[13] Ordenanças Reales, lib. 2, tit. 4.--Marina, Teoría de las Cortes, part. 2, cap. 25.
By one of the statutes, (ley 4,) the commission of the judges, which, before extended to life, or a long period, was abridged to one year. This important innovation was made at the earnest and repeated remonstrance of cortes, who traced the remissness and corruption, too frequent of late in the court, to the circumstance that its decisions were not liable to be reviewed during life. (Teoría, ubi supra.) The legislature probably mistook the true cause of the evil. Few will doubt, at any rate, that the remedy proposed must have been fraught with far greater.
[14] Ordenanças Reales, lib. 2, tit. 1, 3, 4, 15, 16, 17, 19; lib. 3, tit. 2.--Recop. de las Leyes, lib. 2, tit. 4, 5, 16.--Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, part. 2, cap. 94.
[15] Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS.--By one of the statutes of the cortes of Toledo, in 1480, the king was required to take his seat in the council every Friday. (Ordenanças Reales, lib. 2, tit. 3, ley 32.) It was not so new for the Castilians to have good laws, as for their monarchs to observe them.
[17] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, p. 167.--See the strong language, also, of Peter Martyr, another contemporary witness of the beneficial changes in the government. Opus Epistolarum, (Amstelodami, 1670,) ep. 31.
[18] Prieto y Sotelo, Historia del Derecho Real de España, (Madrid, 1738,) lib. 3, cap. 16-21.--Marina has made an elaborate commentary on Alfonso's celebrated code, in his Ensayo Histórico-Crítico sobre la Antigua Legislacion de Castilla, (Madrid, 1808,) pp. 269 et seq. The English reader will find a more succinct analysis in Dr. Dunham's History of Spain and Portugal, (London, 1832,) in Lardner's Cyclopaedia, vol. iv. pp. 121- 150.--The latter has given a more exact, and, at the same time, extended view of the early Castilian legislation, probably, than is to be found, in the same compass, in any of the Peninsular writers.
[19] Marina (in his Ensayo Histórico-Crítico, p. 388) quotes a popular satire of the fifteenth century, directed, with considerable humor, against these abuses, which lead the writer in the last stanza to envy even the summary style of Mahometan justice.