Romans they have not read of any greater ostentation.[4] The charge hath {319} certainly been very great, but hath cost the King nothing; for it hath long used this town to defray all extraordinaries either for his honour or his pleasure. Since then there has been a bull-feast and some fresh entertainment every day. On Sunday last there was a masked carnival fit for the Shrove-tide season; so full of variety of different figures, antique shapes, and several dances, that I have not seen in a ridiculous way any of more pleasure. Late advices have given them little contentment; but however their business may go abroad, they are resolved to make themselves merry at home."[5] However "merry" the Court might be, the need for money was more pressing than ever. In the same letter that describes these entertainments, we are told that the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo had been sent to Seville to demand 800,000 ducats for present needs in Madrid. "Though he is to demand it as a denature, this King's requests are {320} understood to be commands, and admit of no reply.[6] The denature has already begun in this Court, and is to go through the whole kingdom, everybody being told by way of request what he has to pay." The Pope, too, who had been for months striving to bring about peace or a truce, was persuaded to consent that the Spanish clergy should be mulcted in 500,000 ducats; and when the Indies fleet arrived, Olivares ordered a similar amount of private treasure in it to be seized in exchange for assignments, which, says Aston, is commonly a very slow and lame payment. But the greatest novelty in the way to raise funds was invented at this juncture by a Jesuit priest in Madrid named Salazar, and was at once seized upon by Olivares to become until our own days a principal source of revenue in all civilised States; namely, the device of using government-stamped paper for all official and formal documents. This new impost was published in Madrid early in 1637, there being four denominations of stamped paper; respectively of 1, 2, 3, and 4 reals per sheet, to forge which was an offence punishable by death. The lawyers and people were up in arms against it, though financiers said it would bring in two million ducats a year, and the Nuncio and priests flatly refused to conform to {321} it for the ecclesiastical courts, etc., without the special order of the Pope.[7] [Sidenote: Prices in Madrid]