Marked out thus for popularity by the true Spanish type, Don Carlos was endowed with no office, dignity, nor title; he was only the King’s “individual companion, dressed in similar garments, from top to toe,” with the King, and when the King had new robes, others were always provided for him; he was, in short, His Spanish Majesty’s shadow.[16]
Thus fenced round with guardians and etiquette, the Infanta could only publicly converse with Charles, and that through an interpreter, the Earl of Bristol, “Our cousin, Archy” (King James’s fool) “hath,” says the writer in Howell’s letters, “more privilege than any, for he goes with his fool’s coat where the Infanta is with her meninas and maidens of honour, and keeps a blowing and a blustering, and flirts out what he lists. One day they were discoursing what a marvellous thing it was that the Duke of Bavaria, with less than 15,000 men, after a long toylsome march, should dare to encounter the Palsgower’s army, consisting of about 25,000, and give them an utter discomfiture, and take Prague presently after; wherefore he archly answered, that he would tell them a stranger thing than that. ‘Was it not a stranger thing,’ quoth he, ‘that in the year eighty-eight, there should come a fleet of one hundred and forty sails from Spain to invade England, and that ten of these should not go back to tell what became of the rest.’”[17]
At last Charles was resolved to gain a private interview with her whom he supposed to be his destined wife. Understanding that the Infanta was in the habit of going early in the morning to the Caso del Campo, on the other side of the river, to gather May-dew, he rose early, and went thither, accompanied by Endymion Porter. “They were,” says Howell, “let into the house, and into the garden, but the Infanta was in the orchard, and there being a high partition wall between, and the door doubly bolted, the Prince got on the top of the wall, and sprung down a great height, and so made towards her; but she, spying him first of all the rest, gave a shriek, and ran back. The old Marquis that was then her guardian, came towards the Prince and fell on his knees, conjuring him to retire, in regard he hazarded his head if he admitted him to her company; so the door was opened, and he came out under that wall under which he had got in.”