Directly she heard of his designs, she wrote to the Pope begging that the administration of the Order might be given into her husband’s hands. Then, having dispatched the messenger, she mounted her horse and set off at once from Valladolid, where she was staying. It was a three days’ journey to Ocaña, and when she reached that town it was already nightfall, and the rain was descending in torrents, but she refused to wait. Continuing her road to Uccles, she appeared before the astonished commanders and told them of the request she had sent to the Pope, begging them to suspend the election until she had received an answer. Don Alonso de Cardenas was not unnaturally sulky at this frustration of his ambitions; but on Isabel’s promise that she would faithfully consider his claims, he at length agreed to withdraw them temporarily, and the King in due course received the administration of the Order. Alonso de Cardenas now redoubled his efforts to prove his loyalty; and Ferdinand and Isabel at last consented to give him his long-coveted honour; but they took care to make a favour of what he had sought as a right. Each year he paid three millions of maravedis into the royal treasury to be used for the defence of the frontier against the Moors, and on his death his office lapsed finally to the Crown. During the course of the reign, Ferdinand also assumed the administration of the other two Orders of Calatrava and Alcantara, and thus found himself possessed not only of vastly increased revenues, but of a widely extended patronage. The absorption of the Military Orders marked the decisive victory in the sovereigns’ war against aristocratic pretensions; but the campaign had other battles no less serious, though they did not involve such important financial considerations. If it had been a difficult matter to impress the idea of justice on the country at large, it was equally arduous to persuade the leading families of Castile that they also stood below the law and were expected to obey it. They might surrender estates wrongly acquired, and even sink their ambitions before the claims of royalty, but to admit of arbitration in their private feuds, instead of dealing with them by the old-fashioned method of duel or assassination, was a tax on their self-control too great for Castilian pride.