Expositie-Exhibition talent JOAN THE MAD 177 her hair was covered. Casting herself

Galerie 't Pleintje www.heibel.nl

2.4: "talent" - Pagina 4-4

JOAN THE MAD 177

her hair was covered. Casting herself upon her knees she sought to kiss her father's hand ; but he also knelt and embraced her tenderly ; leading her afterwards by the hand into the house. Every sign of dutiful sub- mission was given by Joan to her father ; and after several long private conferences between them, Ferdi- nand announced that she had delegated to him the government of Castile.

A few days afterwards the whole court moved to another small place, called Santa Maria del Campo, a few miles nearer Burgos, Joan, as usual, travelling by night, accompanied by the coffin ; and here, at Santa Maria, the grand anniversary funeral service for Philip was celebrated (25th September 1507), and Jimenez received the Cardinal's hat, though Joan would not allow that joyous ceremony, as she said, to be held in the church that held her husband's remains. With infinite trouble Ferdinand at length persuaded his daughter to accompany him to a larger town, where more comfort could be obtained, and in early October they set forth, Ferdinand travelling by day and Joan by night. Suddenly, however, Joan guessed that they were taking her to Burgos, that dreadful city where Philip had died. No consideration would induce her to go another step in that direction ; and she took up her residence at Arcos, a few miles away, whilst Ferdinand established himself at Burgos with his young French wife, whom Joan received politely.

At Arcos Joan, with her two children, Ferdinand and Katharine, lived her strange, solitary life for eighteen months, broken only when Ferdinand, going in July 1508 to reduce Andalusia to order, decided to take his favourite little grandson and namesake with him. Joan flew into a fury when she learnt that her

M

178 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

child was to be taken from her ; and there is no doubt that the disturbance thus caused aggravated her malady for a time, although it is said that she forgot the boy in a few days. A curious idea of her life at Arcos is given in a letter sent on the gth October 1508 by the Bishop of Malaga, her confessor, to the King. 'As I wrote before, since your Highness left, the Queen has been quiet, both in word and action ; and she has not injured or abused any one. I forgot to say that since then she has not changed her linen, nor dressed her hair, nor washed her face. They tell me also that she always sleeps on the ground, as before.' There follow some medical details, from which the Bishop draws the conclusion that the Queen would not live long. ' It is not meet,' he says, ' that she should have the management of her own person, as she takes so little care of herself. Her lack of cleanli- ness in her face, and they say elsewhere, is very great, and she eats with the plates on the floor, and no napkin. She very often misses hearing mass, because she is breakfasting at the hour it is celebrated, and there is no opportunity of her hearing it before noon.'' Before leaving to suppress the revolt in Andalucia, Ferdinand took effective measures to prevent Joan from being made a tool of faction. He had tried without success to prevail upon her to remove to the remote town of Tordesillas, on the river Douro, where there was a commodious castle-palace fit for her habitation, and the climate was good ; but he posted around Arcos strong forces, commanded by faithful partisans, with orders that if the Queen at last gave way to the persuasion of her attendants, and removed to Tordesillas, the troops were to guard her just as

1 Copied by Rodriguez Villa.

JOAN THE MAD 179

closely and secretly there. But Joan obstinately refused to move ; and Ferdinand found her still there when he returned from the South in February 1509. Whilst he had been absent, the great magnate in whose district of Burgos Arcos was situated, the Constable of Castile (Count de Haro) had been coquetting with the Emperor Maximilian to displace Ferdinand by his grandson Charles, now nine years old ; and the possession of the person of Joan was of the highest importance. Ferdinand decided, therefore, that, either willingly or unwillingly, Joan should be placed where she would be safe from capture by surprise. When he visited her at Arcos, he found her thin and weak with the cold, unhealthy climate. ' ' Her dress was such as on no account could be allowed, or is fit even to write about, and everything else looked similarly, and as if it would be totally impossible for her to go through another winter if she continued to live in the same way.'

The King stayed with her for some days, without broaching the sore subject of removing her ; but on the 14th February 1509, he had her aroused at three o'clock in the morning — since he knew she would not travel in daylight — and told her she must prepare to be gone. She offered no resistance, but only pleaded for one day to prepare, which was granted ; and she consented to cast away the filthy rags which she had been wearing, and don proper garments before setting out on the journey to her new home ; carrying her little daughter, Katharine, with her ; the corpse of Philip on its great hearse drawn by four horses, as usual, leading the way. Although it was evening

1 It is in the immediate neighbourhood of Burgos, and one of the coldest places in Spain.

i8o QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

when she started, great crowds of people had flocked over from Burgos to see their Queen, who had been invisible for so long, and was by many thought to be dead.

As the morning sun on the third day was glinting with horizontal rays the bare brown cornlands that stretch for many miles around Tordesillas on both sides of the turbid Douro, the wan and weary cavalcade rode over the ancient bridge. Between the main street and the river stood a fortress-palace with frowning walls and little windows looking across the road at the convent of Saint Clara, with its florid Gothic church and cloisters. Into the palace rode, by her father's side, with her face shrouded, Joan, Queen of Castile ; and thenceforward, for forty-seven dreary years, the palace was her prison, until, an old, broken woman of seventy-six, but wayward and rebellious to the last, she joined her long-lost husband in the splendid sepulchre in Granada. From the windows of Joan's early apartment in the palace, she could see the coffin of Philip deposited in the convent cloister, and in the first years of her confinement, she kept her vigil over the corpse in most of her waking hours, as well as on rare occasions, and closely guarded, attending commemora- tory services in the convent in honour of the dead, until her undutiful son, the Emperor Charles, either overcoming her resistance, or perhaps finding the dismal caprice outworn, transferred the mouldering remains of Philip the Handsome to its last abiding place ; whilst Joan the Mad waited for her release with fierce defiance in her heart, and revilings on her tongue for all that her oppressors held sacred.

It would not be profitable, even if it were possible, to follow closely the monotonous life of Joan during

JOAN THE MAD i8i

her long years of confinement ; but, at certain crises in the political history of her country, her personality assumed temporary importance, and on these occasions a flood of light is thrown upon her, which, to some extent, will enable us to see the reality and extent of her malady, and to judge how far her laxity in religious observance was the cause of her continued incarcera- tion. Mr. Bergenroth, in his introduction to the early volumes of the Calendars of Spanish State Papers, very forcibly urges the view that Joan was not really mad at all, and that she was sacrificed solely to the ambition of her husband, her father and her son, in succession. After carefully considering all the docu- ments adduced by my learned predecessor as Editor of the Calendars, and many in the Spanish Royal Academy of History which were unknown to him, I find myself unable to come to the same conclusion. The separate accounts of her behaviour are so numer- ous, and many of them so disinterested, as to leave in my mind no reasonable doubt that after Philip's death, whatever may have been the case before, Joan was not responsible for all her actions. She appears to have been able on many occasions to discuss com- plicated subjects quite rationally, as is not infrequent with people undoubtedly insane, but her outbursts of rage against religious ceremonies, her neglect of her person, her persistence for days in refusing food, and other aberrations, are not only clearly indicative of lunacy, but were the symptoms repeated exactly in the case of her great grandson, Don Carlos, who was undoubtedly insane. At the same time it is clear to see that there was no reason for keeping her closely confined and isolated under strong guard, except the dread of Fer- dinand, and afterwards of Charles, that leagues of

i82 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

nobles might make use of her to weaken the power of the CastiHan crown. ^ That this fear was not groundless has already been shown, and at one point, as will be related presently, the peril was imminent. That Joan did not seize the opportunity when it was offered to her after her bitter complaints of her treat- ment is, in my view, the best proof that she was not capable of independent rule.

Ferdinand died in January 1516, leaving the whole of his realms to his grandson Charles in Flanders, in view of Joan's 'mental incapacity.' He tried almost with his last breath to divide Spain for the benefit of his younger son, Ferdinand ; but was overborne by the remonstrances of his Council. Jimenez was ap- pointed to be Regent until the new King arrived ; and when Cardinal Adrian, Charles's ambassador, claimed the Regency in virtue of a secret authority he pro- duced, Jimenez accepted him as colleague, but made him a cypher. Up to this period Joan had been under the care of Ferdinand's faithful Aragonese friend, Mosen Ferrer, the man whom rumour accused of having poisoned Philip : whilst her principal lady in waiting was the Dowager Countess of Salinas. The personal guard of the Queen was entrusted to the in- corruptible Monteros de Espinosa, and there were some companies of Castilians on duty in, and around, the palace. Mosen Ferrer was hated, especially by the townspeople of Tordesillas and by the Castilian attendants of Joan, because it was asserted that he had treated the Queen cruelly, and had not attempted to cure her. He gave strict orders that Joan should

1 And at a later period, when that danger was at an end, the fear of scandal being caused in a court so slavishly Catholic by Joan's violent hatred of the religious services.

JOAN THE MAD 183

not be told of her father's death ; but such news could not be hidden, for all Castile was astir to know what was coming next.

Many of the nobles were around young Ferdinand, and were claiming Castile for him, in accordance with the old King's penultimate wish ; and not a few were looking towards Queen Joan. When she first heard the news she was disturbed to know that Jimenez was not on the spot when the King died, but was tran- quilised to learn that he was on the way, and would promptly assume the government. No sooner was it known in Tordesillas that Ferdinand was dead than the townspeople and the Castilian guards endeavoured to enter the Queen's apartments and expel Mosen Ferrer : but the latter and the Monteros de Espinosa ' stood firm, and for weeks the feud continued. The Guards brought an exorcising priest to cast out the devils that afflicted the Queen ; but Ferrer would not let them enter the room ; though they got into an ante- chamber, where, quite unknown to the Queen, the exerciser performed his futile incantations through a hole in the door. As soon as Jimenez had established himself in the regency, he sent the Bishop of Majorca to set matters right in Tordesillas. Ferrer, intensely indignant at the accusations against him, wrote a letter to the Regent, which, being read between the lines, tells us much. How could he hope to cure the Queen when her own father could not do so ? and how could he be so bad a man as they say, if wise King Ferdi- nand entrusted his daughter to his care ? This does not seem very convincing : but when he tries to excuse

' This strangely privileged corps has always had the duty to guard the sovereigns of Castile personally inside their apartments. The men are all drawn by right from the inhabitants of the town of Espinosa only.

i84 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

himself Ferrer makes matters much worse. It was, he says, only to prevent the Queen from starving her- self to death that he had put her to the torture {dar cuerda). He complains bitterly that though he is not dismissed he is not allowed to go near the Queen, for fear he should injure her health. Jimenez, probably recognising that Ferrer had thought more of Aragonese interests than of the health of Joan, thereupon let him go, and appointed the Duke of Estrada to be her Keeper.

The first instructions sent by the new King Charles, whose age was barely sixteen, to the Regent Jimenez concerned Joan. Her custody was so important, he said, that he agreed, in view of the dissensions amongst Spaniards, that a Fleming should guard her. Until one was appointed he directed that ' whilst she was to be very well treated, she was to be so closely guarded that if any body should attempt to thwart my good intentions they may not be able to do it. It is more my duty than that of any one to care for the honour, contentment, and solace of the Queen ; and if any one else attempts to interfere it will be with an evil object.' Nevertheless many did attempt to interfere by whisper- ing doubts to Joan of her Flemish eldest son, in the interests of his young brother Ferdinand, whom his mother and all Spaniards loved best ; and when in September 15 17 one of the monieros approached her and said : ' Madam, our sovereign lord King Charles, your highness' son, has arrived in Spain,' Joan burst forth in a great rage. ' I alone am Queen : my son

' Calendar, Spanish State Papers, Supplement to vol. i. All the docu- ments quoted in narrating this period of Joan's life are from the same source, and from the collection of the Royal Academy of History ('Rodri- guez Villa).

JOAN THE MAD 185

Charles is but the prince,' and she always resisted call- ing him King thenceforward.

Charles and his sister Leonora came to Tordesillas to see their mother in December. Charles's tutor and counsellor, Chievres, first saw Joan to break to her the news of the presence of her children ; and when, im- mediately afterwards, they entered the room and knelt before their mother, she was overcome with joy to see those whom she had left as little children twelve years before, now in the best period of adolescence. When Charles and his sister had retired, Chievres lost no time in saying that in order to relieve the Queen, and accustom Charles to rule, it would be well to entrust the government of Spain to him. Joan made no great objection to this ; but it is clear that her intention was, that he should administer the government for her and not rule on his own account as he subsequently did ; and when, a few months afterwards, Charles met the Cortes at Valladolid they would only confirm his power as joint sovereign, jealous as they were of Flemings, on condition that he swore that if ever Joan recovered her faculties he would resign the government to her.' Thenceforward Joan, though her name appeared for years on decrees and proclamations, was politically dead.

' By a long series of intrigues Chievres had forced the hands of Jimenez to have Charles and Joan proclaimed joint sovereigns even before the arrival of the former. The Pope and the Emperor had been persuaded to address Charles as Catholic King upon Ferdinand's death ; but in the face of the discontent of the Castilian nobles it was necessary for Charles at last to make all manner of promises as to his future residence in Spain, respect for Spanish traditions, and avoidance of using Spanish money for foreign purposes, as well as that to which reference is made in the text with regard to Joan, before he could be fully acknowledged. He broke most of his pledges at once, and so precipitated the great rising of the Comuneros. See ' Vie de Chievres ' by Varilla.

i86 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

During his stay at Tordesillas, Charles was dis- tressed to see the sad fate of his young sister, Katharine, now aged eleven. Joan was fiercely attached to her, and would hardly let her out of her sight. The child's rooms were behind those of the Queen, and could only be reached with Joan's know- ledge ; little Katharine's sole amusement being to look through a window which had been specially cut for her, and watch the people going to the opposite church, and the children playing in the side lane that led to the river, who were encouraged by money to play there for her amusement. She never left the palace, and was dressed in mean rags, such as the Queen herself wore, and Charles, knowing that the Queen would never let the child go willingly, somewhat cruelly planned to have her kidnapped. He caused a way into her apartment to be broken through a tapestry-covered wall from an adjoining gallery ; and the girl and her female attendants were carried away at dead of night to a large force of horsemen and ladies awaiting her on the opposite side of the bridge across the Douro ; and thence spirited away to Valla- dolid, where, dressed in fitting splendour, she was lodged in her sister Leonora's palace. When, in the morning, Joan discovered her loss, she was incon- solable. She would neither eat, drink, nor sleep, she said, until her child was restored to her, and after two days had passed, and she still stood firm, the King had to be asked what was to be done. He was loath to give up the education of his sister ; for princesses were valuable dynastic and international assets ; but there was no other way but to send her back. Charles accompanied her to Tordesillas, and made terms with Joan ; the girl must have proper companions and

JOAN THE MAD 187

attendants, she must dress suitably to her rank, and she must be allowed some little relaxation and liberty outside the palace. To this Joan consented, and Katharine hved with her until her marriage with the King of Portugal six years later.

In March 1518, Charles appointed to the custody of the Queen, the Marquis of Denia, who held her until his death, and was succeeded by his son. Soon after his appointment, he wrote a letter to the King which lifts the veil considerably on Joan's condition. She tried, he says, persistently and with artful words, remarkable for one in her condition, to persuade him to take her out of her prison, and to summon the nobles of Castile, as she was discontented at the way she was being kept out of the government, and wished to complain. He details the excuses with which he put her requests aside, and evidently looks upon her blandishments as wiles to escape ; but assures Charles, as he did for many years afterwards, that ' nothing should be done against his interests,' whatever that may have meant. But even in this letter we see signs of Joan's undoubted madness. A day or two before she had thrown some pitchers at two of her women, and hurt them ; and when Denia went with a grave face to her and said, ' How is this, my lady ? This is a strange way to treat your servants ; your mother treated hers better ;' Joan rose hurriedly, and the very act of her rising sent her servants scurrying off in a fright. ' I am not so violent as to do you any injury,' she said ; and so began again, and for the next five hours, to try by wheedling to get him to take her out, 'for she could not bear these women.'

In reply to this, Charles warned Denia that his conversations with the Queen must never be over-

i88 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

heard by anybody, and that all his letters about her must be strictly secret. Thus every few days news of his mother reached the young King, sometimes reporting improvement, sometimes the reverse; but always harping upon her desire to get out, her dislike of her woman attendants, and her extreme irregularity in getting up and eating, which she often did only at intervals of two days. At this time, too, began to develop her great repugnance to attend mass. The women seem to have been a great source of trouble to every one. They were, it appears, always gadding about the town, telling people of what passed in the palace, and what the Queen said, especially about religion, and her desire to go out, and to summon the grandees. What was worse, they defied Denia to dismiss them, until the King gave him full authority over them, and brought them to reason. In the autumn of the same year, 1518, there was a visitation of plague in the country, though Tordesillas had not suffered much, owing to the scrupulous care taken to isolate the place. The removal of the Queen, however, had to be con- sidered. ' If it be necessary,' wrote the Marquis, 'we shall want saddle mules with black velvet housings for the Queen and the Infanta. ... It will also be necessary to take the body of the King, your father, and if this has to be done, we must put into proper order the car in which it was brought here, as it is now dismantled. Charles was against any removal if it could possibly be avoided, but if quite unavoidable, the Queen might be taken to the monastery of St. Paul at Moralejo, near Arevalo. If she refused to go, she must be taken by force ; but with as much respect as possible, and with every precaution against her endeavouring to stay in the open on the way. If she

JOAN THE MAD 189

wanted the corpse of Philip to go with her, a dummy coffin might be made up and carried, whilst the real one with the body remained behind at Tordesillas.

The plague passed away, and the move was not made ; and so things passed with Joan as before. Squalid and unhappy, she resisted as obstinately as ever the pressure put upon her to attend mass, though more than once she was violently desirous of going over in Holy Week, or other anniversaries, to the convent church of St Clara, and on several occasions had her clothes washed in preparation for the great event ; which Denia himself was inclined to allow, under strict guard, as people in the town were tattling about her being kept a prisoner. Great efforts were made by Juan de Avila, the chaplain, to bring Joan to a better frame of mind about religion ; and in June 1 5 19 he writes a curious letter to the King, beseeching him to do his duty by his mother ; ' especially for the salvation of her soul.' Perhaps in answer to this Charles ordered Denia to insist that the Queen should hear mass. She had wished it to be said at the end of a corridor, instead of in a special room adjoining her own, as Denia desired, and, at last, rather than she should not hear it at all, she was allowed to have her way ; and an altar and chapel were screened off by black velvet hangings at the end of the corridor. She went through the service with great devotion until the evangelium and the pax were brought to her, when she refused them, but motioned that they should be administered to her daughter.

This attendance at mass continued for some time, to the immense jubilation of Denia and the priests ; but as the day approached when Charles was to leave Spain for Germany to claim the imperial crown, in

igo QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

consequence of Maximilian's death (January 15 19), the effervescence and discontent in Castile at the prospect of an absentee King drawing money from Spain for foreign purposes, penetrated in some mysterious way the prison-palace of Joan the Mad. For hours the Queen railed at Denia for not having summoned the Grandees, as she had requested him to do so often. She was being disgracefully treated, she said ; every- thing belonged to her, and yet she was being denied what she required. She excitedly summoned the treasurer, and demanded money of him, which he was not allowed to give her. So vehement did she become, that at last Denia forbade any one to speak to her at all. She would go to Valladolid, she said ; and at another time she would dress to go over to the convent church, though she was not allowed to go. She ordered Denia to write to her son, asking that she should be better treated ; and that the grandees should come to her to consult about the realm. Denia, at his wit's end to pacify her, on one occasion, for, as he says, 'she uses words fit to make the very stones rise,' had the inspiration to mention her father, as if he were still alive, and at the head of affairs ; and for a time all the disagreeable answers given to her were said to be by order of King Ferdinand, for whose wisdom she had a great respect. But this lie gave her a new idea. If her father were alive, he could help her; and she ordered Denia to write and tell him that she could no longer stand the life she led. She was badly treated, and as a prisoner, her son, Ferdinand, had been taken away from her, and she feared they were going to rob her of her daughter Katharine ; but, if they did, she would kill herself Denia fell more and more into her black books, as the discontent at Charles's departure

JOAN THE MAD 191

grew in the country, and echoes reached the Queen's prison of the pubHc indignation at her seclusion, and wild rumours of intentions to rescue her. On one occasion (July 1520) she ordered Denia to open a doorway from her apartments into the corridor where mass was said. He was suspicious and refused, whereupon she fell into a violent rage with him, and heaped upon him outrageous words without measure. No wonder the poor man deplores that everybody believes he keeps her prisoner (as indeed he did, though he says not), and he advocates her entire seclusion, although the best way to undeceive the people, he says, would be to let them see her, and recognise her sad condition.

Charles sailed from Corunna on 20th May 1520. During the time he had been in Spain he, or rather his rude, greedy gang of Flemings, had driven Castilians to desperation. Jimenez, who had held the country for him in his absence in the face of the nobles and young Ferdinand, had been con- temptuously dismissed — and probably poisoned on Charles' arrival : young Ferdinand had been packed off to Flanders : Flemings had crowded all the great posts, to the exclusion of Spaniards : Joan was not presented before the Cortes as Queen jointly with her son, as she should have been ; and now, to crown all, the Constitution of Castile had been violated by the insolent young foreigner who was to rule, not Spain alone, but half the world. He had held a Castilian Cortes outside the limits of Castile itself, and had coerced the deputies to vote him large sums of money to be spent away from Spain. The nobles were already seething with discontent, and now the people in the towns, who paid all the taxes, rose and

192 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

hanged some of the deputies who had voted away their money for an absent king.

Then, Hke a well-laid train, all Castile blazed into revolt. It was a great social, industrial and political struggle, which ended in the financial impotence of the Cortes of Castile, and the decadence of the Castilian nobility. The complicated details of the revolt cannot here be told, but only those points in which Joan was personally concerned. The governing committee of the revolutionary Comuneros met at Avila at the end of July 1520, headed by the gentry, and, to some extent, secretly encouraged by the great nobles. The Flemish Regent, Cardinal Adrian, was paralysed with dismay at the extent of the rising, and did nothing ; whilst to the cry of ' Long live the King and Queen : down with evil ministers,' every Spanish heart responded. The manifesto published by the committee announced that the revolutionaries had risen in the interests of the imprisoned Queen Joan ; and early in August a committee of the council of Castile, the supreme executive body of the Regent's government, with its president, Bishop Rojas, pre- sented themselves before Joan in her palace of Tordesillas, to beg her to sign decrees against those who were in arms. Joan was to all appearance calm, and replied to the demand for her signature, ' It is now fifteen years that I have been kept from the government and badly treated; and this marquis here' (pointing to Denia), 'is he who has lied to me most' Denia, confused, replied : 'It is true, my lady, that I have lied to you, but I have done so to overcome certain prejudices of yours. I may tell you now, that your father is dead, and I buried him.' The Queen shed tears at this, and turning to Rojas, murmured

JOAN THE MAD 193

between her sobs, ' Bishop, believe me, all that I see and hear is like a dream.' Rojas pressed his point. ' My lady, I can assure you that your signature to these papers will work a greater miracle than Saint Francis ; for, after God, in your hands now rests the salvation of these realms.' 'Rest now,' replied the Queen, 'and come back another day.'

On the morrow the committee of the council saw the Queen again, and as there was no seat but hers in the room, the president mentioned that it was not meet that they should be kept standing. ' Bring a seat for the council, ' directed the Queen ; but, as the attendants were bringing in chairs, she said, ' No, no, not chairs, but a bench ; that was the rule in my mother's time: but the bishop may have a chair.' After another long conference the Queen directed the committee to return to Valladolid and discuss again, in full council the papers to which they requested her signature ; and thus, unsatisfied, the members left her, only to find themselves prisoners at Valladolid, which was now in the hands of the rebels, who were rapidly marching upon Tordesillas at the urgent request of the townspeople of the latter place, to save Queen Joan from being carried away by the government party.

The rebels had no time to communicate with Joan as to their aims before they appeared outside the walls of the town on the 29th August. As soon as Joan learnt of their coming she ordered the townspeople to welcome them ; and so, amidst salute of cannon and enthusiastic cheers, Padilla, the rebel leader, and his host were escorted into the town, and passed before the Queen, who stood in a balcony of the palace. After resting and changing their garments, Padilla

N

194 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

and other chiefs sought audience of the Queen. Joan received him smilingly. ' Who are you ? ' she asked, as he knelt before her. ' I am Juan Padilla, my lady,' he replied, ' son of the captain-general of Castile, a servant of Queen Isabel, as I am a servant of your Highness.' And then the insurgent chief told the astonished Queen all that had happened since old King Ferdinand died : how the evil foreign advisers of young Charles had brought all Spain into revolt, and that Padilla and the commons of Castile were ready to die in the service of their own Queen Joan. She expressed her wonderment at all this. She had been kept a prisoner, she said, for nearly sixteen years, and Denia, her gaoler, had hidden everything from her. If she had been sure of her father's death she would have gone forth and have prevented some of this trouble in her realm. Then, addressing Padilla, she said : ' Go now ; I order you to exercise the authority of captain -general of the realm. Look to all things carefully, until I order otherwise.'

Joan thus made herself the ostensible head of the revolution ; and on many subsequent occasions con- ferred with the leaders in arms at Tordesillas, fully approving of their proceedings and aims. She tried to exonerate Charles on account of his youth and inexperience of Spain, but clearly indicated her intention to govern for herself in future. Most important of all, she authorised the leaders to summon the Cortes to meet at Tordesillas. The weak, foreign Cardinal Regent could only ascribe Joan's attitude to her madness ; though, as he wrote to Charles, the people regard it as a proof of her sanity. Denia was now almost a prisoner, but the revolutionary leaders could never persuade

JOAN THE MAD 195

Joan to sign his formal dismissal, though they, on their own authority, turned both the marquis and his wife unceremoniously out of the town when Torde- sillas became the centre of the rebel government in September, and the Cortes held its sittings there.'

Joan met her Parliament in the hall of the palace, and listened patiently to the lengthy harangues of the deputies. In her reply, which seems to have been extempore, she spoke at great length of her father, whose death had been concealed from her. During his life she was at ease, because she knew no one would dare to do harm. But she now saw how the country and herself had been abused and deceived, to the injury of the people whom she loved so much. She wished she were in some place where she could direct affairs better ; but as her father had placed her there, either because of the woman who took her mother's place, or for some other reason, she could do no more than she had done. She wondered that the Spaniards had not avenged themselves before upon the foreigners who had come with her son. She thought at first that these foreigners had meant well to her boys ; whom they had, she was told, taken back to Flanders ; but she saw differently now, and she hoped no one here had any evil meaning towards her

' Denia told the rebels that he had appealed to the Queen for a certificate of his dismissal, but what he really asked for was her written order to stay. In reply, she told him to go about his business and talk to her no more. He was, however, successful in getting a letter from the young Infanta to the revolutionary Junta praying them not to send the marchioness away, but it had no effect. The Infanta got into sad disgrace with her brother for her alleged kindness and sympathy with the rebels, but she spiritedly defended herself, and appealed to this letter of hers in favour of the Denias as proof that she did what she could in very difficult and dangerous circumstances. (Letters from Simancas copied by Senor Rodriguez Villa.)

196 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

sons. Even if she were not the Queen she ought to have been better treated, for, at least, she was the daughter of great sovereigns ; and she was in favour of the Comuneros, because she saw they were anxious to remedy the abuses of which she complained. All this seemed quite sane, but at the end of the speech there is a pathetic ring of self-distrust that tells the sad tale. ' To the extent of my power I will see to affairs, either here or elsewhere. But if, whilst I am here, I cannot do much it will be because I am obliged to spend some time in calming my heart and strengthening my spirit, on the death of the King, my husband. But as long as I am in disposition for it, I will attend to affairs. ''

The democratic excesses of the revolutionary Com- mittee, together with the diplomacy of Charles, were gradually enlisting the great nobles on the side of the government. Although Joan's attendants generally were in her favour, and continued to assert her sanity now they had got rid of the Denias, her confessor, Juan de Avila, was always secretly faithful to the Regent ; and whispered warnings constantly in the Queen's ear. It was evident after a short time also to the revolutionary junta that Joan was not sane ; as they wrote from Tordesillas to the city of Valladolid saying that they had summoned all the best physicians in Spain to her ; and, apparently finding human aid powerless, they had ordered processions and prayers for her restoration to health. The Regent, indeed, writing to Charles in October, says that the Queen cannot last long if she does not escape from the power of the rebel government ; as she was much worse after

1 It was one of the principal allegations of the government, that, although Joan never signed anything for the rebels, her verbal orders were at once taken down in notarial form and acted upon as royal decrees.

JOAN THE MAD 197

Denia went. She no longer sleeps in a bed, he says, nor eats regularly, but keeps her food all around her cold until it goes bad. At another time, after she had eaten nothing for three days, she was given the accumulated food of the whole period at once. The government party asserted that all the poor woman's crazy caprices were acceded to, and even threats resorted to by the junta, in order to get her to sign the decrees necessary to legitimise their action ; but she continued obstinate in her refusal to put her hand to anything.!

The junta began to grow desperate ; for the forces against them were growing daily, whilst they made no progress, depending, as they did, for legality upon obtaining the signature of a lunatic. They tried to bribe the poor woman to sign by promising to take her away from Tordesillas ; but that was fruitless : on another occasion, in the middle of the night, a hue and cry was raised that the Constable of Castile with a great force of government troops was outside, and the Queen was told that the ' tyrants ' had come to seize her. ' Tell the Constable,' she replied, ' not to do any- thing until the daylight comes ; and then I will see about it.' Things thus went from bad to worse for the rebellion. This was the one chance of Joan's life, and she missed it. For months she trifled and smiled upon the rebel junta, but would sign nothing ; and early in December the government troops were strong enough to make a dash for Tordesillas, which they took by assault after four hours of desperate fighting ; the rebel junta flying in a panic from the place. Joan welcomed the victors with a smiling face. She had

' One of her demands was that all her women should be sent away, as they were. Her hatred of her own sex was remarkable.

198 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

been expecting and wishing they would come, she said ; and had ordered that the nobles should be admitted before the fight began.

During the battle she with the Infanta had left the palace, carrying her jewels with them, and had ordered the corpse of Philip to be taken from the church and carried with them out of the town. Before it could be done, in the confusion, the royal troops entered, and they found the Queen and her daughter crouched in the doorway of the palace trembling with fright. The great nobles who came to the capture of Tordesillas were full of lip service to Joan, and she, flattered apparently by their deference, professed delight at their coming ; but from the moment the rebel junta fled before the Constable's troops at Tordesillas with- out her signature, Joan was a closely watched prisoner. Denia and his wife, with their harsh methods, came back, to the loudly expressed disgust, not only of Joan, but of some of the greatest of the Castilian nobles, who saw how his presence irritated her ; ' but Charles would permit no change in his mother's keeper, for he knew he could depend upon Denia to keep her close.

In April 1521, the Comuneros were finally crushed at the battle of Villalar, and the yoke of imperialism forged unwittingly by Ferdinand the Catholic, and open-eyed by Charles the Emperor, was fixed upon the neck of Spain until it strangled her. Thence-

^ The Admiral of Castile and other nobles at the time endeavoured to prevail upon Joan to take the direction of affairs under their guidance ; but she refused just as obstinately to give her signature to them as she had to the rebels. Denia writes to the Emperor that the Admiral is very anxious to cure the Queen ; but in no case will it be allowed without the Emperor's permission. ' Besides, it would be another resurrection of Lazarus.' The bitterest complaints of Denia and his methods were sent by the great nobles to Charles, whilst Denia could say no good word for them.

JOAN THE MAD 199

forward Joan was but a shadow in the world, to which she no longer appertained.

The person most to be pitied, until marriage rescued her in 1524, was the poor young Infanta Katharine. The Denias came back vowing vengeance against every one who they thought had been polite to the rebels, and the Infanta, as well as the Queen, had to feel their petty tyranny. The girl wrote indignantly to her brother of the wretched straits to which she was reduced by them, and also of the persecution of her mother by them. Amongst other complaints, the following may be quoted. ' For the love of God, pray order that if the Queen wishes to walk in the gallery looking on to the river, or in the matted corridor, or to leave her chamber for pastime, they shall not prevent her from doing so. And pray do not allow the servants and daughters of the marchioness, or others, to go to my closet through the Queen's rooms, but only the persons who serve ; because, in order that the Queen may not see them, the marchioness orders the women to shut the Queen up in her chamber, and will not allow her to go into the passages or hall, but keep her in the chamber where there is no light but candles ; for there is nowhere else for her to go, and she will not leave the chamber until she is dragged out : or, if she would, the women are there to prevent her.' This is the Infanta's own version ; but the Denias' story is that the young princess is not allowed by her mother to see any one but a common servant, and has not the fit company of ladies. To make matters worse for the girl the Denias accused her of favouring the rebels, which she indignantly denied, and made peace successfully with her brother. Her departure from Tordesillas for her

200 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

marriage afflicted Joan greatly, and for the rest of the Queen's Hfe there was no one to stand between the emperor and her gaolers.

During the long years of Joan's seclusion, the principal feature of her aberration was its anti- religious tendency. It is true that she often demanded the summoning of the nobles, and continued her eccentricity in eating and sleeping, but the strange antipathy she showed, and often violently expressed, to the services of her church, was a scandal worse than any in a country where thousands of people were being burnt for a tenth part of what the Queen allowed herself to say and do. The whole of the emperor's system was based upon the enforcement of universal religious orthodoxy by Spain : and it was a bitter affliction for him to know that his mother, and rightful Queen, was madly opposed, at intervals, to the ceremonies imposed upon the rest of Spaniards. Denia in his letters to the Emperor, on several occa- sions, drops dark hints that torture should be applied — as it evidently had been applied to Joan years before by Mosen Ferrer. Speaking of her obstinacy soon after the rebel defeat, and advising that she should be transferred to the fortress of Arevalo, which he thought safer and more loyal to Charles, he says : ' Your Majesty may be sure that this will not be done with the Queen's goodwill, for it is not to be expected that a person who refuses to do anything beneficial, either for her body or her soul, but does quite the contrary, will agree to this. And, in good truth, if your Majesty would use pressure '

^ Mr Bergenroth translated ' hacerle premia,' ' applying torture,' and it may be so translated. I prefer, however, the wider interpretation ; though, no doubt, Denia meant to recommend physical coercion.

JOAN THE MAD 201

upon her in many things, you would serve God and benefit her Highness, for people in her condition really need it. Your grandmother. Queen Isabel, served her Highness, her daughter, in this way, but your Majesty will do as you think best.'

Denia, whilst recommending the employment of force for the removal of the Queen, did not wish to appear personally as the instrument, but recommended that the President of the Council of Castile should be sent with the Emperor's order for her to submit, and if she resisted, to have her seized and put into a litter by force in the night time, and carried off. The removal of the Queen, often urged by Denia for years, on the ground of the accessibility of Tordesillas to disaffected people, does not seem ever to have taken place. ' Denia's desire to lodge Joan in a strong isolated fortress is also explained by him on the ground of the scandal caused by the Queen's religious attitude. In the letter just quoted, where he recommends torture, he relates that on Christmas night, whilst early matins were being sung in the presence of the Infanta, the Queen came in search of her daughter, and screamed out in anger for them to clear the altar of everything upon it ; and she had to be forcibly taken back to her rooms. He relates also that : ' She often goes into the gallery overlooking the river, and calls to any one she sees to summon the troops to kill each other. Your majesty may judge from all this what is best to do, and what we have to put up with.'

These hints at personal punishment of the Queen are repeated again and again over a series of years by Denia, though, so far as can be gathered from the

1 The Emperor ordered her to be taken to Toro in 1 527, but Denia was afraid of forcing her to go.

202 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

Emperor's replies, he gave no instructions for it to be done. In 1525 Denia writes : 'Nothing would do so much good as some pressure (i.e., punishment or torture), although it is a very serious thing for a subject to think of applying such to his Sovereign. Perhaps it will be best to try what effect a good priest would have upon Her Highness ... a Dominican would be best, as she does not like Franciscans.' On another occasion soon afterwards, when Charles had decided to have his mother secretly carried by night to the impregnable castle of Toro, not far from Tordesillas, Denia remarks that he had taken measures that no persons should be in the streets to witness her arrival, ' for, in good truth, I myself am ashamed of what I hear and see.'

And so from year to year the Queen's religious aberrations consigned her to constantly increased seclusion to avoid scandal. The Emperor and his only son Philip visited the Queen at least on one occa- sion at Tordesillas, and during the regency of Philip in 1552, whilst Charles was in Germany, the Prince, much more rigidly devout even than his father, and shocked at the continued refusal of his grandmother to attend the services of the Church and fulfil her religious duties, sent to Tordesillas the saintly Jesuit Francis of Borgia, Duke of Gandia, to exert his influ- ence upon the Queen. His success was very small. For weeks Joan refused to conform, until, at last Borgia persuaded her to make what is called a ' general confession,' and he thereupon gave her absolution;'

' Denia's account of the interview with Borgia (confirmed by the latter) is extremely curious. The priestly Duke said, as she would do nothing else, she might recite the ' General Confession,' and he would absolve her. ' Can you absolve ? ' she asked. ' Yes ! ' he replied, ' with the exception of certain cases.' ' Then,' said the Queen, ' you recite the General Confes-

JOAN THE MAD 203

but directly he left she relapsed into her former in- difference again.

When Philip was leaving Spain to marry Mary, Queen of England, in 1554, he sent Father Borgia again to try to bring Joan to her religious duties. She heard the good father patiently, and when he had finished his exhortations, she endeavoured to make terms. Yes, she would hear mass, and confess, and receive absolution, and the rest of it, if the women attendants upon her were sent away, as they always mocked her whilst she was at her devotions. ' If that be so,' replied Father Borgia, 'the Inquisition shall deal with them as heretics ; ' and he at once wrote to Philip recommending that they should pretend to hand the women over to the Holy Office, place crosses and images of saints about the Queen's rooms, say daily mass on the corridor altar, and if the Queen objected, tell her that it was done by the order of the Inquisition. He also proposed to bring some priestly exorcisers to cast out the devils that afflicted the Queen ; but this Philip would not allow. The effect of Borgia's efforts on this occasion was, that when Prince Philip on his way to Corunna to sail for England called at Torde- sillas, he found Joan to his delight going through the ordinary religious rites without resistance. But her devotion was clearly only on the surface, and her new confessor Friar Luis de la Cruz, soon reported that he dared not expose himself to the peril of committing a

sion.' This Borgia did, and asked her whether she said the same. ' Yes,' she repUed ; and ' she then permitted him to absolve her.' It will be seen that there was not much submission in this. Only a day or so after- wards she appears to have flown into a terrible passion because some new hangings and gold ornaments had been placed on the corridor altar ; and she refused to eat until they had been removed, and the altar left plain as before.

204 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

grave act of sacrilege by administering the sacraments to the Queen, and resigned his ofifice. It appears, amongst other things, that she always shut her eyes at the elevation of the Host at the mass, and on one occasion she violently told her attendants to throw away the blessed tapers they carried before her, as she said they stank.

Since the summer of 1553, Joan, then an old woman, had suffered from swelling of the lower limbs, which almost crippled her; and in February 1555, after a bath of very hot water, the legs broke out into open wounds. Thenceforward the course of her illness pre- sented an extraordinary resemblance to that which proved mortal in the case of her grandson, Philip 11. Dreadful gangrenous sores, which she refused to have dressed or washed, caused her the most awful torment. She paid no heed to the directions of doctors or nurses ; and when her granddaughter, the Infanta Joan, came over from Valladolid with the best medical men procurable, the Queen violently refused to see them or allow them to examine her. Thus, lying in repulsive squalor and filth, the poor creature was told that Father Borgia had come to see her. She angrily refused to listen to him at first, but she was weak, and his persistence seems finally to have conquered. By and bye she admitted that she was sorry for her errors, and de- plored the divagations of her spirit. At the request of Borgia she repeated the apostle's creed and confessed ; but just as he was about to administer the viaticum, she expressed some scruple at receiving it. Learned theologians were summoned in haste from Salamanca ; and a few days afterwards, on the i ith April 1555, the famous Dr Soto was closeted with her for hours. His report was that, though she had privately told him

JOAN THE MAD 205

things that consoled him, the Queen was not fit to receive the Eucharist ; though extreme unction might be administered.

That same night the last rites were performed. Leaning over the dying woman with a crucifix, the priest told her that the last hour for her was come, and that it behoved her to ask God for pardon. By signs and gestures of grief and contrition, she expressed what her poor palsied tongue refused to utter ; and Father Borgia, believing her beyond speech, asked her to signify whether he should recite the creed for her. To the astonishment of every one she suddenly recovered her power of utterance, and replied, ' You begin it, and I will repeat it after you.' When the last amen was said, the saintly Jesuit placed a crucifix to the lips of the dying woman. 'Christ crucified aid me,' she had strength yet to say, and then Joan the Mad passed to the land where all are sane. For twenty years her body lay in the Convent of St. Clara, opposite her prison palace ; upon the same spot where the coffin of her husband had rested for so many years ; and then, in 1574, she was carried at last to the sumptuous tomb at Granada, to join for the rest of time the dust of him that she had loved not wisely but too well.

The foregoing account of the life of this most un- fortunate of queens, gathered entirely from the contem- porary statements of persons who knew her, tends irresistibly to the conclusion that her early rigid train- ing, followed by her life in Flanders, had implanted in her mind a dislike of the stern bigotry which charac- terised the religion of Spain under the influence of the Inquisition ; and that this dislike grew to hatred when her mind became permanently unsettled. Her strict seclusion and cruel treatment do not appear to have

2o6 QUEENS OF OLD SPAIN

been so necessary for her own health, or even primarily for the public welfare, as for the interests of her father and son, whose autocratic power was threatened by any combination of nobles acting in her name, and whose policy largely depended upon the maintenance of strict religious orthodoxy. To leave at liberty and accessible a feeble-minded Queen who desired to govern through the nobles, and hated the religion of the Inquisition, would have been to invite disaster to the very basis upon which the vast edifice of Spanish autocratic power at its grandest was erected. 1 1 might have been better for Spain in the long run, but it would have been ruin for Ferdinand and Charles ; and to their interests succes- sively Joan the Mad was sacrificed.