The Project Gutenberg eBook of Queens of Old Spain, by Martin Hume

3. Letter of Diego de Valera to Henry IV. MS. quoted by Amador de las Rios. Historia de Madrid. See also the famous poems of the time, Coplas de Mingo Revulgo, and Coplas del Provincial, where vivid pictures are given of the prevailing anarchy.

4. The protest is in the archives of Villena’s descendant, the present Duke of Frias, to whom I am indebted for an abstract of it.

5. The original treaty, which of course came to nothing, is in the Frias Archives, and is signed by Louis XI. as one of the contracting parties. It is dated 9th May 1463. I have not seen the fact stated elsewhere.

6. The text of the demands, under thirty-nine heads, will be found in the ‘Documentos Ineditos,’ vol. xiv. p. 369.

7. The exact sequence and dates of these and the following events have never yet been made clear in any of the numerous histories of the time, not even in Prescott, owing to the fact that Enriquez de Castillo and Pulgar very rarely give dates, whilst Galindez only mentions the years of such happenings as he records. The printing of the contemporary so-called ‘Cronicon de Valladolid’ (partly written by Isabel’s physician, Dr. Toledo) in the ‘Documentos Ineditos,’ now enables us to set forth the events chronologically, and thus the better to understand their significance.

8. Enriquez de Castillo, ‘Cronica de Enrique IV.‘

9. A number of decrees issued by Alfonso at the time, conferring upon Villena and his partisans great grants and privileges, are in the Frias archives; and other charters rewarding the city of Avila for its adherence to his cause have recently been printed by the Chronicler of the city from its archives, Sr. de Foronda.

10. Of a poisoned trout which he ate, it was asserted by his partisans. The suspicion of poison is strengthened by the fact that his death was publicly announced as a fact some days before it happened, when he was quite well.

11. In a series of documents recently published from the archives of the city of Avila by St. Foronda, there is one very curious charter signed by Isabel on 2nd September, before even she started for the interview with her brother. In it she already acts as sovereign of Avila, confirming the many privileges given to the city by her brother Alfonso, whom she calls King, and cancelling the grants of territories belonging to the city which King Henry had made to his follower, the Count of Alba. Thus she annulled the King’s grants before he bestowed the city upon her.

12. The original deed signed by the King of Portugal, dated 2nd May 1469, is in the Frias archives.

13. Isabel only learnt of the deception practised upon her some time afterwards (1471) from the partisans of the Beltraneja’s projected marriage with the Duke of Guienne. A genuine bull of dispensation was afterwards granted to her by the new Pope, Sixtus IV.

14. The story of Ferdinand’s coming and his marriage is graphically told in the Decades of Alfonso de Palencia, who had been sent from Isabel to fetch him, and accompanied him on his journey.

15. ‘Cronicon de Valladolid,’ a diary kept at Valladolid at the time by Dr. Toledo, Isabel’s physician. Doc. Ined. 14.

16. In the Frias archives there is an undertaking, dated 2nd October 1470, signed by the Duke of Guienne, promising rewards to Cardinal Mendoza, the Marquis of Villena, the Duke of Arevalo, and others, for their aid in bringing about the betrothal with the Beltraneja.

17. Dueñas was granted on the same day, 21st October 1470, to the Princess Doña Juana (the Beltraneja). Cronicon de Valladolid.

18. How much Isabel prized the fidelity of these steadfast adherents is seen by the last act of her life. On her deathbed she revoked—not very honestly or graciously most people think—all grants and rewards she had given out of crown possessions, on the pretext that she had been moved to make them more by need than by her own wish. The only exception she made was the manors of the Marquisite of Moya, which, with the title, had been granted to Cabrera and his wife Doña Beatriz Bobadilla.

19. Recorded in Enriquez de Castillo’s ‘Cronica de Enrique IV.‘

20. It should be mentioned that the faithless Queen of Henry IV., the mother of the Beltraneja, lived apart from him in Madrid. She had several children by various men subsequently.

21. Galindez tells the story that Henry on his deathbed swore that Juana was really his child, and says that he left a will in her favour of which Villena was the executor. The latter having predeceased the King, the will remained in the keeping of Oviedo, the King’s secretary, who afterwards entrusted it to the curate of Santa Cruz at Madrid. He, fearing to hold it, enclosed it in a chest with other papers and buried it at Almeida, in Portugal. Years afterwards Isabel learnt of this, and when, in 1504, she was mortally ill, she sent the curate and the lawyer who had told her to disinter the will. When they brought it she was too ill to see it, and it remained in the lawyer’s keeping. He informed Ferdinand after the Queen’s death, and the King ordered the document to be burnt, whilst the lawyer was richly rewarded. Others say, continues Galindez, that the paper was preserved.

22. She died in June 1475.

23. Although she allowed a poor madman who attempted to kill Ferdinand to be torn to bits by red hot pincers, and consigned scores of thousands of poor wretches to the flames for doubting the correctness of her views on religion, she refused ever to go to a bullfight after attending one at which two men had been killed. She strongly condemned such waste of human life without good object.

24. Oviedo, who knew her well, says that no other woman could compare with her in beauty.

25. ‘Cronicon de Valladolid,’ Doc. Ined. 14, and also Alfonso de Palencia.

26. As one instance of the mercenary character of the Castilian nobles of the time, I may mention that there is a bond signed by the King of Portugal in the Frias archives promising to young Villena the Mastership of Santiago in payment for his help.

27. The King of Portugal, having heard that Castilian raiders had crossed the Portuguese frontier, is said to have proposed to Ferdinand at this juncture a compromise, by which the Beltraneja should be dropped, and Isabel recognised in return for the cession to Portugal of all Galicia and the two fortresses of Zamora and Toro which he occupied. Ferdinand was inclined to agree to this, and sent an envoy to propose it to his wife. Before the envoy had finished his first sentence Isabel stopped him indignantly, and forbade him to continue. She herself, she said, would in future direct the war, and no foot of her own realm of Castile should be surrendered. She then hurried to Medina and summoned the Cortes, as is told in the text.

28. Each group of 100 heads of families subscribed sufficient to pay, mount, arm, and maintain a horseman; and when intelligence of a crime came, every church bell in the district rang an alarm to summon the members of the constabulary to pursue the evil-doer, a special prize being given to the captor. It must be understood that the townships in Spain extend in every case over a large territory outside the walls, so that the house tax, although nominally urban because collected by the municipalities, was really collected also from rural hamlets.

29. The importance of obtaining control of the Orders was seen by Isabel at the very beginning of her reign. When the Master of Santiago died in 1476 the Queen was at Valladolid. Without a moment’s delay she mounted her horse and rode to the town of Huete, where the Chapter to elect the new Master was to be held. She entered the Chapter and in an energetic speech urged the knights for the sake of her, their sovereign, to elect her husband their Master. The Castilian knights were angry at the idea of an Aragonese heading them, and opposed the suggestion. Isabel found a way out by pledging Ferdinand to transfer his powers as Master to a Castilian as soon as he was elected; and this he did, appointing his faithful follower Cardenas; but when the latter died Ferdinand became actual Master. Thenceforward the knighthoods (encomiendas) were endowed with pensions derived from rent charges on portions of the estates, the bulk of the revenue being absorbed by the King’s treasury. For details of the Orders and their appropriation, see Ulick Burke’s ‘History of Spain’ to 1515, edited by Martin Hume.

30. As at Jaen in 1473, where the Constable of Castile was killed whilst trying to stop the massacre.

31. Galindez and Perez de Pulgar.

32. At the Cortes of Madrigal in 1479, and in those of Toledo in 1480, Isabel and Ferdinand renewed all the old ferocious edicts against the use of silk and jewels by Jews in their garments, and ordered them strictly to confine their residence to the ghettoes, and two years later all toleration they enjoyed by papal decree was abolished.

33. Father Florez claims for Isabel and Torquemada alone what he considers the great honour of establishing the Inquisition.

34. In the first eight years of its existence, the Inquisition burnt in Seville alone 700 people, and sent to perpetual imprisonment in the dungeons 5000 more, confiscating all their goods.—Bernaldez.

35. Shortly after her death, the mayor of her own city of Medina del Campo declared that the soul of Isabel had gone to hell for her cruel oppression of her subjects, and that all the people around Valladolid and Medina, where she was best known, were of the same opinion.—Spanish State Papers, Supplement to vols. i. and ii.

36. Florez, ‘Reinas Catolicos.’

37. Pulgar. ‘Cronica de los Reyes Catolicos.’

38. The Moors justified the attack by the accusation that the famous Ponce de Leon, Marquis of Cadiz, had raided and plundered the town of Mercadillo, near Ronda.

39. When somewhat later the Queen urgently begged him to accept the bishopric of Salamanca, and he persistently refused, she reproached him for not obeying her once when she had obeyed him so many times. ‘I will not be the bishop,’ he replied, ‘of any place but Granada.’ He was in effect the first archbishop.

40. Pulgar, ‘Cronica de los Reyes Catolicos.’

41. Lagréze. See also Zurita’s ‘Anales de Aragon.’

42. Florez, ‘Reinas Catolicos.’

43. See Perez de Pulgar, ‘Reyes Catolicos.’

44. Florez, ‘Reinas Catolicos.’

45. Bernaldez, ‘Reyes Catolicos,’ and Bleda’s ‘Cronica.’

46. The chroniclers of the siege dilate much upon the magnificent appearance of Isabel and her great train of ladies when, on the day of her arrival before Baza, she reviewed her troops in full view of the dumbfoundered Moors on the ramparts of the fortress. Her own Castilian troops, frantic with enthusiasm, no longer cried ‘Long live the Queen,’ but ‘Long live our King Isabel.’—Florez, ‘Reinas Catolicos,’ and Letters of Peter Martyr, who was present.

47. The professed Christian Jews were much more severely dealt with than the unbaptised.

48. Perez de Hita (Historia de los Vandos) recounts that the city of Santa Fe sprang from a marvellous edifice which four grandees caused to be constructed in a single night. It consisted of four buildings of wood covered with painted canvas to imitate stone, and surrounded by a battlemented wall of a similar construction. Roadways in the form of a cross divided the four blocks with a gate at each of the four extremities. The Moors, on seeing what they thought was a strong fortress raised so rapidly, thought that witchcraft had been at work, and were utterly cast down.

49. The title ‘Catholic’ was formally conferred upon them by the Pope after the taking of Granada.

50. He promptly sold this to Isabel, and retired to Fez, where he was murdered. The account of the surrender is mainly taken from Perez de Hita’s ‘Historia de los Vandos,’ 1610, and Perez de Pulgar’s ‘Cronica.’

51. She is said never to have allowed Ferdinand to wear a shirt except those that she herself made for him.—Navarro Rodrigo, ‘El Cardinal Cisneros.’

52. The sequence of the movements of Columbus, and several facts and dates here given, vary from the current accounts. The narrative here set forth has been carefully compiled from the result of much recent Spanish research, besides the well-known texts of Navarrete and the superb anthology of contemporary information reproduced by Mr. Thatcher in his exhaustive three volumes lately published. I have also depended much upon Rodriguez Pinilla’s ‘Colon en España,’ Cappa’s ‘Colon y los Españoles,’ and Ibarra y Rodriguez’s ‘Fernando el Catolico y el Descubrimiento de America,’ etc. etc.

53. See Columbus’s own letter to the nurse of Prince Juan, reproduced by Mr. Thatcher.

54. As Medina Celi was with Ferdinand during all the campaign of 1485, it is possible that he may have mentioned it to the King then, and have been told that when there was time the sovereigns themselves would examine into the matter.

55. Las Casas and F. Colon.

59. The speech, which is probably apocryphal, is given at length by Las Casas.

60. The legend of Queen Isabel and her jewels has been now completely disproved by my friend, Don Cesareo Fernandez Duro, in his article ‘Las Joyas de la Reina Isabel’ in the ‘Revista Contemporanea,’ vol. xxxviii.

61. Professor Ibarra y Rodriguez’s interesting study ‘Fernando el Catolico y el Descubrimiento’ (Madrid, 1892) makes this matter clear for the first time. The treasury of Castile was empty, but Ferdinand had plenty of money in Aragon. He was careful, however, not to allow the Castilians to know this, or they would have clamoured for some of it for their war against Granada, whilst he was hoarding it for his war against France. He therefore went through the comedy of causing Sant’angel to lend the million maravedis, apparently out of his own pocket, but the money was secretly advanced for the purpose to Sant’angel from the King’s Aragonese treasury, to which it was subsequently repaid through Sant’angel.

62. Some of these took the form of generosity at other people’s expense. The town of Palos was ordered, as punishment for some offence, to provide two caravels and stores.

63. Quoted by Florez. ‘Reinas Catolicos.’

64. Ibid. Both Luis de Sant’angel, who served as accountant general, and Gabriel Sanchez, the Aragonese treasurer, were of Jewish descent.

65. From Ulick Burke’s ‘History of Spain.’ Edited by Martin Hume. Only five years after the expulsion from Spain, as many of the Spanish Jews had fled to Portugal, Isabel, through her daughter, who had married the King of Portugal, coerced the latter to expel all Jews from his country.

66. It is said that Ferdinand tried to save the life of his assailant, who had been condemned to the most cruel and awful tortures as a punishment. The Catalans, furious at being baulked of their vengeance, appealed to Isabel, who decided that the sentence should be carried out, but that the victim should be secretly suffocated first.

67. The Luis de Sant’angel and the Sanchez letter have been published several times, but the letter to the Sovereigns has been lost, but for some passages quoted by Las Casas.

68. It is related that the Queen concealed from Jimenez her intention to make him Primate, and handed him unexpectedly the papal bull addressed to him as: The venerable brother Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, Archbishop-elect of Toledo. When the friar saw the superscription he dropped the document and fled, crying, This bull is not for me. He was pursued and caught two leagues from Madrid by envoys from Isabel, and still refused the great preferment on the ground of his unworthiness. He stood out for six months until Isabel obtained from the Pope a peremptory command to him to accept the archbishopric, and even then he insisted that the vast revenues should be used for pious and charitable purposes.

69. A full account of these complicated intrigues will be found in the present writer’s ‘Wives of Henry VIII.‘

70. Father Florez quotes a remark of Isabel, on another occasion, warmly approving of the bullfight, ‘which, though foreigners who have not seen it condemn as barbarous, she considered it very different, and as a diversion where valour and dexterity shine.’

71. Florez, ‘Reinas Catolicos.’

72. Montero de los Rios ‘Historia de Madrid.’

74. Ferdinand had wished to appoint an Aragonese commander, but as Castile was defraying most of the expenses of the war, Isabel insisted upon a Castilian being appointed.

75. Clemencin. ‘Elogio.’

76. Zurita, ‘Anales,’ and Padilla, ‘Cronica de Felipe I.‘

77. The Spanish chroniclers complain bitterly of Philip’s slowness in coming to meet his bride. He was in Tyrol when she arrived in Flanders, and spent nearly a month in joining her at Lille. From the first the love was all on poor Joan’s side.

78. Ferdinand, it is related, fearing that the sudden news of Juan’s death would kill Isabel with grief, caused her to be told that it was her husband, Ferdinand himself, that had died, so that when he presented himself before her, the—as he supposed—lesser grief of her son’s death should be mitigated by learning that her husband was alive. The experiment does not appear to have been very successful, as Isabel was profoundly affected when she heard the truth. (Florez, ‘Reinas Catolicos’).

79. In fact the Cortes of Aragon obstinately refused to swear allegiance to the Infanta Isabel as heiress when she went to Saragossa for the purpose in the autumn; and she was kept there in great distress until her expected child should be born, which, if it were a male, would receive the oath of the Cortes. The anxiety and worry consequent upon this killed the Infanta (Queen of Portugal) in the birth of her child Miguel in August.

80. Her story is told in ‘The Wives of Henry VIII.,’ by the present writer.

81. ‘Spanish State Papers.’ Calendar, Supplement to vol. i. p. 405.

82. ‘Calendar of Spanish State Papers,’ Supplement to vol. i. ‘Reports of the Sub-Prior of Santa Cruz to Isabel.’

83. Ferdinand sent at once an envoy to remonstrate with Maximilian about his son’s pretensions, but it was soon seen that Maximilian and his son were entirely in accord. Maximilian had the effrontery to claim the crown of Portugal in right of his mother, Doña Leonor of Portugal, and the crown of Castile for Juana, in preference to any daughter that might be born to her eldest sister, Isabel of Portugal. Ferdinand’s enemy, the King of France, naturally supported these pretensions, which were really put forward at the time to thwart Ferdinand, whose plans in Italy were now seen to threaten the suzerainty of the empire over some of the Italian States.

84. As showing how unrelenting was Isabel’s determination to exterminate infidelity in the whole Peninsula at the time, it may be mentioned that one of the conditions of the marriage of her eldest widowed daughter Isabel to the King of Portugal in 1497, was that every Jew should be expelled from Portugal.

85. Marmol Carbajal, ‘Rebelion of Castigo de los Moros de Granada.’

86. Marmol Carbajal. It will be recollected that Ferdinand had opposed Jimenez’s appointment, as he wanted the archbishopric and primacy for his son.

87. Ulick Burke, ‘History of Spain.’ Edited by Martin Hume.

89. Colon’s son, Ferdinand, says that he ordered his fetters to be buried with him: but this does not appear to have been done. His bitter indignation is expressed by his son, Fernando, and in Colon’s ‘Letter to the Nurse.’

90. Zurita: Rodriguez Villa, ‘Juana la Loca,’ and ‘Calendar of Spanish State Papers,’ Supplement to Vol. i.

91. Especially the Archbishop of Besançon, whose influence over Philip was great. Philip would not let him go; but he died suddenly directly afterwards, doubtless of poison. Philip’s hurry to get away from Spain was attributed to his own fears of poison.

92. A copy of their urgent remonstrance from Toledo is in MS. in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid.

93. ‘Calendar of Spanish State Papers,’ Supplement to vols. i and ii.

94. Sandoval, in his ‘Historia de Carlos V.,’ gives a glowing account of the festivities that followed, and especially of a ridiculously fulsome sermon preached by the Bishop of Malaga on the occasion, laying quite a malicious emphasis upon poor Joan’s devotion to what was called in Spain ‘Christianity,’ or rather the strict Catholic ritual.

95. These interesting letters are in MS. in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid, A 11. Some of them are quoted by Rodriguez Villa in his ‘Dona Juana la Loca.’

96. Royal Academy of History, Madrid, A 9, and Rodriguez Villa.

97. He even had a letter written, as if by his child Charles of three years old, to King Ferdinand praying that his mamma might be allowed to come home to them.

98. When the will was signed Isabel called her husband to her bedside, and with tears made him swear that, neither by a second marriage nor otherwise, would he try to deprive Joan of the crown. She fell back then prostrate and was thought to be dead, but afterwards revived.

99. Zurita, ‘Anales de Aragon.’

100. A full account of the progress of events from day to day at the time is given in Documents Ineditos, vol 18.

101. Ferdinand, after the Cortes had taken the oath of allegiance, addressed to them a document (quoted in full by Zurita) saying that when Queen Isabel provided in her will for the case of Joan’s incapacity to rule, she had not gone further into particulars out of consideration for her daughter; although the latter had, whilst she was in Spain, shown signs of mental disturbance. The time had now come, said Ferdinand, to inform the Cortes in strict secrecy of the real state of affairs. Since Joan’s return to Flanders reports from Ferdinand’s agents, and from Philip himself, which were exhibited to the Cortes, said that her malady had increased, and that her state was such that the case foreseen by Queen Isabel in her will had now arrived. The Cortes, after much deliberation and against the nobles, led by the Duke of Najera, thereupon decided to acknowledge Ferdinand as ruler owing to the incapacity of Joan.

102. Zurita, ‘Anales de Aragon.’

103. Discovered in the Alburquerque archives by Sr. Rodriguez Villa, and published by him in his ‘Doña Juana La Loca.’

104. It has already been mentioned on page 26 that, according to Galindez, a will of Henry IV. leaving the crown of Castile to the Beltraneja had come into Ferdinand’s possession on Isabel’s death. The authority for the statement that Ferdinand offered marriage to the Beltraneja at this juncture is principally Zurita, ‘Anales de Aragon,’ and it was adopted by Mariana and later historians. Mr. Prescott scornfully rejects the whole story, without, as it seems to me, any reason whatever for doing so, except that it tells against Ferdinand’s character. It is surely too late in the day to hope to save that.

105. ‘Collection de Voyages des Souverains des Pays Bas,’ vol. i.

106. From a most entertaining Spanish account in manuscript in the Royal Academy of History, Madrid, in which the courtiers are mercilessly chaffed.

107. ‘Spanish State Papers Calendar,’ vol. i. Peter Martyr (Epist. 300) says that Katharine did her best to solace, comfort and entertain her sister Joan, but that the latter would take pleasure in nothing, and only loved solitude and darkness. In order to preserve appearances, the treaty arranged and signed before Joan’s arrival at Windsor was ostensibly entered into by Philip as ruler of Flanders, not as King of Castile; but its whole object obviously was to strengthen Philip in Spain.

108. None of Ferdinand’s envoys were allowed to see Joan at Corunna, but when the great Castilian nobles, Count Benavente and Marquis de Villena, came to pay homage, Joan was seated by the side of her husband, and the reception hall was thrown open to the public. This was necessary in consequence of the jealousy of Castilians against foreigners, and their insistence upon Joan’s sovereignty; but it was the only occasion on which Philip openly associated her with his government.

109. See the draft summons to nobles and gentry, kept ready for the eventuality, reproduced by Rodriguez Villa, ‘Doña Juana la Loca.’

110. Her grand-daughter, another Joan, sister of Philip II. and Princess of Portugal, had also after her widowhood this curious fancy to keep her face hidden.

111. The part played by Jimenez at this period has always been a puzzling problem. He was apparently in the full confidence of Philip, but it is impossible to believe that he was not really acting in concert with Ferdinand at the time. He probably knew that one way or the other Philip was bound to disappear very soon, and his presence at the crisis would enable him, as it actually did, to keep firm hold upon the government until Ferdinand returned. His anxiety to get the custody of Joan seems to point to this also, as the person who held the Queen was the master of the situation.

112. Estanques’ ‘Cronica’ in Documentos Ineditos, vol. viii.

113. Although, as was usual, Philip’s Italian physician vehemently denied that there were any indications of poison on the remains, there can be but little doubt that Philip was murdered by agents of Ferdinand. The statement to that effect was freely and publicly made at the time, but the authorities were always afraid to prosecute those who made them. See ‘Calendar of Spanish State Papers,’ Supplement to Vol. i., p. xxxvii. There were many persons who attributed Philip’s death, not to Ferdinand, but to the Inquisition, which Philip had offended by softening its rigour, and suspending the chief Inquisitors, Deza and Lucero; but this is very improbable.

114. ‘Collection de Voyages des Souverains des Pays Bas,’ vol. i. It is here stated that foreign officers of the household broke up all the gold and silver plate they could lay hands on to turn into money, and pay their way back to Flanders.

115. ‘Collection de Voyages des Souverains des Pays Bas.’

116. On the very day that Philip died, an attempt was made by a faction of nobles to obtain possession of the young Prince. The keeper of the Castle of Simancas was on his guard, as he knew of the King’s illness, and refused admittance to any but the two gentlemen who bore Philip’s signed order for the child to be delivered to them. When the morrow brought news of the King’s death, the Seneschal refused to obey the order, and defied the forces sent to capture the fortress.