pts which might be made
to coerce her. But the king gave no heed to her remonstrances, and made
arrangements for the wedding festivities, the bridegroom having been
summoned. The pope had absolved the profligate grand master from his
vows of celibacy, which he had never kept, and poor Isabella, sustained
only by the moral support of her courageous mother, was beginning to
quake and tremble, as she knew not what might happen, and the prospect
for her future happiness was far from good. A providential illness
overcame the dreaded bridegroom when he was less than forty leagues from
Madrid, as it turned out, and Isabella was able to breathe again freely.

With the death of the younger Alfonso, there were many who urged
Isabella to declare herself at once as the Queen of Castile and to head
a revolution against her brother, the unworthy Henry. Her natural
inclinations, as well as the whole character of her early education, had
made her devout, almost bigoted, by nature, and it was but natural that
her advisers at this time in her career were mostly members of the
clergy, who saw in this young queen-to-be a great support for the
Spanish Church in the future. But this girl of sixteen was wiser than
her advisers, for she refused to head a revolution, and contented
herself with a claim to the throne upon her brother's death. Such a
claim necessarily had to run counter to the claim of the dubious
Princess Juana, and to discredit her cause as much as possible her
sobriquet _La Beltraneja_ was zealously revived. Sure of the support of
the clergy, and still wishing to be near to her advisers, Isabella went
to the monastery at Avila, where, it is said, deputations from all
parts of Castile came to entreat her to assume the crown at once. Her
policy of delay made possible an interview between sister and brother,
at which Henry, unable to withstand the manifest current of public
sentiment, agreed to accept Isabella as his successor and as the lawful
heir to the throne of Castile. With this question settled in this
satisfactory way, the matter of Isabella's marriage again became an
affair of national importance. There were suitors in plenty, Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV. of England, and the Duke of
Guienne, brother of Louis XI. and heir to the French throne, being among
the number; but the young Isabella, influenced as much by policy as by
any personal feeling in the matter, had decided that she would wed
Fernando,