PART
II.
Ferdinand and Isabella, who were occupied with
the affairs of Andalusia at this period, no sooner heard of the arrival of Philip and Joanna, than they hastened to the north. They reached Toledo to- wards the end of April, and in a few days, the queen, who paid the usual penalties of royalty, in seeing her children, one after another, removed far from her into distant lands, had the satisfaction of again folding her beloved daughter in her arms.
Recognised by cortes. On the 22d of the ensuing month, the archduke and his wife received the usual oaths of fealty from the cortes duly convoked for the purpose at Toledo.[1] King Ferdinand, not long after, made a journey into Aragon, in which the queen's feeble health would not permit her to accompany him, in order to prepare the way for a similar recognition by the estates of that realm. We are not informed what arguments the sagacious monarch made use of to dispel the scruples formerly entertained by that independent body, on a similar application in behalf of his daughter, the late queen of Portugal.[2] They
- ↑ The writ is dated at Llerena, March 8. It was extracted by Marina from the archives of Toledo. Teorla, tom. ii. p. 18.
- ↑ It is remarkable that the Aragonese writers, generally so inquisitive on all points touching the constitutional history of their country, should have omitted to notice the grounds on which the cortes thought proper to reverse its former decision in the analogous case of the infanta Isabella. There seems to have been even less reason for departing from ancient usage in the present instance, since Joanna had a son, to whom the cortes might lawfully have tendered its oath of recognition ; for a female, although excluded from the throne in her own person, was regarded as competent to transmit the title unimpaired to her male heirs. Blancas
cap. 55.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 220. This extreme simplicity of attire, in which Zurita discerns " the modesty of the times," was enforced by laws, the policy of which, whatever be thought of their moral import, may well be doubted in an economical view. I shall have occasion to draw the reader's attention to them hereafter.
