Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/415

387 DEATH AND CHARACTER OF FERDINAND. 387 Ferdinand breathed his last. ^^ The scene of this chapter XXIV. event was a small house belonging to the friars of Guadalupe. " In so wretched a tenement,'' ex- ^a^^ claims Martyr, in his usual moralizing vein, " did this lord of so many lands close his eyes upon the world." ^'^ Ferdinand was nearly sixty-four years old, of which forty-one had elapsed since he first swayed the sceptre of Castile, and thirty-seven since he held that of Aragon. A long reign ; long enough, indeed, to see most of those whom he had honored and trusted of his subjects gathered to the dust, and a succession of contemporary monarchs come and disappear like shadows." He died deeply la- mented by his native subjects, who entertained a partiality natural towards their own hereditary sove- reign. The event was regarded with very differ- ent feelings by the Castilian nobles, who calculated their gains on the transfer of the reins from such old and steady hands into those of a young and in- 35 Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., et prostrator hostium, Rex in rusti- bat. 1, qiiinc. 3, dial. 9. — Tiie cana obiit casa, et pauper contra queen was at Alcala de Henares, hominum opinionem obiit." Peter when she received tidings of her Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 566. — ' husband's illness. She posted with Brantome, (Vies des Hommes II- all possible despatch to Madriga- lustres, p. 72,) who speaks of Mad- lejo, but, although she reached it rigalejo as a " meschant village," on the 20th, she was not admitted, which he had seen, says Gomez, notwithstanding her 37 Since Ferdinand ascended the tears, to a private interview with throne, he had seen no less than the king, till the testament was ex- four kings of England, as many of ecuted, a few hours only before his France, and also of Naples, three death. De Rebus Gestis, fol. 147. of Portugal, two German empe- 3G Carbajal, Anales, MS., aiio rors, and half a dozen popes. As 1516. — L. Marineo, Cosas Mem- to his own subjects, scarcely one of orables, fol. 188. — Gomez, De all those familiar to the reader in Rebus Gestis, fol. 148. the course of our history now sur- " Tot regnorum dominus, tot- vived, except, indeed, the Nestor que palmarum cumulis ornatus, of his time, the octogenarian Xi- Christianoe religionis ampMcator menes.