SPAIN, SPANISH JEWRY, PORTUGAL, IBERO-AMERICA 157

The state of Castile in the third quarter of the fourteenth cen-
tury was such as to favour the emergence of political verse. Never
had faction been so envenomed. The ballads of King Pedro the
Gruel's cycle (65-9) polarized this hatred by riveting on the king
responsibility for three murders, unpardonable in their atrocity.
Brief and anonymous, like editorial articles, they presumed to be
the expression of a common judgement; but, more efficient than
editorials, they were so framed that they became each reciter's own
possession. The king was condemned for the murder of his
brother, his cousin, and his wife. The first and second he did, in
fact, kill; the third probably died of plague, aggravated by neglect.
Yet the force of the ballads concerning Queen Blanche wTas such
that not only were they received into the Chancellor Lopez de
Ayala's history of the reign—complete with some assonances—
but they persuaded the very partisans of King Pedro. Their
reply was not to refute the baseless charge, but to insinuate a new
scandal: they insinuated (67)—

it is noised among the people,
whispered, not as something known—

that the brother and queen might have been lovers, and so deserved
their fate.

King Pedro came to the throne in 1350 as a child and without
friends. His brothers would, according to Castilian dynastic pre-
cedent, have provided centres for disaffection under any circum-
stances ; but their hostility was aggravated by their bastardy, which
was a slur to them and a reminder to Pedro of many years of neglect
in his father's court. But Pedro had grown up with a mind patho-
logically rigid. He would make no concession, resign no claim,
forgive no fault, nor thank any one for a service. His arrogant
pretensions disgusted his neighbours on all sides, alienated the
nobles one by one till he was left with but a handful of adherents,
and led on to those black crimes which made reconciliation with
his brother Enrique impossible. Paying no heed to his father's
example, he complicated his position by taking for paramour
Dona Maria de Padilla, a compassionate lady with greedy relatives.
For her he neglected his queen, Blanche de Valois, from the day of
her marriage. On her untimely death he married Dona Maria.
The marriage legitimated her children, and especially Constance,
who became later the claimant to the crown; but the children of