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CHAPTER XXXIV.

JOHN II. OF CASTILE.

(1407-1454.)

I.-The Good Regent Ferdinand.

JOHN II. of Castile was but two years of age at the time of his father's death. Castile was once more in the hands of a Council of Regency. Yet, among the regents of Spain, few, if any, may be compared in excellence with Ferdinand, the brother of the late king, who was associated with the widowed queen in the administration of the affairs of the realm. There was but one fault in his government of the king and of the kingdom-it was all too brief in its duration. Many were the counsellors, and they were not necessarily traitors to Castile, who urged the popular and capable uncle to mount the throne of the infant nephew. Could they but have foretold that the infant would live for fifty years without attaining the wisdom of a man, their demands might have been more strongly insisted upon. But Ferdinand refused to hear them. He acted with the most perfect loyalty to his brother's son, until the day when, unhappily for his own country, he was called to wear the crown, not of Castile, but of Aragon-the fruit of no intrigue,1 the spoil of no civil war, but the free gift of a free people.

To find another Prince Regent with the conduct and qualities of Ferdinand of Castile, says Señor Modesto Lafuente,2 we must

1 In July, 1412. See ante, chapter xxxii. The administration of the kingdom of Castile was divided between the queen and her brother-in-law; the northern provinces being the share of the former, and the southern that of the latter. The war with Granada (1407-1410), ending with the conquest of Antequera, will be more particularly noticed in the chapter on the wars of Granada. See also Marina, xix., 22.

2 Lafuente, ix., p. 16. It is agreeable to note and quote such liberal and just appreciation of the hereditary enemy. Señor Lafuente has now been my constant companion in study during nine volumes of his monumental work, and if I have

go back over five centuries, and find him in the distinguished stock of the Ommeyades of Cordova, in the noble and generous Prince Almudafar, the uncle and the protector of the child who lived to reign so gloriously as Abdurahman the Great.

The Council of Regency that was nominated in Castile on the departure of Ferdinand was not much more harmonious nor much more efficient than such associations usually were in mediæval Spain. But Castile continued at peace for four years under the effective if distant protection of Ferdinand of Aragon. That most worthy prince unhappily died in 1416. Queen Katherine, who, though far from being a second Berengaria, was at least an honest and affectionate guardian, died two years afterwards, in 1418; and a foolish boy of twelve years old was left to the society of dissolute favourites and the control of jealous regents. At the end of 1418 he was married to a daughter of the lamented Ferdinand. In 1419 he took into his feeble hands the reins of government, on attaining his fourteenth year. But from the death of Ferdinand, the real sovereign of Castile was the celebrated Alvaro de Luna, a relation of the indomitable anti-Pope Benedict XIII., and, like that stubborn ecclesiastic, a bold and masterful Spaniard.

II.-Alvaro de Luna.

The boldest knight, the ablest intriguer, the most fascinating companion at the king's court was Alvaro de Luna, by common consent the strongest head and the bravest heart in Castile. More skilful in the use of arms, more dexterous in every game and sport than any of his compeers, he was the best horseman, the most graceful dancer, the most accomplished troubadour, eloquent, magnificent, courageous, refined, the most brilliant cavalier in all Spain. And the Castilian historians, partly, no doubt, to palliate the contemptible submissiveness of King John II., are never weary of insisting upon his almost supernatural vigour, both of mind and body. But a man far less bold, whether in the field or in the closet, than the far-famed Constable of

not always been able to agree with him, I have consulted his pages with much sympathy, and with unvarying respect.

1 Alvaro de Luna era el hombre mas politico, disimulado, y astuto de su tiempo. Quintana, Vida de Españoles celebres, supplementary vol. (Madrid, 1833), pp. 1-253; and Lafuente, ix., 24-30. Yet he was short of stature, the victim of premature baldness, and disfigured by small eyes and bad teeth.

Castile, would have had little difficulty in mastering the weak and docile John.

Magnificent in an age of magnificence, Don Alvaro de Luna made display at once his pleasure and his business. The mere enumeration of his titles, as he grew in power and dignity, would fill a page of this history. As Constable of the Kingdom and Grand Master of Santiago, he would already have been the first man in Spain, yet he did not disdain the minor honours of the Dukedom of Truxillo, the Counties of Gormaz, San Esteban and Ledesma, and the lordships of no less than seventy towns or castles.

His brother was made Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of all Spain. His daughter was married to Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, second Duke of Infantado, of the bluest blood in Castile. His retinue was more magnificent than that of the king. His revenues exceeded those of the kingdom. Yet if he was permitted for well-nigh forty years to rule the king and the kingdom of Castile, it does not follow that John II. who obeyed so masterful a favourite, was either a fool or a simpleton. The king, indeed, was at once unwarlike and weak. And these were just the qualities which contemporary Castilians neither understood nor endured in their sovereigns.

Alfonso X., who was one of the greatest intellects of the thirteenth century, was despised by his subjects for his peaceful policy; and it was not likely that John, who lived in still more troubled times, under the shadow of a masterful regent, and who showed his intelligence chiefly by dabbling in poetry and patronising university professors, should have commanded the respect of his subjects, or even of their patriotic posterity. John, indeed, never had what may be called a fair chance as king. The ocean of political intrigue was deep and stormy from the very day when the loss of his uncle left the ship of State, already labouring in the growing tempest, to his feeble and uncertain command. For ere he had enjoyed his nominal independence for twelve months, his cousin and brother-in-law, Henry, Infante of Aragon, surprised him (July, 1420), at Tordesillas, possessed himself, apparently without let or hindrance, of his royal person, and kept him a close prisoner in his own palace until he had been brought to consent to the marriage of this princely adventurer with his sister, the Infanta Katharine of Castile.

The insolence of the successful adventurer, the pusillanimity of the king, the indifference of Alvaro de Luna, are equally

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strange and equally contemptible. Henry was rewarded not only with a royal wife but with honours and estates. The king was released from captivity. Alvaro de Luna was restored to favour, and appointed Constable of Castile (1425).

The tale of the long reign of John II. is scarcely worth telling in any detail. Castile, in spite of aristocratic intrigues and unmeaning civil war, grew gradually richer and stronger, and more civilised-in spite of king or constable, rather than on account of any political intelligence on the part of any leader in Castile. Literature, indeed, was encouraged, and men of letters were protected by the court. The life of no man is entirely contemptible. The king, who could not go to bed without the permission of his favourite, extended a generous and not unintelligent patronage to literature and the arts. A student, if not a scholar, and a respecter not only of Alvaro de Luna but of men of learning and science, an appreciative musician, a mild poet, a man fond of good manners and graceful diction, it must ever be remembered to the honour of John II. that he encouraged the Universities of Castile as they had not been encouraged since the days of Alfonso the Learned, and that he endowed them as they had never been endowed before.1

But politically the king's life was contemptible in the extreme. Such an episode as that known as the Seguro de Tordesillas, more particularly referred to in a subsequent chapter upon contemporary literature, would seem to mark the nadir of royal influence and national honour in Castile. Plots for the destruction of the over-powerful favourite were ever encouraged by the king's weakness, and brought to nought by his timidity. The rebellion of Henry, Prince of Asturias, and the attack on the king at Medina del Campo in 1441; the long civil war which culminated on the battle-field of Olmedo in May, 1445, and the defeat and banishment of Henry of Aragon and John of Navarre ; the lamentable death of the constable; the constant vacillation of the king-all these things are neither interesting nor profitable to recall.

Amid all the unimportant and inglorious disputes with Navarre and Aragon, troubles and disturbances in every part of Castile, and the leagues and counter-leagues that characterise this long and dreary reign, one single feat of arms which Spanish historians recall with satisfaction was the victory over the Moors

33.

1 Cronica de D. Juan II. (año 1454), cap. 2; Generaciones y Semblanzas, cap. There is a chapter in vol. xix. of the Documentos Ineditos, pp. 435-454, on the Erudicion del Rey Juan II., which is worth looking at.

at Sierra Elvira, or Higueruela, in July, 1431. Yet the Christian action or intervention had been suggested only by civil war in Granada; and for many years after the bootless victory, the Moslems ravaged the Castilian frontiers with an impunity unknown for over 200 years.

John II. of Castile, indeed, did one thing, and one thing only for posterity, and that was to leave behind him a daughter who in no way resembled her father. By his first 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 grand-daughter 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 high-spirited 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 of July, 1454, was John II. gathered to his fathers.

The one person who stands out in bold relief among his rest

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 él 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. I. (A similar control over the marital conduct of young Philip on his first marriage was established by his father Charles V. in favour of the prince's governor, Don Juan de Zuñiga, though Philip, unlike John II., soon evaded it.-H.)