trouble as far back as 1564.[1] The question had naturally been in abeyance during the rupture with Spain. Under James it broke out again, and each ambassador had the strictest order from his government not to abate a jot or tittle of his full claims to precedence. James, being rex pacificus, had no desire to commit himself to a decision on so knotty a point, and did his best to evade it, by not inviting both ambassadors to the same festivity. But even then one festivity differed from another in glory, and the attempt to keep an even balance gave rise to endless tracasseries. During the earlier years it seems clear that a variety of causes, amongst which must be counted his own superior astuteness, a liberal distribution of bribes, the Spanish proclivities of Anne, and probably also the deliberate trend of James's foreign policy, enabled Juan de Taxis to snatch more than one advantage from his French rivals. He secured an invitation to the Queen's mask both in 1604 and 1605. This double rebuff led to a change in the French embassy, and a similar success of De Taxis in 1608 so infuriated Henri IV that he threatened to withdraw his ambassador altogether, until James judged it discreet to call his attention to the still unpaid financial obligations which he had incurred to the English Crown in the previous reign. After the death of Henri in 1610 and the consequent rapprochement between France and Spain, the balance of political forces shifted, and, for a time at least, the English Court laid itself out to gratify rather than humiliate the French. Minor bones of precedence were worried between Venice and Flanders, and between Florence and Savoy, while the Spanish ambassador took offence if he was asked to appear in public with the representative of the revolted Spanish provinces of the Netherlands.[2]
- [Footnote: vii. 524). Retiring Venetian ambassadors were sometimes knighted and
given a lion of England to quarter on their shields (V. P. xii. 163; xiv. 85).]
- ↑ Sp. P. i. 382, 385, 403, 451, 545.
- ↑ S. P. D., Jac. I, vi. 21; xii. 16; Winwood, iii. 155; P. L. de Kermaingant, Mission de Christophe de Harlay, 173, 252; De la Boderie, Ambassades, i. 240, 262, 271, 277, 291, 353; iii. 1-192 passim; V. P. x. 139, 149, 212, 234, 388, 408; xi. 83, 86, 212. I have given some details in relation to the masks in ch. xxiii; cf. also ch. vi. There is a connected narrative of the Franco-Spanish disputes in M. Sullivan, Court Masques of James I, which perhaps lays insufficient stress on incidents occurring at state ceremonies and tilts as distinct from masks.
