Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/345

ADMINISTRATION OF CASTILE. 201 rank was no longer the sole, or indeed the necessa- chapter . . VI. ry aveiiue to promotion, sought to secure it by at- tention to more liberal studies, in which they were greatly encouraged by Isabella, who admitted their children into her palace, where they were reared under her own eye. ^^ But the boldest assaults on the power of the aristocracy were made in the famous cortes of To- ledo, in 1480, which Carbajal enthusiastically styles " cosa divina para reformacion y remedio de las desordenes pasadas." ^* The first object of its at- tention was the condition of the exchequer, which Henry the Fourth had so exhausted by his reckless prodigality, that the clear annual revenue amounted to no more than thirty thousand ducats, a sum much inferior to that enjoyed by many private in- dividuals ; so that, stripped of his patrimony, it at last came to be said, he was " king only of the highways." Such had been the royal necessities, that blank certificates of annuities assigned on the public rents were hawked about the market, and sold at such a depreciated rate, that the price of an annuity did not exceed the amount of one year's income. The commons saw with alarm the weight of the burdens which must devolve on them for the maintenance of the crown thus impoverished ^f^{°f;|,°°j in its resources; and they resolved to meet the ^'"" difficulty by advising at once a resumption of the 23 Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., royal policy. Hist, des Cortes, bat. 1, quinc. i, dial. 44. — Sem- chap. 24. pere notices this feature of the 24 Carbajal, Anales, MS., ano 80. VOL. I. 26