Redworth, Glyn, the Prince and the Infanta

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Redworth, Glyn, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), xiv + 200 pp., £25.00, ISBN 0 300 10198 8 (hardback). The visit of Charles Prince of Wales to Madrid in 1623 was a pivotal event in early seventeenth-century British history. Having risked his life on a journey across the roads of Europe in the hope of winning the hand of the King of Spain’s sister, Charles would spend nearly six months exposed to a style of government and a practice of religion that ought to have been anathema to the heir to the throne of the leading Protestant state in Europe. While the experience would be decisive in influencing the sober and majestic court protocol that would come to be so much associated with his reign as Charles I, his dalliance as a Prince at the Spanish court would also leave him tainted as a ruler with a worrying open-mindedness towards things Catholic. Glyn Redworth’s excellent account of the failure of the Spanish Match concentrates mainly on the three years between the summoning of the 1621 Parliament and Charles’s empty-handed return to England in the autumn of 1623. As such, it complements a recent and very welcome renewal of interest in Spain’s influence on the political and cultural history of Stuart Britain, which has found form in several international conferences and a major exhibition that was held in the Prado Museum in 2002. Yet, for all this attention, there has still been much about the Madrid visit that has remained obscure. Previous research has failed to provide convincing explanation for the origins and responsibility of the episode, and has up until now been unable to clarify why the Spaniards reacted as effusively as they did to the Prince’s arrival when so many of them regarded the prospect of an English marriage for their Infanta with great hesitation. This book fills a major gap in our knowledge of seventeenth-century international relations and dynastic policy. Its central argument is that Charles was acting on the assumption that nearly all the diplomatic preliminaries to his marriage had been completed before he left England. In making the journey, he saw himself as fulfilling a dynastic right and duty, as a member of the House of Stuart, to go abroad in search of his bride, just as his father had sailed to Copenhagen to bring back Anne of Denmark and in the same way as his great-grandfather had gone to France to pay court to Mary of Guise (pp. 4 and 75-76). Such

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an interpretation successfully debunks many of the other arguments that have been used to explain the incident. Buckingham’s role is here shown to have been merely that of a reluctant henchman anxious not to lose the favour of the heir to the throne, and the interests of the Elector Palatine to have been nothing more than an excuse to revoke the engage- ment after Charles’s return to London. Redworth depicts the Prince of Wales as a naive and frustrated tenderfoot, caught up in a web of deceit, at least some of which was of his own making. Having duped his father into allowing him to go to Spain, his arrival was quite understandably interpreted by his hosts as an expression of his intention to convert to Catholicism. Once disabused, an elaborate charade had to be played out until both sides were finally able to part company—a marriage agreement having been made, but only on the understanding that the Infanta would remain in Madrid until it became clear that the English really did intend to honour the extraordinary series of religious con- cessions to which the Prince had put his name whilst being entertained at the King of Spain’s pleasure. But it was clearly not all Charles’s fault, for Redworth also shows him to have been actively encouraged to go to Madrid by the Spanish ambassador in London, the count of Gondomar. For modern historians, Gondomar has acquired a reputation as a master diplomat, able to manipu- late James I into following policies that assisted Spain’s international interests. Yet, for many of his countrymen, he was ‘no more than an influential, and often irritating functionary’, who was quite capable of misrepresenting the international importance of the British Monarchy in order to advance his own career (pp. 52-53). So, when Charles arrived in Madrid, it was left to the count-duke of Olivares, the chief-minister (or valido) of Philip IV of Spain, to clear up the confusion. Here, the author makes important new use of Italian and Austrian sources in order to demonstrate how Olivares contrived to ratchet up the pope’s condi- tions for a dispensation, whilst offering Charles the valuable consolation prize of the hand of the eldest daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand II. Yet the Prince’s refusal to bargain over his suit for the Infanta spoiled everything, leaving him with no alternative but to compromise himself, his father and the English Privy Council in an agreement to grant public toleration of Catholicism within the Stuart kingdoms. Only when he had got back to the safety of Whitehall was he able to renege on his promises and adopt the spurious and very temporary role of Protestant hero. Beyond matters immediately arising from the Madrid visit, this book also raises more universal issues, such as the use made by the Spanish kings