There was hardly a private or public shortcoming of which Henry in his lifetime had not been accused. From the Sovereign Pontiff to frank, but humble subjects, remonstrances against his notoriously bad conduct had been offered to the wretched King; and at his death the accumulated evils, bred by a line of frivolous monarchs, had reached their climax. There was no justice, order or security for life or property, and the strong oppressed the weak without reproach or hindrance, the only semblance of law being maintained by the larger walled cities in their territories by means of their armed burgess brotherhood. But in the disturbances that had succeeded the birth of the Beltraneja the cities themselves were divided, and in many cases the factions within their own walls made them scenes of bloodshed and insecurity. Faith and religion, that had hitherto been the mainstay of the throne of Castile, had been trampled under foot and oppressed by a monarch whose constant companions and closest servitors had been of the hated brood of Mahomet. Nobles who, for themselves and their adherents, had wrung from the Kings nearly all they had to give, and threatened even to overwhelm the cities, were free from taxation, except the almost obsolete feudal aid in spears which the Sovereign had nominally a right to summon at need. Such men as Villena, or Alvaro de Luna in the previous reign, with more armed followers than the King and greater available wealth, were the real sovereigns of Castile in turbulent alternation, and the final disintegration of the realm into petty principalities appeared to be the natural and imminent outcome of the state of affairs that existed when Henry IV. breathed his last.