Then grave heads were shaken in doubt that this thing might be of evil omen. Already had the rigid Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia,[3] solemnly warned the King and Lerma of their impiety in making terms with the enemies of the faith; lamentations, as loud as was consistent with safety, had gone up from churches and guardrooms innumerable at this tacit confession of a falling away from the stern standard of Philip II. But now that Lord Admiral Howard, Earl of Nottingham, who had defeated the great Armada in 1588, and had commanded at the sack of Cadiz in 1596, was to ruffle and feast, with six hundred heretic Englishmen at his heels, in the very capital of orthodox Spain, whilst the baby prince whom God had sent to realise the dream of his house was baptized into the Church, offended pride almost overcame the stately courtesy and hospitality which are inborn in the Spanish character. But not quite: for though priests looked sour, and soldiers swaggered a little more than usual when they met the Englishmen in the { 4} cobbled streets, yet to outward seeming all was kind on both sides; and even the biting satires of the poets were decently suppressed until the strangers had gone their way.[4]
Howard and his train were lodged on the night of the 25th May in the castle and town of Simancas, on its bold bluff seven miles from the city; and betimes in the morning the six hundred and more British horsemen, all in their finest garb, set forth over the arid sandy plain on the banks of the Pisuerga, to enter in stately friendship the capital of the realm that they and theirs had harried by land and sea for two score years. For seven months no drop of rain had fallen on the parched earth; and as the noble figure of the old earl, in white satin and gold, surrounded by equally splendid kinsmen, passed on horseback to the appointed meeting place outside the walls of the city, the dust alone marred the magnificence of the cavalcade. For two hours the Englishmen were kept waiting under the trees, { 5} where the Grand Constable, the Duke of Frias,[5] and the other grandees were to meet them; for Spanish pride was never at a loss for a device to inflict a polite snub upon a rival. This time it was a diplomatic illness of the Duke of Alba that delayed the starting of the great crowd of nobles who were to greet the English ambassador, and it was five o'clock in the afternoon before the Spanish horsemen reached their waiting guests. Then, as if by magic, the heavens grew suddenly black as night, and such a deluge as few men had seen[6] descended upon the gaudy throng; "heaven weeping in sorrow at their reception," said the bigots. In vain the Constable of Castile besought the stiff old Lord Admiral to take shelter in a coach. He would not balk the people of the sight, he said, and the costly finery of both English and Spanish received such a baptism as for ever spoilt its pristine beauty. Wet to the skin, their velvets and satins bedraggled, their plumes drooping, and their great lace ruffs as limp as rags, the thousand noble horsemen passed through dripping, silent, but curious crowds to their quarters.