Hacket, 161. From Sanderson, p. 552; taken from the Spanish reports of their conference.
Nevertheless, the preparations for the espousals proceeded; the first check given to them being a letter from Prince Charles, desiring Lord Bristol not to deliver up his proxy to the marriage to the King of Spain until further notice from England. On receiving this intimation, Lord Bristol observed “that he and Sir Walter Aston had a commission under the Broad Seal of England to conclude the match, and that there could not be a better favour for the surrender of the Palatinate than the Infanta, who would never rest until she had merited the love of the British nation.” He did not, therefore, relax his preparations; and provided rich liveries of watered velvet, with silver lace up to the very capes of the cloaks for his servants; and, in a fortnight afterwards, the ratification arrived, the marriage-day was fixed, and a terrace, covered with tapestry, was raised from the King’s Palace to the next church, a distance about the same as that between Whitehall and Westminster Abbey. But when she stood thus on the very threshold of her happiness,as she deemed it, the Infanta was doomed to be rejected and disappointed. “She had studied,” writes Bishop Hacket, “our language, our habit, our behaviour, everything but our religion, to make her English. Her conversation turned continually upon the Prince, and on her projected voyage to England in the spring. On the other hand, she was led to suppose that Charles admired her for her beauty; that his attachment was equal to her own; and that he was worthy of the affection which she undoubtedly bore him.”[84]
The young King of Spain, her brother, participated in the sentiments of personal attachment which Charles appears to have inspired in those who beheld him, in the prime of his youth, at the Court of Madrid. Philip was now anxious to conclude the marriage, which he meant to do on the day on which his infant daughter was christened. Invitations were actually sent to the principal nobility to attend the espousals by proxy; ordinance was ordered to be fired off in the port-towns; and all Spain was prohibited from speaking disadvantageously of the alliance; when a new commission to Lord Bristol arrived. By this he was forbidden to deliver up the Prince’s proxy until a full and absolute satisfaction for the surrender of the Palatinate was given under the hand and seal of the King of Spain.