It is extremely likely that the story of this outrage, exaggerated as we have seen, would be one of the arguments employed by Torquemada when first he began to urge upon the attention of the Sovereigns the desirability of the expulsion of the Jews. He would cite it as a flagrant instance of the Jewish hatred of Christianity, which gave rise to his complaint and which he contended rendered a united Spain impossible as long as this accursed race continued to defile the land. Further, there can be very little doubt that it would serve to revive and to lend colour to the old stories of ritual murder practised by the Jews and provided for by one of the enactments in the “Partidas” code of Alfonso XI. The reluctance of the Sovereigns to lend an ear to any such arguments is abundantly apparent. Not Ferdinand in all his bigotry could be blind to the fact that the chief trades of the country were in the hands of the Israelites, and to the inevitable loss to Spanish commerce, then so flourishing, which must ensue on their banishment. Of their ability in matters of finance he had practical and beneficial experience, and the admirable equipment of his army in the present campaign against the Moors of Granada was entirely due to the arrangements he had made with Jewish contractors. Moreover, there was this war itself to engage the attention of the Sovereigns, and so it was not possible to lend at the moment more than an indifferent attention to the fierce pleadings of the Grand Inquisitor. Suddenly, however, in 1490 an event came to light, to throw into extraordinary prominence the practice of ritual murder of which the Jews were suspected, and to confirm and intensify the general belief in the stories that were current upon that subject. This was the crucifixion at La Guardia, in the province of La Mancha, of a boy of four years of age, known to history as “the Holy Child of La Guardia.” A stronger argument than this afforded him for the furtherance of his aims Torquemada could not have desired. And it is probably this circumstance that has led so many writers to advance the opinion that he fabricated the whole story and engineered the substantiation of a charge that so very opportunely placed an added weapon in his hands. Until some thirty years ago all our knowledge of the affair was derived from the rather vague “Testimonio” preserved in the sanctuary of the martyred child, and a little history of the “Santo Niño,” by Martinez Moreno, published in Madrid in 1786. This last--like Lope da Vega’s drama upon the same subject--was based upon a “Memoria” prepared by Damiano de Vegas of La Guardia in 1544, at a time when people were still living who remembered the incident, including the brother of a sacristan who was implicated in the affair.[161]