{261}
_A PALACE IN THE STRAND._
{263}
[Illustration: Headpiece]
_A PALACE IN THE STRAND._[1]
Probably not one person out of a thousand of those who hurry along the
busiest part of the Strand notices even the existence of a closed iron
gate by the side of a public-house opposite the Vaudeville Theatre. If
you peer through the grating you will only see a dark, narrow court,
now blocked up by the building operations connected with the Hotel
Cecil, and you will have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that
this avenue, which has been gradually going down in the world for the
last two centuries, is destined before very long to be blotted out
altogether. For this was an important thoroughfare once, called Ivy
Lane, one of the three public roadways by which access was obtained
from the Strand to the river and the boats, the other two being Milford
Lane and Strand Lane, the entrance to which latter still exists, a mere
passage between two shops opposite Catherine Street. Down the centre
of Ivy Lane ran a brook, over which the roadway of the Strand was
carried by a bridge called Ivy Bridge. This lane, which separates the
liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster from the city of {264} Westminster,
ran sloping down to the river between the garden walls of two of the
great Strand palaces which, erected, as they all were at first, by
bishops, were subsequently grabbed by kings and courtiers for their own
use. To the east stood, on the Savoy demesne, the house of the Bishop
of Carlisle, which was granted to the Elizabethan Earl of Bedford, and
subsequently came into the possession, by exchange, of Robert Cecil,
afterwards the first Earl of Salisbury, second son of the great
Burleigh, whose own house stood nearly opposite, on the site of Exeter
Hall; and on the west, covering all the space now occupied by the
Adelphi as far as Coutts' bank, there rose the ancient mansion which
for centuries was the town palace of the prince-bishops of Durham,
known to history as Durham Place.
In the lawless times, when these mansions were first founded, it would
have been dangerous for any but ecclesiastics to have resided outside
of the protection afforded by the City boundaries, and so it came about
that all the way from the Temple to Whitehall, along the banks of the
silent highway, which then was the principal thoroughfare of London,
there ran a string of bishops' palaces and religious foundations.
Their outhouses and stable gates opened on to the rough country road we
still call the Strand--a road which even in the time of Mary, we are
told, was filthy and unseemly, and remained so, indeed, until the great
nobles made these palaces their homes. Many books have been written
about the Aldelphi and its site, and Durham Place, which was by far the
most important of the Strand palaces until the Protector built Somerset
House, has come in for its own full share of notice, but the writers
{265} upon the subject have copied each other with slavish fidelity,
errors and all. The same set of facts and assumptions has invariably
done duty in all descriptions of Durham Place. I wish in the present
article to break new ground, and relate some hitherto unnoticed
episodes in its history.
Stow has not much to tell of Durham Place, except of the great festival
of 1540, when the future rivals, Dudley and Seymour, with Poynings,
Carew, Kingston, and Richard Cromwell, challenged all Europe to a
tourney, and held open house with regal lavishness for a week at Durham
Place, lent to them for the purpose by the King, who rewarded each of
them, moreover, with an income for ever of a hundred marks a year and a
house out of the plunder of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. The
State Papers now and again give us a ray of side-light on the history
of Durham Place. We know how Somerset granted it to Elizabeth for her
life after he had beheaded his brother, who there had coined the
doubloons with which he thought to bribe his way to the throne. We
know on Somerset's fall how jealous Northumberland gave to the Princess
the great unfinished palace of the dead Protector, and took for his own
town house Durham Place, in which, although it was nominally hers, she
had never lived. We know something, but not much, of the fastuous
splendour of Dudley's life during the three years he lived here, of
Jane Grey's ill-starred wedding in the house, of the plotting of her
father-in-law, verily a lath painted like a sword, and the weaker
time-servers around him, to perpetuate their rule and confirm them in
their ill-gotten gains, of the pitiably crumbling down of the {266}
house of cards when the supreme moment came; and how Northumberland
went forth from the Tower to the scaffold, never to see Durham Place
again, hoping in his craven soul, till the axe fell, that his abject
recantation would purchase his worthless life.
The Egerton Papers (Camden Society) tell us somewhat in detail of the
arbitrary expulsion of Raleigh from Durham Place, where, by the grace
of his mistress, he had lived happily and splendidly for nearly twenty
years. These facts and some others in the subsequent history of the
house are recited by every writer who has touched upon the subject, and
I have no desire to repeat at length incidents which are already well
known. One error into which most writers have fallen has been to jump
at the conclusion that whenever recorded history is silent on the
subject of Durham Place, the house reverted to the possession of the
See of Durham. Such does not appear to me to have been the case. It
is usually asserted that Henry VIII. first took possession of the house
by forcing the Bishop, Cuthbert Tunstal, to exchange his palace for
some other property. This is founded on Stow's statement that Cold
Harbour, in Thames Street, was granted to the Bishop because of "his
house near Charing Cross being taken into the King's hands, Cuthbert
Tunstal was lodged in this Cold Harbour." It is certain, however, that
Katherine of Aragon lived here during her widowhood, before Henry VIII.
came to the throne, as many of her letters to her father in Spain are
in existence dated from this house, ranging over several years prior to
her marriage with Henry in 1509. On the {267} very year of Mary's
death Cuthbert Tunstal wrote a letter[2] to Cardinal Pole thanking him
for obtaining for him the _reversion_ of the house;[2] and it is
usually assumed from this that he actually entered into possession of
it. But he did not; and it is the story of Durham Place during this
time, namely, the last years of Mary and the first few years of
Elizabeth, that I wish to tell.
The historians of the house generally make short work of the matter by
saying, "When Elizabeth came to the throne Tunstal was again driven
from this house, and about 1583 Elizabeth granted it to its greatest
tenant, the glorious Raleigh."[3] In all probability Tunstal only
lived in the house a short time if at all. He was appointed to the See
in 1530, and in 1540, as we know by Stow's description of the
already-mentioned festival, Durham Place was a royal house, and so it
remained until 1603, when Lord Salisbury used Toby Matthew, Bishop of
Durham, as his catspaw to claim it, in order that he might filch the
best part of it--the Strand frontage--for himself, which he did to his
own great profit. In any case, it is certain that Tunstal never got
the house back again from Mary or Cardinal Pole, whatever promises may
have been made to him.
Of the few Spanish nobles of high rank who stayed with Philip II.
during the whole of his residence in England after his marriage with
Queen Mary, one was Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Count de Feria, a prime
favourite and close friend of Philip. This nobleman had fallen deeply
in love with Miss Jane Dormer, one of Mary's maids of {268} honour, and
married her, and although the secret of the union had been well kept,
circumstances made it necessary to openly avow it before the King and
his suite left London for Flanders in September, 1555. Feria was again
in London with the King in March, 1557, for a few months, but in
January, 1558, he came back in another capacity. The war was going
badly for Philip and England. The French had taken Calais, and Guines
was on the point of falling; if the contest was to be carried on at all
more money and more men must be squeezed out of unwilling England, or
otherwise peace must be made, with England for a scapegoat. Philip
could not come himself, so he sent his haughty, overbearing favourite
Feria as his ambassador to bully and bribe the English courtiers and
coerce the sorely beset Queen. He came with a large train of servants
and with great magnificence; his English wife, a country knight's
daughter only as she was, as proud as himself; and he was granted the
use of Durham Place, furnished from the Queen's own house, as other
great ambassadors had been granted it before him. Egmont had been
lodged there with his splendid train in January, 1554, when he had come
to offer Philip's hand to Mary. Chatillon, the French ambassador, too,
had been given the use of the house during his short embassy in 1550,
so that there was nothing extraordinary in the granting of the house to
Feria. Only that former ambassadors had stayed for a few weeks,
whereas Feria and his successor remained in possession for five years
and a half, and made of Durham Place a trysting-place for treason
during the most of that time.
{269}
Whilst Elizabeth was striving against terrible odds with all her subtle
statecraft to lay the foundation of a united nation on the broken
elements of civil and religious discord, her task was hourly rendered
more difficult by the plots hatched in her own house at Durham Place.
All the disaffected and discontented found a welcome there; emissaries
from Shan O'Neil flitted backwards and forwards at night by the river
gate. Stukeley whispered here his willingness to desert with the
Queen's ships to the King of Spain, and here Hawkins himself humbly
begged to be bought. Lady Sidney, Robert Dudley's sister, Dudley
himself, Arundel, Lumley, Montague, and Winchester found in the secret
rooms at Durham Place open but discreet ears to listen to their plans
for preventing the establishment of Protestantism in England, and for
bringing the country again under the sway of the Pope. Madcap Arthur
Pole appealed first to Durham Place when he wanted aid for his silly
plot in favour of Mary Stuart, and long-headed Lethington came at dead
of night by the silent river on a similar but far more serious errand.
The publication of the correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors in
England during the reign of Elizabeth (Rolls Series) adds many
interesting pages to the history of Durham Place, and renders the
memories of the house more important than ever to the students of the
Reformation period in England.
Feria arrived in London and took up his residence at Durham Place on
the 26th of January, 1558, having, as he says, lingered on the way in
order not to bring the unwelcome news of the surrender of Guines by the
English, which news {270} had crossed the Channel with him. In
addition to Durham Place, where he and his household were lodged, he
had the same privileges as to an apartment in the Queen's palace as
those which appertained to an English Privy Councillor--privileges
which he tried hard to have confirmed to him by the new Queen when Mary
died, in order, as he says, that he might keep his foot in the place
and spy out what was going on. But Elizabeth and Cecil knew full well
what his object was, and were quite shocked at the idea of the
representative of a possible suitor for her hand sleeping under the
same roof as the maiden Queen, so Feria had to depend upon his paid
agents in the palace, and even in the Council itself, to bring him news
to Durham Place of what was going on.
With the evidence now before us we can form an approximate idea of the
appearance of Durham Place at the time. The Strand was a rough,
unpaved road, with a fringe of shops and taverns on the northern side,
whilst on the south side were the back walls and outer courts of the
riverine mansions. The principal land gateway of Durham Place stood
exactly opposite the spot now occupied by the Adelphi Theatre. The
English custodian or porter, who was in the pay of the Queen, had his
dwelling just inside the gate, where he could spy those who went in and
out on the land side. On each side of the gate in the outer courtyard
were stables and outhouses, and in and around the gateway in the street
were benches where idlers and hangers-on sat and lounged through the
day gossiping, in various tongues, and boasting of the prowess of their
respective countrymen. On {271} the other side of the street, nearly
opposite, was a tavern called the "Chequers,"[4] which drove a roaring
trade with the men-at-arms, Court-danglers, and serving-men who were
constantly passing to and from Whitehall and St. James'. Opposite the
gateway, across the large outer courtyard, was the door of the great
hall, generally standing open for the neighbours to pass through[5] it
to the inner or smaller courtyard, in which stood a water conduit fed
by a "spring of fairwater in Covent Garden."[6] Beyond this inner
courtyard stood the house itself at the bottom of the slope on the bank
of the river at the spot now occupied by the arches that support
Adelphi Terrace. It was a castellated structure, with its water-gate
placed in the middle of the curtain between two turrets, and leading
not, as usually was the case, through a garden, but straight from the
steps into the house itself by an enclosed pent-house doorway. The
domestic offices, and probably the chapel, were on the ground floor,
but the principal dwelling-rooms were all upstairs and in the turrets.
Aubrey, in his letters (vol. iii. 573), thus speaks of Raleigh's
occupancy of one of these turrets: "Durham House was a noble palace.
After he came to his greatness, he lived there or in some apartment of
it. I well remember his study, which was on a little turret that
looked into and over the {272} Thames, and had a prospect which is as
pleasant as any in the world."
The water-gate of the house was not the only approach to the river, as
there was a space with trees on each side of the house, with a dwarf
wall fronting the water, and a descent on one side by which the
neighbours were allowed to get water from the stream for washing and
similar purposes. It will thus be seen that the only really private
part was the house itself between the inner courtyard and the river;
the great hall and both courtyards being practically open to the public
under the supervision of the custodian at the outer gate, who was
responsible only to the Queen, and was a constant source of friction
with the foreign occupants of the house.
Feria stayed at Durham Place until August, 1558, taking an active part
in the distracted Councils of the Queen; and then, having found that
Mary's hopes of an heir were again fallacious, and having bullied and
frightened the Queen and Council into raising all the money they could
beg or borrow for Philip's service, he went back to Flanders, leaving
his English wife in London, with a Flemish and a Spanish ambassador of
lower rank than himself to represent his master. But when Mary was
known to be dying, he posted back again to be on the spot when the
great change took place, and Durham Place was avoided like a
plague-spot thenceforward for many days by the courtiers and
time-servers who wished to stand well with the new Queen.
The proud Spaniard repaid distrust by bitter resentment, and soon found
that his arrogance made him unfit instrument for cajolery. So he sent
for a softer spoken diplomatist to act as his "tender," {273} and the
wily, silken Bishop of Aquila became his guest at Durham Place. Feria
could not for long brook the need of paying supple court to the people
over whom he had ridden roughshod, and an excuse was soon found by
which he might be withdrawn without an open confession of his
unfitness, and in May, 1559, he left Durham Place for good, leaving his
English Countess and the Bishop of Aquila in possession.
At Dover he met Baron Ravenstein, who was coming from the Emperor to
offer the hand of the Archduke Charles to Elizabeth, and as such a
match would only have subserved Spanish interests if it had been
effected by the aid of Spanish diplomacy, Feria asked the German to
become his guest at Durham Place, which he did, and was made much of by
the Countess and the Bishop. But he wore out his welcome very soon,
particularly with the latter, a portion of whose apartments he
occupied, and the Bishop sneers at him for his constant attendance at
Mass. "He is quite a good fellow," he says, "but surely this must be
the first negotiation he ever conducted in his life." The Countess
soon came to high words with the new Queen, and in a month or so left
Durham Place in a dudgeon to join her husband in Flanders,
thenceforward to see England no more. With her went, in addition to
her escort, Don Juan de Ayala, her grandmother, Lady Dormer, and that
Mistress Susan Clarencis who was Queen Mary's most devoted attendant.
From that time, namely, July, 1559, the Bishop was temporary master of
Durham Place by favour of the Queen, against whom he never ceased to
intrigue as far as he dared.
{274}
We have already glanced at the structure of the house itself; it may be
now interesting to give some account of the household of the Bishop,
which may probably be considered a typical one. First there was a
chaplain at three crowns a month and his board, a chief secretary at
twelve crowns a month, a chamberlain, two or three
gentlemen-in-waiting, a groom-of-the-chambers, and six pages--all
without any fixed wage, but who lived on promises, perquisites, and
what they could pick up, eating, however, at the Bishop's expense, and
mostly clothed by him. Then there were two couriers at three shillings
a month, which they rarely got; a cook, a buyer, a butler, and a
pantryman, at a crown a month each; two cantineers, two "lacqueys," two
Irish grooms, and two washerwomen at nominal wages of from three to
five shillings a month when they could get them, which was very
uncertain. Small as the wages seem to us, the expense of the
establishment was very great, as these people and a host of friends and
hangers-on were fed roughly but abundantly at the Bishop's cost, the
humbler sort eating in the great hall and the gentlemen of the
household in the upper chambers.
The Bishop had hardly been in possession of the house for a year when
Challoner, the English Ambassador in Spain, warned Cecil that the
"crafty old fox" was getting to know too much about what went on at
Court, and that some decent excuse should be sought for turning him out
from so advantageous a coign of vantage as Durham Place, with its
water-gate and its close proximity to the palace, whence spies and
courtiers might come and go secretly, as we now know they did, at all
hours for {275} the information of the King of Spain's Ambassador. We
may be sure that the hint was not lost on Cecil, but the Bishop was
cunning, and to turn him out without good ostensible cause would have
been too risky at a time when Philip's future action was still
uncertain. So the Queen's porter in charge of the house was told to
take careful note of those who went in and out by the Strand gate, and
particularly those who attended Mass in the Ambassador's chapel. But
still the weak point in the position was the water-gate, the key of
which always remained in the possession of the Bishop or his
major-domo. Various stratagems were resorted to by the English porter
to obtain possession of it, but in vain, and more decided measures had
at last to be taken. The Bishop's confidential secretary, an Italian
named Borghese, was bribed by Cecil to tell all he knew of his master's
practices, and great promises of high position and a rich marriage in
England were held out to him as a further reward for his treachery.
This made him arrogant and boastful, and led to a slashing match with
the Bishop's Italian gentleman-in-waiting, whom Borghese nearly killed.
He boasted that he had friends at Court, snapped his fingers at the
officers of the law and at the Bishop's cajolery and threats, made a
clean breast of it to Cecil, and things began to look bad for his late
master. Dr. Wotton, a member of the Privy Council, went to Durham
Place, and gravely formulated a series of complaints founded on the
secretary's information. Most of these complaints were trivial, being
to the effect that the Bishop had said and written various depreciatory
things against the Queen: but one {276} accusation was serious, namely,
than Shan O'Neil had taken the Sacrament at Durham Place, which was
true, although the ecclesiastical diplomatist solemnly denied it.
The Bishop was nearly beside himself with rage and chagrin, and begged
plaintively to be relieved from his irksome post among heretics such as
these. But all in vain. It did not suit the Queen and Cecil for the
moment to perpetrate the last indignity of turning him out of the
house, but after this they kept a closer watch upon him than ever and
bode their time. They had not to wait long. There were four French
hostages in London, held in pledge for the due fulfilment of the Treaty
of Château Cambresis, and very troublesome guests they were.
The most turbulent of them was a certain Nantouillet, Provost of Paris,
a fanatical Catholic and partisan of the Guises. He had for some
reason or another conceived a grudge against a mercenary captain called
Masino, who was in the pay of the Vidame de Chartres, a Huguenot
nobleman. So, in the manner of the times, he sought to have him
killed, and, seeking for an instrument, he came across a young lad of
bad character called Andrea, who was a servant of a lute player at
Court, Alfonso the Bolognese. To this lad the Provost gave a dagger
and a coat of mail, and promised a reward of a hundred crowns if he
killed Masino. Andrea left his musical master and hung about the
Strand door of Durham Place for several days at the beginning of
January, 1563. At meal times he went into the great hall as others did
and ate his fill, and then lounged outside on the benches again.
{277}
At last, in the dusk of the afternoon of the 3rd of January, 1563,
Captain Masino came swaggering up the Strand on his way to Whitehall,
and Andrea fired at him point blank, at a foot distance, with a
harquebuss. But the captain's swagger saved his life, for the bullet
passed between his left arm and his body, making a hole through his
swinging cape and burning his doublet, and then glanced off into a shop
on the other side of the way, "and came near killing an honest
Englishman therein." Out came the swashbuckler's long rapier, and off
ran the assassin into the outer courtyard of Durham Place, shrieking
for mercy, followed by the captain and the English neighbours. The
Bishop's household in the great courtyard seized their arms, and
slammed the doors in the faces of the pursuers, whilst the terrified
assassin fled through the great hall, through the inner courtyard and
pell-mell up the stair leading to the Bishop's apartment.
Quite by chance, of course, the Provost of Paris happened to be playing
at cards with the Bishop and the French Ambassador, whilst Luis de Paz
and other friends looked on. The banging of the crowd at the closed
door of the great hall, the terror-stricken cries of the criminal, and
the tramping of the servants on the stair, brought out the Bishop and
his friends to ask indignantly the cause of the uproar. Andrea on his
knees at the door begged for protection and mercy. Captain Masino had
beaten him, he said, some days ago, and he had fired a shot at him and
missed him, so no harm was done, but still the captain wanted to kill
him. Calming the clamour, the Bishop asked whether the shot had been
fired inside or outside of Durham {278} Place. "At the gate!" they
said, and the boy had only entered when pursued, to save his life.
"Then," said the Bishop to Bernabe Mata, his majordomo, "turn him out
by the water-gate." By mere chance again a boat was in waiting, hired
by the Provost of Paris, who slipped outside himself to see the
assassin safely off, gave him ten crowns, and whilst the crowd still
battered and stormed at the door of the great hall, Andrea was carried
to Gravesend as fast as strong oars could propel him. But he was
captured next day, and under torture told the whole story. The Provost
himself was closely imprisoned in Alderman Chester's house, whence he
carried on for weeks an interesting correspondence with his friends
outside, written with onion juice on the inside lining of the breeches
of a servant.
This attempted murder was the opportunity for which Cecil had long been
waiting. Strong hints about treachery founded on the secretary's
information, galling interference with attendance at Mass, flouts and
insults, had been more or less patiently borne by the Bishop at his
master's behest, but harbouring a criminal was an infraction of the
ordinary law of the land, and if it could be brought home to the
Ambassador the Queen would have a good excuse for taking her house away
from a tenant who put it to so bad a use. The news was not long
travelling from the Strand to Whitehall; Cobham and a posse of the
Queen's guard came straight to Durham Place, and in the name of the law
demanded the surrender of the criminal. They were told he was not
there, but had left by the water-gate, and, this reply being
unsatisfactory, they came back again directly with the Queen's command
{279} that the keys of the water-gate, as well as those of the Strand
entrance, should be given up to the English custodian, in order that he
might render an account of all those who went in and out. The Bishop
writes to Philip:--
"This custodian is a very great heretic, who for three years past has
been in this house with no other duty than to spy out those who come to
see me, for the purpose of accusing me. I have put up with it for all
this time, although at great inconvenience to myself, so as to avoid
having disputes with them on a matter of this description. When the
Marshal made this demand, however, I answered him that for twenty years
the Ambassadors here had been allowed to reside in the royal houses,
nearly all those sent by your Majesty and the Emperor having done so,
and they had invariably been accustomed to hold the keys of the houses
wherein they lived. I said that it was not right that an innovation
should be made in my case after my four years' residence here,
especially on so slight a pretext as this matter, in which I was not at
all to blame, and considering that this is the first case of the sort
that has happened since I have been here, it cannot be said that my
house is an habitual refuge for criminals. I would, however, go and
give the Queen an account of the matter, which I endeavoured to do."
But the Queen would not see him either that day or the next. She was
too busy she said; and on the following day, which was Twelfth Day,
just as people were coming to Mass, some locksmiths came in a boat to
the water-gate and put a new lock on, notwithstanding the protest of
the Bishop's {280} household, and the keys of all the gates were now
held by the Queen's officers. The Bishop was in a towering rage, and
said, that as the Queen imprisoned him in his own house, and made a
goal of it, he demanded the keys back, or else that she should find him
another residence where he might be free. A long account of the solemn
conference between the Bishop and the Council is given in the Calendar
of State Papers (Foreign), the 7th of January, 1563, and the Bishop's
version is now published in the Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth, vol.
i. According to both accounts, the Bishop got decidedly the worst of
it. Cecil was the spokesman, and, instead of taking up a defensive
position about the keys, he turned the tables by piling up all the
complaints which his spies had accumulated for the last two years, and
the poor Bishop found himself the accused rather than the injured
party. The escape of the criminal by the water-gate was made the most
of--such a thing in law-abiding England had never been heard of
before--but after all this was a bagatelle to the other charges.
The neighbours had complained over and over again, Cecil said, of the
quarrels and fights of the Bishop's dependants, and had asked for his
removal from the house. There had been a squabble, one of many,
between the English porter and the Bishop's scullions about the water,
which, after serving the conduit in the inner courtyard, ran down to
the basement kitchen of the house itself. The Bishop's servants kept
their tap running in the kitchen out of malice, in order to deprive the
upper conduit of water, and when the English porter complained, they
shut the door of the great hall, so {281} that neither he nor the
neighbours could get to the conduit at all. Then the porter said he
would cut the pipe and stop their supply, and at this threat they went
to his house with weapons in their hands and said they would kill him
if he did so; and he was the Queen's servant! But, worst of all, Cecil
accused the Bishop of plotting with Shan O'Neil and Arthur Pole, and
said that since the house had been in the Bishop's occupation it had
become sadly dilapidated and damaged as regarded the lead, glass doors,
and so on, and that the Queen had decided to put it into proper repair
and find another fitting residence for him. The Bishop retorted by
denying all the charges, and saying that as the house was low-lying and
damp and he was old and ailing, he would be glad to leave it. But soft
spoken as he was to the Council, he was burning with rage, and wrote to
Granvelle in a very different tone.
It was some months yet, however, before he moved from Durham Place, and
during that time the Queen's Marshal again descended upon the house one
morning of a Catholic feast-day, and haled all those who were attending
Mass to the Marshalsea. The guard had, it appears, concealed
themselves betimes in the porter's house, and Cecil had given them
orders that if any resistance whatever was offered they were to attack
the house in force and capture all the inmates at any cost. But at
last the poor old Bishop, heart-broken at having to suffer so much
indignity, was got rid of and lodged elsewhere. Deeply in debt and
penniless, he went in the summer of 1563 to Langley, Bucks, where he
died in August, some say of poison, some of plague, and some of grief.
Then Durham Place, {282} refurbished and repaired, again became a royal
guest-house.
On the 16th of July, 1565, the Queen lent Durham Place to Sir Ambrose
Cave, one of her Privy Council, for the celebration of his daughter's
wedding with the son of Sir Francis Knollys, the Vice-Chamberlain, and
the new Spanish Ambassador, Canon Guzman de Silva, was invited to the
supper in the evening, at which the Queen had promised to be present.
By mutual consent it had been arranged that the French and Spanish
Ambassadors should never meet at Court, or where the vexed question of
precedence might arise; but the two diplomatists, wily Churchmen both,
were for ever on the look out for a chance of scoring off each other.
No doubt Ambrose Cave thought he had cleverly evaded the difficulty by
asking the French Ambassador to the more important meal, namely, the
eleven o'clock dinner, and the Spanish Ambassador to the supper in the
evening, at which the Queen was to be present. But when De Foix learnt
at the hospitable feast at Durham Place that the Queen was coming
later, he announced his intention of staying to supper as well. If
Guzman did not like it, he said, he might stay away, and poor Cave,
foreseeing an unseemly squabble in the Queen's presence, rushed off in
despair to the Spanish Ambassador to beg of him not to come. But this
was too much for the Toledan pride of the Canon, and he told Cave that
he had not sought an invitation to the feast, but since it had been
given and accepted he was not going to stay away for the French
Ambassador or any one else. As for precedence, his master was the
greatest King on earth, {283} and if the worst came to the worst he
would fight out the question. In vain Cave protested that the Queen
would not come if there was to be any quarrelling, and he would be
ruined at Court. He could not, he said, get rid of the Frenchman, who
flatly refused to go, and he could hardly throw him out of the window.
Guzman said if there was much ado about it he would throw him out of
window himself, and sent off Cave in a huff. Then Guzman hurried to
Whitehall in order to catch the Queen before she started for Durham
Place. He waited for some time, he says, in the privy garden by which
she would have to pass to her barge; and after she had vainly attempted
to smooth matters over, and said she herself must refrain from going if
there was to be any disturbance, she pretended to fly into a rage at
Cave's management of the affair, and sent Cecil and Throgmorton off to
Durham Place to get rid of the French Ambassador somehow. What
arguments they used Guzman neither knew nor cared, but when he arrived
with the Queen the rival Ambassador was gone, and he was the principal
guest next to the sovereign. "The Queen stayed through the
entertainment, and the Emperor's Ambassador and I supped with her in
company with the bride and some of the principal ladies and the
gentlemen who came with the Emperor's Ambassador. After supper there
was a ball, a tourney, and two masques, and the feast ended at
half-past one in the morning."
In September, 1565, Durham Place received a royal guest in the person
of Cecilia, Princess of Sweden, Margravine of Baden, who came
principally to spy how the land lay with regard to the {284}
oft-repeated suit for Elizabeth's hand made by her brother Eric XIV.
The English queen, as was her wont, made much of her at first; but she,
too, wore out her welcome during the months she stayed, for, as we have
seen, the housekeeping of great folk in those days was far from
economical, and when the Swedish princess ran short of money and wanted
pecuniary help, as she soon did, frugal Elizabeth's friendship began to
cool, and it ended in the poor Princess having to pledge even her
clothes to satisfy her more pressing creditors before they would let
her go; and her husband, a ruling prince, was put into gaol at
Rochester by the irate tradesmen who had trusted his wife. But all
this was at the end of her visit; the beginning was certainly brilliant
and auspicious.
The Princess arrived at Dover in the Queen's ships, and was there
received by Lord Cobham and his wife, the Mistress of the Robes, and a
knot of courtiers sent by the Queen from Windsor. They rode as usual
through Kent to Gravesend, where the Queen's barges awaited them, and
the Queen's cousin, Lord Hunsdon, and six pages in royal livery
received the Princess, who was thus carried up the river with all pomp
and circumstance to the water-gate of Durham Place. Her dress on the
occasion attracted attention in London by its strangeness. She was
attired, we are told, in a long black velvet robe, with a mantle of
cloth of silver and black, and on her fair hair she wore a golden
crown. At the top of the water-stairs at Durham Place she was received
by the Countess of Sussex, Lady Bacon, and Cecil, and installed in the
house with all honour. A day or two afterwards the Queen came {285}
from Windsor to visit her. "She received her Majesty at the door,
where she embraced her warmly, and both went up to her apartments.
After the Queen had passed some time with her in great enjoyment she
returned home, and the next night, the 15th, the Princess was delivered
of a son." In due time the young Prince of Baden was christened with
great pomp, and Durham Place was a scene of festivity on that and many
other occasions whilst the Swedish Princess resided there. We have
rather a full account of one of Queen Elizabeth's visits to the
Princess at Durham Place, as Guzman, the Spanish Ambassador, happened
to be at Whitehall when her Majesty was starting, and, at her
invitation, accompanied her thither in her barge. He says he was with
her alone for some time in the cabin of the barge, until, probably, her
Majesty becoming tired of a _tête-à-tête_ with an elderly clergyman,
called her new pet Heneage to her, and began to whisper and flirt with
him. The Princess awaited the Queen at the water-gate as usual, and
led her to the principal apartments upstairs, although neither royal
lady would consent to be seated until a stool was brought for Guzman,
who relates the incident. The Queen came by water, and returned in a
coach by way of the Strand. When she was seated in the carriage with
Lady Cobham, her maiden Majesty could not resist the opportunity
afforded by the condition of her companion to make rather a risky joke
to the Ambassador, who, ecclesiastic though he was, retorted fully in
the same vein, and carefully repeated the conversation in a letter to
his royal master the next day.
{286}
For the next few years Durham Place gave shelter to many courtiers,
ambassadors, and honoured guests of the Queen, and was occasionally
lent, as we have seen, for parties and merrymakings, its large size and
easy access by land and water making it peculiarly appropriate for such
uses. But the elder Earl of Essex, Walter Devereux, made a somewhat
longer stay in some of its apartments. It was here, probably enough in
the turret-rooms which were Raleigh's favourite abiding-place, that
Essex planned that expedition to Ireland with which his name was
destined for all time to be linked. From here he started in August,
1573, and, with the exception of one flying visit in 1575, never saw
Durham Place again.
In 1583 the Queen granted the house to Raleigh. It was in a
dilapidated condition, and he spent, as he says, £2,000 in repairing
it; certain it is that during twenty years that Raleigh lived there
Durham Place reached its apogee of splendour. The Strand had greatly
altered for the better since the time when Feria lived at Durham Place.
The Bishop of Carlisle's house, on the other side of Ivy Lane, had
disappeared, and Robert Cecil had built a splendid house for himself on
its site. His father and elder brother, too, across the Strand had
another palace, and between them they had paved and made up the roadway
for a considerable distance before their properties. But slowly, too,
the Strand was becoming a great fashionable thoroughfare, and
long-headed Robert Cecil knew well that as shops grew up along its line
the street frontage would increase in value. So he cast covetous eyes
across his own boundary at Ivy Lane on to the great {287} ramshackle
congeries of stables and outhouses which fronted the Strand at Durham
Place. As long as his mistress lived he dared not disturb Raleigh, but
no sooner had the great Queen passed away than Raleigh was turned out
with every circumstance of harshness and insult, and Lord Salisbury got
his street frontage, upon which he built Britain's Burse, which was to
be a rival to the Royal Exchange.
Thenceforward Durham Place went down in the world. A sort of square,
with entrance by what is now called Durham Street, was built on a
portion of the garden and great courtyard, but the hall and mansion
themselves were left intact, and the latter was still used for the
lodging of ambassadors and others, and the Bishops of Durham appear to
have had lodgings in what formerly was their own palace. Lord Keeper
Coventry lived, or at all events wrote, his letters here, and Lord
Keeper Finch died at Durham Place in 1640. Lord Pembroke bought the
whole site soon after, intending to build himself a house there, but
although the plans were made the project fell through. The
Commonwealth soldiers were quartered in the house for nearly two years,
and Lord Pembroke had to find himself a house elsewhere, for which the
Parliament voted him £200.
The Strand front became more and more valuable, and by and by another
exchange was built on the rest of the frontage, whilst the property in
the rear continued to get more squalid as the time went on. In the
middle of the last century the exchanges were pulled down and a fine
row of shops built on the site, whilst projects for {288} dealing with
the space still occupied by the old palace were busying many men's
minds. At last came the brothers Adam and made a clean sweep of it
all, back and front, and built the Adelphi as we see it to-day. The
wide expanse of mud which at low tide formerly spread from the walls of
the old palace is now replaced by the waving trees of a public garden.
Great railway stations, gigantic hotels, towering masses of "flats" and
"mansion" rear their high heads all round the site of old Durham Place.
The wealth and power have passed from the hands of the few to the hands
of the many, and instead of one man living in squalid splendour in the
comfortless palace surrounded by hosts of unproductive hinds, hundreds
live in comfort, usefulness, and self-respect upon the spot. There is
probably more money spent in a week by working people in the garish
music-hall that occupies the Strand front than would have sufficed to
keep Durham Place in full swing for a year during the time of its
greatest grandeur.
[1] _The Fortnightly Review_, September, 1893.
[2] Calendar of State Papers, 1547-1580, p. 105.
[3] "The Adelphi and its Site," by H. B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
[4] It was afterwards called the "Queen's Head," and here Old Parr
lodged when he came to London.
[5] In the next century, when the Strand front was built over, the
parishioners wanted this hall for a church for St. Martin's parish, the
hall, they said, being only used as a passage.
[6] A century later the water of this spring was found to be foul, and,
as its source had been forgotten, an examination was made. The spring
was rediscovered under a cellar of a house in Covent Garden.
[Illustration: Tailpiece]
{289}
_THE EXORCISM OF CHARLES THE BEWITCHED._
[Illustration: CHARLES II. OF SPAIN, "The Bewitched."
(_From a painting by Claudio Coelle._)]
{291}
[Illustration: Headpiece]
_THE EXORCISM OF CHARLES THE BEWITCHED._[1]
The pallid little milksop in black velvet, with his
lank, tow-coloured hair and his great underhung
chin, who will simper for ever on the canvas of
Carreño, had grown to be a man--a poor feeble
anæmic old man of thirty-seven,[2] the last of his
race, to whom fastings and feastings, the ceremonies
of the Church, and the nostrums of the empirics had
been equally powerless in providing a successor
for the crumbling empire of his fathers. The
{292}
strong spirits upon whom he had leant in his youth
and early manhood had passed away. His imperious
mother, who reigned so long and unworthily
in his name, had died of cancer only a year or two
ago. His virile brother, Don Juan José of Austria,
in whom the worn-out blood of the imperial race had
been quickened by the brighter but baser blood of
his actress mother, had been poisoned. His beloved
first wife, the beautiful Marie Louise of Orleans,
had faded away in the sepulchral gloom of that
dreary Court, and his new German wife, Marie Anne
of Neuberg, with her imperious violence, frightened
him out of what little wit he had left by her
advocacy of new ideas. For new ideas to that poor
brain were the inventions of the very Devil himself.
He had been drilled for years into the knowledge
that the claims of his French kinsmen to his
inheritance were just; and, though for years past all
the diplomatists of Europe had been plotting and
planning for one or the other claimant with varying
success, all that poor Charles the Bewitched himself
wanted was to be left alone in peace whilst he lived,
and that one of his French cousins should succeed
him when he died. There was not much chance
of either wish being fulfilled from the time that
England and the Austrian faction juggled Marie
Anne of Neuberg into the palace as Charles' second
wife. She made short work of all the courtiers and
ministers who favoured the French succession--they
had one after the other either to come round
to her side or go. Most of the best of them--not
that any of them were very good--sulked in their
own provinces awaiting events, whilst others still
plotted in the capital.
{293}
In the meantime the Queen and her camarilla
were all-powerful. After various weak and futile
explosions, the smashing of crockery and breaking
of furniture and the like, the poor King, for the
sake of peace, let her have her own way, and
ostensibly favoured the claims of the Austrian
Archduke to his inheritance. But like most
semi-idiots he could not relax his grasp on an
idea of which he had once become possessed, and
though he was surrounded day and night by the
Queen's creatures, and was content that they should
have their way whilst he was well, he no sooner
fell into one of his periodical fits of deadly sickness
than, with all the terror and dread of death, and
constant fear of poison and witchcraft upon him,
he yearned for the presence of those who had been
with him in earlier and happier days, before the
German Queen and her base blood-suckers had
come to disturb his tranquillity.
The story of the strange and obscure Court
intrigue which resulted in the gaining by the
French faction of the upper hand in the palace
during the critical time preceding Charles's death,
has often and variously been told, mostly with
an ignorant or wilful distortion of events.
M. Morel-Fatio has shown how Victor Hugo has
deliberately falsified the character of the Queen
Marie Anne of Neuberg, in order that he might
make use of the local colour furnished by the
Countess d'Aulnoy's letters written from Spain
fifteen years before the period represented by the
dramatist;[3] and many other writers, French and
{294}
English, who have been attracted by the romantic
elements of the witchcraft story, have surrounded
it with a cloud of fictitious persons and incidents
which makes it difficult now to distinguish between
history and romance. Every writer on the subject,
so far as I know, moreover, has stopped short at
the story of the exorcism itself, whereas it really
developed into a great struggle of many years'
duration between the Grand Inquisitor on the
one hand and the Council of Inquisitors on
the other, in which, curiously enough, the latter
body championed the cause of legal process as
against the arbitrary power assumed by its own chief.
There is in the British Museum[4] a full
manuscript account from day to day of the whole
transaction from beginning to end, written at the
time by one of the clerks or secretaries in the
Inquisition, who, although he avows himself a
partisan of the French faction and of the King's
confessor, Froilan Diaz, around whom all the storm
raged, declares that he has set down the unvarnished
truth of the whole complicated business, in order
that people may know after his death what really
happened, and how much they "owe to his Sacred
Majesty Philip V. for preserving the privileges of
the holy tribunal of the Inquisition, or, what is
the same, our holy faith." By the aid of this
set of documents, and another set in the Museum
(part of which has been published in Spanish),
{295}
the story, which is well worth preserving, may
be reconstructed, and the hitherto unrelated
particulars of the actual exorcism rescued from
oblivion.
The most powerful person at Court next to the
Queen was Father Matilla, the King's confessor,
whose hand was everywhere, and who said on
one occasion that he would much rather make
bishops than be one. Then came the other members
of the Queen's camarilla, an obscure country
lawyer who had been created Count Adanero, and
Minister of Finance and the Indies, who provided
the crew with money to their hearts' content, and
squandered and muddled away the national
resources, whilst all Spain was groaning under
impossible imposts; Madame Berlips, a German
woman who had an extraordinary influence over
the Queen, and an insatiable greed; two Italian
monks, and a mutilated musician of the Royal
Chapel. There were two great nobles also who,
after several periods of disgrace and hesitation,
had at last thrown themselves on to the Queen's
side--the Admiral of Castile and Count Oropesa, the
ostensibly responsible ministers; but these
practically only carried out the designs of the Queen's
camarilla, and were content with the appearance
and profits of power without its exercise. The
populace, as may be imagined, were in deadly
opposition to the Queen and her foreign
surroundings, and were strongly in favour of one of
the younger French princes whom they might adopt
and make a Spaniard of, as they never could hope
to do with a German archduke, and thus, as they
thought, avoid the threatened partition of their
{296}
country.[5] This was the position of things in March,
1698, when the King, who had partly recovered
from his previous attack eighteen months before,
was again taken ill.[6] He was dragged out by the
Queen to totter and stagger in religious processions,
was made to go through the ceremonial forms of
his position, nodding and babbling incoherently to
ministers and ambassadors whom he was obliged
to receive, and at last, weary and sick to death,
haunted by an unquiet conscience and with the
appalling fear of hourly poison, he sent word by
a trusty messenger to the wise, crafty old minister
of his mother, Cardinal Portocarrero, who had been
banished from the Court by the Queen, that he
wished to see him.
The Cardinal needed no two invitations, but
posted off to the palace. He had still plenty of
{297}
friends of various ranks, notwithstanding the
Queen, and amongst them was Count de Benavente,
the Gentleman of the Bedchamber. By him he
was conducted at night to the King's bed-side,
after the Queen had retired, and heard the
heart-broken recital of the monarch's troubles. The
King told him he was ill and unhappy and in
trouble about his soul's health. He was conscious
of a struggle going on within him between his
knowledge of the right thing to do and his incapacity to
do it, and this left him no peace or happiness. The
people who surrounded him were distasteful to him,
his confessor, Matilla, gave him no real consolation,
and he ascribed much of his own illness and misery
to the bad management and ceaseless worry he
had to endure from those who had the direction
of affairs. The King unburdened himself to
the Cardinal in his lisping, mumbling fashion,
his utterance broken with sobs and tears, but
sufficiently plainly for Portocarrero to see that if
he and his friends acted boldly, swiftly, and secretly
they might again become predominant and dispose
of the splendid inheritance of Spain and the Indies.
He said some consoling, soothing words to the
King, and promised him that steps should be
taken to insure him tranquillity, and then he took
his leave. The interview took place in the ancient
Alcazar, which stood on the site of the present
royal palace in Madrid, for poor Carlos had no
spirits for the new Buen Retiro Palace, where his
father had been so gay and splendid. It was nearly
eleven o'clock at night, but as soon as the Cardinal
got back to his own house he summoned his friends
to a private conference. They were all of them
{298}
courtiers in disgrace with the Queen, and most of
them extremely popular with the mob in Madrid.
There was Count Monterey, mild and temporising,
with his hesitating speech and his irritating "hems
and hahs"; there was the Marquis of Leganes,
a hot-headed soldier, rash and pugnacious; Don
Francisco Ronquillo, ambitious, intriguing, and
bold, who, with his brother, was the idol of the
"chulos" of the capital; Don Juan Antonio Urraca,
honest, uncouth, and boorish; and, above all, quiet,
wise, and prudent Don Sebastian de Cotes, a close
friend of the Cardinal's. First, Monterey was
invited to give his opinion as to what should be done,
but he dwelt mainly upon the danger to them all
presented from the King's infirmity of purpose;
and how one minister after the other who had for
a moment succeeded in persuading him to make
a stand, had been disgraced and banished the
moment the Queen got access to her husband and
twisted him round her finger, as she could. He
had no desire to take risks, apparently, and could
recommend nothing but that the Cardinal Archbishop
should keep his footing in the palace, and
gradually work upon the King's mind. Leganes
scoffed at such timid counsels; where the disease
was so violent as this a strong remedy must be
adopted. This should be the immediate banishment,
and, if necessary, the imprisonment of the
Admiral of Castile, the principal minister. He
(Leganes) had plenty of arms at home, and had
hundreds of men in Madrid who would serve him,
with experienced officers to command them, and
could soon make short work of the Admiral and
his train of poets and buffoons. Ronquillo went
{299}
further still. He said that was all very well, but
at the same time they must seize the Queen and
shut her up at the Huelgas de Burgos. Monterey
called him a fool, and said such an act would be
the death of the King and would ruin them all
before he could alter his will; and the two nobles
rushed at each other to fight out the question on the
spot before the Archbishop himself. When they
were separated the Cardinal no doubt thought it
was time to do something practical, and asked his
friend Cotes his opinion. Cotes was prosy enough,
but practical. He said of course Portocarrero could
easily get the King to sign any decree he liked, but
the Queen could more easily still get him to revoke
it; and, although it would be well to strike at the
Queen herself, he did not know who would dare
to do it. But after all she could only influence
him by mundane means; the confessor, Matilla,
whom the King hated and feared, and flouted only
yesterday, must be got rid of, and the Queen would
lose her principal instrument. This was approved
of, but no one could suggest a fitting successor
except Ronquillo--who, of course, had a nominee
of his own!--who was promptly vetoed. Each of
the others doubtless had one too, but thought best
to press his claims privately. So it was left to
the Archbishop to choose a new successor and
gain the King's consent to his appointment. The
choice fell upon a certain Froilan Diaz, professor of
theology at the University of Alcalá. One of his
recommendations was that he was near enough to
the capital to be brought thither quickly, before the
affair got wind, and no sooner did the Ronquillos
learn that Cotes had recommended him to the
{300}
Archbishop than they sent a mounted messenger
post-haste to Alcalá to inform Father Froilan of
his coming greatness, and claim for themselves
the credit of his appointment.
A few days afterwards, in the afternoon, the King
lay in bed languidly listening to the music which was
being played in the outer chamber, with which his
own room communicated by an open door. The
outer room, as usual, was crowded with courtiers, and
in the deep recess of a window stood the confessor,
Matilla, chatting with a friend, alert and watchful
of all that passed. Suddenly Count de Benavente
entered with a stout, fresh-coloured ecclesiastic,
quiet and modest of mien and unknown to all.
They walked across the presence chamber without
announcement, and entered the King's chamber,
shutting the door behind them. Matilla's face grew
longer and his eyes wider as he saw this, and he
knew instinctively that his day was over. Turning
to his friend, he said, "Good-bye; this is beginning
where it ought to have left off," and with that he
left the palace, and went with the conviction of
disaster to his monastery of the Rosario. They
had all known for some days that something had
been brewing. Spies had dogged every footstep
of the Archbishop and those who attended the
midnight meeting at his house, but they had left
out of account the King's own Gentleman of the
Bedchamber, Count de Benavente, who had arranged
the whole affair. It is true that when the Queen
had, as usual, entered the King's bedroom that day,
at eleven o'clock, to see him dine, he had told her
in a whisper, unable to retain his secret, that he
had changed his confessor. She, astounded and
{301}
disconcerted at the news, pretended to approve
of the change--anything, she said, to give
tranquillity to her dear Carlos. But when she could
leave, she flew with all speed to her room,
summoned the Admiral and the camarilla, and told
them they were undone. Panic reigned supreme,
the general idea being that Matilla himself had
betrayed them. In any case they saw that he was
past praying for, so they threw him overboard, and
decided to try to save themselves, and see if, in
time, they could not buy over the new confessor.
The only man of them who kept his head was
a great ecclesiastic, a brother of the Admiral of
Aragon, and of a member of the Council of the
Inquisition, one Folch de Cardona, Commissary-General
of the Order of San Francisco, who was
subsequently to play an important part in the
tragi-comedy. When Matilla learnt that the Queen and
her friends had known of the change an hour or two
before it happened he broke down. "Oh, for that
hour!" he exclaimed; "in it I would have set it all
right." Divested of all his offices, dismissed from
his inquisitorship, with a pension of 2,000 ducats,
he died within a week of poison or a broken heart,
and he disappears from the scene.
In his place stands Froilan Diaz, a simple-minded
tool of the courtiers who had appointed
him. He did not look very terrible, even to the
panic-stricken Queen and her friends, and they
decided to make the best of him, and try to
confine the changes to the confessorship.
Henceforward Froilan Diaz was a man to be courted
and flattered. Honours and wealth were lavished
on him, and for a year no great change was
{302}
made in the palace or outside; but under the
surface intrigue was busy, both at the King's
bedside and in the haunts of the Madrid mob. At
the end of a year the latter element made short
work of the ministers and the Queen's gang and
drove the lot of them out, to be replaced by Arias,
the Ronquillos, and the French party; but with
this revolt the present study has nothing to do.
The King's extreme decrepitude for a young man
had several years before given rise to rumours
amongst the vulgar that he was bewitched, and the
assertion had been made the subject of grave
consideration by the Grand Inquisitor of the time, who
reported that he could find no evidence to act upon.
At the time of the first serious illness of the King,
in 1697, he had of his own action sent to the new
Grand Inquisitor a terrible and austere Dominican
monk called Rocaberti, and had confessed to him
his conviction that his illness was not natural but
the result of some maleficent charm, and besought
him earnestly to have an exhaustive inquiry made.
The Inquisitor told him that he would, if he pleased,
have inquiry made, but saw no possible result could
come of it, unless the King could point out some
person whom he suspected or some plausible
evidence to go upon. And so the matter remained
until some weeks after Father Froilan had become
confessor. As may be supposed, Froilan Diaz's
elevation had reminded all his old friends of his
existence, and, amongst others, an old fellow-student
visited him, with whom he fell into talk about past
days and former acquaintances. "And how is
Father Argüelles getting on?" said the confessor.
"Ah, poor fellow!" was the reply; "he is confessor
{303}
at a convent at Cangas, terribly ill, but in no-wise
cast down, for the Devil himself has assured him in
person that God is preserving him for a great work
yet that shall resound through the world." The
King's confessor pricked up his ears at this, and
wanted further particulars. It appeared, according
to the friend, that Argüelles had had much trouble
with two nuns of his convent, who were possessed,
and in the course of his exorcisms had become quite
on intimate terms with his Satanic Majesty. Froilan
thought this was too important to be neglected, so
he consulted the Grand Inquisitor, the Dominican
Rocaberti. The grim monk did not, apparently,
much like the business, but consented to a letter
being written to the Bishop of Oviedo, the superior
of Argüelles, asking him to question his subordinate
as to the truth of the assertion that the King was
suffering from diabolical charms. The Bishop,
determined that he would not be made the channel
for such nonsense, wrote a sensible answer back,
saying that he did not believe in the witchcraft
story. All that ailed the King was a weakness of the
heart and a too ready acquiescence in the Queen's
wishes, so he would have nothing to do with it.
Then Froilan sent direct to Argüelles, who
himself was afraid of the business unless he was
secured from harm, and refused to put any questions
to the Devil unless he had the warrant of the Grand
Inquisitor. A letter was therefore written by the
latter on June 18, 1698, ordering him to write the
names of the King and Queen on a sheet of
paper, and, without uttering them, to place the
paper on his breast, summon the Devil, and ask
him whether the persons whose names were so
{304}
written were suffering from witchcraft. Froilan
sent the letter in a long one of his own to his old
friend Argüelles with an elaborate cipher and other
devices for secrecy in subsequent communications.
No names henceforward were to be written.
The vicar, Argüelles, replied, expressing no
surprise at so strange a request, but said the Devil had
previously told him that he was reserved for great
things, but had not given particulars, only that he
should receive an order from a superior. Then he
tells the result obtained by his first effort. He says
he placed the hands of the possessed nun upon the
altar, and by the power of his incantations
commanded the Devil to answer the question put to him.
The Devil was not at all shy, but "swore by God
Almighty that it was the truth that the King was
bewitched," "et hoc ad destruendam materiam
generationis in Rege et eum incapacem ponendum ad
regnum administrandum." He said the charm had
been administered by moonlight when the King was
fourteen years of age.
So far the Devil. Then the vicar, as an expert,
gives some advice of his own. He says the
King should be given half a pint of oil to drink,
fasting, with the benediction, and the ceremony
of exorcism which the Church prescribes.[7] He
{305}
must not eat anything for some time afterwards,
and everything he eats and drinks must
be blessed. The case is a very bad one, he
says, and a miracle will be performed. If the
King can bear it he should be given, in addition,
the charm prescribed by the Church, but not
otherwise.
He gives the not improbable opinion that as the
King will vomit dreadfully he must be held in the
arms of the "master," by which name it was agreed
that the Grand Inquisitor should be referred to in
the correspondence. But he says not an hour is
to be lost, and the master himself must administer
the draught.
But this remedy was too strong, and Froilan
and the Inquisitor, or the friend and the master,
as they are called henceforward, write to say
that, although they are much obliged to the Devil
and the vicar, such a draught as that
recommended would certainly kill the King, and they
beg the exorciser to ask the Devil again for a more
practical and a safer remedy. "How much and in
what form is the Church charm to be given; at what
hour; on what parts of the body?" And so
on--queer questions indeed to be addressed by two
pillars of the Church to the Devil. But this is not
all. They draw up a series of questions that would
do honour to a cross-examining barrister. "What
is the proof of witchcraft? In what way does
it act so as to make the King do things contrary
to his own will? How are the organs affected
cleansed by the charm? What compact was made
with the Devil when the witchery was effected?
Was it administered internally, or externally?
{306}
Who administered it? Has it been repeated? Is
the Queen included in its operation?" And other
questions of a similar sort. The vicar is rather
shocked at their inquisitiveness, and refuses to put
such questions. How can he ask the Devil anything
that the Church does not deal with in its
exorcising ceremonies?
Another letter is sent asking him to consult the
Devil as to whether it will be well to take the King
to Toledo, to which the vicar replies somewhat
evasively, reproaching his associates. What is the
good, he says, of all their professed desire to heal
the King whilst they refuse to carry out the
directions sent them? A change of place is useless if
he takes the malady with him, and until they follow
out the instructions already given it is no good for
him to consult the Devil again. "Besides," he
says, getting into dangerously deep water for a
country vicar, "how can you expect the King to
be well? Justice is not done, the churches are
starved, hospitals are despoiled and closed, and
souls are allowed to suffer in purgatory because
money is begrudged for Masses, and above all, the
King does not administer justice after swearing
on the cross that he would do so. The Divine
message has already been delivered to you. I have
told you all it is fitting for you to know and how to
cure the patient, and you do nothing but ask a lot
more questions. I tell ye, then, that you will find no
excuse for this at the supreme judgment, and the
death of the King will be laid at your door, since
you could cure him and will not." This was almost
too bold to be borne, and the Inquisitor's secretary
writes back in grave condemnation. He again
{307}
insists upon the questions being put to the Devil.
"You are presumptuous to dare to suppose that you
know better than the friend and the master, and
that you can command in this way whilst refusing to
obey. You want to get out of it now by attributing
the King's illness to other causes. The 'friend
and the master' are deeply offended, and if you do
not do as you are commanded all will be frustrated,
and we distressed to feel that, just as God had
begun to open the door of knowledge to us, all is
spoilt by your presumption and obstinacy."
After a good deal more of mutual recrimination
the vicar gave way, and on September 9, 1698,
he wrote that he had sworn the Devil on the holy
sacrament, and he had declared that the charm had
been administered to the King in a cup of chocolate
on April 3, 1673. "I asked," he writes, "what the
charm was made of, and he said three parts of a
dead man." "What parts?" "Brain to take away
his will, intestines to spoil his health, and kidney to
ruin his virility." "Can we burn any sign to restore
him?" "No, by the God that made you and me." "Was
it a man or a woman who administered the
charm?" "A woman; and she has already been
judged." "Why did she do it?" "In order to
reign." "When?" "In the day of Don Juan of
Austria, whom she killed with a similar charm, only
stronger."
This of course was directed against the late
Queen-mother--a dangerous line to take, considering
that the Cardinal Archbishop Portocarrero,
whose creature Froilan was, had been her friend
and minister. Lucifer continued, that the remedies
were those that the Church prescribed. First,
{308}
drinking of blessed oil fasting; secondly, anointing
the whole body with the oil; next, strong purges
and absolute isolation of the King even from the
sight of the Queen. Then the Devil got sulky,
said he was tired and knew no more, and refused to
say another word. The adoption of such a course
as that prescribed, with a man who was dying
already of exhaustion would have been murder;
and of course the associates again hesitated, writing
to the vicar directing him to inquire of the Devil
if any witchery has been practised since the first,
and why the King cannot do right when he wishes
to, instead of being, as he complains, impelled to act
wrongly against his will. It seems impossible that
this can be the result of the original charm,
particularly as the person who gave it is dead. Has
anything been given since? "Yes," says the Devil,
"in 1694, only four years ago, on September 24th,
a similar charm was given in food and left no
outward sign," and this the Devil swears by God and
the Holy Trinity. Then Lucifer, tired of answering
questions, apparently gives a bit of advice. He
says they are thwarting Providence by their delay,
and if they do not hurry up the King will be past help.
But again the friend and the master want more
information, and on October 22nd write to say that
it is of the highest importance that they should know
the name and residence of the witch; who ordered
her to act, and why. This the Devil absolutely refuses
to answer; but as his past proceedings proved him
to be a demon somewhat infirm of purpose, they do
not seem to have been at all discouraged, but a
week or so afterwards return to the charge with a
{309}
perfect catechism, which they order the vicar to
put to his diabolical interlocutor. "Who was the
witch? What was her name, condition, and
residence? Who ordered the charm, and why? Who
got the corpse and prepared the conjuration? Who
handed the chocolate to the King? Had the witch
any children?" And so on at great length. The
answer came from the vicar on October 7th, in
which the Devil seems to have made quite a clean
breast of it. The Queen-mother, he said, had
ordered the first charm; the first witch was a woman
named Casilda, married, with two sons, who lived
away from her. The go-between was Valenzuela
(the Queen-mother's favourite), and the witch had
no accomplice but the Devil. She sought the
corpse and prepared the charm, and handed it to
Valenzuela. The second charm, in 1694, was
administered by one who wishes for the _fleur-de-lis_ in
Spain; one who is a great adulator of the King,
but hates him bitterly. The Devil could not
mention names, he said, but they knew the person
well. This witch was a famous one named Maria,
living in the Calle Mayor; but he could not give
the number of the house or her surname.
The Grand Inquisitor's secretary wrote in answer
to this, thanking him, but regretting that his
information was so limited. The street mentioned as
the residence of the first witch, namely, the Calle de
Herreros, did not exist in Madrid, and the friend
and the master beg the vicar to ask his friend the
Devil for more information as to the houses and
husbands of both witches, "as to seek a Maria in
the High Street of Madrid was like looking for a
needle in a haystack." They want also the name
{310}
of the person who ordered the second charm, and
the secretary ends his letter with an astounding
invocation of the Devil's aid. He is conjured in
the names of God, of His holy Mother, and of
St. Simeon of Jerusalem, the King's patron saint, to
intercede with God, "who, the lessons tell us, is
a relative," to aid in the King's recovery. No reply
appears to have been received to this letter, but it
was soon followed by another, saying that the friend
and the master have administered the charm
recommended by the Devil, and the King is better; but
they urgently beg for further aid from the same
quarter, and more charms if possible. This letter
was written on November 5, 1698, and produced
two replies from the vicar, who said that he had
been conjuring all the afternoon fruitlessly, and at
last the Devil burst out in a rage, "Go away! don't
bother me." In fact, it is quite clear at this point
that the vicar, having got himself into a perfect net
of confusion and contradiction, was getting very
frightened indeed; and his next letter said the
Devil was sulky, and would only reply to all his
conjurations that he, the Devil, had been telling
him a lot of lies and would say no more. All
would be known by and by, but not yet. The
vicar added to this a remark to the effect that
all the King's doctors were false and disloyal,
and should be dismissed; the doctor to be
appointed in their place was to be chosen more for
his attachment to the old Church than for his
medical science, and, in the meanwhile, the King's
abode and garments were to be changed and the
exorcisms continued.
The vicar was thereupon again gravely rebuked
{311}
for daring to say that the King's physicians are
disloyal, but they, the friend and the master, will
refrain from employing them. A further letter of
November 26th urges the vicar not to stand any
more of the Devil's nonsense. Tell him he _must_
give the names and addresses, as the friend and the
master are put to great trouble seeking them, and
he is exhorted to be diligent in completing the good
work he has begun, as the King is much better for
the exorcisms administered to him. The doctors
were, of course, nominees of the new dominant
French party, and the friend and master did not
like their loyalty to be called into question; but the
vicar was firm, so they were changed, and the poor
King was taken on his journey to Toledo and
Alcalá. He certainly had got much better, and
Stanhope ascribes his improvement to the plasters
of his new Aragonese doctor, or "rather," he says,
"what I believe has done more is that he has of
late drunk two or three glasses of pure wine at
every meal, whereas he has never taken anything
before in all his life but water boiled with a little
cinnamon."
As soon as the King was well enough, the
intrigue that had been brewing since the new
confessor had got a footing was completed, and the
third claimant to the succession, the young Prince
of Bavaria, was solemnly adopted as heir to the
crown. This, of course, offended most of the great
Powers of Europe, but it had the effect of
reconciling with each other the Spanish courtiers who had
espoused either the French or the Austrian cause,
and for a few months, until the new heir died, the
Court quarrels were patched up. Still the inquiries
{312}
of the Devil went on, and the vicar stumbled and
blundered deeper into the mire. He tried to
correct his mistake about the street where the first
witch lived by saying that the street called Herreros
was now the Cerrajeros, and the surname of the
witch was Perez, the commonest name in Spain.
The secretary wrote to say that the friend and the
master could not make head or tail of it all, and
begged the Devil to be more explicit--first he said
the witch was alive, and then dead. The King
was much better.
By this time, the beginning of the year 1699,
the vicar evidently thought that, as he had so far
come out of the affair with flying colours, he
ought to be brought to the capital and placed on
the main road of promotion, instead of being kept
in a remote village: and he wrote that the Devil
had declared that the whole truth could only be
divulged in the church of the Virgin of Atocha
in Madrid, and that as he, vicar, had begun it, so
he must conduct the affair to the end. A week
or two later he wrote, again pressing to be allowed
to carry on the rest of the conjuration at the Atocha,
in order, as he says, to reanimate the devotion
to the image, which he thought was cooling. He
gives the name of the second witch as Maria Diez,
another extremely common name, and then falls ill,
sulks, and refuses to invoke the Devil again except
at the Atocha. Still his correspondents continue to
press him for fresh signs and information, without
result except to produce fresh demands that he should
be brought to Madrid. The confederates, however,
deemed this too dangerous, and the correspondence
with Argüelles closes in the month of May, 1699.
{313}
About this time the Queen's suspicions were
aroused by a hint dropped by the King, and
she at once set spies around those who had
access to the monarch's room, particularly Froilan
Diaz. She soon learnt something of what was
going on, and, as the chronicler says, "roared
from very rage." She called her friends together,
and in a tearing passion told them what she had
discovered, demanding immediate vengeance on
the King's confessor. Some of her friends,
particularly Folch de Cardona, were cooler-headed than
she was, and pointed out that as the Grand Inquisitor
was mixed up in the business, it would be imprudent
to take any steps until it was seen how far the holy
tribunal itself was implicated, and that in any case
the Queen's vengeance should be wreaked on
Froilan by the action of the Inquisition if possible,
so that she might avoid the unpopularity of
appearing in the matter herself.
The next day Folch de Cardona sounded his
inquisitor brother, and found that the Council of
the Holy Office knew nothing of what was going
on, and when the Inquisitor was informed and asked
whether the tribunal would consider Froilan guilty if
the facts were proved, he cautiously answered his
brother that he would not venture of himself to
decide, but personally he considered so much hobnobbing
with the Devil both delicate and dangerous. In
June the Grand Inquisitor Rocaberti died suddenly,
probably of poison, and left Froilan to face the matter
alone; and a few days afterwards a report was sent
from Germany, having been transmitted to the
Emperor by the Bishop of Vienna, containing a
declaration, said to have been made by the Devil to
{314}
an exorciser in the church of St. Sophia, to the
effect that Charles II. was bewitched by a certain
woman called Isabel living in the Calle de Silva,
in Madrid, and that if search were made the
instruments of her incantations would be found
beneath the threshold of her house. The Queen
thought to prove that this was another of Froilan's
tricks, and had the whole matter discussed by the
Inquisition, who, however, could find nothing to
connect him with it, but proceeded to excavate the
spot indicated in the Calle de Silva, and there found
sundry dolls and figures dressed in uniforms, which
dolls were borne in solemn procession and burnt
with all the ceremonies of the Church at the end of
July. All this was of course conveyed to the King
by Froilan, and it, together with the positive
assurance that he was bewitched given to him by a
German exorciser named Mauro Tenda, who had
been secretly summoned to Spain, threw the poor
creature into such an agony of terror that his state
became more and more pitiable.
In September a mad woman in a state of frenzy
presented herself at the palace and demanded
audience. She was refused admittance, and
thereupon began to scream and struggle in a way that
attracted the attention of the King, who told his
attendants to admit her. She burst in foaming
and shrieking with a crucifix in her hand, cursing
and blaspheming at the poor trembling King,
and she had to be borne out again on the
shoulders of the guards, the King nearly dying of
fright on the spot. The maniac was followed,
and it was found that she lived with two other
demoniacs, one of whom was under the impression
{315}
that they were keeping the King subject in
their room. This nonsense was also conveyed to
the monarch, who was now thoroughly persuaded
that he was under the influence of sorcery, and he
ordered that all three of the women should be
exorcised by the German monk. This was done,
Froilan standing by and dictating the questions that
were to be asked of the Devil by the exorciser.
Unfortunately for the confessor, the questions he
asked were rather leading ones, in which his desire
to injure the Queen was evident. "Who was it,"
he asked, "that had caused the King's malady?" The
answer given was that it was a beautiful
woman. "Was it the Queen?" was next
demanded, to which the reply was somewhat
confusing, as it was merely the name of an unknown
man, "Don Juan Palia." "Is he a relative of the
Queen? What countryman is he?" received no
reply; but when the Devil was asked in what form
the charm had been administered he said, "In
snuff." "Any of it left?" "Yes, in the desk." "What
queen was it that caused the malady?" was
again asked. "The dead one," said the Devil.
"Is there any other charm?" "Yes." "Who
gave it?" "Maria de la Presentacion." "Who
ordered it?" "Don Antonio de la Paz." "When
was it given?" No answer. "Of what was it
made?" "Of a dog's bone." "Why did you send
the woman to frighten the King?" No answer.
Other questions and answers were given of the
same sort, the latter mentioning at random the
names of unknown people, and in some cases
libelling the Queen and the ministers--all of it
obviously the babble of a mad woman. Secret
{316}
though the exorcism was, the Queen had a full
report of it, and was of course furious with rage at
the open attempt to cast upon her the blame of the
witchcraft.
The first step towards her revenge was to get
a new Grand Inquisitor in her interest, and
she pressed the King to appoint her friend Folch
de Cardona. He refused, no doubt prompted by
his confessor Froilan, and, notwithstanding the
Queen's passionate protests, appointed a second son
of one of the noblest houses in Spain, Cardinal
Cordoba, to whom the King unburdened himself
completely, and Froilan told the whole story of the
exorcism from beginning to end. From these
confabulations a most extraordinary resolution was
arrived at. Probably the Queen herself was too
high game to fly at, so the new Grand Inquisitor
and his friends decided that the Devil and the
Admiral of Castile, the late Prime Minister, were
at the bottom of all the King's trouble, and they
ordered the Admiral with his papers to be secretly
seized and imprisoned by the Inquisition of Granada,
whilst all his household were incarcerated in another
prison. They had no doubt, they said, that he
would confess all, even if his papers did not
incriminate him. No action, however, could be taken until
the new Grand Inquisitor's appointment was ratified
by the Pope; but on the very day the bull of
ratification arrived the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor died
of poison, and the Queen once again urged her
nominee for the place, but without success as before.
She then cast about for an ambitious man who was
unobjectionable to her opponents, but who might
nevertheless be bought over by her. She found
{317}
him in the person of Mendoza, Bishop of Segovia,
to whom she promised her support and a cardinal's
hat if he would serve her. He was appointed
Grand Inquisitor, and the Queen had now the
whip-hand of her enemy, the confessor. First the
German monk was netted, and under torture by
the Inquisition made a clean breast of his exorcism
in the Calle del Olmo, when Froilan was present.
Then a monk of the Atocha, who had been sent by
the Provincial to investigate the strange doings of
Friar Argüelles at Cangas, produced the letters
from the "friend and the master," and told the
story of the conjurations. This was quite enough
evidence to ruin Froilan, and he was apprehended.
He refused to answer any questions, as all he had
done had been by the King's own orders, and as
the confessor of his Majesty his mouth was closed.
He was at once dismissed from his offices, and the
Grand Inquisitor appealed to the King to allow all
privileges to be waived, and his confessor punished.
Poor Charles the Bewitched was dying in good
earnest now, and could only mumble out that they
might do justice. But Froilan had powerful friends
both at Court and in the Council of the Inquisition,
and before the blow fell he retired, ostensibly to his
monastery, but thence fled to the coast, and so to
Rome. But he was not safe even there, for the
Grand Inquisitor had him seized for heresy by the
Papal officers and brought back to Spain. Then
came the long struggle between the Inquisition and
its head. First, Froilan's case was submitted to the
theological committee of the Holy Office, who
unanimously absolved him. On June 23, 1700, he was
fully acquitted by the General Council of the
{318}
Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor alone voting for
his secret imprisonment without further trial.
At the next meeting of the full Council, to the
intense surprise of the members, a decree for the
secret imprisonment of Froilan was placed before
them for signature. They unanimously refused to
sign it, and came to high words--almost blows--with
their chief, who threatened them all with dire
consequences for their obstinacy, and, to show that
he was in earnest, there and then sent five of them
down to their dungeons on his own responsibility.
This was too high-handed even for the meekest of
the Inquisitors, and the Council broke up in confusion.
The Council of Castile, the supreme advisers of the
Crown, appealed at once to the King against the
imprisonment of the Inquisitors; but the King was
helpless now, for the Queen and a new confessor
were at his bedside, bound to stand by the Grand
Inquisitor through thick and thin. They got the
dying King to sign a decree appointing new
Inquisitors enough to swamp the votes of those
left, but lo and behold! they turned against their
own creator at the very first meeting, and refused
to endorse the Grand Inquisitor's action, either as
to the imprisonment of Froilan or that of the
Inquisitors. The strong man who led the revolt
was Lorenzo Folch de Cardona, the brother of the
Queen's old friend, now Bishop of Valencia, and
it was decided that he must be silenced somehow.
They offered him a bishopric, which he refused.
They threatened him with prison and banishment,
and he told them that they dared not touch him;
and he was right, for all Madrid was looking on.
Then the Inquisitor-General sent the case to be
{319}
judged by a provincial council of the Inquisition at
Murcia, which was subservient to him, but the
General Council at Madrid told them they would
be acting illegally if they decided against the
verdict already given by the Committee of
Theologians and the General Council, and even they did
not dare to find Froilan guilty. In the meanwhile,
guilty or not guilty, the poor man was kept a close
prisoner in a dark cell of a monastery of the
Dominican Order, to which he belonged.
In November, 1700, the King died, and the Grand
Inquisitor was one of the regents, making himself
remarkable for his splendour and ostentation during
the short period of uncertainty after the King's
death. But the arrival of the French King, Philip
V., put an end to the Queen's hopes, and the Grand
Inquisitor was sent off in disgrace to his diocese.
As soon as his back was turned the General
Council of the Inquisition, with Folch de Cardona
in the chair, demanded of Prior of the Atocha
by what right he still kept Froilan in prison. His
answer was that he did so on the warrant of the
Grand Inquisitor. An appeal was made to the
King, but the fortune of war kept Philip for ever
on the move, and for years no decision was given.
In the meanwhile the Pope espoused the cause of
the Inquisitor-General, and protested against his
deprivation. The King appointed a new Inquisitor-General,
and the Pope vetoed the appointment. Then
the Pope sent special power to the old Grand Inquisitor
to sentence Froilan to whatever punishment he
liked without more ado, and the Council of the
Inquisition and Folch de Cardona protested to the King
against the attempt of the Pope to override the
{320}
law of Spain; and at last Philip V. put his foot
down once for all--dismissed the Inquisitor-General,
reappointed the old Council, and authorised them
to release Froilan in the King's name. They found
him, after five years' close confinement, nearly blind
in the dungeons of the monastery of the Atochu,
and brought him out in triumph to be appointed
Bishop of Avila. In vain the Pope protested and
the dismissed Grand Inquisitor fumed. Philip the
Magnanimous was a very different monarch from
Charles the Bewitched. The black bigotry of the
House of Austria was gone, and thenceforward,
though the Holy Office existed in the land for a
century longer, the arbitrary power of the Inquisition
to override the law of the land was gone with it.
[1] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1893.
[2] Stanhope, the English minister in Madrid, writes to the
Duke of Shrewsbury, September, 1696: "They cut off his
hair in this sickness, which the decay of nature had almost
done before, all his crown being bald. He has a ravenous
stomach, and swallows all he eats whole, for his nether jaw
stands out so much that his two rows of teeth cannot meet,
so that a gizzard or a liver of a hen passes down whole, and
his weak stomach not being able to digest it he void it in
the same manner."
[3] "L'Histoire dans Ruy Blas" in "Études sur l'Espagne,"
by A. Morel-Fatio, Paris.
[4] Add. MS. 10241, British Museum. See also "Proceso
criminal fulminado contra el Rmo. P.M. Fray Froylan Diax,
de la sagrada religion de predicadores, Confesor del Rey
N.S.D. Carlos II.: Madrid, 1787."
[5] Stanhope to his son, March 14, 1698: "Our Court is in great
disorder: the grandees all dog and cat, Turk and Moor. The
King is in a languishing condition, so weak and spent as to his
principles of life that there is only hope of preserving him for a
few weeks.... The general inclination is altogether French
to the succession, their aversion to the Queen having set them
against all her countrymen, and if the French King will
content himself that one of his younger grandchildren be King
of Spain, he will find no opposition either from grandees or
common people. The King is not in a condition to give
audience, speaking very little and that not much to the
purpose. The terms in which they express it to me is that he
is _embelecado_, _atolondrado_, _and dementado_. He fancies the
devils are very busy in tempting him."
[6] "The King is so very weak he can scarcely lift his hand to
his head to feed himself, and so extremely melancholy that
neither his buffoons, dwarfs, nor puppet shows, all of which
show their abilities before him, can in the least divert him
from fancying everything that is said or done to be a temptation
of the Devil, and never thinking himself safe with out his
confessor and two friars by his side, whom he makes lie in
his chamber every night" (Stanhope to the Earl of Portland.
March 14, 1698).
[7] How fit the King was to undergo such a regime as this
may be judged by Stanhope's letter to his son, dated Madrid,
June 15, 1698: "Our gazettes here tells us every week that
his Catholic Majesty is in perfect health, and it is the general
answer to all inquiries. It is true that he is abroad every day
but _hærct lateri lethalis arundo_; his ankles and knees swell
again, his eyes bag, the lids red as scarlet, and the rest of his
face a greenish yellow. His tongue is _trabada_, as they
express it; that is, he has such a fumbling in his speech, those
near him hardly understand him, at which he sometimes
grows angry, asks if they all be deaf."
[Illustration: Tailpiece]
{321}