Kennet’s History of England, vol. ii., p. 765.
Buckingham did not, it appears, escape the zeal of the Jesuits, but acquitted himself, in reply to the energetic attacks upon his faith, with a prompt decision; and, as far as he was concerned, the attempt seems to have ceased, although he was afterwards incessantly reproached with a leaning to Romanism.
Like others, Buckingham became, at length, weary of the subject of the Palatinate, and not only still more weary of his long residence in Spain, but anxious to leave the political management of the affairs to those who best understood those intricate matters.[11] To his precipitate conduct, and his impatience of delay, it was said the whole failure might be ascribed; and that, had it not been for his impetuous temper, Charles and the Infanta would have been married before the Christmas of 1623.
Whilst all went smooth, or appeared to do so, with the treaty, the diplomatists were at variance among themselves.
“When we were here in the heighth of discontents,” wrote Simon Digby,[12] “nothing so much spoken of as the Prince, his sudden departure, _reinfectâ_, all our wranglings and disputes were, when no man suspected and expected any such matter,[13] shut up like a comedy, and the match declared and published for concluded.”
Letter from Simon Digby. State Papers for 1623, July 25.
At home, the Marquis Inojosa was making representations which he was ordered to lay before the King, through Don Carlos Colonna, complaining of the East India Company’s ships at the taking of Ormus. In the ship called the _London_, were, it was alleged, goods stolen from the King of Spain to the amount of five hundred thousand pounds. The very dishes used by the lowest men in that ship were of silver, taken from some of the very best families in Portugal, whom the English had plundered and slain, and had then stamped their plate with their own arms. Jewels of inestimable value had also been seized. It was therefore demanded that these ships should be put into sequestration. It is a curious proof how completely a feeling against the Spanish marriage had, by this time, possessed every class, that, upon the arrival of these vessels in port, the crews, hearing a report that the marriage with the Infanta was to be broken off, shot off their artillery, and threw their caps into the sea for joy.[14]