Another measure of no little importance in establishing the royal supremacy was the virtual incorporation in the crown of the masterships of the three great military Orders of Santiago, of Calatrava and of Alcántara. Under Henry IV a Master of Santiago had been able to keep the whole kingdom in confusion, and the wealth and power of the others, although not so great, were sufficient to render their chiefs the equals of the highest nobles. From Innocent VIII, in 1489, Ferdinand procured a brief granting him for life the administration of all three; and in her will Isabella bequeathed to him an annual income of ten millions of maravedís from their revenues.[96] As Ferdinand's death drew near, the Orders endeavored to be released from subjection, claiming that they could be governed only by their own members, but prudent care secured in time from Leo X the succession in the masterships to Charles V, who, after Leo's death, made haste to obtain from Adrian VI a bull which annexed them in perpetuity to the crown.[97] * * * * * It was impossible that a king so far-seeing and politic as Ferdinand and a queen so pious as Isabella, when reducing to order the chaos which they found in Castile, should neglect the interest of the faith on which, according to medieval belief, all social order was based. There were in fact burning religious questions which, to sensitive piety, might seem even more urgent than protection to life and property. To comprehend the intricacy of the situation will require a somewhat extended retrospect into the relations between the several races occupying the Peninsula. CHAPTER II. THE JEWS AND THE MOORS. The influences under which human character can be modified, for good or for evil, are abundantly illustrated in the conversion of the Spaniards from the most tolerant to the most intolerant nation in Europe. Apologists may seek to attribute the hatred felt for Jews and Moors and heretics, in the Spain of the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, to an inborn peculiarity of the race--a _cosa de España_ which must be accepted as a fact and requires no explanation,[98] but such facts have their explanation, and it is the business of the expositor of history to trace them to their causes. * * * * *