The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies
David Hume · en
the Spaniards that the earl had only managed to
kiss her cheek.
But the chagrin of the proud, dissatisfied
Spaniards was growing deeper as they saw their
hopes of domination in England disappear. The
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men-at-arms and bodyguard, cooped up in their
ships at Portsmouth and Southampton, forbidden
to land under pain of death, were becoming restive;
the courtiers and their followers, scoffed at and
insulted in the streets, and waylaid and robbed if
they ventured into the country, were forced to put
up with everything silently, by order of the King;
but they could relieve their minds by writing to
their friends in Spain an account of their sorrows.
Writing from Winchester, narrator No. 2 says:--
"After all this weary voyage, these people wish to
subject us to a certain extent to their laws, because
it is a new thing for them to have Spaniards in their
country, and they want to feel safe. The Spaniards
here are not comfortable, nor are they so well off
as in Castile. Some even say they would rather
be in the worst stubble-field in the kingdom of
Toledo than in the groves of Amadis."
The courtier who wrote No. 3 is even more
emphatic. He says:--
"Great rogues infest the roads and have robbed
some of our people, amongst others the chamberlain
of Don Juan de Pacheco, from whom they took
400 crowns and all his plate and jewelry. Not a
trace has been found of them, nor of the four or five
boxes missing from the King's lodgings, although
the Council is sending out on all sides. The friars
have had to be lodged in the college for safety and
bitterly repent having come."