Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/148

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descended in the scale; and, when the claims of the several competitors for the throne were finally extinguished, and the tranquillity of the kingdom was secured, by the union of Henry the Third with Catharine of Lancaster at the close of the fourteenth century, the third estate may be said to have attained to the highest degree of political consequence, which it ever reached in Castile.

The healthful action of the body politic, during the long interval of peace that followed this auspicious union, enabled it to repair the strength, which had been wasted in its murderous civil contests. The ancient channels of commerce were again opened; various new manufactures were introduced, and carried to a considerable perfection; wealth, with its usual concomitants, elegance and comfort, flowed in apace; and the nation promised itself a long career of prosperity under a monarch, who respected the laws in his own person, and administered them with vigor. All these fair hopes were blasted by the premature death of Henry the Third, before he had reached his twenty-eighth year. The crown devolved on his son John the Second, then a minor, whose reign was one of the longest and the most disastrous in the Castilian annals. As it was that, however, which gave birth to Isabella, the illustrious subject of our narrative, it will be necessary