After exchanging salutations, the two monarchs alighted, and entered a small hermitage in the neighbourhood. The conference led to no result. Philip was well schooled in his part, and remained, says Martyr,[l] immovable as a rock. There was so little mutual confidence between the parties that the name of Juana, whom Ferdinand desired so much to see, was not even mentioned during the interview.[66]
A Cavalier in the Time of Ferdinand
But, however reluctant Ferdinand might be to admit it, he was no longer in a condition to stand upon terms; and, in addition to the entire loss of influence in Castile, he received such alarming accounts from Naples as made him determine on an immediate visit in person to that kingdom. He resolved, therefore, to bow his head to the present storm, in hopes that a brighter day was in reserve for him. On the 27th of June he signed and solemnly swore to an agreement by which he surrendered the entire sovereignty of Castile to Philip and Juana, reserving to himself only the grand-masterships of the military orders, and the revenues secured by Isabella’s testament.
On the following day he executed another instrument of most singular import, in which, after avowing in unequivocal terms his daughter’s incapacity, he engages to assist Philip in preventing any interference in her behalf, and to maintain him, as far as in his power, in the sole, exclusive authority.
Before signing these papers, he privately made a protest, in the presence of several witnesses, that what he was about to do was not of his own free will, but from necessity, to extricate himself from his perilous situation and shield the country from the impending evils of a civil war. He concluded with asserting that, far from relinquishing his claims to the regency, it was his design to enforce them, as well as to rescue his daughter from her captivity, as soon as he was in a condition to do so. Finally, he completed this chain of inconsistencies by addressing a circular letter, dated July 1st, to the different parts of the kingdom, announcing his resignation of the government into the hands of Philip and Juana, and declaring the act one which, notwithstanding his own right and power to the contrary, he had previously determined on executing so soon as his children should set foot in Spain.
It is not easy to reconcile this monstrous tissue of incongruity and dissimulation with any motives of necessity or expediency. Why should he, so soon after preparing to raise the kingdom in his daughter’s cause, thus publicly avow her imbecility, and deposit the whole authority in the hands of Philip? Was it to bring odium on the head of the latter, by encouraging him to a measure which he knew must disgust the Castilians? But Ferdinand by this very act shared the responsibility with him. Was it in the expectation that uncontrolled and undivided power, in the hands of one so rash and improvident, would the more speedily work his ruin? As to his clandestine protest, its design was obviously to afford a plausible pretext at some future time for reasserting his claims to the government, on the ground that his concessions had been the result of force. But, then, why neutralise the operation of this by the declaration, spontaneously made in his manifesto to the people, that his abdication was not only a free but most deliberate and premeditated act? He was led to this last avowal, probably, by the desire of covering over the mortification of his defeat; a thin varnish, which could impose on nobody. The whole of the proceedings are of so ambiguous a character as to suggest the inevitable inference that they flowed from habits of dissimulation too strong to be controlled even when there was no occasion for its exercise. We occasionally meet with examples of a similar fondness for superfluous manœuvring in the humbler concerns of life.
THE REIGN OF PHILIP I (1506 A.D.)
King Ferdinand had no sooner concluded the arrangement with Philip, and withdrawn into his hereditary dominions, than the archduke and his wife proceeded towards Valladolid, to receive the homage of the estates convened in that city. Juana, oppressed with an habitual melancholy, and clad in the sable habiliments better suited to a season of mourning than rejoicing, refused the splendid ceremonial and festivities with which the city was prepared to welcome her. Her dissipated husband, who had long since ceased to treat her not merely with affection, but even decency, would fain have persuaded the cortes to authorise the confinement of his wife, as disordered in intellect, and to devolve on him the whole charge of the government. But the commons could not brook such an indignity to their own “natural sovereign”; and the usual oaths of allegiance were tendered to Juana as queen and lady proprietor of the kingdom, and to Philip as her husband, and finally to their eldest son, Prince Charles, as heir-apparent and lawful successor on the demise of his mother.
By the tenor of these acts the royal authority would seem to have been virtually vested in Juana. From this moment, however, Philip assumed the government into his own hands. The effects were soon visible in the thorough revolution introduced into every department. Old incumbents in office were ejected without ceremony, to make way for new favourites. The Flemings, in particular, were placed in every considerable post, and the principal fortresses of the kingdom intrusted to their keeping.