After this preparation, the running commenced. The canes were distributed to each runner, and, according to ancient custom, the King chose the Condé Olivares for his own encounter, and the Infant Carlos, the Marquis of Carpio. The palm of skill and bravery was, of course, accorded to these royal brothers, and on the Duke of Cea’s delivering to the King the canes, the place rang with shouts of “Long live their Majesties,” a cry which London doubtless would re-echo as this “triumpant show,” says the annalist, “was made to honour her Prince, and in a time of such vehement heate, though now it was qualified.”[35] Footnote 35: Nichols, 901. This grand festivity was probably the cause of a serious illness to Buckingham, for, a day afterwards, Charles wrote to his father that his “dog” was not to be troubled with writing, having taken cold, which had ended in an ague. The Duke had been bled, and was recovered; the Prince concluded by warning the King that in spite of his efforts to keep his letters private, they had been seen in London, by the French ambassador’s means, by the Spanish ambassador, and that His Majesty was “betrayed in his bedchamber.” Buckingham added in a postscript:--"Sir, I have bine the willinger to let your sone play the secretary at this time of little neade, that you may see the extraordinary care he hath of me, for which I will not intreat you not to love him the wors--nor him that thretens you that when he once getts hould of your bed-post againe never to quitt it." The period for Charles’s return home with the Princess was now at hand.[36] It was arranged with the King of Spain that, upon the arrival of the Pope’s approbation of some articles that had lately been sent to him, he should be empowered to have the Infanta married by proxy; and that, meantime, she should be styled “Princessa de Inglatierra,” and be considered in every respect as the betrothed wife of Prince Charles. “This day we take our leaves,” the Prince, on the twenty-fifth of August, wrote to his father; his letter was accompanied by one from the Earl of Bristol, stating that the King of Spain and his ministers had grown “to have so high a dislike of the Duke of Buckingham,” and considered him to be so adverse to the treaty, and to exercise so great an influence over Prince Charles, that they hoped it might not be in his power to make the Infanta’s life less happy there (in England), or to embroil the two kingdoms. “Suspicions and distastes betwixt them here and my Lord of Buckingham,” Bristol said, “could not be at a greater height.” This was the first letter that Bristol wrote prejudicial to Buckingham. Footnote 36: Nichols, 903.