Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/201

175 HER CHARACTER. 175 burial. She orders her remains to be transported chapter to Granada, to the Franciscan monastery of Santa '- — Isabella in the Alhambra, and there deposited in a low and humble sepulchre, without other memorial than a plain inscription on it. " But," she con- tinues, " should the king, my lord, prefer a sepulchre in some other place, then my will is that my body be there transported, and laid by his side ; that the union we have enjoyed in this world, and, through the mercy of God, may hope again for our souls in heaven, may be represented by our bodies in the earth." Then, desirous of correcting by her exam- ple, in this last act of her life, the wasteful pomp of funeral obsequies to which the Castilians were addicted, she commands that her own should be performed in the plainest and most unostentatious manner, and that the sum saved by this economy should be distributed in alms among the poor. She next provides for several charities, assigning, among others, marriage portions for poor maidens, and a considerable sum for the redemption of Chris- tian captives in Barbary. She enjoins the punctual discharge of all her personal debts within a year ; she retrenches superfluous offices in the royal house- hold, and revokes all such grants, whether in the forms of lands or annuities, as she conceives to have been made without sufficient warrant. She incul- cates on her successors the importance of maintain- ing the integrity of the royal domains, and, above all, of never divesting themselves of their title to the important fortress of Gibraltar. After this, she comes to the succession of the settles the succession.