The Spanish Match: Prince Charles's Journey to Madrid, 1623 (review)

The Spanish Match is an engaging collection of essays originally read at an interdisciplinary conference held at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2003. While historians have usually tended to emphasize the political implications of the proposed marriage and the joyous reception given Prince Charles upon his return without a Spanish bride, these eleven essays examine less well-known, but no less important, aspects of his ill-fated trip to Madrid in the spring and summer of 1623. They range from the prince's purchases of pictures and clothing, to the ceremonies of welcome, concluding with the literary responses in Britain, Spain, and France to the proposed marriage.

Given the unusually eclectic specialties of the authors, different readers will naturally derive pleasure from different essays, but they will learn much from all. I found the chapters on Charles's purchases particularly rewarding. Contrary to the view that the prince's interest in collecting began with the pictures he had been given and others he had seen in Madrid, he had already begun his collecting under the tutelage of Arundel, Buckingham, and others. But the pictures he was offered in Spain had political as well as aesthetic significance. Titian's Portrait of Charles V with Hound signified to recipient and giver alike that the prince was not only "being invited to join the Habsburg dynasty," but also to accept his "crown from the Pope just as his namesake had done" (19).

What probably drew the attention of his Spanish hosts was not purchase of art, but of clothing. Charles and Buckingham traveled to Spain in unconvincing disguise as ordinary Jack and Tom Smith, but once in Spain, Charles spent lavishly to acquire a wardrobe to impress his hosts. He had to have clothing for his roles of eager suitor as well as princely guest, some in the Spanish style, others the English. But Charles was not the only one to fill the purses of Madrid's haberdashers. Charles's extravagance was matched by the Spanish nobility, who were encouraged by the suspension of a recently enacted austere sumptuary code and by Philip's generous offer of no-interest loans.

Rumors of Charles's extravagance worried his father, but James would have been far more upset had he known of the ceremonies Charles participated in. Although Philip was careful to honor his prospective son-in-law by insisting that two Cardinals and the Inquisitor General take part in welcoming ceremonies, many of the entertainments had a religious aspect, designed to suggest that by participating in them Charles was prepared to convert to Catholicism. James would have been shocked to learn that Charles was widely reported to have knelt when the Sacrament passed by during the Corpus Christi procession, part of a festival designed to convert Protestants by using "splendour and magnificence to confirm the 'truth' of the Catholic faith" (71).

Charles's impetuous visit proved to be a boon to writers and publishers in England, Spain, and France. Spanish interpreters and presses cranked out devotional books aimed at the English market, while their English counterparts provided new dictionaries and language-learning texts. The failure of his courtship and Charles's subsequent marriage to a French princess allowed the French writers to rewrite the history of 1623. In this new version, the central event was Charles's brief stay in Paris, where he allegedly fell in love with his future bride. Therefore, his trip to Madrid became mere anticlimax, carried out merely to keep up appearances. In England, Charles's quixotic Spanish adventure was remembered in plays by Massinger and Middleton that questioned the viability of interfaith marriages and heightened anti-Spanish feelings.

If Charles failed, at least one Englishman enjoyed success in Spain. Archie Armstrong, James I's fool, who accompanied the prince, had far greater success at court as related in a "mock-encomium" by John Taylor...