ments being
probably set apart for the offices of attendants, and places of
confinement for prisoners: in the centre of the upper story was a
diminutive open court, supported by the vaults of the ground-floor, and
into which a series of elegantly proportioned rooms opened on all sides.
Although the greater part of the vaults and interior walls are fallen
in, the rooms are all to be traced, and inscriptions in the old Gothic
letter run round the walls of some of the apartments. A second enclosure
rises to about two-thirds of the elevation of the inner quadrangle, and
is provided with corresponding turrets; but the proportions of these are
more spacious, and their construction and ornament more massive. Beyond
this are the exterior defences rising out of the moat, and very little
above the surrounding ground.

Viewed from without, nothing indicates that this edifice is a ruin. Over
the entrance are the arms of the Counts of Fuensalida. It is supposed by
many that this castle was erected by Garcilaso de la Vega, grandfather
of the "Prince of Spanish poets," as the celebrated bard of Toledo is
entitled. Others maintain its founder to have been Pedro Lopez de
Ayala, first Count of Fuensalida. This latter story is the more probable
one; since, besides its being confirmed by the armorial shield above
mentioned, it has been adopted by Haro in his Nobiliario, a work drawn
up with care and research, in which Garcilaso de la Vega is stated to
have purchased some towns from the family of Ayala,--among others
Cuerva, in the near neighbourhood, but not Guadamur.

The Ayalas were descended from the house of Haro, lords of Biscay.
Several of them had held high offices at the Court of Castile. The
grandfather of the founder of the castle had been High Chancellor of
Castile, and Great Chamberlain of Juan the First; and his father, the
first lord of Fuensalida, was High Steward, and first Alcalde of Toledo.
He lost an eye at the siege of Antequera,--taken from the Moors by
Ferdinand, afterwards King of Aragon, in the year 1410, and thus
acquired the surname of the One-eyed. To him Juan II. first granted the
faculty of converting his possessions into hereditary fiefs: "Because,"
according to one of the clauses of the act, "it was just that the houses
of the grandees should remain entire in their state for the eldest son;
and in order that the eldest sons of the grandees might be maintained in
the estates of their predecessors, that the na