borderslynn

Isabella of Portugal was married to King John II of Castile as his second wife, making her also Queen of Castille. Her stepson became Henry IV of Castille.

Isabella was 19 when she married John, who was 42. After a difficult birth of her daughter, born 1451, she developed a serious case of post natal depression and became mentally unstable. This led to her paranoia about the unwanted influence of a friend of her husband’s. She then conspired to incriminate him in a killing and he was executed for the crime. She believed she was haunted by the ghost of the dead man.

 She had a son, Alfonso in 1454, a few months after her husband John II died. Isabella’s stepson, Henry IV, only 3 years her elder, became king of Castille, and he banished his stepmother to the Castle of Arévalo. Here, Isabella and her small children struggled to live in austerity, which further damaged her mental state.

Isabella ensured her daughter and namesake observed practical piety and a deep reverence for religion. But she became more paranoid and ill, the children were removed from her around 1461, and young Isabella, who was to become the wife of Ferdinand, did not see her mother again until she was dying in 1496.  

When Henry IV’s wife, Joan of Portugal, was about to give birth to their daughter Joanna, Isabella and Alfonso were summoned to court (Segovia) to come under the direct supervision of the King and to finish their education. Alfonso was placed in the care of a tutor while Isabella became part of the Queen’s household. This meant a considerable improvement in living conditions for the children. Henry forbade Isabella from leaving Segovia or involving herself in local feuding. But she was well aware of what was going on around her.

Those making trouble for Henry were noblemen, anxious for power and demanding that Alfonso be named his successor. The nobles had gained control of Alfonso, and fought to make him heir at the Second Battle of Olmedo in 1467. The battle was a draw. Henry agreed to recognise Alfonso as heir presumptive, provided that he would marry his daughter, Joanna. Soon after he was named Prince of Asturias;  Alfonso died in July 1468, perhaps of the plague. 

One other version of what befell Alfonso was that he died in suspicious circumstances and perhaps Isabella suspected that he had been murdered. Isabella had no reason to trust her half brother, Henry. Although he knew she had made her debut in the matrimonial market at the tender age of six, with a betrothal to Ferdinand. Ferdinand was the favourite and the younger son of John II of Aragon (whose family was a cadet branch of the House of Trastámara). Henry he was always trying to marry his half sister off to other financially suitable prospects to bolster his plans for his future heirs. But she had made her decision her co monarch would be Ferdinand and John II of Aragon secretly negotiated the wedding to his son Ferdinand. It seems she did not tell Henry when she was going to Valladolid to marry Infante Ferdinand of Aragon. Instead, she eloped, saying she was going to see her brother’s tomb in Ávila.

The marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand took place on 18 October 1469.

Since 1295, the remaining Muslim presence was in Southern Spain,  Grenada. Isabella was determined to expel them and it took until 1492 for her to do so.  This will be covered in my blog, Forceful Woman, Part II.

The Arawak Indians of South America. Once Christopher Colombus arrived with his men, the Arawak were no longer guardians of their territory.  This is when greed destroyed the peace and tranquility of this part of the world forever.

The Auld Alliance

Today we talk of the ‘special relationship’ between the US and UK. The special relationship which once existed between Scotland and France is just such a relationship. Today the Scottish Nationalist Party refer to it as the helpful bond with France  which has held strong with the European Union. Hubert Fenwick wrote, when Britain was considering joining the Common Market, that the spirit of the Auld Alliance would be kept alive by such a process.

I have been reading this excellent book by historian Hubert Fenwick, published 1971. It is the first attempt ever to trace the story of ‘The Auld Alliance’ in its entirety. I have dipped into it and quoted from it to illustrate the relevance to the 17th Century life of Adam Smith. The fact that the dual nationality afforded to French and Scots people lasted for centuries, is quite remarkable in itself.  I have transcribed some paragraphs from the book here.

The origins of the Auld Alliance are lost in the mists of time…….(p.xii) the first documentary evidence of a formal alliance is actually contained in the Treaty concluded between King John Baliol and Philippe le Bel, in 1295, which was ratified by King Robert the Bruce in 1326, and renewed by David II in 1359.

Succeeding monarchs of the Royal Stewart line renewed the Auld Alliance as each came to the throne, and in 1512, the year before Flodden, it was formally strengthened still further. James V added a French marriage to the political union, espousing Madeleine de Valois, daughter of François Premier; and when she died he wed Mary of Guise, whose work own daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, subsequently became Dauphine and Queen of France. However, the Reformation soon put paid to the ever-increasing ovement towards a unitary state in Scotland and France, in in 1560, under the aegis of John Knox and his patroness, Queen Elizabeth, whose ships entered the Firth of Forth in a show of force, the official Alliance was dissolved. Yet Marie Stewart and François II remained as joint Sovereigns off France and Scotland and the purely cultural and commercial aspects of the association continued unabated.

(p.xiii) In 1513 Louis XII granted French nationality to the whole Scottish nation, ‘Pour route la nation d’Ecosse,’ as a document on display in the French Institute in Edinburgh in 1953 stated; and because of this and other generous gestures from France a visit to that country has special attractions for Scots. It not only emphasises sentimental attachments that linger on long after the severing of political ties, but also reminds one of artistic and intellectual gifts, not to mention gastronomic novelties, received from our oldest allies. We shared and won battles together too. In the Cathedral of Orléans, for example, may be seen a plaque upon which is recorded the service of an officer of the historic Garde Écossaise; while at Buzancy, near Soissons, the 1914-1918 village War Memorial is inscribed as follows:

‘Ici fleurira lr glorieux Chardon d’Écosse

Parmi les Roses de France.’

A gap of nearly six centuries divides these two tributes, but the bottle of friendship have clearly bridged the years undiminished.

(p.xiv) Throughout the seventeenth century adventurers and scholars, as well as professors and religious men kept up the two-way traffic between Scotland and France. Rabelais was first translated into English by a Scotsman, and John Law of Lauriston founded the first Banque Nationale de France (italics). Later, when the Stewart’s went into exile in St. Germain, there arose yet a third phase of collaboration in which French and Scots intellectuals participated. Hume and Rousseau were closely associated, and as the eighteenth century progressed scores of Scots who were neither supporters of the Stewart’s nor mere tourists went to Ferney to pay their respects to the author of Candide and to demonstrate their superior learning!