judgment against a Grandee without first consulting the Royal Council. He was himself happy to escape with about a month's imprisonment.* (54) The lady mother of this young Duke was living in her widowhood. She was Louisa Manrique, in her own right Duchess of Najera, being the last surviving child and heiress of Juan Manrique de Lara, the fourth Duke. She was not easily satisfied with the moderate allowance of punishment awarded to the Judge, who had shewn so little regard to her son's dignity as to order him to be brought out of prison, mounted on a mule without stirrups, and then beheaded on a scaffold. But the king, after the month was over, gave his license that the magistrate should be reinstated. This lady was the spoilt child of high fortune; the daughter of a beautiful mother, who died at the age of twenty-three, she discharged her own duties as a mother by attempting to force her eldest daughter into a convent, in order to settle a double portion of her goods upon the younger. This being resisted, and the daughter having made a suitable match with the Marquis of Cañete, not without the Church's blessing, Louisa gave her servants mourning suits. instead of bridal dresses. On another occasion, meeting at the house of a mutual acquaintance with the Countess of Medellin, celebrated by Gongora as one of the court-beauties, a widow who had comforted Cabrera, 358, 360. + Lopez de Haro, Nobiliario, ii. 298. her widowhood by a second marriage with a Portuguese gentleman, the two ladies assailed each other with such words of reproach, that it ended in the Duchess calling in her servants, and bidding them kill the Countess. The servants were quite ready for such an act of duty; swords and daggers were unsheathed; but the people of the house prevented it.* The Court seems to have thought it best to overlook this strange outbreak, as no blood was drawn. As to Duke George, with his two brothers, James and John, we find them shortly engaged in other brawls and acts of violence, a fray at a bull-fight in the country, where two or three persons lost their lives, and other trials of sword-play in the streets of Madrid. But after all, we read of him in 1618 employed as Governor, Alcalde, and Captain-General of the forces at Oran, Mazarquivir, and in the realm of Tremecen.+ Possibly the Duke of Lerma may have thought that the rash temper which his mother gave him might be less mischievously employed against the Moors"; or that, if he died in the king's service there, his country might endure his sweet life's loss. (55.) All this is pretty well for one family, and it shews that some of those scenes in Cervantes and other writers of fiction, which appear somewhat wild and extravagant, are not without touches of truth and One may believe that there may have been nature. * Cabrera, 316, 367, 545. + Lopez de Haro, Nobiliario, ii. 299. such a person as "Father Monopoly," the Jonathan Wild of Seville, who kept a kind of custom-house or register-office for thieves and cut-purses within the circuit of the city,* appointed the districts, within which the younger practitioners were to occupy themselves in their vocation, without intruding on another associate's quarter; who had a secret understanding with the alguacils and inferior officers of justice, and gave up to the vengeance of the law those who broke his rules, or plied a contraband trade without paying him duties. The insolence of certain persons in the higher ranks is described as hiring, through such agency, the hands of bravoes to execute their private revenge. Such things are not quite without a parallel among us in the time of the younger Buckingham and Rochester. But what was with difficulty accomplished by a few of our wildest rakes and the bullies of Whitefriars, was in Spain almost the custom of the country. (56.) What is more remarkable is, that the cavȧliers who lost their lives in these disorders and private passages of arms, seem to have made their exit as lightly as the dying heroes on the stage. Don Gaspar de Ezpeleta, a knight from Navarre of the order of Santiago, was slain in Valladolid at the end of the wooden bridge which crossed the Esgueva, on a sum * "La aduana del Señor Monipodio, adonde se paga almoxarifazgo de ladrones; a lo menos registranse ante el Señor, que es su padre y su maestro." Cervantes, Novela de Rinconete y Cortadillo. mer's night in June 1605, and was carried into the lodgings of Cervantes to die. He lived long enough for the Alcalde to take his deposition. He had gone out slightly disguised, or in what was technically called his night-dress,* with his sword and targe on his left arm; and fell in a quarrel which he had provoked by intruding into a serenade which did not concern him. He would not disclose his opponent's name, if he knew it, but ended his tale by saying "that the person who had fought with him had fought like a man of honour, and that it was himself who had drawn first."+ These heroes, according to Gongora, were like hobgoblins, making night hideous with their quaint disguises and their clank of steel. We do not know what Cervantes thought of this unfortunate case; but Gongora comments upon it with much caustic severity: 66 Come, for a story while we ride, We need not draw the bit,-I'll tell On Lovers' Bridge of Sighs he died. O, would the Muse vouchsafe to guide, To give to song his gallant brawl. In some sweet ballad's dying fall." + (57.) Why did not the Government repress these wild excesses? It was a reason assigned for the *"Habito del noche." + Pellicer, Don Quix. I. cxxi. Gongora, ed. Vicuña, p. 58. removal of the court to Valladolid, that it would curtail the number of idle retainers, and vagabonds of every degree, who flocked to it under pretence of seeking office or employment. But the evil was never effectually removed. The poor knaves and disorderly characters had sometimes a hard time of it; detected or suspected sharpers were banished, persons of scandalous lives were even sent to a house of correction, women had their eye-brows and heads shaved,* but the more powerful masters who employed them escaped.t All history is full of instances of brawls instigated by disputes originating from the gaming table. The Spaniards were unhappily deeply imbued with the vice which they inherited from their Gothic ancestry. "A Spaniard," says Howell, "will say his prayers before gaming; and if he win, will thank God for his good fortune afterwards."+ The Duke of Lerma could not expel the gamesters from the court, for he was himself a great gamester. He is accused of having inspired the king with a love of play, or having taught him to play deep.§ It was a melancholy accident when the young Count of Gelves, after a long evening at cards with the King, winning 100,000 ducats, and leaving off at three o'clock in the morning, retired to rest and died suddenly in his bed.|| (58.) It is recorded by different witnesses, that the Duke in his days of greatest prosperity was subject to * Cabrera, 342, 343. Letters, iii. xxxi. § Contarini, 564. + Davila, 222. |