Nor had the principle of loyalty, always so prominent in the Spanish character, become less perverted and mischievous than the religious principle. It offered its sincere homage alike to the cold severity of Philip the Second, to the weak bigotry of Philip the Third, to the luxurious selfishness of Philip the Fourth, and to the miserable imbecility of Charles the Second. The waste and profligacy of such royal favorites as the Duke of Lerma and the Count Duke Olivares, which ended in national bankruptcy and disgrace, failed seriously to affect the sentiments of the people towards the person of the monarch, or to change their persuasions that their earthly sovereign was to be addressed in words and with feelings similar to those with which they approached the Majesty of Heaven.[272] The king--merely because he was the king--was looked upon substantially as he had been in the days of Saint Ferdinand and the “Partidas,” when he was accounted the direct vicegerent of Heaven, and the personal proprietor of all those portions of the globe which he had inherited with his crown.[273] The Duc de Vendôme, therefore, showed his thorough knowledge of the Spanish character, when, in the War of the Succession,--Madrid being in possession of the enemy, and every thing seeming to be lost,--he still declared, that, if the persons of the king, the queen, and the prince were but safe, he would himself answer for final success.[274] In fact, the old principle of loyalty, sunk into a submission--voluntary, it is true, and not without grace, but still an unhesitating submission--to the mere authority of the king, seemed to have become the only efficient bond of connection between the crown and its subjects, and the main resource of the state for the preservation of social order. The nation ceased to claim its most important rights, if they came in conflict with the rights claimed by the royal prerogative; so that the resistance of Aragon in the case of Perez, and that of Catalonia against the oppressive administration of the Count Duke Olivares, were easily put down by the zeal of the very descendants of the _Comuneros_ of Castile. [272] See the first of Doblado’s remarkable Letters, where he says, “You hear from the pulpit the duties that men owe to ‘both their Majesties’; and a foreigner is often surprised at the hopes expressed by Spaniards, that ‘his Majesty’ will be pleased to grant them life and health for some years more.” The Dict. of the Academy, 1736, verb. _Magestad_, illustrates this still further. [273] Partida Segunda, Tit. XIII. [274] Tapia, Hist., Tom. IV. p. 19.