Page:The Queens of England.djvu/500

 452 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. ing much personal vicissitude — by flight and participation of the queen-mother's imprisonment — formed, however, a most unfit discipline for her character. In fact, the records of the time are replete with the quarrels and reconciliations of Marie and the king h^r son, and the elevation and depression of the favorites of each. The first occasion on which Prince Charles beheld his future consort was during this romantic expedition, in 1623, to Madrid to obtain the hand of the Infanta ; the prince, after the example of his father and grandfather, and at the instigation of Buck- ingham, being desirous that an interview with his future bride should cement, by personal affection, that bond of political union which King James was eager to institute, both from the emergency of his own pecuniary distresses, and an opinion peculiar to himself, that "any alliance below that with France or Spain was unworthy a Prince of Wales." This .Quixotic expedition, besides Charles and the king's "humble slave and doge, Steenie," as Buckingham was styled, consisted of Sir Francis Cottington, Sir Richard Greharn, and Master Endymion Porter, and upon reaching Paris, the party, "by mere accident," as we are told by Sir Henry Wotton, obtained a first view of Henrietta, each errant knight "shadowed under a bushy peruke," and concealing his title by a plebeian name, though the two of greatest dignity among them attracted marked atten- tion by their superior grace and deportment. The Spanish match was soon broken off by the impetuous attempts of the clergy to proselytize Charles, the exasperation of Olivarez with Buckingham, and the refusal to include the restitution of the palatinate in the marriage portion of the Infanta — a circumstance which induced King James to exclaim, "that he would never marry his son with a portion of his only sister's tears"; and he hastily recalled the prince from Madrid, his paternal anxiety being painfully increased by the remark of Archie, his jester, who first offered to "change caps" with James for allowing the Prince of Wales to depart ; and upon the king's inquiring what he would say when he saw him come back again, replied, "Marry, I will take off the fool's cap, which I now put upon thy head for sending him thither, and put it upon the king of Spain's for letting him return." Anxious, however, for the fulfilment of his dearest wish, James, almost before the conclusion of the Spanish negotiation had been notified in England, privately dispatched Lord Kensing- ton to Paris, with offers for the hand of Henrietta, where, not-