Perhaps it may be asked how, under such adverse circumstances agriculture survived at all; yet at the beginning of the sixteenth century Castile was not only growing sufficient corn for her own needs but even exporting it to the rest of the peninsula. The explanation lies in a comparison not with the gigantic production of modern times, but with the preceding age, when the scorching breath of anarchy had withered the fields. The government of Queen Isabel’s reign, if it favoured the more popular cattle-trade, at least protected the farmer and labourer from pillage; while, by forbidding the tolls which, during Henry IV.’s misrule, territorial lords had levied at will at every river-ford and turn of the road, it gave a sudden freedom to the circulation of corn as well as of other merchandise. Even more effective was the abolition in 1480 of the export duty on grain, cattle, and goods passing from Castile to Aragon, whereby the cornfields of Murcia were enabled to compete with its grazing lands, until at length a series of bad harvests restored the old predominance of the live-stock industry. The real decline of agriculture, like that of industry, was to set in at the close of the sixteenth century under Isabel’s great-grandson. The reign of the Catholic sovereigns and the early years of Charles V. stand out as a golden age of commercial prosperity. The production of wool and silk increased almost tenfold; the fairs drew foreign merchants from every part of Europe; while Flemish and Italian artisans, attracted by an offer of ten years’ freedom from taxation, settled in the large towns to pursue and teach their handicrafts. [Illustration: BURGOS CATHEDRAL FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY LACOSTE, MADRID ] The numberless _pragmaticas_, or royal proclamations and ordinances, issued at this time show how vigilant was Ferdinand and Isabel’s interest in all that concerned the welfare of their land. In 1486 the cloth-workers of Murcia complained that their trade was being killed by external competition; their looms stood idle, and whereas 50,000 sheep had been needed in old days to provide them with wool, now only some 8000 grazed in their meadows. The response to their petition was a command that for two years no woollen fabrics should enter Murcia; while the import of silk thread from Naples, that threatened the silk industry of Granada, was similarly forbidden. These are only two instances of measures that ranged from awarding bounties to owners of ships of six hundred tons and upwards by way of encouraging navigation to minute instructions as to shoes, hats, embroideries, and armour.