wife, Mary of Aragon, the king had but one son, born in 1425, who succeeded him as Henry IV. The queen died in 1445, and John, it is said, desired to take for a second wife a princess of the royal house of France. His master,1 however, willed otherwise; and by order of Alvaro de Luna, the submissive monarch espoused Isabella of Portugal, a granddaughter of King John I. The marriage took place in 1450, and a son, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias, was born in 1453. But two years previously, in 1451, a daughter had been given to the royal pair, who was destined to change the fortunes of Spain, and who received in honour of her highspirited mother the ever famous name of ISABELLA. If this Portuguese marriage thus brought_everlasting honour to Spain, it sealed the fate of Alvaro de Luna. For the queen of his choice, far from becoming either his agent or his ally, emboldened the king, her lord, to assert his independence of his Favourite; and Alvaro de Luna, like many greater and better men, fell by the hand of a woman. If the great Hajib at Cordova was too strong for Sobeyra the queen-mother, the Constable was no match for the superior attractions of Isabella the wife. And at length, delivered by the king, in a fit of momentary vigour, into the hands of the executioner, the Favourite died, before his ever vacillating sovereign could summon up resolution to remit the sentence, on the 2nd of June, 1453. One year only did the king survive the Constable; and on the 21st July, 1454, was John II. gathered to his fathers. The one person who stands out in bold relief among his restless contemporaries is, of course, Alvaro de Luna. Yet, superior as he no doubt was to his contemporaries, and to his inevitable successor, to the ungrateful Villena and to the scandalous Beltran de la Cueva, his renown is due rather to his domination of the feeble monarch who abandoned to him for forty years the absolute government of Castile, than to any enormous merits of his own. In spite of much historical glorification, Alvaro de Luna must be considered as a somewhat commonplace favourite, of the more magnificent order; a strong and unscrupulous minister, who ruled a weak and submissive king by the accustomed methods, and who perished in the accustomed manner. His success, great as it was, was purely personal. With almost unlimited power, 1 The subjection of the king to the favourite was so complete that it extended to the most personal and private acts of his daily life. Aun en los autos naturales se dió asi à la ordenanza del condestable, que seyendo el mozo y bien complexionado, y teniendo à la reyna su mujer moza y fermosa, si el condestable se lo contradixiese, no iria à dormir à su cama della. Perez de Guzman, Cronica de D. Juan ii. (Ed. 1779), p. 602, col. 1. his administration of Castile was to the last degree disastrous : and his strength of character was never for forty years displayed in the good government of Spain. Magnificentjhe certainly was, a commanding and an attractive figure in Spanish history, admired by his contemporaries, celebrated in a fascinating Chronicle, and ennobled by a tragic and dignified death, he may rank higher among the Rulers of his country than Olivarez or Godoy, but he is unworthy of a moment's comparison with Almanzor.1 1I have derived much information from the Cronica de D. Alvaro de Luna, &c., &c., &c., ed. con varios apendices by D. Josef Miguel de Flores, Secretario de la Real Academia de Historia (Madrid, 1784). Among the apendices, printed at pp. 1-112, is The SEGURO DE TORDESILLAS, by Don Pedro Hernandez de Velasco, Conde de Haro, referred to in the text, and also the Libro del Passo Honroso defendido por el Excelente Caballero Suero de Quiñones, compiled by Pero Rodriguez Velena and edited by Juan de Pineda, pp. 1-68. The whole is preceded by a good Prologo, and makes a most interesting volume. See post, vol. ii., p. 32. |