[36] The Mendoza came originally from the province of Alava and incorporated themselves into Castilian society during the reign of Alfonso XI (1312-1350).⁽¹⁾ Alava -- a mountainous region bounded by Castile, Navarre, and Aragon -- is one of the Basque provinces incorporated into the Castilian monarchy with fueros (royal charters) during the reign of Alfonso XI.

Before the Mendoza moved to Castile, Alava had been a battleground for generations in the feuds of the local seigneurial families. By 1332, the Mendoza had been feuding with the Guevara clan for at least a century; and other Alavese clans that moved to Castile in the fourteenth century -- including the Ayala, the Velasco, and the Orozco -- had all shed blood in these feuds and suffered a high death toll in incidents ranging from night ambushes to pitched battles in full armor.

Once the Alavese moved to Castile, they ended their feuds, incorporated themselves into the Castilian fighting force, and climbed the ladder of rewards available to those who gave military service to the king.

By virtue of being caballeros, the Alavese who moved to Castile in the fourteenth century were hidalgos (gentry). All members of the hidalgo class -- caballero or letrado -- shared a common responsibility for the res publica: they were the public administrators of Castile. The caballeros' first responsibility was to recruit, maintain, provision, and command an army that could be put at the disposal of the crown in wartime. The caballeros provided these armies to the crown not because of feudal obligation but as military entrepreneurs. The top ranks of the caballeros became vasallos del rey while the lower ranks served in the armies of the vasallos or in the king's guard. According to the thirteenth-century definition of Alfonso X el Sabio, vasallos del rey were those [37] who received horses, money, or lands in return for outstanding military service.⁽²⁾ In practice, the king usually rewarded a vasallo del rey after each occasion on which he presented himself and his army to the king prepared for war. In addition to rewards presented in the form listed by Alfonso X, the crown assigned caballeros to posts in the royal administration, with their respective incomes and perquisites. The caballeros therefore held the overwhelming majority of royal administrative posts: they were the admirals of the fleets; adelantados (military governors)⁽³⁾ and notarios mayores (chief notaries) of the provinces; corregidores (royal administrators) of the cities; and alcaides (military governors) of the royal fortresses, including both the walls, towers, and bridges of the cities and the royal castles and fortified towers of the countryside. Caballeros also received positions in three of the corporate jurisdictions -- the municipalities, the Mesta, and the military orders. By right, hidalgos held one-half the regimientos (seats with full voting rights) in the city councils; and the two procuradores each city sent to the Cortes had to be hidalgos. Caballeros held the highest offices in the Mesta and exercised a monopoly on the encomiendas (commanderies) of the military orders. Caballeros also had the right to possess señorío (jurisdiction), which they acquired either by purchase or through royal merced (gift) and which usually coincided with the lands they owned. Each of these officials appointed his own client caballeros as tenientes (administrators) of the offices he held in absentia, as holders of the subordinate offices under his patronage, and as gobernadores of his seigneurial estates. Thus caballeros filled the royal, corporate, and seigneurial administrations from top to bottom, from the national to the local level, in city and countryside. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, only the jurisdictions of the universities, the church, and the Audiencia remained outside the grasp of the caballeros.

In the offices they held, the caballeros exercised judicial, executive, legislative, and military functions; for the Spanish concept of the separation of powers tended to distribute power among various corporate groups and allow them to exercise all the functions of government rather than to distribute the functions themselves. Thus the caballeros were judges of the first instance in criminal cases within the jurisdictions of their public offices and judges of the first and second instance in criminal and civil cases within their own señoríos. Because Castilian practice judged criminal and civil cases according to custom through a process of deposition and arbitration, a university education in Roman law was not necessary for a caballero properly to fulfill the judicial functions of his office. Thus, when the Mendoza and other caballero families [38] from Alava moved to Castile, they became participants in the public life of the kingdom through a range of activities impossible in a more feudalized or more centralized monarchy.

The first Mendoza to appear in the service of Castile was Gonzalo Yáñez de Mendoza. He fought against the Muslims at the battle of Algeciras -- along with Chaucer's parfit gentil knyght -- served as montero mayor (chief huntsman) to Alfonso XI, moved to the Castilian province of Guadalajara, and settled in the city of Guadalajara where he became a regidor (city councilman) after marrying a sister of Iñigo López de Orozco. An Alavese, Orozco had received the office of alcalde entregador (chief justice) of the Mesta in reward for his military services to the king. He was a regidor of the city of Guadalajara and one of the richest men of the province. Even in the career of this very early Mendoza some of the characteristic patterns of the family history can be seen: Gonzalo Yáñez was by profession a caballero, fought in battle against the Muslims, received royal office as a reward, became a regidor of the city in which he lived, and married into a propertied and influential family.

Gonzalo's son, Pedro González de Mendoza (d. 1385), was particularly adept at choosing the winning side at a propitious moment; and under his leadership, the Mendoza became established as one of the rich and powerful families in fourteenth-century Castile. Pedro González accomplished this by abandoning king Pedro in 1366 and supporting the illegitimate pretender to the throne, Enrique de Trastámara. The Trastámara revolt had its roots in the private life of Alfonso XI..⁽⁴⁾ When Alfonso died of the plague which had devastated his army at the siege of Gibraltar (1350), he left only one legitimate son -- the sixteen-year-old Pedro who became king of Castile. But Alfonso also left seven illegitimate children by his mistress, Leonor de Guzmán. With the cooperation of Pedro's principal counselor, Juan Alfonso de Alburquerque, the widowed queen María ordered the murder of her hated rival, Leonor de Guzmán; and this murder, in 1351, set the pattern for Pedro's reign. Leonor's sons and grandsons -- known as the epígonos -- began a career of vengeance for her murder. One of the oldest of the epígonos -- Enrique, count of Trastámara -- became the focal point of the dissatisfied parties in Castile, and Pedro counterattacked by summarily executing any vasallo del rey he suspected of allying with the epígonos. In his twenty years as king (1350-1369), Pedro murdered more than sixty vasallos del rey, some of them in such a cruel way that he has been given the epithet Pedro the Cruel. Although the epígonos enjoyed the support of a few great families -- especially the Manrique, [39] la Vega, Mexía, and Albornoz -- they were unable to match Pedro's superior forces. Fearing for their own lives, they spent much of their time in exile in France or Aragon, especially after Pedro killed Enrique de Trastámara's twin, Fadrique, master of the Order of Santiago (1358).

During the first sixteen years of Pedro's violent reign, Pedro González de Mendoza and his uncle, Iñigo López de Orozco, supported Pedro, receiving privileges and income in return for military service.⁽⁵⁾ This pattern was broken in 1366, when Enrique de Trastámara raised an army of Castilian, Aragonese, and French knights, invaded northern Castile, and marched on Burgos, site of Pedro's campaign headquarters. Although Pedro's vasallos del rey, including the Alavese, had mobilized for the campaign and wanted to make their stand there, Pedro abandoned Burgos to Enrique, who entered the city and proclaimed himself king. In the face of Pedro's desertion, Mendoza, Orozco, and the other Alavese caballeros -- probably acting under the leadership of Fernán Pérez de Ayala -- refused to follow Pedro. Ayala's son, Pedro López de Ayala, joined Enrique and became his alférez mayor de la banda -- the same office he had held under Pedro. Mendoza and Orozco, speaking for the city of Guadalajara, proclaimed their allegiance to Enrique, promptly receiving extensive lands and privileges from him and incurring Pedro's undying hatred. Enrique also gave Mendoza two strategic towns north of Madrid, Hita and Buitrago. Because these fortified towns remained loyal to Pedro, Mendoza had to conquer them in order to gain his war prizes.⁽⁶⁾ Mendoza became mayordomo mayor to Enrique's son, and Orozco became a regular member of Enrique's council.

While Enrique and his supporters triumphantly marched south through Toledo, Pedro took ship in Seville and fled to Bayonne, where he formed an alliance with the English crown prince -- Edward, the Black Prince. The Trastámara civil war now became part of the Hundred Years' War, France taking the side of Enrique and England supporting Pedro.⁽⁷⁾ The Black Prince regarded Pedro's cause as just -- and probably profitable -- and invaded Castile by way of Alava. Enrique, after achieving some success in small skirmishes against this much larger, more experienced, and more modern army, decided to engage in full-scale battle. Although the resulting battle of Nájera (3 April 1367) was a disaster for the Enriquistas, the events immediately following it precipitated the formation of the Mendoza family as a political party and became the inspiration for the Renaissance in Castile.

Enrique escaped to France, while Orozco, Mendoza, Pedro López de Ayala, Pedro Manrique, Pedro Fernández de Velasco, and most of the [40] other Enriquista captains were taken prisoner. Pedro murdered Orozco in cold blood after he surrendered on the battlefield, and only the intervention of the Black Prince saved the other Enriquista captains from the same fate. Disgusted with their ally's behavior, the English returned to more pressing affairs in France, assured of a profit from their Spanish venture when they received the ransoms of the Trastámara captains. The prisoners soon paid up, Enrique returned to Castile with French and Aragonese reinforcements, and in the next two years the Enriquistas defeated Pedro's armies and isolated him from outside assistance. Enrique murdered Pedro in 1369 and consolidated his power in the peninsula through the help of the Mendoza and other caballeros, whom he rewarded for their services. Enrique's mercedes, or rewards, formed the core of the Mendoza patrimony; and in the fifteenth century, they were to become the basis for the greatest fortune in Trastámara Castile.⁽⁸⁾ The Mendoza fortune was thus built upon their adherence to the Trastámara cause at a critical moment. As military entrepreneurs, they offered their services to the most profitable cause and in so doing acted as a political party. As their fortune and power grew during the next century, the mere fact of their choosing one side over another became enough to tip the balance in favor of the side they chose.

The events at Nájera, more than any other single event, shaped Trastámara society and Mendoza politics throughout the fifteenth century. Mendoza's shift from Pedro to Enrique in 1366 had been a shrewd and hard-headed move to the winning side. Modern historians of the Mendoza claim that Pedro González de Mendoza deserted Pedro because he was disgusted with the king's murderous disregard for justice, but this claim does not explain why Mendoza served Pedro loyally and profitably for fifteen years after the king committed his first murder -- that of Garcilaso de la Vega -- in 1351. Mendoza deserted Pedro only after the king's blundering resulted in the loss of Burgos and it appeared that he would not be able to win the war. A rather tenuous adherence to Enrique's cause was converted into fervent commitment at Nájera when Mendoza's uncle, Iñigo López de Orozco, was catapulted into the select company of Enriquista martyrs. From that time on, Mendoza actively supported the Trastámara dynasty and its politics and allied himself with other Enriquistas who had undergone the same sort of conversion at Nájera. Generations of Mendoza sons would bear the name Iñigo López.

Soon after the disaster at Nájera, the freed captives began to form a series of marriage alliances with one another and with the epígonos. The leaders of the Trastámara revolution thus sealed their political [41] alliances through marriage ties. The extended family that grew out of the Nájera group, formed by a unique common historical experience, became a closed corporation within the Castilian aristocracy. During thee fifteenth century, the Nájera prisoners and their descendants would marry into other Castilian families and ally themselves with a variety of political forces within and without the kingdom. But throughout the Trastámara period, the descendants of the Nájera prisoners remained set apart from other members of the aristocracy by their common ancestry, inextricably bound up with the experience at Nájera and a common interpretation of its political implications.

In supporting Enrique's rebellion, the captives at Nájera committed themselves to a king who acted as if the monarch had a contractual relationship with his subjects and as if services not included in the subject's contractual obligations had to be rewarded in material ways. In his first grant of lands to Pedro González de Mendoza,⁽⁹⁾ Enrique argued that loyalty to one's lord must be maintained as zealously as one's eyesight, for loyalty was the cement which bound men together into society, without which no one could survive alone. But he also claimed that kings and lords are obligated by the loyalty of their subjects to reward them and increase their fortunes. The very origins of their dynasty bound the Trastámara kings to this contractual relationship with the Nájera prisoners and their descendants. The natural consequences of this fact for the Mendoza were enormous. From the time Pedro González de Mendoza committed himself to the Enriquista cause at Nájera, the Mendoza became the pillars of the Trastámara dynasty. They were also the prime beneficiaries of the Trastámara rewards.

Before Nájera, Pedro González de Mendoza had formed a marriage alliance with the Pechas, a Guadalajara family prominent in the Castilian government. His wife died without issue; and after Nájera Mendoza married again, this time to a woman from Toledo, a daughter of Fernán Pérez de Ayala -- a prisoner at Nájera and leader of the Alavese clans in Castile. The eldest son of this second marriage married an illegitimate daughter of Enrique II, and the youngest son married a close relative of Enrique's queen. Mendoza's eldest daughter, Juana, married Diego Gómez Manrique, a brother of Pedro Manrique, one of the first supporters of Enrique's revolt. Manrique was also a relative of the queen and a prisoner at Nájera. The other daughters married men less wealthy and powerful but equally Enriquista in their politics. Among his in-laws, Pedro González de Mendoza could count a niece and a nephew of the king and queen, the king's daughter, and five men who had died or been taken prisoner at Nájera. With these marriages, [42] Mendoza built a network of Enriquista connections that bound his descendants to the party that had triumphed in the civil war and to the prisoners at Nájera.

The most important alliance Pedro González de Mendoza formed after Nájera was his marriage to Elvira de Ayala. The Ayala had been among the first of the Alavese clans to immigrate to Castile; and by the time of the revolt, they had already achieved a high social status and a claim to leadership. The Mendoza's alliance with this aggressive and upwardly mobile Ayala clan, rather than their alliance with the royal family, proved decisive; for apart from the fact that a number of the Ayala were exceptionally shrewd and successful political figures, the Trastámara nobility became involved in a series of internecine feuds that led to their decline in influence in the generation after Nájera.⁽¹⁰⁾ Most important of all, the Ayala -- Fernán Pérez and his son, Pedro López -- would provide the intellectual leadership of the Nájera group and of the Renaissance in Castile.

This extended family spawned by the events at Nájera became the most powerful political group in Castile and held the highest political and military offices of the kingdom. Pedro González de Mendoza himself was mayordomo mayor to Juan I (13379-1390); and his brother-in-law, Pedro López de Ayala, became canciller mayor of Castile. Both of them were del consejo del rey. One of Mendoza's sons-in-law, Diego Gómez Manrique, was adelantado mayor of Castile; another, Díaz Sánchez de Benavides, was caudillo mayor (military governor) of the diocese of Jaén. Pedro González de Mendoza and his in-laws thus held the two highest political offices of the kingdom and two of the territorial military commands.

This profitable policy of active military and political support of the new dynasty was continued by Mendoza's eldest son, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, admiral of Castile. The admiral's public life was a glorious succession of victories, but his private blunders cost the Mendoza their alliance with the Ayala clan. As admiral of Castile, he rendered valuable military services in the wars against Portugal, defeating Portuguese fleets in three separate naval engagements. In the power struggle during the minority of Enrique III (1390-1406), he supported the winning side by allying himself with his uncles, Pedro López de Ayala and Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, thus becoming del consejo del rey at a time when his uncle, Pedro López de Ayala, was also del consejo del rey and canciller mayor. Sometime before 1395, the admiral received the patronage of the city offices of Guadalajara as a merced, and since he had earlier received the right for himself and his descendants to name the city's [43] procuradores to Cortes, the Mendoza henceforth were able to dominate the principal city in the province of Guadalajara.⁽¹¹⁾ When his career was cut short by death in 1404, the admiral was reputed to be the richest man in Castile.⁽¹²⁾ He had inherited a large fortune from his father and added large tracts of land to the Mendoza estates. He received estates as mercedes from both Juan I and Enrique III that increased his holdings in the provinces of Guadalajara and Madrid.⁽¹³⁾ He also extended the family's interests into Asturias through his second marriage, to Leonor de la Vega, in 1387. As the sole heiress of the Vega fortune, Leonor de la Vega brought extensive seigneurial lands in Asturias into the Mendoza estate, including sheep-grazing lands, salt mines, and seaports, sources of an important part of the Mendoza income in a period of extensive wool trade between Castile and Flanders.⁽¹⁴⁾

Leonor de le Vega also brought to the Mendoza a proud and ancient lineage. In contrast to that of the newly arrived Mendoza, the Vega family's high social status was venerable by Castilian standards.⁽¹⁵⁾ Since the Vega also had a talent for getting themselves killed in colorful circumstances while in the service of God and king, the Vega name brought with it a heavy accretion of fame and anecdote. Leonor's great grandfather, Garcilaso de la Vega (d. 1326), had been canciller mayor, adelantado mayor of Castile, and justicia mayor of the king's household under Alfonso XI. While organizing the king's defenses against the rebellion of don Juan Manuel, he was assassinated in Soria during mass. Her grandfather, Garcilaso de la Vega (d. 1351), also adelantado mayor of Castile and justicia mayor of the king's household under Alfonso XI, had been the first murder victim of Pedro the Cruel. Her father, Garcilaso de la Vega, died in the battle of Nájera fighting for Enrique.

This marriage was also a renewal of the alliance system which the Mendoza had formed with the Enriquista aristocracy, involving as it did the family which had suffered most at the hands of Pedro the Cruel and been among the first supporters of the Trastámara cause. These connections were further strengthened by the second marriage of the admiral's eldest sister, Juana, to Alfonso Enríquez, a nephew of Enrique II. Enríquez succeeded Mendoza in the office of admiral of Castile, and this office became hereditary in the Enríquez family -- a powerful connection the Mendoza used to good advantage throughout the fifteenth century, long before their cousin, Fernando the Catholic, a great grandson of Juana and Alfonso, became king.

Admiral Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and his father transformed the Mendoza from a provincial military family into a wealthy, aristocratic dynasty that dominated an entire city and province, held the highest [44] national offices, and enjoyed many family ties to a powerful network of prestigious families, including the royal family itself. All of this was accomplished through their active participation in national affairs, including military service, personal influence at court, or high national office.

The admiral had another, even greater claim to the reverence accorded him by his descendants: he was the father of the greatest cavalier of the fifteenth century, Iñigo López de Mendoza, first marquis of Santillana (1398-1458). Santillana's reputation in Spanish history rests on his great literary achievements. In the history of the Mendoza, his reputation also rests on his great political achievement -- the recuperation and preservation of the Mendoza fortune during a period of internal and external attacks on the Enriquista political order.

Before the admiral died in 1404, he tried to assure the inheritance of his small children by naming two of his powerful relatives as their tutors: his uncles, Pedro López de Ayala, canciller mayor of Castile, and Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, prestamero mayor (military governor) of Vizcaya. This effort was doomed to fail because of the admiral's own pecadillos. Although his decision to marry Leonor de la Vega was his own -- made after his father died in the battle of Aljubarrota (1385) -- it appears that the couple were at odds from the beginning. The admiral was away when their first son was born, and Leonor had the child baptized Garcilaso in honor of her glorious ancestors. In an early will, the admiral stipulated that the boy's name should be changed to Juan Hurtado de Mendoza in honor of the Mendoza's glorious ancestors.⁽¹⁶⁾

Although the couple had several children, they maintained separate households. Leonor lived in Carrión with her mother, and the admiral in the Mendoza family residence in Guadalajara -- with his cousin, Mencía de Ayala. We do not know what Mencia's father, the canciller mayor, thought about his daughter's living arrangement; but it is clear from the documents that the admiral and Mencía were sharing bed as well as board. The original twist to this otherwise ordinary story lies in the fact that the admiral named Mencía as one of the executors of his will. The widowed Leonor de la Vega was thus left at the mercy of a woman she must have despised, and the two bereaved ladies fought so bitterly over the terms of the will that predatory relatives -- especially the Manrique -- found it convenient to usurp the far-flung estates of the Mendoza inheritance.

After the old canciller mayor died in 1407, Leonor broke off all relations with the Ayala family; and the estrangement between the Mendoza and Ayala lasted until Santillana became an adult, to the disadvantage of [45] both families. To compensate for the loss of Ayala support, Leonor sought another alliance to protect her children's estate: in 1408, she and Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa, master of Santiago, signed a marriage contract for their children. Although Leonor was abandoning her ties with the Ayala, she continued the Mendoza's policy of marriage to the Nájera group, for Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa's wife was a daughter of the martyred Iñigo López de Orozco. But the master of Santiago died in 1409, and the double marriage did not provide the security Leonor had sought. The one remaining tutor, Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, plunged into the political conflicts of the minority of Juan II, leaving the admiral's widow without help and with limited success in defending her children's inheritance against the claims of their Manrique relatives.⁽¹⁷⁾ In the years before he was old enough to take an active part in politics, Santillana's estate was eroded so seriously that it took him a lifetime of strenuous political and legal activity to restore it.

Modern historians, influenced by Isabelline propaganda and rooted in the constitutional history of earlier centuries, consistently interpret the first hundred years of Trastámara rule -- especially the years of Santillana's political activity -- as a struggle between monarch and nobility.⁽¹⁸⁾ Neither the chronicles nor the other documents of the period support this view, and the Mendoza and their allies certainly did not see the political choices of their day in such simplistic terms. Instead, they saw themselves bound to the illegitimate Trastámara dynasty by their own success in overthrowing the legitimate monarch. Although the Mendoza were loyal to the dynasty as an ideal, the day-to-day behavior and character of the royal family made it difficult for even the most devoted subjects to figure out what course of action would be loyal. To begin with, the Trastámara were a short-lived lot: the Trastámara monarchs before Fernando and Isabel died at an average age of thirty-eight; of all six Trastámara monarchs in Castile, only two were survived by more than one legitimate son. The early Trastámara were mostly minors ruled by squabbling regents or weak characters controlled by their favorites. Furthermore, the Trastámara dynasty was split in 1412 when Juan I's younger son, Fernando de Antequera, was elected king of Aragon. As regent for his nephew, Juan II, Fernando had provided each of his sons with a rich estate. The eldest, Alfonso, was to inherit his father's vast holdings in Castile. The second, Juan, received the lordship of some of the richest cities in Castile (including Medina del Campo), became duke of Peñafiel, and married the heiress to the crown of Navarre. The third son, Enrique, not only became master of Santiago in 1409 but also received a number of rich estates, including Alburquerque, Ledesma, [46] Salvatierra, and Miranda. The fourth son, Sancho, became master of Alcántara in 1409 -- at the age of eight. When Fernando was elected king of Aragon, it might have been expected that he and his sons -- now the infantes of Aragon -- would give up their Castilian possessions for lands in Aragon. Instead, they held on to them; and when Castile tried to retrieve some of this wealth after Fernando's death in 1416, the infantes used Aragon as a refuge and staging ground for attacks on Castile -- the principal cause of political instability there during the first half of the fifteenth century.

The Mendoza thus did not enjoy the luxury of a straightforward choice between monarch and nobility. During most of the fifteenth century, they had to choose between a weak Trastámara king in Castile and a dynamic Trastámara king in Aragon -- between the Castilian king's corrupt favorite and the Aragonese king's avaricious sons. This pattern of conflict within the royal family is of course one of the political constants of medieval Castilian history: Alfonso X el Sabio was attacked and deposed in all but name by his son, Sancho; Alfonso XI was attacked, betrayed, and deserted by his uncle, don Juan Manuel; Pedro was attacked, defeated, and killed by his half-brother, Enrique de Trastámara; Juan I had to imprison and exile both a cousin and a half-brother for sedition; Juan II spent the first forty years of his reign defending his kingdom from the attacks of his cousins, the infantes of Aragon; Enrique IV was deposed in absentia and burned in effigy by the supporters of his half-brother, Alfonso; and Isabel the Catholic usurped the Castilian throne from her niece, Juana de Castilla. The caballeros shifted their support from the king to his relatives and back whenever they could see an advantage in following one side or the other. Inasmuch as these struggles continued without a decisive victory for most of the century, about one-half of the caballeros must have supported the crown at all times, although the membership in each party was in constant flux. There was no "noble party" any more than there was a "royal party," and the picture we are usually given of a class conflict between monarchy and nobility is a cliché that persists despite all evidence to the contrary.

For Santillana, as head of the Mendoza family, the protracted conflict between Juan II and his cousins presented a painful moral dilemma: this was a conflict not only between a king and his relatives but between two equally legitimate branches of the Trastámara -- to whose dynasty the Mendoza owed all their worldly success and were intensely loyal. Fernando de Antequera was a hero to his contemporaries because he did not follow the usual pattern of royal relatives: he did not try to usurp the throne from his ailing brother Enrique III, or from his infant nephew, [47] Juan II. While Fernando was regent, he did plunder the royal patrimony to enrich his children; but this was considered almost a virtue compared to the typical deeds of royal relatives.

The Mendoza and other Enriquista families almost idolized Fernando de Antequera while he was regent in Castile, and his election as king of Aragon only increased their admiration and devotion.⁽¹⁹⁾ This confusion loyalties continued after 1420. While the Castilian king, Juan II, repeatedly failed to perform his royal functions and turned his responsilities over to his favorite, don Alvaro de Luna, the Aragonese king, Alfonso V (1416-1458), embarked on his successful conquest of Naples -- just the sort of enterprise that the caballeros admired most in a ruler. The Mendoza's loyalty to king Juan II was slight compared to their attraction to the more vigorous Aragonese Trastámara. The tension caused by this conflict of loyalties gradually eased as the leadership of the Aragonese Trastámara passed, first from Fernando de Antequera (whom the Mendoza idolized), to Alfonso (who abandoned the peninsula to pursue his Neapolitan wars), to the infante Enrique (whom the Mendoza admired with some reservations), to the infante Juan, the future Juan II of Aragon (whom they disliked). The death of the infante Enrique in 1447 also changed the legality of the infante Juan's position. Enrique had fought Juan II of Castile largely to retain his Castilian possessions as master of Santiago and count of Alburquerque. Although these possessions gave him a dangerously powerful politicalbase in Castile, the legality of his claim was clear. When the infante Juan claimed that as Enrique's heir he should inherit these nonheritable possessions, the Mendoza supported Juan II of Castle against him. This reversal, however, raised another conflict for the Mendoza -- it brought them into alliance with don Alvaro de Luna, favorite of Juan II of Castile. The Mendoza occasionally supported the increase of don Alvaro's powers as a counterweight to the excessive power of the infantes, but increasingly the Mendoza came to resent don Alvaro for usurping some of the king's powers and using them to enrich the Manrique at the expense of the Mendoza. The king's execution of don Alvaro eliminated this conflict, but the major source of tension for the Mendoza -- the division of the Trastámara dynasty -- was not resolved until the marriage of Fernando and Isabel in 1469.

In order to gain the military resources and influence at court necessary to regain his fortune in this situation, Santillana practiced a politics of necessity and opportunism -- signing agreements and then breaking them, changing his support from one leader to another, withholding military service until his demands were met, defying the king's will by barricading [48] himself in the fortresses at Hita and Buitrago and later residing at the royal court to protect his own interests. The first political action in which Santillana participated was the "incident at Tordesillas" (1420) when fighting against his tutor, Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, he join the forces of the infante Enrique in an attempt to kidnap the young king Juan II. In this unsuccessful action, Santillana worked in alliance with his cousins: Fernán Pérez de Guzmán; Fernán Alvarez de Toledo, future count of Alba; and Pedro Fernández de Velasco, future constable of Castile.⁽²⁰⁾ Most historians of the Mendoza are embarrassed by this act of disloyalty and try to dismiss it as a "pecadillo of youth,"⁽²¹⁾ but it one of the most important events in the history of the Mendoza -- for the alliance of Santillana, Guzmán, Alba, and Velasco, frequently renewed, constituted one of the few stable political blocs of the fifteenth century.

From the incident at Tordesillas until 1427, Santillana and his allies opposed the infantes of Aragon and encouraged the career of don Alvaro de Luna in order to strengthen the monarchy against them. In 1428, don Alvaro rewarded Santillana by naming him del consejo del rey at the age of thirty. Don Alvaro later became hostile toward Santillana and his allies; and in 1431 he persuaded the king to imprison Alba, Velasco, Santillana, and Guzmán on charges of treason. Santillana escaped arrest and fortified himself in his fortress at Hita until his cousins were released eight months later.

During the next eight years, 1431 to 1439, the infantes of Aragon offered no threat to Juan II of Castile -- they were busy fighting with one another and assisting Alfonso in his conquest of Naples. Don Alvaro took advantage of the peace to solidify his position, granting lands and titles to a number of caballeros in order to gain their support and in the process creating the first hereditary nobility in Castilian history. Although the Mendoza were not attracted by his policy, several of their allies and relatives benefited from it -- Fernán Alvarez de Toledo, for example, who became count of Alba in 1438, received the first hereditary title of nobility in Castile and the first title outside the royal patrimony.

Blaming don Alvaro for the success of the Manrique in gaining possession of his Vega lands in Asturias, Santillana turned against don Alvaro. As early as 1440, Santillana, Velasco, and don Alfonso de Cartagena, bishop of Burgos, discussed ways of eliminating don Alvaro's influence at court; but no action resulted from these conversations. In 1441, the infantes of Aragon again rebelled against Juan II, claiming the Castilian crown prince as the head of their party. Don Alvaro responded with an attempt to buy the prince back by persuading Juan II to give him the [49] city of Guadalajara. When don Alvaro's agents arrived in Guadalajara to take possession in the name of the prince, however, Santillana retreated to Buitrago and declared open war on don Alvaro. The king quickly relented and exiled don Alvaro from the court, and Santillana went to the court to represent himself and his allies. Juan's anger against don Alvaro was short-lived, however; and when the favorite returned to the court, Santillana retreated to his fortress at Buitrago. From that time on, Santillana refused to perform military service for the king unless he first received land or titles.⁽²²⁾

When Juan II was taken prisoner by the infante Juan (now de facto king of Navarre) in 1443, Santillana refused to fight for the king until his ownership of the Vega lands was confirmed. The next year, Navarre threatened another invasion; and when Manrique's allies organized a rebellion in support of Navarre, Santillana helped organize the Castilian defense and defeat the rebels. In anticipation of this service, he was given the hereditary titles marquis of Santillana and count of Real de Manzanares. Through these and other military services, Santillana and his allies increased their fortunes, but they also increased the suspicions and hostility of don Alvaro.

In 1449, don Alvaro -- in alliance with the queen's favorite, Juan Pacheco -- persuaded the king to imprison five nobles, including Alba. On 26 July 1449, Santillana joined in a "mutual assistance alliance against all enemies except the king." This alliance did not result in military action, and a truce seems to have prevailed until well into 1453. In that year, when the alliance of 1449 was invoked by one of the allies, Santillana sent one of his knights (the famous chronicler, Diego de Valera) to pledge his assistance and his eldest son to help capture don Alvaro.

On the order of the king, don Alvaro was beheaded by the royal guards. This execution shocked fifteenth-century society, first because the king had killed the man who had been his closest friend since childhood and second because for the first time since the reign of Pedro the Cruel a Castilian king had executed a vasallo del rey. The Mendoza's resistance to don Alvaro de Luna had pushed the king into an uncharacteristic act that conjured up all the violence of the pre-Trastámara kings, and the rest of his reign was characterized by a sort of stunned immobility on the part of both king and aristocracy. Juan II still refused Santillana's demand that Alba be released, but he tried to placate Santillana by naming one of his sons, Pedro González de Mendoza, bishop of Calahorra. Alba was finally released a few months later when Santillana gave his oath of loyalty to the new king, Enrique IV.

[50] During the period of invasions from Navarre and Aragon, the king granted Santillana clear legal title to most of the disputed Vega lands in Asturias and two titles of nobility confirming his possession of Santillana and Real de Manzanares. In addition to this recuperation and guarantee of his estate, Santillana added an important new bloc of lands to the family possessions; twelve towns around the city of Guadalajara -- given to him when Juan II distributed the Castilian possessions of the infantes of Aragon among the Castilian nobility. Since the infantes continued to claim these lands as part of their heritage, Santillana had to fight to take possession of them. Santillana's acquisition of the bishopric of Calahorra -- the Mendoza's first move into the church hierarchy, later to be an important source of wealth and power for the family -- also added to the family wealth, as did his persistent buying and trading of land. Like his father, Santillana engaged in financial and commercial enterprises which, although profitable, did not constitute the most significant portion of the family income.

Santillana and his allies profited enormously from their military power in a reign marked by internal rebellion and foreign invasion. Modern historians of the Mendoza family interpret this profit as a just reward for faithful service to the king and believe that the Mendoza showed consistent personal loyalty to the king. To a large extent, this does seem to describe the pattern of Mendoza actions under Juan II, although their reasons for supporting the king far exceeded simple loyalty in their complexity. It was natural for Santillana to support the king when the Manrique supported the infantes' rebellion: Santillana's Manrique relatives were claiming and occupying his estates. It was also natural for those families that had profited most from the reigns of Juan I and Enrique III, as the Mendoza had, not to want their positions superseded by those of the infantes or of don Alvaro. For their part, the Manrique, who had lost wealth and power during the previous two reigns, wanted the redistribution of power that would result if the infantes were victorious. Although Santillana was in fact selling his loyalty and military services to the highest bidder, only the king of Castile could offer the price Santillana wanted -- confirmation of his possessions and privileges.

Nevertheless, the choice between the two branches of the Trastámara dynasty was difficult for Santillana. As the political situation became more complex and the factors involved in making political decisions more conflicting, Santillana and his allies withdrew more and more from an active role in the formation of royal policy. In both military and political affairs, they followed a policy of conserving what resources they [51] already held, avoiding the larger issues (which seemed insoluble), and turning their attention to smaller, more manageable problems. Santillana continued the family policy of forming marriage alliances to strengthen political alliances, but he formed alliances with a greater variety of political groups than had his father and grandfather.⁽²³⁾

In contrast to the small families of three previous generations, ten of Santillana's children lived to adulthood. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, the Mendoza multiplied extraordinarily during the fifteenth century. They married young (often more than once), bore many children, lived to ripe ages, and thus acquired personal influence to cover any political eventuality. Santillana seldom participated in the consejo del rey and never accepted a high political office, but he was related through marriage to most of the high officials of the kingdom; thus he was able to avoid the burdens of high office while retaining some influence over official decisions. This political caution is characteristic of Santillana's leadership of the Mendoza family: he exchanged the aggressive extension of political and economic interests on a national scale, which had characterized the admiral and Pedro González de Mendoza, for a slow and deliberate rebuilding, consolidation, and preservation of the family's military and seigneurial control over local affairs.

After Santillana's death in 1458, the titular leadership of the family passed to his eldest son, the second marquis of Santillana; but the effective leadership was carried by one of the younger sons, Pedro González de Mendoza, bishop of Calahorra. Three other sons, Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza, Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa, and Iñigo López de Mendoza, took an active role in the wars Enrique IV carried on against the Muslims from 1454 to 1464.⁽²⁴⁾

In 1464, the kingdom began a new chapter in the traditional struggle between the monarch and his relatives.⁽²⁵⁾ During the first ten years of his reign, the childless Enrique's heir was his half-brother Alfonso, the son of Juan II's second marriage. In expectation of Alfonso's accession to power, a political party formed around him, led by Enrique's favorite, Juan Pacheco, and other caballeros of Portuguese extraction. When Enrique divorced his first wife and married again and Juana was born to his new queen, Juan Pacheco and his party continued to support Alfonso as heir, claiming the superiority of male inheritance, while the king and Cortes recognized princess Juana as heiress. Most of the nobility, as usual, shifted support from one party to another and signed confederations in an effort to gain a political advantage if a crisis should arise. When Enrique IV replaced Juan Pacheco with a new favorite, Beltrán de la Cueva, Pacheco tried to recoup his losses by denouncing both [52] Beltrán and the king. Enrique IV was extremely mild-mannered, almost passive; and with the memory of don Alvaro de Luna's execution still vivid in Castile, he chose to follow a policy so narrowly directed at avoiding risk, without any apparent larger goal, that both enemies and supporters interpreted his behavior as weakness.

Early in 1465, Pacheco and his allies felt strong enough to declare open rebellion against the king. Enrique announced his intention of marrying Alfonso to Juana and declared Alfonso his heir. This maneuver successfully ended the immediate military crisis, but Enrique repudiated the agreement as soon as the crisis passed; and the rebels, being the most powerful party, dethroned him in absentia in Avila on 5 June 1465, burned him in effigy, and declared Alfonso king. Before this, the Mendoza held back from taking sides in the succession dispute; but they had long considered Juan Pacheco an enemy because of some property disputes, and the events at Avila enraged and alarmed them. The bishop of Calahorra published a speech denouncing the events at Avila, and he and his brothers rushed to the king's defense with an army of eight hundred cavalry. Enrique rewarded the Mendoza brothers generously: he gave the tercias (the royal share of the tithe) of Guadalajara to the bishop of Calahorra, the royal town of Santander (with its annual income of seven hundred thousand maravedís in taxes and pasture fees) to the marquis of Santillana, and royal incomes from sources near their own estates to the other brothers. In September, the opposing armies hurled insults at each other across a field outside Olmedo and actually engaged in combat. After this battle of Olmedo, which was considered a victory for the royal forces, the king turned Juana over to the Mendoza as a hostage for his pledges to them, and bishop Pedro González took up residence at the royal court to make sure the king would not again capitulate to his enemies. On 5 October 1465, in a field outside Arévalo, the marquis of Santillana (representing the king's party) and the count of Benavente (representing the rebel party) signed a confederation that ended hostilities in the kingdom until the end of February 1466. This breathing space gave everyone time to form more confederations; and by the summer of 1467, the rebel party had signed on so many allies that the king again started to make concessions to them. At this point, the Mendoza believed that the king was his own worst enemy and tried to protect him from himself by persuading him to sign a pledge that he would make no treaty or agreement with Alfonso or any of his partisans without the advice, agreement, and consent of the bishop of Calahorra. On 6 August 1467, the king renewed this pledge for a term of thirteen months. Faced with such uncharacteristic intransigence on the part of [53] the king and believing themselves to be militarily superior, the rebels issued a challenge. The two armies actually engaged in battle at Alaejos on 20 August 1467. Although the fighting had barely started when it was stopped by a violent hailstorm, the Mendoza considered Alaejos a great victory for their side because they held the advantageous position when the fighting stopped. Unfortunately for the rebels, Alfonso died prematurely in 1468, and they put forward his sister Isabel as heiress to the throne.⁽²⁶⁾ Thus Isabel the Catholic, the last Trastámara monarch of Castile, entered the Castilian political scene in the tradition of her family -- as a pretender to the throne leading a rebellion against her own half-brother.

The Mendoza were perhaps too impressed with their "victory" at Alaejos and insufficiently impressed by the determination and ability of Isabel, for they relaxed their vigil over Enrique. In September 1468, at a time when the bishop of Calahorra was not with the royal court, Enrique followed the advice of Juan Pacheco, met with Isabel, abjured the rights of Juana, and recognized Isabel as his legal heiress -- on the condition that she should not marry without his consent. The Mendoza were angered and disgusted by this betrayal, and the bishop of Calahorra drew up a statement of protest on behalf of Juana. Copies of this document were nailed to church doors in several towns, including Ocaña where Isabel was staying.

In the next two years, the Mendoza withdrew from the succession question: Enrique named Pacheco as Juana's new tutor, and the Mendoza surrendered her to the king and her new guardian sometime in 1468; Isabel married Fernando in 1469, and his father, Juan II of Aragon, began to solicit Mendoza support for the Isabelline party.⁽²⁷⁾ In 1473, the Mendoza formally agreed to support Isabel as rightful heiress in exchange for clear title to Castilian lands claimed by both Juan II of Aragon and the Mendoza and a cardinalate for the bishop of Calahorra. The opportunism of this move should not blind us to the equally compelling motive of loyalty to the Trastámara dynasty.

The marriage of Fernando and Isabel eliminated the conflict which had torn the loyalties of the nobility in opposing directions and kept Castile in a state of turmoil for over fifty years. When Enrique died in 1474, Fernando and Isabel were supported by the Mendoza and their traditional allies, and Juana was supported by Pacheco and his allies. The Mendoza provided most of the leadership and manpower that enabled Fernando and Isabel to win the civil war (1474-1480), a fact Isabel gratefully acknowledged in 1475 when she conferred the title of duke of Infantado on the second marquis of Santillana, thanking him and [54] seventeen of his relatives for their leadership of her cause, and saying that he had provided so many people and such force that no other grandee of the kingdom could equal him in the conservation of her estate.⁽²⁸⁾

The Mendoza's participation in the later phases of the Isabelline war of succession was almost desultory, reflecting their lack of emotional commitment to her claims. The Mendoza participated in sieges but in no pitched battles during the war. The duke of Infantado received his title at Toro in 1475 as a reward for anticipated military services against the king of Portugal, but he appears to have been elsewhere when the battle actually took place almost a year later. As soon as the Portuguese withdrew from Castile, the Mendoza and Juan II of Aragon persuaded Isabel to make peace with Pacheco and his Castilian allies. Isabel later broke the peace, but the Mendoza -- especially after the poet Jorge Manrique was killed leading a royalist attack on a Pacheco fortress -- refused to serve, and the queen had to call off the attack.

When Isabel broke the agreement a second time and attacked Pacheco in 1479, Infantado, as one of the guarantors of the agreement, sent an army under the command of one of his sons to Pacheco's defense; and the prospect of war against the Mendoza finally persuaded Isabel to make and keep an agreement with Pacheco. Throughout this affair, which dragged on from 1476 to 1480,⁽²⁹⁾ the Mendoza maintained an even-handed detachment until it was no longer possible for them to avoid involvement; and then they committed themselves to a fellow nobleman rather than to the monarch.

The thoroughgoing lack of commitment to the monarchy as an institution and to the queen as a person was not typical of the Mendoza's attitude toward Fernando. They were attracted to Isabel's party specifically by her marriage to Fernando: the negotiations that brought the Mendoza into the Isabelline camp in 1473 were conducted by the bishop of Calahorra and Juan II of Aragon. Thus the Mendoza allegiance to Fernando was based on the most prosaic and the most romantic of reasons: he was their cousin;⁽³⁰⁾ he had proved himself a knight by the age of seventeen; he was the namesake of their hero, Fernando de Antequera, and son and heir of Fernando's only surviving son, Juan II of Aragon; and by his marriage to Isabel, he reunited the Trastámara dynasty. The very Mendoza who avoided large-scale commitments in Isabel's war of succession were those most enthusiastic and active in the conquest of Granada -- under the leadership of Fernando. In his own character, Fernando personified the vigor of the early Trastámara; and by his marriage to Isabel, he had eliminated the single greatest source of dissension and rebellion in fifteenth-century Castile. The Mendoza had [55] found a chivalric leader who commanded their respect and a Trastámara who would reunite the dynasty: to his enterprise they committed themselves and their armies.

In reward for their services, the Mendoza again received noble titles and clear legal title to disputed lands. The second Santillana was elevated to duke of Infantado in 1475, and Infantado's eldest son was made count of Saldaña. Santillana's second son, Iñigo López de Mendoza, was made count of Tendilla in 1467 (?); and the third son, Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa, was made count of Coruña in 1468 (?). The youngest of Santillana's sons, the former bishop of Calahorra, became cardinal of Santa Croce -- popularly known as the cardinal of Spain since there was never more than one Spanish cardinal at a time -- bishop of Sigüenza, archbishop of Seville, and administrator of the bishopric of Osma. In 1485, cardinal Mendoza gave up the archbishopric of Seville in favor of a nephew -- brother of the second count of Tendilla -- and was named archbishop of Toledo. He received royal and papal legitimation of his sons, the privilege of establishing two mayorazgos for them, and two titles of nobility for the eldest: count of Cid and marquis of Cenete. As primate of Spain, cardinal Mendoza became a permanent resident of the royal court, where he was popularly believed to exercise so much influence over Fernando and Isabel that he was called the third king of Spain.⁽³¹⁾

Their switch from champions of the rights of princess Juana to leaders of the Isabelline party was the climactic moment of the Mendoza's political history. At Nájera in 1367, Pedro González de Mendoza had been just one of a number of Trastámara party captains -- a minor one at that. Mendoza support of Isabel in 1474 made her queen of Castile. The Mendoza had become kingmakers -- the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful political force in Castile.

The Mendoza's actions in the Isabelline war of succession followed the pattern established in the Trastámara war: they remained loyal to the legitimate ruler until it became profitable to shift allegiance to the illegitimate party. In this case, the illegitimate party represented the survival of a unified Trastámara dynasty; and Mendoza loyalty to this dynasty had become more compelling than any considerations of loyalty to the legitimate heir or duty to the monarchy as a legitimate institution. After the marriage of Fernando and Isabel in 1469, to have supported Juana would have been to destroy the Trastámara dynasty. The Mendoza fortune had been built entirely on a policy of support of this dynasty; and so long as the Trastámara ruled in Spain, the Mendoza would be loyal to them.
 

1. The pioneer and still unsurpassed work on the seigneurial regime and its relationship with the Castilian monarchy is Andreas Walther, Die Anfänge Karls V, Leipzig, 1911, pp. 39-65. A less reliable analysis can be found in J.R.L. Highfield, "The Catholic Kings and the Titled Nobility of Castile," in J.R. Hale et al., eds. Europe in the Late Middle Ages, Evanston, Ill., 1965. Both Walther and Highfield are based upon Antoine de Lalaing, Relation du premier voyage de Philippe le Beau en Espagne, en 1501, in Collection des Voyages des Souverains des Pays-Bas, Brussels, 1876, vol. I. The most important comprehensive histories of the Mendoza are those by Mondéjar in the seventeenth century and by Layna in the twentieth. The chapters of Mondéjar's work covering the period 1566-1571 are edited and published by Alfred Morel-Fatio, L'Espagne au XVI^e e au XVII^e siècle, Heilbronn, 1878, pp. 66-96. A less successful seventeenth-century history of the family is Gabriel Rodríguez de Ardila y Esquivias, "Historia de los condes de Tendilla," ed. R. Foulché-Delbosc, Revue Hispanique, 31 (1914), 63-131. An eighteenth-century genealogical history based on documents now contained in Osuna is Diego Gutiérrez Coronel, Historia genealógica de la Casa de Mendoza, ed. Angel González Palencia, 2 vols., Madrid, 1946, See also Arteaga y Falguera, La Casa del Infantado; Carril, Los Mendoza; José Amador de los Ríos, Vida del marqués de Santillana, Buenos Aires, 1948; González Palencia, Vida, vol. 1.

2. Siete Partidas, Partida IV, 25, 1.

3. The territorial military governors had different titles according to the usage at the time each territory had been incorporated into the kingdom, i.e., montero mayor de León, prestamero mayor de Vizcaya, adelantado de Murcia, capitán general de Granada, virrey de Nueva España.

4. For the war and its aftermath, see Ayala, Crónica del rey don Pedro; Julio Valdeón Baruque, Enrique II de Castilla: La guerra civil y la consolidación del régimen 1366--1371, Valladolid, 1966.

5. Alfonso Andrés, "D. Pedro González de Mendoza él de Aljubarrota, 1340-1385," Boletín de la Academia de la Historia, 78 (1921), 255-273, 353-376, 415-436, 496-504; "Extracto del privilegio del rey Pedro de Castilla por el que hace merced de la villa de Galve a Iñigo López de Orozco, Tordesillas, 28 October 1354," Salazar, M-1 58, ff. 67, 67v; "Extracto del privilegio del rey por el que concede cierta venta de trigo a Iñigo López de Orozco, Toledo, 7 January 1365," Salazar, M-158, f. 66v.

6. "Pedro González de Mendoza, Escribanías de Guadalajara y otras por Enrique II, 1366," Osuna, 1873/1; "Hita and Buitrago, escribanía a Pedro González de Mendoza, 1366," Osuna, 1873; "Duques del Infantado, Cédulas de algunos reyes a favor de Alvaro de Luna y los Duques del Infantado, 1361-1476," Osuna, 1724/3; "Extracto del privilegio del rey Enrique II por el que confirma a Iñigo López de Orozco y a doña Marina García de Meneses los privilegios de sus casas, Toledo, 10 May 1371," Salazar, M-158, f. 66v; Valdeón, Enrique II, pp. 125, 128-129.

7. English participation in the war in John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France and Spain, ed. H.P. Dunster, New York: Dutton, 1961, pp. 91-112; and P. E. Russell, English Intervention in Spain & Portugal in the Time of Edward III & Richard II, Oxford, 1955.

8. The mercedes of Enrique II were those gifts from the king that involved the alienation of a portion of the royal patrimony and were given in remuneration for services. "Merced de Buitrago e Hita a Pedro González de Mendoza, 1368," and "Confirmación, 1379," Osuna, 1652/6; Valdeón, Enrique II, pp. 121-123, 181-183, 214, 288-289; "Pedro González de Mendoza, Mayorazgo para su hijo Iñigo, 1373," Osuna, 1373/10; Amador de los Ríos, Vida, p. 22; Gutiérrez Coronel, Casa de Mendoza, I, 96-98; "Mayorazgo para su hijo Diego, 13 February 1380," Osuna, 1762, printed in Layna Serrano, Guadalajara, I, 282-284.

9. Burgos, 1 January 1366, "El rey don Enrique II hace merced de las villas de Buitrago y Hita a Pedro González de Mendoza," in Luís de Salazar y Castro, Historia genealógica de la Casa de Haro, ed. Dalmiro de la Válgoma y Díaz-Varela, Archivo Documental Español, 15 (1959), 316-322.

10. Emilio Mitre Fernández, Evolución de la nobleza en Castilla bajo Enrique III, 1396-1406, Valladolid, 1968; Luis Suárez Fernández, "Algunas consideraciones acerca de la crisis castellana de 1383," Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 2 (1965), 359-376; idem, "Problemas políticos en la minoridad de Enrique III," Hispania, 12 (1952), 163-231, 323-400. For the Mendoza connections with the Pecha and Ayala clans, see Luis Maria de Uriarte, ed., El fuero de Ayala by Fernán Pérez de Ayala, Madrid, 1912, pp. 37-49; Jerónimo de Sigüenza, Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo, in Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, vols. 8, 12, Madrid, 1909; Juan Catalina García López, Biblioteca de escritores de la provincia de Guadalajara y bibliografía de la misma hasta el siglo XIX, Madrid, 1899.

11. "Testimonio de la entrega a don Diego Hurtado, el almirante, hecha por micer Ventura Venzón, del regimiento, alcaldía y alguacilazgo de Guadalajara, Segovia, 16 November 1401," Osuna, 1875, published in Layna Serrano, Guadalajara, I, 302.

12. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones, p. 17.

13. "Tendilla, Privilegio rodado escripto en papel que dió el señor rey don Enrique 3^o al señor don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza señor de la Vega y Almirante de la Mar por la qual hace merced de la villa de Tendilla, Madrid, December 1395," Osuna, 2983/1.

14. Amador de los Ríos, Vida, pp. 22-23; "Santillana, Reconocimiento de vasallaje a García Laso de la Vega, 1315," Osuna, 1798/6; "Santillana, Bienes de da. Leonor de la Vega, Poder sobre posesión de Potes y demás lugares de Liébana, 1408," Osuna, 4232/3; "Leonor de la Vega, Apuntes sobre sus tierras y vasallos," Osuna, 1788/3; "Leonor de la Vega, Carta de Per Alvarez sobre alcabalas de Castrillo, siglo XV," Osuna, 1864/6; "Santillana, Provision de Juan I a los alcaldes de Santander, S. Vicente de la Barquera y Santillana para la posesión de pozo de sal de Treceño, 1379," Osuna, 2266/1.

15. Hayward Keniston, Garcilaso de la Vega; A Critical Study of His Life and Works, New York, 1922.

16. "Otrosi mando que a mi fijo garcia que le muden el nonbre e le digan iohan furtado de mendoça." Osuna, 1762.

17. Santillana's property disputes with the Manrique and other relatives are described at length in Gutiérrez Coronel, Casa de Mendoza, I, 165-172; and Amador de los Ríos, Vida, pp. 23, 27, 45-56. See also "Mondéjar, Cesión por Sancho de Rojas Arzob. de Toledo a da. Leonor de Aragón que la había dado Saldaña, 1415," Osuna, 1825/4; "Villa de Hita, Carta de Iñigo López de Mendoza para que sus vasallos de Buitrago e Hita le paguen lo que le orden, 1418," Osuna, 1648/6; "Merindad de Santillana, Sobre el secando de la sal de Cabezón en la Merindad de Santillana, 1423," Osuna, 2266/2; "Castillo de Saldaña, Sobre entrega por Diego Gómez de Sandoval, 1430," Osuna, 1965/5; "Santillana, Posesión, Gonzalvo Ruiz de la Vega, 1437," Osuna, 1826/2; "Tendilla, Carta de venta que otorgó fray Esteban de León religioso de monasterio San Jerónimo en San Bartolomé de Lupiana como albacea de la señora da. Aldonza de Mendoza a favor de Juan de Contreras de la villa de Tendilla, 1441," Osuna, 2983; "Santillana y sus valles," Osuna, 1784-1797; "Capítulos entre Iñigo López de Mendoza y el Consejo para levantar con muralles de Hita, 1441," Osuna, 1670/1; "Saldaña, Derecho a nombrar teniente de alcalde y escribano, etc. por los Duques, 1797," Osuna, 1826/2.

18. For general information about the period 1407-1474, I have relied upon Luis Suárez Fernández, Angel Canellas López, and Jaime Vicens Vives, Los Trastámaras de Castilla y Aragón en el siglo XV, 1407-1474, (Vol. 15 of Historia de España directed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal). Madrid 1969; Luis Suárez Fernández, Castilla, el cisma, y el crisis conciliar, 1378-1440, Madrid, 1955; idem, Nobleza y monarquía, 2nd ed., Valladolid, 1974; and José María Font Ríus, Instituciones medievales españolas, Madrid, 1949. See also "Marqués de Santillana, Confederación con él de Villena y el conde de Plasencia, 1450," Osuna, 1860/7; "Priego, Lope de, Posesión en nombre de Juan de Luna de los lugares de Alcocer, etc. 1453," Osuna, 1727/4; "Confederación, 22 December 1456," Osuna, 1860/8; "Confederación, Segovia, 4 June 1457," Osuna, 1860/19. Suárez Fernández points out several times that both supporters and opponents of the crown switched sides many times and that there was no ideological or class conflict between the monarchy and the aristocracy, yet he continues to believe that the political conflict of the period can be explained as a conflict between the crown and the aristocracy, whom he inconsistently labels nobility.

19. The fifteenth-century admiration for Fernando de Antequera is repeated without criticism in I. MacDonald, Don Fernando de Antequera, Oxford, 1948.

20. Santillana was Guzmán's great nephew; Gutierre Gómez de Toledo, who led them in this action, was Guzmán's cousin and Alba's uncle; Santillana and Velasco became consuegros; and Guzmán was a nephew of Velasco. Amador de los Ríos believes that Santillana and Alba were educated together in the household of Gutierre Gómez de Toledo while the latter was archdeacon of Guadalajara and that Alba's presence at Santillana's deathbed is evidence of a lifelong friendship. Vida, p. 77. J. H. Elliott suggests that the Mendoza and Alba were enemies in the fifteenth century: Imperial Spain, pp. 256-257. It is true that the Mendoza never had the close friendship with Alba that they had with some other great families, such as the Velasco and Guzmán, but they did have a consistent friendship based on common political interests, amply documented by the alliances between the Mendoza and Alba in Osuna, 1860.

21. "La acción de Tordesillas fué un pecado de juventud de don Iñigo." Carril, Los Mendoza, p. 30.

22. "Santillana, marqués de, Cédula para entrega de Juan de Puelles, 1455," Osuna, 1860/37; "Sevilla, 11 August 1455, Cédula original de Enrique IV," Osuna, 1860/37; "Cédulas para que los arrendadores del rey no cobren rentas en el condado del Real de Manzanares, Partido de Buitrago, Partido de Hita, marquesado de Santillana, 1456," Osuna, 1862/1; "Albalá del rey Juan II por el que hace merced del título de marqués de Santillana y de conde del Real de Manzanares a Iñigo López de Mendoza, Burgos, 8 August 1445," Salazar, M-92, ff. 295v.-297; "Testamento del primer marqués de Santillana, 8 May 1455, Guadalajara," Osuna, 1875, and "Codicilo al testamento del primer marqués de Santillana, Jaén, 5 June 1455," Osuna, 1762, both published in Layna Serrano, Guadalajara, I, 315-324; Amador de los Ríos, Vida, 45, 64; Gutiérrez Coronel, Casa de Mendoza, I, 173-178.

23. In 1436, Santillana's eldest son was married to Brianda de Luna, a cousin of don Alvaro -- a marriage for which the king himself acted as padrino (godfather) in an attempt to establish peace between the two houses. Amador de los Ríos, Vida, pp. 52-55.

24. "Confederación, Guadalajara, 21 March 1459," Osuna, 1860/9; "Confederación, Logroño, 4 June 1461," Osuna, 1860/20, with a letter from the king in 1860/10.

25. For the following section, see Manuel Torres Fontes, "La conquista del marquesado de Villena en el reinado de los Reyes Católicos," Hispania, 13 (1953), 37-151; Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y su reinado, Madrid, 1964, pp. 3-205; "Confederación, Arévalo, 8 October 1465," Osuna, 1860/11; "Confederación, Arévalo, 8 October 1465," Osuna,

1860/12; "Confederación, 30 January 1466," Osuna, 1860, no number; "Confederación, March, 1466," Osuna, 1860/16; "Confederación, Atienza, 28 April 1466," Osuna, 1860/13; "Confederación, Valladolid, 29 August 1466," Osuna, 1860/14; "Confederación con doña Juana mujer de Enrique IV, 1467," Osuna, 1860/14; "Traslado autorizado del pleito omenaje que hiço el rey don Enrique IV a los... refrendado de Fernando del Pulgar en manos del S^r don Iñigo López de Mendoza, 28 June 1467," Osuna, 1860/38; "Confederación con Juan Alfon de Monjeca, 1468," Osuna, 1860/18; "Copia sin autorizar en papel de quartillo de la confederación..., Burgos, 29 July 1468," Osuna, 1860, no number; "Confederación, Trijueque, 30 July 1468," Osuna, 1860/18.

26. Fernando del Pulgar, Crónica de los reyes católicos, II, 9.

27. "Marqués de Santillana, Relación de la entrega de la Princesa Juana, 1468," Osuna, 1726/9; "Confederación, 11 March 1469," Osuna, 1860/6; "Confederación, 18 March 1469," Osuna, 1860/20; "Pedro González de Mendoza, Confederación para tener por reina a Isabel la Católica, 1474," Osuna, 417/20 bis; "Confederación, Carrión, 28 March 1474," Osuna, 1860/21; "Marqués de Santillana, Confederación para conquistar Carrión, 10 April 1474," Osuna, 1860/22.

28. The entire document from the private library of the present duke of Infantado is reproduced and transcribed in Arteaga, Casa del Infantado, I, 210-215. As Arteaga emphasizes, Isabel explicitly states that she is giving the title because the second Santillana was "el principal grande caballero de nuestros reinos, que conservan nuestro estado e sostienen nuestra corona."

29. Torres Fontes, "La conquista del marquesado de Villena."

30. Fernando's mother was Juana Enríquez, granddaughter of Juana de Mendoza and Alfonso Enríquez, the first Enríquez admiral.

31. Francisco de Medina y Mendoza, Vida del Cardenal D. Pedro González de Mendoza. Memorial Histórico Español, vol. VI, Madrid, 1853; Azcona, Isabel, p. 724.