The fifth and last child of Ferdinand and Isabella, Catalina, was born in 1485. She married, when scarcely sixteen, Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VII., but was left a widow within a year. By special dispensation from the Pope she married her brother-in-law in 1509, and is better known in history as Catharine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII., of England, mother of Mary I., or "bloody Mary." Knowing her Spanish parentage, we can better understand why she was such an ardent Roman Catholic. Strange that one so loyal to the forms of her religion should have been the innocent cause of the English Reformation! The injured queen, divorced, remained in England, a religious recluse, until her death in 1536. This brief outline of family life, with its joys, disappointments, and heart-breaking sorrows, brings into clearer relief the mental strength and moral courage of Isabella, who, while carrying this burden on her heart never relaxed for a moment her vigilant, vigorous rule over a mighty empire; and this brings us at last to the GREAT HISTORIC QUEEN. From the very beginning of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard of the cross until it was everywhere victorious over the crescent," the "Expulsion of the Moors" had been the hereditary appanage of the crown of Castile and Leon, the first fruits of the reconquest. The crown was heavy and the burden was great that descended to Isabella in 1474, for although she came to the throne through Gothic ancestry and in conformity with Gothic law, her father's heir and the chosen of the people, yet the nation had already poured out its blood in defence of her "succession" and the war of her "accession" was pending. No wonder that Isabella never forgot that it was through the people and for the people, and in defence of the cross, that she wore the crown and sat upon the throne of Leon and Castile. During the preceding reigns the laws of the country had been so constantly defied that they had become of no effect. The one law of barbarism seemed the only law that governed, "He can take who has the power, And he may keep who can."