[Illustration: King James I. with Steenie and Baby Charles.] I have told you that James used to make favourites of people, without caring much about their goodness. One of his greatest favourites was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and he gave his son Charles to the Duke to take care of, just when he was grown up. The silly king used to call Buckingham, Steenie, and the prince, Baby Charles, although he was almost as big and as old as a man. When the prince was old enough to be married, his father wished him to marry the Infanta of Spain. (In Spain the princes are called Infants, and the princesses Infantas.) Now the Duke of Buckingham wanted very much to go abroad, and show himself to all the princes and nobles in France and Spain, for he was very vain of his beauty and his fine clothes; so he put it into the prince’s head, to tell his father he would not marry, unless he would let him go to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham, and see the Infanta before he married her. The poor foolish king began crying like a child, and begged his dear Steenie and Baby Charles not to go and leave him; but they laughed at him, and went and borrowed all his fine diamonds and pearls, to wear in their hats and round their necks, and took all the money they could get, and set off to go to Spain. They called themselves John Smith and Thomas Smith, and first they went to France. Prince Charles found the ladies in the French court very pleasant and entertaining. It is true that several of them were not very good, but then they amused Charles, and he was particularly pleased with the Princess Henrietta Maria, who was pretty and merry, and appeared to like Charles very much. They quickly pursued their journey through France to go to Spain, and when Charles and Buckingham first got there everything seemed very pleasant. The Infanta was handsome, but very different from Henrietta Maria, for she was very grave and steady, and seemed as if she would be a fit wife for the prince, who was naturally grave and steady too. But the Duke of Buckingham quarrelled with some of the great men of the court, and was so much affronted at not being treated rather like a king than only a plain English nobleman, that he made the prince believe that the King of Spain meant to offend him, and did not really intend his daughter to marry him; and, in short, he contrived to make Charles so angry, that he left Spain in a rage, and afterwards married that very French princess, Henrietta Maria, whom he had seen at Paris. The bad education King James gave his son Charles, though it was the most mischievous of all his bad acts, was not the only one.