justice, the most difficult of all duties in an imperfectly civilized
state of society. The queen found especial demand for this in the northern
provinces, whose rude inhabitants were little used to subordination. She
compelled the great nobles to lay aside their arms, and refer their
disputes to legal arbitration. She caused a number of the fortresses,
which were still garrisoned by the baronial banditti, to be razed to the
ground; and she enforced the utmost severity of the law against such
inferior criminals as violated the public peace. [1]

Even ecclesiastical immunities, which proved so effectual a protection in
most countries at this period, were not permitted to screen the offender.
A remarkable instance of this occurred at the city of Truxillo, in 1486.
An inhabitant of that place had been committed to prison for some offence
by order of the civil magistrate. Certain priests, relations of the
offender, alleged that his religious profession exempted him from all but
ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, as the authorities refused to deliver
him up, they inflamed the populace to such a degree, by their
representations of the insult offered to the church, that they rose in a
body, and, forcing the prison, set at liberty not only the malefactor in
question, but all those confined there. The queen no sooner heard of this
outrage on the royal authority, than she sent a detachment of her guard to
Truxillo, which secured the persons of the principal rioters, some of whom
were capitally punished, while the ecclesiastics, who had stirred up the
sedition, were banished the realm. Isabella, while by her example she
inculcated the deepest reverence for the sacred profession, uniformly
resisted every attempt from that quarter to encroach on the royal
prerogative. The tendency of her administration was decidedly, as there
will be occasion more particularly to notice, to abridge the authority
which that body had exercised in civil matters under preceding reigns. [2]