PART ONE
THE RISE OF RUY GOMEZ DE SILVA

La Fortuna es la que differencia las
mas vezes a los Grandes de los Chicos.
Antonio Pérez (Las obras y relaciones, 1654)

1
From La Chamusca to the Court of Spain

The biography of Ruy Gómez de Silva has not been written, nor will it ever be, at least not as a full-scale life. His role in affairs of state was usually that of a fixer at the court, operating from behind the arras. Many of his activities required no written report, and if he was a great correspondent, the bulk of his letters have not survived. "Ruy Gómez," William Maltby has justly observed, "remains as elusive in death as he was in life."^[1]

It is possible, however, to trace his career in considerable detail, and this is a worthwhile task: as well as being one of the most important political men of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, he was perhaps the most polished and successful courtier of his time. For years he was the intimate friend and counselor of Philip, prince and then king of Spain. Study of this relationship between favorite and monarch, central to the destiny of the former, reveals a great deal about the latter as a youth and young man. Ruy Gómez's rise also illustrates, perhaps better than any other example, the possibilities of social mobility open to a man whom fortune blessed and who knew how to maneuver, intrigue and exert influence in the treacherous corridors of power near the king. "The Court," wrote Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, "is so dangerous a gulf that few pass through it without adversity. . . . Rui Gomez was the first pilot who, in such huge undertakings, lived and died secure, always choosing the best port."^[2]

Nothing in the circumstances of his birth indicated that Ruy Gómez de Silva^[3] would one day earn such a lofty eulogy. He was born in La Chamusca, on the Tagus River near Santarém in Portugal, probably in 1516.^[4] He was the second son of Francisco de Silva, the lord of the town, and his wife, Doña María de Noronha. The Silvas were an old family in the region. The historian Salazar y Castro says of Francisco de Silva, with some exaggeration, that he was "one of the most eminent Fidalgos of his time in Portugal, and [among

those] who had the most genteel and splendid Houses."^[5] He was the great-grandson of Diego Gómez de Silva, one of the ricos-hombres of Portugal, who was related by birth and marriage to the powerful families of Coutinho and Sousa. Diego Gómez was a second son (his father was Gonzalo Gómez de Silva, lord of Vagos, Tentugal and Boarceos) and made his name in the military service of John I of Portugal and his successors. He fought against the Castilians at Aljubarrota (1385) and thirty years later commanded a ship in the invasion of Ceuta. In 1416 he was rewarded with the title of alferez mayor (chief standard-bearer) of Portugal.^[6]

The eldest son of the alferez mayor , the first Ruy Gómez de Silva, was also a soldier. He fought in the conquest of Tangiers in 1437, and in 1445 he was with the Portuguese column that aided John II of Castile against the infantes of Aragon. He was rewarded for his services to the Crown by the grant in 1449 of the village of Ulme near Santarém, which had been confiscated following the rebellion of its previous lord. Possession of Ulme was granted to Ruy Gómez and his heirs in perpetuity, and it comprised the first entailed property of the house. Ruy Gómez lived until 1487 and received several other mercedes from the Crown. The most important of these was the grant for two generations of the reguengos of the villages of Nes Pereyra, Riba de Bouga, Monçon and Villanueva de Fascoa. Among these, only the reguengo of New Pereyra was of substantial value. Ruy Gómez's marriage to Blanca de Almeida may have contributed to his success in obtaining mercedes , since her father was a surveyor of the royal treasury. Royal favor extended to the couple's children as well: their eldest daughter was given a prominent position in the household of the Infanta Isabel of Castile, daughter of the Catholic Kings and wife of the Portuguese Prince Afonso.^[7] Their son, Juan de Silva, inherited his father's holdings in 1487. He had maintained the family tradition of military service, fighting for Afonso V in Africa and in the Castilian campaign of 1475–1476 on the side of Juana la Beltraneja . During this campaign, at Zamora in 1475, the king extended the grant of the reguengos for another generation; Juan de Silva's son would enjoy these revenues too. This extension was confirmed by John II in 1487.^[8]

Juan de Silva was a member of the Royal Council under John II and Manuel. He was a man of considerable prominence in the kingdom, and his house, in his newly acquired town of La Chamusca,

was fine enough to serve as a stop on the honeymoon sojourn of Manuel and his bride, Leonor of Castile, in 1518. All five of the children of Juan de Silva were borne by his third wife, Doña Juana Enríquez. A lady of high birth but small dowry, Juana Enríquez was the daughter of the aposentador mayor (chief quartermaster) of Portugal and the great-granddaughter of Henry II of Castile. She and Juan de Silva drew up a joint will in 1520, in which they created a mayorazgo for their eldest son Francisco, comprising the town of La Chamusca and their estates and principal house there. Juan de Silva died shortly thereafter, in February 1520.^[9]

Francisco de Silva was not a soldier like his forebears, but instead seems to have lived a quiet life as a country gentleman.^[10] In or around 1512 he married María de Noronha in Lisbon, under a dispensation of consanguinity granted by Pope Julius II. The groom was both a second cousin and a third cousin of the bride's father, Ruy Tellez de Meneses, who was the lord of Uñao and comendador of Orique and a prominent member of the powerful Meneses family. Francisco de Silva was also distantly related to María de Noronha's mother, Guiomar, whose marriage to Ruy Tellez had formed a link between the powerful clans of Meneses and Noronha.^[11] The couple's large family was already well started when Francisco de Silva succeeded his father in 1520. Their marriage produced eight children—three sons and five daughters—who survived into adulthood.^[12] Of these, at least the two oldest boys, Juan and Ruy Gómez, were born in the first five years of the marriage.

Ruy Gómez de Silva was the second son, and the date of his birth remains somewhat mysterious. Modern historians have accepted 1516,^[13] evidently on the basis of Salazar y Castro's unsupported statement that he was born "around" that year. Salazar's work is, for the most part, quite accurate, and he may have had access to information, such as a baptismal record, that has since been lost.^[14] His estimate is at least roughly corroborated by an independent source, the Venetian ambassador Federico Badoero, who described Ruy Gómez de Silva as approximately thirty-nine years old in 1556, which would place his birth in 1516 or 1517.^[15]

Nothing is known of Ruy Gómez de Silva's early childhood. In addition to the principal house at La Chamusca, his father owned another mansion nearby in Ulme, which may have been used primarily as a hunting lodge. La Chamusca, the larger of the two vil-

lages, was celebrated for its fruits and wines. It lies in a fertile plain near the Tagus about thirteen miles upriver from Santarém and fifty-five miles from Lisbon. A century and a half later, La Chamusca and Ulme together had 400 householders.^[16] Both villages were under the jurisdiction of Santarém until 1561, when, as a favor to Francisco de Silva, they were granted the status of villas and their jurisdiction was transferred to their lord.^[17]

Ruy Gómez's early childhood was spent in these towns dominated by his father, where the boy's ancestors had "always been seen to live as gentlemen and to subsist from their mayorazgos and their encomiendas and holdings and patrimonies," without resort to any "base occupation."^[18] The marks of his family's status were visible all around him: his forebears "having resided there, they built sumptuous palaces in La Chamusca and ennobled it with public buildings."^[19] The elegance of these rural mansions is open to question, but the predominance of the Silvas in their provincial domain is not. A seventeenth-century observer noted that the arms of the house of Silva ("un león leonardo en campo blanco coronado") were emblazoned on a great marble tomb in the parish church of La Chamusca and "on the hall of the Audiencia of this town and on the rest of the public buildings."^[20]

These symbols of his family's station may have thrilled the young Ruy Gómez, but they were destined to comprise the inheritance of his older brother. Francisco de Silva's estate was entailed in primogeniture, and since he seems to have added very little to it during his lifetime, there was no possibility of establishing another mayorazgo for a cadet line. Moreover, Francisco's daughters would require dowries. Thus some arrangement had to be made for his second son. Like his father, Francisco de Silva was a member of the Council of State and spent some time at court in Lisbon.^[21] He may have sought patronage for his son Ruy Gómez there or when the court visited Almeirim, near La Chamusca, in 1523.^[22] As it turned out, his connections through marriage with the house of Meneses proved decisive in the placement of his second son.

Ruy Tellez de Meneses and Guiomar de Noronha—the maternal grandparents of Ruy Gómez de Silva—were, as a contemporary reminisced, "among the most Illustrious [persons] of this kingdom [of Portugal]."^[23] Confirmation of this high status is provided by the fact that, in the mid-1520s, Ruy Tellez was named mayordomo mayor

of the household of the Portuguese Infanta Isabel. The daughter of King Manuel and the sister of John III, Isable had been promised in marriage to the Emperor Charles V.^[24] Ruy Tellez's position provided an opportunity for placing his grandson, the young segundón Ruy Gómez. In 1526 the Infanta Isabel was conducted to Castile for her marriage to the emperor. Isabel's entourage was led by two of her brothers, who delivered her in February 1526 to Charles's representative, the duke of Calabria, at the frontier between Elvas and Badajoz. The infanta 's household, headed by Ruy Tellez, accompanied her; among its members was Ruy Gómez de Silva. The boy's grandfather had secured a post for him as one of the Infanta's meninos (pages, serving boys). Once in Castile, Isabel and her party were escorted to Seville, where she married Charles V.^[25]

Thus, at the age of nine or thereabouts, Ruy Gómez de Silva left his native land and began his career of service at the Castilian court. This was a crucial turning point for his fortunes and for those of the house of Silva, which henceforth would look for favor and advancement to the kings of Spain rather than to those of Portugal.

Nothing concrete is known of the next few years in the life of Ruy Gómez de Silva. Presumably he and the other Portuguese servants of the empress moved with Charles V's peripatetic court. Years later Ruy Gómez recalled that he had been raised in the empress's household by a black woman, Nativa d'Almeyda.^[26] Salazar asserts, on uncertain authority, that the boy advanced rapidly as a result of his grandfather's patronage and his own talents and that he was the first person to be assigned to the service of Prince Philip, who was born in Valladolid on 21 May 1527.^[27] Cabrera states that Ruy Gómez "was reared with the king Don Felipe II," and Badoero makes a similar claim, so perhaps the young page did serve the prince in his infancy.^[28] Neither Ruy Gómez nor anyone else held a formal position in service to Philip, however, until the latter was nearly eight years old. The care of the infant prince was entrusted to the empress's household during Charles V's absence from Spain in 1529–1533, and this arrangement remained unaltered until the eve of Charles's departure for the Tunis expedition in the spring of 1535. On the first of March in that year, the court residing at Madrid, Charles named Juan de Zúñiga governor and tutor of Prince Philip. Zúñiga was charged "to look after, to wait upon, and to govern [the prince], and to instruct him in good and praiseworthy habits."^[29] The

prince was not to have a formal household, and thus no mayordomo was appointed, but he was assigned three maestresalas (waiters) and three trinchantes to serve him at table. These functionaries were all young nobles and "criados of the Emperor"; among the trinchantes was Ruy Gómez de Silva. Payment of the salaries of this proto-household remained the responsibility of the empress's establishment, and her own pages, including Zúñiga's son, Luis de Requesens, were to serve the prince in rotation. Presumably the six table servants also retained duties in Isabel's household.^[30]

A few months after his appointment as a trinchante Ruy Gómez de Silva was involved in an incident that might have cost him his career at court, or worse. Late one night, probably in early December 1535, in the presence of Prince Philip, Ruy Gómez came to blows with another young nobleman, Juan de Avellaneda. Zúñiga was absent when the incident occurred, but the young men, who had unsheathed their daggers, were restrained by the duke of Sessa and two other gentlemen. In the melee the prince received a scratch beneath his eye. He was evidently untouched by the drawn weapons but instead brushed his face against a sharp brooch on someone's clothing or wounded himself with a baton he was carrying.^[31] The president of the Royal Council (Juan de Tavera, cardinal-archbishop of Toledo)^[32] was notified of the incident and ordered Zúñiga to investigate. The latter conferred with the empress, who ordered Ruy Gómez and Avellaneda confined to their lodgings but was not unduly upset over the affair. "Since they are boys," wrote Zúñiga, "Her Majesty says that she will punish them as such."^[33]

Cardinal Tavera was less sanguine. The next morning he presented the facts of the incident to the council and the alcaldes of the court. Then he led a delegation of counselors to meet with the empress. They argued that the affair was serious, since "a great mistake might have happened." Because of the gravity of the circumstances, the two young men should be tried and punished by the council. Isabel demurred, replying that "it was not necessary for any other magistrate to take cognizance of it." She dismissed the counselors, saying that she would make the necessary inquiries and assess punishment herself.^[34]

The empress was as good as her word. She decided that the two combatants should be confined in fortresses outside Madrid; she

assured the president that she would order that "they should be thoroughly punished." Two days after the incident the council learned that Ruy Gómez and Avellaneda had been taken to their respective prisons by constables.^[35] Tavera continued to believe that the empress had made light of a serious matter. He wrote to the emperor that, although the prince had not been badly injured, "the effrontery was great, and [so was] the laxity and paucity of fear and respect of those young men, particularly in drawing weapons; . . . [This was] a dangerous and brutish affair."^[36] Charles V assured the president that he had behaved properly, but he supported his wife's handling of the affair. At the same time Zúñiga was ordered to ensure that there could be no repetition of this incident.^[37]

No further information has come to light regarding the punishment of Ruy Gómez and Avellaneda. It seems, however, that it was neither severe nor lengthy, since the empress, on Christmas Eve 1535, granted Ruy Gómez a formal title as trinchante to the prince, with an annual salary and allowance of 50,000 maravedís (133 1/3 ducats).^[38]

From later events it is clear that in his teenage years, if not earlier, Prince Philip developed a close attachment to his Portuguese table servant. Had the president of the Royal Council had his way in 1535, though, this attachment would have been nipped in the bud, since it is evident that the punishment Tavera deemed appropriate would not have ended with Ruy Gómez returning to Philip's household. The incident of his altercation with Avellaneda, in itself trivial, provides some insight into the precarious nature of Ruy Gómez's position at court as an adolescent in the 1530s. The empress's rather surprising intervention was all that preserved him from an ignominious obscurity; Isabel's motives in interceding for the young page thus bear examination. She asserted that she did not want to deal too sternly with such young men, and mercy surely had some part in her actions. But a perceptive court observer found another reason for her behavior:

The Empress has taken it very well. . . . [A]ll the members of the Council and those of the court perceived it as very grave. Her Majesty wished to calm them, since one [of those involved in the altercation] is a Portuguese, and she commanded the alcaldes and members of the Council that none of them should take notice of it.^[39]

Isabel's motive thus appears to have been based less on a willingness to forgive boyish behavior than on a desire to protect a young countryman who had come with her to Castile. That she so quickly reinstated him to her son's service suggests that she must have been personally fond of Ruy Gómez. It may also have indicated a wish to maintain a Portuguese presence in Philip's immediate household, which was dominated by her husband's adviser, the stern Castilian Zúñiga.^[40]

The career at court of Ruy Gómez de Silva was preserved at this critical juncture by the empress's mercy and patronage. Neither for the first time nor for the last, Ruy Gómez enjoyed fortune's favor at a decisive point in his life. Evidently he made good use of his second chance; in 1539, after the empress's death, his continuance at court was assured when his salary as trinchante was doubled by order of Charles V.^[41]

The historical record yields little information about Ruy Gómez de Silva during the next several years. The favor of the empress had kept him in close proximity to the prince, but there is no reason to suppose that Ruy Gómez enjoyed Philip's particular favor in the decade after his altercation with Avellaneda. For example, the transport manifest for a journey of Philip's household from Valladolid to Madrid in the early 1540s reveals that Ruy Gómez was assigned one cart. This was a paltry allotment, considering that even his co-trinchante , Juan de Benavides, was granted two carts and the major figures of the household, ten times that many.^[42] Perhaps attempting to eke out his meager wages, Ruy Gómez in 1543 solicited the prince, through Francisco de los Cobos, to grant him the confiscated goods of two convicted murderers from the town of Alcaraz.^[43]

Ruy Gómez de Silva took part in the festivities surrounding the wedding of Philip to María of Portugal in 1543, but again there is no mention of special favor. He did, however, demonstrate his facility at some of the courtly arts. He was one of the principal dancers at the gala in Salamanca on the night after the formal betrothal of the prince and princess.^[44] A tournament held soon after in Valladolid to celebrate the wedding was the scene of a more splendid display. Ruy Gómez and the prince of Asculi (Don Luis de Leiva) entered the arena together, twenty-third and twenty-fourth among the thirty-one knights who participated. They were resplendent in black velvet and cloth of gold and came onto the field accompanied

by a number of pages attired in matching velvet livery and serenaded by six minstrels riding a decorated chariot pulled by white horses.^[45] The prizes in the tournament were monopolized by the highest-born—Philip himself, the admiral of Castile, the duke of Alba—but Ruy Gómez had at least made a dazzling entrance before the very select crowd on hand.^[46]

By 1547 Ruy Gómez had risen in the prince's estimation. In May of that year Philip, governing in the emperor's absence, granted him one-eighth of the royal revenues from the mines of Xerez de Badajoz (Jerez de los Caballeros). This grant, of uncertain value, was predated to 1 January 1546 and was to run for a period of ten years.^[47] Later that year Ruy Gómez was entrusted with a diplomatic mission. Philip sent him to Charles V to congratulate the emperor on his victory at Mühlberg and to wish him a speedy recovery from a serious illness. Ruy Gómez traveled by post-relay and found the emperor at Augsburg. Charles sent him back to Spain with orders for Philip to proceed to the Low Countries as soon as possible. There father and son would be reunited, and the prince could tour his future northern states. After a "very swift" return journey Ruy Gómez rejoined Philip's court at Monzón, where the cortes of Aragon were being celebrated.^[48] Evidently Philip was pleased with his performance. Back in Valladolid the next spring, he rewarded Ruy Gómez for "his many and constant services" by increasing his share of the revenues from the Xerez mines.^[49]

Also in 1548 Ruy Gómez was named to a prestigious post for the first time. In August of that year the Castilian court was reorganized in the Burgundian style, with its more elaborate ceremonial. This innovation was likely intended to prepare Philip for the usages of the northern courts that he would soon visit. Charles V put the duke of Alba in charge of the reorganization, naming him mayordomo mayor of Philip's household. Among the new posts created in the changeover was that of sumiller de corps . Ruy Gómez de Silva was one of the five initial sumilleres . His colleagues were prominent Castilian noblemen, including Alba's eldest son and the count of Cifuentes, and another former trinchante , Juan de Benavides, later marquis of Cortes.^[50]

The post of sumiller conferred little formal authority but provided something even more valuable at court: constant access to the prince. According to the historian Ballesteros y Beretta,

The service incumbent upon the sumiller de corps was that most immediate to the person of the sovereign. . . . He slept in the same chamber, on a low pallet that the valets set in place and removed at the appropriate times. He followed His Majesty everywhere, even if the king was entering the queen's rooms, and they [the sumilleres ] could never lose sight of him, except at a direct signal from the monarch; in this case they would bow and retire to the next room.^[51]

Presumably the five sumilleres observed a rotation in these duties. An order of precedence existed among the five named in 1548, with Ruy Gómez holding the second position, behind Don Antonio de Rojas.^[52]

Within a few years the system was altered so that there was but a single sumiller de corps , while the other gentlemen of the bedchamber had to be content with a lesser title. Ruy Gómez de Silva became first sumiller late in 1551 and was the sole holder of this title until his death in 1573.^[53] This ceremonial post, which kept Ruy Gómez in close proximity to Philip, was perhaps the principal key to his influence at court.

No documents or contemporary histories indicate directly why Ruy Gómez de Silva rose to comparative prominence by the late 1540s. Garibay and Cabrera simply observed that the prince grew up in the company of Ruy Gómez and that the two became very close.^[54] Relying on these authorities, Prescott drafted the clearest statement of the prevailing wisdom:

He [Ruy Gómez] had been early received as a page in the imperial household, where, though he was several years older than Philip, his amiable temper, his engaging manners, and, above all, that tact which made his fortune in later life, soon rendered him the prince's favorite.^[55]

Years later the apologist of William of Orange alleged a less flattering basis for the favor enjoyed by Ruy Gómez. According to this scurrilous source Philip was, at the time of his marriage to María of Portugal, already married to "the Ladie Isabella Osorius," by whom the precocious sixteen-year-old prince had fathered two or three children. Orange's defender further asserted that Ruy Gómez would attest to the reality of this marriage, "for he was the procurer thereof, whereby also he obtayned that great credite, and so much goodes in Spaine."^[56]

This tale is likely an invention,^[57] but it points indirectly to a more

plausible reason for the prince's liking for Ruy Gómez de Silva. Consider the situation of Prince Philip in his early adolescence. His mother had recently died, and his father was usually absent; his governance and instruction were in the hands of much older, dour men, like Zúñiga and the tutor Juan Martínez Siliceo. It is not farfetched to assume that, under these circumstances, the prince was lonely and felt the need of more youthful and lighthearted companionship. Ruy Gómez de Silva was one of the youngest men in his household and had been a favorite of the prince's mother. He was an accomplished horseman and dancer, a handsome young man of medium height and slender frame, "graceful and full of elegance in all his movements."^[58]

Philip may have come to regard Ruy Gómez rather like an older brother, a somewhat worldly confidant, playmate and model. There is no way to know for sure, but it is interesting to note that Lerma and Olivares owed much of their ascendancy with Philip's son and grandson to similar sets of circumstances. Each of the great seventeenth-century validos initiated his conquest of power by playing the worldly indulgent uncle to a sheltered and introverted young prince.^[59] Perhaps there was even a faint glimmer of truth in the charge made in Orange's Apology . In the next century Olivares would be charged with having corrupted the prince in order to enhance his own favor, and the rumors, however blatantly fueled by jealousy of the valido's influence, cannot be entirely dispelled.^[60] By the same token, it is neither demonstrable nor inherently implausible that Ruy Gómez may have taken charge of his prince's initiation into worldly pleasures and debaucheries; certainly, decades later he implied some knowledge of the king's "past amours" to the French ambassador Saint-Sulpice.^[61]

It is also worth noting that Ruy Gómez's favored position became cemented in the long period of Philip's political apprenticeship, while he acted as a semi-autonomous ruler under the surveillance of Charles V and his ministers. In 1543 Charles for the first time left the young prince as regent in Spain. The emperor made it clear that Philip was to leave his childhood behind:

Moreover, son, you must alter your life and intercourse with people. Until now all your retinue have been boys, and your pleasures those which are enjoyed among such. From now on, you are not to gather them near you, except to tell them how they are to serve. Your princi-

pal retinue is to be comprised of old men and others of reasonable age, who have virtues and good practices and examples, and the pleasures that you take shall be with such men and moderate.^[62]

Philip was to rely on Francisco do los Cobos, the churchmen Tavera and Valdés and the duke of Alba for political and military counsel and on Zúñiga and Siliceo in his private affairs. While he recommended these men to his son, Charles also pointed out their faults and told Philip to be on guard against their self-serving ways.^[63] Left alone in this situation, it is not surprising that Philip turned for friendship and advice to a man more nearly his own age, a man who, moreover, did not share the awesome authority and daunting experience of the advisers left him by his father.

Ruy Gómez de Silva was no longer a boy, and thus association with him did not contradict Charles V's instructions, but his lack of independent stature and fortune may have enhanced his appeal in the eyes of the insecure Philip. His counselors, even Alba, who was much younger than the rest, were all men of high status and long experience of government and war in the emperor's service. Philip doubtless felt intimidated by them, and he may have resented the fact that, while they showed him deference, these men still reported his decisions and actions to his absent father. He must have welcomed a companion who, as Cabrera wrote of Ruy Gómez, "attended upon him without harassing him or obstructing him when he desired solitude . . . [and] held him in uniform respect in all his actions."^[64]

Ruy Gómez de Silva, then, owed much of his success to being the right man in the right place at the right time. He was raised from obscurity because Philip needed a man of his own in the midst of a retinue selected by, and primarily loyal to, his father. Ruy Gómez's case provides a classic illustration of the principle later enunciated by his protégé, Antonio Pérez: "The condition of being the favorite is dependent upon Fortune and the will of another."^[65]

Ruy Gómez enjoyed another stroke of good fortune in that he had won the prince's support at a juncture when the field of opportunity for a man on the rise was considerable. His open emergence into favor coincided with the disappearance of the grand old men of Philip's household. Cardinal Tavera died in 1545; Zúñiga and García de Loaysa, in 1546; and Francisco de los Cobos, in 1547.^[66] Moreover, Don Alvaro de Córdoba, identified by López de Gómara

as Philip's favorite, died in 1545 as well.^[67] Once the old advisers were gone, Alba, the youngest of the emperor's men, emerged by default and by dint of his imperious personality as the leading figure in the reorganized household of 1548. In the words of his biographer, he had become by 1550 "a true caudillo, a soldier with a large political following . . . [at] the nexus of three key institutions, the court, the army, and the Church."^[68] Within a few years, though, Philip's favor would transform Ruy Gómez de Silva into a figure capable of standing up to Alba, and the court became polarized around these two men after Philip became king.^[69]

Philip, coming into his majority and already a widower,^[70] had dealt with affairs of government in his father's absence for five years and was now in a position to assert himself more forcefully. In elevating a man of his own to counterbalance Alba, Philip, the ever-dutiful son, was in part implementing his father's advice to guard against becoming too dependent on great nobles and to use Alba's talents without succumbing to his pretensions.^[71] At the same time this may be seen as an expression of submerged resentment toward the absent, dominant and omnicompetent father and as an arrangement of a test of wills through surrogates.

Even when he had emerged as a man of some importance, though, Ruy Gómez was still far from being the social equal of the court's principal figures. He had no private wealth or prospects, and his noble status itself was disparaged by the Castilians. Throughout his life, even when he had become a grandee of Spain, Ruy Gómez de Silva was denied the courtesy title of "don," which was accorded to humble hidalgos of Castilian birth.^[72]

The title of sumiller was a first step in imparting stature to the prince's man. Others soon followed. Also in 1548, Philip arranged a match for Ruy Gómez with Doña Teresa de Toledo, the sister of Gómez Dávila, the second marquis of Velada. The prince granted Ruy Gómez 10,000 escudos to provide him with some substance in the eyes of the bride's family. Nevertheless, Doña Teresa chose to enter a convent rather than marry him.^[73] She may have had a genuine religious bent—there were several nuns in the family—or the convent may have been the only graceful escape from a marriage, arranged by the prince, that was considered demeaning. Either way, this jilting must have been a blow to Ruy Gómez's ego and to his and Philip's hopes for his social advancement.

After this disappointment Ruy Gómez left Spain as a member of Philip's retinue on his journey to be sworn as heir in his father's northern realms.^[74] In November 1548 the royal party was carried from Catalonia to Italy on Andrea Doria's fleet. Most of the fifty-eight galleys of this flotilla were assigned for the transport of the dignitaries in Philip's entourage, their gear and households; one was designated solely for Ruy Gómez's use, which provides some measure of his stature.^[75] Moreover, while his baggage traveled in this private ship, Ruy Gómez himself was among a handful of luminaries who sailed with Philip in the royal galley.^[76] In January 1549, the prince's party left Milan on the overland journey to the north and reached Brussels at the beginning of April, having crossed Austria and southern Germany. Ruy Gómez was an active participant in the round of tourneys and balls that accompanied the royal tour, revealing himself along the way as a partisan of fancy dress. In Milan he rode in the cane-play (juego de cañas ) outfitted as a Moor in the squadron of the count of Luna, while at Ghent on 18 July 1549 he danced in the guise of a German alongside ten companions cross-dressing as "damas tudescas ."^[77] The following spring Ruy Gómez was himself the organizer of a tournament in Brussels to commemorate the completion of Philip's circuit of the Low Countries.^[78] At the end of Philip's sojourn in northern Europe, Ruy Gómez received a commission as captain of horse from Charles V as a reward for his services to the emperor and his son. He retained this honorary command of a company of cavalry until his death.^[79]

The prince and his entourage returned to Spain in the summer of 1551. Soon afterward Philip, with his father's approval, granted Ruy Gómez de Silva the encomienda of Argamasilla in the military order of Calatrava.^[80] There is no reliable record of the value of this Manchegan encomienda , which, like all those of the three orders, was a territorial lordship held essentially in fee from the king as grand master of the orders. It is likely that the encomienda was worth 1,000-2,000 ducats per year to Ruy Gómez, after the payment of various mandatory imposts and the salaries of parish priests and estate agents.^[81]

Ruy Gómez's career as a knight and encomendero in the military orders was long and rather confusing, so a synopsis is in order. When he entered the order of Calatrava in 1540, Ruy Gómez had already been, for an unspecified time, a caballero of Alcántara.^[82] En-

trance in Calatrava necessitated that he put aside his habit of Alcántara. Perhaps he had been nominated for an encomienda or presented with some other inducement to switch orders. Evidently he reversed his course and returned to Alcántara sometime in the 1540s, since he had to resign that order's encomienda of Esparragal in order to accept Argamasilla around 1551.^[83] This pattern continued throughout his life: he was subsequently to hold the Alcántara encomienda of Herrera, which he resigned to his young second son in 1571 in order to take up the post of clavero in the order of Calatrava. This is an exceptional example of mobility within the orders. It can be assumed that each successive encomienda brought greater status and more income, culminating in the very lucrative clavería , worth 9,600 ducats per year in 1573.^[84]

The income of Argamasilla must have been quite welcome to Ruy Gómez in the early 1550s. His increasingly prominent position at court imposed considerable expenses. In 1552, for example, he was the organizer and sponsor of a great joust at Toro, where the court was assembled for the wedding of Philip's sister to a Portuguese prince.^[85] More important than the income, however, was the status of knight and encomendero of a military order, which certified Ruy Gómez as a man of ancient noble and Old Christian lineage. The great families of Castile might resent him as a foreign upstart, but they could not cast aspersions on his ancestry without calling into doubt the hábitos that were the tangible badges of their own purity of blood.^[86] The encomienda of Argamasilla also imparted considerable additional status, since its holder was ex officio president of the general chapter of the order of Calatrava, and Ruy Gómez indeed presided over this assembly when it convened in 1552.^[87] Even so, Philip desired still greater distinction for his favorite, so he asked his father to grant Ruy Gómez a wealthier encomienda , a request Charles V ignored, at least in the short term.^[88]

Ruy Gómez de Silva was still unmarried, and thus, despite his position at court and in the order of Calatrava, he was a man without substance independent of the prince's favor and without useful family ties in Castile. He had no title, nor a personal fortune nor prospects of one. The position that was his primary asset on the marriage market was personal and not hereditary. Even Philip's intervention had not been sufficient to secure a match for him in 1548. Ruy Gómez continued to press for a marriage for himself while he

was with Philip in the north. He enlisted the aid of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in Siena, in negotiations that were proceeding in 1550;^[89] in all likelihood he urged his case with Philip at every opportunity.

When Ruy Gómez returned to Spain in 1551 he was more clearly than before the favorite of a prince who was now grown and almost undoubtedly would be king. His heightened status enhanced his marriageability, and, with Philip's assistance, he soon arranged a very satisfactory match, with Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda. She was the daughter of the second count of Mélito, (another) Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and the Countess Doña Catalina de Silva, the sister of the fifth count of Cifuentes. Born in 1540, Doña Ana was a most desirable bride, "because of her blood, her beauty, and the inheritance of so noble a House, one of the most-sought-after marriages of that time."^[90] She was the only child of the count and countess of Mélito, and in the early 1550s it was already very probable that there would be no more heirs.^[91] Thus she stood to inherit a great entailed fortune and could make her husband and their heirs the masters of a major noble house.

It is not known who first proposed that she should be married to Ruy Gómez de Silva. There is, however, no evidence to support Maltby's contention that "the house of Mendoza" arranged the marriage as a political stratagem to increase the family's influence at court: "[I]n the virtually landless favorite [Ruy Gómez] they saw the kind of opportunity that comes but once in a generation, and courted him with almost indecent haste."^[92] The Mendozas were an immense and widely ramified family, and no indication exists that they acted as a concerted group on this marriage or, for that matter, on any other issue. Doña Ana's father was ambitious for himself, however, and his daughter's hand was a useful bargaining chip for the attainment of his personal goals.

In all likelihood the initial suggestion for the match came from Prince Philip, who was eager to see Ruy Gómez well and wealthily married. In any event, the prince entrusted the negotiations for the marriage to the prospective bride's maternal uncle, Juan de Silva, count of Cifuentes. The count was a lifelong friend of Ruy Gómez, with whom he had served at court since childhood.^[93]

Cifuentes successfully concluded the match—by one account, the count and countess of Mélito accepted the offer "joyfully"^[94] —and

the capitulations were signed in Madrid on 18 April 1553.^[95] From the terms of the contract it may be judged that, overjoyed or not, the count of Mélito drove a hard bargain. Ruy Gómez could hardly complain, though, since the prince met each of Mélito's demands and presented his favorite with a marriage that was designed to confer private stature in Castile commensurate with his public position at the court.

Ruy Gómez de Silva's marriage marked the culmination of his rise from obscurity and set the stage for the next phase of his life. In the following decade he would attain the stature of a true privado and the king's chief minister and would take the first steps toward becoming a landed magnate in his own right. His marital connection with the house of Mélito and, through it, with the high Castilian aristocracy, was to be crucial to the future course of his career and especially to the establishment of his own house of Pastrana. It would be well, before turning to the specific terms of the marriage, to examine Doña Ana's pedigree and prospects in some detail in order to appreciate fully the value of this match.

2
A Marriage Contract

Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda was a great match in the marriage market of the court of Castile. She stood to inherit the house of Mélito, a cadet line of the Mendoza family that traced its ancestry to the great Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza (1428–1495). The fifth of seven sons of the first marquis of Santillana, the cardinal was renowned less for his spirituality than for his grandeur and political acumen. As cardinal-archbishop of Seville he served as captaingeneral of the Isabelline forces in the war of succession of 1474–1476 and won great influence with the victorious Catholic Kings. He was rewarded in 1483 with the primate see of Toledo, acted as grand chancellor of Castile and was instrumental in the establishment of the Inquisition. The cardinal was so prominent in politics and government that Pedro Martir dubbed him "the third king of Spain."^[1]

In addition to his public accomplishments, Pedro González de Mendoza fathered three sons. The first two, Rodrigo and Diego, were borne by Doña Mencia de Lemus, a Portuguese lady-in-waiting to Henry IV's queen.^[2] These sons, and a third by another noblewoman, were legitimized by the pope and by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1489.^[3] Rodrigo served with valor in the Granadine war and was created first marquis of Cenete and count of Cid in 1491. His father had previously established a mayorazgo for him, comprised for the most part of properties situated in the Kingdom of Valencia. The marquis died in Valencia in 1523, leaving three minor daughters as his heirs.^[4]

The second son, Diego, was to become the founder of the house of Mélito. He was raised in the cardinal's castle of Manzanares, and in 1489 his father established a mayorazgo for him, comprising the town of La Puebla de Almenara (southeast of Tarancón) and a third of the royal tercias of the city of Guadalajara.^[5] Like his brother Rodrigo, Diego fought in the campaign of Granada. In 1500 he went to Naples as first captain of infantry in the army of the "Great Cap-

tain" Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. He fought with great distinction throughout the campaign and, especially at Rubo and Cerignola, "performed notable deeds." In 1503 the Great Captain rewarded Diego with the County of Mélito (Mileto), which had been confiscated to punish its rebellious previous owner, Jacopo Sanseverino. Ferdinand the Catholic confirmed this grant later in the same year and again in 1507, after the Treaty of Granada had restored the estates of most of the Neapolitan rebels.^[6]

Diego returned to Spain as count of Mélito and of Aliano and grand justiciar of the Kingdom of Naples.^[7] Subsequently he served Charles V as Lieutenant for the Crown of Aragon. Most of his efforts in this post were devoted to the affairs of Valencia, where, despite some initial bungling, he put down the revolt of the Germanías . Later he was a counselor of State.^[8] The count of Mélito married Doña Ana de la Cerda y Castro, his second cousin (she was a great-granddaughter of the marquis of Santillana) and the niece of the first duke of Medinaceli. Her father, Don Iñigo de la Cerda, had attempted and failed in 1501 to seize his elder brother's duchy by force. After the death of their parents Doña Ana and her brother made an agreement on the partition of their lordships (señoríos ) of Miedes and Mandayona that left her with the lion's share, presumably as a marriage portion.^[9] A lord and military hero of the stature of Diego de Mendoza was, despite his illegitimate origins, an extremely good match for the daughter of a rather disreputable younger son.

This marriage produced eight children, of whom three sons and two daughters survived into adulthood.^[10] In 1529 Don Diego and Doña Ana founded a mayorazgo for their eldest son. The couple had been contemplating such a move for fifteen years at least; they were first granted royal permission to form an entail in 1514.^[11] The new mayorazgo of Mélito combined into a single inalienable entity Diego's patrimonial estate, his Italian county and other acquisitions, and the properties that Ana had brought to the marriage. This was a substantial set of holdings. The Italian component of the mayorazgo comprised complete judicial and economic control over an area of Calabria equivalent to the jurisdictions of eight modern communes. In Castile Diego had acquired perpetual juros secured on the alcabalas of many New Castilian towns and villages, which, at least on paper, were worth about 3,000 ducats a year. These juros were in-

cluded in the mayorazgo , along with the town of La Puebla de Almenara and the Guadalajaran tercias bequeathed by the cardinal. The mayorazgo was further enhanced by the de la Cerda properties, Miedes and Mandayona, with their hinterlands and taxes, in the diocese of Sigüenza, and by the "cassas prinzipales" that the couple had built in Toledo's Santa Leocadia parish.^[12] In 1553 this mayorazgo was thought to generate yearly revenues of more than 22,000 ducats.^[13]

The first count of Mélito died in 1536, and his titles descended to his son Diego Hurtado de Mendoza.^[14] In 1538 the second count married Doña Catalina de Silva y Andrade, the daughter of Fernando de Silva, fourth count of Cifuentes and a prominent figure at court.^[15] Cifuentes had only two surviving children, Catalina and a son, Juan. For reasons that are unclear—perhaps Juan was frail?—Catalina was for many years considered the probable heiress of the substantial house of Cifuentes.^[16] She bore her husband one child, a daughter, in June, 1540, at Cifuentes.^[17] This daughter, Ana, was baptized with the surname of Silva, in honor of her maternal ancestors. The count and countess of Mélito doubtless expected to have sons to carry the patrilineal names. No siblings were ever born, though, and their daughter passed into history as Doña Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda; she came to use the apellidos that had been mandated by the founders of the mayorazgo of Mélito for its holders.^[18]

Little is known of Ana's childhood. The traditional authorities state that she was raised in the household of her maternal grandparents in Cifuentes and Alcalá de Henares. This story is called in question, however, by the fact that her grandfather was a widower at the time of Ana's birth, died when she was five, and in the interim was occupied at the peripatetic court as the governor of Charles V's young daughters. All writers on the subject agree that Ana was a spoiled only child, but they cite no evidence for this except her willful character as a mature woman.^[19]

Ana first appears in the sources as, in effect, a commodity, the object of the marriage negotiations completed in 1553. She was two months short of her thirteenth birthday when the agreement was made to marry her to a man as old as her father.^[20] There is no indication that she was consulted at all about the match, although she was doubtless at least shown her future husband. Nothing is known of

the course of the negotiations, which were conducted by her uncle the count of Cifuentes. In view of Ana's status and desirability as a probable heiress, it is likely that she was the object of other suits beforehand or concurrently. Her youth was no impediment; marriages could be, and regularly were, arranged for children seven years old and even younger.^[21] She was, moreover, said to be "very pretty although she is small."^[22] There is every reason to believe that Ana could have been matched with a man of much higher station than Ruy Gómez de Silva. Her paternal aunts, whose expectations had been humble in comparison, had been married to titled noblemen, the counts of Concentaina and of Chinchón.^[23]

The formal marriage contract itself points to the principal reason why the count of Mélito chose to marry his daughter to a relatively obscure Portuguese courtier. The document bears, in addition to the signatures of Mélito, his wife and Ruy Gómez, those of Prince Philip and his secretary. Significantly, its title is "What is agreed and capitulated between our lord the Prince and [the] Count and Countess of Melito regarding the marriage that has been negotiated between Ruy Gómez de Silva . . . and D^a Ana de Mendoza, daughter of the said Counts."^[24] The principal parties to this agreement were not, as one would expect, the prospective groom and father-in-law, but instead the latter and the prince. "In order to effect this illustrious marriage," Salazar noted, "Philip interposed all of his authority."^[25] The marriage may have been Philip's idea to begin with, and in essence the prince acted in loco parentis for the much older Ruy Gómez when it came to striking the final bargain. It was usual for the royal head of the household to approve and intervene in the marriages of officials of the court, but in this case, as we shall see, the prince went to great lengths and considerable expense to forge an advantageous match for his favorite.

The terms of the compact as written were quite simple. For the time being the couple was to be betrothed "por palabras de presente," which would place a rigid impediment against either of them marrying anyone else. This form of betrothal was widely regarded in pre-Tridentine Europe as constituting a valid marriage without the necessity of a subsequent ecclesiastical ceremony to bind the alliance.^[26] Nevertheless, it was agreed that Ruy Gómez and Ana would be wed "en [h]az de la santa Madre Yglesia" and the

marriage consummated within two years of the date of the contract (18 April 1553).^[27] Presumably the delay was in deference to the bride's tender age.

The economic agreement was also quite straightforward. Prince Philip agreed to endow the couple with income of 6,000 ducats per year in perpetuity. This income was to commence within two years. It was assumed that Ana would inherit the estate of Mélito and that when she did the royal grant would be added to its mayorazgo and passed on to the couple's heirs. If there were no children and Ruy Gómez predeceased Ana, she was to collect the 6,000 ducats for the remainder of her life and could bequeath it to her offspring by a subsequent marriage; only if she died childless would the income cease upon her death. Ruy Gómez was to have the 6,000 ducats if the marriage was dissolved. The door was not closed on the possibility that a male heir would forestall Ana's claim to the Mélito inheritance. In this case her father would be obliged to provide her with a dote of 100,000 gold ducats, which, along with the royal grant of income, would form the basis of a new mayorazgo for the couple and their descendants.^[28] For his part Ruy Gómez agreed to give Ana an arras^[29] of 10,000 ducats. He also pledged that, should his mother-in-law be widowed, he and Ana would see to the repayment of her dote and arras^[30] and would provide her with an income of one million maravedís (2,666 ducats) a year, situated on the most reliable revenues of the mayorazgo of Mélito.^[31]

In addition to signing the capitulations and pledging the gift of the 6,000-ducat juro , Philip made the extraordinary gesture a few days later of riding from the Pardo hunting lodge to Alcalá to attend the betrothal ceremony, where he served as best man.^[32] Beyond the pleasure of bestowing great favor on his friend, it is difficult to see what advantage the prince secured from his very prominent role in arranging this marriage. Experienced observers seem to have regarded his generosity as excessive. Juan de Samano informed Eraso, who was with the emperor, of the marriage and the revenue bestowed on the couple, but he asked that this information remain confidential, since "I would not want to be the source" through which Charles V learned of the affair. "This is a favor such as His Majesty [the emperor] has not made in his time to any privado of his own. I would dearly like to know how it shall seem to His Majesty."^[33]

On the other hand, the match seems to have afforded several distinct advantages to the count of Mélito. For acceding to what the prince so obviously wanted, hardly an impolitic move in itself, Mélito received in return an advantageous modification of the financial arrangements usual in a marriage of this importance. He did not have to pay a dote in cash to his daughter's husband. Instead, Ruy Gómez would have to be content with Ana's claim to inherit the Mélito title and estates and with the cash provided by Philip, which must be seen both as a marriage portion paid by a surrogate and as the provision of a respectable fortune for the landless favorite.

Although precise figures are not available, there is reason to believe that the count was in no position to pay a large marriage portion in the early 1550s, and thus he probably welcomed this arrangement. In those years Mélito faced a battery of challenges, initiated by family members, to his possession of his estates. The most serious of these was a suit brought in the Collateral Council of the Kingdom of Naples by his mother, alleging that, after his father's death, Mélito had unjustly taken possession of the Italian properties. She argued that they were hers by right for her lifetime, by virtue of the provisions of the will of the first count of Mélito. This suit led, in September 1551, to a court order blocking formal assent to Diego's investiture as count of Mélito. This injunction was soon overthrown, but it was succeeded by another and by the presentation of evidence that Diego had previously acknowledged his mother's claims. By the end of 1551 the suit was bogged down in a legal duel that threatened to drag on for years, as "many writs, provisions, decrees, objections with considered opinions, and proofs were submitted by first one and then the other party." More important, as long as this skirmish lasted the dowager countess was able to collect a portion of the revenues of the estate. Diego's collections were further constricted by embargoes ordered by the court pending resolution of the suit.^[34]

This was not the only legal challenge facing Mélito. His second cousins, the grandchildren of his de la Cerda uncle, were in this period conducting a suit against Mélito and his mother over the possession of Miedes and Mandayona.^[35] The count was also entangled in a web of litigation over the Italian towns of Rapolla, La Amendolea and San Lorenzo. This dispute had a complicated history, beginning in 1518, when Charles V had promised the first

count of Mélito compensation in money and land for the Lucanian County of Aliano. The reversion of this county and title had been awarded to Mélito but was subsequently granted to Antonio Caraffa for political reasons.^[36] The promised recompense was not forthcoming until 1532, when Charles granted Mélito the aforementioned towns, which had been confiscated from disgraced rebels of the Caracciolo and Abenavalo families. The revenue of these properties fell far short of the 3,000 Neapolitan ducats per year pledged in compensation, largely because the emperor stipulated that Lucrecia Caracciolo, the wife of the outlawed lord of San Lorenzo, must be repaid her marriage portion from the proceeds of that estate. It was estimated that her claim would be satisfied by 1540; thereafter the full yield of San Lorenzo would go to the house of Mélito, thus reducing the initial shortfall of about 1,900 ducats per year. The Crown was obligated to make good this and any subsequent deficits.^[37]

The matter did not turn out as planned. After the death of the first count his widow, Ana de la Cerda, claimed these properties as hers, under the terms of her husband's will. In 1539 she founded a mayorazgo for her second son, Gaspar Gastón de la Cerda, that included the towns of Rapolla and Amendolea, reserving their usufruct to herself for life and disqualifying her eldest son from inheriting them.^[38] Next she appears to have sold San Lorenzo to Lucrecia Caracciolo for 14,000 ducats, including the unpaid balance of her marriage portion.^[39] Not surprisingly the second count, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, raised strenuous objections to these proceedings. He claimed the three towns as his own and initiated formal proceedings to take possession of them. Subsequently they became an issue in the suit with his mother.^[40] Then his brother, Gaspar Gastón, brought suit over Rapolla and Amendolea in the Chancillería of Valladolid. Diego succeeded in having this transferred to the Neapolitan courts in 1551 but not in having the suit dismissed.^[41] Meanwhile Mélito sued his mother in Naples to block her sale of San Lorenzo. With the outcome of this litigation still pending, he gave San Lorenzo to his third brother, Baltasar de la Cerda, who in turn sold it to Caracciolo for 17,000 ducats. This maneuver short-circuited their mother's sale of the town, which had been judicially postponed for the duration of the suit.^[42]

The count of Mélito may have hoped—and indeed may have

been encouraged to hope—that his marriage alliance with the prince's favorite could help to procure a favorable disposition of the litigation that encumbered his estate. The resolution of the suit with his mother gives some reason to suspect that such hopes were not entirely in vain. In early 1552 the suit had taken a turn for the worse, from Mélito's point of view, when the emperor ordered an extension of the time period allowed for registration in Naples of various renunciations of his rights made by Mélito years earlier in favor of his mother and brother. In the meantime Mélito had repudiated these renunciations, and the time allotted for their registration had expired, but the royal intervention reopened the possibility that they might be validated.^[43] This must have been interpreted by Mélito, and more importantly by the judges in Naples, as a sign of the quarter where lay royal favor in the matter.

Nevertheless, the judgment rendered on 8 October 1553 by the Collateral Council was wholly in favor of the count of Mélito. The regents of the council ordered that he could proceed to take full possession "of the whole estate of Mélito and [the] city of Rapolla and territory of Mendolia [sic ]," as rightful firstborn heir and successor of the first count. The claims of his mother and brother were quashed, and the former was ordered to repay to Mélito the estate revenues she had collected since the suit began.^[44] There is no evidence beyond the timing of the judgment to indicate that Mélito's new relationship with Prince Philip had any bearing on the outcome of this suit. It is, however, suggestive that this reversal of the apparent trend of the litigation coincided so closely with the conclusion of the marriage pact.

Although monetary considerations and the strong possibility of benefit from the influence of Philip and Ruy Gómez doubtless swayed Mélito,^[45] further evidence indicates that he received greater proofs of favor in return for his daughter's hand. This is not surprising, since it is clear that Ana's parents regarded the match as a mésalliance. The contract stipulated that the heirs of Ruy Gómez and Ana must bear the apellidos Mendoza y Silva and carry the arms of Mendoza at the right-hand place of honor on their shields.^[46] Such a reversal of names and arms could scarcely have been demanded of a suitor of rank equivalent to Ana's. Furthermore, contrary to the usual custom in such matters, Ana was to live with her parents and not in the house of her new in-laws in the interim between the be-

trothal and the final solemnification of the marriage. As Erika Spivakovsky remarks, "the proud Mendozas would not allow their daughter to go to a more modest house in Portugal."^[47] Nor, what was perhaps more likely, did they want Ana to reside at the prince's court in the absence of a princess and her female household.^[48] There was simply no comparison in wealth and status between the count and countess of Melito and their future son-in-law. In order to pledge 10,000 ducats in arras, a rather ordinary sum by the standards of the great houses of Castile, Ruy Cómez de Silva had to obtain royal permission, which Philip granted, "so that you might promise and give the said arras, notwithstanding that it exceeds the tenth part of your property."^[49]

The bridegroom's position did not entirely compensate for his lack of wealth and social prestige. Ruy Gómez's influence with Philip, though obvious, was a commodity of uncertain long-term value, since Charles V was still in the prime of life and, while intermittent rumors circulated, there was as yet no strong hint that he would abdicate.^[50] Moreover, despite his proximity to the prince, Ruy Gómez was not yet publicly acknowledged as a supremely influential counselor. He held no governmental post, and there was no assurance that he ever would. There was no automatic connection between personal favor and political office. Charles V had not established a tradition of an all-powerful privanza, combining the functions of favorite and minister in one person. Since the time of the comuneros the emperor had tended to leave political administration in the hands of bureaucrats, to the increasing exclusion of courtiers. This casts doubt on the theory, proposed by Maltby and others,^[51] that this marriage was arranged primarily to serve the interests of the house of Mendoza. Spivakovsky bluntly asserts this view:

Ana's father had instigated this marriage, acting upon the suggestion of his relatives. The extensive, power-hungry clan of the Mendozas planned to secure as their political ally the future King's favorite, whose influence over his master was practically limitless.^[52]

This unsupported passage overstates Ruy Gómez's influence at the time and implies what contemporaries could not have known with any certainty about the future. More damning is the fact that the Mendoza "clan," largely because of its very extensiveness and the

sometimes conflicting hungerings for power of various individuals within it, was not a unitary group that met in council to plan grand strategy. Had Ruy Gómez truly been the widely recognized marital catch that Spivakovsky's passage implies, many nobles—among them, doubtless, several Mendozas—would have been vying to marry their daughters to him. Furthermore, Ruy Gómez's father-in-law later insinuated that, far from being pressed by influential relatives to seek this match, he had been forced to sweep aside the objections of his own wife in order to conclude the marriage pact.^[53]

At the same time Philip's clear interest in the match made it awkward if not impossible for the count of Mélito to refuse his daughter's hand to Ruy Gómez. Ana could not be placed in a convent to avoid the marriage, since there was no other heir to the house. Nevertheless, the count was not easily cowed by royal authority: a few years later he openly defied the regent and Charles V's sister.^[54] While it might not be possible to reject Ruy Gómez's suit, pressed with Philip's backing, the count was a sufficiently strong character to exploit the bargaining position that remained to him. The emperor could not be expected to look favorably on his son's actions if they resulted in aggrieving a powerful subject or if they convinced other noblemen that the Crown would trample at will on their rights to marry their daughters as they saw fit. Thus Mélito was able to extract from Philip further concessions, which were not reflected in the formal marriage contract.

Although no existing document outlines the secret capitulations of the marriage agreement, their content can be deduced from subsequent events. In April 1554 the count of Mélito was named viceroy of Aragon by Philip, acting as regent of Spain.^[55] On the first of March of the next year, as the two-year period for ratification of the marriage neared its expiration, Philip, now king of Naples, granted Mélito the Neapolitan title of duke of Francavila. Also at about this time some of his Castilian properties (including a number of villages whose possession was still being legally disputed by Mélito's second cousins) were amalgamated into the marquisate of Algecilla. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was named the first marquis; thereafter the title would be held by the heir-presumptive of the house of Mélito. With these new titles Mélito was also accorded the coveted hereditary status of grandee of Spain.^[56]

Like his forebears, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza seems to have

been eager to serve the Crown in proconsular offices. Unlike them, though, he had little talent for affairs of state. His tenure as viceroy in Aragon came to a disastrous end in 1556, when, in defiance of the Aragonese fueros, he had an accused bandit garroted in the Cárcel de la Manifestación in Zaragoza. This arbitrary act provoked a popular uprising and an unauthorized convocation of the cortes of Aragon. Mendoza took refuge in the city's castle and sent his secretary, Juan de Escobedo, to Valladolid to explain his actions to the princess regent. Both she and the Council of Castile, concerned about keeping Aragon loyal during the war with France, disavowed his actions and censured his behavior. Mélito, now known as Francavila because of his cession of the former title in 1555, was forced to retire ignominiously from Zaragoza, and no new viceroy was sent for three years.^[57]

Despite this miserable performance Francavila was appointed to the Council of State and was named to head the Council of Italy upon its formation in 1558.^[58] In 1564 he was sent once more to the eastern kingdoms, this time as viceroy in Catalonia.^[59] The duke has been aptly described as "violent, thoughtless, incapable of prudence or reflection,"^[60] and contemporaries thought him ill qualified for these prestigious and difficult posts. His merit was bluntly questioned by the Venetian ambassador Leonardo Donato, who doubtless came close to the truth with his observation, regarding the presidency of the Council of Italy, that Francavila "attained this position rather more through the son-in-law's favor than by his own ability." Donato added that Philip was well aware of the deficiencies of his appointee and thus had given him an assistant "who is always present in his stead in the council and expedites all its affairs."^[61]

It appears, then, that Ana's father continued for many years to reap tangible benefits from this alliance. Francavila realized his good fortune, exclaiming in 1557 that "today one could hardly imagine a man in any kingdom more advantageously connected by marriage than I am in this realm."^[62] The groom, Ruy Gómez de Silva, also profited from the private provisions of the marriage contract. On 13 March 1555 his father-in-law signed over to him his Italian estates and the title of count of Mélito. Ruy Gómez was to enjoy the income of these estates, except for a small allowance that would go to Mendoza, and, perhaps more important, would now be able to employ a noble title. In principle this was a perpetual donation,

although in practice its duration was five years. Some practical and financial aspects of this transaction will be examined below.^[63]

A royal document of 1555 states clearly that the cession of the Mélito title and estates to Ruy Gómez comprised part of his marriage contract.^[64] It might be regarded as a sort of marriage portion, in kind rather than cash, for Ana. But since the original capitulations make it quite clear that her dote consisted of her claim to succeed to her father's estate, it seems more correct to regard the cession as part of a quid pro quo for the office and titles bestowed on the new duke of Francavila. The failure to make this agreement public probably stemmed from Philip's desire not to anger his father or other subjects by publicizing the favors he granted to secure his favorite's marriage. It is also very probable that the exact terms of the further concessions were left unresolved in 1553, since even Philip could not have been certain then that in two years' time he would be in a position to grant titles of nobility or major royal offices.

Ruy Gómez de Silva gained some further concessions from his father-in-law that had not been expressly agreed in the marriage contract. In March and April 1554 the count of Mélito signed over two sets of properties to his daughter's husband. The first set included Rapolla, Amendolea and the remainder of Mélito's claim to the 3,000 ducats of yearly revenue promised his father in compensation for Aliano. The second grant comprised three towns—Sacedón, Tamajón and Rotundas—with their jurisdictions and banalités in the New Castilian region of the Alcarria.^[65] The transfer of the Italian towns and claim seems to have been designed to forestall or at least complicate future litigation over these properties that could be brought by Mélito's brother or by Lucrecia Caracciolo. An explicit reason was given for the second grant. Mélito declared that, in the marriage contract, no provision had been made for his daughter's dote except in the case that he were to have a son. Since she was still his sole heir, he said, nothing had changed on this score, but he felt an obligation to provide her with an allowance. This obligation had been "discussed" when the marriage was pacted, and now he was going to fulfill it by giving the three alcarreño towns to Ruy Gómez and Ana. This donation, "por via de alimentos para ayuda a sustentar las cargas de matrimonyo," was to take effect on the feastday of San Juan (June 1554) and would be valid "for all the days of my

life or [that] of the lord Ruy Gómez."^[66] It seems strange that Mélito was so punctilious in observing a monetary obligation that was not recorded in the contract, especially since (as will be seen abundantly below) the count was hardly a doting father. No proof of a connection can be found, but it is perhaps worth nothing that these generous donations were made at the seat of Philip's court shortly prior to Mélito's appointment as viceroy of Aragon.^[67]

The second donation provoked a response from Ruy Gómez that is interesting in two respects. After Mélito signed the donation the notary took a copy of the document to Ruy Gómez, who effused over its generosity and rushed to his father-in-law to kiss his hands. He then asked the notary to draw up a formal document of acceptance, which was duly signed and witnessed.^[68] The latter gesture was not usual and lends some credence to the suspicion that the donation was part of an agreed quid pro quo. Be this as it may, Ruy Gómez's fawning response provides a glimpse of the characteristic methods of this courtier on the make.

A stronger taste of this aspect of Ruy Gómez's character is provided by a letter he wrote in August 1553 to the emperor's secretary, Francisco de Eraso. In this period the two men were developing the close and mutually self-serving relationship that they would maintain for many years.^[69] "The favor that His Highness [su Alteza, i.e., Philip] made me in marrying me was great," Ruy Gómez wrote,

but what has been said there [at the emperor's court] is not enough. It is true that His Highness did me the favor of promising me 6,000 ducats of income, which he is not [presently] giving me, from his household or in anything else; but he will settle with me when he can, as has been said there. From now until two years hence, when the marriage is to be effected, I don't have the right to ask anything from him, and not then either, if His Highness is not so kind as to give me something of his own accord.

Your Grace should understand that if His Majesty [su Magestad, i.e., Charles] should not be pleased to show me some favor on this occasion, from which people might be satisfied that His Majesty approved of the merced that His Highness made me, I would be the most sorrowful man in the world, and thus I entreat Your Grace (since you go so seldom to His Majesty to [ask him to] shift me to another encomienda or to augment my income from it) that you might show how this might be accomplished, and otherwise I may well retire from here in a year. I leave Your Grace to consider it, and whether I should not be correct to presume that he does not value me.^[70]

In a subsequent letter Ruy Gómez complained that "there will always be those who judge my affairs maliciously" and went on to protest that, regardless of what might be said in Brussels, he had received no further gifts from the prince. In fact, since the promised 6,000 ducats per year was not yet being paid, his current income barely allowed a monthly personal expenditure of 300 escudos, over and above the allowance for household expenses paid him as sumiller . "I offer Your Grace this account," he concluded to Eraso, "so that you may know that I am not so very well provided as not to be spending every bit that I receive and whatever else I can scrape together." He hoped that, with this in mind, the secretary would come to his defense "when you see me trampled on this score" and would plead his case for further mercedes from the emperor.^[71]

Despite Ruy Gómez's protestations to Eraso, the prince did not delay long in fulfilling the promises made in the marriage capitulations. In February 1554 he donated to the couple the largely undeveloped lands between San Cristóbal and Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife. This property was said to return an income of 8,000 ducats per year. This was an estimate, though, and probably a wishful one at that, since the governor of the Canaries was ordered to have the lands surveyed to determine how large a grant would be necessary to produce that amount of revenue. The grant included irrigation rights, but an additional provision stated that if insufficient irrigable land was found to exist on Tenerife, the grant could be rounded out with lands on La Palma.^[72]

In the marriage contract Philip had promised the couple 6,000 ducats in revenues in Castile. The amount granted them in the Canaries was greater, in order to defray the added costs of administration outside the peninsula. It was stipulated that, if the Tenerife property yielded less than 8,000 ducats per year, the king would make good the shortfall from the "rentas de Castilla" at the rate of 3/4 of the amount of the deficit.^[73]

Nothing is known of the outcome of this donation, since it was superseded in 1558 by a grant of 6,000 ducats of yearly income from the yield of the alcabalas and tercias of the Castilian marquisate of Villena.^[74] No clear reason was given for this substitution, but two explanations suggest themselves. First, the Tenerife properties may have been found to be worth much less than 8,000 ducats per year, especially in their unimproved state. Second, the management and

improvement of the Canary lands would have demanded considerable supervision by Ruy Gómez or his agents. The original grant suggested that these lands would be suitable for sugar cultivation, which of course requires considerable capitalization and organization.^[75] Ruy Gómez was a courtier, not an entrepreneur, and doubtless greatly preferred the lesser but guaranteed income from the Villena revenues, which would be collected and paid by the royal treasury, to the chancy prospect of developing an island wasteland. The initial grant, in Philip's view, must have seemed at least partially justified as an internal improvement project; the final form of the donation was simply an alienation of public revenues to a private person.

Although Philip fulfilled his promises, neither Eraso nor the emperor seems to have acquiesced to Ruy Gómez's plea for a sign of imperial favor. Given everything that the bridegroom stood to gain from the agreement pacted with the prince, his request for more seems shamelessly impertinent. Moreover, his threat to withdraw from public life was transparently hollow. Philip, not Charles, was his ticket to further honors and wealth; if he could maintain his relationship with the prince, the emperor would eventually become entirely irrelevant to his prospects.

Ruy Gómez de Silva must have realized this, and it is difficult to view his lamentations to Eraso as anything but symptoms of importunate greed for patronage. The prince's favorite, it appears, would not shrink from attempting to exploit any possible avenue of advancement, and he was not much concerned about the image that might result from such unbridled grubbing for favor. His further career illustrates the profitability of this approach and provides us with a glimpse of the workings of a court in which blatant spoilsmanship did not redound to the detriment of its practitioner, at least if the man on the make was as skilled as Ruy Gómez de Silva.

3
The King's Man

Early in the summer of 1554 the Infante Don Carlos, a boy of nine, was brought to the Castilian town of Benavente. There he awaited his father, Prince Philip, who would pass through en route to La Coruña and thence to England and his marriage to Queen Mary. The town had been richly decorated in preparation for this royal reunion and farewell. As they entered Benavente the members of the infante's 's household were impressed by the great houses, some of them "very sumptuous," that lined the main street. They were particularly pleased by the facades of the houses on the right-hand side, which had been decorated with "very finished and beautiful effigies, in the style of medallions." On the upper level were depicted the emperor, Prince Philip and Don Carlos; below them were six portraits of court luminaries, including, in a central position, a likeness of Ruy Gómez de Silva.^[1]

This was a striking indication of the public stature of the newly married Ruy Gómez. Evidently the count of Benavente and the leading citizens of his town numbered the Portuguese courtier among the handful of men closest to Philip. Only certain knowledge of the prince's partiality to Ruy Gómez could have induced them to have his portrait placed alongside those of men of much nobler lineage, like the count of Feria and the marquis of Pescara. His position was secure, at least to the extent that no one would openly question that he belonged in such company. This evidence is borne out by the events of the 1550s, for as Philip assumed the kingship of his far-flung realms, Ruy Gómez de Silva became ever more clearly his chief minister and confidant.

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The ink was barely dry on his own marriage contract when Ruy Gómez de Silva set out for Portugal in the summer of 1553 to conclude a match between Prince Philip and the Portuguese Infanta María. That Ruy Gómez was entrusted with such a mission reflects the prince's confidence in him as well as his obvious qualifications as an emissary to the court of Lisbon. The negotiations were slowed, however, by wrangling over the dowry. Still, the marriage had nearly been agreed in August 1553 when Philip became aware of the opportunity presented by the accession of Mary Tudor to the English throne. The prince quickly and rather clumsily suspended the Portuguese negotiations and thus freed himself to seek the hand of the English queen.^[2]

The arrangements for the English marriage were made in the subsequent fall and winter by representatives of the emperor's court in Brussels, most notably the imperial ambassador in London, Simon Renard. Neither the prince nor his advisers actively participated in the negotiations. Philip's misgivings about the match are well known, but, as an obedient son, in the end he resolved to play the part the emperor had assigned him. Nevertheless, he delayed half a year (purposely, in the view of many observers) before finally leaving Spain for England in mid-July 1554.^[3]

Ruy Gómez de Silva was a member of the entourage that accompanied Philip to England, along with the other prominent household officials—Alba as mayordomo mayor, the caballerizo mayor Don Antonio de Toledo, the chaplain Fray Alonso de Castro—and a sizable portion of their staffs. A considerable number of grandees also elected to make the trip, doubtless attracted by the liberal ayudas de costa Philip promised all members of the retinue, and encouraged by the consideration that those who remained in Spain would be cut off from other forms of the prince's patronage.^[4] Philip anticipated that his entire entourage would amount to about 3,000 people and 1,500 horses and beasts of burden. He seems to have regarded this as a rather austere following: "I am persuaded to take only the members of my household since, being few in number, it will be that much more possible to govern and get along according to the custom of the natives."^[5]

This question of adaptability to English ways troubled a Spanish observer in London in early 1554. Don Juan Hurtado de Mendoza advised the bishop of Arras that Philip "must bring no soldiers, and

only such courtiers as are prepared to be meek and long-suffering."^[6] This was a tall order, given the temperament of the Castilian nobles. Not surprisingly, friction between the Spaniards and their hosts in England was considerable. Some felt slighted because the English household appointed by Mary had usurped many of their customary duties at Philip's side. Ruy Gómez de Silva complained that "if any of our number attempts to perform any service, they [the English staff] take it ill and do not wish to allow it to be done." The bulk of the household brought from Castile were left stranded along Philip's route inland and were not even present at the wedding in Winchester.^[7] Obviously they were resentful at this exclusion from the festivities. One Spaniard grumbled that even Alba, the mayordomo mayor, was not being allowed to fulfill all of his duties. When the king dined in public, attended by Englishmen, the duke "did hand him the napkin, but did not act as master of the household nor carry his staff of office."^[8]

The same writer expressed scorn for the great English lords. Pembroke and Arundel passed for "the greatest men of the realm at present, though their incomes are not more than 25,000 ducats."^[9] This accusation was perhaps based on wishful thinking inspired by jealousy rather than on factual knowledge. Ruy Gómez de Silva was more concerned that the Spaniards would fail to impress the English with their grandeur. In late July he wrote Francisco de Eraso about his impressions of the English character and his anxieties on this score:

Most seasonable was the grant of the Kingdom of Naples that His Majesty made to the King [Charles V gave Philip Naples and the Duchy of Milan as a wedding present^[10] ] and, as such, they [the English] have greatly appreciated it here. It was opportune because the greater the prospect of receiving more favors, the more content they are. Upon my faith, even though interest is a powerful motive in all lands, it is nowhere in the world stronger than here, where nothing is done well except with cash in hand. We have all brought with us so little money that, if they tumble to the fact, I do not know if we will escape alive; at the very least, we will be without honor, since in their disappointment they will flay us mercilessly.^[11]

There is no further reference to the penury of the Spanish courtiers, but this condition, combined with their worries that the English household rendered them superfluous and compounded by linguis-

tic difficulties, must have left the Spaniards anxious and uncomfortable during much of their stay.

They also feared for their personal safety and lamented the lawless nature of the English in terms reminiscent of the complaints of subsequent English travelers in Spain. "There are plenty of robbers on the roads here," wrote one Spaniard,

and they have attacked several persons, among them a servant of Don Juan Pacheco, the marquis of Villena's son, from whom they stole 400 crowns and all the gold and silver objects he had with him. Not a trace has been found of all this property nor of four chests belonging to His Highness's household, though the Queen's Council do take certain precautions.

He concluded sadly that "the wise thing to do here is to imitate the English and go home early."^[12] Ruy Gómez also took up this theme and compared the English with the Spanish brand of thievery. "There are some great thieves among them," he remarked to Eraso, "and they rob in plain view, having the advantage over us Spaniards that we steal by stealthy contrivance and they by main force."^[13] Later in the summer it proved impossible to arrange suitable accommodation for all of the Spanish courtiers at Hampton Court, and the queen was apprised "that certayne disorderes hath risene in lodgeing of sundrye noblemen and gentlemen of the kinges trayne."^[14] A joint committee of English privy councilors and Spaniards, including Ruy Gómez, determined to house part of the entourage in the neighboring countryside, at least in part "to protect them from the rapacity of the people."^[15] Despite this attempt to alleviate friction the Spanish courtiers remained very uncomfortable; one wrote that "we are all desiring to be off with such longing that we think of Flanders as paradise." Many of the aristocrats who had accompanied Philip—among them the duke of Medinaceli, the marquises of Pescara and Las Navas, and the Netherlandish count of Egmont—applied for and received permission to leave England for the emperor's court. By 17 August only the key household officials, Alba and Ruy Gómez in particular, and the counts of Feria and of Olivares, remained as major figures at Philip's side. Joined by Don Pedro de Córdoba, these men seem to have comprised Philip's unofficial Spanish council thereafter.^[16]

The shared discomfiture of the remaining Spaniards did not put an end to internecine rivalries. The ordinary strife of ambitious

courtiers was complicated by the presence of another divided court at the emperor's residence in Brussels. Philip, though he now was king of Naples, duke of Milan and consort of England in his own right, was still clearly subordinate to his father.^[17] At the same time the emperor's ill health (and intimations of his abdication) turned the thoughts of his servants to the coming reign and to strategies for enhancing or perpetuating their own influence within it. The intrigues of the time are confusing, not least because much of the pertinent documentation was lost,^[18] but the courtiers, in England and Flanders alike, seem to have divided into two basic groups. One tendency was represented by the duke of Alba at Philip's court and, less overtly, by the bishop of Arras in Brussels. These seasoned courtiers seem to have staked their fortunes on a perception of Philip as a weakling who would be overawed by their experience and thus easily dominated. They counted on the notion that Philip's filial devotion would extend to his father's preferred counselors, and they probably believed that they would be even more indispensable to a young king. They desired and expected continuity in the personnel of government and the distribution of power at court. The other group, prominently including Ruy Gómez de Silva in England and Francisco de Eraso at the imperial court, acted on what may have been a more subtle appreciation of Philip's character. Their program was to exploit his resentment at the condescension of his father's servants and to build his confidence, hoping that Philip in power would be grateful to those who had helped him to assert his independence. They were the party of change, desiring the establishment under Philip of a new ministerial team, dominated by themselves.

A close analysis of all the personalities involved and of their positions on tangled issues of policy would not suit present purposes.^[19] Instead, the focus here will be on the means by which Ruy Gómez secured the ascendancy over Philip that he enjoyed in the first years of the new reign. Although Ruy Gómez had enjoyed close personal relations with Philip at least since the late 1540s, his role in the actual operation of government had remained limited. In England, as previously in Castile, his principal rival for preeminence among the prince's entourage was the duke of Alba. Charles V, realizing his son's misgivings about the English marriage and hoping to avoid a repetition of the poor impression made by Philip during his tour

of the northern kingdoms five years before, had entrusted Alba, as mayordomo mayor , with the task of maintaining discipline among the Spanish courtiers in England. "I implore you," wrote the emperor, "to take the measures you deem fitting to gain reputation and maintain the good opinion" of the English people.^[20] In particular the emperor charged Alba with keeping an eye on Philip: "Duke, for the love of God, see to it that my son behaves in the right manner; for otherwise I tell you I would rather never have taken the matter in hand at all."^[21]

Despite recent attempts to rehabilitate Alba, there is no reason to question the verdict of the Venetian ambassador who described the duke as "presumptuous, swollen with pride, consumed with ambition, given to flattery and very envious. . . . He is not well-liked at Court, for many there deem him heartless and imprudent."^[22] Such a man seems a poor choice to appoint as a watchdog for a mature prince, jealous of his dignity and prerogatives. The emperor was not unaware of the duke's character. A decade previously he had warned Philip against becoming too dependent on Alba, who

claims extravagant things, and attempts to swallow up all that he can, despite having appeared crossing himself, very humble and otherworldly. Observe, son, that he will place himself near you who are younger. You must guard against placing him or other grandees in the inner circle of government, since he and they will proceed by all possible means to get their way from you, which will cost you dearly later.^[23]

Charles proved an apt prophet, and Alba's haughty demeanor angered the prince even as a youth.^[24] The duke grew no more tactful as Philip matured and became increasingly conscious of his regal status. Alba habitually addressed Philip, even when the latter had become king, as "son." This condescension was not made more palatable by the duke's explanation that it was a sign of his great personal affection for Philip.^[25] The proud prince was prepared to accept paternal guidance from Charles V alone.^[26]

As a young man Philip had far less personal contact with Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, the bishop of Arras, but nonetheless he conceived a dislike for him as well. At least in the 1550s Arras was less bluntly patronizing toward Philip than was Alba; it has been justly noted that "he did not hesitate to stoop to the lowest forms of flattery in order to curry favour." Still, the prince remained cool toward

him, and many years were to pass before Arras (Cardinal Granvelle from 1561) was valued by Philip as he had been by Charles V. Arras enjoyed both a keen intelligence and a very high opinion of himself, and he may well have initially alienated Philip by condescending to him in 1549 during the prince's painful progress through the Low Countries. That the prince disliked Arras should not be surprising; the arrogant bishop had made many enemies during his precocious rise to power.^[27]

One such enemy was the secretary Francisco de Eraso, who was Arras's principal rival at the court of Brussels by the time of the English marriage. The power struggle between these two men, envenomed by a bitter personal enmity, persisted for more than a decade and left its marks on Philip's policy in the Netherlands and elsewhere.^[28] Eraso had strengthened his position vis-à-vis Arras by maintaining access to Charles V during the emperor's severe illness and depression in 1553 and early 1554—for months, Charles effectively refused to see anyone except the secretary and his sister Mary.^[29] The canny secretary had also begun to exploit, to Arras's detriment, a rift between the bishop and his countryman Simon Renard (both were franche-comtois ), which arose in part from their conflicting claims to credit for arranging the English marriage.^[30] Meanwhile, looking ahead to the inevitable succession, Eraso had cultivated an alliance with the one man at Philip's court whose long-term interests most neatly dovetailed with his own—Ruy Gómez de Silva.^[31] Even before the English match Ruy Gómez and Eraso had schemed to minimize Arras's influence over Philip.^[32]

Arras and Alba also shared an obvious common interest in maintaining their influence through the transition between reigns.^[33] Both men could count on continuing to prosper under Charles but might face different circumstances under Philip. In Alba's case, arrogance seems to have dulled the recognition that things might change when Philip came to power. Arras made some attempt to woo the prince—or at least to rehearse for the leading role he envisioned for himself in the coming regime—by adapting to Philip's well-known predilection for Spanish ways and interests. Alone among the emperor's Burgundian intimates, Arras went to the trouble to learn Castilian and began to expound an hispanocentric vision of the empire similar to Alba's. These gestures failed to win the prince's affection and succeeded only in straining relations between Arras and the Bur-

gundian and Flemish courtiers, who were already arrayed in ethnic mistrust of the Castilian heir-apparent and his peninsular advisers.^[34] Alba hardly tried and Arras failed to overcome the personal traits that had alienated the prince. At the same time, neither the duke nor the bishop was as well situated to know and exploit the prince's feelings and resentments as was Ruy Gómez, who assisted at Philip's dressing and undressing and slept in his antechamber, nor were they as close to the emperor in his last years as was Eraso.^[35] In any case, Alba and Arras did not work together to maintain their positions half as effectively as Eraso and Ruy Gómez toiled to supplant them. For the most part these senior counselors seem to have assumed that power over Philip was their due and would fall into their hands like a ripe fruit. They were mistaken, and they did not comprehend until it was too late that Eraso and Ruy Gómez had darted in to snatch the prize from their grasp.

During Philip's first stay in England (July 1554 to September 1555) Eraso and Ruy Gómez de Silva labored assiduously to project a positive image of Philip's behavior and acumen in his sensitive role as Mary's consort. In contrast to the more pessimistic dispatches of Renard and others and to his own private observations on the Spaniards' reception in England, from the very outset of the English sojourn Ruy Gómez sent glowing reports of Philip's actions to Brussels:

The Queen is very happy with the King, and the King with her; and he strives to give her every possible proof of it in order to omit no part of his duty. . . . [T]he best of it is that the King fully realizes that the marriage was concluded for no fleshly consideration, but in order to remedy the disorders of this Kingdom and preserve the Low Countries.^[36]

and

his [Philip's] dealings with the English lords are such that they themselves say that England has never had a King who has so rapidly won the hearts of everyone. . . . I believe what they say because of what I see of His Highness's actions towards them. In every letter he writes, His Majesty [Charles] should not fail to praise his son for this nor to urge him not to tire in such behavior, for it is certain that he [Philip] knows how to behave marvellously if he so desires.^[37]

In another passage Ruy Gómez lauds Philip's treatment of Mary and incidentally gives a glimpse of his own intimacy with his master, who must have been telling tales out of school:

He skillfully amuses the Queen and well knows how to pass over her defects from the standpoint of the carnal sensibility. He maintains her in such happiness that, in truth, the other day when they were by themselves she very nearly spoke loving endearments to him, and he responded in kind.^[38]

Clearly these words of praise were meant for the emperor's ears and wider circulation at court. In the same vein, Ruy Gómez contended a few weeks later that Philip's arrival in London had quieted the inhabitants' unrest, attributed rather dubiously to their resentment at being denied the presence of their beloved king.^[39]

In these months rumors circulated widely that the emperor meant to retire soon.^[40] His work habits had become extremely lackadaisical, with his secretary for Italian affairs complaining that Charles had refused to resolve individual petitions from the peninsula for nearly four years.^[41] By September Arras seems to have believed that Charles had in fact decided upon abdication.^[42] Although he had been very close to Charles during his illness and thus was alert to the emperor's weariness, Eraso was less certain that the retirement was imminent, and Ruy Gómez, hearing the rumors, excoriated the secretary for keeping him and Philip in the dark. It appears, however, that Eraso was correct—Rodríguez-Salgado concludes that "abdication gradually emerged in the course of 1555 as the most suitable option"^[43] —and the allies continued to act on the assumption that Charles would delay his abdication until he was convinced that Philip was competent to assume his responsibilities. The emperor's charge to Alba to watch over Philip clearly demonstrates that he had serious reservations about his son's aptitude for governing northern European subjects.^[44] The prince's comportment in England would be eagerly studied by his tired father for signs that he could conscientiously lay down his regal burdens. Therefore, Ruy Gómez and Eraso set out to present Charles with evidence of his son's competence. At the same time, other courtiers, like Arras, might find themselves better served were the abdication postponed as long as possible.^[45] Via Ruy Gómez, Eraso had received assurance that Philip would retain him in a major administrative

post;^[46] others had no such guarantees. The dynamics of this situation—complicity between Eraso and Ruy Gómez, the mounting success of their campaign on Philip's behalf, the emperor's paternal and self-interested desire to think well of his son's capabilities and Arras's discomfiture over this issue—are illustrated in a letter from Eraso to Ruy Gómez of 29 November 1554. The secretary had recently been in England carrying despatches from the court; upon his return to Brussels he informed Ruy Gómez that

I made a verbal report to the Emperor of such things as seemed to me essential in praise of our master [nuestro amo , i.e., Philip], touching upon the skillful manner in which he conducts himself and manages all affairs, and the care and steady tenacity with which he negotiates, and the rapid resolutions and decisions he makes, and his excellent desires and designs and their execution insofar as it lies within his power, and the prudence with which he handled the religious question. . . . I told likewise of the peaceful state of affairs that prevailed over there, and of how beloved and well-liked the King is, by the illustrious and the commons alike, and of the good treatment that he accords everyone, as well as the fact that he has acquired much credit for his management of justice.^[47]

The reference to Philip as "our master" is suggestive, given that Eraso had for years been one of the emperor's closest advisers.^[48] Charles V's response to the secretary's paean must have been deeply gratifying to these allies who so clearly had cast their lot with Philip:

His Majesty [Eraso continues] heard all these things very attentively and with singular satisfaction, and he was even more content that the King should enjoy such great credit with the Queen, and that everyone knows it to be so, and that he goes out among the public very freely and they marvel at this, which is one of the reasons why they hold him in such esteem. Finally, having gone over all this with His Majesty, he responded that he gave great thanks to God for the favor shown him in this, and that truly the King had changed greatly.

This triumph was made more delicious by the opportunity to repeat this happy report to some of his adversaries at the court:

And at this point the Queen [Charles's sister Mary], M. de Prats [Praet] and the bishop of Arras came in, and His Majesty ordered that I should repeat for them the points I had made; and even though the speech was in "coarse Castilian" ["çafio castellano"] I emphasized everything in such a manner that I think there was no lack of comprehension of that which suits us.^[49]

Presumably the emperor stood by, beaming with paternal pride, while Eraso clearly relished the telling. One can imagine that Arras viewed this scene with a sinking premonition of his future and had to struggle to mold his features to the proper cheerful aspect. Resentment at Burgundian condescension resonates in Eraso's remark about "coarse Castilian." It was sweet indeed that Philip's Spaniards were winning the struggle for Charles's heart and that Eraso should be there to break the news to the haughty courtiers.

Eraso also reported that he had sung Philip's praises widely in the governing circles of the Netherlands and assured Ruy Gómez "that the King enjoys here so great a reputation and such positive opinion that they desire nothing better than to see him here, and that he should govern them, and I think it is necessary [that he should]."^[50] This seems a dubious proposition, and it is unlikely that either Eraso or Ruy Gómez were so taken in by their own propaganda as to believe that the Netherlanders awaited Philip with eagerness. More likely this claim was meant to bolster Philip's ego. As will be seen, Ruy Gómez de Silva was in the habit of showing Eraso's letters to Philip; part of the allies' game was, of course, to offer the prince proofs of their devotion, while simultaneously strengthening his confidence and resolve.

This campaign of encomiums for Philip was effective and incidentally helps to illuminate the nature of the alliance between Ruy Gómez and Eraso in the mid-1550s. Although the two men had corresponded for several years,^[51] it is difficult to imagine that their bond was one of personal affection. Since they operated at two separate and widely removed courts, they cannot have met often nor spent a great deal of time together. Moreover, Eraso's personality was notoriously harsh and unpleasant.^[52] Consonance of policy views might provide an explanation of their alliance, except that the correspondence between the two men in this period is seldom focused on large issues or ideology. Instead, it seems clear that the Eraso-Ruy Gómez entente was firmly based on the perception of mutual self-interest and mutual usefulness. Both were extremely ambitious, self-made men in ardent pursuit of royal favor and the power and wealth it could bring. And, in certain obvious ways, they could help each other while simultaneously helping themselves.

Ruy Gómez de Silva was extremely close to Philip, and the French ambassador in England deemed him "the person by whose

judgment [the prince] was chiefly guided."^[53] Philip's advancement could only mean an access in his own position and influence. In the waning years of Charles's reign, though, the rise of Ruy Gómez de Silva was structurally blocked. Despite his pleas he received no special favors from the emperor at the time of his marriage (and no other imperial mercedes have come to light). Thus it was very much in his interest to proclaim Philip's readiness to govern. Eraso, a strong voice at Charles V's court, could broadcast these advertisements for the prince (and, incidentally, for his sumiller^[54] ) where they would do the most good. Moreover, Ruy Gómez de Silva had little experience in administration or government. If he hoped to play a major role in affairs of state, he would need the guidance of an experienced ally within the bureaucracy. For protection in these tangled affairs of state, wrote Ruy Gómez, "I need Your Grace's shield and sword."^[55]

In turn, Eraso stood to gain from Ruy Gómez's influence with Philip. The secretary, of undistinguished hidalgo origins, had served the emperor since 1523 but had attained a significant post only in 1546. In 1554 he was in his mid-forties. The course of his career, particularly its disgraceful latter stages, indicates that he was motivated by a greedy drive for power and wealth.^[56] Already in 1557 the Venetian Badoero, perhaps confused but more likely punning, referred to him as Secretary "Crasso."^[57] In many ways Eraso was a perfect example of one style of Habsburg bureaucrat, of what has been described as "the predatory, arrogant, avaricious secretary of the new age."^[58] Eraso was hardly the man to go quietly into retirement at the peak of his long climb simply because Charles V chose to relinquish power. Moreover, Eraso nursed long-standing grudges against other powerful figures at the imperial court, including Arras, Juan de Figueroa and Gonzalo Pérez, who had for years scorned his abilities and obstructed his rise.^[59] It was unlikely that he would gain satisfactory revenge while Charles ruled, since the emperor was a master at balancing and massaging the massive egos of his counselors. If, however, Eraso could gain a privileged foothold with the new king, all might be very different, and his former tormentors might find the tables turned. Better than any other member of the prince's entourage, Ruy Gómez could secure for the secretary a pledge of Philip's future favor.

A letter of 12 August 1554 illustrates well what Ruy Gómez de Silva could do for Francisco de Eraso. Ruy Gómez wrote:

His Highness has seen your letters and was very glad to hear the news you sent me in them. By the way, I showed him [one letter in particular] . . . in order to be able to speak about you and see how he feels about you. I do not think he lacks desire to show you favor and keep you in your honorable position. Do not fail to make up your mind as to what you want, and I will see what can be done for you.^[60]

This was not an isolated episode. A month later, for example, Ruy Gómez reported that "I showed Your Grace's letter to the king, and His Highness was not content to see just that one but demanded to read all the others as well."^[61] These letters neatly illustrate what would always be the basis of Ruy Gómez's influence with Philip. In an early modern monarchy private access to the ruler was power: the favorite could set part of the agenda during his daily conversations with the prince and could turn the discussion to topics that aided his friends and harmed his enemies. Ruy Gómez once claimed that "I have never interfered in nor spoken about any matter that lies outside my métier, which is to dress His Highness in his jacket."^[62] This seeming self-deprecation throws a thin veil over the possibilities inherent in such a relationship: a trusted favorite could furnish his master's mind even as he clothed his body.

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The pro-Philippine campaign soon began to bear fruit. On 7 December 1554 one of the first crucial steps toward abdication was taken when Charles wrote to Philip praising the behavior that Eraso had described. The emperor urged his son to come to the Netherlands as soon as possible. Such a visit, which Charles had previously discouraged, was a necessary preliminary to the turnover of power.^[63] Philip had been emboldened, perhaps by Eraso's glowing reports of his repute in the Low Countries, to press harder for permission to come to his father's court; in the meantime Charles had gained a better impression of his son's abilities.^[64] No less than the emperor, the allies Ruy Gómez and Eraso must have been heartened by Philip's growing assertiveness in these months. In addition to express-

ing his desire to take a hand in Flemish affairs, Philip had begun to complain that the imperial court was not showing him proper deference in matters relating to his states of Naples and Milan.^[65] The prince was clearly developing the temperament of a king.

Mainly because of the hopes aroused by Mary Tudor's false pregnancy,^[66] Philip's journey to his father's court was delayed until September 1555. In the interim Ruy Gómez de Silva and Francisco de Eraso were entrusted with primary responsibility for maintaining communication between the two courts at London and Brussels. Ruy Gómez made three trips to Brussels at Philip's behest between December 1554 and August 1555. During the same period Eraso made the opposite journey at least twice. The two allies managed liaison between the courts as preparations went on for Philip's journey to the Netherlands and Charles's abdication. By March 1555 Arras was forced to entrust requests for favors from Philip to Ruy Gómez.^[67]

One reason for Ruy Gómez de Silva's increasing prominence was that the duke of Alba was ordered away from Philip's court in the early months of 1555. The prince, asserting his sovereignty over Naples and Milan, ordered Alba to take up the government of Italy, which was being threatened by a French army.^[68] William Maltby has interpreted this appointment as the result of an intrigue masterminded by Ruy Gómez, who stood to benefit from the removal of his rival. Maltby does not, however, explain just how Ruy Gómez managed this coup.^[69] The surviving evidence does not allow certainty, but a plausible scenario of these events can be sketched. Contrary to Maltby's image of Alba accepting the bitter cup of command in Italy against his own inclinations and out of a sense of duty to his clientele and to the dynasty, it appears that Alba's own ego and ambitions propelled him into this assignment, with hardly a nudge from Ruy Gómez de Silva.^[70]

What emerges from the diplomatic correspondence is that in the fall of 1554 and the ensuing winter there was a bitter competition for the appointment to command in Italy involving three principal claimants—Ferrante Gonzaga, Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, and the "reluctant" duke of Alba. The open jockeying began when Gonzaga, governor of Milan since 1546, appeared in the Netherlands in the fall, eager to dispel criticism of his administration and to solicit subsidies and rewards for his service. Rodríguez-Salgado

suggests that Alba was behind the allegations of corruption leveled against Gonzaga in 1553, which would seem to weaken the case for the duke's disinterest. In October Gonzaga crossed to England to pay court to Philip and seek a vote of confidence for the continuance of his tenure at Milan.^[71] Meanwhile, at the imperial court, conflict had arisen between Gonzaga and the duke of Savoy, whose principality was under French occupation and who desired the Milanese command for himself. Gonzaga returned to the Continent at the end of October, having been richly feted but promised nothing. Savoy journeyed to England to press his own claims at the end of the year.^[72] Resolution of these conflicting claims posed a tricky problem for the emperor's servants, compounded by the fact that Philip had proclaimed his desire to make decisions concerning Italy for himself. Still, Arras had not internalized this latter fact, and he encouraged the merry chase of the claimants to London as a means of buying time for the emperor to make a decision on the choice of a commander.^[73]

It would appear that Alba's appetite for preferment was further piqued by the parade of contestants through London. By lavishing attention on Ferrante Gonzaga during his October visit, Ruy Gómez de Silva may have played a part in exciting Alba's jealousy and interest. Alba's temperament was not such as to view with equanimity displays of favor toward another captain. Moreover, his family had extensive interests in Italy. In any case, Alba was complaining of boredom in England and lobbying Philip for the command at least by late November.^[74] By the end of the year Philip was determined to entrust Alba with unprecedentedly broad powers in the peninsula, but the emperor continued to balk, in part from distrust of Alba and also to avoid shabby treatment of his longtime comrade Gonzaga. The public decision on the post was thus postponed until late February, when, with apparent concurrence between Charles and Philip, it was granted to Alba. Still, Charles did not sign Alba's commissions until April.^[75] This turn of events clearly outraged Gonzaga and allegedly disgusted Italian opinion, but it also provided a solution for several outstanding problems.^[76] The rivalry between Gonzaga and Savoy had made it impossible to appoint either of them without offending the other's supporters and thus sowing discord among pro-imperial elements in northern Italy at the very moment of a serious French threat.^[77] The choice of Alba posed the risk

of offending all Italian opinion but allowed pacification of the other rivals on relatively equal terms. Savoy's disappointment was allayed by the offer of the government of Flanders and by imperial support for a grand match with the duchess of Lorraine.^[78] Gonzaga, whose potential disaffection was a less serious threat to Spanish interests (but perhaps of greater personal concern to the emperor), was first threatened with disgrace if he did not step aside and then fobbed off with cash and praise. The case that Alba openly competed for the Italian command is reinforced by the evidence of Gonzaga's lasting enmity toward the duke and also by the fact that he demanded compensation for the loss of his governorship in the form of Alba's post as mayordomo mayor in Philip's household. This demand was rejected, and Gonzaga had to content himself with a variety of gifts and subsidies, the promise of prestigious lodgings in the palace, and vague assurances that he stood next in line for a major military post.^[79]

Another problem was resolved by the despatch of Alba to Italy. The presence of the imperious duke in England had become an irritant to Philip and indirectly a threat to the success of the pro-Philippine campaign of the prince's allies. This is the import of Ruy Gómez's letter to Eraso of 15 April 1555, which is cited by Maltby as his principal evidence of an intrigue against Alba. For reasons that will emerge, however, this letter can be regarded as a relatively straightforward account of events, rather than as the hypocritical poison-pen missive that it appears to Maltby.

In the letter Ruy Gómez de Silva claims to write on Philip's behalf in order to apprise Eraso of the prince's fears regarding Alba's probable behavior when he reaches Brussels on his way to Italy. "You are to know," he wrote,

that the Duke, after having thrown himself at the King's [Philip's] feet, as I told you, in order to secure these appointments, now that he has attained them asserts that he is being made to take them, complaining in every quarter that he is not being treated according to his deserts. In all this, he uses his accustomed skillful arguments in order to draw the water to his own mill. . . . As for the Duke's interests, the King says he has got away with more than there was any good reason to give him.^[80]

Still, Alba had complained bitterly about "the scanty favour that is shown him," even though he had received about 40,000 ducats for

his services in England. Eraso needed to know the truth in order to be able to counter Alba's laments at the imperial court.^[81] Beyond this, there was reason to fear that Alba would try to destroy the image of Philip's competence as a ruler that had been so painstakingly fostered by the allies:

The King says that the Duke may intimate that affairs in England are not being handled with all due care. As for this, the King remarks that he has not wished to conclude certain business before having got the Duke out of this country, because he, his friends and his wife have permitted themselves to say that once the Duke had left everything would go to ruin, he having been the mainstay in all these matters and the King not being equally vigilant. As they have been talking like this here in the King's Court it is quite possible that they will do the same when they reach the Emperor's, and if everything that had to be accomplished had been terminated before the Duke left, he would have been able to attribute all the merit to himself. Therefore, the King decided to wait until the Duke was out of the way, although the Duke greatly insisted, again and again. This is what the king wishes me to write to you, begging you to take particular care to keep him informed of what happens.^[82]

Ruy Gómez also feared a personal attack:

Now that the Duke has spoken to me about the appointments to Naples and Milan . . . and has assured me that he is eternally obliged to me for them, I am afraid that when he sees his Majesty [Charles], he may not treat me as tenderly as he is accustomed to do. . . . Therefore I implore you to do what you can to protect me, for I certainly am afraid of him. He is a dead shot.^[83]

This letter would seem to clarify several points about Alba's appointment. The duke had lobbied for the position and had enlisted Ruy Gómez to help his candidacy with Philip.^[84] At the same time Alba's behavior, particularly his tendency to claim the credit for all achievements, had rankled the prince. Philip's desire to be rid of an overweening adviser surely was a major factor in the decision to give Alba his desired appointment. Alba's departure from England was by no means unwelcome to Ruy Gómez de Silva, but it is difficult to see in this situation the clear-cut intrigue against Alba posited by Maltby. The further charge, lately resurrected by Maltby, that Ruy Gómez and Eraso conspired to deprive Alba of adequate funds during his Italian tenure,^[85] is still less tenable. The evidence cited for this purported deprivation—"an act of irresponsibility border-

ing on treason," according to Maltby—comes above all from Alba's letters. As any reader of the Epistolario can attest, the duke never ceased to complain about his finances in the most bitter terms; surely this evidence must be taken with a grain of salt. In addition, although Eraso was very much involved in disbursements in the period of Alba's tenure in Italy, Ruy Gómez de Silva had no official position in the financial bureaucracy until 1557, near the end of the duke's viceregal term. Moreover, Maltby produces no evidence of collusion between Ruy Gómez de Silva and Eraso on this matter, despite his contention that these allies plotted to deny Alba the wherewithal to defend the king's interests in Italy. To the contrary, the most recent study argues that Eraso was more Alba's victim than vice versa and that neither he nor Ruy Gómez could possibly have controlled all of the persons and institutions responsible for remittances to the duke. It would seem more logical and more just to analyze Alba's problems, insofar as the duke's complaints had foundation, in terms of the increasingly straitened circumstances of the Crown finances. Throughout the monarchy in those years, royal obligations far exceeded the capacity of the treasury.^[86] Ruy Gómez himself provides eloquent witness to this financial strain: "More money we must have though it cost us the very blood in our veins," he exclaimed in December 1554. "May God cradle our affairs in His hands, since we no longer know how to hold anything in our own."^[87]

Faulty interpretation on these points is primarily the result of the unfounded belief that the bitter enmities between Philip's advisers that emerged later in the reign were fully developed in the period prior to Charles V's abdication.^[88] A great deal has been written on the topic of the struggle of factions led by Ruy Gómez de Silva and the duke of Alba at the court of Philip II. There is abundant evidence that deep divisions within Philip's Council of State became clearly delineated in the first years after the emperor's abdication and thereafter played a major role in politics. One must be careful, however, not to project too far back in time the sharp rift and personal venom between the king's principal counselors that pervaded the court in the late 1550s. The phenomenon that truly polarized the court—the elaboration and intensification of animosity between Ruy Gómez de Silva and the duke of Alba—postdated the period of Philip's sojourn in England.

Maltby argues plausibly that even before 1550 Alba was "a true

caudillo , a soldier with a large political following." He was the head of an old and wealthy family, whose members were well positioned in the church, the military and at court. But no such case can be made for Ruy Gómez's influence, at least outside the court, despite Maltby's contention that "by the 1550s his following equalled that of Alba." Maltby relies on the dubious theory that, by virtue of his marriage, Ruy Gómez de Silva somehow became the political head of the Mendoza family.^[89] No evidence exists to support this notion. Moreover, even were it true, this clan leadership would have been of little use to Ruy Gómez during Philip's stay in England. While Alba could count on the support of kinsmen and friends at both of the northern courts, few members of the putative Mendoza network had come to England with Philip or were in Flanders with Charles. Insofar as Ruy Gómez had a functional clique in this period, it consisted of Eraso and perhaps Diego de Vargas in Brussels and the count of Feria in England. None of these men can plausibly be associated with the Mendoza clan; nor, more important, is there any evidence that they regarded Ruy Gómez as their chief rather than as their ally. In more ways than one, Ruy Gómez de Silva was alone with Philip during the English sojourn.^[90]

And that—his relationship with Philip—was of course the basis of his influence. In fact until 1555 and formally until Philip formed his own Council of State in 1556, Ruy Gómez's position was strictly that of a favorite and an informal "household councilor."^[91] Alba, on the other hand, was a true counselor of state, a man of wide experience and stature throughout the monarchy. He was the emperor's adviser and could believe, with some justification, that Charles had given him a commission to oversee Philip's affairs. Ruy Gómez, the friend and valet of the prince, shone only by virtue of the latter's reflected glow. Until Philip was king the two men were not overt rivals for the directing hand in affairs of state. Their competition prior to Philip's accession was essentially limited to the sphere of the household, where both had been officials since 1548. Even there, Alba held the senior post of mayordomo mayor .

It may be presumed from his collusion with Eraso, and it became abundantly clear later, that Ruy Gómez de Silva had aspirations to act as a major figure in government as well as in the household. Before the formation of Philip's Council of State, however, Alba could not (and could not justly be expected to) regard as a serious

competitor a man so far beneath him in lineage and station, a man who, moreover, had no experience or official status as an officer of government. On the contrary, Alba seems to have regarded Ruy Gómez as a useful conduit to the prince and as a potential ally. This is borne out by the fact that before and during his tenure in Italy Alba wrote repeated friendly letters to Ruy Gómez de Silva, relating the news and asking for favors and intercession with Philip.^[92] In Carande's words, Alba saw Ruy Gómez de Silva as "su confidente cerca de don Felipe."^[93] The surviving evidence reveals that Alba's civility was reciprocated by Ruy Gómez.^[94] Of course, the good faith that underlay this apparent cordiality must not be overestimated. Certainly Ruy Gómez sought to become a power in the state as well as the household, and an increase in his influence would necessarily come at the expense of Alba, among others. Moreover, as was seen above, Ruy Gómez was critical of Alba's character and motives in his letters to Eraso. On 6 June 1555 he went further and denounced Alba to Eraso as "a great rogue."^[95] Nevertheless, the fact remains that in these final months of Philip's apprenticeship the relationship between the future rivals was free of public animosity. The clash of factions had not yet emerged. Alba, who had a substantial clientele, was seemingly unaware of any need to direct it against Ruy Gómez de Silva, who as yet had no grand following of his own. This situation, however, would be altered drastically during Alba's tenure in Italy. Although it cannot be demonstrated that Ruy Gómez orchestrated the duke's appointment as viceroy, there can be no doubt that he exploited the opportunity afforded by Alba's absence.

Alba's biographer, on uncertain evidence, argues that by late 1554 the duke was Philip's "chief spokesman" and had "assumed the dominant role" in Spanish policymaking in England.^[96] At least that Alba believed this to be the case may be inferred from Ruy Gómez's letter quoted above. There is in fact little reason to believe that any of the Spaniards played a considerable role in English affairs. Philip himself and Simon Renard had the ear of the queen, who was the only effective instrument of Habsburg influence. The few Spanish counselors who remained were handicapped by their unpopularity with the populace and by their undoubtedly shaky understanding of English politics.^[97] Among them only the count of Feria and perhaps Ruy Gómez could speak English at all.^[98] Despite a recent charge that his ignorant advice harmed Philip in his relations with the English, Ruy Gómez seems at least to have gotten along well

with some of the English aristocrats, notably Charles Lord Howard of Effingham, and he won a prize from the queen's hand in a joust on 4 December 1554.^[99]

All in all, though, Alba, Ruy Gómez de Silva and the rest of the band of Spaniards who remained with Philip seem to have stood on the sidelines of English affairs. Their principal role was to provide Philip with companionship and to handle his communications with Brussels. Ruy Gómez played an important part on both counts from the outset of the stay in England; and once Alba was gone, he was indisputably the most active of Philip's advisers. As noted above, he made repeated trips to the Continent on the prince's business. Important correspondence from Brussels was routed to Philip through him. On 23 August 1555, for example, Arras wrote Ruy Gómez regarding the state of military affairs in Flanders. "I wished to inform you of what was happening," Arras concluded, "in order that you might report to the King and making sure that you will do this I am not writing to him."^[100] Ruy Gómez still had no formal position outside his household office^[101] but clearly was regarded as a de facto minister of state. Ruy Gómez also managed the arrangements for Philip's departure from England in September 1555. At the final stage he had six ships outfitted in Calais and returned with them to Dover, where he met Philip and a sizable English retinue. Despite fears of French mischief the royal crossing was made without incident on 4 September 1555.^[102]

Thereafter events moved swiftly, and with them the trajectory of Ruy Gómez's ascent. Once Philip arrived in the Low Countries the complex process of Charles's abdication was set in motion. On 26 September 1555 the emperor issued orders for the Estates-General and the leading officials of the Netherlands to convene in Brussels in the following month. Before this assembly, on 25 October, Charles turned his title to rule in the Low Countries over to Philip. Much less ceremony attended Philip's investiture as king of Castile, Aragon and Sicily on 16 January 1556. Charles simply handed the acts of abdication for the Spanish crowns to Francisco de Eraso. This was strangely fitting, in light of the efforts made by Eraso and Ruy Gómez de Silva to clear the way for Philip's elevation. Over the next few months Charles divested the remainder of his hereditary territories. Without clear authority to do so, the emperor made Philip and his heirs perpetual vicars of the Italian lands of the Holy Roman Empire in March 1556. The Franche-Comté was made over to Philip

on 10 June. Power in the empire (and in 1558 the imperial dignity itself) went to Charles's brother Ferdinand.^[103]

Having received his patrimony, Philip II set about to organize his government. The king chose to revive as a key institution of government the Council of State, which his father had reduced to an honorific and inactive body.^[104] Philip named his councilors of State shortly after his assumption of the Spanish crowns in early 1556. Ruy Gómez de Silva was one of the dozen or so men from throughout Philip's lands elevated to the council.^[105] The choice of councilors was doubtless dictated by several considerations. Some names—Ferrante Gonzaga, Andrea Doria—were included primarily as a nod to the honor of men whose loyalty, rather than their advice, was crucial to the new king. The bulk of the list, however, reveals an attempt to forge a unified ruling institution comprising, on the one hand, the principal advisers inherited from the previous reign and, on the other, the key figures among Philip's own men, primarily officers of his household. The outstanding members of the first group were Alba, Arras, the duke of Savoy and Don Juan de Figueroa. Among the second were Ruy Gómez de Silva, Don Antonio de Toledo, the count of Feria and a rather surprising choice, the obscure Gutierre López de Padilla, one of the king's mayordomos and identified by Cabrera de Córdoba as a friend and client of Ruy Gómez.^[106] The council was rounded out with men who had caught Philip's eye as good administrators or diplomats—Don Bernardino de Mendoza, skilled in naval and financial affairs, Don Juan Manrique de Lara, who had been ambassador at Rome, and the count of Chinchón, a man who was to rise steadily for decades in Philip's service and estimation.

While Philip II governed from Brussels in 1556 and 1557 six of these men emerged as the true Council of State. Ruy Gómez de Silva, Mendoza, Arras, Feria, Manrique and Don Antonio de Toledo met twice daily (in the mornings until noon and again from 2:00 P.M. until dark) to debate the principal affairs of state. Ruy Gómez seems to have been the principal minister, a situation underlined by the fact that the meetings of the council were often held in his lodgings.^[107] Thus Ruy Gómez had gained a lofty position in the mechanism of state to complement his personal influence with the king. At the same time his ally Eraso had been promoted to a position of power unrivaled among the secretaries, who actually transacted the business of government. Along with his constitution of

a Council of State, Philip had reshuffled secretarial appointments. Eraso emerged as secretary of Finance (Hacienda ) and of the patronage bureau, the Cámara de Castilla, as well as secretary to the administrative Councils of Inquisition, Orders and Indies.^[108] His ally Ruy Gómez must indeed have put in a good word for him, and the secretary had reason to be well pleased. His position allowed him to sit in on meetings of the Council of State and to have a major voice in a wide range of policy decisions, as well as giving him tremendous influence in the granting of state patronage and of the encomiendas of the military orders. Now he could truly act upon his predisposition to enrich himself, aid his friends and harm his enemies.^[109]

Nor could Ruy Gómez de Silva complain about the preferment shown him by Philip. Despite its prestige and attendant power, the position of councilor of State carried no stipend, while the relatively small allowance he received as sumiller de corps was mostly earmarked for entertainment expenses.^[110] Philip II soon made good this deficiency. In February 1556, at Antwerp, the king granted Ruy Gómez the town of Eboli, in the southern Italian principality of Salerno.^[111] The revenues of the town, 1,958 Neapolitan ducats per year, were granted to Ruy Gómez to make up the shortfall in the 3,000 ducats per year promised to the estate of Mélito by Charles V.^[112] At this point no title was attached to the grant. Badoero reported that "Don Ruy Gómez . . . does not call himself Duke [of Eboli], but is addressed by the title of Excellency."^[113]

In March 1556 Ruy Gómez was favored with the grant of the encomienda of Herrera in the Order of Alcántara. Eraso as secretary in charge of the patronage of the orders countersigned the king's gift, and Ruy Gómez was invested with his new and lucrative encomienda in a ceremony at a Brussels monastery on 7 April.^[114] Both his political position and his economic position were further enhanced on 30 January 1557, when Philip II named him contador mayor of Castile and the Indies.^[115] In this position, Ruy Gómez stood (along with the two other contadores mayores ) at the top of the financial administration of the Castilian sphere of the monarchy. Some of his duties and activities in this post will be examined in the next chapter. As contador mayor he also enjoyed a small salary and more substantial dues (derechos ) amounting to more than 531,000 maravedís (1,416 ducats) per years.^[116]

Thus the efforts of Ruy Gómez de Silva and Francisco de Eraso

to bring about the abdication of Charles V and the accession of their "master," Philip II, paid rich dividends as soon as the new reign began. Through the grateful patronage of Philip II the allies gained preponderant positions in the councils and the financial administration. They received new honors, incomes and salaries in addition to the personal financial opportunities presented by their offices. Still, victory had not been total. Philip had not seen fit to dispense entirely with the trusted counselors of Charles V. Once Philip announced the composition of his Council of State, Arras was able to drop the pretense, adopted in the period of the abdication, that he hoped to retire to his estates. The bishop remained an active member of the government. Nevertheless, he was not trusted or consulted by Philip as he had been by Charles, and increasingly his influence was restricted to the internal government of the Netherlands, where he served as chief adviser to Savoy, the governor.^[117] According to the Venetian ambassador, Ruy Gómez de Silva was disappointed that Arras retained even these vestiges of his former influence.^[118] Alba had also been granted a seat on the Council of State, but, absent in italy, he had little say in the central administration in the first years of the reign. Upon his return the duke would find that Ruy Gómez had grown into a serious rival indeed. Alba's dismay at finding another man ensconced in what he believed to be his rightful position as first minister would touch off the personal and factional conflict of the late 1550s and 1560s.^[119]

Ruy Gómez de Silva and Eraso were Philip's men, and as such they won great advancement at the outset of the reign. Nevertheless Philip, though still young, was already in many respects the Prudent King. He was willing to exalt his own creatures over his father's counselors, but he refused to place his government entirely and irrevocably in the hands of the allies who had served him so well. Old counselors, men of experience and now clearly rivals of the upstarts, were kept in the wings to provide the king with a check against domination by the men he had elevated. Ruy Gómez de Silva had extended his sphere of influence from the household to the halls of government; now he would have to maintain his position at the pinnacle of Philip's administration. The supplanted counselors stood ready to topple him, and they were soon joined by younger men on the make. In his turn, Ruy Gómez de Silva would find that staying on top could be just as difficult as climbing.

4
The Privado

Ruy Gómez de Silva stood at the height of his ascendancy in the first years of the reign of Philip II. As the king's sumiller de corps he enjoyed constant private access to Philip. His voice was dominant in the Council of State, largely because his special personal relationship with the king was widely acknowledged. Meanwhile, as contador mayor , Ruy Gómez aggregated supervision over the Crown's finances to his privileged position in policymaking and the royal household. In reporting to the doge and Senate regarding his tenure in Brussels in 1556 and 1557, the Venetian ambassador Federico Badoero graphically described the extent of Ruy Gómez's supremacy among the advisers of Philip II:

[T]he main title that everyone gives him is that of rey [king] Gómez, in place of Ruy Gómez, since it seems that no one has ever been so privy with a prince of such great power, nor as well beloved by his lord as he [Ruy Gómez] is by His Catholic Majesty.^[1]

In these first years of the reign Ruy Gómez attained the status of a true privado; his role as a friend and private hombre de confianza of the king burst forth beyond the personal sphere of the household to encompass a substantial role in the public exercise of kingship. He was the only true privado of the reign of Philip II, or indeed of the entire sixteenth century in Spain.

The privanza, in the sense of the combination in one person of unmatched royal favor and a principal role in government, had been a common feature of the late medieval Castilian monarchy. The weak kings of the fifteenth century, notably John II and Henry IV, were accustomed to govern through all-powerful favorites (or, alternatively, were powerless to govern without them). The perception that privados like Alvaro de Luna ruled the country in their own interest rather than that of the Crown was a critical precipitant of the civil wars that wracked Castile until the end of the 1470s. Because of

this, and also because they delighted in active kingship, neither the Catholic Kings nor Charles V had revived the institution of the privanza. The personal favorites of these monarchs had for the most part been restricted to a private role in the household, while the tasks of governance fell increasingly to secretaries who were the king's servants rather than his friends.^[2]

The preeminent position of Ruy Gómez de Silva at the outset of the reign of Philip II thus amounted to a partial reversal of a trend toward more impersonal and bureaucratic administration. The king's dual personality—as a man and as a ruler—was reintegrated in the public sphere in the person of Ruy Gómez. The source of the privado's power lay in the perception that he spoke and acted for the king, as a physical extension and indeed substitute for the royal presence. This concept of the privanza was later clearly institutionalized in the form of the valimiento conferred by the seventeenth-century Habsburgs on their favorites. Philip III, for instance, decreed in 1612 that the written or verbal orders of his privado, the duke of Lerma, would enjoy binding force utterly equivalent to his own royal signature or pronouncements. Thereby a royal alter ego was legally created.^[3]

Philip II never went so far as to define the status of his privado, and indeed, after the first decade or so of his reign, the king seems to have rejected the notion of a privanza altogether. By the late 1560s Philip's ruling style revealed sure signs of a return to government through personal direction of secretaries whose private relationship with the monarch was thoroughly circumscribed. Philip's initial reliance on a privado and subsequent retreat from the privanza delimited the contours of Ruy Gómez's public career after 1556. The king's personality and manner of governance evolved and matured over the course of the first decade of his reign, first creating and later closing off political opportunities for his favorite.

We are accustomed to envisioning Philip II as a fixed and timeless personality, the Prudent King ensconced in his study at the Escorial, coldly and purposefully directing a grand plan to make Spain the arbiter of a re-Catholicized northern Europe. To the degree that it is accurate at all, however, this vision of the "Spider of the Escorial" holds true only for the last decades of the reign. The confident and aggressive monarch who set in motion the Invincible Armada and risked all the formidable resources of his monarchy in a reckless

bid to upset the French succession must be contrasted with a very different younger self. The mature Philip was single-minded, supremely sure of himself, and voracious in his appetite for the exercise of power. When he came to the throne, however, Philip II was a diffident young man, a somewhat timid son awed by the example of a legendarily bold and omnicompetent father. Perceptive foreign observers agreed on this point. Philip's disposition was "phlegmatic and melancholic," his constitution "extremely delicate"; he was physically weak, slept a great deal and detested vigorous activity. When confronted with a crisis, the king exhibited "a rather timid spirit" and despite his intelligence and ability to comprehend complex issues, "did not possess the vigor and liveliness for the measures requisite to the good government of so many kingdoms and cities." Philip was constitutionally

more inclined to tranquillity than to action, more to repose than to labor. Consequently, even though he is of an age at which ordinarily are manifested bellicose enthusiasms and insatiable desires for glory and power, up 'til now all of the efforts of His Majesty have been directed, not at the warlike expansion of his estates but rather at their conservation through peace.^[4]

It was also reported in these years that the king, although unfailingly courteous and regal in bearing, found it difficult to converse on matters of substance. He disliked going out in public and preferred "to stay in his room speaking of private matters with a few favorites." In conferences with ambassadors and ministers, Philip remained aloof and gave little indication of his own views on the matters under discussion.^[5]

Geoffrey Parker has remarked of Philip's early years as king that "for some time he continued to stand in the shadow of his father." Throughout 1556 this paternal presence was physical, since Charles remained in Brussels until the end of the year, intermittently intervening in his son's government.^[6] Thereafter the emperor's influence, though intangible, was no less real. Philip took to heart his father's written instructions and precepts of government. From them he absorbed a strong sense of the responsibilities of kingship and an exalted notion of the standard set for him by the emperor. He also seems to have attempted to comply with Charles's advice that as king he should trust no one and should dissemble his own feel-

ings and opinions, always reserving the right to make decisions contrary to the advice of his counselors.^[7]

Conflicts thus arose between the king's natural timidity and diffidence and his ingrained commitment to active, responsible kingship. Philip's shyness, which rendered him awkward in public, in combination with his suspicion of others (both innate and encouraged by his father), made it impossible for the king to attend to his duties in the gregarious personal style that had suited the emperor.^[8] Moreover, Philip rejected the incessant itinerancy that had characterized the reigns of Ferdinand the Catholic and, especially, of Charles V; he insisted that "traveling about one's kingdoms is neither useful nor decent."^[9] In the long run Philip resolved these contradictions by developing a method of ruling through the written word rather than through personal contact and debate. The capacities and inclinations that would eventually make Philip the "king of paper"^[10] were evident from his youth. "It was well said of him" Merriman reports, "that from his childhood days he preferred to communicate by writing rather than by word of mouth." Already in the first years of the reign, the king's propensity for secluded reading and study had been remarked by the Venetian Badoero.^[11] Even as late as his mid-thirties, though, the king still lapsed into lethargy at times, unable to force himself to attend to the daily press of paperwork.^[12]

As a young king, then, Philip II was a shy, passive, sedentary man miscast in a regal role that for forty years had been played by the active and extroverted Charles V. It would take Philip more than a decade to perfect his own governing system as the secretary-king ruling far-flung dominions with pen and ink alone. In the meantime Ruy Gómez de Silva acted as the king's eyes, ears and voice. While Philip for the most part held back, aloof from public contacts and personal direction of affairs, his privado traveled for him, spoke for him, and presided over the Council of State in his place.

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Philip's unease with his regal position was exacerbated in the late 1550s by a sense of geographical displacement. He never felt comfortable outside Spain,^[13] but the momentum of events conspired to

keep him in northern Europe for three and one-half years after his accession. Although Spanish hopes for the future of the English alliance were permanently dimmed by the disappointment of Mary Tudor's false pregnancy (1555), Philip remained obliged to pay some attention to his wife's affairs. It was war rather than love, however, that truly compelled his continued presence in the north. Despite the king's attempts to forestall hostilities by concluding the Truce of Vaucelles with France in early 1556, general conflict erupted in the first year of the reign. Further negotiations between Ruy Gómez de Silva and the constable of France (Anne de Montmorency) broke down in July 1556, primarily because of French intransigence. Pope Paul IV, chiefly infuriated that Philip had opposed his election, offered dire provocations that led to the invasion of the Papal States by Spanish forces under Alba in September 1556. The truce with France wholly evaporated at the end of the year, when Henry II allowed the duke of Guise to lead a French army across the Alps to aid the pope, who was essentially defenseless in the face of Alba's army. The war spread to the north with Henry's declaration of war at the end of January 1557.^[14]

The outbreak of war was the occasion of a major diplomatic and financial mission entrusted to Ruy Gómez de Silva. On 2 February 1557 Philip instructed his privado to undertake a journey to England and thence to Spain. In England Ruy Gómez was to convey a written message from Philip to the queen and to inform her verbally of the king's plans to visit the island. (Philip landed, on what was to be his final visit to England, on 18 March 1557 and stayed until 6 July 1557.^[15] ) He was also to inform Mary of the provocations of the pope and the king of France and of the measures Philip proposed to take in response. Ruy Gómez was to encourage the course of events that Philip expected—that the English would also break with France—primarily by taking William, Lord Paget into his confidence and urging Paget to prepare the ground so that the king would find English aid forthcoming upon his arrival.^[16]

Ruy Gómez de Silva left the Netherlands for England early in February 1557. Presumably he accomplished his mission at Mary Tudor's court with dispatch, since he wrote from Greenwich on 16 February that he was leaving to go on to Spain. Philip II had ordered a ship prepared to convey Ruy Gómez from England to Iberia, and it landed (probably at Laredo) in early March. Ruy Gómez arrived

in Valladolid at the court of the regent, Princess Juana, on 10 March 1557.^[17] There, aided by his criado Gutierre López de Padilla,^[18] he set about the principal tasks assigned to him by the king. Ruy Gómez's main mission was to arrange and expedite the provision of men and money from Castile for the military campaigns that would have to be undertaken against the French in Flanders and Italy. The widening conflict demanded increased support from the peninsula. Ruy Gómez's official appointment as contador mayor de Castilla , designed to give him authority to command the fiscal apparatus in Spain, was granted on 30 January 1557,^[19] the very day Henry II declared war. The power of the privado qua privado declined in proportion to Ruy Gómez's distance from the king; an appropriate official appointment could be expected to bolster his informal prestige in his dealings with Castilian officials and notables.

The Crown's Spanish finances were in a wretched state at the beginning of 1557.^[20] The extravagant borrowing undertaken to support Charles V's initiatives and campaigns in the 1550s burdened the treasury with short- and medium-term debt of nearly seven million ducats by the end of 1556.^[21] Service on these debts consumed that portion of the revenues of Castile which was not already pledged to the holders of long-term juros .^[22] In December 1554 a Castilian treasury official had calculated that revenues would fall short of required debt payments by at least 4,300,000 ducats over the period 1555–1560, and by 1556 all predicted revenues through 1560 had been committed in advance.^[23] By 1557 the outlook was even worse. The debt had continued to increase, while Castilian revenues had suffered a severe blow from Pope Paul IV's revocation (effective in 1556) of the cruzada and subsidio collected under papal dispensation from the Spanish church. Now, to compound these problems, Philip II had to have large sums from Castile in 1557 in order to meet the expense of warfare, since none of his other kingdoms was willing to provide significant subsidies. Thus he sent Ruy Gómez de Silva to extract the needed revenue through a variety of expedients; meanwhile, as Ruy Gómez reached Spain, the king himself set in motion the grandest expedients of all, by ordering a rescheduling of debts to the Crown's creditors and further by directing the officials of the Casa de Contratación in Seville to confiscate all treasure arriving from the Indies for private persons.^[24]

While in Spain Ruy Gómez de Silva was to make sure that the

revenues released by the rescheduling or suspension of payments were expeditiously dispatched to the fronts in Flanders and Italy. Philip's orders were blunt: he instructed his privado that, immediately upon arrival, "you are to insist with the Princess [regent] that before anything else she should order the drafting and dispatch of the decrees necessary" to effect the transfer of the bullion confiscated at Seville to the agent (Agustín de Santander), who would move it to northern ports for transshipment to Flanders.^[25] The king needed these funds—he specified a sum of one and one-half million ducats—in a hurry: "In the matter of the money, you must lose neither an hour nor a speck of time, since more rides on this than on all the rest."^[26] Ruy Gómez was ordered to dispense with the time-consuming task of assaying the treasure and instead to send two Spanish metal-founders to the Netherlands along with the bullion. Philip suggested that it might also save time to send the money in up to three discrete shipments, rather than waiting for the whole amount to be collected at the port.^[27] Meanwhile, Ruy Gómez was to ensure that an additional 600,000 ducats were transferred from Seville to Barcelona and from there to Italy to meet the needs of Alba's army. Philip assigned his privado an additional responsibility in connection with this shipment. En route to Italy the bullion would be transported from Castile into the Crown of Aragon, and Ruy Gómez de Silva had to make sure that the viceroy of Catalonia was apprised of this transfer in advance, so that he could arrange with the customs officials to forgo collecting duties on the treasure. "Since it is our own Hacienda," the king wrote, "it is not necessary to do this [i.e., collect the customs]."^[28] This directive affords a sharp glimpse into the peculiar federal structure of the Spanish monarchy. In effect, Philip II ordered his adviser and plenipotentiary to order one of his proconsuls to order some of his customs officials not to collect his duties on his own money being transferred between his realms. One suspects that Philip saw nothing strange in this unwieldy process. It is in a way impressive that the king remembered this detail, which was but one of a myriad of complications that had to be borne in mind in order to rule his dominions effectively.

Besides money the king needed soldiers and warships, and Ruy Gómez was directed to see to the provision of both. Castile was to provide eight thousand troops and the rations for their trip to the north; in addition, a fleet of thirty ships was to be assembled at

Laredo. Divided into two squadrons, the fleet would ferry the bullion and the soldiers from Cantabria to the channel ports. Overall supervision of this mobilization fell to Ruy Gómez. One of his principal tasks was to arrange for the victualing of the fleet on its runs between Spain and the north. He was empowered to arrange for the commercial transfer of grain from southern England to Laredo to provision the fleet, if this proved viable.^[29] Although the actual victualing arrangements have not come to light, the suggestion that English wheat might be brought to Laredo more economically than Castilian grain gives an interesting indication of contemporary perceptions of the relative costs and convenience of sea and land transport for bulky goods.

The king also asked Ruy Gómez de Silva to visit Charles V in his retreat at Yuste, in order to deliver a letter and to put Charles in the picture regarding the affairs of the monarchy. This aspect of the mission was complicated by Philip's evident insecurity; he wanted his privado to convince the retired emperor to resume an active political role in this crisis. Ruy Gómez should implore Charles V, "supplicating most urgently and humbly

that His Majesty might be inclined to exert himself in this conjuncture, aiding and assisting me not just with his opinion and advice (which is the greatest resource I can enjoy), but also with the presence of his person and authority, leaving the monastery [of Yuste] for whatever place may be most amenable to his health and the business at hand, dealing with such affairs as may arise by the means that cost him least affliction. [This is critical] since the common good may well depend on his decisions, for once the world learns of his resolution I am quite sure that my enemies will greatly alter their conduct in these affairs.^[30]

This instruction provides a revealing glimpse of Philip's psychological state at the outset of the first great crisis of his reign. Clearly the king thought his own authority a laughable deterrent to his adversaries, while on the other hand his father's merest exertion would cause all Europe to tremble. Despite his vested authority, the king's self-image remained that of a mummer disguised in the oversized robes of the emperor.

Ruy Gómez de Silva spent about ten days in Valladolid, consulting with the princess regent and setting the financial machinery in motion, before embarking on the rather arduous journey to Yuste.

Toward the end of March he stayed with the emperor for several days, presenting Philip's plea for help. The tone of these meetings may have been awkward, since both men doubtless recalled the strenuous efforts of Ruy Gómez and Eraso to convince Charles of his son's independence and competence to govern alone. In any case, the emperor staunchly refused to leave his retreat. Charles did grudgingly assent to another of Philip's requests: he postponed the formal renunciation of his imperial title pending the outcome of the year's campaigns in Flanders and Italy. Philip had feared that a complete transfer of power in the Empire would erode his authority in these nominally imperial territories.^[31]

Although Ruy Gómez de Silva was unable to convince the emperor to come out of retirement, he did obtain Charles V's counsel on a number of pressing matters. The presidency of the Council of Castile was vacant, and in Valladolid Ruy Gómez had begun to urge that Don Juan de Vega, the former viceroy of Sicily, be elevated to fill the vacancy. The emperor concurred in this choice, and Vega got the post, to the severe annoyance of the marquis of Mondéjar, who had openly campaigned for the appointment.^[32] Ruy Gómez's role in the selection of Vega incidentally provides a refutation of the argument that he was the court patron of the house of Mendoza, since in 1557 Mondéjar was the most visible representative of that house.^[33]

Another issue was determined in the consultations at Yuste. Philip had hoped that Ruy Gómez might bring Don Carlos, the eleven-year-old crown prince, back to the Netherlands with him. There the prince could gain experience of statecraft and firsthand knowledge of his future territories. It is also possible (Cabrera, at least, believed so) that the king had heard rumors of a budding "romance" between his son and his widowed sister the Princess Juana (born 1535), and that he wanted to remove Don Carlos from the temptations of this inconvenient attachment. In any case the emperor convinced Ruy Gómez that the time was not yet ripe for Don Carlos's debut on the world stage. The young man remained too willful and disorderly. Ruy Gómez likely had already observed the prince's behavior for himself. He dropped the notion of taking Don Carlos to the Netherlands; instead, he busied himself in a search for new guardians and tutors for the prince, men who could ensure that the youth "might observe actions and pictures that elevate his spirit with thoughts and deeds of majesty [and] that will generously stim-

ulate him to grandeur, glory and triumphs."^[34] The new tutors, in common with those they succeeded and others yet to come, were to enjoy little success in improving the mind and character of their pathetic charge.

Upon leaving the emperor at Yuste Ruy Gómez de Silva turned his attention to what was perhaps the most sensitive and difficult aspect of his mission in Spain in 1557. During Philip's absence from Spain the privileged orders of the realm had become increasingly uncooperative and belligerent in their attitudes toward agents of the royal fisc. This was particularly true of the high clergy who, emboldened by the pope's revocation of the cruzada and subsidio , haughtily refused all pleas for contributions to the treasury. Juan Martínez Siliceo, the archbishop of Toledo, turned a deaf ear to official pleading that the church should contribute to the state in the interests of common welfare. To underscore his defiance Siliceo sent sizable sums in 1556 to Pope Paul IV, the king's enemy. The archbishop's actions formed a prime example of what Braudel termed the "crisis of insubordination" afflicting Castile in the mid-and late 1550s.^[35] In order to quell this insubordination and raise funds from the privileged orders, Philip II instructed Ruy Gómez de Silva to implement another expedient. What the lords and prelates refused to pay as taxes would be claimed from them "in the form of a donativo [free gift], in appearance voluntary, but in truth obligatory and compelled." Upon departing for Spain the privado was provided with sixty signed letters from Philip II, addressed to the wealthiest figures in the realm and asking for financial aid. Ruy Gómez also carried additional copies of the letter with the recipients' names left blank, to use as he saw fit.^[36]

Through April and into May, Ruy Gómez de Silva attempted to coerce the donativo . This was a ticklish job, since the members of the privileged orders jealously guarded their exemptions from taxation and resented any challenge to them. The prelates, in particular, remained reluctant to contribute, citing the impropriety of using church funds to subsidize warfare against the pope. The stubborn Siliceo's control of the immense wealth of the Toledan see was still a principal stumbling block. Ruy Gómez met with the archbishop to attempt to convince him to donate the sum he had previously pledged for a North African expedition (now postponed) and to arrange for the churches to grant a subsidio notwithstanding Paul

IV's orders. Siliceo stalled, and he died, without having promised any contributions, on 12 May 1557. The government of the princess regent immediately ordered the sequestration of Siliceo's estate and an embargo, for the king's use, of the dues that would be paid to the papacy for succession in the see of Toledo. In essence the archdiocese and its revenues were placed in receivership under the control of a secular magistrate.^[37]

This situation was the occasion for what seems to have been an attempt to bribe Ruy Gómez de Silva. After Siliceo's death the cathedral chapter of Toledo, anxious to win an ally who might be able to lift the sequestration of the archdiocesan revenues, confirmed Ruy Gómez in his possession of the title of adelantado mayor of Cazorla. The adelantamiento of Cazorla (a jurisdictional unit in northeastern Andalusia) had been the object of a protracted legal battle between the see of Toledo and the heirs of Charles V's great secretary, Francisco de los Cobos. In the 1540s Cobos had secured papal bulls granting the adelantamiento to his son. With the emperor applying pressure on the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the territory had subsequently been incorporated into Cobos's mayorazgo of Camarasa. The see of Toledo objected, arguing that the position of adelantado was in the archbishop's gift and could not be perpetually alienated. In the early 1550s Archbishop Siliceo, ignoring the incumbency of Cobos's heir, had named Ruy Gómez adelantado , doubtless hoping to benefit from his influence with Philip, who was then regent of Castile. Ruy Gómez's interest in wresting the title from the house of Camarasa was intensified by the fact that his father-in-law's house of Mélito had been adjudicated a portion of the property of the adelantamiento , and possession of the title might bolster a claim to the remainder.^[38]

The sources disagree as to whether Ruy Gómez de Silva accepted reconfirmation in this post from the cathedral chapter in May 1557. Cabrera de Córdoba asserts that he did not; Salazar y Castro, that he did. In either case they concur that the privado urged the archdiocese to pay the Crown its due, and no evidence exists that Ruy Gómez raised objections to the sequestration.^[39] It is impossible to know what really happened, but it is not difficult to believe what Salazar y Castro implies: that Ruy Gómez took the bribe but declined to exert the influence it was meant to purchase. The fact that the next archbishop, Carranza, further confirmed Ruy Gómez's possession

of the title—despite Paul IV's order to revoke it—may indicate either that the see of Toledo was not displeased with the outcome of the bribe or that, regardless of the sequestration, Ruy Gómez remained the person best situated to combat the claims of Cobos's heirs. In the coming years Ruy Gómez did intervene on behalf of the Toledan see in the suit brought in Rome to restore the gift of the title of adelantado mayor to the archbishop. Despite a favorable ruling by the pope in 1559, however, actual possession of the adelantamiento remained with the house of Camarasa until the early seventeenth century. Eventually Ruy Gómez de Silva ceded his rights to Cazorla to the house of Alba, which after lengthy litigation finally won possession in the seventeenth century.^[40]

Despite Ruy Gómez's rather murky dealings with the Toledan chapter, the death of Siliceo presumably enabled the Crown to extract some subsidies from the revenues of his archdiocese. Difficulties persisted with the other dioceses, however, and Ruy Gómez made another pilgrimage to Yuste on 18 May 1557 to enlist the emperor's aid in his attempts to coax a donativo from the recalcitrant prelates of Castile. On this occasion Charles V agreed to lend his authority to the effort, and Ruy Gómez returned to Valladolid with letters from the emperor addressed to some of the least tractable bishops. Chief among this group was Fernando de Valdés, archbishop of Seville and inquisitor-general. The princess regent had summoned Valdés to a personal audience in March, where she and Ruy Gómez had asked him to supply 150,000 ducats for Philip's campaigns. Valdés—once described by the normally affable count of Feria as a "treacherous malcontent"^[41] —stalled for two months in the face of further importunities and responded to the emperor's letter in May by pleading that alms-giving had exhausted his income. Moreover, he upbraided a treasury officer for having the temerity to dun a prelate. Ruy Gómez reported to Charles V that, despite Valdés's protestations of poverty, six mules heavily laden with the archbishop's revenues had just passed through Valladolid. The emperor wrote once again to Valdés, more sternly this time. After more dithering the archbishop grudgingly promised 50,000 ducats to the Crown, with even this sum to be reduced by the arrears owed Valdés from previous loans. This pattern, of obstruction, delay and, finally, payment of a reduced share of the sum asked for the donativo , seems to have been typical of the behavior of the prel-

ates and lords from whom Ruy Gómez sought contributions. Finally, though, more generous giving was stimulated when Philip, at the end of his patience, threatened to sequester Valdés's archdiocese in order to collect an amount (100,000 ducats) he considered reasonable. With this prod, the donativo solicited by Ruy Gómez de Silva may in the end have realized as much as two million ducats for the king; this was a remarkable success, when the resistance of most of the contributors is borne in mind.^[42]

Ruy Gómez completed his mission in Spain in midsummer and left Valladolid on his return journey on 30 July 1557. Despite the king's February injunction to "come back as quickly as you can" and the regent Juana's urgings that he hasten back to the Low Countries to advise her brother that he must return to Spain, the privado had been absent from court for nearly six months. He was further delayed awaiting embarkation at Laredo until the end of August.^[43] Regardless of these delays, though, Ruy Gómez's mission had succeeded. In June Philip had received significant remittances and reinforcements brought from Spain by Don Antonio de Velasco. A month later, 550,000 ducats were delivered to the duke of Alba in Italy. When Ruy Gómez sailed in August, it was at the head of a squadron laden with more troops and some money (perhaps 100,000 ducats^[44] ). The financial machinery he had set in motion continued to operate through the fall and winter, and a final installment of at least 200,000 and probably as much as 800,000 ducats was brought to Flanders in the spring of 1558 on the fleet of Don Pero Meléndez de Avilés. Although the expedients employed, particularly the confiscation of private American treasure, did not realize the grandiose sums projected by Philip II, the success of the crucial summer campaigns of 1557 in both Italy and Flanders owed a great deal to the timely infusions of cash and manpower from Spain.^[45] In the north the campaign culminated in the great victory of St. Quentin (the crucial assault came on 27 August, just as Ruy Gómez de Silva was leaving Laredo). Cabrera de Córdoba credited Philip's privado with a crucial role in this triumph: "Rui Gomez arranged the provision of the money in such a way and with such abundance that it sustained an army of 80,000 combatants" throughout the summer and at the siege of St. Quentin.^[46]

Ruy Gómez had performed well in a series of difficult tasks, and he had largely succeeded in imposing the king's authority in finan-

cial matters in Spain. His efforts had provided enough support to enable Philip's armies to prevail (barely) over those of the similarly strapped king of France, but they were of course not of a nature calculated to rectify the long-term problems of royal finance. Funds were too scarce to allow decisive action to follow up the victory at St. Quentin, and by November the king was reputed to be essentially bankrupt. His bankers, reeling from the suspension of payments, refused further credit. Suriano, the Venetian ambassador, reported that Spain was in turmoil, its resources "exhausted by the forced exactions ("li partiti extremi") levied for war by Don Ruy Gómez." Philip was forced to rely on the Estates-General of the Netherlands for further revenue; with considerable justice, the delegates remonstrated that the king's demands were unreasonable.^[47] Ruy Gómez played a major part in the king's unsatisfactory quest for new sources of revenue in this period. He was the sole contador mayor at Philip's court in the late 1550s—Bernardino de Mendoza had died in the last days of the siege of St. Quentin, and the third contador , Gutierre López de Padilla, remained in Spain and did not long survive him. Mendoza had been the most competent man of finance among Philip's inner circle, and his expertise was sorely missed in the last years of Philip's stay in the north.^[48] Meanwhile, the king and Ruy Gómez toyed with desperate expedients, involving

a German in Malines [Mechelen] who, by mixing one ounce of some powders of his with sixteen ounces of quicksilver, fabricated sixteen ounces of a metal that is resistant to the touch and to the hammer, but not to fire. It was proposed that this silver be employed for payment of the army; but the estates [of the Netherlands] did not wish to acquiesce in this. . . . At all events, since that invention greatly pleased the king and Ruy Gómez, it may well be believed that in case of necessity his Majesty would make use of it without scruple.^[49]

The activities of the alchemist, Peter Sternberg, were overseen by Ruy Gómez's secretary, a man named Calderón. The secretary was a shifty character who was not above selling his master's secrets to the Venetians, and he turned his superiors' fascination with alchemy to his own profit if hardly that of the treasury. Sternberg received at least 1,200 ducats from the king as a reward for his efforts, while Calderón received 800 ducats for himself. The royal confessor (Don Bernardo de Fresneda) opposed this pathetic expedient from the outset, and his appeals to Philip's conscience, if not his common

sense, seem to have prevented the counterfeit scheme from progressing beyond the stage of expensive demonstrations.^[50]

While these quicksilver dabblings reveal one of the whimsical facets of the collaboration between the king and his favorite, the mission of 1557 provides clear illustration of several more central aspects of the privanza . Both in England and in Spain Ruy Gómez acted as the personal representative of the king. Except in the limited sphere of his role as contador mayor , his authority rested not on vested office but on broad authority conferred by his special relationship with Philip II. No bureaucratic or diplomatic commission in the Habsburg repertoire would suffice to empower the bearer to perform all the roles—among others, advance man at the court of St. James, coordinator of policy with the emperor and the princess regent, expediter of funds between and across jurisdictions, fund-raiser for the donativo —that were discharged by Ruy Gómez de Silva in 1557. The king remained in the Netherlands, but Ruy Gómez traveled as an embodiment of his kingship, licensed to deal with rulers and mighty subjects on terms and with broad discretion provided not by his personal stature but by the aura of reflected and delegated majesty that surrounded him. Ruy Gómez doubtless trod on many toes in Spain, not just those of the social superiors he hectored to contribute to the royal fisc, but those of officials of the military and fiscal administration as well. His success in these dealings outside the chain of command and against the grain of the social hierarchy owes something to his own considerable skills, but primarily it reflects the grudging recognition by lords, prelates and bureaucrats that Ruy Gómez wielded the crosscutting authority of Philip II himself.

The description of the mission provided by Philip's early biographer Luis Cabrera de Córdoba bears examination for the impressions it provides of the privanza as a symbiosis of the king and his favorite, a delegated reproduction of some of the attributes of incarnate kingship. Cabrera wrote that the king

sent . . . Rui Gómez de Silva to take steps to arrange this provision [of men and money from Spain], to raise 8000 infantrymen, to visit the Emperor, to confer on affairs of state, determine the best course to be followed, assess the state of the kingdoms and determine what must be remedied, since he [Philip] could not then visit them; moreover, he was to bring the Prince Don Carlos back to the Low Countries

in order that he might see those lands and be sworn as heir to them, and in order to steer him away from encounters with the Princess his aunt, and principally in order to set the Prince on the right path through his example and presence, since he [Ruy Gómez de Silva] understood his [Don Carlos's] habits as well as though he were of the same flesh and blood.^[51]

As described by Cabrera, Ruy Gómez's mission comprised not just the execution of a series of public tasks but also the performance of some of the king's most sacred personal duties. Since Philip could not come to Spain, his privado would assume the royal function of evaluating the state of the kingdom and the imperatives of just government. Even more striking was Ruy Gómez's insertion into the affairs of the king's family. In Philip's place the privado would tie together the Habsburg generations, reporting to the emperor like a son and supervising Don Carlos like a father.

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Ruy Gómez de Silva remained an intimate of Philip II for most of the remainder of his life, but seldom after 1557 did he appear so unmistakably as the royal alter ego. During most of the rest of his privanza Ruy Gómez operated in the midst of envious and hostile competitors for power and influence. In 1556–1557 his ascendancy among Philip's men stood out in sharp relief; thereafter it was more a matter of degree. Only rarely after 1557 did he stand alone on the public stage in an obvious position of command; in later years his power was wielded in the more private world of a closed court. For the most part he appeared at public functions as one among a shifting cast of courtiers and magnates. His dominance was exercised behind the scenes, and it surfaces in the records of the reign like the voice of a lead singer emerging by subtle counterpoint from the confused roar of an enthusiastic but ill-conducted choir.

Thus it is that we find him in 1558–1559 taking a leading but not solo role in the negotiations that led to the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis. At the beginning of 1558 he, along with the bishop of Arras, was named by Philip to treat for peace with the pope with Cardinal Carlo Caraffa, the papal nephew and legate. Later in the year the negotiations expanded to encompass a general peace among the Habsburgs, France and England. On 11 October 1558

Philip designated his commissioners: Ruy Gómez de Silva; the duke of Alba; Arras; William, prince of Orange; and Viglius van Aytta of Zwichem, head of the Netherlands Privy Council.^[52] Because of his linguistic aptitude Arras was probably the principal voice of Philip's delegation during the negotiations, which lasted in two stages until April 1559. Meanwhile Ruy Gómez de Silva acted as envoy between Philip II and the talks; during the parley he made several journeys to confer with the king on important issues and secured royal approval of the final draft at the end of March.^[53]

Once the treaty was concluded Philip sent his privado to Paris to carry the wedding jewels to his affianced bride, Isabel de Valois, and to inform her of his plans to return to Spain and send for her to join him there. This was the sort of highly visible ceremonial task that fell to Ruy Gómez de Silva in his capacity as sumiller de corps . His grand public roles were often colored by an overtone of the menial. Here he was both an emissary of the king and his master's bearer. Likewise in the case of the elaborate obsequies staged in Brussels in 1558 to commemorate the passing of Charles V: Ruy Gómez stood with the king at the ritual focus of the procession, but he was there to carry the six-yard-long train of Philip's robes of state.^[54]

Ruy Gómez de Silva arrived in Paris on 5 July 1559. This was a critical moment, since Henry II lay dying from the wound he had suffered on the last day of June during the tournament celebrating the wedding and the peace. Philip II feared that if the French king died his successors would renounce the peace and annul the marriage; foreign observers reported that the Spanish contingent in Paris was immensely saddened and anxiety ridden as a result of the king's perilous state. Philip instructed his privado to extend his sympathy to the royal family and, more important, to demand guarantees of French compliance with the terms set at Cateau-Cambrésis. Andreas Vesalius and another surgeon arrived with Ruy Gómez, sent by Philip to attend Henry II. The party had ridden straight through from Brussels by post-relay and, still booted and spurred, Ruy Gómez was ushered into the king's chamber ahead of Vesalius. He remained closeted with the dying king for two hours, presumably seeking assurances that the pact would be honored.^[55]

Within a matter of days the privado learned that Catherine de' Medici was suffering the complementary fear that Philip II would

seize this opportunity to back out of the treaty and attack France in its weakness. Seeking further advantage, Ruy Gómez reacted noncommittally to Catherine's discreet inquiries about the Catholic King's intentions. The desperate pleas of the duke of Guise and other leading figures on the morning after Henry II's death (11 July) provoked a similarly inconclusive response.^[56] Despite the fears this behavior aroused among the French, there is no evidence that Philip even considered renouncing the peace. If nothing else, his finances demanded an end to warfare. Thus, regardless of Vesalius's failure to save Henry II, the peace was ratified. Ruy Gómez's coyness in Paris was simply standard operating procedure for an envoy scenting possible further advantage. He gained no concrete concessions, but he managed to extract from the new governors of France relief and gratitude for an outcome that his master had desired all along.

With the conclusion of the treaty Philip II, in Ghent, proceeded with his preparations to return at last to Spain. Ruy Gómez de Silva sought and received permission to precede the king, and he left directly from Paris for Spain on 26 July 1559; by 7 August he was back in Valladolid.^[57] Again, Philip hoped that his privado might convey Don Carlos to the Netherlands to act as governor there, but this plan was abandoned in view of the prince's evident incapacity, and Ruy Gómez stayed in Spain to await the king's return. During his absence from Philip's side his place as sumiller de corps was filled by Don Juan de Pimentel.^[58] According to an English agent at Ghent, Philip was occupied in the last weeks of his stay in the north with the provision of mercedes for his retainers. "His rewards given to retain his private ministers of late are great and right notable," the agent reported. He cited an ayuda de costa for Alba amounting to 150,000 ducats, and another of 80,000 for the duke of Sessa (governor of Milan). Compensation for their efforts went "to certain other Spanish Lords after the like rate."^[59] While Ruy Gómez de Silva may or may not have shared in this banquet of largesse (and it is impossible to be certain), he had already received a striking reward from his king.

On 1 July, as Ruy Gómez prepared to leave Brussels for Paris, Philip II had granted him the Neapolitan title of prince of Eboli. In the privilege Philip II acknowledged his esteem for and gratitude to his privado :

In consideration of the remarkable and eminent virtues, and endowments of valor, of the Illustrious Ruy Gómez de Silva, Count of Mélito, our much beloved counselor of State and sumiller , and of his Noble and resplendent family, and [his] much-noted knowledge of other affairs, in both the Civil and the Military sphere, in addition to the embellishments of most elevated fortune, virtue, prudence and ingenuity, all of which we know to be abundant and remarkably honored; and to leave to one side the continuous and important services that since his adolescence he has performed with consummate fidelity, application and labor, services which would take too long to recount here, in view of the fact that he has always been with us as our companion in affairs public and private, and in other arduous and very secret expeditions in wartime, times of difficulty and travels; for which reason, with no wrongful motive whatsoever, moved by these and other considerations, we judge him worthy to be adorned with the Title and honor of Prince, in order that we may manifest with unmistakable signs the singular heartfelt affection ["afecto de ánimo"] that we bear him, and so that his descendants may know that he was pleasing and meritorious in our sight.^[60]

The document's phrase—"he has always been with us as our companion in affairs public and private"—neatly sums up Ruy Gómez de Silva's status as privado to Philip II.

The privilege elevated the town of Eboli (near Salerno, in the Kingdom of Naples^[61] ) and the lands Ruy Gómez held surrounding it to the status of a principality. Philip's privado received the title of prince for himself and his heirs by primogeniture in perpetuity.^[62] This title was not as grand as it may seem. Gaspar Muro noted that the Spanish Habsburgs granted various Italian princely titles but that, "far from constituting a more elevated hierarchy, the recipients were not even considered the equals of dukes, grandees of Castile." He quoted the seventeenth-century genealogist López de Haro to the effect that the title of prince in the Kingdom of Naples was roughly equivalent to that of marquis in Castile.^[63] Ruy Gómez himself appears to have valued the title more highly than that of a Castilian count. He immediately dropped the appellation of count of Mélito, which he enjoyed in those years by virtue of his father-in-law's cession, in favor of prince of Eboli. Of course, this may well have reflected his pleasure in a title truly his own rather than an evaluation of the respective merit of the two titles.

Around the same time Philip enlarged his privado's principality by granting him the town and marquisate of Diano and the fief of

Lago Picholo in Campania, on condition that he redeem a lien, in the sum of 36,666 escudos, held against these properties by the prince of Astillano. Presumably Ruy Gómez paid off Astillano, since he held these properties until 1567, but even with this addition the principality of Eboli was more valuable for its title than for its revenues. Eboli was a dusty town of 600 hearths, according to the fiscal census of 1648, and had an assessed revenue in 1556 of 1,958 Neapolitan ducats per year. This was slightly increased by a supplementary grant of Crown revenues in 1559. Diano had 150 hearths in 1648, with a net return to its lord in 1558–1559 of 1,876 ducats. Both towns offered additional "donations" or servicios to Ruy Gómez in the mid-1560s: 2,000 ducats from Diano and 3,000 from Eboli, to be paid in installments over three years. In the late 1560s Lago Picholo was leased out yearly for a lump sum of around 1,400 ducats—a beneficial arrangement, given that remittances from the fief had amounted to a mere 85 ducats in 1558–1559. It would be surprising if these properties taken together (and without regard to the outlays for redemption from Astillano) were ever worth more than 7,000 ducats per year to Ruy Gómez de Silva; by comparison, the estate revenues of a Castilian duke in that era fell in the range of 40,000 to 100,000 ducats annually.^[64]

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Back in Spain the new prince of Eboli continued to play a leading role in government in the years after 1559. As he had in Brussels, he spoke for the king in the Council of State, first at Toledo and after 1561 at Madrid. His alliance with Eraso was renewed and strengthened, and at various times in the 1560s it seemed that the two of them controlled the entire governmental machine.^[65] As the sole contador mayor , Ruy Gómez was paramount in the financial bureaucracy to a degree unmatched since the glory days of Francisco de los Cobos. Assisted by Eraso, Eboli dominated the Council of Hacienda and thus exerted great influence both on the direction of policy and on the flow of salaries, grants and mercedes . The combination of his intimate influence over Philip and his official powers in the Councils of State and Hacienda made Ruy Gómez de Silva the crucial stopcock in the pipeline of royal patronage throughout much of

the decade of the 1560s. "Because of the king's regard for him, Ruy Gómez always has the last word in matters of honors, rewards, favors and payments," according to the Venetian Antonio Tiepolo.^[66]

Meanwhile, particularly after the court was established at Madrid, Philip II retreated even farther from public view, firmly establishing the reclusive brand of kingship that would characterize his long reign in Spain. For contemporaries, just as for modern historians, the king was barely visible in the early 1560s. He stayed away from his councils, and his meetings with foreign envoys were rare and taciturn.^[67] In the eyes of the ambassadors at court, the privado was an indispensable source of access to the king and of information on Philip's wishes and disposition toward their affairs. In some ways Eboli's function was analogous to that of the chief of staff to a modern executive: as the man who saw the king on a regular basis and thus could largely control the flow of information to and from the source of power and preference, the privado's pronouncements and gestures carried great weight and were eagerly parsed by those who had business at the court of Spain.^[68] Ruy Gómez de Silva stood at the center of the affairs of the court, like a lens collecting rays of aspiration emitted by the competing interests gathered at the seat of government, focusing some onto the king and refracting others away from their target and into oblivion.

A wide range of contemporary observers acknowledged the privado' s vast influence as a conduit to the king and a crucial broker in affairs of government and patronage. For the French ambassador Saint-Sulpice, presentation to Ruy Gómez de Silva was one of the first matters on the agenda when he arrived in Madrid in 1562.^[69] At the end of 1563 the powerful secretary Gonzalo Pérez informed the duke of Sessa that, among all the grandee's friends at court, none but Ruy Gómez de Silva could help him in a bid for royal mercedes .^[70] While offering similar advice to his protégé the baron de Bolwiller in 1564, Granvelle observed that, in "a question of finances and matters of state," Ruy Gómez enjoyed "more power over the king than anyone else alive."^[71] Granvelle's brother Thomas de Chantonnay also placed his trust in Philip's privado : "through your aid and intercession with His Majesty I may hope to gain fit compensation for all the years and the private resources I have spent in [the royal] service."^[72]

The outcome of Chantonnay's petition remains unknown, but perhaps he benefited from the same sort of persuasive energy that

Ruy Gómez expended on behalf of his longtime friend and client, Count Persico Broccardo. In 1565 the privado asked the duke of Alburquerque, captain-general in Milan, to expedite the audit of the expenses Broccardo had reported as arising from his recent mission to Rome for the king. "Several times," Ruy Gómez began,

I have informed Your most illustrious Lordship of what a great friend of mine is Count Broccardo, whom I value both for his services to His Majesty and for his personal merits. . . . [Lately] he has performed services that deserve a much better reward than bearing on his own account the expenses he had there and in his travels to and fro. And although I am sure that you have ordered that the audit of these expenses should be carried out immediately, as His Majesty has commanded . . . [still] I implore Your Lordship to order once again that these harassments come to an end. . . . For it is a great shame if it is not enough for a gentleman to risk his life and honor, without consuming his fortune as well.^[73]

Alburquerque, he concluded, should resolve Broccardo's problem "without regard for the subtleties of lawyers or the slanders of those persons in that state [Milan] who do not wish him well."^[74] Throughout the 1560s and into the next decade Ruy Gómez exerted influence on behalf of Broccardo.^[75] He seems truly to have liked the count, once exclaiming that "if one could accompany him, a trip to Italy would be a great delight," and he may also have found Broccardo a useful advocate in his personal affairs in Italy.^[76]

According to Sigismondo Cavalli, Ruy Gómez "is the recourse of all the men of affairs and of the whole court" ("è il ricorso dei negozianti e di tutta la corte").^[77] Cavalli's successors agreed: when it was impossible to gain an audience with the king himself, "we met with signor Ruigomez in preference to any other."^[78] The prince of Eboli knew how to get things done. When Viceroy García de Toledo obstructed attempts by agents of the admiral of Castile to export grain from Sicily under a previously obtained royal license, the admiral's man of affairs turned to Ruy Gómez for help. The privado learned that the matter had been referred to the Council of Italy, and he wrote to one of the regents of that body, asking him to present the case to his fellows in a manner favorable to the admiral. Confident of the desired outcome, he wrote to the conciliar secretary, Diego de Vargas, telling him to be prepared to send the compliance decree to García de Toledo without delay. Then Ruy Gómez instructed his

criado , Juan de Escobedo, to visit the regent in order to reinforce verbally his own written request. Finally, Escobedo was directed to speak to Vargas's assistant, "inducing him to open the letter that is coming" so that his master would be sure to read it immediately.^[79] This episode reveals some of the reasons why Ruy Gómez's support was so prized by petitioners at the court. The privado once remarked, regarding the conduct of business in Philip's administration, that "matters here progress a la española , that is to say, in a sluggish and ill-considered fashion."^[80] Over time, however, Ruy Gómez became a master of circumventing bureaucratic obstacles and manipulating the system for his own benefit and for that of his friends and clients.

The privado was not only an expediter of bureaucratic process and the conduit of requests for the king's favors but also acted as a funnel for dissent. For example, when Fernando Francisco Dávalos, marquis of Pescara, objected to Philip's decision to establish a resident embassy in Turin, he made his disagreement known to Ruy Gómez, who passed it on to his master.^[81]

Of course, relatives also reaped the benefits of Ruy Gómez's skilled intercession. His younger brother, Hernando de Silva, held the post of governor of Asti and was furnished with a considerable stipend authorized by the duke of Sessa, while the latter served as captain-general in Milan and himself enjoyed the patronage of Philip's privado .^[82] Instead of posts and emoluments, some family members requested special pleading in criminal matters. Doña Ana's aunt, the dowager countess of Concentaina, asked Ruy Gómez to intervene with the king on behalf of her son. On Corpus Christi day, 1562, the young count had been involved in a sword fight on the streets of Valencia, had fled the officers of justice, and now was confined in the archbishop's palace awaiting disposition of his case. "What I ask of Your Lordship," his mother wrote, "is that His Majesty should know the truth . . . and see that the count was forced to do what he did and is blameless in this."^[83] On occasion, family loyalties compelled the privado 's intervention on behalf of total strangers. In one such instance, Ruy Gómez tried to influence the judicial officials of Alcántara (Extremadura) to release a Portuguese named Joan Rodrigues from their jail. "My father informs me," he explained, "that he [Rodrigues] is a man of honor but they don't know him there [in Alcántara] and thus for their lack of respect he could receive a stiff sentence." He sent Escobedo a letter requesting am-

nesty for Rodrigues, with the address left blank, instructing his criado to learn the identity of the responsible judge in Alcántara and to forward it to that official with the proper salutation. Meanwhile Escobedo should contact Licenciado Medellin, presumably an official of justice at court, and "ask him for the love of me to take this matter in hand."^[84]

Not just the king's powerful subjects and the privado 's demanding relatives, but foreign royalty as well recognized Eboli's crucial position at the Spanish court. To ensure Ruy Gómez's goodwill toward her daughter, Philip's queen, Catherine de' Medici saw fit to send him a personal note enclosing a diamond for Doña Ana.^[85] Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy fairly gushed that "I am so very obligated to Your Lordship that, while the Duke of Savoy lives and breathes, the Prince Ruy Gómez will possess in him a true friend, and so I have written and signed this ]affirmation] with my own hand, for now and forever."^[86] And even Teresa de Avila, who conducted a great deal of business at court in the course of her efforts to reform the Carmelites, recalled that "in all matters it was well to secure the favor of Ruy Gómez, who enjoyed so much credit with the King and with everyone."^[87]

The public stature of Ruy Gómez de Silva, established during Philip's years in the north, thus remained very prominent after the return of the court to Spain. Meanwhile, to all appearances his private life was also marked by the blessings of fortune. By the late 1550s the generosity of Philip II had bestowed on Ruy Gómez, in addition to his princely title, yearly revenues from the royal treasury in the amount of 26,000 escudos (24,266 ducats).^[88] Most of these grants of income took the form of juros situated on the royal alcabalas of various towns and jurisdictions of the Crown of Castile. The largest single grant was doubtless the 6,000 ducats per year, secured on the marquisate of Villena, that Ruy Gómez enjoyed as part of his marriage settlement.^[89] The composition of another 13,000 ducats per year of the juros granted by Philip II to his privado can be reconstructed from records compiled in 1661 by the estate administrators of Ruy Gómez's great-great-grandson, the fourth duke of Pastrana (see Table). This impressive income was the fiscal measure of Philip II's devotion and gratitude toward his favorite and was further enhanced by the emoluments of his post as contador mayor and as a comendador of the military orders. In addition to these revenues, en-

joyed at the king's pleasure, the prince of Eboli had another source of income that was seemingly more secure. Between 1555 and 1560 he collected the revenues of his father-in-law's Italian estates, which he and Doña Ana could expect eventually to inherit.

In addition to his public position and his growing wealth, Ruy Gómez de Silva had another reason to rejoice in the period of his privanza . His family was growing rapidly in the 1560s, as Doñ Ana presented him with one child after another. Their marriage had been consummated during Ruy Gómez's mission to Spain in 1557. Doña Ana had become pregnant at that time, but the child, christened Diego, died in infancy before his father returned from the north. Once Ruy Gómez was back in Spain, however, the family grew rapidly, and by 1566 the prince and princess of Eboli had five live children. The eldest was a daughter, born in 1561 and named Doña Ana after her mother. Next came a boy to stand as heir to his parents: Don Rodrigo, born in 1562. The name was probably chosen as a Castilianization of his father's. Then, in 1564–1566, three more boys were born, Don Diego, Don Pedro González de Mendoza, and Don Ruy Gómez de Silva. The first two were obviously christened

in honor of their mother's lineage, while the last, born in 1566, bore his father's name with no apologies for its foreign origins.^[90]

Thus Ruy Gómez de Silva could count himself a favored child of fortune in the first decade of the reign of Philip II. From unpromising origins he had risen to become the king's friend, counselor and privado , a man of wealth and influence, and a husband and father linked to one of the great houses of Castile. But the people of that age knew man's fortune to be remarkably volatile, and Eboli's career was still to provide an illustration of this truism. In words that might have served as an admonition to Ruy Gómez de Silva in the years of his glory, Philosophy counseled Boethius to take account of the nature of his life's trajectory:

If you hoist your sails in the wind, you will go where the wind blows you, not where you choose to go. . . . You have put yourself in Fortune's power; now you must be content with the ways of your mistress. If you try to stop the force of her turning wheel, you are the most foolish man alive. If it should stop turning, it would cease to be Fortune's wheel.^[91]

The privado of Philip II had indeed ridden a favorable wind to the pinnacle of worldly success. Then, in the final chapter of his life, he was spun about by a gale that threatened to wreck him on the inhospitable shore of failure. In the depths of this great crisis of his life he would prove himself to be not a foolish man but instead a true man of the Renaissance. Ruy Gómez de Silva would oppose the forces of fate with the exercise of virtù , and in the end he would succeed in stopping and then reversing the turning wheel of fortune.