Al and the independence of the Commons had alike declined. ready in the reign of Henry IV., the king was able to send instructions to Seville that the citizens should elect certain persons named by him to be their representatives in the Cortes. In the last year of the reign of Henry III. the Cortes authorised the king, who so well deserved the confidence of the people, to levy such a subsidy as he might require in the future; a bad precedent, which paved the way for the gradual loss of power and authority by the Commons, under kings less virtuous than the third Henry of Castile. By such encroachments and by such surrenders, and above all by such selfishness, the king's authority became paramount. And the Commons, without allies or sympathisers among the other orders in the nation, the burgesses who had looked on with jealous satisfaction at the destruction of the nobility by Peter and by Ferdinand, were in their turn reduced to insignificance and to impotence by Charles and Philip II. The Cortes became a byword for all that was powerless and contemptible. Nor did the boasted freedom of Castile survive the wreck of its most cherished institution.1 But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Commons were free and powerful. No tax could be imposed without their consent in the Cortes, and they watched, not only over the granting, and the collection, but over the expenditure of the revenue that was raised by their authority. The judges and officers of the realm, and even the private affairs of the king himself, were subjected to their scrutiny and their interference, and that to an extent which would not be endured even in modern democratic England.2 In the Cortes of Valladolid, in 1258, for example, the Commons went so far as to take upon themselves the control of the expenditure of the king's household, and limited the expenses of the royal table to 150 maravedis a day.3 1 The process of the decadence of parliamentary institutions in Castile followed the usual course. The constituent Town Councils were packed with nominated and hereditary members, and the members of Cortes were bribed enormously by direct grants and by the gift of offices. The rule of payment of members by the towns and the delegation of resident townsmen to the Cortes, fell into desuetude until, by the end of the reign of Philip II., the Cortes of Castile had lost all vigour and independence. So much was this the case that Philip II. insisted upon the regular supply being considered as a tribute which Cortes was bound to vote without conditions.-H. 2 The Cortes of Valladolid, in 1351, fixed the price of a day's labour and the wages of husbandmen and artisans (Ordenamiento de Menestrales). The sixth article of the Ordenamiento de Prelados has been interpreted as a prohibition to the labourer to change his master. Mérimée, Don Pèdre, i., p. 32. As to the supervision exercised by the Cortes over the persons and morals of the kings as well as their marriages, treaties, etc., from the time of Ramiro III. of Nor were the affairs of the humbler classes disregarded by these parliamentary administrators. No law could be made or repealed save in the great Council of the nation. Nor was any serious attempt made to evade these constitutional principles until the reign of John II., whose royal proclamation, dictated by Alvaro de Luna, sought to over-ride the authority of the Cortes. The deputies were elected by the Municipal Councils or Concejos,2 and were not permitted to receive any "favour or gratification" from the king or his ministers during the period of their deputation. The Municipal Councils furnished their deputy with instructions not only verbal, but in writing; and he was thus the mandatory or representative, not of the nation, but of his own municipality. The members of the Cortes were summoned by writ, almost exactly coincident in expression with that in use in England.3 The persons of the deputies were inviolable. By the beginning of the fifteenth century a smaller or Privy Council obtained some of the authority which resided in the Cortes. But sitting in permanence, and at the king's court, the members were exposed to powerful influences unfavourable to freedom; and when soon afterwards they came to be chosen by the king himself, they can have exercised but a very slender check upon any arbitrary acts of royal power. In the reign of Henry III. four delegates of the Cortes, selected by that body, were added to the Privy Council, and their presence was judged to be of the utmost value to the commonwealth. pro This royal or administrative Council was reorganised by Ferdinand and Isabella, and although the nominal right of the great nobles and ecclesiastics to a seat was still recognised, the fessional jurists or Law Lords were practically invested with both the judicial and the consultative functions of the whole Privy Council.4 The constitution of Aragon was at once less popular and more liberal than that of Castile. The institutions of the Leon (967), see Marina, Teoria de las Cortes, ii., 4. (See also in this respect the essay "A fight against finery" in The year after the Armada, by the present editor.-H.) 1 See protest of Cortes of 1506. apud Hallam, Mid. Ages, ii., 30. 2 Marina, Teoria, ii., 1. 3 Marina, Teoria, ii., 3; Hallam, ii., 28. Ordenanzas Reales de Castilla (Burgos, 1528), former was rather aristocratic; those of the latter tended to absolute monarchy. The arbitrary power of the king was more effectually checked by the nobles of Aragon than by the Commons of Castile. For in Aragon, gentle and simple, the classes and the masses, stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of their common liberties. And even the great royal victory at Epila in 1348, which crippled the power of the aristocracy, and abolished the formal privilege of union, did not sever the bonds that held together the knight and the burgess, the priest and the landed proprietor, who still maintained their liberties against Peter IV. "The aristocracy of Aragon," says Señor Castelar, who is certainly no friend to aristocracies, "fought at all times, not for power, but for popular liberty." In Castile it was far otherwise. For there the Commons and the king were ever united against the nobility; and the nobles fought, not for liberty, but for personal aggrandisement. Thus, on the whole, political life was freer and larger; the people of all conditions were far more united in Aragon than in Castile. 2 Neither state enjoyed the priceless boon of trial by jury; but in Castile there was no Justiciary, as in Aragon, no Habeas Corpus, no writ of Certiorari. To the Castilians was given no General Privilege, such as was accorded to their neighbours by Peter III. Yet the Privilege of Union, the most tremendous power ever conceded by a king to his subjects, had its milder, and indeed its far more practical counterpart in Castile, in the Hermandades, or brotherhoods of citizens, which have already been spoken of in treating of the turbulent reign of Ferdinand IV.5 Throughout the long and distracted reigns of John II. and Henry IV. the Hermandad was a necessity. With the return of good government and civil order it became superfluous; until at length the orderly and autocratic Isabella reduced turbulent Spain to complete submission, and replaced the old popular brotherhoods of a harassed and distracted country by the "Holy Brotherhood," the well-organised constabulary of a united king dom. 1 Castelar, Estudios Historicos, 49, 50. 3 Jurisfirma or Firma del derecho. 4 The Cortes of Castile became a Congress of Deputies from a few cities, too limited in number and too unconnected with the territorial aristocracy to maintain a just balance against the crown. Hallam, Mid. Ages, ii., 38. 5 The Hermandad is considered by Señor Vicente de Lafuente as among the secret societies of Spain, partaking of the nature of freemasonry. Hist. de las Sociedades Secretas (Lugo, 1870), p. 44. CHAPTER XXXIII. ALFONSO OF ARAGON AND NAPLES. (1416-1453.) THE early death of Ferdinand I., after his brief but worthy reign of only four years, was in every way disastrous to Aragon. For Ferdinand, who had been one of the best regents of Castile, and one of the best kings of Aragon, was not a man to be easily replaced. And his son and successor, partly from his adventurous disposition, and partly from the force of circumstances, was led to embark once more upon the stormy sea of Italian politics, and to waste the blood and treasure of Aragon and Catalonia in enterprises without interest or advantage to Spain. The record of the reign of Alfonso V. is Italian rather than Spanish; and Aragon, ably administered by Queen Maria during the king's absence beyond the sea, prospered as a country that has no history. King Alfonso's surname of The Magnanimous is said to have been earned by a refusal to investigate an alleged conspiracy against his succession, when he found himself firmly seated upon the throne; but the first act of his reign was unworthy of so noble a title. Jealous of the influence and popularity of his brother John in Sicily, where he resided as viceroy of the kingdom, Alfonso recalled him to Spain. And the prince, deprived of his honourable occupation in the peaceable administration of an important province, was led, most unhappily, to engage in intrigues and armed interference, in company with his brothers Henry and Peter, in the troubled affairs of neighbouring Castile. It was in Italy, in his maturer years, that Alfonso was at once more magnanimous and more successful in his dealings with his fellow-men; and well deserved the proud title by which he is known in the history of two countries. The years of his personal rule in Aragon were neither many nor glorious; and if it could be asserted, with any show of truth, that he was Ithe most ex cellent prince that had been seen in Italy from the time of Charlemagne," 1 the best that may be said of his rule in Aragon is that it was superior to that of his cousin in Castile. In 1420 he turned his attention to his eastern possessions, and undertook an expedition against Corsica and Sardinia, whence he retired the next year without having materially advanced the interests of Aragon. A dispute with the justiciary of the kingdom in the same year was less honourable to the king than to the judge. And it is chiefly interesting in that the Cortes of Alcañiz took advantage of the opportunity to formulate a decree that the justiciary should in future hold his office independent of the king's pleasure. But it was in 1421 that Alfonso undertook the expedition which determined the course of his future life, and had a far-reaching influence on the future history of United Spain. Joanna of Naples, sometime the affianced bride of John of Sicily-the self-willed queen who had so hastily married his rival, the French Count de la Marche-had soon grown tired of her chosen husband, and had relieved herself of his distasteful presence by throwing him into prison; and then turning her eyes once more to Aragon, she proposed to Alfonso, who had so narrowly escaped being her brother-in-law, that he should become her adopted son, with a right of succession to the crown of Naples. Alfonso accepted the tempting offer, which was confirmed by a formal treaty, sanctioned by a Bull of Martin V.; and despite the expected opposition of the Angevin, he proceeded to establish himself at Naples. His adopted mother, as a matter of course, soon changed her mind; and disinheriting Alfonso as formally as she had previously accepted him as her chosen suc cessor, she adopted as her son and heir his rival and hereditary enemy, Louis of Anjou. Alfonso had already taken possession of Naples (June, 1423), but his position was uncertain and embarrassing; new intrigues were set on foot in Italy; and after war and siege with varying fortune, the king of Aragon was glad to return to Spain. Sailing near Marseilles with his well-equipped fleet, he took advantage of the opportunity to attack and plunder the city. The town was burned. The inhabitants were massacred. But we are told that the relics of St. Louis of Toulouse were piously rescued by the assailantes from the general destruction, and were welcomed on board the 1 Zurita, lib. xvi., cap. 42. 2 Like our own judges, quamdiu se bene qecarint, |