Blue Spanish Eyes - of an Amorous Prince and His Infanta

by Anna Belfrage

Charles, the spare

There are many things one can say about Charles, James I’s second son, the rather uninteresting spare who initially seemed destined to live forever in the shadow of his beloved and admired older brother, Henry Frederick. One could call him lucky, seeing as big brother died in typhoid fever, thereby making Charles the heir. One could call him unlucky, in that his reign was to end with his own beheading – to a large extent caused by Charles’ obdurate take on the divine right of kings. One could call him elegant, a good father and a loving husband. Some would say he was priggish and small-minded. Rarely would one call him flamboyant or daring. And yet, there is one incident in Charles’ early life that speaks of a desire for adventure, a streak of recklessness. I am, of course, talking about the infamous Spanish affair.

Elizabeth, future Queen of Bohemia

Long before there was a Spanish affair, there was the Bohemian debacle. In 1613, Charles’ older sister, Elizabeth Stuart, had married Frederick, Count of the Palatinate Rhine – or Elector Palatinate for short. A wedding mainly contracted for political reasons quickly blossomed into a passionate love-affair, and Elizabeth was head-over-heels with her staunch Protestant German prince. Frederick was of impeccable bloodlines, related with more or less every single royal house in Europe, and the young couple seemed destined for a happy, fruitful union, bringing squalling sons into the world at very regular intervals.

So what does this have to do with Spain? Well, at the time, Europe was a patchwork quilt of loyalties, and ever since the Reformation a century or so before, these loyalties had been realigned, redesigned and generally moved around, creating a political instability equivalent to that of a grumbling volcano.

In 1619, the Holy Roman Emperor Matthias II died. A man who tempered his own Catholic beliefs with a sizeable dose of pragmatism, Matthias had deployed a tolerant approach to the Protestants living within his empire. His successor and cousin, Ferdinand II, was much more hard-core and had every intention of eradicating Protestant influence. This did not sit well with the Bohemian nobles – not only were many of them Protestants, but Ferdinand II was a great believer in absolute monarchy, thereby over-riding the hereditary rights of the Bohemian nobles to have a substantial say in their government.

Being creative, the Bohemian nobles decided to fall back on their right to choose their own monarch (a right that had not been much exercised over the last few centuries) and invited Frederick to take the crown. Frederick was hesitant. His wife wasn’t. She wanted a crown, and besides, this was an opportunity for her beloved Freddy to show his prowess and defend his co-religionists. After some hemming and hawing, Frederick accepted the crown and was formally installed as King of Bohemia in November of 1619.

Ferdinand II

Ferdinand II was not pleased, putting it mildly. A year later, in November of 1620, the Holy Roman Emperor’s forces (including a large number of Spanish soldiers) trounced those of Frederick at the Battle of White Mountain. The first pitched battle of the Thirty Years’ War had thereby been fought, and Ferdinand would go on to aggravate most of Protestant Europe for (taa-daa) thirty more years, give or take. For Frederick and Elizabeth, the effects were far more immediate: after one year, they’d been ousted from their thrones and forced into exile.

This is where Spain comes into play. Ferdinand II was a Hapsburg. The Spanish royals were also Hapsburgs. They were also undoubtedly the most powerful royals in Europe (for a little while longer) and James I had long nurtured the hope of uniting his family with the Hapsburgs, thereby creating an impressive alliance between England and Spain that would effectively crush France between them.

Henry Frederick as a child

Originally, the intention had been to wed Henry Frederick to a Spanish Infanta. Given just how fervently Protestant Henry Frederick was, and how fiercely Catholic the Spanish royals were, that would probably have been a rather unhappy match.

In actual fact, it is rather odd that the Spanish Ambassador to England ever suggested the match – after all, he – and his royal master, Felipe III of Spain – would have known the pope would never give the dispensation required for a princess of such august Catholic blood to wed an upstart heretic. Unless said heretic converted, of course.

Henry Frederick died, the formerly so disregarded Charles was installed as Prince of Wales in 1616, and the hope of a Spanish alliance still lived. Ambassador Gondomar sweetened the deal by offering a huge dowry – large enough that James could do without that pesky Parliament, at least for a while. All the Spanish wanted in return was for England to throw out all that anti-Catholic legislation, such as Test Acts and the like, and stay well away from the turbulent situation in the Spanish Netherlands, no longer quite as Spanish, seeing as the northern part was determined to break away.

James I & IV

James considered himself a great statesman, and was probably more than flattered by the Spanish interest. Being possessed of the ability to ignore that which did not please him, he didn’t pay much regard to the heated protests from various subjects, along the lines that England had not defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 only to hop into bed with that popish whore of a nation four decades later.

After the Bohemia debacle, James had hopes that a Spanish match could lead to the Spanish Hapsburgs putting pressure on their Austrian cousins so as to reinstate Frederick and Elizabeth. In the aftermath of the Battle of White Mountain, James saw no option but to call a Parliament, hoping thereby to raise the funds required to help Frederick and Elizabeth retake what was rightfully theirs. Parliament was all over itself in its anti-Catholic furore, but saw no reason to expend any larger amounts of English tax money on the Elector and his wife. James was miffed. Even more so when Parliament argued for war with Spain, thereby threatening the potential Spanish match.

After months of arguing with Parliament, James dissolved it. He still had his heart set on the Spanish alliance, but we were now in 1621, Spain had a new king, there was a new pope, and James was also astute enough to see that Parliament was, in effect, expressing the view of the English people when they opposed a marriage alliance with Spain. Besides, even James must have realised the religious differences between the Spanish and the English were too much of an obstacle.

A young Charles

James’s son, however, did not share his father’s defeatist view on the Spanish match. Neither did Prince Charles’ new bosom friend, George Villiers, the soon-to-be Duke of Buckingham. These two gentlemen therefore decided to take matters in their own hands, and what better way to woo the reluctant Spanish Infanta than by popping in on a surprise visit?

At the time, royal courts worked to defined protocols. Compared to the formal Spanish court, James’s court was like a laid back two-week inclusive in the Caribbean. In Spain, one DID NOT pop by on a surprise visit, even less travelling under an alias. Such minor details did not deter our amorous prince. Charles and George decided (rather unimaginatively) to travel as Thomas and John Smith and set off in February of 1623, Charles determined to win his Spanish bride and return home a married (and richer) man.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham

Off they went, George and Charles, failing miserably at keeping the low profile required to even slip out of England unnoticed. At some point, Villiers had to reveal himself as the Lord Admiral he was, and only then were our two Mr Smiths allowed to step aboard the ship that was to take them to France. In Paris, they donned periwigs to disguise themselves, which worked surprisingly well, and so after some days of enjoying France incognito, they set off south, riding hard for Madrid and the waiting Doña María Ana, Infanta of Spain and as Catholic as they came.

It seems no one had thought to investigate whether the purported bride had any interest in marrying the gallant English prince. María Ana was very devout, and would no more wed a heretic than she would one of the multiple flea-ridden urchins that prowled the streets of Madrid. Unless, of course, the young man in question were to convert, thereby ensuring María Ana a permanent place in heaven.

Early in March, Charles and George arrived in Madrid. As a matter of course, they went directly to the residence of the Earl of Bristol, England’s ambassador in Spain. The poor ambassador was shocked. Incensed. Aghast. Gobsmacked. All of these. Charles, however, was quite pleased with himself. From his perspective, all that was now required was for him to meet his intended, charm her petticoats off, and that was it.

Spanish Infantas did not meet men outside their immediate family just like that. María Ana was no exception to the rule, and Charles’ request that he may be allowed to pay court in person was met with a polite but firm no. Disappointment must have etched Charles’ face, because Felipe IV came up with a little plan whereby Charles would be able to see his intended without any loss of face.

In Spain, at the time there was a tradition called “hacer la rúa”, or “el paseo”. In essence, it meant people took to the outdoors, whether astride a horse, in a carriage or on foot, and made a pre-defined circuit, thereby upping the chances of running into someone you really wanted to meet. In Madrid, the route circled the Plaza Mayor, detoured round San Gerónimo, and ambled through El Prado (at the time a park, not an art museum).

María Ana

Buckingham and Charles were bundled into a carriage. María Ana was placed in another, accompanied by her brother’s queen, the pretty Isabel of Bourbon. By chance, as it were, these vehicles passed one another a couple of times. Enough for Charles to see bright blue eyes and a stray lock or two of golden hair. Not enough to exchange as much as a word.

For five months, Felipe IV kept Charles hanging. James dispatched a retinue from England, Charles met frequently with Felipe IV and his closest advisor the Count of Olivares. He was feted in grand style, was acclaimed by the Spanish people who were rather taken by the English prince – even more so given that his mere presence in Spain reasonably indicated his intention to return to the True Faith.

There were banquets and balls, there were bull runs and afternoons at the Madrid playhouses, and not once was Charles allowed to spend as much as a moment alone with María Ana, the precious Infanta always impressively chaperoned, never more than an enticing promise.

In a grand gesture, Felipe IV released hundreds of English prisoners from his galleys, but smiled blandly whenever Charles pressed his suit, reminding the eager prince that he needed reassurances, promises that the English anti-Catholic legislation would be repealed, that María Ana would be allowed to worship in accordance with her conscience.

Charles (or his father) had no authority to agree to the Spanish terms – but they did, off the record, like. And still Felipe IV procrastinated. Even after James had signed the contract, Felipe hemmed and hawed, saying he couldn’t be parted from his dear sister until the promised changes had been made.

Felipe IV

Truth was, Felipe never had the slightest intention of forcing his sister into marriage with Charles – but he negotiated with Charles as if he did, and all the while Spain was carefully jockeying for a more favourable position in the European conflicts, keeping England docile by waving the carrot of a potential marriage under Charles’ nose. As to the Elector, Felipe was not about to support a Protestant upstart against his Austrian uncle. Besides, Ferdinand II had a son, yet another Ferdinand, and María Ana would make an excellent Holy Roman Empress, wouldn’t she?

Eventually, Felipe came clean and admitted that his sister would not consider marrying Charles – unless he converted. To convert was not on the books as far as Charles was concerned. Humiliated and furious, Charles embarked on the long trip home, and his previously so warm feelings for fair María Ana, for Spain, were replaced by the conviction that nothing good could come from interacting with the accursed Hapsburgs – no matter how blue their Spanish eyes might be.

In 1625, James died, and Charles wasted little time in finding a new bride. This time, his eye fell on Henrietta Maria, French princess and just as fervent a Catholic as María Ana. And yet the English heaved a sigh of relief: at least their future queen wasn’t Spanish!

María Ana went on to marry her cousin Ferdinand III. One of her daughters would subsequently marry Felipe IV, María Ana’s brother. Not at all unusual among the Hapsburgs, to marry close relatives, but this time round all that inbreeding was to result in a number of short-lived babies and a seriously impaired heir – both mentally and physically.

A better choice? Henrietta Maria

As we all know, Charles I was not destined to live a long and happy life (very much due to his own incompetence), but he was fortunate in his wife, a loyal spouse who stood beside him through thick and thin. To Charles, it mattered little that Henrietta Maria was Catholic. Sadly, to his subjects it most certainly did, and the little queen who was so warmly welcomed in 1625 would be viewed with suspicion as the English succumbed to an ever-growing hatred of all things papist. But that, as they say, is an entirely different story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anna Belfrage is the successful author of eight published books, all of them part of The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, this is the story of Matthew Graham and his wife, Alex Lind - two people who should never have met, not when she was born three centuries after him.

Anna's books have won several awards - recently, one of her books won the HNS Indie Book of the Year Award -  and are available on Amazon, or wherever else good books are sold.

Presently, Anna is working on a new series set in 14th century England - the first installment will be published in November 2015.
For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website. If not on her website, Anna can mostly be found on her blog.

In the name of God - Implementing Religious Tolerance

by Anna Belfrage

In 1963, my parents decided to brave the unknown. They said farewell to family and friends, waved goodbye to Sweden, and set off for exotic South America. In the sixties, this was a relatively drastic thing to do – but compared to the emigrants of the previous centuries, my parents had something of a walk in the park, with the added benefit of knowing that, should they want to, they could always go back home and it wouldn’t take them more than a couple of days by plane.

In the 17th century, airplanes were not even on the drawing board. The ships that crossed the Atlantic were small and fragile, and the probability of dying in a shipwreck was relatively high. Add to this the risk of being attacked by pirates, or being blown off course, and one wonders that anyone actually dared to set off for new lands. Maybe they were braver than I am –or maybe they didn’t feel they had a choice.

Many of the early settlers in the American Colonies emigrated due to religious issues. Interestingly enough, while the English government had little tolerance for Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Presbyterians and what have you back home, they seemed not to have minded overmuch when these people settled in the faraway colonies – still English dominions, but at a sufficient distance to allow the heart to grow (somewhat) fonder. Maybe this tolerance rather reflected the government’s interest in increasing their fiscal income. Or maybe it was as simple as “out of sight, out of mind”, because seriously, who in Bristol or York would be all that bothered by what happened on the other side of the world?

The young colonies were no more tolerant than England – but with different religious preferences. Virginia quickly became an Anglican stronghold, further reinforced during Sir William Berkley’s long tenure as governor. Massachusetts was firmly in Puritan hands – strong, capable and somewhat sombre hands – and then there was Maryland, where for the first time in history an Act of Toleration was implemented in 1649. (The fledging Rhode Island passed a series of laws in the 1630’s that protected religious freedoms, but nothing as explicit as Maryland’s Act)

Let us take a step back, and consider just how turbulent the 17th century was from a religious perspective. The Reformation movements of the 16th century spilled over into the new century, and with the Protestant view that man was fully capable of reading the Bible and understanding it all on his own, the door was opened wide on multiple interpretations, resulting in a plethora of Protestant orientations, all of them with their own distinctive set of beliefs. At one end of the spectrum was Calvin and the Presbyterian school of thought, at the other the far more moderate (lax in the eyes of the more rabid reformers) Church of England.

Gustavus Adolphus victorious during the Thirty Years' War

Ultimately, the unrest of the 17th century was never about faith as such; it was about power. The Thirty Years’ War was clad in the guise of defending the faith, but was about expanding the power base and wealth of certain states (such as Sweden and France) while curtailing that of others, notably the Hapsburg Empire. How else to explain the interesting fact that Catholic France bankrolled a substantial part of Protestant Sweden’s war efforts?

Inconsistency was rife: on one hand, France allied itself with Sweden, on the other it viciously oppressed the Huguenots, this culminating in the Huguenot revolts and the Anglo-French War. England had to retreat from the war due to Charles I’s increasing problems at home (he had his own vociferous religious protesters), leaving France’s Protestants to their fate.

In England, the Church of England – and the government – was distrustful of all religious faiths outside the Anglican Church. Catholics were hounded, would continue to be hounded for decades. Puritans were seen as dangerous dissenters and were forced to flee in large numbers, first to the welcoming Dutch States, eventually to Massachusetts. When the situation for Catholics (or ‘recusants’) became intolerable, many of them opted to go overseas as well, and fortunately for these papists there was a small colony in America that welcomed them with open arms, namely Maryland.

Cecilius Calvert

Maryland at the time was a private possession. It was owned by Cecilius Calvert, a Catholic peer, and as such it welcomed Catholic immigrants with open arms. Actually, the colony welcomed immigrants of any Christian denomination with open arms, and as a consequence the colony’s population very quickly came to be dominated by Puritans.

Calvert was set on creating some sort of safe haven for his co-religionists, and he quickly concluded that persecution of non-Catholics was not the right way to go about it – after all, Maryland was the colony of a Protestant country. Besides, Calvert seems to have been a wise man, who urged all his colonists to set their religious rivalries aside and concentrate on building a prosperous new country – which of course benefited Calvert financially.

Maybe those early colonists were tired of strife. Perhaps Calvert’s urgings had them rubbing along equably. Already in 1639, the colony passed an ordinance that had a generally worded comment as to the rights of man, but when the English Civil War broke out, the underlying religious differences surged to the surface, and for a couple of years Maryland was under Protestant dominion before the Calvert family regained  control. Worried by the violence that had erupted in his colony, Lord Calvert drafted an Act of Toleration, not only to protect the minority Catholics, but also to assure the recent Puritan colonists in Providence (Annapolis) that they would have freedom of worship.

The Act of Toleration is in many ways a precursor to the First Amendment in the American Constitution. In a world full of religious strife, it was an innovative attempt to heal rather than breach. In many ways it was imperfect, granting freedom of worship only to Trinitarian Christians. To deny the divinity of Jesus Christ could lead to execution, thereby closing the gate in the face of Unitarians and Jews. The colony’s Puritans chafed under some of the wordings, made uncomfortable by accepting a law drafted by a Catholic. (To them, swearing fealty to Calvert was to indirectly swear fealty to the Pope, who according to Puritan tenets was anti-Christ. Interestingly enough, those early Puritans found a way of accommodating this conundrum within their conscience)

What is of particular interest in Calvert’s Act is that it contains the first attempts to curtail hate speech. As per the Act of Toleration, the word “heretic” and religious insults in general were forbidden. Well before the rest of the world woke up to the need to reinstate civility in religious discourse, Calvert attempted to draw up a framework of rules that would force people of different convictions to treat each other with respect.

In 1654, the Act of Toleration was repealed. Two years earlier, Calvert’s government had been overthrown, the colony seized by Protestant forces loyal to the new Parliamentarian Government in England and led by William Claiborne. The Puritans went on a spree once the Act was repealed. Catholic churches were burnt, Catholics were persecuted and forbidden to practise their religion. All in all, not at all a godly behaviour...

Fortunately, Calvert regained control, and in 1658 the Act was once again passed by the colonial assembly. This time, it would survive until 1692, when the Maryland Puritan Protestants overthrew Calvert’s rule yet again. And this time, the Act was permanently abolished, Catholicism was banned and the Church of England became the colony’s official church in 1702 – something that can’t have pleased the Maryland Puritans all that much.

Not until the American Revolution would freedom of worship be reinstated in Maryland, but when the Founding Fathers of the United States drew up their documents, they clearly found some inspiration Maryland’s Toleration Act. I think Lord Calvert would have been pleased.

Anna Belfrage is the author of three published books, A Rip in the Veil , Like Chaff in the Wind and The Prodigal Son. The fourth book in The Graham Saga, A Newfound Land, will be published in November of 2013. Set in seventeenth century Scotland and Virginia/Maryland, the books tell the story of Matthew and Alex, two people who should never have met – not when she was born three hundred years after him. For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website, www.annabelfrage.com