Note 46 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
On the 29th July, Hopton wrote: "Don Carlos was sick for seventeen days with ordinary ague at first, but at the end of eight days it turned to tabardillo (spotted typhus) with convulsions. My man has come in from the palace whilst I am sealing up this, and says he is not yet dead, but cannot live two hours. All things for his funeral are prepared, and blacks taken up, and servants that are to wait on his body to ye Escorial are commanded to be in readiness so that your honour (Coke) may take it that this gallant young Prince is a dead man." Hopton's MS. Notebook. In another letter he wrote of the distress of the people at the Infante's death: "The mourning could not be more hearty for the King, and they have good reason, for he was a Prince that never offended any man willingly, but did good offices for all; being bred upp amonge them to as much perfection as they could expect." Writing an unofficial letter to Cottington on the same day, Hopton gives some extremely curious private details of the causes of the Prince's illness, which cannot be here translated. But he continues: "The poore Conde de Olivares is the scape, goat that must bear all men's faults; but he is very much afflicted, for he was very sure of this Prince's love, whatsoever the world sayeth."