In 1447, King John married again, a woman of very different temperament to his former wife. This lady, Joanna Enriquez, daughter of the Admiral of Castile, was as unscrupulous and greedy of power as her husband, and from the first adopted the rôle of “cruel stepmother.” The birth of her son, Ferdinand, in March, 1452, set fire to the slumbering jealousy she had conceived for Charles of Viana, and henceforth she devoted her talents and energy to removing him from her path. It is the penalty of public characters that their private life is not only exposed to the limelight, but its disagreements involve the interference of many who are not directly concerned. The hatred of Queen Joanna for her stepson not only convulsed Navarre and Aragon but dragged Castile also into the scandal. Throughout the long reign of John II. of Castile, the King of Navarre had on various pretexts interfered continually in his cousin’s affairs. On some occasions he had posed as the protector of sovereignty from the schemes of an ambitious favourite. On others he had been an open rebel, harrying the royal demesnes, or sulkily plotting revenge when, as the result of his rebellion, the estates he had inherited in Castile were taken from him. Through all these vicissitudes the thread of his policy ran clear,—to fish in waters that he himself had previously troubled. If his own haul proved empty, he could at least boast of spoiling the sport of others. In 1440, in a brief moment of reconciliation with Castile, he married his eldest daughter Blanche to Henry, then Prince of Asturias, and was thus provided with a plausible excuse for henceforth thwarting his cousin in his son-in-law’s interests. From no other point of view could the alliance be called a success. Henry proved as faithless a husband as he was disloyal a son; and, after thirteen years of fruitless union, the marriage was annulled on the grounds of impotence. Blanche returned to her own land; but her father found the man who had been her husband too useful an ally to resent her repudiation, and as soon as Henry became King he agreed to a treaty by which, in return for an annual income, he surrendered any rights he might have to estates or property in Castile. With such a settlement the political horizon seemed fair; but the Castilian royal favourite, Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, to whom a lion’s share of the said estates had fallen, mistrusted its serenity, believing that as soon as the King of Navarre succeeded his brother Alfonso V. on the throne of Aragon, he would revive claims so obviously to his advantage. The Marquis of Villena was deaf to the voice of patriotism or personal loyalty to his master, but he was more than ordinarily acute, where his own prosperity was concerned. He had garnered successfully the confiscated property, but “he lived” we are told “always with the fear of losing it, as those live who possess what does not belong to them.” [Illustration: JUAN PACHECO, MARQUIS OF VILLENA