Portugal had consented that the infanta Mary should visit her mother in Spain. The despatches from Yuste make no complaints of that unpunctuality of the treasury remittances on which historians have frequently had to moralize. Gaztelu, indeed, once cautioned the secretary of state against delays in making his payments, the emperor, he wrote, being most particular in requiring the exact performance of each part of the service of his household.' The advice appears to have been followed ; for the only other remark on the subject is one made by · Charles himself, the money for the expenses of my house always comes to hand in very good time."

In spite of the untold wealth which Spain possessed beyond the ocean, the crown was in constant distress for money. That financial ruin which was completed by Olivares, had begun in the days of Granvella. By means of bills of exchange, obtained at usurious rates from the bankers of Genoa, the colonial revenue was forestalled two years before it was collected; and the bars and ingots of Mexico and Peru may be said to have been eaten up by courtiers and soldiers, fired away in cannon, and chanted away by friars, before they had been dug from the caverns of Sierra Madre, or washed from the gravel of Yauricocha. When in due time the precious freight of the galleons reached the royal vaults at Seville, it belonged almost wholly to foreign merchants; and the country having no manufacturing or commercial industry in which the golden harvest could become the seed of new public and private wealth, it passed away to enrich poorer soils and fructify in colder climes. The popular sense of the value of the golden

'Gaztelu to Vazquez, June 15th, 1557.

La provision de dinero para mi casa llega siempre a muy bien tiempo.' Emperor to Vazquez, Sept. 22nd, 1557.

regions was embodied in the proverb, used by expectants heartsick with deferred hope, who said that the event despaired of 'would come with the Indian revenue." The war in Italy and the war in Flanders, the fleets in the Mediterranean, the fortresses on the shores of Africa, now demanded such vast and increasing supplies, that the princess-regent was almost at her wit's end for ways and means of obtaining them. Many a hint did she drop, in her despatches, of the good use she could make of the money at Simancas. But the emperor would take no hints, and, like another Shylock, preferred keeping his ducats to pleasing his daughter.

Necessity, which has no law and respects none, at length drove the princess and her council to a step contrary to every principle of justice. The plate-fleet having arrived at Seville, orders were sent down to the Indian board to take possession of the whole bullion, not only of that which belonged to the crown, but also of that which was the property of private adventurers, who were to be paid its value in places under government, in orders on the land-revenue, or in treasury-bonds bearing interest. As might be expected, the robbers who proposed to buy, and the victims who were required to sell, differed widely about the price. The places were refused, the bonds scoffed at; and finally the traders, aided by the wanderers from whom the gains of their wild lives were about to be wrested, attacked the royal officers as they were landing their booty, and rescued it from the grasp of the crown.

When the news of this transaction reached Yuste, the emperor went into a fit of passion very unusual to his cool temperament. The view which he took

1 'No se logra mas que hazienda de las Indias: Memoires curieux envoyez de Madrid, sm. 8vo. Paris: 1670.

of the matter was entirely royal and wrong. He would not, perhaps he could not, see the injustice which had been done to the subject; but he felt most keenly the indignity which had been suffered by the crown. The rough gold-seekers who had thus boldly defended their hard-earned wealth, repelling violence by violence, appeared to him no better than pirates who had boarded a royal galleon on the high seas, or brigands who had rifled a train of royal mules on the king's highway. Were his health sufficiently strong, he said, he would go down to Seville himself, and sift the matter to the bottom; he would not be trammelled by the ordinary forms of justice, but would at once confiscate the goods of the offenders, and place their persons in durance, there to fast and do penance for their crime. Unjust as this view of the affair was, it was precisely the view which the traders expected the government to take, and which they would themselves have taken had they been the government. Alarmed for the consequences, the prior and consuls of the merchants of Seville-the chairman and chamber of commerce of their day-raised a sum of money by subscription, and set out to Valladolid with their offering, in hopes of pacifying the regent and the council. On the way, they craved leave to present themselves and tell their story at Yuste. The emperor

refused this request with scorn, and assured the princess that he would communicate his indignation to the king, were he to write with both feet in the grave, or, to use his own forcible phrase, 'were he holding death in his teeth." A commission appointed to examine the matter began its sittings in March, and continued them, with but slender results, through the summer and autumn,

Soy bueno por ello aunque tengo la muerte entre los dientes, holgare de hacerlo :' Emp. to Princess-regent, 1st April, 1557.

urged at intervals to despatch by the impatient inquiries transmitted from Yuste. It was not till September that the emperor showed any symptoms of being reasonable on the matter; nor till he had heard that the most serious discontent prevailed among the commercial men of Seville, would he allow Gaztelu to write that, for the sake of public credit, it might be proper for the regent to alter her policy towards them, and take such a course as would keep them in good humour. One of the arrested culprits, Francisco Tello, however, died, after having been twice submitted to the torture, in the dungeons of Simancas, merely for refusing his gold to that exigency of state against which the neighbouring strong-box of the emperor was inexorably shut.

In the spring of 1557, the foreign affairs of Spain had assumed so grave an aspect, that the king determined to lay them before his father for his consideration and advice. For this important mission he selected Ruy Gomez de Silva, count of Melito, afterwards so well known as prince of Eboli. This celebrated favourite, now in his fortieth year, was head of a considerable Portuguese branch of the great house of Silva which traced its heroic lineage to the kings who reigned in Alba Longa. At the marriage of the emperor he had held the bride's train as one of her pages; attached to the person of Philip from the cradle, he had been the playmate of his childhood, and the friend of his youth; he had accompanied the prince on his travels, and had supported the timid and awkward knight at the tournay and cane-play; not long since he had carried the wedding gifts to the fond bride who awaited the king at Winchester; and he was himself married to the proud beauty and heiress who was, or was to be, his master's imperious mistress. Strong in these various relations, as in capacity and experience, he was every day gaining ground upon his rival, the mag

nificent bishop of Arras, and he now ranked as one of the most important personages who stood near the Spanish throne.' Charles had a high opinion of the favourite's prudence and abilities; he had for some days looked with anxiety for his arrival, and he now received him with every demonstration of cordiality. Although he had strictly forbidden the friars to entertain guests, on this occasion he relaxed the rule, and ordered Quixada to provide him a lodging within the precincts of Yuste. The favoured envoy arrived there early on the twentythird of March, and was closeted for five hours with the emperor. Part of his message was an entreaty on behalf of the king, that the emperor, if his health permitted, and state affairs rendered it expedient, would remove from the monastery to some other residence nearer the seat of government. Philip also desired his father's opinion on the policy of carrying Don Carlos to Flanders to receive the oath of allegiance as heir apparent to the dominions of the house of Burgundy; and if the emperor approved the design, the count was instructed to bring the prince with him when he returned.3 The journey, however, was never made by Don Carlos, his grandfather considering that his fitful and passionate temperament rendered it as yet unsafe to produce him to the world. Next day, the count had a second audience as long as the first; and the day following, the twenty-fifth of March, after hearing mass at daybreak, he mounted his horse and took the road to Toledo.

Luis de Salazar: Historia de la Casa de Silva, 2 vols., fol. Madrid: 1685, ii. 456.

2 Philip's original letter of the second February, 1557, to Ruy Gomez de Silva, is given in the MS. of Gonzalez.

3 Salazar: Hist. de la Casa de Silva, ii. 473.

Luis Cabrera de Cordova: Filipe Segundo, fol. Madrid: 1619, p. 144.