The same night the dead body of the King was dressed in a handsome suit of brown velvet, embroidered and trimmed with silver, with the great red sword-cross of Santiago worked upon the breast, preparatory to the pompous lying-in-state in the same gilded hall of the old palace at Madrid, where the comedies the King had loved were so often played before him. At the same time in an adjoining room the Councils of Castile and State gathered to hear the will read by the secretary, Blasco de Loyola, which made Mariana Queen-Regent of Spain, with the assistance of a special council of regency, consisting of the great dignitaries of the State, failing two of whom the Queen might appoint two substitutes, an eventuality which partially occurred within a few hours of Philip’s death by the decease of the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Moscoso. Don Juan, who was commended to the widow in the will, waited to hear no more than the elevation of Mariana to the regency, and then took horse with all speed and hurried back to the safe seclusion of his fief of Ocaña. A few days afterwards, the sumptuous lying-in-state being concluded, the body of ‘Philip the Great’ was carried in a vast procession to the Escorial, to rest for ever in the jasper niche before which he had so often prayed and wept.[270] Mariana, at the age of thirty-one, was now ruler of Spain for her son Charles II., aged four, and she lost no time in showing her tendencies when left to herself. The root of most of the calamities that affected Spain were the traditions that bound it to the imperial house. All that the country needed, even now, was rest, peace and freedom from foreign complications in which Spaniards had no real concern. But Mariana was Austrian to her finger tips; and ever since Philip’s health began to fail she had been working for the predominance of her kindred and weakening the bonds of friendship with France, knit by the marriage of Maria Theresa with Louis XIV.