6
Safely into Port

Although Philip II refused to force Alba to recognize Ruy Gómez de Silva as his chief minister or to intervene to put an end to the sniping of jealous aristocrats, he nevertheless showed no signs during this period that his personal affection for Eboli was waning. On the contrary, one observer wrote, in the midst of Alba's outbursts in 1560, that

it is evident that his Majesty's mind towards Don Ruy Gómez is not in the least changed, and that he loves him as heartily as he ever loved him[;] many persons are of the opinion that in secret Ruy Gómez will always have greater favour and authority with the King than anyone else.^[1]

But be this as it may, Ruy Gómez had been deeply wounded by Alba's attacks, and he remarked to the bishop of Limoges that the duke was "a melancholic enemy of men, who would ruin their court and their master."^[2] The privado 's withdrawal from the public stage of the court was a response to this hurt, but Ruy Gómez also professed to hope that it would help to bring down his enemy. "He was well-satisfied," reported de l'Aubespine,

that all matters were remitted to the Duke of Alba, and well pleased to see every day the anxieties and importunities of a thousand persons, expecting that in the end, since this nation is scurrilous in its envy, rancor and deceit against favorites, the said duke would suffer the same penalty that he had.^[3]

Meanwhile he kept to himself, continuing in private his supervision of the finances and, observers believed, plotting with Francavila, Eraso, Mondéjar (from 1561 president of the Council of Castile) and the king's confessor against Alba. The duke, despite "lamenting . . . the fortune of those who carry the burden of public affairs," seems in 1561 to have been the paramount public front man for Philip's government.^[4] Ruy Gómez's hopes were doubtless raised that sum-

mer by the rumor circulating in Madrid that his nemesis would be sent to Naples as viceroy—it was remarked that the duke's departure would leave Eboli and Eraso "kings" at court—but Alba held fast to the position that he would never leave Spain except to accompany the king.^[5]

In the following year, though, the tide began to turn against Alba. The early months of 1562 saw the court convulsed by a rather obscure intrigue precipitated by the death of the count of Alba de Liste. Alba coveted his deceased kinsman's post as mayordomo mayor to the queen. Ruy Gómez operated behind the scenes promoting candidates of his own, first the duke of Medinaceli and then Alba's own relatives, García de Toledo and Antonio de Toledo. Presumably Eboli hoped to sow discord within the house of Toledo, and the outcome—Alba was named acting mayordomo , but Philip procrastinated in selecting a permanent successor—seems to have rankled the duke.^[6] Alba's frayed temper was stretched past the breaking point in August 1563. Convinced that Philip was slighting him in order to bestow lavish mercedes on Ruy Gómez de Silva, the duke stormed off to his estates once again.^[7] This time the breach was prolonged; a year later the secretary Vargas reported to Granvelle that Alba had not consulted with the king in the interim.^[8]

With his rival once more out of the way, Eboli was clearly the chief figure in the government during the king's visit to his Aragonese kingdoms in the fall and winter of 1563–1564.^[9] Foreign observers again remarked on his great favor with Philip.^[10] Still, Granvelle at least realized that, despite Ruy Gómez de Silva's apparent victory in this round, the struggle was hardly decided. He praised Eboli to Gonzalo Pérez for using "his grandeur and privanza very modestly" but observed that it was still the case that, "if some are content with his grandeur, others are not."^[11] Although Ruy Gómez de Silva had begun by 1563–1564 to recover from the low ebb of his fortunes, the continuing strength of his enemies, coupled with the king's growing reluctance to bestow his favor unconditionally, meant that Eboli was never again to attain the great heights of power that he had scaled in the 1550s.

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During these years Ruy Gómez demonstrated a mastery of courtly skills unmatched by any of his contemporaries at the court of Spain. His dual achievement of the early 1560s—moderating "that envy which had nearly overwhelmed him" without any real help from his protector the king and simultaneously maintaining Philip's favor—comprised a triumph of the artful style of the Renaissance courtier. Beginning in his youth Ruy Gómez had labored to perfect this style; his rise to power and prominence had been effected through masterful courtiership, employed first to attract the prince's eye and then to impress Philip and others with his ability to maneuver within the environment of the court and household. By middle age Ruy Gómez had become a model courtier who might have stepped straight from the pages of Castiglione. "Look at the Spaniards," exclaimed Calmeta in the Book of the Courtier , "who seem to be the masters in Courtiership."^[12] A brief examination of the courtly style of Ruy Gómez de Silva will perhaps confirm this observation.

He was favored by nature for the role. Castiglione's prescription for the physical size and appearance of the courtier called for a body neither too large nor too small but well-proportioned and fit for "agile exercise." "And hence I would have him well built and shapely of limb," the writer continued, "and would have him show strength and lightness and suppleness."^[13] Compare Badoero's description (1557):

Ruy Gómez is . . . of medium height. His eyes are bold and full of lively intelligence, his hair and beard black and curly, his frame delicate but his constitution robust. . . . He is graceful in all his movements and very courteous, with certain innate qualities that win him affection and esteem.^[14]

The Venetian commented further on Ruy Gómez's "subtle frame", while another observer remarked on his "handsome aspect."^[15] Portraits of the prince of Eboli indeed reveal a thin, lithe and handsome man, with a straight nose, dark watchful eyes and full beard, dressed stylishly in a velvet doublet and tights, a flat cap, lacy ruff and jeweled chains.^[16] All in all, he might have embodied the perfect courtly specimen described by Count Ludovico in The Book of the Courtier , a man

endowed by nature not only with talent and with beauty of countenance and person, but with that certain grace which we call an "air,"

which shall make him at first sight pleasing and lovable to all who see him.^[17]

For Castiglione, a principal benefit of physical beauty and agility was their utility in attracting admiring public notice. In particular the courtier should show himself adept in gentlemanly competitions; in

jousts, tourneys, stick-throwing, or in any other bodily exercise—mindful of the place where he is and in whose presence, he will strive to be as elegant and handsome in the exercise of arms as he is adroit, and to feed his spectators' eyes with all those things that he thinks may give him added grace. . . . [H]e will take care to have a horse gaily caparisoned, to wear a becoming attire, to have appropriate mottoes and ingenious devices that will attract the eyes of the spectators even as the loadstone [sic ] attracts iron.^[18]

And indeed, throughout his career Ruy Gómez cut a prominent figure at tournaments and jousts. He debuted at Valladolid in 1543 in a splendid display of finery, participated in the round of tourneys that marked Prince Philip's progress through Italy and the Low Countries in 1549–1550, won a prize from Queen Mary at an English joust in 1554 and was still competing in 1560 at Toledo.^[19] Badoero observed that, prior to 1556 and his assumption of a major governmental role, Ruy Gómez's "only study was to serve the king in his chamber, to please the king in everything, and to shine in jousts and tourneys."^[20]

Hunting provided another opportunity for distinction in courtly and aristocratic circles, and Ruy Gómez was eager to make a good showing in this arena as well. For example, in 1563 he went to considerable lengths to outbid Don Antonio de Toledo, Alba's kinsman and Philip's master of the horse, for the prized hunting greyhound "Marugan." Ruy Gómez may have been more intent upon depriving his rival of this flashy animal than on hunting with it. The breeder at least seems to have suspected as much, and Eboli's reply did not entirely dispel this notion: "Since I have great affection and desire for this sort of hunting, if the occasion arises I shan't fail to take advantage of your offer [of more dogs], but for now this one will suffice."^[21]

Tourneys, mounted bullfights, hunting and the like were of course a sort of mock military exercise, but they also provided the courtier with a chance to demonstrate his equestrian skills:

I wish our Courtier [wrote Castiglione] to be a perfect horseman in every kind of saddle; and, in addition to having a knowledge of horses and what pertains to riding, let him put every effort and diligence into outstripping others in everything . . .^[22]

Although he never rode to war, Ruy Gómez was a dedicated horseman. No record of his proficiency has come down to us, but his interest is attested by the fact that he maintained a large stable of riding horses, carriage teams and mules. Already in 1557 his agent wrote that the horses in his string were "the finest that exist now in Spain." At his death Ruy Gómez's stock included a small white pony named "La Polonia" and a prancing black horse suitable for ceremonial processions and perhaps for use in mounted bullfighting. One of Eboli's finest mounts was "the silver-gray horse that is called Ribera," likely an Arabian. He also maintained a number of carriages, and he undoubtedly cut a fine figure on the streets of Madrid in his leather-covered coach, upholstered in cochineal-dyed satin.^[23]

For Castiglione, in addition to these physical attributes and skills, the ideal courtier should be "more than passably learned in letters, at least in those studies which we call the humanities," and should enjoy some familiarity with the classical languages and fluency in the principal vernaculars.^[24] In this realm Ruy Gómez's courtly credentials were less imposing. His education remains a mystery. Some authors, on uncertain evidence, imply that he was educated alongside the young Prince Philip.^[25] If so, his role in accompanying the prince was undoubtedly more that of a servant than a fellow pupil of Juan Martínez Siliceo, Philip's tutor and a rather uninspired humanist.^[26] No evidence exists that, as a youth, Ruy Gómez received any formal education outside the context of this court school. In later life, though, the privado seems to have felt the lack of thorough instruction and set out, at least for a time, to remedy his deficiencies. Badoero commented that

He shows no fondness for letters; however, since the king has confided important matters to him, he has attempted to acquire instruction, and has been at some pains to achieve this, but lately, whether because of the press of business, or because his maestro lacks talent, he has renounced it.^[27]

According to the Venetian, Ruy Gómez was not a particularly versatile linguist: "He speaks no language but Spanish, but he speaks it to perfection, and understands a great deal of Italian."^[28] This ac-

count gives a somewhat misleading impression, since Spanish was not his native tongue; in addition, he may have learned passable English in the mid-1550s.^[29] Although we can catch a glimpse of him in 1563 taking down an ambassador's speech in French and then repeating it word-for-word in Spanish, a recognition of linguistic shortcomings perhaps lay behind Ruy Gómez's uncharacteristic reluctance to accept an illustrious position as a commissioner for peace talks with the French in 1555.^[30]

Of course, his demurrer on this occasion—"I am not sufficiently experienced to be of use in this connexion, and I will see what I had better do in case it falls to me to be present"—might be seen as an instance of the modesty thought becoming in a courtier.^[31] Modesty was prized primarily as a precaution against engendering jealousy, which was perceived as a great pitfall for the courtier. Castiglione judged that a man striving for recognition at court must avoid affectation and presumption and exercise great sensitivity in interpersonal relations in order to avoid exciting envy. Only rare individuals could consistently enjoy both success and popularity. Prowess and competence would not suffice to win respect and friendship for the courtier,

for, truly we are all naturally more ready to censure errors than to praise things well done; and many men, from a kind of innate malice, and even when they clearly see the good, strive with all effort and care to discover some fault.^[32]

As we have seen, in the years of his privanza the prince of Eboli was the focus of a raging storm of envy at the court of Philip II, and he calmed its worst outbursts in the early 1560s by exercising the sort of amiable self-effacement counseled by Castiglione. His efforts along these lines were well described by Luis Cabrera de Córdoba:

[Ruy Gómez de Silva] made friends of enemies, granting them favors so that they should know his power: a hard and difficult action, generous, noble and Christian, but the difficulty enhances the virtue. He knew his rivals and defeated them courteously, shunning the occasions of open quarrels, doing good to their friends so that they might moderate their ill will. He restrained his retinue when he was moving through the Court.^[33]

Ruy Gómez's technique for deflecting envy seems to have been one of passive amiability. Instead of engaging in undignified public

wrangling with his adversaries, he tended to rely on charm and a rather deferential magnanimity to disarm them. He counseled forbearance: "It is very important for Courtiers, in order to keep friends and palliate enemies, to close their ears to slanderous tongues. Prince Ruygomez attested this from Experience."^[34] This seeming generosity of spirit should not be taken too seriously, however. Ruy Gómez, with his privileged access to the king, had ample opportunity to undermine his enemies in private while turning toward them a sunny outward countenance. "Even though he covered it up in public," remarked one hostile observer, "in darkness he spread his poison where it seemed to him that it could cause injury."^[35]

Of course, Ruy Gómez's supreme gift as a courtier was his ability to attract and retain the favor of Philip II, the fount of all blessings at the court. When the Englishman Arthur Atey described Ruy Gómez as "the most inwarde favourite that ever was with kinge," he was perhaps guilty of overstatement but not of hyperbole.^[36] What was the secret of Eboli's status with Philip?

Proximity to the king was the key prerequisite of his favor. As sumiller de corps Ruy Gómez dressed and undressed Philip and, at least before the court returned to Spain, slept in the anteroom of his chamber.^[37] Indeed, a contemporary witness described the sumiller as "he who sleeps in the King of Spain's room."^[38] This household position, which he held for more than twenty years, provided him daily opportunities for private conversation with the king and kept him constantly within Philip's sight and attention. Coupled with the fact that Ruy Gómez de Silva had known Philip well since their youth, this access made him perhaps the most acute student of Philip's personality, desires, insecurities, likes and dislikes. Even the duke of Alba recognized this, in a remark he made after his rival's death to Eboli's protégé, Antonio Pérez. According to Pérez,

one day in the King's private antechamber, the duke of Alba said to me these very words: "Señor Antonio, Señor Ruygomez with whom you are so taken was not one of the greatest Counsellors that there has been, but I acknowledge him, to you, as so great a master of that herein [in the cámara of the king], of the temper and disposition of Kings, that all the rest of us who pass through here have our heads where we think we are carrying our feet."^[39]

Although the duke could not resist a snide preamble, this statement comprises a considerable testimonial to Ruy Gómez's courtly skills. a friendlier witness was the duke of Savoy, who told Jorge Manrique that, were he to send his son to Spain, he would entrust him only to Eboli, who might take him "for his own, instructing him to understand the will and pleasure of the king."^[40]

How did Ruy Gómez behave in order to enjoy great influence over his master? Gregorio Marañón believed that Philip was pathologically timid and felt threatened by bold and decisive men like Alba and Don Juan de Austria; thus, he argued, the secret of Ruy Gómez's favor was "his murky personality" and willingness to subordinate himself to the king, coupled with a "mysterious gift" for divining and subtly manipulating his master's will and desires.^[41] And indeed, a sort of suave obsequiousness is suggested in accounts of Ruy Gómez's interaction with the king. Consider, for example, Cabrera's description: he asserted that Ruy Gómez

kept it [royal favor] because he attended on him [Philip II] without harassing him or obstructing him when he desired solitude, like a wise man observing with prudence the distribution of his time that the king had ordained. He [Ruy Gómez] held him [Philip II] in uniform respect in all his actions, and this deference increased with the favor and merced that he received. He performed his duties without trickery, with eager willingness and to the liking of his lord . . . winning first the reputation of an intelligent and prudent man with the unpretentious and opportune question and the brief and judicious answer, without relating tales nor rambling, speaking well of those whom the king loved. With creditable dissimulation, a quality both good and necessary, he did not hear more than he was meant to hear, at least when such discretion neither offended justice nor mocked the truth. What was said to him he kept secret, and if others said it to him he dissimulated and was the last to say it.^[42]

Sigismondo Cavalli's description of Eboli's ingratiating touch with Philip is in some respects similar. According to the Venetian, Ruy Gómez

has always manifested a miraculous dexterity and conduct, and accommodates himself very well to His Majesty's disposition, and in treating of affairs he always goes in to the king with the greatest respect, showing himself timid.^[43]

The impression given is that Ruy Gómez, the soul of tact and discretion, blended imperceptibly into Philip's intimate surroundings, anticipating his lord's whims and moods, providing a safe sounding board and a steady source of reassurance and praise for the monarch, and exercising influence by subtle insinuation rather than blunt argument. Giovanni della Casa might have been thinking of Eboli when he wrote that

I could name you many, whoe (being otherwise of litle account) have ben and be still, muche esteemed & made of, for their cherefull and plesaunt behaviour alone: which hath bin suche a helpe & advauncement unto them, that they have gotten greate preferments, leaving farre behinde them, such men as have bin endowed with those other noble and better vertues.^[44]

In Marañón's analysis Philip chose to surround himself with just such comforting, rather than threatening, figures:

there can be no doubt that the King preferred this type of suave courtier [Ruy Gómez de Silva, Antonio Pérez] to men of firm warlike character, like the Duke of Alba. . . . Such a preference is explained by its concordance with his own character, subtle, shrewd and pacific.^[45]

In this view only his iron self-control and devotion to kingly duty as he understood it kept Philip II from giving over his government entirely to "yes men."^[46] This struggle between personal comfort and a sense of responsibility accounts for the intermittency of Philip's reliance on men like Alba and also Granvelle, who was described by a contemporary as "by nature a little cantankerous and harsh"; he and his brother Chantonnay may "seem to want to flay you alive when they simply intend to scratch."^[47]

Marañón's vision of Philip as timid, irresolute and uncomfortable with authoritative men is perhaps overstated, but it is undeniable that the king had a reclusive personality and preferred as intimate friends men whose personal origins and status tended to reinforce their dependence. During the course of Philip's long reign, few men spent a great deal of time in private with the king. Among those who did, Ruy Gómez de Silva and, later, Cristóbal de Moura were minor Portuguese nobles, Diego de Espinosa was a clergyman of low birth, as was Mateo Vázquez, and Antonio Pérez was, like Vázquez, a mere secretary and moreover the bastard son of a cleric. The Portuguese were outsiders, and Philip's liking for their company

may indicate that in some sense he saw himself as likewise alienated from his surroundings. Alternatively, the king's mother was Portuguese, and his affinity for Ruy Gómez and Moura may have stemmed from a submerged sense of shared identity.^[48] The others, Espinosa, Pérez and Vázquez, were even more clearly the king's creatures. His use and patronage of these men may indicate feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness that barred Philip from friendship with more imposing and independent figures; on the other hand, a king jealous of his authority could hardly safeguard it better than by delegating it to men who remained dependent on him for whatever status they enjoyed.

While his father ruled and during the early years of his own reign, Philip's choice of a favorite likely had less to do with calculations of statecraft and more to do with personal preference and insecurities. Ruy Gómez de Silva was first and foremost the friend of the young prince and the inexperienced king, a confidant who, in Castiglione's words, could

lay aside grave matters for another time and place, and engage in conversation that will be amusing and pleasant to his lord, so as not to prevent him from gaining such relaxation [as he can] . . . for I do not see why princes should not have the same freedom to relax their spirits as we should wish for ourselves.^[49]

Even when he attained the status of Philip's privado , entrusted with major governmental posts, Ruy Gómez de Silva remained primarily the king's friend and only secondarily a statesman. Scrutiny of his record does not lead to the conclusion that Ruy Gómez entirely shared the aims of the ideal courtier of Castiglione's imagination, who sets out

to win for himself . . . the favor and mind of the prince whom he serves that he may be able to tell him, and always will tell him, the truth about everything he needs to know, without fear or risk of displeasing him; and that when he sees the mind of his prince inclined to a wrong action, he may dare to oppose him and in a gentle manner avail himself of the favor acquired by his good accomplishments, so as to dissuade him of every evil intent and bring him to the path of virtue.^[50]

The career of Ruy Gómez de Silva reveals no major instances of strenuous principled opposition to the king's expressed will. In-

stead, his courtly actions and motivations seem to comport more closely to the views of Lorenzo Ducci (in Arte Aulica , 1601), as paraphrased by Sydney Anglo:

For Ducci . . . the courtier submits his neck voluntarily to the yoke of servitude. But his end is, blatantly, "his own profit"; and all his service to a lord is only to achieve this. "It appeareth then that the ends or scopes that the courtier hath are three, that is his proper interest , and this is that which chiefly he endeavoureth; next, the favour of the prince , as the cause of the first end; and then, the service of the prince , as the efficient cause of that favour."^[51]

Nevertheless, this is perhaps not as damning a condemnation as it might seem at first glance, since Ducci's apparently cynical analysis in fact represents a rather keen dissection of the common motivations of a client within a patronage system. In the exceedingly unequal power relationship between a king and a courtier of limited personal assets, like Ruy Gómez de Silva, it is implausible to expect the client to conceive of his primary role as one of opposing his patron's inclinations, when such opposition might jeopardize his own position. Thus, while perhaps hardly admirable, it is not for example surprising to find Ruy Gómez, in conversation with the nuncio in 1566 or 1567, first denouncing Alba's opposition to a papal proposal to form a league against the Turks and then asking the nuncio to keep his dissent secret, since he believed that Alba's view would prevail with the king.^[52] His contemporaries knew the privado's tendency to tell Philip only what he wanted to hear. Thus Gutierre López de Padilla urged Ruy Gómez to inform the king in no uncertain terms of the financial exhaustion of Castile and to make this point "without mumbling as though you had a mouthful of water."^[53]

There is in fact no necessary contradiction between the courtly motivations adduced by Ducci and the achievement of the higher goal—of steering the prince along "the path of virtue"—espoused by Castiglione. Good advice was often a by-product of the courtier's pursuit of self-interest; the dynamics of the situation, however, usually dictated that self-interest would override any temptation to preach to a prince bent on pursuing an ill-considered course. The actual strategy of a practicing courtier, attempting both to sway his prince and to maintain his own position, is revealed in Antonio

Pérez's account of his discussions on this subject with Ruy Gómez de Silva.

Antonio Pérez's writings, although problematic, comprise the best extant source of insights into Eboli's vision and practice of courtiership.^[54] No mean courtier himself, Pérez acclaimed Ruy Gómez de Silva as "that great Privado, that master of Privados and of the understanding of Kings" and as "the greatest master of this science that there has been in many centuries."^[55] After Pérez's disgrace, he wrote extensively on the techniques and problems of the privanza and larded his letters and discourses with references to sayings and deeds of the prince of Eboli. "I quote the Prince Ruygomez so much," he wrote, "because he was my teacher [maestro ], and the Aristotle of this philosophy."^[56]

Pérez, in a discourse on the sources and preservation of privanza argued that

If it [favor] is based on the great judgment and value of the person [favored], here is the greatest danger, here are the shoals of human small-mindedness, here great circumspection is needed, and navigation with the sounding lead always in hand. Oh, that the Earth (I mean the Prince) in which the tree (I mean the privado ) is planted may have great virtue, and the profundity to tolerate such trees. Because there is not a Prince—what am I saying, "a Prince"; there is not a man (this is a disease native to all)—who persists in tolerating greater knowledge and judgment [than his own]. But if the privado knows how to moderate the use of it, from this type of privados come the most durable ones.^[57]

He supports this argument by reference to the practice and precepts of the prince of Eboli:

I tell what he said to me, that . . . in the Counsels that he gave his Prince, and in speaking with him, he always bore in mind an important admonition, To adjust his judgment to that of his Prince; . . . that what works in swaying the will of a Prince is a bit of adulation (natural fare to the human temperament), since that homage confirms that they are Lords and powerful. And he added that he even strove to see that the happy outcomes of his Counsels should seem the success of good luck, and born of much care and vigilance in his service, in order that the Prince might acquire love for him, like those who, in gambling, seek players who are lucky more than [those] who have knowledge; because the former [luck] caused affection for the person and the latter, envy.^[58]

In order to underscore this point, Ruy Gómez related to Antonio Pérez the story of Count Luys de Silvera, a favorite of the Portuguese King Manuel. The king asked Silvera's advice about a reply to an extremely well-drafted letter from the pope, and the two men contrived an outline of an answer. King Manuel asked the count to draft the reply; meanwhile, the king, who was proud of his own eloquence, would draw up an alternative letter. Silvera was reluctant to compete with his master, but at length he accepted the task. When they met the next day the king conceded that the count's draft was superior to his own and ordered it sent to the pope. Immediately after this meeting

the Count left for his house and, even though it was midday, ordered two horses to follow his own, for his two sons, and without eating, he led them to the country, and said to them: "My sons, each of you seek your life, and I mine, as there is none to be lived here, since the King now knows that I know more than he."^[59]

Clearly, in Ruy Gómez's view, advice had to be tempered to avoid challenging or threatening the royal ego or pretensions. The secret of his prolonged hold on Philip's affections was perhaps just this ability to provide an insecure young king with private admiration and to act as a foil accentuating the qualities of lordship, power and wisdom that Philip desperately sought to see in himself. The knack of private enchantment, rather than a pronounced aptitude for statecraft, was the key to Ruy Gómez's favor with Philip II. Antonio Pérez had to look no farther than the patron of his youth to find the model for his aphorism that "Privados are great and bewitching charmers."^[60]

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In the mid-1560s this courtly magic began to fail Ruy Gómez de Silva, or perhaps the magician tired of his act. From 1565 on a series of events testified to the slippage of Eboli's favor with Philip II. First, despite the fact that Ruy Gómez had long argued the desirability of high-level talks with Catherine de' Medici and clearly wanted to represent Philip at the Bayonne meetings that were arranged between the two powers, the king chose in spring 1565 to send Alba and excluded Eboli from the delegation. Ruy Gómez was humili-

ated by this rebuff, and his then-ally Juan Manrique de Lara attempted, to no avail, to delay preparations for the mission to gain time during which the king might change his mind.^[61] Eboli even enlisted the French ambassador to plead his case with Philip, and he was doubtless rather taken aback by the king's lame excuse that "during this journey [to Bayonne], his son the prince must travel to Guadalupe, which he would not wish to entrust to anyone other than Ruy Gómez, and there may be danger if he is not always near him." In desperation, Ruy Gómez asked Saint-Sulpice to insist further with the king, telling the Frenchman that he had many enemies at court who strove to keep him down out of envy and because he was Portuguese by birth.^[62] Additional pleas were unavailing, though, and Ruy Gómez stayed behind. Beyonne became a substantial triumph for Alba and provided clear evidence that the duke's star at court was again on the rise after the relative eclipse of 1563–1564.^[63]

In the same period Eboli's old ally Francisco de Eraso was facing serious charges of peculation and misuse of his official authority, instigated by Don Juan de Figueroa, president of the Council of Castile and a longtime enemy of the secretary. Although the accusations were doubtless largely justified, the case was pressed with such bitter personal venom that Granvelle referred to it as "Figueroa's war on Eraso."^[64] Despite the death of the president of Castile in the midst of the investigation, and notwithstanding Eboli's impassioned testimony on behalf of Eraso, the secretary was found guilty in early 1566. Philip II approved the verdict, which fined Eraso 12,600 ducats, stripped him of some of his offices and barred him for a year from the Council of Hacienda, where he had long acted as Ruy Gómez's chief lieutenant. Although some of the penalties were eventually commuted, Eraso was never to regain the dominance of conciliar affairs that had made him such a powerful ally of Ruy Gómez de Silva.^[65]

In the meantime a new rival was rising to prominence at Philip's court. This was Diego de Espinosa, a priest of exceedingly humble origins who became inquisitor-general in 1564 and then succeeded Figueroa as president of the Council of Castile in 1565. Espinosa, who had a tremendous capacity for administrative routine, essentially replaced Eraso as the workhorse of the councils, and he seems also to have supplanted Eboli as the king's hombre de confianza . Ac-

cording to another counselor, the count of Chinchón, between 1565 and his disgrace and death in 1572 Espinosa was "the man in all Spain in whom the king places most confidence, and with whom he discusses most business, both concerning Spain and foreign affairs."^[66] There was some retrospective speculation that Espinosa's rise was initially engineered by Ruy Gómez de Silva as a stratagem to dilute Alba's reviving influence, "but as it turned out," concludes Luciano Serrano, "his calculations were misguided, since Espinosa, once ensconced as President [of Castile] shrugged off all tutelage" and pursued an independent and ambitious course.^[67] Espinosa's emergence as a dominant figure was demonstrated during the summer of 1566, when he persuaded the king, over Eboli's objections, to allow him to conduct the meetings of the council at his home in Madrid while the court was absent in the Segovia Woods.^[68] Shortly thereafter, Ruy Gómez was reduced to attempting to learn through a third party what the king had written to Espinosa concerning a matter of interest to himself.^[69] The president of Castile was beginning to stand between Ruy Gómez and the intimate confidences of his master.

These reversals for Eboli occurred against the backdrop of heated debate in the Council of State over how to deal with the mounting unrest in the Netherlands. Eboli was seen as an ally by the Netherlands nobles whom he had cultivated in the 1550s. Count Egmont stayed with Ruy Gómez during his 1565 visit to Madrid to urge a conciliatory settlement, and Montigny and Berghes wrote the king to ask that he send Eboli to govern the Low Countries.^[70] At the crucial meeting of the Council of State on 29 October 1566, Eboli and Alba squared off in what was essentially a replay of their 1558 debate over the war with France. Ruy Gómez argued that the revolt was a relatively minor threat, too insignificant to require the king's presence in the Netherlands, especially when he was desperately needed in the peninsula. He suggested that the count of Feria be sent as governor to reconcile rather than punish the rebels. Alba, predictably, reacted violently to this suggestion and asserted that the king's honor and the preservation of his authority demanded his personal presence at the head of an army sent to the Netherlands to chasten rebellious subjects. The duke allowed that, alternatively, a general could be sent ahead to prepare the ground for a subsequent

journey by Philip. At this meeting Eboli was deserted by Juan Manrique de Lara, traditionally an ally in the council, who seconded Alba's proposals. Philip rejected Ruy Gómez's counsel in favor of the second plan proposed by the duke and his allies. A month later Alba accepted the command of the planned expedition.^[71] In the intervening days the court buzzed with rumors that Eboli was to go to Flanders, one observer going so far as to assert that "Ruy Gómez governs absolutely."^[72] Even Feria evidently thought the outcome uncertain until the public announcement of Alba's command, since in early December he was reportedly "so malcontent at not having been made general" that he fumed about abandoning the court entirely.^[73] In the event, though, Ruy Gómez had clearly lost this debate, and "entirely preoccupied, could neither close his eyes in sleep nor bring rest to his mind."^[74] Among Granvelle's circle it was thought that Eboli's intrigues with his friends among the Netherlands nobility reflected disloyalty to the Crown and that Philip should "examine who has been serving him until now, and . . . look to who will serve him from now on."^[75] Even the prospect of the removal of his antagonist to the Netherlands provided Ruy Gómez little comfort, since in January 1567 Fourquevaulx reported to the French court that "the Duke of Alba has had such power with this king—as full power as he has thought to request."^[76]

As if all this were not bad enough, since late summer 1564 Ruy Gómez de Silva had been saddled with the unenviable post of mayordomo mayor to the increasingly disturbed crown prince, Don Carlos. He was granted full authority over the prince's governance, household and finances.^[77] On the positive side, this post had traditionally been regarded as one of great honor, and certainly its bestowal was a mark of Philip's confidence that Ruy Gómez would take good care of his troubled heir. In fact, the king told the French ambassador that he would not entrust his son to any man in the world except Ruy Gómez.^[78] Eboli seems also to have believed in 1564 that this appointment was the prelude to sending Don Carlos, under his supervision, to govern the Netherlands, he told Saint-Sulpice that

the king his master had wished to entrust this duty to him on account of the trust that he had in him, and in order that he [Ruy Gómez] might be near his son until he married, since then the woman would

take care of him, and, if in the meantime the king his father were to send Don Carlos to Flanders to pacify the Netherlands . . . he would accompany the prince to attend to his household.^[79]

But the drawbacks of the position outweighed its advantages. Don Carlos greeted his new mayordomo mayor with open hostility, regarding him as a spy for his father. Subsequently the illness and frenzied antics of his charge "interrupted Eboli's constant presence in the king's intimate circle" and thus contributed to his growing estrangement from Philip.^[80]

Some examples will illustrate the frustrations of Ruy Gómez's post as mayordomo mayor to the prince. In the midst of his other problems Ruy Gómez had to derail an insane plot hatched in the summer of 1565 by the prince (now twenty years old) and two of his aristocratic playmates. Don Carlos, at odds with his father, wanted to escape Madrid for Aragon, where as the sworn heir he could act as governor. From there he could fulfill his desire to go on to Flanders. His companions urged the prince to take Ruy Gómez de Silva along to Aragon, since the privado's presence would convince the inhabitants of the localities he visited en route that the journey had Philip's blessing. The three young men made their preparations, caching money and traveling costumes in the prince's country lodge outside Madrid. They agreed that they would lure Ruy Gómez to the lodge and inform him of the plan. If Eboli did not agree to join them, they would kill him so he could not block their departure. They duly confronted Ruy Gómez, who was able, after a lengthy discussion, to dissuade Don Carlos from his half-baked plan by dissecting the flaws in this adolescent fantasy.^[81] Some months later the prince doubtless embarrassed his minder when he stormed into the cortes of Castile and threatened the assembled procuradores that "he would strip them of all their power" should they continue, as he put it, to meddle in his affairs.^[82] Then, in 1567, Ruy Gómez was caught between the king and the prince when the latter asked him for a loan, to be concealed from Philip, to finance his flight to the Netherlands or Portugal. Eboli went to the king, and Don Carlos, his plans undone, was very angry with his mayordomo . In fact, Ruy Gómez took second place only to Philip on a list of enemies said to have been found among the prince's effects.^[83]

In his post as mayordomo mayor to Don Carlos, Eboli was burdened with a thankless task; certainly by 1567, and probably much

earlier, he realized that his charge would never rule either the Netherlands or Spain itself.^[84] He was condemned to manage as best he could the antics and tantrums of the prince, while Philip, at the end of his patience, was already in 1567 considering imprisoning his son.^[85] A few years later, speaking of another bizarre prince, Sebastian of Portugal, Ruy Gómez would remark

that it is necessary, in a manner of speaking, to guide him and deal with him with apples in hand, and not with reason or remonstrances, since he neither knows nor wishes to understand what is good or bad for him.^[86]

This observation smacks of the rueful wisdom of experience. As mayordomo mayor , though, beyond the attempt to steer Don Carlos like a wayward pet, he could do nothing to stem the prince's degeneration and thus please the king; meanwhile, Ruy Gómez's image in Philip's mind likely became tainted by association with the personal tragedy of his son's mounting insanity.

Beginning in mid-decade observers of the court were aware of a deterioration in Ruy Gómez de Silva's relationship with Philip II. Visiting Madrid in late 1564, Brantôme speculated that Eboli no longer enjoyed his great favor with the king, noting that his continual pleas to be relieved of the care of Don Carlos went unheeded.^[87] Meanwhile, the envy of the grandees, somewhat muted for the past few years, had reemerged to trouble Eboli. Giovanni Soranzo, in his report of 1565, noted that, while Ruy Gómez was well liked by those who had business at Madrid, because of his "very sweet and clement nature toward everyone," he was "much hated" by the Spaniards at court, "who cannot bear his great grandeur, primarily because he is a foreigner and of the Portuguese nation, most deeply loathed by them." Ironically, this envy seems to have been exacerbated by Philip's choice of Ruy Gómez as mayordomo mayor to Don Carlos, "a rank that all the grandees of Spain wanted and aspired to."^[88] Another Venetian, Sigismondo Cavalli, reported later in the decade that, because of various altercations with Espinosa, Eboli had lost some of his favor with Philip II, "having come under suspicion by the king as a self-serving man." Noting what he believed to be Ruy Gómez's genuine amity toward Venice and his reputation as an honest broker of affairs at court, Cavalli concluded that "it would surely mean grievous harm were he to fall."^[89]

A tangible measure of the growing estrangement between Ruy Gómez and his master the king is provided by the fact that, during the summer of 1567, Eboli and his family left their longtime lodgings in the palace and took up residence in a nearby house in the parish of Santa María that had belonged to Gonzalo Pérez. Ruy Gómez would never again live for an extended period under Philip's roof, except during Don Carlos's detention, when, as the prince's keeper, he resided in the prisoner's apartments abutting the palace.^[90]

There is also perhaps some indication of a souring relationship between Philip and his old favorite in the growing number of unpleasant tasks entrusted to Ruy Gómez in these years. Most obviously, his role as minder and then warder of Don Carlos eminently qualified as dirty work. Another ugly chore fell to Ruy Gómez in May 1567. His old friend the marquis of Berghes was gravely ill at Madrid, and Philip sent him a secret instruction from the Escorial, directing him to visit the sick man. If he ascertained that Berghes's illness was terminal, Ruy Gómez should tell him that the king had granted his oft-repeated request for leave to return to the Low Countries; if, however, there was any chance that Berghes might recover, he should merely hold out hope of such permission in future. Furthermore, in the event of Berghes's death, Eboli was to write to Margaret of Parma, instructing her on his own authority—citing Philip's absence from the capital—to seize the dead man's estates in the Netherlands.^[91] Ruy Gómez carried out this distasteful mission. Evidently he reckoned Berghes's affliction fatal, for he relayed Philip's safe-conduct to the marquis. Nevertheless, before Berghes died early on the morning of 21 May he expressed his great bitterness toward the king for delaying this permission and thus effectively killing him. Berghes's body was hardly cold when Ruy Gómez dispatched a courier to Brussels in the mid-afternoon of the 21st, relaying the news and the instruction to confiscate the marquis's estate. Margaret of Parma replied on 1 June, reporting to Ruy Gómez that, under the pretext of protecting Berghes's heirs and their property rights, she had dispatched soldiers to hold his property.^[92]

This distasteful episode may be read as an instance of Philip compelling a demonstration of loyalty from Ruy Gómez, at the expense of honor, old friendship and Eboli's well-known and now discredited views on the proper handling of the Netherlands situation. The king's behavior carried a whiff of sadistic caprice, while Ruy

Gómez's compliance was nothing if not obsequious; certainly the relationship between master and favorite had deteriorated from the warm mutual regard of earlier days. In the wake of this episode Eboli seems to have seen the handwriting on the wall, and he wasted no time in denying his other former friends among the Netherlands nobility. For example, soon after Berghes's death he advised Gaspar de Robles (the seigneur de Billy) to burn the letters of recommendation that Egmont had written for him.^[93] Some further evidence of Philip's assignment of unpleasant duties to Ruy Gómez is provided by the fact that Eboli wrote on the king's behalf to inform Margaret of Parma of her removal from office in October 1567. Although he cushioned the blow with—in Gachard's term—"paroles flatteuses" and extended a "golden parachute," Eboli's role here was clearly that of hatchet man.^[94]

Diego de Espinosa's star continued to rise in this period, and the contrasting trajectory of his own favor must have become increasingly evident to Ruy Gómez. In the spring of 1568, while Eboli guarded the jailed heir to the throne, Espinosa was at Philip's instance invested as a cardinal. Both Gachard and Serrano interpreted this honor as both an exaltation of Espinosa and a calculated humbling of the other lords around Philip, including Alba and Eboli.^[95] Through his ambassador in Rome Philip had lobbied for Espinosa's elevation since the fall of 1567; contemporaries believed that the king wanted this dignity for Espinosa so that he might leave the new cardinal as regent in Spain if he chose to go in person to the Netherlands.^[96] Recognition of Espinosa as a mutual danger may have played some part in the public reconciliation undertaken by Ruy Gómez and Alba before the duke left for Brussels in the spring of 1567.^[97]

When Espinosa received the biretta, in April 1568, Philip made a great public show of respect and deference. As a more concrete token of esteem the king gave Espinosa the lucrative see of Sigüenza, from which he reportedly realized 100 escudos a day. The year before, his nephew, also Diego de Espinosa—"who is dear to him and whom he looks always to advance"—had received an hábito of Santiago and other mercedes from the monarch. The cardinal seems to have acted as Philip's private chaplain, thus assuring himself solitary time with his master, particularly in 1568, a year of personal heartbreak during which the king presumably had great need of

spiritual comfort. Meanwhile, the Council of Castile continued to meet in Espinosa's house.^[98] Court observers in the late 1560s had no doubt that the cardinal was preeminent in Philip's affections and the most powerful adviser in the court. In 1569 Catherine de' Medici's ambassador urged her to cultivate Espinosa, "who can do whatever he wishes with this king." A year later the same envoy wrote that, despite Ruy Gómez's own candidacy for the post, Espinosa would prevail on the king to make his relative Don Antonio de la Cueva mayordomo mayor of the new queen: the cardinal of Sigüenza, Fourquevaulx asserted, "does and undoes what he pleases."^[99] By 1571 Ruy Gómez had formed an alliance with the new favorite. He and Espinosa were described as "two heads in one hood," but it was the cardinal's head that carried Philip's warmest benediction.^[100]

While the dwindling of his position at court posed a threat to Eboli's influence and to the steady flow of royal mercedes , he also faced growing uncertainty in his private life. His relations with Doña Ana, now the princess of Eboli, seem to have been tempestuous but not miserable, and certainly their marriage was fecund—ten children were born to them between 1558 and 1572, of whom six survived. The four eldest survivors, including three sons, were born between 1561 and 1566.^[101] Obviously Ruy Gómez would have to make some provision for these children, and his ambitions for them were lofty. He had a considerable income, estimated at as much as 60,000 ducats a year in 1565, from his official posts, his encomienda and his annuities and other royal grants, but a major part of this was payable for life alone, and almost all was directly dependent on Philip's continued favor.^[102] Given the ebbing of this favor, the financial future of Ruy Gómez de Silva, and especially that of his children, could not be regarded as secure.

The private fortune represented by Doña Ana's presumptive inheritance of the house of Mélito seemed increasingly uncertain as well. First, Ruy Gómez had gained accurate knowledge of the value of the Mélito estate during the period 1555–1560, when, by the terms of his marriage, he had been allowed to collect its revenues. During this period the estate returned a net income of rather less than 8,000 Neapolitan ducats per year, a far cry from its reputed annual yield of 20,000–30,000. According to a governmental report of the late 1550s the capital city, Mileto, was "extremely depopulated," while the count's "fortresses and houses are falling into ruins." The short-

fall of income stemming from these conditions was compounded by the fact that many revenues were sequestered pending the outcome of protracted litigation. A history of corrupt and inefficient administration—one observer noted that "the lack of justice in Mélito is proverbial"—was also partly to blame. Although Ruy Gómez, with his special influence, had been able to expedite some of the lawsuits and had attempted to improve the management of the estate, his experience must have left doubts about the sufficiency of the Mélito inheritance as a financial foundation for his lineage.^[103]

To make matters worse, the inheritance itself had become a dubious prospect. In 1557 severe public disagreement had erupted between Doña Ana's parents, the duke and duchess of Francavila (previously the count and countess of Mélito and subsequently the prince and princess of Mélito). The precipitant was the flagrant philandering of the duke, Ruy Gómez's father-in-law. Doña Ana sided with her mother and secured the aid of the regent, the Princess Juana, against her father. She thus incurred Francavila's lasting enmity. Ruy Gómez, in Spain attending to royal financial matters, was drawn into the dispute, and he unsuccessfully urged a settlement. The best he could do was to prevail upon Philip to summon the duke to his side in the Low Countries. Doña Ana's parents publicly separated in the aftermath of this episode and lived apart until 1564. Ruy Gómez assumed the responsibility of supporting his mother-in-law during these years. Relations between father and daughter, and increasingly between mother and daughter as well, remained stormy. Francavila was arrogant and unrepentant, while the duchess's "principal activity is to grumble and backbite without mercy for anyone." The situation was awkward for Ruy Gómez not least because he had to have political dealings with his father-in-law. Although their relations became so strained by the late 1560s that Francavila was acting as an Alba partisan, Ruy Gómez and his father-in-law seem to have patched up their relationship at least by 1573, the year of Eboli's death. The sources uniformly praise Ruy Gómez for his tactful handling of this three-cornered dispute. He seems to have taken the familial bond very seriously: "since I took them [the duke and duchess] for parents, it is necessary to carry them on my shoulders even though this burden causes me considerable travail." Nevertheless, the princess of Eboli remained estranged from her father, and her inheritance was doubtful because of it. Just

how uncertain is evident from the fact that, upon the death of Doña Ana's mother in 1576, her father remarried immediately and left his widow pregnant when he died in 1578. The posthumous child was a stillborn daughter; had it been a live son, he would have preempted Doña Ana's succession.^[104]

The precarious nature of the Mélito legacy was clear at least from the early 1560s. To compound the problems posed by familial antagonisms, there were other potential obstacles to Doña Ana's inheritance of the House of Mélito. These arose from the fact that conditions of the entail barred female succession to at least some of the properties. This led to extensive litigation when the estate was finally settled; other observers noted these problems, and it seems unlikely that Ruy Gómez was himself unaware of them.^[105]

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In the 1560s, then, Ruy Gómez de Silva saw his luck beginning to turn sour. His standing and fortune, public and private, were essentially dependent on the goodwill and the whims of other men, the king and his father-in-law. The mounting evidence of experience indicated that this goodwill was not reliable. Records of Ruy Gómez's thoughts and feelings in this period are scarce, but some indications can be found in the later writings of Antonio Pérez. Pérez's ruminations on the fortune and misfortune of privados were hardly disinterested, but he was protégé of Ruy Gómez, and there is no reason to dismiss his assertion that Philip's Portuguese favorite confided in him and was his primary instructor in the courtly arts. Eboli's troubles seem to have turned his mind toward musings on the workings of Fortune. This was a characteristic preoccupation of the courtly thought of the Renaissance. Castiglione, for example, believed that the aspiring courtier should always retain in the back of his mind the image of the revolving wheel of fortune and should temper hubris with the consideration of "how often Fortune in mid-course, and sometimes near the end, dashes our fragile and futile designs and sometimes wrecks them before the port can even be seen from afar."^[106] Antonio Pérez epigrammatized this conventional wisdom ("Fortune is to be feared when it is most fully in hand"^[107] ) and went on to apply it specifically to the realities of life at court:

Privados and others most securely favored by Dame Fortune ought to recall, in the midst of the banquets of her favors, just who She is: That She attacks the careless, and squeezes dry and drowns those who most firmly embrace her: that her hugs are those of a bloodthirsty and treacherous bear.^[108]

Writing long after the death of Eboli and after his own fall from grace at court, Pérez reproduced a conversation that he had had with Ruy Gómez. This conversation, as distilled and doubtless embellished by Pérez, reveals a man disillusioned by court life and saddened by the waning of favor that he perceived as having been earned through a lifetime of loyal service. Pérez reported that

On our private strolls, he [Ruy Gómez de Silva] came to say this to me: "Señor Antonio, think you that I would not flee away from here if I were able without incurring censure for ingratitude? You had better believe that I would do so, and would hold myself fortunate: but I cannot without peril of the censure I speak of. . . . It is happening to me, finally, which happens to women (the comparison was his) who have grown rich from their beauty: that, in order to be respected, they must return in old age what they acquired in youth; and, by the same token, I should continue on here so that they may not hold me ungrateful for the prosperity that has come to me in the King's service."^[109]

The inveterate courtier seems finally in middle age to have lost his zest for the game. Of course, there is a stylish element of world-weary rhetoric here. "At court," the moralist bishop and courtesy-writer Antonio de Guevara remarked, "everyone curses the court, and then they all follow it."^[110] Nevertheless, the bustle and tension of court life had to be wearing, especially as the years advanced. "Those who pass their time in palaces," wrote Diego de Hermosilla in 1573, "must have iron heads and copper stomachs."^[111] Guevara went on to observe that courtiership was enjoyable only for favorites when they were riding high or for callow youths who did not feel the pain of its vicissitudes.^[112] With his youth gone and his privanza dissolving, it is no wonder that court life began to lose its charm for Ruy Gómez de Silva.

According to Pérez, Ruy Gómez went on to speak, presumably from personal experience, about the cruelty of a reversal of fortune:

Also that day, Prince Ruygomez came to say to me something singular, which pleased me greatly, among many other very fine things on

this subject, that when Fortune deserted those whom she had favored (it was for him a very characteristic pastime to occupy himself with this subject), and had passed them by, they felt more deeply slaps on the face than mortal blows. The reason may be the same as with spoiled children, who suffer more from the visible stigma of blows that show and the bruises they leave than from the pain of secret blows they receive.^[113]

These reflections capture something of the bewildered humiliation that Ruy Gómez must have suffered in the mid-1560s, as it became obvious, not just to him but to his envious adversaries as well, that Philip's favor was receding.

Thomas de Chantonnay, Granvelle's elder brother, was musing in 1565 about a similar predicament. He warned his brother that

princes show good warm affections when they need to make use of men; but they don't hold them in such esteem when they come too cheaply, and if they become accustomed to having such men under their feet, they hold them in no account, and it seems to them that they can dispose of their bodies and their honor at a whim; and, if they become accustomed to doing without them, they forget them and find they no longer have need of them.^[114]

He counseled Granvelle "not to put so much faith in the beautiful words of princes," but instead to make his own luck.

The past is gone; and from now on, it is time to look out for one's own honor, and to show one's face and teeth, because the times are such that the bold and those who make themselves difficult are well-treated, cherished, wooed, bought and held in awe, while those who are adaptable and self-sacrificing are ground underfoot.^[115]

Chantonnay's counsel of aggressive self-promotion was perhaps appropriate for Granvelle, but less so for Ruy Gómez, whose stock at court had always been based more on suavity than on boldness. His style had never been "to show his teeth." Nonetheless, Eboli found his own way of combating the changeability of his fortunes. While he may have brooded on the cruel blows of fortune, Ruy Gómez was taking action to ensure some security for himself and his lineage. Beginning in 1562 he rapidly assembled a collection of properties in the New Castilian region of the Alcarria (between the Tajo and Tajuña rivers, east and southeast of Madrid), evidently with the notion of establishing himself as a substantial seigneur. The Alcarria did not have a great deal to recommend it in terms of rich lands or

thriving towns, but it did offer some advantages. First, it was near the court, firmly established at Madrid since 1561; Ruy Gómez would thus be able to adopt some aspects of a seigneurial style of life without abandoning his crucial connection with the court. Moreover, a considerable number of properties were available in the Alcarria. Various towns and villages had been expropriated from the military orders and put up for sale by the Crown.^[116] Others were held by more or less impecunious relatives of Doña Ana. The region was a traditional preserve of the various branches of the Mendozas and, because of familial connections, Eboli was doubtless well informed about opportunities to purchase jurisdictions there. Another reason why Eboli may have chosen to concentrate his acquisitions in the Alcarria is that he already had something of a foothold as a lord in the region. Since 1559 he had been, by Philip's appointment, the alcaide (castellan) of the castle of Zorita de los Canes on the Tajo.^[117]

Whatever his reasons for choosing the Alcarria, analysis of the pattern of Eboli's purchases indicates that he was more interested in amassing a sizable estate rapidly than in constructing a particularly coherent economic or jurisdictional unit. He seems to have begun scouting potential purchases in 1561.^[118] In 1562 he opened negotiations with Don Gaspar Gastón de la Cerda, Doña Ana's paternal uncle, to purchase his jurisdiction over the town of Pastrana and its neighboring villages. The deal was closed and a royal privilege obtained, but the seller died before the arrangements could be finalized. Eboli continued the negotiations with the new owner, his wife's cousin Don Iñigo de Mendoza (later first marquis of Almenara), but he did not succeed in purchasing this centerpiece of his future duchy until 1569. The purchase included the palace in Pastrana (valued in 1562 at 15,000 ducats), various monopolies and a portion of the town's alcabalas . Eboli secured the remainder of the alcabalas and tercias and assorted real property in Pastrana by purchase from another of his wife's uncles in the same year.^[119]

During the period of negotiations over Pastrana, Ruy Gómez had purchased several other jurisdictions. In 1565 he bought the towns of Estremera and Valdaracete from the estate of Don Francisco de Mendoza, the son of the second marquis of Mondéjar and admiral of the galleys, who died on campaign in 1563.^[120] Also in 1565 and 1566, Eboli purchased from the Crown the towns of La Zarza, Zorita

de los Canes and Albalate, which had been "dismembered" from the lands of the military orders. He rounded out these holdings by purchasing alcabalas and tercias within the jurisdictions and buying the alfoz of Almonacid and the mills of Pangía and Verdugo on the Tajo.^[121] At one point he expressed interest in the holdings of Don Bernardino de Cárdenas in Colmenar de Oreja, but nothing came of these initial inquiries.^[122] Ruy Gómez also obtained a papal privilege of 1569 to found and patronize the Collegiate Church of Pastrana. In the same year he and Doña Ana invited Teresa de Avila to establish a Carmelite convent in Pastrana, which she did. Eboli secured hereditary patronage rights for the other religious foundations in Pastrana as well, and in 1571 he sponsored the institution of a short-lived college in the University of Alcalá under the rectorship of John of the Cross.^[123]

In at least one instance Ruy Gómez's new vassals resisted incorporation into his growing estate. The people of Albalate, protesting the king's sale of their town, demonstrated in the plaza , and in August 1566 they sent a delegation to register their objections with Philip, then summering in the Segovia Woods. The king refused to see them, but the priest heading the delegation left a written petition. In it the citizens of Albalate asked Philip to nullify the sale of the town to Ruy Gómez, offering instead to purchase it themselves. In a letter to Escobedo, Ruy Gómez noted with relief that the townspeople could raise only 13,000–14,000 ducats, far short of the 34,000 ducats he had agreed to pay. Philip seems to have taken no notice of the counteroffer from Albalate, and he may never have seen it. Nevertheless Ruy Gómez, still wary that his purchase might be nullified, ordered his agents to forgo further amendments to the terms of sale, for fear that any innovations would attract the attention of the king and the Council of Castile. By November 1566 Eboli's purchase had been finalized, and he enjoyed a vacation in Albalate, praising the town's "refreshing air and peaceful aspect."^[124]

Ruy Gómez's acquisitions in the Alcarria entailed considerable expense. The haste with which they had been negotiated had allowed little time for hard bargaining or careful appraisals, and Eboli complained in 1568 that he had been defrauded in some of his purchases.^[125] In any case, Pastrana, Estremera and Valdaracete, the three major towns, alone cost more than 366,000 ducats. Despite an impressive list of salaries and his juro income of perhaps 20,000 ducats

per year, these expenditures were well beyond the means of the prince of Eboli. The purchases were primarily financed through loans, mostly from major creditors of the Crown, such as the royal Treasurer-General Melchor de Herrera (subsequently marquis of Auñón), the Genoese financier Niccolò Grimaldo (known to contemporaries as "el rey") and "Antonio Fucar [Fugger] y sobrinos." At the time of his death in 1573 Ruy Gómez de Silva still owed about 70,000 ducats to Herrera and 35,000 to the Fuggers. Grimaldo was even more deeply involved. On behalf of Ruy Gómez he paid the purchase price of more than 160,000 ducats for Estremera and Valdaracete, and he advanced money to Eboli on a number of other occasions. The means by which he was repaid are complex. In a tangled transaction of 1566–1568 Grimaldo purchased Eboli and some other Italian properties from Ruy Gómez. These properties were not particularly valuable, but Grimaldo also obtained the socially legitimizing title of duke of Eboli, presumably through Ruy Gomez's influence with Philip II.^[126]

The sale of Eboli accounted for 32,000 ducats of Ruy Gómez's debt to Grimaldo; the debt stood at 2,600 ducats when Ruy Gómez died.^[127] It is not clear how the remainder (a balance of more than 125,000 ducats for the Estremera purchase alone) was settled. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion of improprieties involving the Crown finances, given Ruy Gómez's influence and Grimaldo's interests in that sphere. In this connection one unusual circumstance involving Grimaldo and Ruy Gómez bears examination. A year before the purchase of Estremera and Valdaracete, Eboli asked the French ambassador in Madrid to secure a license for him to transport 50,000 escudos from Spain to Naples across French territory. The Frenchman seems to have regarded this as a personal rather than an official request, and he recommended approval by his superiors as a means of maintaining good relations with Ruy Gómez. The license was duly granted in December 1564; two months later the French ambassador wrote a safe conduct for Grimaldo, who was transporting 23,000 escudos under the terms of Eboli's license.^[128] This episode suggests the possibility of financial chicanery involving Ruy Gómez and Grimaldo. Was Ruy Gómez using his official position to help Grimaldo remove bullion from Spain? Corruption cannot be clearly documented in this case. Still, at the very least it seems indisputable that Ruy Gómez's position as a contador and an intimate of the king

must have made him a desirable debtor from the point of view of men like Grimaldo, Herrera and the Fuggers.^[129] Perhaps some whiff of financial impropriety in the assembly of Eboli's estates lay behind the king's suspicion, reported by Cavalli in 1570, that Ruy Gómez de Silva was "a self-serving man."^[130] Certainly it is striking that less than a week after Eboli's purchase of Estremera and Valdaracete, financed by Grimaldo, the French ambassador noted that the king had just borrowed "a million in gold" from the same banker.^[131]

Grimaldo and Herrera were intimately involved in other aspects of Ruy Gómez's finances in the 1560s and 1570s. Grimaldo was Eboli's creditor from at least 1562; in that year Ruy Gómez ordered his receiver in Naples to pay the balance of what he was owed from his period of control of the County of Mélito to the Genoese financier.^[132] Eboli was uncomfortable as Grimaldo's debtor, remarking to Escobedo in 1564 that "as you say, it seems to me good advice that I should escape from his hands, since, however smooth they may seem, they are always sticky."^[133] Nevertheless, he seems to have been unable to extricate himself, since in 1565 Grimaldo was collecting Eboli's dues as contador mayor from the treasury,^[134] and of course Ruy Gómez would incur even greater debts to Grimaldo in the course of acquiring his estates.

While he was buying properties in the Alcarria, Ruy Gómez also purchased a number of large juros from the Crown, and Melchor de Herrera figured in several transactions involving these annuities. For example, in May 1568 Ruy Gómez purchased a juro , worth 2,453 ducats per year, by paying the initial price of 34,347 ducats (at the common rate of 14:1) to Herrera, acting as treasurer-general for the Crown. Subsequently, in 1577, it was revealed that, although Eboli held the royal privilege for the annuity, 85 percent of it actually belonged to Herrera.^[135] This pattern was repeated with several other juros ,^[136] and two explanations come readily to mind. Perhaps Ruy Gómez signed over portions of the juros to Herrera in repayment of loans, although this begs the question of how Eboli came up with the substantial initial capital to purchase the annuities. On the other hand, it seems possible that these juros were fraudulent, with Herrera merely claiming to receive payment on the Crown's behalf in return for the lion's share of the annuity income. Leonardo Donato suspected Herrera of corruption, tolerated by Ruy Gómez and the Council of Hacienda, in the arrangement of major royal loans.^[137] Juan Milio said of Ruy Gómez that he "never saw a loose halfpenny

that he did not grab, so long as he could do so safely and easily."^[138] Given their privileged positions within the financial bureaucracy, it is at least possible that herrera and Eboli might have conspired to embezzle juro income.

The history of another of Ruy Gómez's juros , a 1572 gift from Philip worth 533 1/3 ducats per year, may shed more light on the means by which Eboli's debt to Herrera was eventually repaid. This was a perpetual and heritable annuity, with a buy-out price of 20:1, and in 1579 Ruy Gómez's widow signified that she had sold it to Herrera at the established rate for 10,667 ducats. In the course of subsequent litigation, however, Herrera revealed that he had actually paid only 7,467 ducats for the juro ; he explained the lower purchase price by resorting to an affidavit from Niccolò Grimaldo attesting that the annuity had been difficult to collect and that he had thus advised Doña Ana to sell at the lower rate of 14:1. What, if anything, Doña Ana realized from the sale remains unclear, since her sworn bill of sale of 1579 was obviously false, but there can be no doubt that Herrera made out well. He collected the annuity for two years before selling it to a third party in 1581 for 8,000 ducats.^[139]

Again in the case of these juro transactions, the evidence allows no clear verdict of impropriety, and given the confusion of private interest and public trust so characteristic of the era, it may be that such a verdict would be at best anachronistic. Another observer, however, did imply that Ruy Gómez benefited from his inside knowledge of royal finance. Antonio Tiepolo, reporting to the Venetian senate in 1572, claimed that on the basis of gifts, mercedes and his close ties to wealthy elites throughout the empire, Ruy Gómez had assembled, "over a period of little more than twenty years," holdings worth 80,000 escudos per year. He added that "it is universally believed that each year, through the manipulation of exchange, [Ruy Gómez] realizes vast profits in gold."^[140] Tiepolo doubtless overestimated Eboli's income, but his central point—that Ruy Gómez had become wealthy in the king's service—is incontrovertible.

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The estate that Ruy Gómez assembled, beginning with his first negotiations for the purchase of Pastrana in 1562, comprised his attempt to escape the dual bind of aristocratic rancor and personal

dependence on the king and his father-in-law. His failure to gain acceptance as an equal by the Castilian lords doubtless impelled his first efforts to join their seigneurial ranks, and the pace of his estate-building accelerated in mid-decade simultaneous with the erosion of his favor with the king. The purchases were made with an eye to attaining a Castilian title, and preferably a grandeeship. As early as 1567 Ruy Gómez de Silva was using the title of duke of Estremera, without any apparent legal basis or authorization.^[141] Although his use of the ducal title was premature, his strategy paid off, and the estate became the basis of exalted social status and financial security for his descendants.

While he went about acquiring a landed patrimony, Ruy Gómez was also busy arranging for the futures of his growing children. First, in 1566 he contracted a magnificent match for his oldest child, Doña Ana de Silva y Mendoza, who had been born in 1561. The tiny girl was to marry the teenaged Don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, seventh duke of Medina Sidonia (born 1549). The marriage was arranged by Eboli and Doña Ana, acting for their daughter, while the duke was represented by his mother, the countess of Niebla, and his kinsmen, the count of Olivares and the marquis of Ayamonte. The capitulations, drafted in Madrid in June 1566, provided for an immediate betrothal by proxies, to be ratified soon by the duke in person and by the prospective bride when she reached her seventh birthday, the so-called age of reason. The little girl was present at the initial betrothal, and it is rather poignant to find her excused from signing the documents because "she said that she didn't know how to write." The binding palabras de presente were to be exchanged when Doña Ana was twelve, with the final nuptials and subsequent consummation deferred until the bride reached age thirteen, unless a papal dispensation to speed the process could be obtained. Both parties agreed to sizable deposits to guarantee performance—to be held, incidentally, by Niccolò Grimaldo—and Ruy Gómez agreed to provide his daughter with a dowry of 100,000 ducats, in cash, household luxuries and annuities, while Medina Sidonia would present his bride with an arras of 12,000 ducats. The match was effected as planned, with a dispensation allowing an early betrothal by palabras de presente in 1572. The marriage was finalized after Eboli's death in a lavish ceremony at Pastrana in 1574.^[142]

The motives for this match are not far to seek. Ruy Gómez was eager to cement a close link with the high Castilian aristocracy, in order to gain allies in his time of need and social legitimation as part of his own drive to secure a Spanish title. Meanwhile, the house of Medina Sidonia perceived the need for protection at court from a royal initiative to recover alienated revenues and customs dues. Ruy Gómez, with his power in the financial bureaucracy and intimate knowledge of the workings of administration, could be a useful advocate for the interests of the house.^[143] Medina Sidonia wasted no time calling in the favors bought by his hand. By September 1566 Eboli was complaining that the duke's affairs at court were so tangled that "I would give a goodly portion of my own fortune to be obliged to nothing more than serving his interests out of the goodness of my heart, without my own advantage being so closely bound up with his."^[144]

In the late 1560s Ruy Gómez also tried to arrange a marriage for his eldest son, Don Rodrigo, with the daughter and heiress of Don Bernardino de Cárdenas, lord of Colmenar de Oreja. Cárdenas's holdings were quite valuable, reportedly returning around 30,000 ducats per year, and Ruy Gómez had long been interested in adding Colmenar to his estates. A match between Don Rodrigo and the heiress Doña Luisa was agreed in 1567, but Cárdenas's widow and mother backed out after Don Bernardino was killed at Lepanto in 1571. Eboli was persistent, and he managed to negotiate a new contract, this time affiancing a younger son, Don Ruy Gómez, to Doña Luisa. But this match fell through as well, perhaps because Eboli died before the binding betrothal was celebrated. Finally, after her husband's death, Doña Ana concluded a marriage for her favorite child, the second son, Don Diego, with the Cárdenas heiress. This was to be a brief and stormy marriage, ending in annulment and prolonged litigation.^[145]

As his name would suggest, the third son of the prince and princess of Eboli, Don Pedro González de Mendoza, was destined for a position in the church. Evidently he was pledged to the Franciscans as a toddler. In 1570 the duke of Savoy offered to use his influence with the pope to secure for the lad a cardinal's hat. Ruy Gómez accepted gratefully, but this plan suffered a setback when Don Pedro González died in 1571. The youngest son of Ruy Gómez and Doña Ana, Don Fernando (born February 1570) was eventually re-

named pedro González de Mendoza after his deceased brother and went on to enjoy a long and distinguished clerical career.^[146]

It remained to provide for the succession of Eboli's newly acquired estate. On 29 August 1572 Philip II granted a license to found a mayorazgo to Ruy Gómez de Silva and Doña Ana. The mayorazgo , formed for the benefit of their eldest son Don Rodrigo and his successors, was legally established on 11 November of the same year. In addition to the properties in the Alcarria, this entail bound a vast amount of juro income granted by Philip II to Ruy Gómez over the course of his career.^[147] Fortune's gifts were thus rendered truly permanent, as the king's mercedes to his favorite were placed beyond the purview of royal second thoughts and became the principal patrimony of the privado's lineage. The final step in the astounding rise of Ruy Gómez de Silva came on 20 December 1572, when Philip elevated Pastrana to the status of an hereditary duchy.^[148] Ruy Gómez became a Castilian duke and thus a grandee of Spain.^[149]

Philip's gift of this grandeza constitutes proof that Ruy Gómez retained favor with the king after the crisis of the mid-1560s. Philip had to some extent distanced himself from Ruy Gómez after 1565, but he did not refuse to ease his old friend's transformation into an aristocrat. Coming from a monarch not noted for gratitude to his servants, this final great gift bespeaks deep and lasting feeling for the friend of his youth, and perhaps royal approval of the route Ruy Gómez had chosen in order to circumvent the social snobbery that had placed a ceiling on his rise in the court. This impression of lingering royal generosity is further confirmed by the fact that, on 30 April 1571, Philip II named Ruy Gómez clavero of the Order of Calatrava. The clavería carried with it one of the most lucrative encomiendas of the military orders. The merced was enhanced by the king's grant of Ruy Gómez's former encomienda (Herrera, in the Order of Alcántara) to seven-year-old Don Diego de Silva y Mendoza, Eboli's second son.^[150] News of this favor angered allies of the duke of Alba, who believed that their man was not receiving due reward for his service in the Netherlands, while Ruy Gómez absorbed more than his share of royal largesse. "I should have been content had our victories been rewarded proportionally," wrote one Alba partisan. But, he added philosophically, "many things occur in the world that bring on laughter and weeping together."^[151]

These lucrative gifts, however, were never accompanied by a

commensurate restoration of Ruy Gómez's credit and influence as an adviser to the king. Espinosa remained the chief of the key bureaus of government until his disgrace and sudden death in the fall of 1572,^[152] and the days of secretarial government, with the king acting as his own chief minister and imposing his will with the written word (communicated through Antonio Pérez and then Mateo Vázquez) were about to dawn. From the late 1560s "the progressive involution of [Philip's] personality" was becoming evident. The hardening of his policies and the greater confidence and belligerence that characterized him in the 1570s and 1580s, date from the period of the Netherlands crisis of 1565–1566 and his personal tragedies of 1568. Philip's seeming withdrawal of confidence from his privado coincided with a more deep-seated withdrawal; from that period "he allowed himself to see less of the supplicants, of the courtiers, and even of the counselors." "Imprisoned with his papers," concludes the historian Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Philip II was "isolated from men and from reality."^[153]

From his earliest days Philip had always been aloof and uncomfortable in public. Ruy Gómez had provided first a private friend and then something of a public face for his monarch. During the second decade of his reign, however, the king found that he preferred to live essentially without confidants and without a physical public persona. His papers became his life, and the men who shuffled paper well, most notably Espinosa and Vázquez, became the only human contacts he truly needed. In this austere royal maturity Philip felt less need of a privado , and Ruy Gómez de Silva was gradually denied his long-standing intimacy with the king and the influence that it had conferred. Still, he never entirely lost power. In 1571 Ruy Gómez remained among the five men regarded as Philip's "consejo selecto."^[154] When what was to be his final illness became evident, at the end of 1572, the Venetian envoys noted that

this man is a very great minister in the court, and supremely well-informed, and this illness of his causes His Majesty much annoyance and much greater exertion in his affairs.^[155]

And, as we have seen, the bonds of old friendship were never entirely severed; the mercedes granted Ruy Gómez in the early 1570s were tokens of the remnants of a great affection. Nevertheless, in the last years of his life Ruy Gómez was no longer by any measure

"the most inwarde favourite that ever was with kinge,"^[156] and he spent more and more time away from Philip and the court, playing the grand seigneur on his estates in the Alcarria.^[157] He made frequent journeys to Albalate and Estremera, as well as to his ducal seat at Pastrana, and by 1568 was arranging to conduct business in flurries during brief stays at court.^[158] Even his official correspondence increasingly betrayed an overriding concern with personal affairs and the business of his estates. For example, in 1568 Melchor de Herrera, negotiating the king's loans at Medina del Campo, was meanwhile hunting for perfume ingredients—civet musk and black amber—on behalf of Doña Ana. Jorge Manrique, on a diplomatic mission to northern Italy in 1570, appears to have spent a great deal of time hiring skilled artisans for Ruy Gómez's remodeling projects at Pastrana.^[159]

Ruy Gómez de Silva was to live less than a year as the duke of Pastrana and thus did not have long to savor his new status of equality with the grand old houses of Castile. Nevertheless, the formation of the duchy and mayorazgo of Pastrana marked a great personal victory and a triumphant emergence from the grave crisis of his career. No longer an upstart or a dependent, this second son of an obscure Portuguese nobleman had cheated the turning wheel of fortune and established the permanent grandeur of his lineage on the treacherous basis of transitory favor. "Good fortune," observed one chronicler, "is a hard-mouthed horse: few can manage her or give a good account of themselves in her presence."^[160] Looking back on his life, Ruy Gómez might well have agreed, and he could be forgiven if he thought himself a horseman of considerable prowess.