Because it is really extraordinary that in all the very intimate letters which Philip II, on the imprisonment of D. Carlos, wrote to the Pope, to the Dowager Queen of Portugal, Doña Catalina, the Prince's grandmother, to the Emperor Maximilian and the Empress Maria, who were to have been his father- and mother-in-law, and to the great Duque de Alba, he hastens to clear his son from all suspicion of heresy, rebellion, disrespect to his person, or other such crimes which would justify his rigorous measures, and only makes an attempt to do this in all of them by repeating almost identically the same sentence: "In excesses which result from his nature and particular condition, which cannot be repeated for the decency of the case and the honour and estimation of the Prince."
At last D. Carlos, despairing of governing Flanders by his father's leave, and also fearing that his father was breaking off his marriage with Doña Ana, determined to fly from Spain and go to Italy, and from thence to Flanders or Germany, as the circumstances should dictate. The most necessary thing for this was money, and he sent his attendants, Garci Álvarez Osorio and Juan Martinez de la Cuadra, therefore, to borrow 600,000 ducats from among the merchants of Toledo, Medina del Campo, Valladolid and Burgos. But the credit of D. Carlos was very bad on those markets, because they all knew him to be as free in borrowing as he was faithless in paying, and the efforts of Osorio and de la Cuadra only produced a few thousand ducats.
Nothing daunted by this, D. Carlos sent Garci Álvarez Osorio to Seville with twelve blank letters of credit, of which the text was: "The Prince. Garci Álvarez, my attendant, who will give you this, will speak to you, and will ask you, in my name, for certain sums of money to be lent for a pressing and urgent necessity; I beg and charge you much to do it; on the one hand you will perform your obligations as vassal, on the other you will give me great pleasure. In all that concerns payment I rely on the said Osorio, that what he settles I accept as settled. Madrid, 1st of December, 1567."
And in his own hand: "In this you will please me much. I, the Prince."
He wrote at the same time to many of the Grandees of Spain, saying that he had to go on a journey of great importance, and hoping that they would accompany him and give him their aid.