Don Samuel exercised too decided an influence over the king to avoid making enemies. Even had he been a Christian, the court party would have devised schemes to bring about his fall. Attempts were made to stir up the Castilian population against the Jews, particularly against the Jewish minister, not only by Don Pedro's bastard brother, Don Henry, and Queen Blanche, but by all formerly in the king's service. Don Pedro Lopez de Ayala, poet, chronicler, and the king's standard-bearer, has given us, in one of his poems, a picture of the feelings of the courtiers for favored Jews: "They suck the blood of the afflicted people; they lap up their possessions with their tax-farming. Don Abraham and Don Samuel, with lips as sweet as honey, obtain from the king whatever they ask." Samuel's fall was desired by many. It is even said that some Toledo Jews, envious of his good fortune, charged him with having accumulated his enormous wealth at his royal master's expense. Don Pedro confiscated Samuel's entire fortune and that of his relatives, 170,900 doubloons, 4,000 silver marks, 125 chests of cloth of gold and silver and 80 slaves from the minister, and 60,000 doubloons from his relatives. According to some writers, an extraordinary quantity of gold and silver was found buried under Samuel's house. Don Pedro ordered his former favorite to be imprisoned at Toledo and placed upon the rack at Seville, in order to force him to disclose further treasures. He, however, remained firm, revealed nothing, and succumbed under the torture (October or November, 1360). His gravestone recites in simple phrase how high his position had been, and how his soul, purified by torture, had risen to God. Concerning Don Pedro, the inscription has not a single condemnatory expression.
Samuel Abulafia's death did not change the friendly relations between the king and the Jews. They remained faithful to him, and he continued to confer important distinctions on members of their body. They consequently came in for a share of the hatred with which the enemies of the king regarded him. The king resolved to put to death his detested consort (1361). Whatever the character of the queen, whether she was a saint or the reverse, whether or not she had deserved her fate, the method of her death must ever remain a stain on Don Pedro's memory. In spite of the animosity with which De Ayala regarded the Jews, there is no intimation in his chronicle that any of Don Pedro's Jewish favorites were concerned in this crime. It was reserved for a later period to invent fables identifying them with the king's guilt. A story was forged to the effect that a Jew had administered poison to the queen on the king's order, because she had insisted on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. A French romance, in which an endeavor is made to varnish the deeds and misdeeds of the French adventurers who fought against Don Pedro and the Jews, attributes the queen's death to a Jewish hand.