valued at 50,000 ducats; a collar or necklace of 18 brilliants, exquisitely worked and set with dainty grace, valued at 32,000 ducats; a great diamond with a fine large pearl pendant from it (this was Mary's favourite jewel, and may be seen on her breast in most portraits). They were (says narrative No. 2) the most lovely pair of gems ever seen in the world, and were worth 25,000 ducats. Then comes {140} a list of pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies of inestimable value, and other presents without number for the Queen and her ladies. Eighty fine horses and fifty hackneys were sent on to Corunna to await the Prince's coming, and all Castile and Aragon, not to speak of Leon, were alive with artificers of the gorgeous garb and trappings to fit out the proud nobles who were to follow their Prince, each, with true Spanish ostentation, bent upon outstripping the others in the richness and splendour of themselves and their train.[12] Muñoz, in narrative No. 2, gives a list of the clothes made for each of the principal grandees, which it would be tedious and unnecessary to repeat here. The Prince, great as he was, was only first among his peers, and if he could be magnificent so could his train, and Alba and Medina-Celi, Egmont and Aguilar, Pescara and Feria vied with their master in their finery. Each great noble--and there were twenty of them--took his train of servants in new liveries, and the Prince had a Spanish guard of 100 gentlemen in red and yellow, 100 Germans in the same uniform, but with silk facings, "as their custom is to go bravely dressed," 100 archers on horseback, and 300 servants in the same gaudy colours of Aragon. All this splendid apparatus was a comparatively new thing for Spaniards at the time; the homely, unceremonious relations between sovereign and people had only been put aside for the pompous etiquette {141} of the house of Burgundy, on the coming of Philip's grandfather from Flanders with his Spanish bride to take up the sceptre dropped by the dead hand of Isabel the Catholic, and the gold of the Indies had since that time poured into Spain and spread a thirst for showy pomp even amongst the frank, honest, homely gentlemen who had formed a majority of the Spanish hidalgo class. The changed taste, however, was new enough still to attract the attention of the crowd who had not yet become accustomed to so much splendour.