From this life of splendid humiliation they were nothing loth to escape into the country, where they passed their days in their ancestral castles, surrounded by princely domains, which embraced towns and villages within their circuit, and a population sometimes reaching to thirty thousand families. Here the proud lords lived in truly regal pomp. Their households were formed on that of the sovereign. They had their major-domos, their gentlemen of the bedchamber, their grand equerries, and other officers of rank. Their halls were filled with hidalgos and cavaliers, and a throng of inferior retainers. They were attended by body-guards of one or two hundred soldiers. Their dwellings were sumptuously furnished, and their sideboards loaded with plate from the silver quarries of the New World. Their chapels were magnificent. Their wives affected a royal state: they had their ladies of honour; and the page who served as cupbearer knelt while his mistress drank. Even knights of ancient blood, whom she addressed from her seat, did not refuse to bend the knee to her.[415] Amidst all this splendour, the Spanish grandees had no real power to correspond with it. They could no longer, as in the days of their fathers, engage in fends with one another; nor could they enjoy the privilege, so highly prized, of renouncing their allegiance and declaring war upon their sovereign. Their numerous vassals, instead of being gathered as of yore into a formidable military array, had sunk into the more humble rank of retainers, who served only to swell the idle pomp of their lord's establishment: they were no longer allowed to bear arms, except in the service of the crown; and after the Moriscoes had been reduced, the crown had no occasion for their services, unless in foreign war.[416] The measures by which Ferdinand and Isabella had broken the power of the aristocracy had been enforced with still greater rigour by Charles the Fifth, and were now carried out even more effectually by Philip the Second; for Philip had the advantage of being always in Spain, while Charles passed most of his time in other parts of his dominions. Thus ever present, Philip was as prompt to enforce the law against the highest noble as against the humblest of his subjects.