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.