Loud was the indignation of Isabel’s Castilian supporters at this suggestion. The Salic law, they maintained, had never been acknowledged in Castile; on the contrary, cases could be cited in which women had succeeded to the throne to the detriment of the obvious male heir.
Thus, between arguments on the one side and the other, feelings ran high, for Ferdinand himself inclined to a theory that flattered his love of power and independence. Isabel, who had no intention of ceding her rights, at length exerted her influence to win him to her point of view.
“Señor,” she said, after a stormy council-meeting that had in the end upheld her right of succession, “this matter need never have been discussed, because, owing to the union that, by the Grace of God, there is betwixt us, there can be no real disagreement.”
She then alluded to her duty of obedience as his wife; but perhaps to Ferdinand her most convincing argument was the pertinent suggestion that if the Salic law were acknowledged and they should have no male heirs, their daughter Isabel could not lawfully succeed them. It would ill have pleased Ferdinand to leave his possessions to any of his Aragonese cousins. “The King,” we are told, “having heard the Queen’s reasons was highly pleased, because he knew them to be true; and both he and she gave orders that there should be no more talk on this matter.”
The chronicler then goes on to remark on the complete concord that ever afterwards existed between the sovereigns.
And when it was necessary that the King should go to look after affairs in one part of the kingdom and the Queen in another, it never happened that he or she issued a command that conflicted with those that the other gave. Circumstances might separate them, but love held their wills joined.
Ferdinand and Isabel had shown their wisdom in refusing to let the rift between them widen into an open quarrel. In a crisis the least straw may turn the balance; and the condition of affairs required their combined energies in the one scale. It is true that the majority of nobles and knights had either in person, or by deputy, expressed their allegiance; but there still remained a small though powerful group, headed by the young Marquis of Villena, who maintained that the Infanta Joanna was the rightful Queen.
That their objective was rather self-interest than any deep loyalty to the little Princess was obvious from Villena’s letter, mentioning the terms on which he and his followers would consent to submit. For himself he demanded, first his acknowledgment as Master of Santiago, next the confirmation of all lands, castles, and revenues that had belonged to his father, including the Alcazar at Madrid, and thirdly a yearly income of over two million maravedis to be paid by the Crown. The Count of Plasencia, his ally, whom Henry IV. had created Duke of Arévalo with the gift of that town (taken from the widowed Queen Isabel for the purpose), sought also the confirmation of his honours.
With regard to Joanna, whom Villena and his followers styled “Princess of Castile,” they insisted that she should be suitably married; and on this demand all negotiations ultimately broke down. Ferdinand and Isabel were willing to grant the Marquis the Mastership, in spite of the clamours of seven other candidates; they agreed to the idea of Joanna’s marriage; but their stipulation that, while this subject was under consideration, she should be handed over to some trustworthy person, virtually put an end to all hopes of reconciliation. Joanna was the Marquis’s trump card, and he had no intention of playing her until he was certain of his trick, far less of passing her into the hands of anyone, whom her rivals would consider trustworthy.
Dazzled by the schemes he had planned, he believed it would be an easy matter to secure Isabel’s ruin, and in this view he was strengthened by the secret correspondence he had been carrying on with his great-uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo. The latter’s conduct is on the surface inexplicable; for, having maintained Isabel’s cause with unswerving loyalty throughout the negotiations for her marriage, when she was in danger of imprisonment and he of incurring, on her account, not only papal censure but the loss of his archbishopric, he had yet at the end of Henry IV.’s reign reconciled himself to that monarch and his favourite the young Marquis of Villena, to the weakening of his old allegiance. His tardy appearance at Segovia, and the sulky manner he had adopted towards Ferdinand and the Queen, were alike in keeping with a change of policy that in a man of his ambitions seemed as shortsighted as it was unaccountable. The explanation lies in Carrillo’s lack of self-control that made his ambition the plaything of his besetting vice.