of the sixteenth century. She was the sister of D. Rodrigo de Ulloa, first Marqués de la Mota, San Cebrián,

l de Figueredo and Mendoza, Colonel of the Spanish infantry, Steward to the Emperor Charles V, and Lord of Villagarcia, Villanueva de los Caballeros, and Santofimia, and also of Villamayor in the region of Campos, in right of his mother. The pair did not know each other; Do?a Magdalena lived in Toro with her brother, and Luis Quijada followed the Emperor in his wars and journeys, having been his favouri

fimia, which for this purpose he pledged. The marriage was authorised by the Emperor. Luis Quijada sent from Brussels, where he was then living, full powers to his brother álvaro de Mendoza to marry Do?a Magdalena in his name, and this he did in Valladolid on the 27th of November, 1549, adding this clause to the document in his own hand: "And in the name of the said D. Luis Quijada, my brother, for him and as if he himself were present and as a gentleman of noble birth, I do homage once, twice, three times in the presence and und

n afterwards, Luis Quijada arrived in Valladolid, where his wife went to meet him, they were so attracted to each other, he by her beauty and womanly d

Quijada was following Charles V in his last campaign against the French, and the husband never lost an opportunity of letting his wife have news of the dangers he ran or the triumphs he gained. She was the first person in

had always shown him to accept the boy as a mother would, and as such to protect and educate him. He also said that the boy was the son of a great friend, whose name he could not reveal, but whose position and prestige he guaranteed. And he added that though the education of Jeromín was to be that of a gentleman, his father did not wish him to dress as such, but to wear the garb of a peasant, in which he would present himself. It was the desire of the father, moreover, that with all gentleness and discretion the child Jeromín should be urged to enter the Church, but not if it w

n, as a heavy shower of rain spoils the wings of a butterfly. And more icy than reflection, who, if cold and severe, is still honourable, came her bastard sister, suspicion, vile suspicion, who undermines and poisons everything and worms her way into the most upright souls. Reason placed t

stop her in a generous act, and throwing everything, fears, suspicions and imagined wrongs into the flames of her pure charity, she c