In this long-awaited and important study, Patrick Williams traces the career of Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, the first duke of Lerma (1553–1625), who served Philip iii of Spain as his first minister between 1598 and 1618, establishing the office of royal favourite that was to dominate the leading courts of Europe in the early seventeenth century. Lerma has traditionally been viewed through a critical lens by historians who have judged him on the basis of his rapid acquisition of power and wealth, his promotion of family members to strategic offices, his vanity and indulgence, as well as his indolence and neglect of the work of government at a time of acute domestic crisis on numerous fronts. While acknowledging that Lerma was brilliantly successful in exploiting his relationship with an impressionable young king for his own ends, taking greed and self-advancement to a new level in Spanish politics, Patrick Williams demonstrates that there was more to Lerma as a character and politician than these assumptions would suggest. Indifferent to the day-to-day administrative routine, Lerma skilfully controlled events from a distance, exercising power via his clients and personal contacts at court and in government, but taking centre stage when there were negotiations with foreign dignitaries to be conducted or where prestige could be earned by his presence. One of the outcomes of the favourite's lack of interest in policymaking was the emergence of a new professionalism and efficiency in government. At times of crisis he would whisk the king away on hunting excursions and indulge him in lavish entertainment, thus shielding himself from criticism and the king from the pressures of being in the front line. His support of a conciliatory foreign policy, favouring peace with England in 1604 and the Truce with the Dutch in 1609, although criticised by interventionists in government, can with hindsight be regarded as sober and realistic given the Monarchy's limited resources. For all his bad press, the research evidence presented here suggests that Lerma was kind-natured and a good listener, benevolent in his distribution of charity and patronage, and deeply committed to the Catholic faith, culminating in his rise to the status of cardinal in 1617. Although his career at court faltered from 1615, when faction and policy began to move against him, he retained the king's personal affection to the last, leaving office voluntarily in 1618. Williams portrays Lerma as a paradoxical figure: a man whose power eclipsed that of the king, but who exercised authority largely anonymously and often reticently; a man who had an appetite for display on the grandest of scales but who sought the privacy and rigour of religious life; a man who blatantly profited from office but also stripped himself of it. The legacy that Lerma bequeathed to history as the first in a line of great favourites fittingly serves as his and the book's epitaph.