Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/79

CASTII.E. Ixi a pageant in time of peace, and an efficient military section force in war. The demesnes of John, lord of Bis- cay, confiscated by Alfonso the Eleventh to the use of the crown, in 1327, amounted to more than eighty towns and castles. ^° The " good constable " Da- valos, in the time of Henry the Third, could ride through his own estates all the way from Seville to Compostella, almost the two extremities of the king- dom.®^ Alvaro de Luna, the powerful favorite of John the Second, could muster twenty thousand vassals. ^^ A contemporary, who gives a catalogue of the annual rents of the principal Castilian nobility at the close of the fifteenth or beginning of the fol- lowing century, computes several at fifty and sixty thousand ducats a year, ^^ an immense income, if we take into consideration the value of money in that age. The same writer estimates their united 60 Mariana, Hist, de Espana, under view all the different coins torn. i. p. 910. of Ferdinand and Isabella's time, 61 Cronica de Don Alvaro de Lu- settling their specific value with na, (ed. de la Acad. Madrid, 1784,) great accuracy. The calculation is App. p. 465. attended with considerable difficul- 62 Guzman , Generaciones y Sem- ty , owing to the depreciation of the blanzas, (Madrid, 1775,) cap. 84. value of the precious metals, and — His annual revenue is computed the repeated adulteration of the by Perez de Guzman, at 100,000 real. In his tables, at the end, he doblas of gold ; a sum equivalent exhibits the commercial value of to 856,000 dollars at the present the different denominations, ascer- day. tained by the quantity of wheat 63 The former of these two (as sure a standard as any), which suras is equivalent to $438,875, or they would buy at that day. Tak- £91,474 sterling ; and the latter ing the average of values, which to $526,650, or jG 109,716, nearly, varied considerably in different I have been guided b)'^ a dissertation years of Ferdinand and Isabella, ofClemencin, in the sixth volume of it appears that the ducat, reduced the Memorias de la Real Academia to our own currency, will be equal de la Historia, (Madrid, 1821, pp. to about eight dollars and seventy- 507-566,) in the reduction of sums seven cents, and the dobla to eight in this History. That treatise is very dollars and fifty-six cents, elaborate and ample, and brings