Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/154

10 BEIGN OF JOHN II., OF CASTILE. PART lege. Some of those that were excluded, indig- —1 nantlj though ineffectually remonstrated against this abuse. Others, previously despoiled of their possessions by the rapacity of the crown, or im- poverished by the disastrous feuds into which the country had been thrown, acquiesced in the meas- ure from motives of economy. From the same mistaken policy several cities, again, as Burgos, Toledo, and others, petitioned the sovereign to de- fray the charges of their representatives from the royal treasury ; a most ill-advised parsimony, which suggested to the crown a plausible pretext for the new system of exclusion. In this manner the Cas- tilian cortes, which, notwithstanding its occasional fluctuations, had exhibited during the preceding century what might be regarded as a representation of the whole commonwealth, was gradually reduced, during the reigns of John the Second and his son Henry the Fourth, to the deputations of some seventeen or eighteen cities. And to this number, with slight variation, it has been restricted until the occurrence of the recent revolutionary movements in that kingdom.^ The non-represented were required to transmit their instructions to the deputies of the privileged cities. Thus Salamanca appeared in behalf of five hundred towns and fourteen hundred villages ; and the populous province of Galicia was represented by the little town of Zamora, which is not even 9 Capmany, Practica y Eslilo, p. lencia was content to repurchase its 228. — Sempere, Hist, des Cortes, ancient right of representation from chap. 19. — Marina, Tcoria, part. I, the crown, at an expense of 80,000 cap. 16. — In 1656, the city of Pa- ducats.