Council of Castile

The earliest form of the Royal Council was created at the end of the fourteenth century in 1385 by John I of Castile after the disaster at the Battle of Aljubarrota.

This council was rather ineffective and the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I, sought to change it in their drive to centralize the country and bring it more firmly in line with national interests rather than the nobles.

The new composition of the reformed Council was a president, a treasurer, a church prelate, three caballeros (often minor nobility), and between eight and ten letrados (lawyers or jurists).

Archbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros ruled briefly as regent, but was undercut by noble schemes and spent much of his time simply trying to hold together the government.

Cisneros was then replaced by Joanna's father King Ferdinand II, whose claim to rule Castile with his wife's death was rather weak, but no other plausible choice than his being regent existed.

Nobles illegally expanded their domains by force, sending soldiers to "claim" land that was owned by the royal government or free peasants.

The Bishop of Badajoz, Pedro Ruiz de la Mota, was an influential member of the Royal Council and declared to the Cortes of Corunna that Castile was to be the empire's "treasury and sword.

He also added three new councilors, Juan Manuel, Pedro de Medina, and Martín Vázquez, and generally sought to replace nobles with gentry and educated lawyers.

With the growth of Spain's overseas conquests, and the prodding of Charles' grand-counselor and close friend Mercurino di Gattinara, the Council of Castile expanded and split.

Between the years 1522–1524, the Council of Castile reorganized the government of the Kingdom of Navarre, dismissing its viceroy, Antonio Manrique de Lara, 2nd Duke of Nájera.

After Philip V of Spain became the first Bourbon king in 1700, the Nueva Planta decrees approved between 1707 and 1716 abolished the autonomy of the former Crown of Aragon and centralised power in Madrid.