reign of Henry III. of Castile, was its sudden and unhappy termination. For within less than two years after the nation had been gratified by the appearance of a prince of Asturias (March, 1405) the king sickened and died at Toledo on Christmas Day, 1406, leaving the crown once more on the head of an infant, who reigned over Castile for nearly fifty years as John II.

IV.-Pedro. Lopez de Ayala.

Within a few months after the death of Henry, died the old courtier and chronicler to whose powers of observation and fidelity of narrative we owe the greater part of our knowledge of the affairs and the life of Peter the Cruel and of his immediate successor on the throne of Castile.

Pedro Lopez de Ayala was the son of Fernan Perez de Ayala, Adelantado of Murcia in the time of Peter the Cruel. He was attached, at a very early age to the Duke of Albuquerque, and remaining at court after that minister's murder, he served his dangerous sovereign until 1366, accompanying him even in his retreat to Burgos. But on the appeal to foreign intervention, Ayala held for Castile, and transferred his services to "the Count." He fought at Navarrete against the invaders, was taken prisoner, and ransomed by Henry of Trastamara. Restored to Spain, he remained at court until the death of Henry II., and afterwards under John I., as Chancellor of Castile. He served as Alferez mayor, or majorgeneral at the disastrous battle of Albujarrota, where he was

antiguedades de las islas de Gran Canaria (written by the licentiate Juan de la Peña 1676), being the first volume of a work published at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1847. There is a copy in the British Museum Library. [12,231-e.]

The topography and an historical description of all the islands by D. Pedro de Castillo (1848) constitutes the second volume, and there is a most interesting Treatise on the local Ethnography, with notes on the various dialects spoken in the islands, and a comparison between their vocabularies and that of the language of the mainland of Africa, as a third volume, by Malibran and Berthetot.

The entire series is called the Biblioteca Isleña, and should be studied by all who take any interest in the islands.

See also José de Viera y Clavijo, Noticia de la historia de las islas de Canaria; Bontier et Leverrier, Trad. Ramirez, Historia del primer descubrimiento, &c. (Santa Cruz, 1847.) Don J. M. Bremont y Cabello, Bosquejo historico de las islas Canarias (Madrid, 1847), and Pulgar, Cron. iii., xviii.

See also Webb and Berthelot, Histoire naturelle des Iles Canaris (Paris, 1835); Chil y Naranyo, Estudios historicos climatologicos y patologicos de las islas Canarias (Las Palmas, 1876), with maps and plans; and Agustin Millares, Historia general de las islas Canarias (Las Palmas, 1881), in process of publication.

once more taken prisoner by the enemy. But he once more regained his liberty, and lived to serve a fourth king of Castile, Henry III., and to die in the reign of a fifth sovereign, John II., in 1407, at the ripe age of seventy-nine.

His Chronicle1 is of peculiar interest and value, not only as that of an eye-witness, but of an actor in many of the scenes which he records. His style is simple and dignified, and the worst horrors of the king his master are related with a candour that is never malevolent, and with a sobriety that compels belief. Nor in spite of much hostile criticism in modern times has the accuracy of his history ever been seriously impeached.

Ayala was a writer of verse as well as of prose. A courtier at all times, his poem, entitled the Rimado de los Palacios, treats of the duties of kings and grandees, and is illustrated with many interesting allusions, presenting on the whole a most vivid picture of court life in Castile in the fourteenth century, abundantly worthy of study by every reader of the author's more serious Chronicles. The Rimado, moreover, marks an epoch in the progress of Castilian letters; and the Chancellor is frequently spoken of as the restorer of Castilian poetry.2

The Rimado at times recalls the freedom and variety of treatment of the arch-Priest of Hita, though the Muse of Ayala is essentially more serious than that of Ruiz. Nor was Don Pedro content only with his verses and his Chronicle. He was also the author of a practical treatise on falconry, and the care and management of hawks; and his work, one of the most complete that has ever been published on the subject, was annotated by no less distinguished a successor than Beltran de la Cueva, Duke of Albuquerque.3

A statesman and a chronicler, a poet and a sportsman, a

1 Cronicas de los Reyes de Castilla, D. Pedro, D. Enrique II., D. Juan I. D. Enrique III., por D. Pedro Lopez de Ayala. The best edition is that with the notes of Zurita and Llaguno Amirola; Madrid, 1779.

2 See Documentos ineditos, vol. xix., pp. 184, et seq. Ticknor, ed. Gayangos, i., 105-107.

The work on hunting, or rather on field sports, including falconry, attributed by Argote de Molina to Alfonso XI., was probably the work of Alfonso X. Rios, Hist. Crit. de la Lit. Esp.

His nephew, Don Juan Manuel, also wrote a work on the Chase. See Doc. Ined., vol. xix. (Generaciones y Semblanzas).

The best edition of El Libro de los Aves de Caça del Canciller Pedro Lopez de Ayala, is that published in Madrid, 1869, with an introduction by Don Pascual de Gayangos.

See Casiri, Biblioteca Arab. Hist. Escurial., i., 231.

The noble and knightly pastime of falconry was introduced into Spain by the Arabs, having been in all probability adopted by their ancestors from their neighbours the Persians. Falconry is constantly referred to in the Shah Namah of Firdusi. The number of Arabic MSS. treating of falconry in the Escurial would

soldier and a politician, Pedro Lopez de Ayala is very far from being a mere court scribe; and, if he is best known to posterity by his admirable history of his own times, it must not be forgoten that he was one of the most admired and one of the most admirable among the Castilian gentlemen of his day.1

abundantly suffice to prove the oriental origin of Spanish falconry, even if it were not that the vocabulary or technical language of the sport is so largely Arabic that any doubt upon the question is impossible. Cetreria, indeed, is from the Latin accipiter; but most of the special or technical words connected with Spanish falconry speak plainly of their Arab origin, such as :-Azor, a hawk; Alcahaz, bird-cage; Alcaravan, a buzzard or marsh harrier; Alcotan, sparrow hawk; Alfaneque, Tunis hawk, white with brown spots; Bahari, gentle falcon; Sacre, lanner or hen harrier; Alcandara, perch for hawks; Alcatraz, water fowl; Alcadera, water fowl; Alcasubor, a kind of drum to startle water fowl. Many other similar words are given by Don Pascual de Gayangos in his edition (1869) of Ayala's work, referred to in my note on p. 335.

1 The whole of vol. xix, of the Documentos Ineditos, pp. 575, is taken up with a Biographical Memoir and Essay, concluded only in vol. xx., of Ayala, by Rafael de Floranes, to which the student is referred, not only for all that can be said or written about the old chronicler, but for a very interesting treatise upon the rise or restoration of polite letters in Christian Spain, a restoration in which Ayala no doubt played a very important part.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.1

THE Feudal System, which has left so deep and lasting an impression upon social and political life in a great part of Europe, can hardly be said even to have existed in mediæval Spain. The magnates of Castile and Leon, ever warring against their Moslem rivals as a constant duty, and against their Christian neighbours as a no less constant pleasure, did not and could not remain in dignified seclusion in their baronial halls, ruling over their vassals, and administering their estates by undisputed law and custom, after the manner of the great lords of France and England. Engaged in a perpetual crusade against the Infidel on the frontier, the Spanish nobles lived rather in the field than in the castle, ever pushing forward the Christian possessions to the south. Soldiers rather than seigneurs for over five hundred years, (711-1252), they had neither taste nor leisure for the development of their territorial, as distinguished from their military power. The castle was rather an opportune fortress than a permanent home. The plantation of forests, the great pride of a landed aristocracy, was almost unknown. The Spanish nobles learned all too little from their Arab neighbours. Yet as regards forestry, there was but little to be learned. Treeplanting is not an Oriental virtue. It was a feudal aristocracy alone that in Western Europe preserved the forests from the ravages of woodmen and waste, of wandering shepherds and fitful cultivation. It was a feudal aristocracy alone that cared for existing timber, and planted trees in every direction, with a view to sport, to profit, and to personal dignity. A manor-house would be but a grange without its

1 A very interesting account of the Cortes of Madrid (1390) is to be found in Geddes' Tracts, vol. i.

One hundred and twenty-four members or deputies attended, as the representatives of forty-eight cities or burghs. Two members seem to have been usually returned by each town, while Burgos and Salamanca each sent no less than eight, Leon five, Toledo and Soria each four, and some few cities only one. The lord sometimes possessed rights of independent jurisdiction, not only as under the feudal system, as incident to his own territorial authority, but by special grant from the Crown, as in the case of municipal towns.-Viardot, Essai, ii.,

112.

Y

surrounding woods; a park would be but a field without its stately trees. And many a mere field in England possesses finer timber than is to be found in tens of leagues of the plain country of Castile. The Arab and the Moor in their best days were gallant warriors and honourable foes. But their social system admitted of nothing resembling a Christian landed aristocracy, nor a society of hereditary classes and orders of men. Under the Commander of the Faithful all good Moslems were socially equal. Official position, indeed, conferred temporary rank, but the Grand Vizier was as liable to the bowstring as the door-keeper of the palace, and a still humbler official might find himself Prime Minister or Commander-in-Chief. Hereditary rank was unknown. Family succession, as it is understood in the West, was rendered impossible, alike by the manners and customs of the people, and by the operation of the Mohammedan law; at this very day there is no such thing as a surname in the whole of Islam.

When Moor and Christian stood face to face, and strove for mastery, in the South-West of Europe, it was not merely a contest between two religions, but between two social systems. The Moslem was a dweller in towns-a builder of palaces, a layer-out of gardens, a director of water-courses. The trees he planted were the olive and the pomegranate, the fig and the almond; orchards rather than forests grew round his dwelling-places. His castles were designed only for war, as impregnable fortresses, and not as noble residences. And the Christian lord's, if they did not embellish their cities, established their casas solariegas or family mansions by preference within the walls of a town, and disregarded the comfort and material beauty of their country seats, which for long years were never safe from attack, and even from occupation by the Infidel.

For nearly four centuries after the victorious march of Taric and Musa there was a constant ebb and flow in the tide of conquest in mediæval Spain. What was Moorish territory to-day became Christian to-morrow; and when a knight from Leon or Castile had fixed his banner on the battlements of a conquered castle, some new wave from Andalusia or from Africa would sweep over the country and leave him without sod or stone.

In the middle of the tenth century the Christian frontiers had been pushed forward as far south as Simancas. Before the opening of the eleventh century the Moorish arms were carried northward to the Atlantic and the mountains of Biscay. But the tide of victory set strongly towards the South; and the territory conquered, or recovered as it was called, from