glish fleet was then
waiting in a Spanish port, and the Spanish court, inviting our prince to
the grand Escurial, attended the departure of Charles, as Hume expresses
it, with "elaborate pomp."

This attempt of Buckingham, of which the origin has been so often
inquired into, and so oppositely viewed, entirely failed with the
Spaniard. The catholic league outweighed the protestant. At first, the
Spanish court had been as much taken by surprise as the rest of the
world. All parties seemed at their first interview highly gratified. "We
may rule the world together," said the Spanish to the English minister.
They were, however, not made by nature, or state interests, to agree at
a second interview. The Lord Keeper Williams, a wily courtier and subtle
politician, who, in the absence of his patron Buckingham, evidently
supplanted him in the favour of his royal master, when asked by James
"whether he thought this knight-errant pilgrimage would be likely to win
the Spanish lady," answered with much political foresight, and saw the
difficulty: "If my lord marquis will give honour to the Count-Duke
Olivarez, and remember he is the favourite of Spain; or, if Olivarez
will show honourable civility to my lord marquis, remembering he is the
favourite of England, the wooing may be prosperous: but if my lord
marquis should forget where he is, and not stoop to Olivarez; or, if
Olivarez, forgetting what guest he hath received with the prince, bear
himself like a Castilian grandee to my lord marquis, the provocation may
cross your majesty's good intentions."[232] What Olivarez once let out,
"though somewhat in hot blood, that in the councils of the king the
English match had never been taken into consideration, but from the time
of the Prince of Wales's arrival at Madrid," might have been true
enough. The seven years which had passed in apparent negotiation
resembled the scene of a _fata morgana_,--an earth painted in the air,
raised by the delusive arts of Gondomar and Olivarez. As they never
designed to realise it, it would of course never have been brought into
the councils of his Spanish majesty. Buckingham discovered, as he told
Gerbier, that the Infanta, by the will of her father, Philip the Third,
was designed for the emperor's son,--the catholic for the catholic, to
cement the venerable system. When Buckingham and Charles had now
ascertained that the Spanish cabinet could not adopt English and
protestant interests, and Olivarez had