spectators. They made their way first into the church, where mass was sung, and then to the judgment seat, where the future saint1 read aloud the finding of the court. The royal standard was displayed once more over the walls of the castle, and the vast assembly shouted aloud, "Long live Lord Ferdinand, King of Aragon!

Ferdinand was at Cuenca when he received the news of his election; and it was at Cuenca not many days afterwards that the commissioners of Catalonia waited upon him, with dutiful demands that he would respect their liberties, their usages and their Fueros, as they had been respected in days gone by. Ferdinand was ready to promise, and he was no less ready to perform. His first act was to summon the States General of the Aragonese nation to meet at Saragossa on the 25th of August, 1412, when he took the accustomed oath of fidelity to the constitution, and received the homage, not only of his new subjects, but of two of the competitors for the crown which he had won.2

The king's oath was repeated within the year, at the Cortes of Lerida, for the kingdom of Valencia, and Barcelona, where the most powerful of his late rivals, the Count of Urgel, offered the hand of his daughter to the Infante Henry, grand master of Santiago, and second son of King Ferdinand-an offer which was courteously refused.

Yet En Jacme of Urgel was far from being reconciled to Ferdinand's elevation to the throne of Aragon; and counting upon foreign alliances and foreign aid, he sought once more to plunge the kingdom into bloodshed and confusion. Encouraged, at least in the first instance, by the Duke of Clarence, second son of Henry IV. of England, and supported once more by the abandoned Antonio de Luna, James of Urgel marched on Lerida at the head of a small army, composed of Gascons and English, and renegades from every part of France and Spain. But after sustaining a severe defeat at Alcolea (July 10th, 1413) the

1 Saint Vincent (San Vicente Ferrer).

2 The Duke of Gandia did homage for the County of Ribagorza; and Don Fadrique of Aragon for the County of Luna. The Count of Urgel did not dispute the choice of the electors, but excused his attendance at the king's court on the plea of illness. Nothing can show more clearly than these entire proceedings the respect for law and tribunals that so remarkably characterised the people of Aragon. (This is the more conspicuous in this case, because from motives of policy the candidate chosen, Ferdinand of Castile, was certainly less entitled than Jacme to succeed; the custom of Aragon having been generally opposed to the recognition of the rights of the female line to the crown.-H.)

pretender's forces were scattered, and he himself was forced to take refuge in the fortified town of Balaguer on the Segre. The Duke of Clarence was in England, and sent no help to the rebel. His cousin, the Duke of York, offered his friendship and his alliance to Ferdinand. Balaguer surrendered on the 31st of October, 1413; and Ferdinand, displaying a noble clemency to the rebel, and disregarding even the formal sentence of death that was passed by the tribunal before whom the Count of Urgel was arraigned on a charge of high treason, contented himself with the mitigated punishment or precaution of imprisonment in the fortress of Xativa.

Relieved thus honourably from all rivals or rivalry, Ferdinand was crowned, together with his good Queen Leonora, with unaccustomed pomp at Saragossa in January, 1414. His eldest son Alfonso was invested at the same time with the new title of Prince of Gerona.1 His second son John, created Duke of Peñafiel, was appointed governor of the kingdom of Sicily; and a marriage treaty by which the young prince was engaged to marry Queen Joan of Naples-providing for the union of the crowns of Naples and Sicily in the line of Aragon-was signed in the course of the same year. This union, however, was not destined to take place. Queen Joan suddenly changed her mind, and married the Count de la Marche (Feb., 1415), as her affianced husband was actually on his voyage from Barcelona to Naples. Prince John made the best of his disappointment, and married Blanche, daughter of Charles the Noble, through whom he ultimately succeeded to the throne of Navarre. The eldest son of King Ferdinand, Alfonso Prince of Gerona, married in the June of the same year (1415) the Infanta Maria, sister of King John II. of Castile.

Sardinia was pacified about the same time by the purchase of the rights of the Viscount of Narbonne to a large part of the island; and the only great national or international difficulty that baffled all the efforts of Ferdinand successfully to solve, was that of the Great Schism perpetuated by the obstinacy and longevity of the gallant Spaniard, Pedro de Luna-the antiPope Benedict XIII.2

1 Intended to be the hereditary title of the eldest son of the King of Aragon, in imitation of the newly-created principality of Asturias in the royal house of Castile, and that of Wales in the royal family of England.

2 The Council of Constance in 1417, the formal deposition of Benedict XIII. and the election of Martin V. in the same year, had no influence upon the determined Pedro de Luna, who lived shut up in his castle at Peňiscola, maintaining to

Unhappily for Spain and for Europe, Ferdinand fell ill at Perpignan in the course of these negotiations and died soon after (2nd April, 1416) at Igualada, at the early age of thirtyseven. A just man, a kind father, a loyal regent, an honest suitor, a devoted king, a gallant soldier, a true knight; Ferdinand of Castile, after his brief reign of only four years in Aragon, has left behind him a reputation which is gloriously perpetuated in the unaccustomed titles of The Honest and The Just.

the day of his death, in 1423, his infallibility as the only legitimate Pope of Rome. This memorable Spaniard was no less than ninety years of age when he died, in the thirteenth year of his Pontificate. And with his death was practically concluded the Great Schism that had vexed Christendom for nearly forty years.

1 Shortly before his death he signed an act by which he withdrew his own allegiance and that of all his states from Benedict XIII.; whom he had fruitlessly urged to abdicate his assumed Papacy. This important defection from the antiPope practically settled the question, although Benedict personally continued obstinate.-H.

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CHAPTER XXXI.

CASTILE BEYOND THE SEA.

(1369-1407.)

I.-The Lancastrian Claims to Castile.

THE cheerful recognition of Henry the Bastard as King of Castile was due less to his own merits than to the enormous satisfaction that every one must have felt at the death of his legitimate brother. If the cause of the Cid's popularity was his opposition to a despotic king, then Henry of Trastamara should have been the darling of Castile. If steadfast perseverance in spite of adverse fortune, if bravery in the field, if a generous heart and a liberal hand are ever appreciated in a leader and a king, then Henry II. scarcely needs the dark foil of his brother's wickedness to display his own royal and knightly graces.

Yet it was but natural that his assumption of the reins of power should not be entirely without opposition. The legitimate heir to his brother's throne was Ferdinand, King of Portugal, a grandson of Beatrix, the daughter of Sancho the Bravo of Castile. John of Lancaster was at least a powerful claimant. Logroño, Vittoria and other cities on the northern frontier were in the power of Charles the Bad of Navarre. Molina Requena placed itself under the protection of Aragon; and Carmona-fortified and victualled as his last stronghold by Peter the Cruel-refused to open its gates to his successor. But within a year Henry had defeated a Portuguese fleet at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and had possessed himself not only of Carmona (10th May, 1371) but of almost every other city that had at first hesitated to acknowledge his title to the crown.

One of his first acts was to summon a Cortes at Toro (1369), where, among many excellent laws for the protection of the

community, it was ordained that punishments of special severity should be inflicted upon assassins, whether gentle or simple. And at the Cortes that met at Toro in 1371, a very complete system of criminal procedure, known as the Ordenamiento sobre la administracion de justicia, was added to the already excellent laws of Spain.

A projected alliance between one of Henry's daughters— the Infanta Leonora-with Ferdinand, King of Portugal, might have not only removed a dangerous rival, but in the event of surviving issue, would have united the crowns of Portugal and Castile. Ferdinand, however, preferred chicanery to honourable alliance, and having broken off the match, and declared war against Henry, was handsomely beaten by the Castilians both on land and at sea. And the king, thus relieved from all anxiety on the side of Portugal, flew at higher game beyond his northern frontier.

John of Lancaster, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, afterwards Duke of York,1 two sons of Edward III. of England, had married, as we have already seen, the ladies Constance and Isabella, the daughters of Peter the Cruel and Maria de Padilla; and Lancaster, on the death of his worthy father-in-law, laid claim, in right of his wife, to the crown of Spain. Had Peter been really married to his acknowledged mistress, Constance was undoubtedly Queen of Castile; but the oath of a treblyperjured king, supported by the declaration of a servile archbishop, were not of much account as evidence; and, bastard for bastard, the claims of Henry, king in possession, were surely greater than those of his niece, the wife of a foreign duke.

Whatever may have been their results in Castile, the pretensions of John of Lancaster were attended with nothing but evil fortune for himself and for England. The first reply that was given by Henry to the Lancastrian claims upon Spain, which were formulated in June, 1372, was the despatch of a fleet under his admiral, Ambrosio Bocanegra, who fell in with an English squadron under the Earl of Pembroke off La Rochelle, and totally defeated it. Charles V. of France on his side took advantage of the victory, and overran the whole of Guienne; and Lancaster, as captain-general of the English forces, engaged in many by no means successful campaigns in various parts of

1 The marriages took place at Roquefort, near Bordeaux, at the end of 1371; the brothers and sisters went to England in the spring of 1372; and on 25th June John of Gaunt first styled himself King of Castile. See Dict. Nat. Biog., sub tit John of Gaunt.