PhD Program in Historical studies
Valladolid and the displacement of the court
One of the most effective demonstrations of force on the part of the Duke of Lerma was the displacement of the court, which he strongly supported, from Madrid to Valladolid. The city chosen by Philip II as the permanent seat of the court, namely Madrid, had long suffered from some problems, above all of overpopulation and growing urban chaos. However, the decision to move the the court to a city, Valladolid, which soon proved too small and ill-equipped for such a task, was mainly due to the will of the king’s favorite. Valladolid, in fact, was very close to the Castilian possessions of the Duke, including Lerma itself, and the valido could rely on an extensive network of contacts in the cities along the Pisuerga river. Rodrigo Calderón, for example, was a native of Valladolid, one of the closest and most loyal clients of the Duke. In the years spent away from Madrid (1601-1606), Lerma was able to isolate the king even more from the court, by controlling access to building and also limiting contact between the king and those members of the royal family who had shown themselves to be most hostile, above all Empress Maria of HabsburgThe daughter of Charles V and Philip II ‘s sister, Mary of Habsburg (1528-1603) was the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire as the wife of his cousin Maximilian II. The mother of sixteen children, including the emperors Rudolf II and Matthias, she returned to Spain after her husband’s death (which occurred in 1576). She lived the last part of her life in the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, however, exerting a great influence on his brother Philip II and her grandson Philip III. and the wife of the king herself, Margaret of HabsburgMargaret of Habsburg (1584-1611) was the daughter of Charles II of Styria, the third son of Emperor Ferdinand I. She was married by proxy in Ferrara with Philip III of Spain, in 1599. She died soon after giving birth to her eighth child. Among his heirs were the future Philip IV of Spain, the infantes Carlos and Fernando, the future queen of France Anne of Austria and the future empress Maria Anna von Habsburg .. Before the court returned to Madrid in 1606, Lerma represented the nuevo estilo de grandeza that characterized public life under Philip III compared to the years of monastic austerity during the last years of the reign of Philip II. The two main occasions of celebration and Baroque flourish in which Lerma could take up a prominent public role in courtly life in 1605: the baptism of the prince, the future Philip IV, and the visit of the Earl of Nottingham, who arrived to ratify the peace treaty signed between the Spanish monarchy and the Crown of England the previous year. (photo: the church of San Pablo, Valladolid).