(Vol. v., p. 489.)
Your correspondent W. STANLEY SIMMONDS will find a lengthy account of this
notable Spanish Don--Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Conde de Gondomar--in the
_Nobiliario genealogico de los Reyes y Titulos de España_ of Lopez de Haro,
folio, Madrid, 1622, vol. i. pp. 236-238. In this notice he chiefly
figures, strange to say, as a military character! At the ripe age of
_seventeen_ this "famous captain" is said to have chastised the insolence
of that bold "English pirate, Francisco Draques," who in 1584 had had the
temerity to land somewhere near Bayona, his sole object being of course
plunder. Don Diego guarded well his territory of Tuy when the same
formidable "dragon," in the year 1589, made his appearance before Coruña;
and again in 1596, when the English Armada visited ill-fated Cadiz. Being a
person of "great parts," the Count was despatched to England as ambassador
in 1613, and during the five years that he resided in this country, "the
king and his nobility showered upon him favours and honours innumerable."
He once told James that the flour of England (meaning the gentry) was very
fine, but the bran (meaning the common people) was very coarse; "_La harina
de Inglatierra es muy delgada y fina, pero el afrecho es muy
grossero_,"--for Gondomar, like the learned Isaac Casaubon, had been
subject to the grossest insults from the London rabble. We next find ranked
among his praiseworthy deeds the following atrocious one:
"Hizo cortar la cabeça al General Ingles Wbaltero Rale (Sir Walter
Raleigh) por aver intentado descubrimiento en las Indias Occidentales
de Castilla a su partida."
Another meritorious action is added:
"A su instancia perdonó la Magestad de aquel Rey (James I.) a sesenta
sacerdotes que estavan presos condenados por causa de la religion, y a
otros mucho Catolicos, passandolos todos consigo a Flandes."
{314}
The title of Count Gondomar was conferred upon him by Philip III. in 1617,
but the date of his death is still a desideratum. Many anecdotes concerning
him are to be seen scattered in Howel's _Treatise of Ambassadors_.