It was in vain, by the arbitrary acts employed, to suppress public opinion. The Earl of Oxford had been committed to the Tower for saying that he hoped the time would come when justice would be free, and not come only through Buckingham’s hands. This committal was an instance of the resolution at Court to crush all discussion. Gondomar, smooth to the great, was a perfect fury towards the small. The people had been indignant with him for having, before his return to Spain, struck a Scotsman with his fists, for saying that he had been ill-treated in Spain. The Scotsman, though he took the insult patiently, had been sent to prison.[68] These were but scanty specimens of the petty oppressions by which the voice of an aroused people was to be stopped. It was therefore time, Buckingham thought, to save himself, at all events, from the storm. Public hatred had been already shown when Don Diego, as Gondomar was called, passed through the city. The mob insulted him, and even threatened violence, “but none was used.” Three apprentices were, nevertheless, whipped at the cart’s tail for this slight to the Spanish ambassador, whilst the people looked, pitying, on; and those who executed the sentence incurred much popular abuse. James, who was at that time angry with all who differed from him, came from Theobald’s to London in a rage to reprove such disorders. He was pacified by the Recorder, and contented himself with private admonition to the Aldermen to punish such offenders. Another man was then whipped, and those who murmured at the sentence arrested.[69]
State Papers, vol. cxxix., No. 50. Domestic.
Steps were immediately taken to mark a difference between the conduct to be pursued to the Spanish and the French ambassadors; and Charles, having first proposed an audience to the Marquis of Inojosa, granted it, under circumstances not very flattering. The Spanish ambassadors, having repaired to Theobald’s, returned not so well “satisfied as they ought” to be. They endeavoured, but in vain, to procure an audience of the King without the presence of the Duke; but finding that impossible, they became disposed to arraign his conduct in the marriage before his face.[70]
The public, meantime, could not fail to interpret the real temper of the King’s Council by circumstances apparently trivial. In the course of the winter, there arrived from France a nobleman skilled in falconry, with a present of fifteen or sixteen cast-off hawks, some ten or twelve horses, and the same number of setters. He was accompanied by a numerous train, splendidly accoutred, and made his entry into London by torchlight. He was to remain until he had instructed the people in the kind of falconry in which he excelled, he and his troop costing the King from twenty-five to thirty pounds daily. Under this guise, probably, some political mission was couched; for James, although now fast declining, braved the advice of his physicians, and travelled to Newmarket on purpose to see these foreign hawks fly. He had put off the masque on Twelfth Night, on account, as he had assigned, of his indisposition; but actually because of the competition about precedence between the French and Spanish ambassadors, who could not be accommodated in his presence.[71]