MENTAL AND MORAL HEREDITY IN ROYALTY. 175 



him to say that St. Domingo had appeared to him in a dream and 

 counselled him to tell the king that he would meet his death at the 

 hands of his brother, Henry Pedro insisted that the priest must have 

 been prompted by Don Henry himself, and so ordered the poor dreamer 

 to be burnt alive. One lady, Urraca Osorio, for refusing his address, 

 was burnt alive in the market place of Seville. Another disfigured 

 herself in order to escape his attentions. "He was as devoid of gen- 

 erosity as of pity, as reckless of the truth as of life, as greedy of 

 gain as of blood a false knight, a perjured husband, a brutal son."* 



Thus Pedro 'the Cruel' is amply accounted for by heredity alone, 

 without bringing in the question of the inheritance of any acquired 

 characters, and it does not seem that this brutality could be the result 

 of the environment in which he lived since before his clay when 

 times were even rougher we find so many kings and queens possessing 

 every virtue. There were never any before as bad as Pedro nor were 

 there any, on grounds of heredity alone, as likely to be so. It is 

 interesting to note that he was the great-great-grandfather of Eichard 

 III. of England, with whom he is often compared. Pedro's actions 

 cost him the loss of most of his subjects, and finally his life at the 

 hands of his bastard brother, Henry, who had somewhat the same 

 characteristics though in a lesser degree. 



Henry established a new line under the title of Henry II. His 

 own origin was, probably, without distinction on his mother's side, 

 and this is one of the four successive unions now to be discussed 

 which can not in any way be used to illustrate the perpetuation of 

 genius. It is also at this time that we find four incompetent rulers, 

 three of whom are described as imbeciles. This is very significant, 

 though I do not see that the imbecility of John I. of Castile is at 

 all properly accounted for by heredity. Mere weakness, cruelty and 

 licentiousness might be well expected, but not imbecility in the medical 

 sense of the word, and I do not know that this medical sense is implied 

 by the historians when using this term in connection with these persons. 

 The origin of the well-known insanity in the Spanish and Austrian 

 houses, perpetuated over thirteen generations and involving more than 

 a score of individuals, is a very interesting question. It cannot be 

 traced with certainty prior to Isabella, the Queen of John II. of 

 Castile. This Isabella was out and out insane, according to the cele- 

 brated English alienist, Ireland, f and from her, onward, the insanity 

 passed along in one form or another by the very intermarriages which 

 their pride and political motives caused them to arrange, with the 

 intended idea of making permanent their world power, but with the 

 inevitable result of losing that same presti ge by placing it in the 



* Watts' ' The Christian Recovery of Spain.' 

 f Ireland, ' Blot on the Brain.' 



