CHAPTER 2

'Por la guerra viene pobreza et lazeria et pesar, et nasçe della desonra et muerte, et quebranto et dolor, et deserviçio de Dios et despoblamiento del mundo, et mengua de derecho et de justiçia.'

On 25 April 1295 Sancho IV succumbed to his lengthy illness.¹ His demise was most untimely for his heir the Infante Fernando was, at nine years of age, still too young to govern and, more importantly, was by the strictest of legal definitions illegitimate as the continuous endeavours of Sancho and his consort María to obtain dispensation for their uncanonical marriage had failed to bear fruit.² The greater aristocracy, largely obedient during the reign of Sancho IV, sought immediately to derive what profit they could from the uncertainty surrounding Fernando's accession. In May, Diego López, head of the Haro clan since the death in 1288 of his brother Lope Díaz at the hands of royal guards, and exiled in Aragon since that event, took an army into Castile with a view to recovering by force of arms the lordship of Vizcaya, a Laran property which had reverted to the Crown upon Lope's demise. The dowager queen María de Molina, governing on behalf of her son Fernando, dispatched Juan Núñez and Nuño González of the Lara family (traditional enemies of the Haros) to reduce Diego Lopez but instead they allied with him and threatened to recognise Alfonso de la Cerda as Castile's new monarch. Around the same point news arrived from the frontier that Sancho IV's turbulent brother the Infante Juan, settled in Granada since 1292, was preparing to enter Castile with a large Muslim army and proclaim himself King of Castile and Leon.³ Things were looking bleak for Fernando IV. But intense political manoeuvring on the part of María de Molina and the influential Infante Enrique, installed as tutor (regent) at the summer cortes of Valladolid to lend robustness to Castile's new régime, to dilute aristocratic opposition to the child-king proved fruitful: the Infante Juan, Diego López de Haro and the Laras all performed homage to Sancho IV's successor before November.⁴ This hard-earned diplomatic success, however, rapidly paled in the face of a new and very grave threat to Fernando's position.

Subsequent to the successful Castilian-Aragonese venture against Tarifa in 1292, the political relationship between Sancho IV and Jaume II of Aragon had grown steadily cooler.⁵ Upon the death of the former, Jaume, no longer inclined to maintain the fiction of friendly relations with the House of Castile, concluded at Agnani a peace accord with Philippe IV of France (thereby bringing to an end twelve years of war between the Aragonese and the French), and in the early autumn the Aragonese monarch cast aside his Castilian consort Isabel so that he could cement the Agnani arrangement with a marriage to the French king's niece Blanche of Anjou.⁶ In January of the next year Jaume, keen to take advantage of Castile's fragile interior situation, struck a deal with Alfonso de la Cerda and the Infante Juan, agreeing to recognize the former as king of Castile, Toledo, Jaén and Cordoba, and the latter as king of Leon, Galicia and Seville, in exchange for their military help on a projected operation to expand Aragon's frontiers.⁷ By March 1296 Jaume had enlisted also the support of the kings of Portugal, Granada and France for this scheme,⁸ and in April he sought to realize it, dispatching a force headed by his son the Infant Pere and Alfonso de la Cerda to attack Old Castile, and leading an army himself into the kingdom of Murcia - the location, it will be recalled, of a sizeable part of Juan Manuel's patrimony.⁹

The Murcian campaign commenced with the capture of Alicante and its citadel on 21 or 22 April and the conquest of the castle of Guardamar less than a week later.¹⁰ The Aragonese host must have passed close by Elche, the jewel in the crown of Juan Manuel's Murcian inheritance,¹¹ on its way to Guardamar, but no attempt was made to secure it; this was because on 24 April one of the young prince’s most senior court officials, Sancho Ximénez de Lanclares, anticipating the danger to that property, had persuaded Jaume II in Alicante to allow Murcia's adelantado mayor a period of grace to consider 'si volia a [Jayme] obeyr axi com a rey e senyor del regno de Murçia'.¹² Over the course of the twenty-six day truce granted to Juan Manuel, the king of Aragon gave an eloquent demonstration of his military might, securing Oriheula after a ten-day siege (11 May), capturing a number of minor properties along the Segura basin and establishing a tight siege of Murcia city, the kingdom's capital.¹³ Yet despite this show of strength, Juan and his household, staunch supporters of Fernando IV - as they had recently proven with a naval assault against Jaume Il and his vassals in response to this king's repudiation of his Castilian bride¹⁴ - refused to submit. And neither, for that matter, would Juan’s half-sister Violante, who around 20 April had been asked to render homage to Jaume.¹⁵

Disinclined perhaps to move against Elche until the city of Murcia and other important places in the south of the kingdom had been conquered,¹⁶ Jaume allowed Juan a further fifteen days to consider his position.¹⁷ An oath of fealty, however, was not forthcoming, so on 31 May the Aragonese monarch instructed his half-brother Jaume Pérez to take a company to Elche and lay siege to it. But a day later he revoked that order and gave Juan a further five or six days to reconsider,¹⁸ presumably after an eleventh-hour appeal for clemency. The Manuel household, of course, was simply stalling in the hope that a Castilian auxiliary force might soon arrive and expel the invaders from the region. But this was wishful thinking, for at this juncture Fernando IV's limited military resources were stretched to the full by the invasion of Castile proper.

In the second week of June Jaume Il finally lost patience, abandoning an operation against Lorca and returning to the neighbourhood of Alicante to establish a siege at Elche.¹⁹ Around the same date an Aragonese detachment headed by Viscount Jaspert of Castellnou ravaged around Villena. And this nobleman would have dealt destruction also to Chinchilla, wherein Juan Manuel and his entourage had sought refuge, had the king of Aragon, concerned perhaps to restrict the use of military force in a region already deficient in human and natural resources, not refused a request by the viscount for additional cavalry.²⁰

For more than a month the inhabitants of Elche tenaciously resisted their Aragonese besiegers. But within the walls of the town conditions were deteriorating, and so on 20 July Juan Manuel, concerned for the well-being of his vassals, appointed two senior members of his household – Alfonso García de Pampliega and Gómez Fernández – to negotiate the surrender of Elche.²¹ By 26 July they had agreed terms with Jaume II. The salient features of the resulting arrangement - known commonly as the Truce of Elche - were the following: proprietary rights to Elche were to reside with the Crown of Aragon until Juan Manuel's twenty-first birthday (5 May 1303), on which date the said property was to revert to the House of Manuel; if Juan were to acknowledge the king of Aragon's claim to the kingdom of Murcia before that date, then Elche would be returned to him immediately; he could in any event continue to collect rents and dues from the Christians, Muslims and Jews of Elche, Santa Pola, Aspe, Chinosa and Monovar; and if the king of Aragon or any of his vassals violated the conditions of the truce in any way, then Juan would receive within sixty days a fair indemnity.²²

On 27 July Juan's plenipotentiaries swore on his behalf to honour the truce and refrain from attacking the Murcian properties now under Aragonese dominion. Concerned to preserve the dignity and honour of the house of Manuel, they reserved the right to fight alongside Fernando IV in the event of a royal expedition to liberate the region.²³ Over the next few days other formalities to do with the capitulation of Elche were dealt with, culminating in the concejo of Elche’s rendering of homage and fealty to the king of Aragon on 5 August.²⁴

The terms of the Truce of Elche certainly could have been far more injurious to the interests of Juan Manuel. True, in Elche he had lost one of his most valuable assets. But this estate was to be his again in 1303, and only his loyalty to the king of Castile obstructed his repossession of it before that date. It would be naive to argue that Jaume Il set (or at least approved) such moderate terms because of the plea of Alfonso García and Gómez Fernández that the king bear in mind ‘los buenos e grandes deudos que el dicho don Johan a con [él] e la su edat que agora es'.²⁵ Jaume probably did so to erode the house of Manuel's hostile disposition towards the Crown of Aragon and thus reduce the likelihood of recalcitrance in his absence. If that indeed was the tactic then it did not work: around 22 August, no more than two weeks after Jaume had left the region, Ferrando el Romo, lieutenant governor of Buñol, wrote to the Aragonese court communicating that 'Gomes Ferrandes amo de Don Johan Emanuel' had entered Requena 'con companya e cavayllo', with a view perhaps to launching an offensive against nearby Valencia.²⁶

The continuing disobedience of the Manuel household aside, the Aragonese invasion of the kingdom of Murcia had been a resounding success: of the properties in that region only Lorca, and the castles of Alcalá and Alhama, had eluded Jaume Il's grasp.²⁷ The Aragonese operation against Castile proper, in marked contrast, was an unmitigated failure. The expeditionary force led by Alfonso de la Cerda and the Infant Pere had ravaged countryside to the east of San Esteban de Gormaz and then united with companies under the Infante Juan and Juan Núñez de Lara to lay siege to Mayorga de Campos. They anticipated that this royal strongpoint would quickly yield. But the siege instead dragged on for many weeks. In August plague ravaged the Aragonese army and accounted for the Infant Pere. The siege was dissolved, and what remained of the invading force withdrew to Aragon.²⁸

Fortune was smiling on Fernando IV, for this providential bout of pestilence eliminated not only the danger from the east but also, indirectly, the threat from the west in the shape of King Dinis of Portugal, who, upon learning in September of the Mayorga debacle, became uneasy and abandoned a foray into Castilian territory which had taken him as far east as Simancas and in sight of Valladolid.²⁹ And Castile's child-king received a further boost as the Infante Enrique agreed in principle a deal with Muhammad II of Granada: in exchange for Tarifa, Muhammad would furnish the Castilian government with twenty-three southern strongholds, a large sum of money and Muslim military help against the Infante Juan and Alfonso de la Cerda. And not only that: the Nasrid ruler promised to assist Juan Manuel in the recovery of the kingdom of Murcia.³⁰

Indeed, the improvement in Fernando IV's political circumstances around this point was such that his administration was able to undertake in October 1296 a counter-offensive against his domestic foes, including the siege of the Laran stronghold of Paredes de Nava.³¹

With the House of Castile's interior and exterior enemies for the time being in retreat, the Castilian government was able in the new year to convene a meeting of the estates of Castile. A late arrival at this gathering, held at Cuéllar during February and March 1297, was Juan Manuel. Having seen less dependable nobles such as Juan Alfonso de Haro and Fernán Rodríguez de Castro recently receive large estates in reward for promises of obedience and military support, the lord of Villena, still only fourteen years of age but maturing quickly as a politician, had resolved to obtain some form of material recompense for the loss of Elche, and duly solicited the Cuencan town of Alarcón as indemnity. According to the Crónica de Fernando IV, the Infante Enrique was sympathetic, promising to help his nephew in whatever way he could to secure that property. María de Molina, on the other hand, did not want Juan to have that town, her concern being that 'si á don Juan diese cambio por aquel, que eso mesmo querrian todos los otros que perdieron algo en tierra de Murcia'. But Enrique's will and influence in this matter, we are told, was such that she was compelled to deliver Alarcón over to the teenage prince.³² This episode is of note less for the manoeuvring involved than for the nuanced shift in the political behaviour of the House of Manuel. Through 1295 and 1296 Juan Manuel and his entourage had been content to put Crown interests ahead of their own material ambitions; their conduct in Murcia bears ample witness to this. But the lord of Villena's request for Alarcón can be seen as the articulation of a more pragmatic, self-interested outlook similar in complexion to those of more experienced members of the greater aristocracy.

Precious little is known about Juan Manuel's actions or whereabouts between the spring of 1297 and the summer of 1299 due to the scanty nature of the primary evidence available for this period. What little material there is suggests that he spent at least some of this period around his new property of Alarcón,³³ partaking probably in hunting expeditions, since the leading members of his household were avid practitioners of the chase and the environs of this town were ideally suited to that pursuit.³⁴ Possessing now a satisfactory indemnity for Elche, Juan very likely no longer considered the recovery of this Murcian property a leading concern - not least because the title deeds to Alarcón contained an article stipulating that he must return it to the Crown should he recover Elche.³⁵ But he remained nonetheless concerned to ensure that the limited rights he still enjoyed in Elche were respected, and in the autumn of 1297 he dispatched Sancho Ximénez de Lanclares and Ruy Domínguez de Segovia to the Aragonese curia with a lengthy list of alleged violations of the Truce of Elche: grievances included the accusation that newly-installed Aragonese functionaries had appropriated property belonging to Manueline vassals, and a claim that certain of the rents and other revenues customarily due to the House of Manuel were not making it into the lord of Villena's coffers. In a letter of 22 November, the king of Aragon answered the allegations in a fair and forthright manner, assuring Juan that he and his vassals would be returned forthwith whatever was theirs by right, and undertaking furthermore to investigate other reported infractions of the truce.³⁶ Letters exchanged between the Manueline and Aragonese courts through December 1297 to March 1298 deal with further alleged contraventions of the truce. Before 15 December Juan complained to Jaume II that Pedro Zapata, lord of Tous and alcalde (governor) of Mula castle, had taken a Manueline vassal captive during truce time; the Aragonese monarch promised to take appropriate action if Juan would dispatch 'un procurador l...] que al dito Pero Çapata demande por tregua al dicho cavallero'.³⁷ And on 17 February 1298 the king of Aragon wrote demanding the return of property in Villena which Juan had confiscated from one Martín Ximénez de Alcalá, a nobleman who had once resided in that town but now lived in Xátiva; on 26 March the Castilian prince reluctantly agreed to comply with Jaume's wishes even though Martín Ximénez, he claimed, 'era vecino de Villena e lo desamparo et se fue ende como no devia'.³⁸ Other issues to do with the Truce of Elche were to have been dealt with by Juan Manuel and an Aragonese courtier named Bernat Mercer at a meeting scheduled for January 1298;³⁹ but by 26 March they still had not met,⁴⁰ and there is no firm evidence that they ever did.

The above-mentioned diplomatic exchanges merit our attention chiefly because they mark the beginning of Juan Manuel's political association with Jaume II. Hitherto, as we have seen, the attitude of the lord of Villena and his household vis-à-vis the king of Aragon had been decidedly inimical. But the signing of the Truce of Elche had necessitated that the two sides establish and maintain a working political relationship. The above exchanges, formal and restrained, were to pave the way for a closer co-operation between Juan Manuel and Jaume II, an association which was to form the backbone of the lord of Villena's political power, as we shall see in due course.

The war waged against Fernando IV by his enemies after 1296 may best be described as desultory. The major offensive of 1297 was a joint venture by Juan Núñez de Lara and the Infante Juan against crown land to the north-west of Valladolid, an action which provoked Fernando's regents to besiege the head of the Lara clan at Ampudia around July. This royal operation did not give a result,⁴¹ and early in the next year Núñez linked up with Alfonso de la Cerda to attack Almazán. Preoccupied by this and a subsequent military action against Deza,⁴² the Castilian government could not prevent the Aragonese conquest of the Murcian castle of Alhama around the same point.⁴³ The remaining Castilian-held properties in the kingdom of Murcia may well have been lost too had Jaume II not become distracted by Mediterranean affairs and travelled to Sicily (over which he had once ruled) to assist in a war against his brother Fadrique.⁴⁴ This affair occupied Jaume until about March 1299 when, concerned it seems about possible raids on his lands from Castile and Granada, he returned to the Peninsula to secure Aragon's borders.⁴⁵ He returned to Sicily thereafter, but did not stay long, abandoning the campaign against his brother in the early summer. Once back in his own realms, Jaume turned his thoughts again to the completion of the conquest of the kingdom of Murcia, readying a force to attack Lorca and its castle.⁴⁶ On learning of the Aragonese monarch's plan, the dowager regent María de Molina dispatched a company of knights to the area with a large sum of money. In addition, she sent to Juan Manuel – who held Lorca as a benefice from the Crown – 'una grand cuantía de aver porque enviase y todos sus vasallos meterse en la villa porque fuese defendida'. The lord of Villena, we are told, did what was bid of him.⁴⁷ Situated on a high rock, Lorca castle was scarcely an easy stronghold to capture. But it was important, nonetheless, to assure its security since it was the last strategically significant Castilian-held fortress in Murcia. For symbolic as much as for military reasons, Fernando IV's government could ill afford to allow Lorca fall into Aragonese hands.

With Lorca satisfactorily garrisoned, Juan Manuel made his way to his northernmost property, Peñafiel. The return of the teenage prince to this place perhaps stirred memories of the time he had spent with Sancho IV in the autumn of 1294, for on 11 October he dispatched a delegation to Perpignan to work out with representatives of the Majorcan royal family a contract for the marital union which Sancho had concerted for him in that year.⁴⁸ By 20 November an arrangement had been produced and ratified,⁴⁹ and early in the new year the sixteen-year-old Princess Isabel was escorted through Aragon by the Manueline vassal Juan Bretón and delivered to her new husband in Requena.⁵⁰

Though Juan had not married below his station, this match could scarcely be described as advantageous. Marital unions in this era were first and foremost political alliances; a means of consolidating or improving one's political circumstances. And as a member of Castilian royalty, the lord of Villena was singularly eligible. Yet, reluctant perhaps to disrespect the wishes of Sancho IV, he had chosen to marry into a family which was very much on the periphery of Peninsular affairs. A marriage into, say, the Portuguese royal line or a leading Castilian family such as the Laras or Haros seemed a better choice. His decision, however, was not to cost him politically, as we shall later see.

Juan Manuel does not seem to have played an active role in Castilian politics during the first months of 1300.⁵¹ What occupied him instead is far from obvious, but it would not be unreasonable to think that he spent most - if not all - of this period enjoying the company of his new wife, perhaps in the idyllic surroundings of Alarcón. Content with his lot, Juan had remained loyal to Fernando IV through 1297-99. Yet for such loyalty he had received no material reward. When in early 1300 the Castilian government granted the Haro family extensive lands in recognition of its efforts to subjugate Juan Núñez de Lara (May 1299),⁵² the lord of Villena became vexed, and at the May cortes of Valladolid pressed María de Molina for primogenitary possession of Alarcón and life ownership of Alcaraz and Huete.⁵³ According to the Aragonese courtier Bernat de Sarrià, who in late June wrote to the king of Aragon on this episode, María would not let Juan Manuel have what he wanted.⁵⁴ Yet there is reason to believe that he was ceded at least Huete.⁵⁵ That the lord of Villena was not entirely happy with what he had achieved in Valladolid, however, is plain from a document dispatched by Viscount Jaspert of Castellnou to the Aragonese curia towards the end of September in which the said nobleman alerted his sovereign Jaume II to the fact that the Castilian prince was preparing a force in Garcimuñoz for an offensive against the kingdom of Murcia,⁵⁶ the primary objective of which surely was the recovery of Elche. A correspondence dated 21 September, in which Juan requested from the king of Aragon laissez-passer for knights whom he wished to send to the Aragonese court 'para que fablen convusco [Jaume] algunas cosas de la mi pro', suggests that the young lord was disposed (initially at any rate) to negotiate for what he wanted.⁵⁷ But letters of safe-conduct were not produced for these individuals until 7 October,⁵⁸ by which time the House of Manuel had run out of patience and commenced hostilities.⁵⁹

Juan Manuel soon had cause to regret his actions. His military action achieved little other than antagonizing the king of Aragon, who responded to this violation of the Truce of Elche by confiscating the Elche rents and ravaging Manueline lands.⁶⁰ Before 21 November Juan, unhappy about this, dispatched Sancho Ximénez de Lanclares to the Aragonese court to demand that the rents be released and reparation be given for the damage caused by the Aragonese raids.

To this brazen request, the king of Aragon issued the following frosty and sarcastic reply:

Quant a alló dels dans donats per la gent de la terra nostra a la vostra terra vos responem que nos som molt volenterosos de fer fer esmena de tots los dans si dats son ço que no sabem a la vostra terra depus la treva. E vos fetz fer esmena de tots los dans qui per les gents de la vostra terra son dats a les gents nostras depuys la treva presa.⁶¹

Soon after, Juan received a written demand from the Aragonese curia for an indemnity of no less than 500,000 sueldos, to be paid within sixty days;⁶² and not long after this he was visited by two Aragonese procurators, Lope López de Bailo and Guillén de Freixa, whom Jaume II had dispatched with instructions to 'enantar e requerir e demandar [...] al noble Don Johan Manuel emienda e entegra restitucion de todas las malifeytas, daynos e malos que por lo dito Don Johan Manuel fueron feytos a nos [...] contra las posturas'.⁶³

Pressure of this sort from the house of Aragon was the last thing that the lord of Villena needed since the expense of his recent military operation had left his coffers depleted. And with his primary source of revenue - the Elche rents - now cut off, he could not easily replenish them. Moreover, Juan had yet to receive the whole of the dowry for his marriage to the Infanta Isabel.⁶⁴ Evidence of the house of Manuel's financial difficulties at this point can be seen in a letter written on 31 December 1300 by Isabel to the bayle (tax collector) of Elche Pere Escribà in which she requested the said official to bring before her husband 'la cuenta del almoxarifadgo de Elche este anno [...], que es mucho mester para saber quanto es lo que avemos ende avido en este anno [...]. Et otrosi los dies mille maravedises del alfarda traet me los [ende] convusco que los he mucho mester para la mi despensa'.⁶⁵

Juan Manuel's military action damaged not just his fragile relationship with Jaume II but also the precarious peace process between Castile and Aragon, under way since September.⁶⁶ With a force already mobilised, the king of Aragon commenced in December an operation to capture Lorca and its fortress.⁶⁷ Due largely to the poor communications of the period, the Castilian government did not learn of the threat to this strongpoint until the new year, by which time the town had already fallen.⁶⁸ Concerned that its castle should not be lost also, María de Molina raised in short order an army of some four thousand knights and made her way with her son Fernando IV and leading loyalist nobles to the kingdom of Murcia, collecting Juan Manuel and his wife Isabel en route.⁶⁹ No later than 31 January the Castilian host arrived in Alcaraz, some seventy miles short still of its intended destination,⁷⁰ only to discover that the ida had been in vain: Lorca castle and its adjacent towers had yielded to the Aragonese in the last days of December.⁷¹

There was, nevertheless, still a job for the Castilian army to do. After conquering Lorca and its fortress, the Aragonese had established sieges at the Manueline castles of Mula and Alcalá. Fernando IV's troops immediately set about raising these and achieved a swift result.⁷² Buoyed by this success, the Castilian army marched eastwards toward Murcia to attack Jaume II, who around the turn of the year had rushed from Lorca to this city to be with his consort Blanche, who was about to give birth.⁷³ Jaume was forewarned of the approach of the Castilian force yet did not leave Murcia city, presumably because he did not wish to abandon his wife, who must not have been fit enough to travel. Luck, nevertheless, was with the Aragonese monarch: the siege of this city was an unmitigated failure,⁷⁴ lasting certainly less than two weeks and probably no more than three days.⁷⁵

In one respect, the Castilian expedition had been a failure: the royal army had arrived too late to save Lorca castle and it had spurned a gilt-edged opportunity to capture Fernando IV's principal exterior enemy: the king of Aragon. Yet it had at least shown that the Castilian monarch's regime was now robust enough to execute a concerted military enterprise. Jaume II evidently appreciated this, agreeing in April 1301 a mutual defence arrangement with Muhammad II of Granada.⁷⁶ Anxious probably to put an end to the frequent and damaging Muslim guerrilla thrusts against his south-eastern properties,⁷⁷ Juan Manuel also desired an accord with the king of Granada and in mid-June he tasked Bernat de Sarrià, the kingdom of Murcia's procurador general,⁷⁸ with notifying the Granadan court of his desire for a truce of five or six years, and to then petition the king of Aragon for a letter of endorsement for such an arrangement. Desperate for a deal of any description, the Castilian prince further asked Elche's bayle Pere Escribà to deliver to Muhammad II a blank letter, bearing the Manueline seal, upon which the Muslim monarch could put his own conditions for a truce. Though Sarrià was not averse to the idea of Juan having a truce with the king of Granada (so long as it did not outlast the Truce of Elche) he was unwilling to write to Muhammad on the subject or, for that matter, to allow Escribà to travel to him, without the prior approval of Jaume II; thus on 20 June Sarrià dispatched a letter to his sovereign requesting permission for such contact to be made.⁷⁹ Jaume's reply is unknown, but it was probably in the negative, since there is no evidence, documentary or otherwise, of any diplomatic contact between the Granadan and Manueline courts during 1301.

In his letter to the king of Aragon, Sarrià had included a summary of political goings-on in Castile. He reported that a French embassy had left the Castilian court with a gift of 'moltes joyes' from María de Molina after negotiating, it appears, the betrothals of Fernando IV to a daughter of Philippe IV and Alfonso de la Cerda to the Infanta Isabel of Castile (a double marriage designed no doubt to put a definitive end to Castile's succession dispute); that the good relationship between Fernando IV and the Haro family was experiencing strains on account of the friendship the former had struck up with the Infante Juan, who in June of the preceding year had formally renounced his claim to any part of the realm of Castile and pledged allegiance to the teenage monarch;⁸⁰ and that Juan Manuel, having learnt that 'alcuns lan malmenat ab lo Rey de Castela' had travelled to a court meeting in the kingdom of Leon "ab gran companya'.⁸¹ Who had said what to set Fernando IV against the lord of Villena is not recorded, although it is not impossible that the adolescent monarch had been apprised of his cousin's pursuit of a political arrangement with Granada and had taken umbrage (it is worth noting that any perceived association between the Castilian royal family and the infidel Muslim would have been frowned upon by Pope Boniface VIII, who had yet to recognise Fernando's succession).

In the same letter Sarrià advised his sovereign that this was an opportune moment to launch an assault against Castile as, because of five years of civil strife, this realm was in a poor state and there was widespread want.⁸² Mercifully for Fernando IV, Jaume II had trouble at home in the shape of an aristocratic uprising over remuneration and the imposition of a royal levy on salt known as la salga.⁸³ Indeed, so critical was the domestic situation in Aragon that in September 1301 Jaume dispatched an embassy to the Castilian curia to sue for peace. But María de Molina would not embark even on investigatory talks, informing the Aragonese ambassadors that she would not consider the question of peace until Jaume relinquished the Murcian estates he had annexed in 1296 and since.⁸⁴ The dowager queen was in a position to take a firm line because her son Fernando IV, for the first time in his reign, had the undivided support of his aristocracy. Jaume II was read to concede some land.⁸⁵ The difficulty of his interior situation is evidenced by documentation showing that several disgruntled Aragonese grandees had offered to support a Castilian enterprise against Murcia planned for the close of the year.⁸⁶ That military action, however, was never initiated, chiefly because the Infante Juan - good friends with the king of Aragon - was vehemently opposed to it.⁸⁷ Another possible reason is the distraction of the arrival of the long-coveted bull of legitimation for María de Molina's consanguineous marriage to Sancho IV,⁸⁸ a document which validated Fernando IV's right to govern and put an end to Alfonso de la Cerda's claim to the throne on the ground of Fernando’s illegitimacy. The improvement of the king of Castile’s position vis-à-vis his Aragonese counterpart at this juncture is evidenced by Jaume’s offer in January 1302 to return the whole of the kingdom of Murcia, bar Alicante, in exchange for peace.⁸⁹

Had the Castilian government accepted this offer, Juan Manuel no doubt would have recovered forthwith the Elche properties and been able to exercise once more his prestigious office of adelantado mayor en el reino de Murcia. Yet, as far as records allow us to know, he did not create a stir when the deal was rejected. His thoughts were very likely elsewhere. Before 10 October 1301 Isabel Manuel had instructed Pere Escribà to collect whatever rents were owed to her husband and take them, together with a large quantity of victuals, to Alicante, from where she and Juan were soon to sail for the island of Majorca.⁹⁰ Isabel was sick, and it was hoped that a trip to familiar surroundings and a milder, maritime climate might help her convalesce. However, for reasons unclear, the young princess did not return to her homeland; instead, she was moved to Escalona. There her health deteriorated and in December 1301, tragically, she died.⁹¹ Juan’s absence from Castilian politics during the greater part of 1302 could be a sign of how deeply he grieved. In cold political terms, however, Isabel’s passing accorded his career a greater potential, freeing him to secure a far more influential marriage.

Perhaps María de Molina had not availed of the Crown of Aragon's recent offers of peace because she believed that Castile's interior situation would remain stable, enabling her and her son to press through either diplomatic or military means for an understanding on their terms. If so, she naively underestimated the self-seeking ambitions of Castile's greater aristocracy.

On 6 December 1301 Fernando IV had reached his majority. Aware that Fernando was now entitled to govern on his own, the Infante Enrique, concerned to protect his elevated political status, conspired with Juan Núñez de Lara and the Infante Juan to separate the adolescent sovereign from his mother and establish themselves at court. They took Fernando IV away to Leon on a hunting expedition and there convinced him that María had taken the regency solely to further her own material aspirations.⁹²

Evidence that the impressionable monarch no longer fully trusted his mother may be seen in his failure around late December to join her in Vitoria for an emergency meeting with ambassadors of the king of France on the question of recent trouble along the Navarrese border.⁹³ The Infante Juan and Juan Núñez quickly tired of their new alliance with the overbearing Infante Enrique and in the opening weeks of 1302 began to co-operate covertly to discredit him and enhance their own positions. When Fernando IV bestowed upon Juan Núñez the prestigious court post of mayordomo mayor without consulting Enrique,⁹⁴ the ageing infante understood that he was being marginalised. His response was to enlist the support of the powerful Diego López de Haro and threaten war on the king and his new aides. Fernando was able to placate his granduncle with a substantial grant of land.⁹⁵ But the infante would not remain obedient for long.

In late April or early May 1302, in Medina de Campo, Fernando IV convened for the first time a court meeting.⁹⁶ At this gathering, the main purpose of which seems to have been to raise finances,⁹⁷ Juan Manuel received from his sovereign written confirmation of the fuero and freedoms which Fernando IV's grandfather, Alfonso X, had conceded to the town of Escalona, demonstrating that the two were back on good terms after their problems of the previous year.⁹⁸ And it may have been at Juan's instigation that Fernando gave an instruction for Castilian men-at-arms to be sent to the kingdom of Murcia to recover Lorca and other properties seized by the Aragonese during 1296 and since.⁹⁹ This military project, which was in progress by the end of May, does not seem to have achieved much,¹⁰⁰ perhaps because Fernando IV's troops became distracted by a Muslim border foray to the west of the kingdom.¹⁰¹ After the Medina del Campo cortes, Fernando IV rowed with the Infante Juan and Juan Núñez on the subject of remuneration,¹⁰² and these aristocrats consequently did not travel with him to Burgos for a convocation of the estates of Castile.¹⁰³ Nor did Juan Manuel follow his sovereign to Burgos, possibly because he completed his political business at the Medina assembly.¹⁰⁴ He may instead have retired to Peñafiel, his preferred summer residence, for in August he was in nearby Palencia, where his kinsman Alfonso – the eldest son and heir of the Infante Juan – was marrying Teresa Núñez, a union designed to cement the friendship between the groom's father and the bride's brother Juan Núñez. At the Palencia wedding celebrations, Fernán Sánchez tells us, the Infante Juan and Juan Núñez were reconciled with Fernando IV. On learning of the return to royal favour of these noblemen, the Infante Enrique became agitated and threatened for a second time to take up arms against the king. Anxious to prevent a new outbreak of internecine warfare, María de Molina encouraged Enrique to solicit from Fernando the court post of mayordomo mayor, held at that moment by Juan Núñez. He did so and was duly conceded it; although only, we are told, because the Infante Juan and Juan Núñez 'consejáronle [al rey] que lo ficiese, tanto que don Enrique partiese mano de don Diego é de los otros que se tenian con él'. The elderly infante, however, did not remain tranquil for long, 'porque vió de cómmo profazaban dél en casa del Rey, é que le non facian aquella honra que devian'. Matters were not improved by the decision of Fernando IV - seemingly oblivious to the delicacy of Castile's internal situation - to enter into a covert pact with the Infante Juan and Juan Núñez against the Infante Enrique, Diego López de Haro, and his own mother María de Molina (September 1302). On learning of this arrangement, Enrique immediately set about negotiating a counter-pact with Diego López, Juan Alfonso de Haro and other nobles displeased with the excessive influence at court of Juan Núñez and the Infante Juan. María de Molina participated also in these negotiations – primarily, Fernán Sánchez tells us, because 'tovo [ella] que por esta manera podria al Rey guardar de tan grand pleito commo rescelaba que le vernia si ella non lo guardase, seyendo ella con don Enrique'. And it was most probably due to her influence at the talks that the majority of those present resolved to demand of the teenage king of Castile only that 'si [él] les quisiese tomar las heredades o las tierras, que ellos todos gelo mostraren primeramente al Rey, e si gelo non emendase, que le desirviesen commo a rey e commo a señor'.¹⁰⁵ The Infante Enrique and Diego López were bitterly disappointed with this outcome – far too moderate for their liking – and before the close of the year the former renounced in protest his court post of mayordomo mayor,¹⁰⁶ while the latter concluded a military alliance with Philippe IV of France.¹⁰⁷