Charles sailed from Corunna on 20th May 1520. During the time he had been in Spain he, or rather his rude, greedy gang of Flemings, had driven Castilians to desperation. Jimenez, who had held the country for him in his absence in the face of the nobles and young Ferdinand, had been contemptuously dismissed—and probably poisoned on Charles’ arrival: young Ferdinand had been packed off to Flanders: Flemings had crowded all the great posts, to the exclusion of Spaniards: Joan was not presented before the Cortes as Queen jointly with her son, as she should have been; and now, to crown all, the Constitution of Castile had been violated by the insolent young foreigner who was to rule, not Spain alone, but half the world. He had held a Castilian Cortes outside the limits of Castile itself, and had coerced the deputies to vote him large sums of money to be spent away from Spain. The nobles were already seething with discontent, and now the people in the towns, who paid all the taxes, rose and hanged some of the deputies who had voted away their money for an absent king. Then, like a well-laid train, all Castile blazed into revolt. It was a great social, industrial and political struggle, which ended in the financial impotence of the Cortes of Castile, and the decadence of the Castilian nobility. The complicated details of the revolt cannot here be told, but only those points in which Joan was personally concerned. The governing committee of the revolutionary Comuneros met at Avila at the end of July 1520, headed by the gentry, and, to some extent, secretly encouraged by the great nobles. The Flemish Regent, Cardinal Adrian, was paralysed with dismay at the extent of the rising, and did nothing; whilst to the cry of ‘Long live the King and Queen: down with evil ministers,’ every Spanish heart responded. The manifesto published by the committee announced that the revolutionaries had risen in the interests of the imprisoned Queen Joan; and early in August a committee of the council of Castile, the supreme executive body of the Regent’s government, with its president, Bishop Rojas, presented themselves before Joan in her palace of Tordesillas, to beg her to sign decrees against those who were in arms. Joan was to all appearance calm, and replied to the demand for her signature, ‘It is now fifteen years that I have been kept from the government and badly treated; and this marquis here’ (pointing to Denia), ‘is he who has lied to me most.’ Denia, confused, replied: ‘It is true, my lady, that I have lied to you, but I have done so to overcome certain prejudices of yours. I may tell you now, that your father is dead, and I buried him.’ The Queen shed tears at this, and turning to Rojas, murmured between her sobs, ‘Bishop, believe me, all that I see and hear is like a dream.’ Rojas pressed his point. ‘My lady, I can assure you that your signature to these papers will work a greater miracle than Saint Francis; for, after God, in your