Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/151

BIRTH OF ISABELLA. It may easily be believed, that the haughty aris- tocracy of Castile would ill brook this exaltation of an individual so inferior to them in birth, and who withal did not wear his honors with exemplary meekness. John's blind partiality for his favorite is the key to all the troubles, which agitated the kingdom during the last thirty years of his reign. The disgusted nobles organized confederacies for the purpose of deposing the minister. The whole nation took sides in this unhappy struggle. The heats of civil discord were still further heightened by the interference of the royal house of Aragon, which, descended from a common stock with that of Castile, was proprietor of large estates in the latter country. The wretched monarch beheld even his own son Henry, the heir to the crown, enlisted in the opposite faction, and saw himself reduced to the extremity of shedding the blood of his subjects in the fatal battle of Olmedo. Still the address, or the good fortune, of the constable enabled him to triumph over his enemies ; and, although he was obliged occasionally to yield to the violence of the storm and withdraw a while from the court, he was soon recalled and reinstated in all his former dignities. This melancholy infat- uation of the king is imputed by the writers of that age to sorcery on the part of the favorite.^ CHAPTER I. Jealousy of the nobles. 4 Guzman, Generaciones, cap. 33. — Cronica de Don Juan II., p. 491, et alibi. His complaisance for the favor- ite, indeed, must be admitted, if we believe Guzman, to have been of a most extraordinary kind. " E lo que con mayor maravilla se puede decir 6 oir, que aun en los autos naturales se dio asi a la ordenanza del condestable, que seyendo 61 mozo bien complexionado, e teni- endo a la reyna su muger moza y hermosa, si el condestable se lo