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In September 1564 Beltran de la Cueva received the great rank of Master of Santiago, which endowed him not only with vast revenues, but the disposal of an armed force second to none in the kingdom, and this new folly of the King was the signal for revolt. A party of nobles immediately seized Valladolid against the King, and though the townspeople promptly expelled them and proclaimed the loyalty of the city, the issue between the factions was now joined. On the following day, 16th September, an attempt that nearly succeeded was made to capture and kidnap the King himself near Segovia. He was a poor, feeble-minded creature, hating strife and danger, and, though some of his stronger councillors protested against such weakness, he consented to meet the revolted nobles, and redress their grievances. In October Villena, the Archbishop of Toledo, Count Benavente, the Admiral Don Fadrique, and the rest of the rebels, met Henry between Cabezon and Cigales, and in three interviews, during their stay of five weeks, dictated to the wretched King their demands.^[6] The King was to dismiss his Moorish guard and become a better Christian: he was to ask for no more money without the consent of the nobles, to deprive Cueva of the Mastership of Santiago, recognise his own impotence and the bastardy of his daughter, and acknowledge as his heir his half-brother Alfonso, whom he was to deliver to the guardianship of Villena. On the 30th November the nobles and the King took the oath to hold the boy Alfonso as the heir of Spain; and then Henry, a mere cypher thenceforward, sadly wended his way to Segovia, where the commission to inquire into the shameful question of his virility was still sitting,^[7] and Villena and his uncle, the warlike Archbishop, were thus practically the rulers of Spain. But though Henry consented to everything he characteristically tried to avoid the spirit of the agreement. Beltran de la Cueva was deprived of the Mastership of Santiago, but he was made Duke of Alburquerque in exchange for the loss, and the poor little disinherited Beltraneja was treated with greater consideration than before.