ing the palace, to go to the
cathedral, for mass; and once within the walls of the sanctuary, she
refused to go back to her guards, demanded the right of protection which
the churches had always possessed in the Middle Ages, and, finally, told
her story with such dramatic effect, that the clergy crowded about her,
the nobles unsheathed their swords and swore to uphold her cause, and a
revolution was begun which soon assumed great proportions and so
frightened Pedro that he consented to take back his wife and send away
the baleful Maria. For four years his nobles kept stern watch over him,
and he was never allowed to ride out of his palace without a guard of a
thousand men at his heels, so fearful were they that he might break away
from them, surround himself again with evil counsellors, and recommence
his career of wantonness and crime. Their efforts were at last of no
avail, as he eluded his followers one day upon a hunting expedition,
through the kindly intervention of a heavy fog, rode off to Segovia,
ordered his mother, who had been exercising a practical regency during
this period, to send him the great seal of state, and then he proceeded
to wreak vengeance upon all those who had been instrumental in his
humiliation. Blanche was sent to prison at Medina-Sidonia on a
trumped-up charge, was shamefully treated during the time of her
captivity, and died in 1359, in the same year that Maria de Padilla,
discredited and cast aside, also found rest in death. Pitiful as these
stories are, they serve to show that women, even at this time, when
Spain was the seat of learning and refinement for all Europe, were but
the servants of their lords and masters, and that passion still ran
riot, while justice sat upon a tottering seat.

In Aragon, near the close of this fourteenth century, similar scenes of
cruelty were enacted, although the king, Juan I., cannot be compared for
cruelty with the infamous Pedro. Burke has said that if Pedro was not
absolutely the most cruel of men, he was undoubtedly the greatest
blackguard who ever sat upon a throne, and King Juan was far from
meriting similar condemnation. Sibyl de Foix, his stepmother, had
exercised so strange and wonderful a power over his father, that when
Juan came to the throne he was more than eager to turn upon this
enchantress and make her render up the wide estates which the late king
had been prevailed upon to leave to her. It is actually asserted that
Juan charged Sibyl w