Our England came near to being drawn into the story of Spain herself, or rather, of Castile—I say rather of Castile, because the name of Spain, to include the whole country which we now so call, was hardly in use then. This happened because John of Gaunt, who was son of our King Edward III., had married, as his second wife, a daughter of Pedro the Cruel, as he was styled, the King of Castile. Pedro, for his cruelties, had been hunted off the throne by his own brother, and our Edward the Black Prince, eldest brother of John of Gaunt, went down from France into Castile and helped to put Pedro back.
John of Gaunt's claim was settled by the marriage of the son of John I., who had succeeded Pedro on the throne of Castile, to John of Gaunt's daughter. We may think that England was fortunate in thus escaping all the complications in which this claim might have involved her.
And now—to conclude the story of Spain, up to the year 1500 or so, and the story of that long drawn-out crusade of eight centuries of which she was the scene—it is remarkable that although the Moslems' power had been restricted to the Kingdom of Granada as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, it was not until nearly the close of the fifteenth that their dominion in Spain was brought to an end by the capture of Granada itself. And by this time the Christian power in the country had been strengthened by the union of the Kingdom of Aragon with that of Castile. This was brought about by the marriage of Ferdinand, King of Aragon with Isabella, Queen of Castile. Thus, with Granada now included in Christian Spain, we have the boundaries of the country as they are to-day, except for a small part of the little Kingdom of Navarre which lay south of the Pyrenees. That final portion also will be annexed before many years of the new century have gone.
And now Columbus is just coming back with the news of America. Spain is about to enter on her conquests in the New World. A new day is dawning.
CHAPTER XX
THE PLANTAGENETS IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND
If the kings of England after John had been content to acquiesce in his giving up of practically all that were of value of his possessions on the Continent, it is likely that they would have saved much fighting and misery, both for the people of England and of the Continent also.
It was not to be thought for a moment that they would so acquiesce, however. It took the almost continual fighting of some 300 years to effect that useful separation of England from the rest of Europe.
To understand the story we have to bear in mind that the character and will of the king in those days were all-important for the country. He could practically dictate what was to be done. He could declare war and make peace.