CHAPTER I.

STATE OF CASTILE AT THE BIRTH OF ISABELLA.--REIGN OF JOHN II., OF CASTILE.

1406-1454.

Revolution of Trastamara.--Accession of John II.--Rise of Alvaro de Luna. --Jealousy of the Nobles.--Oppression of the Commons.--Its Consequences.-- Early Literature of Castile.--Its Encouragement under John II.--Decline of Alvaro de Luna.--His Fall.--Death of John II.--Birth of Isabella.

The fierce civil feuds, which preceded the accession of the House of Trastamara in 1368, were as fatal to the nobility of Castile, as the wars of the Hoses were to that of England. There was scarcely a family of note, which had not poured out its blood on the field or the scaffold. The influence of the aristocracy was, of course, much diminished with its numbers. The long wars with foreign powers, which a disputed succession entailed on the country, were almost equally prejudicial to the authority of the monarch, who was willing to buoy up his tottering title by the most liberal concession of privileges to the people. Thus the commons rose in proportion as the crown and the privileged orders descended in the scale; and, when the claims of the several competitors for the throne were finally extinguished, and the tranquillity of the kingdom was secured, by the union of Henry the Third with Catharine of Lancaster at the close of the fourteenth century, the third estate may be said to have attained to the highest degree of political consequence which it ever reached in Castile.

The healthful action of the body politic, during the long interval of peace that followed this auspicious union, enabled it to repair the strength, which had been wasted in its murderous civil contests. The ancient channels of commerce were again opened; various new manufactures were introduced, and carried to a considerable perfection; [1] wealth, with its usual concomitants, elegance and comfort, flowed in apace; and the nation promised itself a long career of prosperity under a monarch, who respected the laws in his own person, and administered them with vigor. All these fair hopes were blasted by the premature death of Henry the Third, before he had reached his twenty-eighth year. The crown devolved on his son John the Second, then a minor, whose reign was one of the longest and the most disastrous in the Castilian annals. [2] As it was that, however, which gave birth to Isabella, the illustrious subject of our narrative, it will be necessary to pass its principal features under review, in order to obtain a correct idea of her government.

The wise administration of the regency, during a long minority, postponed the season of calamity; and when it at length arrived, it was concealed for some time from the eyes of the vulgar by the pomp and brilliant festivities, which distinguished the court of the young monarch. His indisposition, if not incapacity for business, however, gradually became manifest; and, while he resigned himself without reserve to pleasures, which it must be confessed were not unfrequently of a refined and intellectual character, he abandoned the government of his kingdom to the control of favorites.

The most conspicuous of these was Alvaro de Luna, grand master of St. James, and constable of Castile. This remarkable person, the illegitimate descendant of a noble house in Aragon, was introduced very early as a page into the royal household, where he soon distinguished himself by his amiable manners and personal accomplishments. He could ride, fence, dance, sing, if we may credit his loyal biographer, better than any other cavalier in the court; while his proficiency in music and poetry recommended him most effectually to the favor of the monarch, who professed to be a connoisseur in both. With these showy qualities, Alvaro de Luna united others of a more dangerous complexion. His insinuating address easily conciliated confidence, and enabled him to master the motives of others, while his own were masked by consummate dissimulation. He was as fearless in executing his ambitious schemes, as he was cautious in devising them. He was indefatigable in his application to business, so that John, whose aversion to it we have noticed, willingly reposed on him the whole burden of government. The king, it was said, only signed, while the constable dictated and executed. He was the only channel of promotion to public office, whether secular or ecclesiastical. As his cupidity was insatiable, he perverted the great trust confided to him to the acquisition of the principal posts in the government for himself or his kindred, and at his death is said to have left a larger amount of treasure than was possessed by the whole nobility of the kingdom. He affected a magnificence of state corresponding with his elevated rank. The most considerable grandees in Castile contended for the honor of having their sons, after the fashion of the time, educated in his family. When he rode abroad, he was accompanied by a numerous retinue of knights and nobles, which left his sovereign's court comparatively deserted; so that royalty might be said on all occasions, whether of business or pleasure, to be eclipsed by the superior splendors of its satellite. [3] The history of this man may remind the English reader of that of Cardinal Wolsey, whom he somewhat resembled in character, and still more in his extraordinary fortunes.

It may easily be believed, that the haughty aristocracy of Castile would ill brook this exaltation of an individual so inferior to them in birth, and who withal did not wear his honors with exemplary meekness. John's blind partiality for his favorite is the key to all the troubles which agitated the kingdom during the last thirty years of his reign. The disgusted nobles organized confederacies for the purpose of deposing the minister. The whole nation took sides in this unhappy struggle. The heats of civil discord were still further heightened by the interference of the royal house of Aragon, which, descended from a common stock with that of Castile, was proprietor of large estates in the latter country. The wretched monarch beheld even his own son Henry, the heir to the crown, enlisted in the opposite faction, and saw himself reduced to the extremity of shedding the blood of his subjects in the fatal battle of Olmedo. Still the address, or the good fortune, of the constable enabled him to triumph over his enemies; and, although he was obliged occasionally to yield to the violence of the storm and withdraw a while from the court, he was soon recalled and reinstated in all his former dignities. This melancholy infatuation of the king is imputed by the writers of that age to sorcery on the part of the favorite. [4] But the only witchcraft which he used, was the ascendency of a strong mind over a weak one.

During this long-protracted anarchy, the people lost whatever they had gained in the two preceding reigns. By the advice of his minister, who seems to have possessed a full measure of the insolence, so usual with persons suddenly advanced from low to elevated station, the king not only abandoned the constitutional policy of his predecessors in regard to the commons, but entered on the most arbitrary and systematic violation of their rights. Their deputies were excluded from the privy council, or lost all influence in it. Attempts were made to impose taxes without the legislative sanction. The municipal territories were alienated, and lavished on the royal minions. The freedom of elections was invaded, and delegates to cortes were frequently nominated by the crown; and, to complete the iniquitous scheme of oppression, _pragmaticas_, or royal proclamations, were issued, containing provisions repugnant to the acknowledged law of the land, and affirming in the most unqualified terms the right of the sovereign to legislate for his subjects. [5] The commons indeed, when assembled in cortes, stoutly resisted the assumption of such unconstitutional powers by the crown, and compelled the prince not only to revoke his pretensions, but to accompany his revocation with the most humiliating concessions. [6] They even ventured so far, during this reign, as to regulate the expenses of the royal household; [7] and their language to the throne on all these occasions, though temperate and loyal, breathed a generous spirit of patriotism, evincing a perfect consciousness of their own rights, and a steady determination to maintain them. [8]

Alas! what could such resolution avail, in this season of misrule, against the intrigues of a cunning and profligate minister, unsupported too, as the commons were, by any sympathy or co-operation on the part of the higher orders of the state! A scheme was devised for bringing the popular branch of the legislature more effectually within the control of the crown, by diminishing the number of its constituents. It has been already remarked, in the Introduction, that a great irregularity prevailed in Castile as to the number of cities which, at different times, exercised the right of representation. During the fourteenth century, the deputation from this order had been uncommonly full. The king, however, availing himself of this indeterminateness, caused writs to be issued to a very small proportion of the towns which had usually enjoyed the privilege. Some of those that were excluded indignantly though ineffectually remonstrated against this abuse. Others, previously despoiled of their possessions by the rapacity of the crown, or impoverished by the disastrous feuds into which the country had been thrown, acquiesced in the measure from motives of economy. From the same mistaken policy several cities, again, as Burgos, Toledo, and others, petitioned the sovereign to defray the charges of their representatives from the royal treasury; a most ill-advised parsimony, which suggested to the crown a plausible pretext for the new system of exclusion. In this manner the Castilian cortes, which, notwithstanding its occasional fluctuations, had exhibited during the preceding century what might be regarded as a representation of the whole commonwealth, was gradually reduced, during the reigns of John the Second and his son Henry the Fourth, to the deputations of some seventeen or eighteen cities. And to this number, with slight variation, it has been restricted until the occurrence of the recent revolutionary movements in that kingdom. [9]

The non-represented were required to transmit their instructions to the deputies of the privileged cities. Thus Salamanca appeared in behalf of five hundred towns and fourteen hundred villages; and the populous province of Galicia was represented by the little town of Zamora, which is not even included within its geographical limits. [10] The privilege of a _voice in cortes_, as it was called, came at length to be prized so highly by the favored cities, that when, in 1506, some of those which were excluded solicited the restitution of their ancient rights, their petition was opposed by the former on the impudent pretence, that "the right of deputation had been reserved by ancient law and usage to only eighteen cities of the realm." [11] In this short-sighted and most unhappy policy, we see the operation of those local jealousies and estrangements, to which we have alluded in the Introduction. But, although the cortes, thus reduced in numbers, necessarily lost much of its weight, it still maintained a bold front against the usurpations of the crown. It does not appear, indeed, that any attempt was made under John the Second, or his successor, to corrupt its members, or to control the freedom of debate; although such a proceeding is not improbable, as altogether conformable to their ordinary policy, and as the natural result of their preliminary measures. But, however true the deputies continued to themselves and to those who sent them, it is evident that so limited and partial a selection no longer afforded a representation of the interests of the whole country. Their necessarily imperfect acquaintance with the principles or even wishes of their widely scattered constituents, in an age when knowledge was not circulated on the thousand wings of the press, as in our day, must have left them oftentimes in painful uncertainty, and deprived them of the cheering support of public opinion. The voice of remonstrance, which derives such confidence from numbers, would hardly now be raised in their deserted halls with the same frequency or energy as before; and, however the representatives of that day might maintain their integrity uncorrupted, yet, as every facility was afforded to the undue influence of the crown, the time might come when venality would prove stronger than principle, and the unworthy patriot be tempted to sacrifice his birthright for a mess of pottage. Thus early was the fair dawn of freedom overcast, which opened in Castile under more brilliant auspices, perhaps, than in any other country in Europe.

While the reign of John the Second is so deservedly odious in a political view, in a literary, it may be inscribed with what Giovio calls "the golden pen of history." It was an epoch in the Castilian, corresponding with that of the reign of Francis the First in French literature, distinguished not so much by any production of extraordinary genius, as by the effort made for the introduction of an elegant culture, by conducting it on more scientific principles than had been hitherto known. The early literature of Castile could boast of the "Poem of the Cid," in some respects the most remarkable performance of the middle ages. It was enriched, moreover, with other elaborate compositions, displaying occasional glimpses of a buoyant fancy, or of sensibility to external beauty, to say nothing of those delightful romantic ballads, which seemed to spring up spontaneously in every quarter of the country, like the natural wild flowers of the soil. But the unaffected beauties of sentiment, which seem rather the result of accident than design, were dearly purchased, in the more extended pieces, at the expense of such a crude mass of grotesque and undigested verse, as shows an entire ignorance of the principles of the art. [12]

The profession of letters itself was held in little repute by the higher orders of the nation, who were altogether untinctured with liberal learning. While the nobles of the sister kingdom of Aragon, assembled in their poetic courts, in imitation of their Provençal neighbors, vied with each other in lays of love and chivalry, those of Castile disdained these effeminate pleasures as unworthy of the profession of arms, the only one of any estimation in their eyes. The benignant influence of John was perceptible in softening this ferocious temper. He was himself sufficiently accomplished, for a king; and, notwithstanding his aversion to business, manifested, as has been noticed, a lively relish for intellectual enjoyment. He was fond of books, wrote and spoke Latin with facility, composed verses, and condescended occasionally to correct those of his loving subjects. [13] Whatever might be the value of his criticisms, that of his example cannot be doubted. The courtiers, with the quick scent for their own interest which distinguished the tribe in every country, soon turned their attention to the same polite studies; [14] and thus Castilian poetry received very early the courtly stamp, which continued its prominent characteristic down to the age of its meridian glory.

Among the most eminent of these noble _savans_, was Henry, marquis of Villena, descended from the royal houses of Castile and Aragon, [15] but more illustrious, as one of his countrymen has observed, by his talents and attainments, than by his birth. His whole life was consecrated to letters, and especially to the study of natural science. I am not aware that any specimen of his poetry, although much lauded by his contemporaries, [16] has come down to us. [17] He translated Dante's "Commedia" into prose, and is said to have given the first example of a version of the AEneid into a modern language. [18] He labored assiduously to introduce a more cultivated taste among his countrymen, and his little treatise on the _gaya sciencia_, as the divine art was then called, in which he gives an historical and critical view of the poetical Consistory of Barcelona, is the first approximation, however faint, to an Art of Poetry in the Castilian tongue. [19] The exclusiveness with which he devoted himself to science, and especially astronomy, to the utter neglect of his temporal concerns, led the wits of that day to remark, that "he knew much of heaven, and nothing of earth." He paid the usual penalty of such indifference to worldly weal, by seeing himself eventually stripped of his lordly possessions, and reduced, at the close of life, to extreme poverty. [20] His secluded habits brought on him the appalling imputation of necromancy. A scene took place at his death, in 1434, which is sufficiently characteristic of the age, and may possibly have suggested a similar adventure to Cervantes. The king commissioned his son's preceptor, Brother Lope de Barrientos, afterwards bishop of Cuença, to examine the valuable library of the deceased; and the worthy ecclesiastic consigned more than a hundred volumes of it to the flames, as savoring too strongly of the black art. The Bachelor Cibdareal, the confidential physician of John the Second, in a lively letter on this occurrence to the poet John de Mena, remarks, that "some would fain get the reputation of saints, by making others necromancers;" and requests his friend "to allow him to solicit, in his behalf, some of the surviving volumes from the king, that in this way the soul of Brother Lope might be saved from further sin, and the spirit of the defunct marquis consoled by the consciousness, that his books no longer rested on the shelves of the man who had converted him into a conjuror." [21] John de Mena denounces this _auto da fe_ of science in a similar, but graver tone of sarcasm, in his "Laberinto." These liberal sentiments in the Spanish writers of the fifteenth century may put to shame the more bigoted criticism of the seventeenth. [22]

Another of the illustrious wits of this reign was Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, marquis of Santillana, "the glory and delight of the Castilian nobility," whose celebrity was such, that foreigners, it was said, journeyed to Spain from distant parts of Europe to see him. Although passionately devoted to letters, he did not, like his friend the marquis of Villena, neglect his public or domestic duties for them. On the contrary, he discharged the most important civil and military functions. He made his house an academy, in which the young cavaliers of the court might practise the martial exercises of the age; and he assembled around him at the same time men eminent for genius and science, whom he munificently recompensed, and encouraged by his example. [23] His own taste led him to poetry, of which he has left some elaborate specimens. They are chiefly of a moral and preceptive character; but, although replete with noble sentiment, and finished in a style of literary excellence far more correct than that of the preceding age, they are too much infected with mythology and metaphorical affectations to suit the palate of the present day. He possessed, however, the soul of a poet; and when he abandons himself to his native _redondillas_, delivers his sentiments with a sweetness and grace inimitable. To him is to be ascribed the glory, such as it is, of having naturalized the Italian sonnet in Castile, which Boscan, many years later, claimed for himself with no small degree of self- congratulation. [24] His epistle on the primitive history of Spanish verse, although containing notices sufficiently curious from the age and the source whence they proceed, has perhaps done more service to letters by the valuable illustrations it has called forth from its learned editor. [25]

This great man, who found so much leisure for the cultivation of letters amidst the busy strife of politics, closed his career at the age of sixty, in 1458. Though a conspicuous actor in the revolutionary scenes of the period, he maintained a character for honor and purity of motive, unimpeached even by his enemies. The king, notwithstanding his devotion to the faction of his son Henry, conferred on him the dignities of count of Real de Manzanares and marquis of Santillana; this being the oldest creation of a marquis in Castile, with the exception of Villena. [26] His eldest son was subsequently made duke of Infantado, by which title his descendants have continued to be distinguished to the present day.

But the most conspicuous, for his poetical talents, of the brilliant circle which graced the court of John the Second, was John de Mena, a native of fair Cordova, "the flower of science and of chivalry," [27] as he fondly styles her. Although born in a middling condition of life, with humble prospects, he was early smitten with a love of letters; and, after passing through the usual course of discipline at Salamanca, he repaired to Rome, where, in the study of those immortal masters whose writings had but recently revealed the full capacities of a modern idiom, he imbibed principles of taste, which gave a direction to his own genius, and, in some degree, to that of his countrymen. On his return to Spain, his literary merit soon attracted general admiration, and introduced him to the patronage of the great, and above all to the friendship of the marquis of Santillana. [28] He was admitted into the private circle of the monarch, who, as his gossiping physician informs us, "used to have Mena's verses lying on his table, as constantly as his prayer-book." The poet repaid the debt of gratitude by administering a due quantity of honeyed rhyme, for which the royal palate seems to have possessed a more than ordinary relish. [29] He continued faithful to his master amidst all the fluctuations of faction, and survived him less than two years. He died in 1456; and his friend, the marquis of Santillana, raised a sumptuous monument over his remains, in commemoration of his virtues and of their mutual affection.

John de Mena is affirmed by some of the national critics to have given a new aspect to Castilian poetry. [30] His great work was his "Laberinto," the outlines of whose plan may faintly remind us of that portion of the "Divina Commedia" where Dante resigns himself to the guidance of Beatrice. In like manner the Spanish poet, under the escort of a beautiful personification of Providence, witnesses the apparition of the most eminent individuals, whether of history or fable; and, as they revolve on the wheel of destiny, they give occasion to some animated portraiture, and much dull, pedantic disquisition. In these delineations we now and then meet with a touch of his pencil, which, from its simplicity and vigor, may be called truly _Dantesque_. Indeed, the Castilian Muse never before ventured on so bold a flight; and, notwithstanding the deformity of the general plan, the obsolete barbarisms of the phraseology, its quaintness and pedantry, notwithstanding the cantering dactylic measure in which it is composed, and which to the ear of a foreigner can scarcely be made tolerable, the work abounds in conceptions, nay in whole episodes, of such mingled energy and beauty, as indicate genius of the highest order. In some of his smaller pieces his style assumes a graceful flexibility, too generally denied to his more strained and elaborate efforts. [31]

It will not be necessary to bring under review the minor luminaries of this period. Alfonso de Baena, a converted Jew, secretary of John the Second, compiled the fugitive pieces of more than fifty of these ancient troubadours into a _cancionero_, "for the disport and divertisement of his highness the king, when he should find himself too sorely oppressed with cares of state," a case we may imagine of no rare occurrence. The original manuscript of Baena, transcribed in beautiful characters of the fifteenth century, lies, or did lie until very lately, unheeded in the cemetery of the Escurial, with the dust of many a better worthy. [32] The extracts selected from it by Castro, although occasionally exhibiting some fluent graces with considerable variety of versification, convey, on the whole, no very high idea of taste or poetic talent. [33].

Indeed, this epoch, as before remarked, was not so much distinguished by uncommon displays of genius, as by its general intellectual movement and the enthusiasm kindled for liberal studies. Thus we find the corporation of Seville granting a hundred _doblas_ of gold as the guerdon of a poet who had celebrated in some score of verses the glories of their native city; and appropriating the same sum as an annual premium for a similar performance. [34] It is not often that the productions of a poet laureate have been more liberally recompensed even by royal bounty. But the gifted spirits of that day mistook the road to immortality. Disdaining the untutored simplicity of their predecessors, they sought to rise above them by an ostentation of learning, as well as by a more classical idiom. In the latter particular they succeeded. They much improved the external forms of poetry, and their compositions exhibit a high degree of literary finish, compared with all that preceded them. But their happiest sentiments are frequently involved in such a cloud of metaphor, as to become nearly unintelligible; while they invoke the pagan deities with a shameless prodigality that would scandalize even a French lyric. This cheap display of school-boy erudition, however it may have appalled their own age, has been a principal cause of their comparative oblivion with posterity. How far superior is one touch of nature, as the "Finojosa" or "Querella de Amor," for example, of the marquis of Santillana, to all this farrago of metaphor and mythology!

The impulse, given to Castilian poetry, extended to other departments of elegant literature. Epistolary and historical composition were cultivated with considerable success. The latter, especially, might admit of advantageous comparison with that of any other country in Europe at the same period; [35] and it is remarkable, that, after such early promise, the modern Spaniards have not been more successful in perfecting a classical prose style.

Enough has been said to give an idea of the state of mental improvement in Castile under John the Second. The Muses, who had found a shelter in his court from the anarchy which reigned abroad, soon fled from its polluted precincts under the reign of his successor Henry the Fourth, whose sordid appetites were incapable of being elevated above the objects of the senses. If we have dwelt somewhat long on a more pleasing picture, it is because our road is now to lead us across a dreary waste exhibiting scarcely a vestige of civilization.

While a small portion of the higher orders of the nation was thus endeavoring to forget the public calamities in the tranquillizing pursuit of letters, and a much larger portion in the indulgence of pleasure, [36] the popular aversion for the minister Luna had been gradually infusing itself into the royal bosom. His too obvious assumption of superiority, even over the monarch who had raised him from the dust, was probably the real though secret cause of this disgust. But the habitual ascendency of the favorite over his master prevented the latter from disclosing this feeling until it was heightened by an occurrence which sets in a strong light the imbecility of the one and the presumption of the other. John, on the death of his wife, Maria of Aragon, had formed the design of connecting himself with a daughter of the king of France. But the constable, in the mean time, without even the privity of his master, entered into negotiations for his marriage with the princess Isabella, granddaughter of John the First of Portugal; and the monarch, with an unprecedented degree of complaisance, acquiesced in an arrangement professedly repugnant to his own inclinations. [37] By one of those dispensations of Providence, however, which often confound the plans of the wisest, as of the weakest, the column, which the minister had so artfully raised for his support, served only to crush him.

The new queen, disgusted with his haughty bearing, and probably not much gratified with the subordinate situation to which he had reduced her husband, entered heartily into the feelings of the latter, and indeed contrived to extinguish whatever spark of latent affection for his ancient favorite lurked within his breast. John, yet fearing the overgrown power of the constable too much to encounter him openly, condescended to adopt the dastardly policy of Tiberius on a similar occasion, by caressing the man whom he designed to ruin, and he eventually obtained possession of his person, only by a violation of the royal safe-conduct. The constable's trial was referred to a commission of jurists and privy counsellors, who, after a summary and informal investigation, pronounced on him the sentence of death on a specification of charges either general and indeterminate, or of the most trivial import. "If the king," says Garibay, "had dispensed similar justice to all his nobles, who equally deserved it in those turbulent times, he would have had but few to reign over." [38]

The constable had supported his disgrace, from the first, with an equanimity not to have been expected from his elation in prosperity; and he now received the tidings of his fate with a similar fortitude. As he rode along the streets to the place of execution, clad in the sable livery of an ordinary criminal, and deserted by those who had been reared by his bounty, the populace, who before called so loudly for his disgrace, struck with this astonishing reverse of his brilliant fortunes, were melted into tears. [39] They called to mind the numerous instances of his magnanimity. They reflected, that the ambitious schemes of his rivals had been not a whit less selfish, though less successful, than his own; and that, if his cupidity appeared insatiable, he had dispensed the fruits of it in acts of princely munificence. He himself maintained a serene and even cheerful aspect. Meeting one of the domestics of Prince Henry, he bade him request the prince "to reward the attachment of his servants with a different guerdon from what his master had assigned to him." As he ascended the scaffold, he surveyed the apparatus of death with composure, and calmly submitted himself to the stroke of the executioner, who, in the savage style of the executions of that day, plunged his knife into the throat of his victim, and deliberately severed his head from his body. A basin, for the reception of alms to defray the expenses of his interment, was placed at one extremity of the scaffold; and his mutilated remains, after having been exposed for several days to the gaze of the populace, were removed, by the brethren of a charitable order, to a place called the hermitage of St. Andrew, appropriated as the cemetery for malefactors. [40]

Such was the tragical end of Alvaro de Luna; a man, who, for more than thirty years, controlled the counsels of the sovereign, or, to speak more properly, was himself the sovereign of Castile. His fate furnishes one of the most memorable lessons in history. It was not lost on his contemporaries; and the marquis of Santillana has made use of it to point the moral of perhaps the most pleasing of his didactic compositions. [41] John did not long survive his favorite's death, which he was seen afterwards to lament even with tears. Indeed, during the whole of the trial he had exhibited the most pitiable agitation, having twice issued and recalled his orders countermanding the constable's execution; and, had it not been for the superior constancy, or vindictive temper of the queen, he would probably have yielded to these impulses of returning affection. [42]

So far from deriving a wholesome warning from experience, John confided the entire direction of his kingdom to individuals not less interested, but possessed of far less enlarged capacities, than the former minister. Penetrated with remorse at the retrospect of his unprofitable life, and filled with melancholy presages of the future, the unhappy prince lamented to his faithful attendant Cibdareal, on his deathbed, that "he had not been born the son of a mechanic, instead of king of Castile." He died July 21st, 1454, after a reign of eight and forty years, if reign it may be called, which was more properly one protracted minority. John left one child by his first wife, Henry, who succeeded him on the throne; and by his second wife two others, Alfonso, then an infant, and Isabella, afterwards queen of Castile, the subject of the present narrative. She had scarcely reached her fourth year at the time of her father's decease, having been born on the 22d of April, 1451, at Madrigal. The king recommended his younger children to the especial care and protection of their brother Henry, and assigned the town of Cuellar, with its territory and a considerable sum of money, for the maintenance of the Infanta Isabella. [43]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Sempere y Guarinos, Historia del Luxo, y de las Leyes Suntuarias de España, (Madrid, 1788,) tom. i. p. 171.

[2] Crónica de Enrique III., edicion de la Academia, (Madrid, 1780,) passim.--Crónica de Juan II., (Valencia, 1779,) p. 6.

[3] Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, edition de la Academia, (Madrid, 1784,) tit. 3, 5, 68, 74.--Guzman, Generaciones y Semblanzas, (Madrid, 1775,) cap. 33, 34.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, en Anales Históricos, (Madrid, 1682,) tom. i. fol. 227.--Crónica de Juan II., passim.--He possessed sixty towns and fortresses, and kept three thousand lances constantly in pay. Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS.

[4] Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 33.--Crónica de Don Juan II., p. 491, et alibi. His complaisance for the favorite, indeed, must be admitted, if we believe Guzman, to have been of a most extraordinary kind. "E lo que con mayor maravilla se puede decir é oír, que aun en los autos naturales se dió así á la ordenanza del condestable, que seyendo él mozo bien complexionado, é teniendo á la reyna su muger moza y hermosa, si el condestable se lo contradixiese, no iria á dormir á su cama della." Ubi supra.

[5] Marina, Teoría de las Cortes, (Madrid, 1813,) tom. i. cap. 20.--tom. ii. pp. 216, 390, 391.--tom. iii. part. 2, no. 4.--Capmany, Práctica y Estilo de Celebrar Cortes en Aragon, Cataluña y Valencia, (Madrid, 1821,) pp. 234, 235.--Sempere, Histoire des Cortès d'Espagne, (Bordeaux, 1815,) ch. 18, 24.

[6] Several of this prince's laws for redressing the alleged grievances are incorporated in the great code of Philip II., (Recopilacion de las Leyes, (Madrid, 1640,) lib. 6, tit. 7, leyes 5, 7, 2,) which declares, in the most unequivocal language, the right of the commons to be consulted on all important matters. "Porque en los hechos arduos de nuestros reynos es necessario consejo de nuestros subditos, y naturales, _especialmente de los procuradores de las nuestras ciudades, villas, y lugares de los nuestros reynos._" It was much easier to extort good laws from this monarch, than to enforce them.

[7] Mariana, Historia de España, (Madrid, 1780,) tom. ii. p. 299.

[8] Marina, Teoría, ubi supra.

[9] Capmany, Práctica y Estilo, p. 228.--Sempere, Hist. des Cortès, chap. 19.--Marina, Teoría, part. 1, cap. 16.--In 1656, the city of Palencia was content to repurchase its ancient right of representation from the crown, at an expense of 80,000 ducats.

[10] Capmany, Práctica y Estilo, p. 230.--Sempere, Histoire des Cortès d'Espagne, chap. 19.

[11] Marina, Teoría, tom. i. p. 161.

[12] See the ample collections of Sanchez, "Poesías Castellanas anteriores al Siglo XV." 4 tom. Madrid, 1779-1790.

[13] Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 33.--Gomez de Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, (Madrid, 1775,) epist. 20, 49.--Cibdareal has given us a specimen of this royal criticism, which Juan de Mena, the subject of it, was courtier enough to adopt.

[14] Velazquez, Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana, (Málaga, 1797,) p. 45.-- Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. p. 10.--"The Cancioneros Generales, in print and in manuscript," says Sanchez, "show the great number of dukes, counts, marquises, and other nobles, who cultivated this art."

[15] He was the grandson, not, as Sanchez supposes (tom. i. p.15), the son, of Alonso de Villena, the first marquis as well as constable created in Castile, descended from James II. of Aragon. (See Dormer, Enmiendas y Advertencias de Zurita, (Zaragoza, 1683,) pp. 371-376.) His mother was an illegitimate daughter of Henry II., of Castile. Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 28.--Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía de España, (Madrid, 1770,) tom. i. pp. 203, 339.

[16] Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 28.--Juan de Mena introduces Villena into his "Laberinto," in an agreeable stanza, which has something of the mannerism of Dante.

"Aquel claro padre aquel dulce fuente aquel que en el castolo monte resuena es don Enrique Señor de Villena honrra de España y del siglo presente," etc. Juan de Mena, Obras, (Alcalá, 1566,) fol. 138.

[17] The recent Castilian translators of Bouterwek's History of Spanish Literature have fallen into an error in imputing the beautiful _cancion_ of the "Querella de Amor" to Villena. It was composed by the Marquis of Santillana. (Bouterwek, Historia de la Literatura Española, traducida por Cortina y Hugalde y Mollinedo, (Madrid, 1829,) p. 196, and Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. pp. 38, 143.)

[18] Velazquez, Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana, p. 45.--Bouterwek, Literatura Española, trad. de Cortina y Mollinedo, nota S.

[19] See an abstract of it in Mayans y Siscar, Orígines de la Lengua Española, (Madrid, 1737,) tom. ii. pp. 321 et seq.

[20] Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1669,) tom. iii. p. 227.--Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 28.

[21] Centon Epistolario, epist. 66.--The bishop endeavored to transfer the blame of the conflagration to the king. There can be little doubt, however, that the good father infused the suspicions of necromancy into his master's bosom. "The angels," he says in one of his works, "who guarded Paradise, presented a treatise on magic to one of the posterity of Adam, from a copy of which Villena derived his science." (See Juan de Mena, Obras, fol. 139, glosa.) One would think that such an orthodox source might have justified Villena in the use of it.

[22] Comp. Juan de Mena, Obras, copl. 127, 128; and Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 220.

[23] Pulgar, Claros Varones de Castilla, y Letras, (Madrid, 1755,) tit. 4.--Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, lib. 10, cap. 9.--Quincuagenas de Gonzalo de Oviedo, MS., batalla 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8.

[24] Garcilasso de la Vega, Obras, ed. de Herrera, (1580,) pp. 75, 76-- Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. p. 21.--Boscan, Obras, (1543,) fol. 19.--It must be admitted, however, that the attempt was premature, and that it required a riper stage of the language to give a permanent character to the innovation.

[25] See Sanchez, Poesías Castellanas, tom. i. pp. 1-119.--A copious catalogue of the marquis de Santillana's writings is given in the same volume, (pp. 33 et seq.) Several of his poetical pieces are collected in the Cancionero General, (Anvers, 1573,) fol. 34 et seq.

[26] Pulgar, Claros Varones, tit. 4.--Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía, tom. i. p. 218.--Idem, Orígen de las Dignidades Seglares de Castilla y Leon, (Madrid, 1794,) p. 285.--Oviedo makes the marquis much older, seventy-five years of age, when he died. He left, besides daughters, six sons, who all became the founders of noble and powerful houses. See the whole genealogy, in Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1, quinc. 1, dial. 8.

[27] "Flor de saber y cabellería." El Laberinto, copla 114.

[28] Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. pp. 265 et seq.

[29] Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, epist. 47, 49.

[30] See Velazquez, Poesía Castellana, p. 49.

[31] A collection of them is incorporated in the Cancionero General, fol. 41 et seq.

[32] Castro, Biblioteca Española, (Madrid, 1781,) tom. i, pp. 266, 267.-- This interesting document, the most primitive of all the Spanish _cancioneros_, notwithstanding its local position in the library is specified by Castro with great precision, eluded the search of the industrious translators of Bouterwek, who think it may have disappeared during the French invasion. Literatura Española, trad. de Cortina y Mollinedo, p. 205, nota Hh.

[33] See these collected in Castro, Biblioteca Española, tom. ii. p. 265 et seq.--The veneration entertained for the poetic art in that day may be conceived from Baena's whimsical prologue. "Poetry," he says, "or the gay science, is a very subtile and delightsome composition. It demands in him, who would hope to excel in it, a curious invention, a sane judgment, a various scholarship, familiarity with courts and public affairs, high birth and breeding, a temperate, courteous, and liberal disposition, and, in fine, honey, sugar, salt, freedom, and hilarity in his discourse." p. 268.

[34] Castro, Biblioteca Española, tom. i. p. 273.

[35] Perhaps the most conspicuous of these historical compositions for mere literary execution is the Chronicle of Alvaro de Luna, to which I have had occasion to refer, edited in 1784, by Flores, the diligent secretary of the Royal Academy of History. He justly commends it for the purity and harmony of its diction. The loyalty of the chronicler seduces him sometimes into a swell of panegyric, which may he thought to savor too strongly of the current defect of Castilian prose; but it more frequently imparts to his narrative a generous glow of sentiment, raising it far above the lifeless details of ordinary history, and occasionally even to positive eloquence.

Nic. Antonio, in the tenth book of his great repository, has assembled the biographical and bibliographical notices of the various Spanish authors of the fifteenth century, whose labors diffused a glimmering of light over their own age, which has become faint in the superior illumination of the succeeding.

[36] Sempere, in his Historia del Luxo, (tom. i. p. 177,) has published an extract from an unprinted manuscript of the celebrated marquis of Villena, entitled _Triunfo de las Doñas_, in which, adverting to the _petits- maîtres_ of his time, he recapitulates the fashionable arts employed by them for the embellishment of the person, with a degree of minuteness which might edify a modern _dandy_.

[37] Crónica de Juan II., p. 499.--Faria y Sousa, Europa Portuguesa, (1679,) tom. ii. pp. 335, 372.

[38] Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128.--Crónica de Juan II., pp. 457, 460, 572.--Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. fol. 227, 228.--Garibay, Compendio Historial de las Chrónicas de España, (Barcelona, 1628,) tom. ii. p. 493.

[39] Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128.--What a contrast to all this is afforded by the vivid portrait, sketched by John de Mena, of the constable in the noontide of his glory.

"Este caualga sobre la fortuna y doma su cuello con asperas riendas y aunque del tenga tan muchas de prendas ella non le osa tocar de ninguna," etc. Laberinto, coplas 235 et seq.

[40] Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, ep. 103.--Crónica de Juan II., p. 564.--Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128, and Apend. p. 458.

[41] Entitled "Doctrinal de Privados." See the Cancionero General, fol. 37 et seq.--In the following stanza, the constable is made to moralize with good effect on the instability of worldly grandeur.

"Quo se hizo la moneda que guarde para mis daños tantos tiempos tantos años plata joyas oro y seda y de todo no me queda sine este cadahalso; mundo malo mundo falso no ay quien contigo pueda."

Manrique has the same sentiments in his exquisite "Coplas." I give Longfellow's version, as spirited as it is literal.

"Spain's haughty Constable,--the great And gallant Master,--cruel fate Stripped him of all. Breathe not a whisper of his pride, He on the gloomy scaffold died, Ignoble fall! The countless treasures of his care, Hamlets and villas green and fair, His mighty power,-- What were they all but grief and shame, Tears and a broken heart,--when came. The parting hour!" Stanza 21.

[42] Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, ep. 103.--Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, tit. 128.

[43] Crónica de Juan II., p. 576.--Cibdareal, Centon Epistolario, epist. 105.

There has been considerable discrepancy, even among cotemporary writers, both as to the place and the epoch of Isabella's birth, amounting, as regards the latter, to nearly two years. I have adopted the conclusion of Señor Clemencin, formed from a careful collation of the various authorities, in the sixth volume of the Memorias de la Real Academia de Historia, (Madrid, 1821,) Ilust. 1, pp. 56-60. Isabella was descended both on the father's and mother's side from the famous John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. See Florez, Memorias de las Reynas Cathólicas, (2d ed. Madrid, 1770,) tom. ii. pp. 743, 787.