the Council—thirteen of them—feed in the palace, as do the Officers of State, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the Master of the Horse, and the King’s English household with all their wives. The ladies and their servants and the households of all the courtiers and two hundred guards all live in the palace as well. Each officer has a cook to look after his food in the Queen’s kitchens. There are eighteen kitchens, and there is such a hurly-burly in them that each one is a veritable hell. So that, notwithstanding the greatness of these palaces, ... and the smallest of the four we have seen has more rooms and better ones than the _Alcazar_ of Madrid, the crowds in them are so great as to be hardly contained.... The ordinary consumption in the palace every day is from eighty to a hundred sheep, with a dozen fat oxen and dozen and a half of calves, besides vast quantities of game, poultry, venison, wild boar, and rabbits; whilst, as for the beer, they drink more in the summer than the river would hold in Valladolid. The ladies and some of the gentlemen put sugar into their wine. The noise and bustle in the palace are dreadful. And notwithstanding the vast number of rooms, they have never given to the Duchess of Alba a chamber in the palace. They are the most ungrateful people ever seen. Not even in the villages where we stay—and each one has a village—do they give to the Duke and Duchess a house to themselves, or the best one. They have fine trouble over their lodgings, as if it were not enough to prevent them from serving in their offices without housing them badly.” Already the courtiers saw that the chance of Philip being allowed to dominate England in consequence of his marriage was a slender one, but the King himself, in his patient, prudent way, persevered. His personal influence over his wife grew stronger every day, and when later she gave him hopes of the birth of an heir, a new prospect for the future seemed to open to him. The Londoners were as yet still almost in a panic at the coming of the Spanish King, and the most exaggerated ideas with regard to the number of armed men he would bring with him prevailed, artfully fostered by Noailles and the Protestant party. On the eve of the state entry of the royal pair into London the appearance of affairs was unpromising enough, as may be seen by Pedro Enriquez’s letter dated on the 17th August.