Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/235

Rh first to the last stage of the proceeding, the whole had gone on with a scrupulous attention to constitutional forms. Yet the authority of the new regent was far from being firmly seated; and it was the conviction of this, which had led him to accelerate measures.

Many of the nobles were extremely dissatisfied with the queen's settlement of the regency, which had taken air before her death ; and they had even gone so far as to send to Flanders before that event, and invite Philip to assume the government himself, as the natural guardian of his wife. These discontented lords, if they did not refuse to join in the public acts of acknowledgment to Ferdinand at Toro, at least were not reserved in intimating their dissatisfaction. Among the most prominent were the marquis of Villena, who may be said to have been nursed to faction from the cradle, and the duke of Najara, both potent nobles, whose broad domains had been grievously clipped by the re- sumption of the crown lands so scrupulously en- forced by the late government, and who looked forward to their speedy recovery under the careless rule of a young, inexperienced prince, like Philip.

But the most efficient of his partisans was Don Juan Manuel, Ferdinand's ambassador at the court