i74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion, had but three degenerate ancestors among the twelve. In the 

 same degree of kinship for his son Alfonso X., we find five among 

 eighteen. For the next generation (Sancho IV.) the number is two 

 in twelve. Ferdinand IV. (d. 1312), his son, had three in fifteen. 

 So we see that this type of character, though common, was present 

 in Spanish royalty in these early centuries only to the extent of 

 about one in four or five, but in the ancestry of Alfonso XI., on 

 account of a gathering of this cruel type, we find no less than eleven 

 such among the fifteen who could furnish records of any sort. It 

 is simply that about Alfonso XI. there happens to be brought together 

 a number of strains from the four different countries, Aragon, Castile, 

 Hungary and Portugal, each containing an average amount of the 

 qualities in question. However, owing to strange jumping about, 

 which so many characteristics show in the course of hereditary trans- 

 mission, Alfonso himself shows none of them, but is himself the bridge 

 over which they pass to appear in his son whose actions seemed more 

 like that of a demon than a man the incarnation of cruelty itself. 



A very close intermarriage was made by this Alfonso IX. of Castile. 

 His wife was the daughter of Alfonso IV. of Portugal, a brilliant 

 warrior, but withal a cruel tyrant and the one of all rulers in Portugal 

 on whom rests the greatest odium.* 



Now let us see what proportion of the passionate and cruel would 

 be found in five degrees of kinship for a child of Alfonso XI. by 

 such a wedlock. Owing to the intermarriage we find but eleven 

 different persons as several names appear twice. There are only 

 three who are free from the characteristics in question, or eight in 

 eleven show the passionate and cruel type. If we take all for six 

 degrees removed we find the number even worse, eleven in fourteen. 

 A son could scarcely escape the worst sort of inheritance, except by 

 the greatest fortune. What did happen was this. Pedro, the only 

 legitimate son of Alfonso XL, known in all history as 'Pedro the 

 Cruel,' amused himself in some such ways as this. He imprisoned 

 and foully treated his first wife, Blanche of Bourbon, and during 

 the first part of his reign had many noblemen, among others Don 

 Juan, his cousin, executed in his presence. Once, it is stated, in 

 the presence of the ladies of the court he commanded a number of 

 gentlemen to be butchered until the Queen, his mother, fell into a 

 dead faint in company with most of the ladies present. "He then 

 caused to be murdered his own aunt, Dona Leonora of Aragon, mother 

 of the above Don Juan, for nothing except that Aragon would 

 not make peace with him 'being compelled to get Moors to do the 

 job, as no Castilian could be induced to undertake it,' says King 

 Pedro IV. of Aragon in his memoirs. A certain priest coming before 



* McMurdo's ' History Portugal,' three volumes, London, 1899. 



