Triumph in the north of Spain was followed by the news of Gonsalvo de Cordova’s victories in Naples; but joy at these successes was counterbalanced by the serious state of the Queen’s health. She and Ferdinand had fallen ill of fever in Medina del Campo in the summer of 1504; and, while his constitution rallied from the attack, anxiety for him and her own weakness aggravated her symptoms, and it was feared that these would end in dropsy.
“We sit sorrowful in the palace all the day long,” wrote Peter Martyr early in the autumn, “tremulously waiting the hour when religion and virtue shall quit the earth with her.”
Isabel herself knew the end was not far off, and bade those about her restrain their tears. When she heard of the processions and pilgrimages made throughout the kingdom in the hope of restoring her to health she asked that her subjects should pray “not for the safety of her life but the salvation of her soul.”
On the 12th of October she signed her will, commanding in it that her body should be taken to Granada, and there buried without ostentation in a humble tomb. The money that would have provided an elaborate funeral was to be spent on dowries for twelve poor girls and the ransom of Christian captives in Africa.
The poverty of the Castilian treasury, in contrast to its heavy expenses, evidently weighed on her mind; and she gave orders that the number of officials in the royal household should be reduced, and gifts of lands and revenues, that had been alienated by the Crown without sufficient cause, revoked. Her jewels she left to Ferdinand, that “seeing them,” she said, “he may be reminded of the singular love I always bore him while living, and that now I am waiting for him in a better world.”
The future government of the kingdom was her special care; and in her will, and its codicil added in November, while acknowledging Joanna as her successor, she begged both her and Philip “to be always obedient subjects to the King, and never disobey his orders.” This injunction was amplified by the command that if Joanna should be absent from Spain, “or although present ... unable to reign and govern,” Ferdinand should act as regent, until his grandson Charles was of an age to undertake this task for himself.
Such were the most important clauses of the document, by which Isabel strove to safeguard her loved Castile from the dangers threatening her. In others, she insisted that Gibraltar, which she had acquired for the Crown should never be alienated from it; that her daughter and son-in-law should not appoint foreigners to any office or post of trust, that the tax of the alcabala,[[10]] if found illegal on inquiry, should be abolished; that a new and more accurate code of laws should be compiled; and that steps should be taken to secure the kindly treatment of natives in the New World. It will be seen that Isabel in her last days was still the ruler, holding in her now feeble hands all the threads of national government, but clear in mind to recognize and command the issues.
CODICIL TO ISABEL’S WILL, WITH HER SIGNATURE
FROM LAFUENTE’S “HISTORIA GENERAL DE ESPAÑA,” VOL. VII.