[40] [This document has been well called Aragon’s Magna Charta, and it was secured in much the same manner. The Privilege was confirmed by the cortes of Saragossa in 1325, and torture of witnesses in criminal trials was abolished. In five years followed the Privilege of Union in which the king of Aragon was forced to authorise unions of his subjects to make war upon the sovereign in case of a denial of justice, or any attempt to act independently of the justiciar. We have to look to Poland for a like constitutional defiance of royalty.] [41] [“The loss of the principal nobles of the union at Epila was a death-blow to the feudal cause in Aragon.”[d]] [42] St. Thecla, patroness of the church of Tarragona, appeared to him, upbraided him with impiety, and gave him so good a box on the ear, or smack in the face, that he never recovered from it. “_Está muy recibido que fue contigado de la mano de Dios, y se le aparecio en vision Santa Tecla, la qual le hirio de una palmada en el rostro, y que este fue la ocasion de su dolencia._”--_Zurita._[e] Who would expect Ferreras,[f] a writer of the eighteenth century, to believe such a relation? [43] [This does not mean “rich men,” as would seem at first sight; but _rico_ here is related to the German word _Reich_, _i.e._, kingdom.] [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER V. HENRY OF TRASTAMARA AND ISABELLA OF CASTILE [Sidenote: [1369-1479 A.D.]] All Castile breathed more freely at the news of the death of Pedro the Cruel, and acknowledging Henry of Trastamara as king, did him homage. By a rule as judicious and just as it was vigorous he endeavoured to obliterate the dark blots which stained his accession. Don Pedro’s race vanished from Castilian soil. On the death of his mistress Maria de Padilla shortly after the murder of the unhappy Blanche, Pedro had tried every means to secure the succession for her children. He brought sworn witnesses to testify that he had been joined with Padilla in lawful wedlock, and induced the estates to confer the first title to the throne upon her son Alfonso, and, in case of his death without issue, upon her three daughters, Beatrice, Isabella, and Constanza, in order of seniority. Alfonso, however, died the same year, and Beatrice followed soon after the frustration of her projected marriage with the heir of Aragon; while the two youngest, whom their father had taken with him when he fled to Guiennes, were detained as hostages by the Black Prince, who sent them to England, where they were married to two sons of Edward III (Constanza to John of Lancaster and Isabella to Edmund of York), and thus transmitted to the English dynasty their claims to the heritage of Castile. [Sidenote: [1369-1373 A.D.]]