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The sole issue of the union of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, with Constance, the heiress of Castile, was Katherine, who, by marriage with the grandson of Trastamere, Henry III. became mother of John II. father of Isabel, “married to Ferdinand, King of Arragon, surnamed the Catholique, by whom she had issue, Joan, espoused to Philip, Archduke of Austria, in her right King of Spain, father of the Emperor Charles V., father of Philip II., who had issue Philip III., father of Philip IV., father of Charles II., who died in 1700.” —Sandford's Geneal. Hist. Kings of England, p. 253.

The inhabitants of Saguntum, (near Murviedro, in Valencia,) besieged by Hannibal, preferred perishing in the flames with their wives and children, rather than submit to ignominious terms. On referring to the account in Livy, it is impossible to resist the insertion of a passage which equally describes some features of the resistance that has immortalised, in our days, the heroic defenders of Saragossa.—“Inter ruinas muri tectaque urbis modico distantia intervallo constiterant.—Hinc spes, hinc desperatio animos irritat: Pœno cepisse jam se urbem, si paululum adnitatur, credente: Saguntinis pro nudata mœnibus patria corpora opponentibus. Nec ullo pedem referente, ne relicto à se loco hostem immitteret. Itaque quo acrius et confertim magis utrimque pugnabatur, eo plures vulnerabantur, nullo inter arma corporaque vano intercidente telo.”—Liv. lib. xxi.

Pelayo was descended from the regal blood of the Goths. After the fatal battle near the river of Guadaleta, where the Moors under Tarif, in 714, totally defeated the Goths, and wrested the sceptre from Roderick, Pelayo retired to the mountains of Asturias, and by inflexible perseverance and heroic courage, gradually prepared the re-establishment of the Christian monarchy.