Note 21 — Chapter I

Galindez tells the story that Henry on his deathbed swore that Juana was really his child, and says that he left a will in her favour of which Villena was the executor. The latter having predeceased the King, the will remained in the keeping of Oviedo, the King’s secretary, who afterwards entrusted it to the curate of Santa Cruz at Madrid. He, fearing to hold it, enclosed it in a chest with other papers and buried it at Almeida, in Portugal. Years afterwards Isabel learnt of this, and when, in 1504, she was mortally ill, she sent the curate and the lawyer who had told her to disinter the will. When they brought it she was too ill to see it, and it remained in the lawyer’s keeping. He informed Ferdinand after the Queen’s death, and the King ordered the document to be burnt, whilst the lawyer was richly rewarded. Others say, continues Galindez, that the paper was preserved.