Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/750

716 JOHN He died in 1395, in consequence of an accident on the hunting field, and was succeeded by his brother Martin. JOHN II. (1397-1479), king of Aragon from 1458, was the younger son of Ferdinand I. (the Just), and was born June 29, 1397. He was twice married, first to Blanche, daughter of Charles III. of Navarre, by whom he had three children (Carlos, heir to the crowns of Navarre and Aragon ; Blanche, for some time the wife of Henry IV. of Castile ; and Eleanor, wife of Gaston, count of Foix) ; and afterwards (in 1447) to Joanna Henriquez, of the blood-royal of Castile, by whom he became the father of Ferdinand V. (the Catholic). For a long time he acted as lieutenant-general in Aragon for his brother Alphonso V., whom business detained in his Neapolitan dominions : in this capacity he intervened frequently in the affairs of Castile, where his weak and inexperienced kinsman John II. occupied the throne, and on one occasion (1444) he invaded that kingdom, but was defeated at Olmedo. On his second marriage he irritated his son Carlos and the community by sending his queen Joanna to share the administration of Navarre with his son ; in the revolt which ensued victory declared for John, Carlos himself being reduced to captivity (1452), in which he was detained for many months. In May 1458 John succeeded his brother in Aragon, Sicily, and Sardinia ; but the influence of Joanna Henriquez prevented him from recognizing the legitimate claims of his own eldest son to the reversion ; an attempt by Carlos to obtain support in other quarters led to his arrest and imprisonment, from which he was released only after Catalonia had risen in arms and the king of Castile had begun an irruption into Navarre. Shortly after this temporary triumph Carlos was carried off by a fever in September 1461, bequeathing the crown of Navarre to his sister Blanche and her posterity. Ferdinand, the half-brother of Carlos, was now put forward as heir apparent of the Aragonese throne, but the indignant Catalonians raised a revolt which did not come to an end until December 1472. Immediately afterwards John entered upon a war with Louis XI. of France in con sequence of disputes about Roussillon and Cerdagne ; first successful, but afterwards worsted, this bold and energetic but ambitious and unjust prince died January 20, 1479, before the conclusion of the peace. He was succeeded by Ferdinand V. JOHN (JUAN) I. 1358-1390), king of Castile and Leon, born in August 1358, was the son of Henry II. ("El Bastardo"), whom he succeeded in 1379. At his accession the Lancasterian claims to the throne of Castile were renewed, and gained the support of Portugal ; the result was a war with the latter power, which ended in a marriage (1382) between John and the Portuguese infanta. The peace thus ratified did not subsist long, for, on the death of Ferdinand of Portugal in the following year with out male issue, John sought to establish a claim to the succession on behalf of his wife, and crossing the frontier penetrated as far as to Lisbon, to which he began to lay siege while John, the grand-master of Aviz, was being proclaimed king. Compelled by pestilence and other un favourable circumstances to withdraw, he encountered the Portuguese in the neighbourhood of Aljubarrota in August of 1385 ; ths disastrous defeat he there sustained was followed by a descent of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster (July 138G), which led to the conclusion of the peace of Troncoso (1387), in virtue of which the constantly recur ring disputes about the crown were settled by the marriage of the crown prince Henry to Catherine, the representative of the Lancasterian claims. The last four years of the reign of John were marked by important legislative re forms in the town brotherhoods (hermandades), in the army, and in the system of taxation. In 1390 he was killed by a fall from his horse, and was succeeded by his son Henry III. JOHN II. (1404-1454) of Castile and Leon, grandson of the preceding, succeeded to the throne when only twenty-two months old. Until 1412 the regency was shared with his mother Catherine by his uncle Ferdinand (afterwards Ferdinand IV. of Aragon) ; this period was marked by much internal prosperity and by important conquests from the Moors, especially by the capture of Antequera. Unfortunately for Castile, Ferdinand was called away (in 1412) to occupy the throne of Aragon; but it was not until after the death of Catherine in 1418 that John s weakness and incapacity came to be fully seen. Abandoning himself recklessly to a life of frivolous pleasure, he left the affairs of his kingdom in the hands of a few favourites, such as the archbishop of Toledo and Juan de Velasco. From 1423 onwards he was the tool principally of Alvaro de Luna, a brilliant, ambitious, and crafty courtier. Henceforward the history of his reign is largely a record of the internal commotions, rising sometimes to the height of civil war, occasioned by the nobles jealousy of Alvaro, and by the oppressions to which the common people were exposed under the absolutist policy of that minister. The period of John II. is chiefly and most favourably remembered in connexion with the history of Castilian literature : a man of some literary turn himself, he was a liberal patron of letters ; and his countenance gave an impulse to refinement and culture of literary style, the effects of which were distinctly traceable through several subsequent generations. By his first wife John II. became the father of Henry IV., his successor ; the daughter of a second marriage was Isabella, afterwards known as " the Catholic." He died in June 1454. JOHN, DON, of Austria (1545-1578), was the bastard Don son of the emperor Charles V. by Barbara Blomberg, the Jol)D daughter of a well-to-do citizen of Ratisbon. He was born in that free imperial city (according to a not very probable tradition in the " imperial hostelry " there, which still sur vives as the inn of the Golden Cross), on February 24, 1545, the anniversary of his father s birth and coronation, and of the battle of Pavia. On another visit to Eatisbon in the following year, after arranging a marriage between the fair Barbara and one of his German courtiers, Hiero- nymus Piramis Kegell, the emperor carried off the young GeroniniOj as he was then conveniently called. The worthy Don Luis de Quijada, to whose care he was here upon confided, watched over his early childhood with jealous care. It was at first sought to conceal the con nexion between the emperor and the child of his declining years, who was brought up in retirement, chiefly in Quijada s castle of Villagarcia in Spain. In the year before the emperor s death, however, the boy was brought into the immediate neighbourhood of San Yuste, where his presence brightened the close of his father s life. In his last will Charles V. acknowledged " Geronimo " as his son, and commended him to the care of his successors, expressing a wish that he should take monastic vows, but that in the event of his declining these a handsome income should be provided for him out of the revenues of Naples. In September 1559 the boy was publicly recognized by king Philip II. as his brother ; and henceforth he resided at court under the name of Don Juan d Austria as a member of the royal family. With the heir to the throne, the unhappy Don Carlos, his relations were so friendly that, when at the end of the year 1567 the infante was plotting his flight from Spain, he confided his more or less treasonable scheme to his half-brother, and even requested the latter to accompany him on his expedition. A sen?e of duty, at which it is difficult to cavil, prompted Don John to reveal this unsought confidence to the king, and