Bristol, during his short further stay in Madrid, laboured hard, aided by Gondomar, to keep the negotiations afoot, the Spanish party in the English Court endeavoured with the same object to arouse the fears of James against Buckingham, and nearly succeeded in doing it. Bristol's colleague and successor at Madrid, Sir Walter Aston, hoping to smooth matters, incurred Buckingham's violent resentment by provisionally agreeing to a day for the espousals, when at last the Pope's conditional consent came. James, and now apparently Charles, had quite made up their minds that no marriage should take place without the Palatinate being surrendered by the Emperor; and Philip, as Olivares had said again and again, would never coerce his Catholic kinsman to do that for the sake of a heretic. Thenceforward though the bickering both in Madrid and London still continued for months, the marriage of Charles and the Infanta was impracticable, and the unwise attempt to force the hands of cunning statesmen by a romantic _coup de théâtre_ came to the undignified and unsuccessful end that it deserved. {125} [Sidenote: Failure of the match] The Spaniards pretended that the match would have been carried through but for Buckingham's bad faith and his personal quarrel with Olivares, and they found it convenient to defend their own character for sincerity by using the favourite for a scapegoat. But it is quite certain now, with the abundant authoritative documents before us, that, except upon quite impossible conditions, there never was any intention on the part of Philip and Olivares to give the Infanta to Charles. Olivares played the game with consummate skill, obtaining concessions to the English Catholics, which, if they had been sincerely carried out, would have endangered James's crown; and presenting to Europe the spectacle of the English King and Prince soliciting an alliance with Spain in a way which allowed such a rebuff to be administered to England as might have made the great Elizabeth turn in her grave.