Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/359

215 ADMINISTRATION OF CASTILE. 215 be supposed to have been somewhat sharpened chapter bj the prospect of the rich temporal acquisitions, '- — which the success of his arms was sure to secure to his fraternity. For the superstitious princes of those times, in addition to the wealth lavished so liberally on all monastic institutions, granted the military orders almost unlimited rights over the conquests achieved by their own valor. In the sixteenth century, we find the order of St. James, which had shot up to a preeminence above the rest, possessed of eighty-four commanderies, and two hundred inferior benefices. This same order could bring into the field, according to Garibay, four hundred belted knights, and one thousand lances, which, with the usual complement of a lance in that day, formed a very considerable force. The rents of the mastership of St. James amounted, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, to sixty thousand ducats, those of Alcantara to forty-five thousand, and those of Calatrava to forty thou- sand. There was scarcely a district of the Pen- insula which was not covered with their castles, towns, and convents. Their rich commanderies gradually became objects of cupidity to men of the highest r'ank, and more especially the grand-master- ships, which, from their extensive patronage, and the authority they conferred over an organized mili- tia pledged to implicit obedience, and knit together by the strong tie of common interest, raised their possessors almost to the level of royalty itself. Hence the elections to these important dignities came to be a fruitful source of intrigue, and fre-