Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/336

192 ADMINISTRATION OF CASTILE. PART Ferdinand and Isabella employed the same vigor- '■ ous measures in the other parts of their dominions, which had proved so successful in Andalusia, for the extirpation of the hordes of banditti, and of the robber-knights, who differed in no respect from the former, but in their superior power. In Galicia alone, fifty fortresses, the strong-holds of tyranny, were razed to the ground, and fifteen hundred malefactors, it was computed, were compelled to fly the kingdom. " The wretched inhabitants of the mountains," says a writer of that age, " who had long since despaired of justice, blessed God for their deliverance, as it were, from a deplorable captivity." ^° ILmTtiiT' While the sovereigns were thus personally occu- pied with the suppression of domestic discord, and the establishment of an efficient police, they were not inattentive to the higher tribunals, to whose keeping, chiefly, were intrusted the personal rights and property of the subject. They reorganized the royal or privy council, whose powers, although, as has been noticed in the Introduction, principally of an administrative nature, had been gradually en- croaching on those of the superior courts of law. During the last century, this body had consisted of prelates, knights, and lawyers, whose numbers and relative proportions had varied in different times. The right of the great ecclesiastics and nobles to a seat in it was, indeed, recognised, but the transac- corrupcion de crlmines que fall6 en 1° Pulffar, Reyes Cat61icos, part, el Reyno qtiando subceai6 en 61." 2, cap. 97, 08. -^L. Marinco, Co- Reyes Cat61ico8, p. 37. saa Memorables, fol. 162. tribunals.