Four days later, on October 18, 1469, the formal betrothal took place. Isabel and Ferdinand as second cousins stood within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity; but the Archbishop of Toledo produced a bull, affording the necessary dispensation. This bore the signature of Pius II., who had died in 1464, and authorized Ferdinand to marry within the third degree of consanguinity, on the expiration of four years from the date of the bull. Granted its authenticity, the marriage was perfectly legal; but it is almost certain the document was an elaborate forgery, constructed by John of Aragon and the Archbishop to meet their pressing needs.[[2]] The dispensation was essential to satisfy, not only Isabel, but any wavering supporters of orthodox views. On the other hand, apart from the haste required and known dilatoriness of the Papal Court, Paul II., who at that time occupied the See of Saint Peter, was the sworn ally of Henry IV.; and those who were negotiating the Aragonese alliance recognized that there could be no successful appeal to his authority.
[2]. See Clemencin, Elogio de Isabella, Illustracion II.
Another matter requiring delicate handling had been the marriage settlement that, signed by Ferdinand and ratified by his father, was read aloud at the betrothal ceremony by the Archbishop of Toledo. In it Ferdinand declared his devotion to the Mother Church and Apostolic See, and his undying allegiance to Henry IV. The document then went on to say that the signatures of both husband and wife must be affixed to all ordinances and public deeds; while the remainder of the clauses were directed to allaying the suspicions of those who feared that the King of Sicily might use his new position for the good of Aragon rather than Castile. In them he promised not to leave the kingdom himself without consent of the Princess, nor to remove any children that they might have, whether sons or daughters. He would not on his own account make peace nor war nor any alliance. He would not appoint to offices any save natives of Castile; while he pledged himself to take no new steps with regard to the lands that had once belonged to his father but had since been alienated.
After the ceremony was over, Ferdinand retired with the Archbishop to his lodging in Valladolid; and the next day, October 19th, he and Isabel were married; and for six days the town kept festival in honour of the event.
Henry learned of his sister’s marriage from the Master of Santiago, and naturally nothing of the insolence of such proceedings towards himself was lost in the telling. The news found him in broken health, the result of his life-long self-indulgence, and with his vanity badly wounded by the scorn and defiance he had encountered in Andalusia. He was therefore in no mood for conciliation, and received Isabel’s letters, explaining the necessity under which she had acted and her assurances of loyalty, in gloomy silence, lending a willing ear to the Master of Santiago’s suggestion that he might retract the oath he had taken at the Toros de Guisandos.
Circumstances favoured such a course; for Louis XI., who looked on the Castilian-Aragonese alliance with alarm as inimical to French expansion, offered Isabel’s rejected suitor, Charles, now Duke of Guienne, to the Infanta Joanna, the underlying condition being of course that Henry should disinherit Isabel in her favour. Negotiations were at once begun; and in 1470, the Cardinal of Arras appeared at the Spanish Court charged with the final conclusion of the terms. He had never forgiven the Infanta’s indifference to his oratory; and, as diligent enquiry had made him cognizant of the fact that Pius II.’s bull must be a forgery, he proceeded to denounce her in words, according to Enriquez de Castillo, “so outrageous that they are more worthy to be passed over in silence than recorded.”
Henry far from being shocked was obviously pleased; and, having completed the agreement with the Cardinal, in October, 1470, he publicly withdrew his oath, taken at the Toros de Guisandos, and acknowledged the Infanta Joanna, then nine years old, as his daughter and heir. Her formal betrothal to the Duke of Guienne followed, and then the little Princess was handed over to the care of the Master of Santiago, much to the indignation of the Marquis of Santillana and the Mendozas, in whose keeping she had hitherto been.
Henry now published a manifesto, in which he declared that his sister had broken her oath in marrying without his consent, and had aggravated her offence by her choice of an enemy of Castile, and by not waiting to obtain a dispensation from the Pope. He had therefore judged her unfit to succeed to the throne and had restored Doña Joanna to her rights.
This document did not meet with general approval. Indeed the principal towns of Andalusia, already disaffected, openly expressed their refusal to consent to its terms. Yet to Isabel in Dueñas, where her first child, a daughter named after herself, had been born in the October of this year, the prospect seemed bleak enough. Her difficulties in Castile were intensified by the ill-fortunes of John of Aragon in his war against Louis XI. for the recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne; so that in spite of the critical position of affairs at home, she was forced to let Ferdinand go to his father’s assistance.
Hiding her fears, she replied to Henry’s manifesto by a counter-protest, in which she recalled her own moderation in refusing the crown on her brother Alfonso’s death, and vindicated her marriage as performed on the advice of the wiser and larger section of the leading nobility. Henry, she declared had broken his oath, not only in acknowledging Joanna, who was known to be illegitimate, as his daughter and heiress; but long before, when he had failed to divorce and send away the Queen as he had promised, and when he had tried to force his sister to marry the King of Portugal against her will.