With the Heart of a King by Benton Rain Patterson

Author:Benton Rain Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

12. THE TRAGEDIES AND TRIUMPHS

Philip was in Ghent, in the Netherlands, on June 22, 1559, the day he was married to the thirteen-year-old French princess, Elizabeth of Valois, at a ceremony in Paris, with the duke of Alba standing in for him. About six weeks later, he began his journey to return to Spain after an absence of five years. Elizabeth—or Isabel, as she was called in Spain—would meet him there.

He and his royal entourage arrived in the Netherlands port city of Vlissingen on August 11, and he toured the area while killing time waiting for a favorable wind. On the afternoon of August 25, after he had bidden formal farewells to the luminaries who had come to see him off, a group that included his half sister, Margaret of Parma, who would rule as regent in his absence, his ship slipped away from the dock and before a light, easterly wind, headed toward the Strait of Dover and the waters of the English Channel, accompanied by a fleet of nearly one hundred vessels.

The voyage was speedy and uneventful, the fleet arriving in Laredo on the evening of September 8, but the next day, while the ships were being unloaded, a storm struck the Spanish coast, and a number of ships were capsized, and men as well as cargo were lost. After resting from the voyage, Philip and his party set out for the southward trip to Valladolid. He arrived on Thursday, September 14, welcomed royally to the gaily decorated city.

There were pressing matters to attend to, one of the main ones being fiscal, others concerning the Inquisition and religious affairs, another involving the continuing military threat from Turkey. A week after having returned, he ordered a legislative session—a Cortes—to be convened in Toledo a month later to help him handle the nation’s affairs. He was wasting no time getting down to business.

As arranged, Elizabeth and her entourage in December 1559 crossed the Pyrenees from France and entered the northeastern Spanish province of Navarre, where she was met by the seventy-year-old duke of Infantado and a huge host of his attendants and noblemen, to be escorted to Castile, in central Spain. She spent a few days in Pamplona, then continued the trip and arrived in Guadalajara on January 28, 1560. There she was treated to a warmly welcoming, lavish reception by Philip’s sister, Princess Juana, and there she and Philip would take their marriage vows again, this time together, in person.

She was welcomed to Guadalajara by the local magistrates and escorted through the main streets of the city in a colorful parade. Dressed in ermine, she rode a white palfrey. On one side of her rode the duke of Infantado, and on the other, the cardinal of Burgos. The procession stopped at the local church, where Te Deum was sung in celebration, then proceeded to the duke’s palace, where the wedding would be held. Unwilling to wait till she was formally presented to him, Philip, as he had done before

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