life's work was seen in the success with which, against heavy odds, he lifted Spain from her obscurity in Europe to the foremost rank of Christian powers. Yet amid the numerous acts of cruelty and duplicity which tarnish the memory of Ferdinand as a statesman, examination of his correspondence with his officials of the Inquisition, especially with those employed in the odious business of confiscating the property of the unhappy victims, has revealed to me an unexpectedly favorable aspect of his character. While urging them to diligence and thoroughness, his instructions are invariably to decide all cases with rectitude and justice and to give no one cause of complaint. While insisting on the subordination of the people and the secular officials to the Holy Office, more than once we find him intervening to check arbitrary action and to correct abuses and, when cases of peculiar hardship arising from confiscations are brought to his notice, he frequently grants to widows and orphans a portion of the forfeited property. All this will come before us more fully hereafter and a single instance will suffice here to illustrate his kindly disposition to his subjects. In a letter of October 20, 1502, he recites that Domingo Muñoz of Calatayna has appealed to him for relief, representing that his little property was burdened with an annual _censal_ or ground-rent of two sols eight dineros--part of a larger one confiscated in the estate of Juan de Buendia, condemned for heresy--and he orders Juan Royz, his receiver of confiscations at Saragossa, to release the ground-rent and let Muñoz have his property unincumbered, giving as a reason that the latter is old and poor.[57] It shows Ferdinand's reputation among his subjects that such an appeal should be ventured, and the very triviality of the matter renders it the more impressive that a monarch, whose ceaseless personal activity was devoted to the largest affairs of that tumultuous world, should turn from the complicated treachery of European politics to consider and grant so humble a prayer. [Sidenote: _ISABELLA_]