appear to me to have been the case. It is usually asserted that Henry VIII. first took possession of the house by forcing the Bishop, Cuthbert Tunstal, to exchange his palace for some other property. This is founded on Stow's statement that Cold Harbour, in Thames Street, was granted to the Bishop because of "his house near Charing Cross being taken into the King's hands, Cuthbert Tunstal was lodged in this Cold Harbour." It is certain, however, that Katherine of Aragon lived here during her widowhood, before Henry VIII. came to the throne, as many of her letters to her father in Spain are in existence dated from this house, ranging over several years prior to her marriage with Henry in 1509. On the {267} very year of Mary's death Cuthbert Tunstal wrote a letter[2] to Cardinal Pole thanking him for obtaining for him the _reversion_ of the house;[2] and it is usually assumed from this that he actually entered into possession of it. But he did not; and it is the story of Durham Place during this time, namely, the last years of Mary and the first few years of Elizabeth, that I wish to tell.

The historians of the house generally make short work of the matter by saying, "When Elizabeth came to the throne Tunstal was again driven from this house, and about 1583 Elizabeth granted it to its greatest tenant, the glorious Raleigh."[3] In all probability Tunstal only lived in the house a short time if at all. He was appointed to the See in 1530, and in 1540, as we know by Stow's description of the already-mentioned festival, Durham Place was a royal house, and so it remained until 1603, when Lord Salisbury used Toby Matthew, Bishop of Durham, as his catspaw to claim it, in order that he might filch the best part of it--the Strand frontage--for himself, which he did to his own great profit. In any case, it is certain that Tunstal never got the house back again from Mary or Cardinal Pole, whatever promises may have been made to him.

Of the few Spanish nobles of high rank who stayed with Philip II. during the whole of his residence in England after his marriage with Queen Mary, one was Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count de Feria, a prime favourite and close friend of Philip. This nobleman had fallen deeply in love with Miss Jane Dormer, one of Mary's maids of {268} honour, and married her, and although the secret of the union had been well kept, circumstances made it necessary to openly avow it before the King and his suite left London for Flanders in September, 1555. Feria was again in London with the King in March, 1557, for a few months, but in January, 1558, he came back in another capacity. The war was going badly for Philip and England. The French had taken Calais, and Guines was on the point of falling; if the contest was to be carried on at all more money and more men must be squeezed out of unwilling England, or otherwise peace must be made, with England for a scapegoat. Philip could not come himself, so he sent his haughty, overbearing favourite Feria as his ambassador to bully and bribe the English courtiers and coerce the sorely beset Queen. He came with a large train of servants and with great magnificence; his English wife, a country knight's daughter only as she was, as proud as himself; and he was granted the use of Durham Place, furnished from the Queen's own house, as other great ambassadors had been granted it before him. Egmont had been lodged there with his splendid train in January, 1554, when he had come to offer Philip's hand to Mary. Chatillon, the French ambassador, too, had been given the use of the house during his short embassy in 1550, so that there was nothing extraordinary in the granting of the house to Feria. Only that former ambassadors had stayed for a few weeks, whereas Feria and his successor remained in possession for five years and a half, and made of Durham Place a trysting-place for treason during the most of that time.

{269}

Whilst Elizabeth was striving against terrible odds with all her subtle statecraft to lay the foundation of a united nation on the broken elements of civil and religious discord, her task was hourly rendered more difficult by the plots hatched in her own house at Durham Place. All the disaffected and discontented found a welcome there; emissaries from Shan O'Neil flitted backwards and forwards at night by the river gate. Stukeley whispered here his willingness to desert with the Queen's ships to the King of Spain, and here Hawkins himself humbly begged to be bought. Lady Sidney, Robert Dudley's sister, Dudley himself, Arundel, Lumley, Montague, and Winchester found in the secret rooms at Durham Place open but discreet ears to listen to their plans for preventing the establishment of Protestantism in England, and for bringing the country again under the sway of the Pope. Madcap Arthur Pole appealed first to Durham Place when he wanted aid for his silly plot in favour of Mary Stuart, and long-headed Lethington came at dead of night by the silent river on a similar but far more serious errand. The publication of the correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors in England during the reign of Elizabeth (Rolls Series) adds many interesting pages to the history of Durham Place, and renders the memories of the house more important than ever to the students of the Reformation period in England.

Feria arrived in London and took up his residence at Durham Place on the 26th of January, 1558, having, as he says, lingered on the way in order not to bring the unwelcome news of the surrender of Guines by the English, which news {270} had crossed the Channel with him. In addition to Durham Place, where he and his household were lodged, he had the same privileges as to an apartment in the Queen's palace as those which appertained to an English Privy Councillor--privileges which he tried hard to have confirmed to him by the new Queen when Mary died, in order, as he says, that he might keep his foot in the place and spy out what was going on. But Elizabeth and Cecil knew full well what his object was, and were quite shocked at the idea of the representative of a possible suitor for her hand sleeping under the same roof as the maiden Queen, so Feria had to depend upon his paid agents in the palace, and even in the Council itself, to bring him news to Durham Place of what was going on.

With the evidence now before us we can form an approximate idea of the appearance of Durham Place at the time. The Strand was a rough, unpaved road, with a fringe of shops and taverns on the northern side, whilst on the south side were the back walls and outer courts of the riverine mansions. The principal land gateway of Durham Place stood exactly opposite the spot now occupied by the Adelphi Theatre. The English custodian or porter, who was in the pay of the Queen, had his dwelling just inside the gate, where he could spy those who went in and out on the land side. On each side of the gate in the outer courtyard were stables and outhouses, and in and around the gateway in the street were benches where idlers and hangers-on sat and lounged through the day gossiping, in various tongues, and boasting of the prowess of their respective countrymen. On {271} the other side of the street, nearly opposite, was a tavern called the "Chequers,"[4] which drove a roaring trade with the men-at-arms, Court-danglers, and serving-men who were constantly passing to and from Whitehall and St. James'. Opposite the gateway, across the large outer courtyard, was the door of the great hall, generally standing open for the neighbours to pass through[5] it to the inner or smaller courtyard, in which stood a water conduit fed by a "spring of fairwater in Covent Garden."[6] Beyond this inner courtyard stood the house itself at the bottom of the slope on the bank of the river at the spot now occupied by the arches that support Adelphi Terrace. It was a castellated structure, with its water-gate placed in the middle of the curtain between two turrets, and leading not, as usually was the case, through a garden, but straight from the steps into the house itself by an enclosed pent-house doorway. The domestic offices, and probably the chapel, were on the ground floor, but the principal dwelling-rooms were all upstairs and in the turrets. Aubrey, in his letters (vol. iii. 573), thus speaks of Raleigh's occupancy of one of these turrets: "Durham House was a noble palace. After he came to his greatness, he lived there or in some apartment of it. I well remember his study, which was on a little turret that looked into and over the {272} Thames, and had a prospect which is as pleasant as any in the world."

The water-gate of the house was not the only approach to the river, as there was a space with trees on each side of the house, with a dwarf wall fronting the water, and a descent on one side by which the neighbours were allowed to get water from the stream for washing and similar purposes. It will thus be seen that the only really private part was the house itself between the inner courtyard and the river; the great hall and both courtyards being practically open to the public under the supervision of the custodian at the outer gate, who was responsible only to the Queen, and was a constant source of friction with the foreign occupants of the house.

Feria stayed at Durham Place until August, 1558, taking an active part in the distracted Councils of the Queen; and then, having found that Mary's hopes of an heir were again fallacious, and having bullied and frightened the Queen and Council into raising all the money they could beg or borrow for Philip's service, he went back to Flanders, leaving his English wife in London, with a Flemish and a Spanish ambassador of lower rank than himself to represent his master. But when Mary was known to be dying, he posted back again to be on the spot when the great change took place, and Durham Place was avoided like a plague-spot thenceforward for many days by the courtiers and time-servers who wished to stand well with the new Queen.

The proud Spaniard repaid distrust by bitter resentment, and soon found that his arrogance made him unfit instrument for cajolery. So he sent for a softer spoken diplomatist to act as his "tender," {273} and the wily, silken Bishop of Aquila became his guest at Durham Place. Feria could not for long brook the need of paying supple court to the people over whom he had ridden roughshod, and an excuse was soon found by which he might be withdrawn without an open confession of his unfitness, and in May, 1559, he left Durham Place for good, leaving his English Countess and the Bishop of Aquila in possession.

At Dover he met Baron Ravenstein, who was coming from the Emperor to offer the hand of the Archduke Charles to Elizabeth, and as such a match would only have subserved Spanish interests if it had been effected by the aid of Spanish diplomacy, Feria asked the German to become his guest at Durham Place, which he did, and was made much of by the Countess and the Bishop. But he wore out his welcome very soon, particularly with the latter, a portion of whose apartments he occupied, and the Bishop sneers at him for his constant attendance at Mass. "He is quite a good fellow," he says, "but surely this must be the first negotiation he ever conducted in his life." The Countess soon came to high words with the new Queen, and in a month or so left Durham Place in a dudgeon to join her husband in Flanders, thenceforward to see England no more. With her went, in addition to her escort, Don Juan de Ayala, her grandmother, Lady Dormer, and that Mistress Susan Clarencis who was Queen Mary's most devoted attendant. From that time, namely, July, 1559, the Bishop was temporary master of Durham Place by favour of the Queen, against whom he never ceased to intrigue as far as he dared.

{274}

We have already glanced at the structure of the house itself; it may be now interesting to give some account of the household of the Bishop, which may probably be considered a typical one. First there was a chaplain at three crowns a month and his board, a chief secretary at twelve crowns a month, a chamberlain, two or three gentlemen-in-waiting, a groom-of-the-chambers, and six pages--all without any fixed wage, but who lived on promises, perquisites, and what they could pick up, eating, however, at the Bishop's expense, and mostly clothed by him. Then there were two couriers at three shillings a month, which they rarely got; a cook, a buyer, a butler, and a pantryman, at a crown a month each; two cantineers, two "lacqueys," two Irish grooms, and two washerwomen at nominal wages of from three to five shillings a month when they could get them, which was very uncertain. Small as the wages seem to us, the expense of the establishment was very great, as these people and a host of friends and hangers-on were fed roughly but abundantly at the Bishop's cost, the humbler sort eating in the great hall and the gentlemen of the household in the upper chambers.

The Bishop had hardly been in possession of the house for a year when Challoner, the English Ambassador in Spain, warned Cecil that the "crafty old fox" was getting to know too much about what went on at Court, and that some decent excuse should be sought for turning him out from so advantageous a coign of vantage as Durham Place, with its water-gate and its close proximity to the palace, whence spies and courtiers might come and go secretly, as we now know they did, at all hours for {275} the information of the King of Spain's Ambassador. We may be sure that the hint was not lost on Cecil, but the Bishop was cunning, and to turn him out without good ostensible cause would have been too risky at a time when Philip's future action was still uncertain. So the Queen's porter in charge of the house was told to take careful note of those who went in and out by the Strand gate, and particularly those who attended Mass in the Ambassador's chapel. But still the weak point in the position was the water-gate, the key of which always remained in the possession of the Bishop or his major-domo. Various stratagems were resorted to by the English porter to obtain possession of it, but in vain, and more decided measures had at last to be taken. The Bishop's confidential secretary, an Italian named Borghese, was bribed by Cecil to tell all he knew of his master's practices, and great promises of high position and a rich marriage in England were held out to him as a further reward for his treachery. This made him arrogant and boastful, and led to a slashing match with the Bishop's Italian gentleman-in-waiting, whom Borghese nearly killed. He boasted that he had friends at Court, snapped his fingers at the officers of the law and at the Bishop's cajolery and threats, made a clean breast of it to Cecil, and things began to look bad for his late master. Dr. Wotton, a member of the Privy Council, went to Durham Place, and gravely formulated a series of complaints founded on the secretary's information. Most of these complaints were trivial, being to the effect that the Bishop had said and written various depreciatory things against the Queen: but one {276} accusation was serious, namely, than Shan O'Neil had taken the Sacrament at Durham Place, which was true, although the ecclesiastical diplomatist solemnly denied it.

The Bishop was nearly beside himself with rage and chagrin, and begged plaintively to be relieved from his irksome post among heretics such as these. But all in vain. It did not suit the Queen and Cecil for the moment to perpetrate the last indignity of turning him out of the house, but after this they kept a closer watch upon him than ever and bode their time. They had not to wait long. There were four French hostages in London, held in pledge for the due fulfilment of the Treaty of Château Cambresis, and very troublesome guests they were.

The most turbulent of them was a certain Nantouillet, Provost of Paris, a fanatical Catholic and partisan of the Guises. He had for some reason or another conceived a grudge against a mercenary captain called Masino, who was in the pay of the Vidame de Chartres, a Huguenot nobleman. So, in the manner of the times, he sought to have him killed, and, seeking for an instrument, he came across a young lad of bad character called Andrea, who was a servant of a lute player at Court, Alfonso the Bolognese. To this lad the Provost gave a dagger and a coat of mail, and promised a reward of a hundred crowns if he killed Masino. Andrea left his musical master and hung about the Strand door of Durham Place for several days at the beginning of January, 1563. At meal times he went into the great hall as others did and ate his fill, and then lounged outside on the benches again.

{277}

At last, in the dusk of the afternoon of the 3rd of January, 1563, Captain Masino came swaggering up the Strand on his way to Whitehall, and Andrea fired at him point blank, at a foot distance, with a harquebuss. But the captain's swagger saved his life, for the bullet passed between his left arm and his body, making a hole through his swinging cape and burning his doublet, and then glanced off into a shop on the other side of the way, "and came near killing an honest Englishman therein." Out came the swashbuckler's long rapier, and off ran the assassin into the outer courtyard of Durham Place, shrieking for mercy, followed by the captain and the English neighbours. The Bishop's household in the great courtyard seized their arms, and slammed the doors in the faces of the pursuers, whilst the terrified assassin fled through the great hall, through the inner courtyard and pell-mell up the stair leading to the Bishop's apartment.

Quite by chance, of course, the Provost of Paris happened to be playing at cards with the Bishop and the French Ambassador, whilst Luis de Paz and other friends looked on. The banging of the crowd at the closed door of the great hall, the terror-stricken cries of the criminal, and the tramping of the servants on the stair, brought out the Bishop and his friends to ask indignantly the cause of the uproar. Andrea on his knees at the door begged for protection and mercy. Captain Masino had beaten him, he said, some days ago, and he had fired a shot at him and missed him, so no harm was done, but still the captain wanted to kill him. Calming the clamour, the Bishop asked whether the shot had been fired inside or outside of Durham {278} Place. "At the gate!" they said, and the boy had only entered when pursued, to save his life. "Then," said the Bishop to Bernabe Mata, his majordomo, "turn him out by the water-gate." By mere chance again a boat was in waiting, hired by the Provost of Paris, who slipped outside himself to see the assassin safely off, gave him ten crowns, and whilst the crowd still battered and stormed at the door of the great hall, Andrea was carried to Gravesend as fast as strong oars could propel him. But he was captured next day, and under torture told the whole story. The Provost himself was closely imprisoned in Alderman Chester's house, whence he carried on for weeks an interesting correspondence with his friends outside, written with onion juice on the inside lining of the breeches of a servant.

This attempted murder was the opportunity for which Cecil had long been waiting. Strong hints about treachery founded on the secretary's information, galling interference with attendance at Mass, flouts and insults, had been more or less patiently borne by the Bishop at his master's behest, but harbouring a criminal was an infraction of the ordinary law of the land, and if it could be brought home to the Ambassador the Queen would have a good excuse for taking her house away from a tenant who put it to so bad a use. The news was not long travelling from the Strand to Whitehall; Cobham and a posse of the Queen's guard came straight to Durham Place, and in the name of the law demanded the surrender of the criminal. They were told he was not there, but had left by the water-gate, and, this reply being unsatisfactory, they came back again directly with the Queen's command {279} that the keys of the water-gate, as well as those of the Strand entrance, should be given up to the English custodian, in order that he might render an account of all those who went in and out. The Bishop writes to Philip:--

"This custodian is a very great heretic, who for three years past has been in this house with no other duty than to spy out those who come to see me, for the purpose of accusing me. I have put up with it for all this time, although at great inconvenience to myself, so as to avoid having disputes with them on a matter of this description. When the Marshal made this demand, however, I answered him that for twenty years the Ambassadors here had been allowed to reside in the royal houses, nearly all those sent by your Majesty and the Emperor having done so, and they had invariably been accustomed to hold the keys of the houses wherein they lived. I said that it was not right that an innovation should be made in my case after my four years' residence here, especially on so slight a pretext as this matter, in which I was not at all to blame, and considering that this is the first case of the sort that has happened since I have been here, it cannot be said that my house is an habitual refuge for criminals. I would, however, go and give the Queen an account of the matter, which I endeavoured to do."

But the Queen would not see him either that day or the next. She was too busy she said; and on the following day, which was Twelfth Day, just as people were coming to Mass, some locksmiths came in a boat to the water-gate and put a new lock on, notwithstanding the protest of the Bishop's {280} household, and the keys of all the gates were now held by the Queen's officers. The Bishop was in a towering rage, and said, that as the Queen imprisoned him in his own house, and made a goal of it, he demanded the keys back, or else that she should find him another residence where he might be free. A long account of the solemn conference between the Bishop and the Council is given in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), the 7th of January, 1563, and the Bishop's version is now published in the Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth, vol.