your poare Steenie, as Duke of Buckingham.” Meantime, festivities were carried on in Spain which rivalled the most brilliant spectacles witnessed in that age of pageantry, during which chivalric manners and chivalric sports were for the last time seen in England, since they were never revived after the Rebellion. On Easter Sunday a masque was performed in honour of the strangers. The Queen, clad in white, in remembrance of the Resurrection, and decked in jewels, dined in public, first having duly observed the solemn religious services of the festival. Prince Charles also dined in public; the gentlemen-tasters, it is especially noted, attended, and the Earl of Bristol gave them the towel. After vespers, the Court assembled, and the palace was thronged with strangers from the various provinces, all eager to see the “wooer.” Charles was then in the full vigour of his youth; he is depicted by Velasquez, at or about this period, as possessing that bloom which care so early destroys; his face was ever rather interesting and picturesque than handsome; but it may easily be imagined how, set off by the charm of manner, the graces of his person may have been exaggerated by those who now welcomed him as a suitor to the young princess. He had, on this occasion, adopted, for the first time, the Spanish national costume, and was in a black dress, “richly garded,” after the Spanish fashion, with the George about his neck, hanging by a watchet ribbon. “The enamelled garter,” so states the Spanish chroniclers, “exceeded that colour” (the watchet) “in brightness, and his Majesty might as clearly be discerned as a sun amid the stars. This being not the meanest action and demonstration of his prudence, that being a travelling guest, who came by the post, not being able to shine with equal lustre, he came to participate of the Spanish sun.”[464] Footnote 464: Narrative of Andres of Mendoza. This tract was entered at Stationer’s Hall, July 5, 1623. There is a copy in the British Museum, and also in the Bodleian Library. Only two others are known.—Nichols, 856.