BOOK VI.

SPANISH AFFAIRS

 

CHAPTER XLVIII.

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF SPAIN.

 

Seventeen years had now elapsed since Philip the Second ascended the throne of his ancestors,—a period long enough to disclose the policy of his government; longer, indeed, than that of the entire reigns of some of his predecessors. In the previous portion of this work, the reader has been chiefly occupied with the foreign relations of Spain, and with military details. It is now time to pause, and, before plunging anew into the stormy scenes of the Netherlands, to consider the internal administration of the country and the character and policy of the monarch who presided over it.

The most important epoch in Castilian history since the great Saracen invasion in the eighth century, is the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, when anarchy was succeeded by law, and from the elements of chaos arose that beautiful fabric of order and constitutional liberty which promised a new era for the nation. In the assertion of her rights, Isabella, to whom this revolution is chiefly to be attributed, was obliged to rely on the support of the people. It was natural that she should requite their services by aiding them in the recovery of their own rights,—especially of those which had been usurped by the rapacious nobles. Indeed, it was the obvious policy of the crown to humble the pride of the aristocracy and abate their arrogant pretensions. In this it was so well supported by the commons, that the scheme perfectly succeeded. By the depression of the privileged classes and the elevation of the people, the different orders were brought more strictly within their constitutional limits; and the state made a nearer approach to a well-balanced limited monarchy than at any previous period of its history.

This auspicious revolution was soon, alas! to be followed by another, of a most disastrous kind. Charles the Fifth, who succeeded his grandfather Ferdinand, was born a foreigner,—and a foreigner he remained through his whole life. He was a stranger to the feelings and habits of the Spaniards, had little respect for their institutions, and as little love for the nation. He continued to live mostly abroad; was occupied with foreign enterprises; and the only people whom he really loved were those of the Netherlands, his native land. The Spaniards requited these feelings of indifference in full measure. They felt that the glory of the imperial name shed no luster upon them. Thus estranged at heart, they were easily provoked to insurrection by his violation of their rights. The insurrection was a failure; and the blow which crushed the insurgents on the plains of Villalar, deprived them for ever of the few liberties which they had been permitted to retain. They were excluded from all share in the government, and were henceforth summoned to the Cortes only to swear allegiance to the heir apparent, or to furnish subsidies for their master. They were indeed allowed to lay their grievances before the throne. But they had no means of enforcing redress; for, with the cunning policy of a despot, Charles would not receive their petitions until they had first voted the supplies.

The nobles, who had stood by their master in the struggle, fared no better. They found too late how short-sighted was the policy which had led them to put their faith in princes. Henceforth they could not be said to form a necessary part of the legislature. For as they insisted on their right to be excused from bearing any share in the burdens of the state, they could take no part in voting the supplies; and as this was almost the only purpose for which the Cortes was convened, their presence was no longer required in it. Instead of the powers which were left to them untouched by Ferdinand and Isabella, they were now amused with high-sounding and empty titles, or with offices about the person of the monarch. In this way they gradually sank into the unsubstantial though glittering pageant of a court. Meanwhile the government of Castile, assuming the powers of both making the laws and enforcing their execution, became in its essential attributes nearly as absolute as that of Turkey.

Such was the gigantic despotism which, on the death of Charles, passed into the hands of Philip the Second. The son had many qualities in common with his father. But among these was not that restless ambition of foreign conquest which was ever goading the emperor. Nor was he, like his father, urged by the love of glory to military achievement. He was of too sluggish a nature to embark readily in great enterprises. He was capable of much labor; but it was of that sedentary kind which belongs to the cabinet rather than the camp. His tendencies were naturally pacific: and up to the period at which we are now arrived, he had engaged in no wars but those into which he had been drawn by the revolt of his vassals, as in the Netherlands and Granada, or those forced on him by circumstances beyond his control. Such was the war which he had carried on with the pope and the French monarchy at the beginning of his reign.

But while less ambitious than Charles of foreign acquisitions, Philip was full as tenacious of the possessions and power which had come to him by inheritance. Nor was it likely that the regal prerogative would suffer any diminution in his reign, or that the nobles or commons would be allowed to retrieve any of the immunities which they had lost under his predecessors.

Philip understood the character of his countrymen better than his father had done. A Spaniard by birth, he was, as I have more than once had occasion to remark, a Spaniard in his whole nature. His tastes, his habits, his prejudices, were all Spanish. His policy was directed solely to the aggrandizement of Spain. The distant races whom he governed were all strangers to him. With a few exceptions, Spaniards were the only persons he placed in offices of trust. His Castilian countrymen saw with pride and satisfaction that they had a native prince on the throne, who identified his own interests with theirs. They contrasted this conduct with that of his father, and requited it with a devotion such as they had shown to few of his predecessors. They not only held him in reverence, says the Venetian minister Contarini, but respected his laws, as something sacred and inviolable. It was the people of the Netherlands who rose up against him. For similar reasons it fared just the opposite with Charles. His Flemish countrymen remained loyal to the last: it was his Castilian subjects who were driven to rebellion.

Though tenacious of power, Philip had not the secret consciousness of strength which enabled his father, unaided as it were, to bear up so long under the burden of empire. The habitual caution of the son made him averse to taking any step of importance without first ascertaining the opinions of others. Yet he was not willing, like his ancestor, the good Queen Isabella, to invoke the co-operation of the Cortes, and thus awaken the consciousness of power in an arm of the government which had been so long smitten with paralysis. Such an expedient was fraught with too much danger. He found a substitute in the several councils, the members of which, appointed by the crown and removable at its pleasure, were pledged to the support of the prerogative.

Under Ferdinand and Isabella there had been a complete reorganization of these councils. Their number was increased under Charles the Fifth, to suit the increased extent of the empire. It was still further enlarged by Philip. Under him there were no less than eleven councils, among which may be particularly noticed those of war, of finance, of justice, and of state. Of these various bodies the council of state, charged with the most important concerns of the monarchy, was held in highest consideration. The number of its members varied. At the time of which I am writing, it amounted to sixteen. But the weight of the business devolved on less than half that number. It was composed of both ecclesiastics and laymen. Among the latter were some eminent jurists. A sprinkling of men of the robe, indeed, was to be found in most of the councils. Philip imitated in this the policy of Ferdinand and Isabella, who thus intended to humble the pride of the great lords, and to provide themselves with a loyal militia, whose services would be of no little advantage in maintaining the prerogative.

Among the members of the council of state, two may be particularly noticed for their pre-eminence in that body. These were the duke of Alva and Ruy Gomez de Silva, prince of Eboli. With the former the reader is well acquainted. His great talents, his ample experience both in civil and military life, his iron will, and the fearlessness with which he asserted it, even his stern and overbearing manner, which seemed to proclaim his own superiority, all marked him out as the leader of a party.

The emperor appears to have feared the ascendancy which Alva might one day acquire over Philip. “The duke”, wrote Charles to his son in a letter before cited, “is the ablest statesman and the best soldier I have in my dominions. Consult him, above all, in military affairs. But do not depend on him entirely in these or any other matters. Depend on no one but yourself”. The advice was good; and Philip did not fail to profit by it. Though always seeking the opinions of others, it was the better to form his own. He was too jealous of power to submit to the control, even to the guidance, of another. With all his deference to Alva, on whose services he set the greatest value, the king seems to have shown him but little of that personal attachment which he evinced for his rival, Ruy Gomez.

This nobleman was descended from an ancient house in Portugal, a branch of which had been transplanted to Castile. He had been early received as a page in the imperial household, where, though he was several years older than Philip, his amiable temper, his engaging manners, and above all, that tact which made his fortune in later life, soon rendered him the prince’s favorite. An anecdote is reported of him at this time, which, however difficult to credit, rests on respectable authority. While engaged in their sports, the page accidentally struck the prince. The emperor, greatly incensed, and conceiving that such an indignity to the heir-apparent was to be effaced only by the blood of the offender, condemned the unhappy youth to lose his life. The tears and entreaties of Philip at length so far softened the heart of his father, that he consented to commute the punishment of death for exile. Indeed, it is hard to believe that Charles had ever really intended to carry his cruel sentence into execution. The exile was of no long duration. The society of Gomez had become indispensable to the prince, who, pining under the separation, at length prevailed on his father to recall the young noble, and reinstate him in his former situation in the palace.

The regard of Philip, who was not of a fickle disposition, seemed to increase with years. We find Ruy Gomez one of the brilliant suite who accompanied him to London on his visit there to wed the English queen. After the emperor's abdication, Ruy Gomez continued to occupy a distinguished place in Philip's household, as first gentleman of the bedchamber. By virtue of this office he was required to attend his master both at his rising and his going to rest. His situation gave him ready access at all hours to the royal person. It was soon understood that there was no one in the court who exercised a more important influence over the monarch; and he naturally became the channel through which applicants for favors sought to prefer their petitions.

Meanwhile the most substantial honors were liberally bestowed on him. He was created duke of Pastraña, with an income of twenty-five thousand crowns a large revenue, considering the value of money in that day. The title of Pastraña was subsequently merged in that of Eboli, by which he has continued to be known. It was derived from his marriage with the princess of Eboli, Anna de Mendoza, a lady much younger than he, and, though blind of one eye, celebrated for her beauty no less than her wit. She was yet more celebrated for her gallantries, and for the tragic results to which they led a subject closely connected with the personal history of Philip, to which I shall return hereafter.

Among his other dignities Ruy Gomez was made a member of the council of state, in which body he exercised an influence not inferior, to say the least of it, to that of any of his associates. His head was not turned by his prosperity. He did not, like many a favorite before him, display his full-blown fortunes in the eye of the world; nor, though he maintained a state suited to his station, did he, like Wolsey, excite the jealousy of his master by a magnificence in his way of living that eclipsed the splendors of royalty. Far from showing arrogance to his inferiors, he was affable to all, did what he could to serve their interests with the king, and magnanimously spoke of his rivals in terms of praise. By this way of proceeding he enjoyed the good fortune, rare for a favorite, of being both caressed by his sovereign and beloved by the people.

There is no evidence that Ruy Gomez had the moral courage to resist the evil tendency of Philip's policy, still less that he ventured to open the monarch’s eyes to his errors. He had too keen a regard to his own interests to attempt this. He may have thought, probably with some reason, that such a course would avail little with the king, and would bring ruin on himself. His life was passed in the atmosphere of a court, and he had imbibed its selfish spirit. He had profoundly studied the character of his master, and he accommodated himself to all his humors with an obsequiousness which does little honor to his memory. The duke of Alva, who hated him with all the hatred of a rival, speaking of him after his death, remarked: “Ruy Gomez, though not the greatest statesman that ever lived, was such a master in the knowledge of the humors and dispositions of kings, that we were all of us fools in comparison”.

Yet the influence of the favorite was, on the whole, good. He was humane and liberal in his temper, and inclined to peace, virtues which were not too common in that iron age, and which in the council served much to counteract the stern policy of Alva. Persons of a generous nature ranged themselves under him as their leader. When John of Austria came to court, his liberal spirit prompted him at once to lean on Ruy Gomez as his friend and counsellor. The correspondence which passed between them when the young soldier was on his campaigns, in which he addressed the favorite by the epithet of "father," confessing his errors to him and soliciting his advice, is honorable to both.

The historian Cabrera, who had often seen him, sums up the character of Ruy Gomez by saying: “He was the first pilot who in these stormy seas both lived and died secure, always contriving to gain a safe port”. His death took place in July, 1573. “Living”, adds the writer, in his peculiar style, “he preserved the favor of his sovereign;—dead, he was mourned by him, and by the whole nation, which kept him in its recollection as the pattern of loyal vassals and prudent favorites”.

Besides the two leaders in the council, there were two others who deserve to be noticed. One of these was Figueroa, count, afterwards created by Philip duke, of Feria, a grandee of Spain. He was one of those who accompanied the king on his first visit to England. He there married a lady of rank, and, as the reader may remember, afterwards represented his master at the court of Elizabeth. He was a man of excellent parts, enriched by that kind of practical knowledge which he had gained from foreign travel and a familiarity with courts. He lived magnificently, somewhat encumbering his large estates indeed by his profusion. His person was handsome; and his courteous and polished manners made him one of the most brilliant ornaments of the royal circle. He had a truly chivalrous sense of honor, and was greatly esteemed by the king, who placed him near his person as captain of his Spanish guard. Feria was a warm supporter of Ruy Gomez; and the long friendship that subsisted between the two nobles seems never to have been clouded by those feelings of envy and jealousy which so often arise between rivals contending for the smiles of their sovereign.

The other member of the council of state was a person of still more importance. This was the Cardinal Espinosa, who, though an ecclesiastic, possessed such an acquaintance with affairs as belonged to few laymen. Philip’s eye readily discovered his uncommon qualities, and he heaped upon him offices in rapid succession, any one of which might well have engrossed his time. But Espinosa was as fond of labor as most men are of ease; and in every situation he not only performed his own share of the work, but very often that of his associates. He was made president of the council of Castile, as well as that of the Indies, and finally a member of the council of state. He was inquisitor-general, sat in the royal chancery of Seville, and held the bishopric of Siguenza, one of the richest sees in the kingdom. To crown the whole, in 1568, Pius the Fifth, on the application of Philip, gave him a cardinal's hat. The king seems to have taken the greater pleasure in this rapid elevation of Espinosa, that he sprang from a comparatively humble condition; and thus the height to which he raised him served the more keenly to mortify the nobles.

But the cardinal, as is too often the case with those who have suddenly risen to greatness, did not bear his honors meekly. His love of power was insatiable; and when an office became vacant in any of his own departments, he was prompt to secure it for one of his dependents. An anecdote is told in relation to a place in the chancery of Granada, which had become open by the death of the incumbent. As soon as the news reached Madrid, Hernandez de Cordova, the royal equerry, made application to the king for it. Philip answered that he was too late, that the place had been already given away. "How am I to understand your majesty?" said the petitioner; "the tidings were brought to me by a courier the moment at which the post became vacant, and no one could have brought them sooner unless he had wings." "That may be," said the monarch; "but I have just given the place to another, whom the cardinal recommended to me as I was leaving the council."

Espinosa, says a contemporary, was a man of noble presence. He had the air of one born to command. His haughty bearing, however, did little for him with the more humble suitors, and disgusted the great lords, who looked down with contempt on his lowly origin. They complained to the king of his intolerable arrogance; and the king was not unwilling to receive their charges against him. In fact, he had himself grown to be displeased with his minister's presumption. He was weary of the deference which, now that Espinosa had become a cardinal, he felt obliged to pay him; of coming forward to receive him when he entered the room; of taking off his cap to the churchman, and giving him a seat as high as his own; finally, of allowing him to interfere in all appointments to office. It seemed incredible, says the historian, that a prince so jealous of his prerogatives should have submitted to all this so long. Philip was now determined to submit to it no longer; but to tumble from its pride of place the idol which he had raised with his own hands.

He was slow in betraying his intention, by word or act, to the courtiers, still more to the unfortunate minister, who continued to show the same security and confidence as if he were treading the solid ground, instead of the crust of a volcano.

At length an opportunity offered when Espinosa, in a discussion respecting the affairs of Flanders, made a statement which the king deemed not entirely conformable to truth. Philip at once broke in upon the discourse with an appearance of great indignation, and charged the minister with falsehood. The blow was the more effectual, coming from one who had been scarcely ever known to give way to passion. The cardinal was stunned by it. He at once saw his ruin, and the vision of glory vanished for ever. He withdrew, more dead than alive, to his house. There he soon took to his bed; and in a short time, in September 1572, he breathed his last. His fate was that of more than one minister whose head had been made giddy by the height to which he had climbed.

The council of state under its two great leaders, Alva and Ruy Gomez, was sure to be divided on every question of importance. This was a fruitful source of embarrassment, and to private suitors, especially, occasioned infinite delay. Such was the hostility of the parties to each other, that, if an applicant for favor secured the good-will of one of the chiefs, he was very certain to encounter the ill-will of the other. He was a skillful pilot who in such cross seas could keep his course.

Yet the existence of these divisions does not seem to have been discouraged by Philip, who saw in them only the natural consequence of rivalry for his favor. They gave him, moreover, the advantage of seeing every question of moment well canvassed, and, by furnishing him with the opposite opinions of his councilors, enabled him the more accurately to form his own.

In the meantime, the value which he set on both the great chiefs made him careful not to disgust either by any show of preference for his rival. He held the balance adroitly between them; and if on any occasion he bestowed a mark of his favor on the one, it was usually followed by some equivalent to the other. Thus, for the first twelve years of his reign, their influence may be said to have been pretty equally exerted. Then came the memorable discussion respecting the royal visit to the Netherlands, Alva, as the reader may remember, was of the opinion that Philip should send an army to punish the refractory and bring the country to obedience, when the king might visit it with safety to his own person. Ruy Gomez, on the other hand, recommended that Philip should go at once, without an army, and by mild and conciliatory measures win the malcontents back to their allegiance. Each advised the course most congenial to his own temper, and the one, moreover, which would have required the aid of his own services to carry into execution. Unfortunately, the violent measures of Alva were more congenial to the stern temper off the king, and the duke was sent at the head of his battalions.

But if Alva thus gained the victory, it was Ruy Gomez who reaped the fruits of it. Left without a rival in the council, his influence became predominant over every other. It became still more firmly established, as the result showed that his rival’s mission was a failure. So it continued, after Alva’s return, till the favorite’s death. Even then his well-organized party was so deeply rooted, that for several years longer it maintained an ascendancy in the cabinet, while the duke languished in disgrace.

Philip, unlike most of his predecessors, rarely took his seat in the council of state. It was his maxim that his ministers would more freely discuss measures in the absence of their master than when he was there to overawe them. The course he adopted was for a consulta, or a committee of two or three members, to wait on him in his cabinet, and report to him the proceedings of the council. He more commonly, especially in the later years of his reign, preferred to receive a full report of the discussion, written so as to leave an ample margin for his own commentaries. These were eminently characteristic of the man, and were so minute as usually to cover several sheets of paper. Philip had a reserved and unsocial temper. He preferred to work alone, in the seclusion of his closet, rather than in the presence of others. This may explain the reason, in part, why he seemed so much to prefer writing to talking. Even with his private secretaries, who were always near at hand, he chose to communicate by writing; and they had as large a mass of his autograph notes in their possession, as if the correspondence had been carried on from different parts of the kingdom. His thoughts too at any rate his words came slowly; and by writing he gained time for the utterance of them.

Philip has been accused of indolence. As far as the body was concerned, such an accusation was well founded. Even when young, he had no fondness, as we have seen, for the robust and chivalrous sports of the age. He never, like his father, conducted military expeditions in person. He thought it wiser to follow the example of his great-grandfather, Ferdinand the Catholic, who stayed at home and sent his generals to command his armies. As little did he like to travel, forming too in this respect a great contrast to the emperor. He had been years on the throne before he made a visit to his great southern capital, Seville. It was a matter of complaint in Cortes that he thus withdrew himself from the eyes of his subjects. The only sport he cared for—not by any means to excess was shooting with his gun or his crossbow such game as he could find in his own grounds at the wood of Segovia, or Aranjuez, or some other of his pleasant country seats, none of them at a great distance from Madrid.

On a visit to such places he would take with him as large a heap of papers as if he were a poor clerk, earning his bread; and after the fatigues of the chase, he would retire to his cabinet and refresh himself with his dispatches. It would, indeed, be a great mistake to charge him with sluggishness of mind. He was content to toil for hours, and long into the night, at his solitary labors. No expression of weariness or of impatience was known to escape him. A characteristic anecdote is told of him in regard to this. Having written a dispatch, late at night, to be sent on the following morning, he handed it to his secretary to throw some sand over it. This functionary, who happened to be dozing, suddenly roused himself, and, snatching up the ink-stand, emptied it on the paper. The king, coolly remarking that “it would have been better to use the sand”, set himself down, without any complaint, to rewrite the whole of the letter. A prince so much addicted to the pen, we may well believe, must have left a large amount of autograph materials behind him. Few monarchs, in point of fact, have done so much in this way to illustrate the history of their reigns. Fortunate would it have been for the historian who was to profit by it, if the royal composition had been somewhat less diffuse and the handwriting somewhat more legible.

Philip was an economist of time, and regulated the distribution of it with great precision. In the morning, he gave audience to foreign ambassadors. He afterwards heard mass. After mass came dinner, in his father's fashion. But dinner was not an affair with Philip of so much moment as it was with Charles. He was exceedingly temperate both in eating and drinking, and not unfrequently had his physician at his side, to warn him against any provocative of the gout, the hereditary disease which at a very early period had begun to affect his health. After a light repast, he gave audience to such of his subjects as desired to present their memorials. He received the petitioners graciously, and listened to all they had to say with patience, for that was his virtue. But his countenance was exceedingly grave, which, in truth, was its natural expression; and there was a reserve in his deportment which made the boldest feel ill at ease in his presence. On such occasions he would say, “Compose yourself”, a recommendation that had not always the tranquillizing effect intended. Once when a papal nuncio forgot, in his confusion, the address he had prepared, the king coolly remarked: If you will bring it in writing, I will read it myself, and expedite your business”. It was natural that men of even the highest rank should be overawed in the presence of a monarch who held the destinies of so many millions in his hands, and who surrounded himself with a veil of mystery which the most cunning politician could not penetrate.

The reserve so noticeable in his youth increased with age. He became more difficult of access. His public audiences were much less frequent. In the summer he would escape from them altogether, by taking refuge in some one of his country places. His favorite retreat was his palace-monastery of the Escorial, then slowly rising under his patronage, and affording him an occupation congenial with his taste. He seems, however, to have sought the country not so much from the love of its beauties as for the retreat it afforded him from the town. When in the latter, he rarely showed himself to the public eye, going abroad chiefly in a close carriage, and driving late, so as to return to the city after dark.

Thus he lived in solitude even in the heart of his capital, knowing much less of men from his own observation than from the reports that were made to him. In availing himself of these sources of information he was indefatigable. He caused a statistical survey of Spain to be prepared for his own use. It was a work of immense labor, embracing a vast amount of curious details, such as were rarely brought together in those days. He kept his spies at the principal European courts, who furnished him with intelligence; and he was as well acquainted with what was passing in England and in France, as if he had resided on the spot. We have seen how well he knew the smallest details of the proceedings in the Netherlands, sometimes even better than Margaret herself. He employed similar means to procure information that might be of service in making appointments to ecclesiastical and civil offices.

In his eagerness for information, his ear was ever open to accusations against his ministers, which, as they were sure to be locked up in his own bosom, were not slow in coming to him. This filled his mind with suspicions. He waited till time had proved their truth, treating the object of them with particular favor till the hour of vengeance had arrived. The reader will not have forgotten the terrible saying of Philip's own historian, “His dagger followed close upon his smile”.

Even to the ministers in whom Philip appeared most to confide, he often gave but half his confidence. Instead of frankly furnishing them with a full statement of facts, he sometimes made so imperfect a disclosure, that, when his measures came to be taken, his counsellors were surprised to find of how much they had been kept in ignorance. When he communicated to them any foreign dispatches, he would not scruple to alter the original, striking out some passages and inserting others, so as best to serve his purpose. The copy, in this garbled form, was given to the council. Such was the case with, a letter of Don John of Austria, containing an account of the troubles of Genoa; the original of which, with its numerous alterations in the royal handwriting, still exists in the archives of Simancas.

But though Philip’s suspicious nature prevented him from entirely trusting his ministers, though with chilling reserve he kept at a distance even those who approached him nearest, he was kind, even liberal, to his servants, was not capricious in his humors, and seldom, if ever, gave way to those sallies of passion so common in princes clothed with, absolute power. He was patient to the last degree, and rarely changed his ministers without good cause. Ruy Gomez was not the only courtier who continued in the royal service to the end of his days.

Philip was of a careful, or, to say truth, of a frugal disposition, which he may well have inherited from his father; though this did not, as with his father in later life, degenerate into parsimony. The beginning of his reign, indeed, was distinguished by some acts of uncommon liberality. One of these occurred at the close of Alva's campaigns in Italy, when the king presented that commander with a hundred and fifty thousand ducats, greatly to the discontent of the emperor. This was contrary to his usual policy. As he grew older, and the expenses of government pressed more heavily on him, he became more economical. Yet those who served him had no reason, like the emperor's servants, to complain of their master's meanness. It was observed, however, that he was slow to recompense those who served him until they had proved themselves worthy of it. Still it was a man's own fault, says a contemporary, if he was not well paid for his services in the end.

In one particular he indulged in a most lavish expenditure. This was his household. It was formed on the Burgundian model, the most stately and magnificent in Europe. Its peculiarity consisted in the number and quality of the members who composed it. The principal officers were nobles of the highest rank, who frequently held posts of great consideration in the state. Thus the duke of Alva was chief major-domo; the prince of Eboli was first gentleman of the bedchamber; the duke of Feria was captain of the Spanish guard. There was the grand equerry, the grand huntsman, the chief muleteer, and a host of officers, some of whom were designated by menial titles, though nobles and cavaliers of family. There were forty pages, sons of the most illustrious houses in Castile. The whole household amounted to no less than fifteen hundred persons. The king's guard consisted of three hundred men, one-third of whom were Spaniards, one-third Flemings, and the remainder Germans.

The queen had also her establishment on the same scale. She had twenty-six ladies-in-waiting, and, among other functionaries, no less than four physicians to watch over her health.

The annual cost of the royal establishment amounted to full two hundred thousand florins. The Cortes earnestly remonstrated against this useless prodigality, beseeching the king to place his household on the modest scale to which the monarchs of Castile had been accustomed. And it seems singular that one usually so averse to extravagance and pomp should have so recklessly indulged in them here. It was one of those inconsistencies which we sometimes meet with in private life, when a man, habitually careful of his expenses, indulges himself in some, which taste, or, as in this case, early habits, have made him regard as indispensable. The emperor had been careful to form the household of his son, when very young, on the Burgundian model; and Philip, thus early trained, probably regarded it as essential to the royal dignity.

The king did not affect an ostentation in his dress corresponding with that of his household. This seemed to be suited to the sober-colored livery of his own feelings, and was almost always of black velvet or satin, with shoes of the former material. He wore a cap garnished with plumes after the Spanish fashion. He used few ornaments, scarce any but the rich jewel of the Golden Fleece, which hung from his neck. But in his attire he was scrupulously neat, says the Venetian diplomatist who tells these particulars; and he changed his dress for a new one every month, giving away his cast-off suits to his attendants.

It was a capital defect in Philip's administration, that his love of power and his distrust of others made him desire to do everything himself; even those things which could be done much better by his ministers. As he was slow in making up his own opinions, and seldom acted without first ascertaining those of his council, we may well understand the mischievous consequences of such delay. Loud were the complaints of private suitors, who saw month after month pass away without an answer to their petitions. The state suffered no less, as the wheels of government seemed actually to stand still under the accumulated pressure of the public business. Even when a decision did come, it often came too late to be of service; for the circumstances which led to it had wholly changed. Of this the reader has seen more than one example in the Netherlands. The favorite saying of Philip, that "time and he were a match for any other two," was a sad mistake. The time he demanded was his ruin. It was in vain that Granvelle, who at a later day came to Castile to assume the direction of affairs, endeavored, in his courtly language, to convince the king of his error, telling him that no man could bear up under such a load of business, which sooner or later must destroy his health, perhaps his life.

A letter addressed to the king by his grand almoner, Don Luis Manrique, told the truth in plainer terms, such as had not often reached the royal ear. “Your majesty’s subjects everywhere complain”, he says, “of your manner of doing business; sitting all day long over your papers, from your desire, as they intimate, to seclude yourself from the world, and from a want of confidence in your ministers. Hence such interminable delays as fill the soul of every suitor with despair. Your subjects are discontented that you refuse to take your seat in the council of state. The Almighty”, he adds, “did not send kings into the world to spend their days in reading or writing, or even in meditation and prayer”, in which Philip was understood to pass much of his time, “but to serve as public oracles, to which all may resort for answers. If any sovereign have received this grace, it is your majesty; and the greater the sin, therefore, if you do not give free access to all”. One may be surprised to find that language such as this was addressed to a prince like Philip the Second, and that he should have borne it so patiently. But in this the king resembled his father. Churchmen and jesters of which latter he had usually one or two in attendance were privileged persons at his court. In point of fact, the homilies of the one had as little effect as the jests of the other.

The pomp of the royal establishment was imitated on a smaller scale by the great nobles living on their vast estates scattered over the country. Their revenues were very large, though often heavily burdened. Out of twenty-three dukes, in 1581, only three had an income so low as forty thousand ducats a year. That of most of the others ranged from fifty to a hundred thousand; and that of one, the duke of Medina Sidonia, was computed at a hundred and thirty-five thousand. Revenues like these would not easily have been matched in that day by the aristocracy of any other nation in Christendom.

The Spanish grandees preferred to live on their estates in the country. But in the winter they repaired to Madrid, and displayed their magnificence at the court of their sovereign. Here they dazzled the eye by the splendor of their equipages, the beauty of their horses, their rich liveries, and the throng of their retainers. But with all this the Castilian court was far from appearing in the eyes of foreigners a gay one; forming in this respect a contrast to the Flemish court of Margaret of Parma. It seemed to have imbibed much of the serious and indeed somber character of the monarch who presided over it. All was stately and ceremonious, with old-fashioned manners and usages. “There is nothing new to be seen there”, write the Venetian envoys. “There is no pleasant gossip about the events of the day. If a man is acquainted with any news, he is too prudent to repeat it. The courtiers talk little, and for the most part are ignorant; in fact, without the least tincture of learning. The arrogance of the great lords is beyond belief; and when they meet a foreign ambassador, or even the nuncio of his holiness, they rarely condescend to salute him by raising their caps. They all affect that imperturbable composure, or apathy, which they term sosiego”.

They gave no splendid banquets, like the Flemish nobles. Their chief amusement was gaming, the hereditary vice of the Spaniard. They played deep, often to the great detriment of their fortunes. This did not displease the king. It may seem strange that a society so cold and formal should be much addicted to intrigue. In this they followed the example of their master.

Thus passing their days in frivolous amusements and idle dalliance, the Spanish nobles, with the lofty titles and pretensions of their ancestors, were a degenerate race. With a few brilliant exceptions, they filled no important posts in the state or in the army. The places of most consideration to which they aspired were those connected with the royal household; and their greatest honor was to possess the empty privileges of the grandee, and to sit with their heads covered in the presence of the king.

From this life of splendid humiliation they were nothing loth to escape into the country, where they passed their days in their ancestral castles, surrounded by princely domains, which embraced towns and villages within their circuit, and a population sometimes reaching to thirty thousand families. Here the proud lords lived in truly regal pomp. Their households were formed on that of the sovereign. They had their major-domos, their gentlemen of the bedchamber, their grand equerries, and other officers of rank. Their halls were filled with hidalgos and cavaliers, and a throng of inferior retainers. They were attended by body-guards of one or two hundred soldiers. Their dwellings were sumptuously furnished, and their sideboards loaded with plate from the silver quarries of the New World. Their chapels were magnificent. Their wives affected a royal state: they had their ladies of honor; and the page who served as cupbearer knelt while his mistress drank. Even knights of ancient blood, whom she addressed from her seat, did not refuse to bend the knee to her.

Amidst all this splendor, the Spanish grandees had no real power to correspond with it. They could no longer, as in the days of their fathers, engage in fends with one another; nor could they enjoy the privilege, so highly prized, of renouncing their allegiance and declaring war upon their sovereign. Their numerous vassals, instead of being gathered as of yore into a formidable military array, had sunk into the more humble rank of retainers, who served only to swell the idle pomp of their lord's establishment: they were no longer allowed to bear arms, except in the service of the crown; and after the Moriscoes had been reduced, the crown had no occasion for their services, unless in foreign war.

The measures by which Ferdinand and Isabella had broken the power of the aristocracy had been enforced with still greater rigor by Charles the Fifth, and were now carried out even more effectually by Philip the Second; for Philip had the advantage of being always in Spain, while Charles passed most of his time in other parts of his dominions. Thus ever present, Philip was as prompt to enforce the law against the highest noble as against the humblest of his subjects.

Men of rank commanded the armies abroad, and were sent as viceroys to Naples, Sicily, Milan, and the provinces of the New World. But at home they were rarely raised to civil or military office. They no longer formed a necessary part of the national legislature, and were seldom summoned to the meetings of the Cortes; for the Castilian noble claimed exemption from the public burdens, and it was rarely that the Cortes were assembled for any other purpose than to impose those burdens. Thus, without political power of any kind, they resided like so many private gentlemen on their estates in the country. Their princely style of living gave no umbrage to the king, who was rather pleased to see them dissipate their vast revenues in a way that was attended with no worse evil than that of driving the proprietors to exactions which made them odious to their vassals. Such, we are assured by a Venetian envoy who, with great powers of observation, was placed in the best situation for exerting them was the policy of Philip. “Thus”, he concludes, “did the king make himself feared by those who, if they had managed discreetly, might have made themselves feared by him”.

While the aristocracy was thus depressed, the strong arm of Charles the Fifth had stripped the Castilian commons of their most precious rights. Philip, happily for himself, was spared the odium of having reduced them to this abject condition. But he was as careful as his father could have been, that they should not rise from it. The legislative power of the commons that most important of all their privileges was nearly annihilated. The Castilian Cortes were, it is true, frequently convoked under Philip more frequently, on the whole, than in any preceding reign; for in them still resided the power of voting supplies for the crown. To have summoned them so often, therefore, was rather a proof of the necessities of the government than of respect for the rights of the commons.

The Cortes, it is true, still enjoyed the privilege of laying their grievances before the king; but as they were compelled to vote the supplies before they presented their grievances, they had lost the only lever by which they could effectually operate on the royal will. Yet when we review their petitions, and see the care with which they watched over the interests of the nation, and the courage with which they maintained them, we cannot refuse our admiration. We must acknowledge that, under every circumstance of discouragement and oppression, the old Castilian spirit still lingered in the hearts of the people. In proof of this, it will not be amiss to cite a few of these petitions, which, whether successful or not, may serve at least to show the state of public opinion on the topics to which they relate.

One, of repeated recurrence, is a remonstrance to the king on the enormous expense of his household—”as great”, say the Cortes, “as would be required for the conquest of a kingdom”. The Burgundian establishment, independently of its costliness, found little favor with the honest Castilian; and the Cortes prayed his majesty to abandon it, and to return to the more simple and natural usage of his ancestors. They represented “the pernicious effects which this manner of living necessarily had on the great nobles and others of his subjects, prone to follow the example of their master”. To one of these petitions Philip replied, that “he would cause the matter to be inquired into, and such measures to be taken as were most for his service”. “No alteration took place during his reign; and the Burgundian establishment, which in 1562 involved an annual charge of a hundred and fifty-six millions of maravedis, was continued by his successor”.

Another remonstrance of constant recurrence a proof of its inefficacy was that against the alienation of the crown lands, and the sale of offices and the lesser titles of nobility. To this the king made answer in much the same equivocal language as before. Another petition besought him no longer to seek an increase of his revenue by imposing taxes without the sanction of the Cortes, required by the ancient law and usage of the realm. Philip’s reply on this occasion was plain enough. It was, in truth, one worthy of an eastern despot. “The necessities”, he said, “which have compelled me to resort to these measures, far from having ceased, have increased, and are still increasing, allowing me no alternative but to pursue the course I have adopted”. Philip’s embarrassments were indeed great, far beyond the reach of any financial skill of his ministers to remove. His various expedients for relieving himself from the burden which, as he truly said, was becoming heavier every day, form a curious chapter in the history of finance. But we have not yet reached the period at which they can be most effectively presented to the reader.

The commons strongly urged the king to complete the great work he had early undertaken, of embodying in one code the municipal law of Castile. They gave careful attention to the administration of justice, showed their desire for the reform of various abuses, especially for quickening the dispatch of business, proverbially slow in Spain, and, in short, for relieving suitors, as far as possible, from the manifold vexations to which they were daily exposed in the tribunals. With a wise liberality they recommended that, in order to secure the services of competent persons in judicial offices, their salaries in many cases wholly inadequate should be greatly increased.

The Cortes watched with a truly parental care over the great interests of the state—its commerce, its husbandry, and its manufactures. They raised a loud, and as it would seem not an ineffectual, note of remonstrance against the tyrannical practice of the crown in seizing for its own use the bullion which, as elsewhere stated, had been imported from the New World on their own account by the merchants of Seville.

Some of the petitions of the Cortes show what would be thought at the present day a strange ignorance of the true principles of legislation in respect to commerce. Thus, regarding gold and silver, independently of their value as a medium of exchange, as constituting in a peculiar manner the wealth of a country, they considered that the true policy was to keep the precious metals at home, and prayed that their exportation might be forbidden. Yet this was a common error in the sixteenth century with other nations besides the Spaniards. It may seem singular, however, that the experience of three-fourths of a century had not satisfied the Castilian of the futility of such attempts to obstruct the natural current of commercial circulation.

In the same spirit, they besought the king to prohibit the use of gold and silver in plating copper and other substances, as well as for wearing-apparel and articles of household luxury. It was a waste of the precious metals, which were needed for other purposes. This petition of the commons may be referred in part, no doubt, to their fondness for sumptuary laws, which in Castile formed a more ample code than could be easily found in any other country. The love of costly and ostentatious dress was a passion which they may have caught from their neighbors, the Spanish Arabs, who delighted in this way of displaying their opulence. It furnished accordingly, from an early period, a fruitful theme of declamation to the clergy, in their invectives against the pomp and vanities of the world.

Unfortunately Philip, who was so frequently deaf to the wiser suggestions of the Cortes, gave his sanction to this petition; and in a pragmatic devoted to the object, he carried out the ideas of the legislature as heartily as the most austere reformer could have desired. As a state paper, it has certainly a novel aspect, going at great length into such minute specifications of wearing-apparel, both male and female, that it would seem to have been devised by a committee of tailors and milliners, rather than of grave legislators. The tailors, indeed, the authors of these seductive abominations, did not escape the direct animadversion of the Cortes. In another petition they were denounced as unprofitable persons, occupied with needlework, like women, instead of tilling the ground or serving his majesty in the wars, like men.

In the same spirit of impertinent legislation, the Cortes would have regulated the expenses of the table, which, they said, of late years had been excessive. They recommended that no one should be allowed to have more than four dishes of meat and four of fruit served at the same meal. They were further scandalized by the increasing use of coaches, a mode of conveyance which had been introduced into Spain only a few years before. They regarded them as tempting men to an effeminate indulgence, which most of them could ill afford. They considered the practice, moreover, as detrimental to the good horsemanship for which their ancestors had been so renowned. They prayed, therefore, that, considering “the nation had done well for so many years without the use of coaches, it might henceforth be prohibited”. Philip so far complied with their petition, as to forbid anyone but the owner of four horses to keep a coach. Thus he imagined that, while encouraging the raising of horses, he should effectually discourage any but the more wealthy from affecting this costly luxury.

There was another petition, somewhat remarkable, and worth citing, as it shows the attachment of the Castilians to a national institution which has often incurred the censure of foreigners. A petition of the Cortes of 1573 prayed that some direct encouragement might be given to bull-fights, which of late had shown symptoms of decline. They advised that the principal towns should be required to erect additional circuses, and to provide lances for the combatants, and music for the entertainments, at the charge of the municipalities. They insisted on this as important for mending the breed of horses, as well as for furnishing a chivalrous exercise for the nobles and cavaliers. This may excite some surprise in a spectator of our day, accustomed to see only the most wretched hacks led to the slaughter, and men of humble condition skirmishing in the arena. It was otherwise in those palmy days of chivalry, when the horses employed were of a generous breed, and the combatants were nobles, who entered the lists with as proud a feeling as that with which they would have gone to a tourney. Even so late as the sixteenth century it was the boast of Charles the Fifth, that, when a young man, he had fought like a matador, and killed his bull. Philip gave his assent to this petition, with a promptness which showed that he understood the character of his countrymen.

It would be an error to regard the more exceptionable and frivolous petitions of the Cortes, some of which have been above enumerated, as affording a true type of the predominant character of Castilian legislation. The laws, or, to speak correctly, the petitions of that body, are strongly impressed with a wise and patriotic sentiment, showing a keen perception of the wants of the community, and a tender anxiety to relieve them. Thus we find the Cortes recommending that guardians should be appointed to find employment for such young and destitute persons as, without friends to aid them, had no means of getting a livelihood for themselves. They propose to have visitors chosen, whose duty it should be to inspect the prisons every week, and see that fitting arrangements were made for securing the health and cleanliness of the inmates. They desire that care should be taken to have suitable accommodations provided at the inns for travelers. With their usual fondness for domestic inquisition, they take notice of the behavior of servants to their masters, and, with a simplicity that may well excite a smile, they animadvert on the conduct of maidens who, “in the absence of their mothers, spend their idle hours in reading romances full of lies and vanities, which they receive as truths for the government of their own conduct in their intercourse with the world”. The books thus stigmatized were doubtless the romances of chivalry, which at this period were at the height of their popularity in Castile. Cervantes had not yet aimed at this pestilent literature those shafts of ridicule which did more than any legislation could have done towards driving it from the land.

The commons watched over the business of education as zealously as over any of the material interests of the state. They inspected the condition of the higher seminaries, and would have provision made for the foundation of new chairs in the universities. In accordance with their views, though not in conformity to any positive suggestion, Philip published a pragmatic in respect to these institutions. He complained of the practice, rapidly increasing among his subjects, of going abroad to get their education, when the most ample provision was made for it at home. The effect was eminently disastrous; for while the Castilian universities languished for want of patronage, the student who went abroad was pretty sure to return with ideas not the best suited to his own country. The king, therefore, prohibited Spaniards from going to any university out of his dominions, and required all now abroad to return. This edict he accompanied with the severe penalty of forfeiture of their secular possessions for ecclesiastics, and of banishment and confiscation of property for laymen.

This kind of pragmatic, though made doubtless in accordance with the popular feeling, inferred a stretch of arbitrary power that cannot be charged on those which emanated directly from the suggestion of the legislature. In this respect, however, it fell far short of those ordinances which proceeded exclusively from the royal will, without reference to the wishes of the commons. Such ordinances and they were probably more numerous than any other class of laws during this reign are doubtless among the most arbitrary acts of which a monarch can be guilty; for they imply nothing less than an assumption of the law-making power into his own hands. Indeed, they met with a strong remonstrance in the year 1579, when Philip was besought by the commons not to make any laws but such as had first received the sanction of the Cortes. Yet Philip might vindicate himself by the example of his predecessors even of those who, like Ferdinand and Isabella, had most at heart the interests of the nation.

It must be further admitted, that the more regular mode of proceeding, with the co-operation of the Cortes, had in it much to warrant the idea, that the real right of legislation was vested in the king. A petition, usually couched in the most humble terms, prayed his majesty to give his assent to the law proposed. This he did in a few words; or, what was much more common, he refused to give it, declaring that, in the existing case, "it was not expedient that any change should be made." It was observed that the number of cases in which Philip rejected the petitions of the commons was much greater than had been usual with former sovereigns.

A more frequent practice with Philip was one that better suited his hesitating nature and habit of procrastination. He replied in ambiguous terms, that “he would take the matter into consideration”, or “that he would lay it before his council, and take such measures as would be best for his service”. Thus the Cortes adjourned in ignorance of the fate of their petitions. Even when he announced his assent, as it was left to him to prescribe the terms of the law, it might be more or less conformable to those of the petition. The Cortes having been dismissed, there was no redress to be obtained if the law did not express their views, nor could any remonstrance be presented by that body until their next session, usually three years later. The practice established by Charles the Fifth, of postponing the presenting of petitions till the supplies had been voted, and the immediate adjournment of the legislature afterwards, secured an absolute authority to the princes of the house of Austria, that made a fearful change in the ancient constitution of Castile.

Yet the meetings of the Cortes, shorn as that body was of its ancient privileges, were not without important benefits to the nation. None could be better acquainted than the deputies with the actual wants and wishes of their constituents. It was a manifest advantage for the king to receive this information. It enabled him to take the course best suited to the interests of the people, to which he would naturally be inclined when he did not regard them as conflicting with his own. Even when he did, the strenuous support of their own views by the commons might compel him to modify his measures. However absolute the monarch, he would naturally shrink from pursuing a policy so odious to the people that, if persevered in, it might convert remonstrance into downright resistance.

The freedom of discussion among the deputies is attested by the independent tone with which in their petitions they denounce the manifold abuses in the state. It is honorable to Philip, that he should not have attempted to stifle this freedom of debate; though perhaps this may be more correctly referred to his policy, which made him willing to leave this safety-valve open for the passions of the people. He may have been content to flatter them with the image of power, conscious that he alone retained the substance of it. However this may have been, the good effect of the exercise of these rights, imperfect as they were, by the third estate, must be highly estimated. The fact of being called together to consult on public affairs gave the people a consideration in their own eyes which raised them far above the abject condition of the subjects of an Eastern despotism. It cherished in them that love of independence which was their birthright, inherited from their ancestors, and thus maintained in their bosoms those lofty sentiments which were the characteristics of the humbler classes of the Spaniards beyond those of any other nation in Christendom.

One feature was wanting to complete the picture of absolute monarchy. This was a standing army, a thing hitherto unknown in Spain. There was, indeed, an immense force kept on foot in the time of Charles the Fifth, and many of the troops were Spaniards. But they were stationed abroad, and were intended solely for foreign enterprises. It is to Philip's time that we are to refer the first germs of a permanent military establishment, designed to maintain order and obedience at home.

The levies raised for this purpose amounted to twenty companies of men-at-arms, which, with the complement of four or five followers to each lance, made a force of some strength. It was further swelled by five thousand jinetes, or light cavalry. These corps were a heavy charge on the crown. They were called “the Guards of Castile”. The men-at-arms, in particular, were an object of great care, and were under admirable discipline. Even Philip, who had little relish for military affairs, was in the habit of occasionally reviewing them in person. In addition to these troops there was a body of thirty thousand militia, whom the king could call into the field when necessary. A corps of some sixteen hundred horsemen patrolled the southern coast of Andalusia, to guard the country from invasion by the African Moslems; and garrisons established in fortresses along the frontiers of Spain, both, north and south, completed a permanent force for the defense of the kingdom against domestic insurrection, as well as foreign invasion.

 

 

 

CHAPTER XLIX.

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF SPAIN.

 

A review of the polity of Castile would be incomplete without a notice of the ecclesiastical order, which may well be supposed to have stood pre-eminent in such a country, and under such a monarch as Philip the Second. Indeed, not only did that prince present himself before the world as the great champion of the Faith, but he seemed ever solicitous in private life to display his zeal for religion and its ministers. Many anecdotes are told of him in connection with this. On one occasion, seeing a young girl going within the railing of the altar, he rebuked her, saying, “Where the priest enters is no place either for me or you”. A cavalier who had given a blow to a canon of Toledo he sentenced to death.

Under his protection and princely patronage, the Church reached its most palmy state. Colleges and convents in short, religious institutions of every kind were scattered broadcast over the land. The good fathers loved pleasant and picturesque sites for their dwellings; and the traveler, as he journeyed through the country, was surprised by the number of stately edifices which crowned the hill-tops, or rested on their slopes, surrounded by territories that spread out for many a league over meadows and cultivated fields and pasture-land.

The secular clergy, at least the higher dignitaries, were so well endowed as sometimes to eclipse the grandees in the pomp of their establishments. In the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, the archbishop of Toledo held jurisdiction over fifteen principal towns and a great number of villages. His income amounted to full eighty thousand ducats a year. In Philip’s time the income of the archbishop of Seville amounted to the same sum, while that of the see of Toledo had risen to two hundred thousand ducats, nearly twice as much as that of the richest grandee in the kingdom. In power and opulence, the primate of Spain ranked next in Christendom to the pope.

The great source of all this wealth of the ecclesiastical order in Castile, as in most other countries, was the benefactions and bequests of the pious of those, more especially, whose piety had been deferred till the close of life, when, anxious to make amends for past delinquencies, they bestowed the more freely that it was at the expense of their heirs. As what was thus bequeathed was locked up by entail, the constantly accumulating property of the Church had amounted, in Philip’s time, if we may take the assertion of the Cortes, to more than one-half of the landed property in the kingdom. Thus the burden of providing for the expenses of the state fell with increased heaviness on the commons. Alienations in mortmain formed the subject of one of their earliest remonstrances after Philip’s accession, but without effect; and though the same petition was urged in very plain language at almost every succeeding session, the king still answered that it was not expedient to make any change in the existing laws. Besides his goodwill to the ecclesiastical order, Philip was occupied with the costly construction of the Escorial; and he had probably no mind to see the streams of public bounty, which had hitherto flowed so freely into the reservoirs of the Church, thus suddenly obstructed, when they were so much needed for his own infant institution.

While Philip was thus willing to exalt the religious order, already far too powerful, he was careful that it should never gain such a height as would enable it to overtop the royal authority. Both in the Church and in the council for they were freely introduced into the councils theologians were ever found the most devoted servants of the crown. Indeed, it was on the crown that they were obliged to rest all their hopes of preferment.

Philip perfectly understood that the control of the clergy must be lodged with that power which had the right of nomination to benefices. The Roman see, in its usual spirit of encroachment, had long claimed the exercise of this right in Castile, as it had done in other European states. The great battle with the Church was fought in the time of Isabella the Catholic. Fortunately the scepter was held by a sovereign whose loyalty to the Faith was beyond suspicion. From this hard struggle she came off victorious; and the government of Castile henceforth retained possession of the important prerogative of appointing to vacant benefices.

Philip, with all his deference to Rome, was not a man to relinquish any of the prerogatives of the crown. A difficulty arose under Pius the Fifth, who contended that he still had the right, possessed by former popes, of nominating to ecclesiastical offices in Milan, Naples, and Sicily, the Italian possessions held by Spain. He complained bitterly of the conduct of the councils in those states, which refused to allow the publication of his bulls without the royal exequatur. Philip, in mild terms, expressed his desire to maintain the most amicable relations with the see of Rome, provided he was not required to compromise the interests of his crown. At the same time he intimated his surprise that his holiness should take exceptions at his exercise of the rights of his predecessors, to many of whom the Church was indebted for the most signal services. The pope was well aware of the importance of maintaining a good understanding with so devoted a son of the Church; and Philip was allowed to remain henceforth in undisturbed possession of this inestimable prerogative.

The powers thus vested in the king he exercised with great discretion. With his usual facilities for information he made himself acquainted with the characters of the clergy in the different parts of his dominions. He was so accurate in his knowledge, that he was frequently able to detect an error or omission in the information he received. To one who had been giving him an account of a certain ecclesiastic, he remarked “You have told me nothing of his amours”. Thus perfectly apprised of the characters of the candidates, he was prepared, whenever a vacancy occurred, to fill the place with a suitable incumbent.

It was his habit, before preferring an individual to a high office, to have proof of his powers by trying them first in some subordinate station. In his selection he laid much stress on rank, for the influence it carried with it. Yet frequently, when well satisfied of the merits of the parties, he promoted those whose humble condition had made them little prepared for such, an elevation. There was no more effectual way to secure his favor than to show a steady resistance to the usurpations of Rome. It was owing, in part at least, to the refusal of Quiroga, the bishop of Cuenca, to publish a papal bull without the royal assent, that he was raised to the highest dignity in the kingdom, as archbishop of Toledo. Philip chose to have a suitable acknowledgment from the person on whom he conferred a favor; and once, when an ecclesiastic, whom he had made a bishop, went to take possession of his see without first expressing his gratitude, the king sent for him back, to remind him of his duty. Such an acknowledgment was in the nature of a homage rendered to his master on his preferment.

Thus gratitude for the past and hopes for the future were the strong ties which bound every prelate to his sovereign. In a difference with the Roman see, the Castilian churchman was sure to be found on the side of the sovereign, rather than, on that of the pontiff. In his own troubles, in like manner, it was to the king, and not to the pope, that he was to turn for relief. The king, on the other hand, when pressed by those embarrassments with which he was too often surrounded, looked for aid to the clergy, who for the most part rendered it cheerfully and in liberal measure. Nowhere were the clergy so heavily burdened as in Spain. It was computed that at least one-third of their revenues was given to the king. Thus completely were the different orders, both spiritual and temporal, throughout the monarchy, under the control of the sovereign.

A few pages back, while touching on alienations in mortmain, I had occasion to allude to the Escorial, that "eighth wonder of the world," as it is proudly styled by the Spaniards. There can be no place more proper to give an account of this extraordinary edifice, than the part of the narrative in which I have been desirous to throw as much light as possible on the character and occupations of Philip. The Escorial engrossed the leisure of more than thirty years of his life; it reflects in a peculiar manner his tastes, and the austere character of his mind; and whatever criticism may be passed on it as a work of art, it cannot be denied that, if every other vestige of his reign were to be swept away, that wonderful structure would of itself suffice to show the grandeur of his plans and the extent of his resources.

The common tradition that Philip built the Escorial in pursuance of a vow which he made at the time of the great battle of St. Quentin, the 10th of August, 1557, has been rejected by modern critics, on the ground that contemporary writers, and amongst them the historians of the convent, make no mention of the fact. But a recently-discovered document leaves little doubt that such a vow was actually made. However this may have been, it is certain that the king designed to commemorate the event by this structure, as is intimated by its dedication to St. Lawrence, the martyr on whose day the victory was gained. The name given to the place was El Sitio de San Lorenzo el Real. But the monastery was better known from the hamlet near which it stood,—El Escurial, or El Escorial, which latter soon became the orthography generally adopted by the Castilians.

The motives which, after all, operated probably most powerfully on Philip, had no connection with the battle of St. Quentin. His father, the emperor, had directed by his will that his bones should remain at Yuste, until a more suitable place should be provided for them by his son. The building now to be erected was designed expressly as a mausoleum for Philip’s parents, as well as for their descendants of the royal line of Austria. But the erection of a religious house on a magnificent scale, that would proclaim to the world his devotion to the Faith, was the predominant idea in the mind of Philip. It was, moreover, a part of his scheme to combine in the plan a palace for himself; for, with a taste which he may be said to have inherited from his father, he loved to live in the sacred shadows of the cloister. These ideas, somewhat incongruous as they may seem, were fully carried out by the erection of an edifice dedicated at once to the threefold purpose of a palace, a monastery, and a tomb.

Soon after the king's return to Spain, he set about carrying his plan into execution. The site which, after careful examination, he selected for the building, was among the mountains of the Guadarrama, on the borders of New Castile, about eight leagues north-west of Madrid. The healthiness of the place and its convenient distance from the capital combined with the stern and solitary character of the region, so congenial to his taste, to give it the preference over other spots, which might have found more favour with persons of a different nature. Encompassed by rude and rocky hills, which sometimes soar to the gigantic elevation of mountains, it seemed to be shut out completely from the world. The vegetation was of a thin and stunted growth, seldom spreading out into the luxuriant foliage of the lower regions; and the winds swept down from the neighboring sierra with the violence of a hurricane. Yet the air was salubrious, and the soil was nourished by springs of the purest water. To add to its recommendations, a quarry, close at hand, of excellent stone, somewhat resembling granite in appearance, readily supplied the materials for building, a circumstance, considering the vastness of the work, of no little importance.

The architect who furnished the plans, and on whom the king relied for superintending their execution, was Juan-Bautista de Toledo. He was born in Spain, and, early discovering uncommon talents for his profession, was sent to Italy. Here he studied the principles of his art, under the great masters who were then filling their native land with those monuments of genius that furnished the best study to the artist. Toledo imbibed their spirit, and under their tuition acquired that simple, indeed severe taste, which formed a contrast to the prevalent tone of Spanish architecture, but which, happily, found favor with his royal patron.

Before a stone of the new edifice was laid, Philip had taken care to provide himself with the tenants who were to occupy it. At a general chapter of the Jeronymite fraternity, a prior was chosen for the convent of the Escorial, which was to consist of fifty members, soon increased to double that number. Philip had been induced to give the preference to the Jeronymite order, partly from their general reputation for ascetic piety, and in part from the regard shown for them by his father, who had chosen a convent of that order as the place of his last retreat. The monks were speedily transferred to the village of the Escorial, where they continued to dwell until accommodations were prepared for them in the magnificent pile which they were thenceforth to occupy.

Their temporary habitation was of the meanest kind, like most of the buildings in the hamlet. It was without window or chimney, and the rain found its way through the dilapidated roof of the apartment which they used as a chapel; so that they were obliged to protect themselves by a coverlet stretched above their heads. A rude altar was raised at one end of the chapel, over which was scrawled on the wall, with charcoal, the figure of a crucifix.

The king, on his visits to the place, was lodged in the house of the curate, in not much better repair than the other dwellings in the hamlet. While there, he was punctual in his attendance at mass, when a rude seat was prepared for him near the choir, consisting of a three-legged stool, defended from vulgar eyes by a screen of such old and tattered cloth that the inquisitive spectator might, without difficulty, see him through the holes in it. He was so near the choir, that the monk who stood next to him could hardly avoid being brought into contact with the royal person. The Jeronymite who tells the story assures us that Brother Antonio used to weep as he declared that more than once, when he cast a furtive glance at the monarch, he saw his eyes filled with tears. “Such”, says the good father, “were the devout and joyful feelings with which the king, as he gazed on the poverty around him, meditated his lofty plans for converting this poverty into a scene of grandeur more worthy of the worship to be performed there”.

The brethren were much edified by the humility shown by Philip when attending the services in this wretched cabin. They often told the story of his one day coming late to matins, when, unwilling to interrupt the services, he quietly took his seat by the entrance, on a rude bench, at the upper end of which a peasant was sitting. He remained some time before his presence was observed, when the monks conducted him to his tribune.

On the twenty-third of April, 1563, the first stone of the monastery was laid. On the twentieth of August following, the corner-stone of the church was also laid, with still greater pomp and solemnity. The royal confessor, the bishop of Cuenca, arrayed in his pontificals, presided over the ceremonies. The king was present, and laid the stone with his own hands. The principal nobles of the court were in attendance, and there was a great concourse of spectators, both ecclesiastics and laymen; the solemn services were concluded by the brotherhood, who joined in an anthem of thanksgiving and praise to the Almighty, to whom so glorious a monument was to be reared in this mountain wilderness.

The rude sierra now swarmed with life. The ground was covered with tents and huts. The busy hum of labour mingled with the songs of the laborers, which, from their various dialects, betrayed the different, and oftentimes distant, provinces from which they had come. In this motley host the greatest order and decorum prevailed; nor were the peaceful occupations of the day interrupted by any indecent brawls.

As the work advanced, Philip’s visits to the Escorial were longer and more frequent. He had always shown his love for the retirement of the cloister, by passing some days of every year in it. Indeed, he was in the habit of keeping Holy Week not far from the scene of his present labors, at the convent of Guisando. In his present monastic retreat he had the additional interest afforded by the contemplation of the great work, which seemed to engage as much of his thoughts as any of the concerns of government.

Philip had given a degree of attention to the study of the fine arts seldom found in persons of his condition. He was a connoisseur in painting, and, above all, in architecture, making a careful study of its principles, and occasionally furnishing designs with his own hand. No prince of his time left behind him so many proofs of his taste and magnificence in building. The royal mint at Segovia, the hunting-seat of the Pardo, the pleasant residence of Aranjuez, the alcazar of Madrid, the “Armeria Real”, and other noble works which adorned his infant capital, were either built or greatly embellished by him. The land was covered with structures both civil and religious, which rose under the royal patronage. Churches and convents the latter in lamentable profusion constantly met the eye of the traveler. The general style of their execution was simple in the extreme. Some, like the great cathedral of Valladolid, of more pretension, but still showing the same austere character in their designs, furnished excellent models of architecture to counteract the meretricious tendencies of the age. Structures of a different kind from these were planted by Philip along the frontiers in the north and on the southern coasts of the kingdom; and the voyager in the Mediterranean beheld fortress after fortress crowning the heights above the shore, for its defense against the Barbary corsair. Nor was the king's passion for building confined to Spain. Wherever his armies penetrated in the semi-civilized regions of the New World, the march of the conqueror was sure to be traced by the ecclesiastical and military structures which rose in his rear.

Fortunately, similarity of taste led to the most perfect harmony between the monarch and his architect, in their conferences on the great work which was to crown the architectural glories of Philip's reign. The king inspected the details, and watched over every step in the progress of the building, with as much care as Toledo himself. In order to judge of the effect from a distance, he was in the habit of climbing the mountains at a spot about half a league from the monastery, where a kind of natural chair was formed by the crags. Here, with his spyglass in his hand, he would sit for hours, and gaze on the complicated structure growing up below. The place is still known as the “king’s seat”.

It was certainly no slight proof of the deep interest which Philip took in the work, that he was content to exchange his palace at Madrid for a place that afforded him no better accommodations than the poverty-stricken village of the Escorial. In 1571 he made an important change in these accommodations, by erecting a chapel which might afford the monks a more decent house of worship than their old weather-beaten hovel; and with this he combined a comfortable apartment for himself. In these new quarters he passed still more of his time in cloistered seclusion than he had done before. Far from confining his attention to a supervision of the Escorial, he brought his secretaries and his papers along with him, read here his dispatches from abroad, and kept up a busy correspondence with all parts of his dominions. He did four times the amount of work here, says a Jeronymite, that he did in the same number of days in the capital. He used to boast that, thus hidden from the world, with a little bit of paper, he ruled over both hemispheres. That he did not always wisely rule, is proved by more than one of his dispatches relating to the affairs of Flanders, which issued from this consecrated place. Here he received accounts of the proceedings of his heretic subjects in the Netherlands, and of the Morisco insurgents in Granada. And as he pondered on their demolition of church and convent, and their desecration of the most holy symbols of the Catholic faith, he doubtless felt a proud satisfaction in proving his own piety to the world by the erection of the most sumptuous edifice ever dedicated to the Cross.

In 1577, the Escorial was so far advanced towards its completion as to afford accommodations not merely for Philip and his personal attendants, but for many of the court, who were in the habit of spending some time there with the king during the summer. On one of these occasions, an accident occurred which had nearly been attended with most disastrous consequences to the building.

A violent thunderstorm was raging in the mountains, and the lightning struck one of the great towers of the monastery. In a short time the upper portion of the building was in a blaze. So much of it, fortunately, was of solid materials, that the fire made slow progress. But the difficulty of bringing water to bear on it was extreme. It was eleven o'clock at night when the fire broke out, and in the orderly household of Philip all had retired to rest. They were soon roused by the noise. The king took his station on the opposite tower, and watched with deep anxiety the progress of the flames. The duke of Alva was one among the guests. Though sorely afflicted with the gout at the time, he wrapped his dressing-gown about him, and climbed to a spot which afforded a still nearer view of the conflagration. Here the “good duke” at once assumed the command, and gave his orders with as much promptness and decision as on the field of battle.

All the workmen, as well as the neighboring peasantry, were assembled there. The men showed the same spirit of subordination which they had shown throughout the erection of the building. The duke’s orders were implicitly obeyed; and more than one instance is recorded of daring self-devotion among the workmen, who toiled as if conscious they were under the eye of their sovereign. The tower trembled under the fury of the flames; and the upper portion of it threatened every moment to fall in ruins. Great fears were entertained that it would crush the hospital, situated in that part of the monastery. Fortunately, it fell in an opposite direction, carrying with it a splendid chime of bells that was lodged in it, but doing no injury to the spectators. The loss which bore most heavily on the royal heart was that of sundry inestimable relics which perished in the flames. But Philip's sorrow was mitigated when he learned that a bit of the true cross, and the right arm of St. Lawrence, the martyred patron of the Escorial, were rescued from the flames. At length, by incredible efforts, the fire, which had lasted till six in the morning, was happily extinguished, and Philip withdrew to his chamber, where his first act, we are told, was to return thanks to the Almighty for the preservation of the building consecrated to his service.

The king was desirous that as many of the materials as possible for the structure should be collected from his own dominions. These were so vast, and so various in their productions, that they furnished nearly every article required for the construction of the edifice, as well as for its interior decoration. The grey stone, of which its walls were formed, was drawn from a neighboring quarry. It was called berroquena,—a stone bearing a resemblance to granite, though not so hard. The blocks hewn from the quarries, and dressed there, were of such magnitude as sometimes to require forty or fifty yoke of oxen to drag them. The jasper came from the neighborhood of Burgo de Osma. The more delicate marbles, of a great variety of colors, were furnished by the mountain-ranges in the south of the Peninsula. The costly and elegant fabrics were many of them supplied by native artisans. Such were the damasks and velvets of Granada. Other cities, as Madrid, Toledo, and Saragossa, showed the proficiency of native art in curious manufactures of bronze and iron, and occasionally of the more precious metals.

Yet Philip was largely indebted to his foreign possessions, especially those in Italy and the Low Countries, for the embellishment of the interior of the edifice, which, in its sumptuous style of decoration, presented a contrast to the stern simplicity of its exterior. Milan, so renowned at that period for its fine workmanship in steel, gold, and precious stones, contributed many exquisite specimens of art. The walls were clothed with gorgeous tapestries from the Flemish looms. Spanish convents vied with each other in furnishing embroideries for the altars. Even the rude colonies in the New World had their part in the great work, and the American forests supplied their cedar and ebony and richly-tinted woods, which displayed all their magical brilliancy of color under the hands of the Castilian workman.

Though desirous, as far as possible, to employ the products of his own dominions, and to encourage native art, in one particular he resorted almost exclusively to foreigners. The oil-paintings and frescoes which profusely decorated the walls and ceilings of the Escorial were executed by artists drawn chiefly from Italy, whose schools of design were still in their glory. But of all living painters, Titian was the one whom Philip, like his father, most delighted to honor. To the king's generous patronage the world is indebted for some of that great master's noblest productions, which found a fitting place on the walls of the Escorial.

The prices which Philip paid enabled him to command the services of the most eminent artists. Many anecdotes are told of his munificence. He was, however, a severe critic. He did not prematurely disclose his opinion. But when the hour came, the painter had sometimes the mortification to find the work he had executed, it may be with greater confidence than skill, peremptorily rejected, or at best condemned to some obscure corner of the building. This was the fate of an Italian artist, of much more pretension than power, who, after repeated failures according to the judgment of the king which later critics have not reversed was dismissed to his own country. But even here Philip dealt in a magnanimous way with the unlucky painter. “It is not Zuccaro's fault”, he said, “but that of the persons who brought him here”; and when he sent him back to Italy, he gave him a considerable sum of money in addition to his large salary.

Before this magnificent pile, in a manner the creation of his own taste, Philip’s nature appeared to expand, and to discover some approach to those generous sympathies for humanity which elsewhere seemed to have been denied him. He would linger for hours while he watched the labors of the artist, making occasional criticisms, and laying his hand familiarly on his shoulder. He seemed to put off the coldness and reserve which formed so essential a part of his character. On one occasion, it is said, a stranger, having come into the Escorial when the king was there, mistook him for one of the officials, and asked him some questions about the pictures. Philip, without undeceiving the man, humored his mistake, and good-naturedly undertook the part of cicerone, by answering his inquiries, and showing him some of the objects most worth seeing. Similar anecdotes have been told of others. What is strange is, that Philip should have acted the part of the good-natured man.

In 1584, the masonry of the Escorial was completed. Twenty-one years had elapsed since the first stone of the monastery was laid. This certainly must be regarded as a short period for the erection of so stupendous a pile. St. Peter's church, with which one naturally compares it as the building nearest in size and magnificence, occupied more than a century in its erection, which spread over the reigns of at least eighteen popes. But the Escorial, with the exception of the subterraneous chapel constructed by Philip the Fourth for the burial-place of the Spanish princes, was executed in the reign of one monarch. That monarch held in his hands the revenues of both the Old World and the New; and as he gave, in some sort, a personal supervision to the work, we may be sure that no one was allowed to sleep on his post.

Yet the architect who designed the building was not permitted to complete it. Long before it was finished, the hand of Toledo had moldered in the dust. By his death it seemed that Philip had met with an irreparable loss. He felt it to be so himself; and with great distrust consigned the important task to Juan de Herrera, a young Asturian. But though young, Herrera had been formed on the best models; for he was the favorite pupil of Toledo, and it soon appeared that he had not only imbibed the severe and elevated tastes of his master, but that his own genius fully enabled him to comprehend all Toledo's great conceptions, and to carry them out as perfectly as that artist could have done himself. Philip saw with satisfaction that he had made no mistake in his selection. He soon conferred as freely with the new architect as he had done with his predecessor. He even showed him greater favor, settling on him a salary of a thousand ducats a year, and giving him an office in the royal household, and the cross of St. Iago. Herrera had the happiness to complete the Escorial. Indeed, he lived some six years after its completion. He left several works, both civil and ecclesiastical, which perpetuate his fame. But the Escorial is the monument by which his name, and that of his master, Toledo, have come down to posterity as those of the two greatest architects of whom Spain can boast.

This is not the place for criticism on the architectural merits of the Escorial. Such criticism more properly belongs to a treatise on art. It has been my object simply to lay before the reader such an account of the execution of this great work as would enable him to form some idea of the object to which Philip devoted so large a portion of his time, and which so eminently reflected his peculiar cast of mind.

Critics have greatly differed from each other in their judgments of the Escorial. Few foreigners have been found to acquiesce in the undiluted panegyric of those Castilians who pronounce it the eighth wonder of the world. Yet it cannot be denied that few foreigners are qualified to decide on the merits of a work, to judge of which correctly requires a perfect understanding of the character of the country in which it was built, and of the monarch who built it. The traveller who gazes on its long lines of cold grey stone, scarcely broken by an ornament, feels a dreary sensation creeping over him, while he contrasts it with the lighter and more graceful edifices to which his eye has been accustomed. But he may read in this the true expression of the founder's character. Philip did not aim at the beautiful, much less at the festive and cheerful. The feelings which he desired to raise in the spectator were of that solemn, indeed somber complexion, which corresponded best with his own religious faith.

Whatever defects may be charged on the Escorial, it is impossible to view it from a distance, and see the mighty pile as it emerges from the gloomy depths of the mountains, without feeling how perfectly it conforms in its aspect to the wild and melancholy scenery of the sierra. Nor can one enter the consecrated precincts without confessing the genius of the place, and experiencing sensations of a mysterious awe as he wanders through the desolate halls, which fancy peoples with the solemn images of the past.

The architect of the building was embarrassed by more than one difficulty of a very peculiar kind. It was not simply a monastery that he was to build. The same edifice, as we have seen, was to comprehend at once a convent, a palace, and a tomb. It was no easy problem to reconcile objects so discordant, and to infuse into them a common principle of unity. It is no reproach to the builder that he did not perfectly succeed in this, and that the palace should impair the predominant tone of feeling raised by the other parts of the structure, looking in fact like an excrescence, rather than an integral portion of the edifice.

Another difficulty, of a more whimsical nature, imposed on the architect, was the necessity of accommodating the plan of the building to the form of a gridiron as typical of the kind of martyrdom suffered by the patron saint of the Escorial. Thus the long lines of cloisters, with their intervening courts, served for the bars of the instrument. The four lofty spires at the corners of the monastery, represented its legs inverted; and the palace, extending its slender length on the east, furnished the awkward handle.

It is impossible for language to convey any adequate idea of a work of art. Yet architecture has this advantage over the sister arts of design, that the mere statement of the dimensions helps us much in forming a conception of the work. A few of these dimensions will serve to give an idea of the magnitude of the edifice. They are reported to us by Los Santos, a Jeronymite monk, who has left one of the best accounts of the Escorial.

The main building, or monastery, he estimates at seven hundred and forty Castilian feet in length by five hundred and eighty in breadth. Its greatest height, measured to the central cross above the dome of the great church, is three hundred and fifteen feet. The whole circumference of the Escorial, including the palace, he reckons at two thousand nine hundred and eighty feet, or near three-fifths of a mile. The patient inquirer tells us there were no less than twelve thousand doors and windows in the building; that the weight of the keys alone amounted to fifty arrobas, or twelve hundred and fifty pounds, and, finally, that there were sixty-eight fountains playing in the halls and courts of this enormous pile.

The cost of its construction and interior decoration, we are informed by Father Siguenza, amounted to very near six millions of ducats. Siguenza was prior of the monastery, and had access, of course, to the best sources of information. That he did not exaggerate, may be inferred from the fact that he was desirous to relieve the building from the imputation of any excessive expenditure incurred in its erection a common theme of complaint, it seems, and one that was urged with strong marks of discontent by contemporary writers. Probably no single edifice ever contained such an amount and variety of inestimable treasures as the Escorial, so many paintings and sculptures by the greatest masters, so many articles of exquisite workmanship, composed of the most precious materials. It would be a mistake to suppose that, when the building was finished, the labors of Philip were at an end. One might almost say they were but begun. The casket was completed; but the remainder of his days was to be passed in filling it with the rarest and richest gems. This was a labor never to be completed. It was to be bequeathed to his successors, who with more or less taste, but with the revenues of the Indies at their disposal, continued to lavish them on the embellishment of the Escorial.

Philip the Second set the example. He omitted nothing which could give a value, real or imaginary, to his museum. He gathered at an immense cost several hundred cases of the bones of saints and martyrs, depositing them in rich silver shrines, of elaborate workmanship. He collected four thousand volumes, in various languages, especially the Oriental, as the basis of the fine library of the Escorial.

The care of successive princes, who continued to spend there a part of every year, preserved the palace-monastery and its contents from the rude touch of Time. But what the hand of Time had spared, the hand of violence destroyed. The French, who in the early part of the present century swept like a horde of Vandals over the Peninsula, did not overlook the Escorial. For in it they saw the monument designed to commemorate their own humiliating defeat. A body of dragoons under La Houssaye burst into the monastery in the winter of 1808; and the ravages of a few days demolished what it had cost years and the highest efforts of art to construct. The apprehension of similar violence from the Carlists, in 1837, led to the removal of the finest paintings to Madrid. The Escorial ceased to be a royal residence: tenantless and unprotected, it was left to the fury of the blasts which swept down the hills of the Guadarrama.

The traveler who now visits the place will find its condition very different from what it was in the beginning of the century. The bare and mildewed walls no longer glow with the magical tints of Raphael and Titian, and the sober pomp of the Castilian school. The exquisite specimens of art with which the walls were filled have been wantonly demolished, or more frequently pilfered for the sake of the rich materials. The monks, so long the guardians of the place, have shared the fate of their brethren elsewhere, since the suppression of religious houses, and their venerable forms have disappeared.

Silence and solitude reign throughout the courts, undisturbed by any sound save that of the ceaseless winds, which seem to be ever chanting their melancholy dirge over the faded glories of the Escorial. There is little now to remind one of the palace or of the monastery. Of the three great objects to which the edifice was devoted, one alone survives, that of a mausoleum for the royal line of Castile. The spirit of the dead broods over the place, of the sceptered dead, who lie in the same dark chamber where they have lain for centuries, unconscious of the changes that have been going on all around them.

During the latter half of Philip’s reign, he was in the habit of repairing with his court to the Escorial, and passing here a part of the summer. Hither he brought his young queen, Anne of Austria, when the gloomy pile assumed an unwonted appearance of animation. In a previous chapter, the reader has seen some notice of his preparations for his marriage with that princess, in less than two years after he had consigned the lovely Isabella to the tomb. Anne had been already plighted to the unfortunate Don Carlos. Philip’s marriage with her afforded him the melancholy triumph of a second time supplanting his son. She was his niece; for the empress Mary, her mother, was the daughter of Charles the Fifth. There was, moreover, a great disparity in their years; for the Austrian princess, having been born in Castile during the regency of her parents, in 1549, was at this time but twenty-one years of age, less than half the age of Philip. It does not appear that her father, the emperor Maximilian, made any objection to the match. If he felt any, he was too politic to prevent a marriage which would place his daughter on the throne of the most potent monarchy in Europe.

It was arranged that the princess should proceed to Spain by the way of the Netherlands. In September, 1570, Anne bade a last adieu to her father's court, and with a stately retinue set out on her long journey. On entering Flanders, she was received with great pomp by the duke of Alva, at the head of the Flemish nobles. Soon after her arrival, Queen Elizabeth dispatched a squadron of eight vessels, with offers to transport her to Spain, and an invitation for her to visit England on her way. These offers were courteously declined; and the German princess, escorted by Count Bossu, captain-general of the Flemish navy, with a gallant squadron, was fortunate in reaching the place of her destination after a voyage of less than a week. On the third of October she landed at Santander, on the northern coast of Spain, where she found the archbishop of Seville and the duke of Bejar, with a brilliant train of followers, waiting to receive her.

Under this escort, Anne was conducted by the way of Burgos and Valladolid to the ancient city of Segovia. In the great towns through which she passed she was entertained in a style suited to her rank; and everywhere along her route she was greeted with the hearty acclamations of the people: for the match was popular with the nation; and the Cortes had urged the king to expedite it as much as possible. The Spaniards longed for a male heir to the crown; and since the death of Carlos, Philip had only daughters remaining to him.

In Segovia, where the marriage ceremony was to be performed, magnificent preparations had been made for the reception of the princess. As she approached that city, she was met by a large body of the local militia, dressed in gay uniforms, and by the municipality of the place, arrayed in their robes of office and mounted on horseback. With this brave escort she entered the gates. The streets were ornamented with beautiful fountains, and spanned by triumphal arches, under which the princess proceeded, amidst the shouts of the populace, to the great cathedral.

Anne, then in the bloom of youth, is described as having a rich and delicate complexion. Her figure was good, her deportment gracious, and she rode her richly-caparisoned palfrey with natural ease and dignity. Her not very impartial chronicler tells us that the spectators particularly admired the novelty of her Bohemian costume, her riding-hat gaily ornamented with feathers, and her short mantle of crimson velvet richly fringed with gold.

After Te Deum had been chanted, the splendid procession took its way to the far-famed alcazar, that palace-fortress, originally built by the Moors, which now served both as a royal residence and as a place of confinement for prisoners of state. Here it was that the unfortunate Montigny passed many a weary month of captivity; and less than three months had elapsed since he had been removed from the place which was so soon to become the scene of royal festivity, and consigned to the fatal fortress of Simancas, to perish by the hand of the midnight executioner. Anne, it may be remembered, was said, on her journey through the Low Countries, to have promised Montigny’s family to intercede with her lord in his behalf. But the king, perhaps willing to be spared the awkwardness of refusing the first boon asked by his young bride, disposed of his victim soon after her landing, while she was yet in the north.

Anne entered the alcazar amidst salvoes of artillery. She found there the good Princess Joanna, Philip’s sister, who received her with the same womanly kindness which she had shown twelve years before to Elizabeth of France, when, on a similar occasion, she made her first entrance into Castile. The marriage was appointed to take place on the following day, the fourteenth of November. Philip, it is said, obtained his first view of his betrothed when, mingling in disguise among the cavalcade of courtiers, he accompanied her entrance into the capital. When he had led his late queen, Isabella, to the altar, some white hairs on his temples attracted her attention. During the ten years which had since elapsed, the cares of office had wrought the same effect on him as on his father, and turned his head prematurely grey. The marriage was solemnized with great pomp in the cathedral of Segovia. The service was performed by the archbishop of Seville. The spacious building was crowded to overflowing with spectators, among whom were the highest dignitaries of the Church and the most illustrious of the nobility of Spain.

During the few days which followed, while the royal pair remained in Segovia, the city was abandoned to jubilee. The auspicious event was celebrated by public illuminations and by magnificent fêtes, at which the king and queen danced in the presence of the whole court, who stood around in respectful silence. On the eighteenth, the new-married couple proceeded to Madrid, where such splendid preparations had been made for their reception as evinced the loyalty of the capital.

As soon as the building of the Escorial was sufficiently advanced to furnish suitable accommodations for his young queen, Philip passed a part of every summer in its cloistered solitudes, which had more attraction for him than any other of his residences. The presence of Anne and her courtly train diffused something like an air of gaiety over the grand but gloomy pile, to which it had been little accustomed. Among other diversions for her entertainment, we find mention made of autos sacramentales, those religious dramas that remind one of the ancient Mysteries and Moralities which entertained our English ancestors. These autos were so much in favor with the Spaniards as to keep possession of the stage longer than in most other countries; nor did they receive their full development until they had awakened the genius of Calderon.

It was a pen, however, bearing little resemblance to that of Calderon which furnished these edifying dramas. They proceeded, probably, from some Jeronymite gifted with a more poetic vein than his brethren. The actors were taken from among the pupils in the seminary established in the Escorial. Anne, who appears to have been simple in her tastes, is said to have found much pleasure in these exhibitions, and in such recreation as could be afforded her by excursions into the wild, romantic country that surrounded the monastery. Historians have left us but few particulars of her life and character, much fewer than of her lovely predecessor. Such accounts as we have, represent her as of an amiable disposition, and addicted to pious works. She was rarely idle, and employed much of her time in needlework, leaving many specimens of her skill in this way in the decorations of the convents and churches. A rich piece of embroidery, wrought by her hands and those of her maidens, was long preserved in the royal chapel, under the name of “Queen Anne’s tapestry”.

Her wedded life was destined not to be a long one, only two years longer than that of Isabella. She was blessed, however, with a more numerous progeny than either of her predecessors. She had four sons and a daughter. But all died in infancy or early childhood, except the third son, who, as Philip the Third, lived to take his place in the royal dynasty of Castile.

The queen died on the twenty-sixth of October, 1580, in the thirty-first year of her age, and the eleventh of her reign. A singular anecdote is told in connection with her death. This occurred at Badajoz, where the court was then established, as a convenient place for overlooking the war in which the country was at that time engaged with Portugal. While there the king fell ill. The symptoms were of the most alarming character. The queen, in her distress, implored the Almighty to spare a life so important to the welfare of the kingdom and of the Church, and instead of it to accept the sacrifice of her own. Heaven, says the chronicler, as the result showed, listened to her prayer. The king recovered; and the queen fell ill of a disorder which in a few days terminated fatally. Her remains, after lying in state for some time, were transported with solemn pomp to the Escorial, where they enjoyed the melancholy pre-eminence of being laid in the quarter of the mausoleum reserved exclusively for kings and the mothers of kings. Such was the end of Anne of Austria, the fourth and last wife of Philip the Second.

 

THE END .