Great preparations were made for the entrance of the Queen and her consort into London. The signs of vengeance had been cleared away, and the city was as bright and gay as paint and gilding could make it. The "galluses," from which dangled the fifty dead bodies of the London trainbandsmen who had deserted to Wyatt at Rochester Bridge, were cleared away from the doors of the houses in which their families lived, and the grinning skulls of the higher offenders were taken from the gates and from London Bridge; but London, for all its seeming welcome and for all its real loyalty to the Queen herself, was more deeply resentful of the Spanish intrusion than any city in the realm, and the few Spaniards who still remained with Philip repaid with interest the detestation of the Londoners {170} towards them. "We enter London (narrative No. 4) on Saturday next, but, considering their treatment of the Spaniards already there, we ought to stay away. Not only will they give them no lodgings,[26] but they affront them on every opportunity, as if they were barbarians, maltreating them and robbing them in the taverns to their hearts' content. The friars brought by his Majesty had better not have come, for these English are so godless and treat them so vilely that they dare not appear in the streets." Only a few days before this letter was written from Richmond (August 19th) two Spanish noblemen of the highest rank, Don Pedro and Don Antonio de Cordoba, ventured to walk in the streets of London in their habits as knights of Santiago, with the great crimson cross embroidered on their breasts, as they are worn in Spain to this day, and this attracting the derisive attention of the irrepressible London street boy of the period, the two gentlemen were soon surrounded by a hooting crowd, who wanted to know what they meant by wearing so outlandish an ornament, and tried to strip the offending coats from their backs. The affair nearly ended in bloodshed, and the Spaniards had to fly for their lives. The very few Spanish ladies who came with Philip were as resentful as their spouses, and we are told that "Donna Hieronima de Navarra and Donna Francisca de Cordoba have decided not to wait upon the Queen, as there is no one to speak to them at Court, these English ladies being so badly behaved; and the Duchess of Alba will not go to Court again, as she had been so discourteously treated." {171}