Reports, indeed, came to console the anxious minds at home, stating that the Prince and Duke were “royally treated,” but it was soon surmised that Charles was becoming weary of his detention. June had arrived; the Duke of Richmond, and six other noblemen, as commissioners, had already gone to Southampton to prepare a reception, with pageants, for the Prince; yet still Lord Rochford, who was expected to arrive with news of the wedding-day being fixed, did not make his appearance.
The Duke of Richmond was accompanied to Southampton by Inigo Jones and old Alleyn, the player, who were to employ their talents for the occasion; but who could, as the great news-teller writer of that period, Chamberlain, observes, “have done just as well without so many Privy Counsellors;” “but we must,” he adds, “shew our obsequiousness in all that concerns her” (the Infanta). At Gravesend, Lord Kelly, in the King’s barge, went to meet the new Spanish ambassador, the Marquis Inojosa, to whom cloths of estate, an honour never permitted to ambassadors in Queen Elizabeth’s time, were conceded, and when the haughty grandee landed at Dover, and was saluted with shot from the castle, he vouchsafed a nod from his coach, but, Spaniard-like, gave not one penny of money.[8]
In spite of all the journeyings to and from Spain, nothing was done, whilst the Prince, whose firmness met with the highest commendations, was written to by the Pope, and “nibbed at with orations by the English seminaries in Spain, in order to effect his conversion.” The expenses at home and abroad could now only be supported by extraordinary devices, such as knighting a thousand gentlemen at a hundred pounds a-piece; ten or twelve serjeants-at-law at five hundred pounds a-piece; but the fees arising from the elevation of these luminaries were to be given to the Lord Keeper or to Sir Francis Crane, to further his tapestry works at Mortlake, or to pay off some scores owed him by Buckingham.[9]
Whilst all these minor difficulties were harassing the King at home, Charles was beset with a far greater difficulty. When the Puritans were blaming him for answering in a polite and conciliatory tone the Pope’s letters, without the permission of his royal father, he was displaying the firmness which could only be the result of a careful and learned education; for faith in those times was, as in ours, feeble without sound knowledge; and it was requisite for him to repel zealous efforts to convert him at all convenient times. Between the dazzling scenes of splendid shows and diversions, made at such times and intervals of repose, Olivares was attacking the Prince with the argument best suited to the character of the romantic youth, telling him how sure a way to the Infanta’s heart his conversion would be; and by hinting that difference of creed could not but be a great obstacle to their union. And when answered that such an apostasy would raise a rebellion in Protestant England, the embarrassed but steadfast Prince was assured that if such were the case, he should have an army from Spain to quell such an insurrection. Even Lord Bristol, who was a great friend and favourite of Charles’s, “strove, with a gentle hand, to allure him that way,” by the specious argument that none but Roman Catholic monarchs had ever been great as sovereigns; whilst the Pope, encouraged by all this subtle working of a hidden machinery, wrote a letter to the Bishop of Conchen, Inquisitor-General of Spain, desiring him not to let such an opportunity of conversion slip out of his hands.[10]