Queen Isabella

Queen Isabella I of Castile (1451 – 1504) was an influential monarch who helped to unite the different regions of Spain and make Spain a leading power in Europe and the Americas. Queen Isabella was a strict Catholic and, amongst contemporaries, was noted for her ‘virtue and fear of God’. She was an effective monarch in bringing greater law and order to the country and had areputation for promoting justice rather than mercy. With her husband King Ferdinand, she set up the Spanish Inquisition, to investigate heretical religious practises.