The season of Lent was now advanced, and the travellers could obtain no meat in the inns. Sir Henry Wotton relates an anecdote, which, as he remarks, is characteristic of the Prince, who is the chief hero of the little incident.
“There was, near Bayonne, a herd of goats with their young ones, upon which sight, Sir Robert Graham tells the Marquis he would snap up one of the kids, and make some shift to carry him close to their lodging; which, the Prince overhearing, ‘Why, Richard,’ says he, ‘do you think you may practise here your old tricks again upon the border?’ Upon which words, they first give the goatherd good contentment, and then, while the Marquis and his servant (being set on foot) were chasing the kid about the stack, the Prince, from horseback, killed him in the head with a Scottish pistol.”[425]
The lofty bearing of Buckingham, and courteous demeanour of Charles, were not unnoticed by the Count de Grammont, the Governor of Bayonne, that “jealous key,” as Sir Henry Wotton terms it, of France. He perceived that they were gentlemen of much more consequence and higher station than their dress implied; nevertheless, he permitted them, courteously, to pass forward.
Philip IV., at whose court they were soon to present themselves, was now only in his nineteenth year. Like his weak father, he had thrown the reins of government, soon after his accession,[426] into the hands of an unworthy favourite. The Condé de Olivares, who had been a gentleman of the bed-chamber to Philip, when the Prince of Asturias was the haughty ruler over the destinies of the Spanish nation. Corrupt, yet able, he is stated to have increased the revenues of the crown, and, so far, to have served his sovereign by several severe but salutary measures. Having, however, acquired some credit for these reforms, he gave loose to his own rapacity, whilst he checked that of others. He even surpassed his predecessors in acts of corruption; his heart was depraved; his selfish ambition boundless; and his private character was suspected, not without just cause, to have been stained with the darkest crimes.[427] Such was the minister to whom Charles and Buckingham were now to bend, as suppliants and suitors; for Philip,[428] imbecile and indifferent, and plunged into degrading vices, was wholly a cipher in the profuse and stately Court over which he was the nominal ruler.