‘The Young Folks Shall Have Their World'

After the cheering stopped Charles’s problems continued. Disappointed in love he needed a scapegoat. He could never admit that he had acted with besotted silliness over the Infanta, or that she, the object of his love, or that Buckingham, the friend who had rescued him from the mess in Madrid, were to blame. Gradually his resentment at being jilted convinced him that the Spanish in general, and Lord Bristol in particular, must be punished. James still wanted a Spanish marriage, while Buckingham urged a French one and war with the dons. So during the last quarter of 1623 Charles wavered, until by the end of the year the aggrieved lover won, and he sided with his best friend against his father. Buckingham, as senior partner, and Charles opened marriage negotiations with Paris, made James call parliament to use the popular dislike of Spain to force the King and the privy council to accept a war. When this did not work they sent an expeditionary force under Count Mansfeld to recover the Palatinate. Throughout the eighteen months between Charles’s and Buckingham’s return from Madrid to the king’s death in March 1625, James was under intense pressure to fight Spain, and although he refused to formally go to war, England returned to the Elizabethan tradition of undeclared hostilities. In effect, the king had lost control of his kingdom. Less than a month after their arrival home the Earl of Kellie had prophesied that ‘It may well come that the young folks shall have their world:’ The rump of James’s reign proved the earl right. ¹