Burgos was now a large and populous town. It owed much of its prosperity to its considerable Jewish colony, of which Don Todros Abulafia was Nasi, and Abu-l-Hasan Aben el Harits, physician to the king, one of the elders. The Israelites contributed over one hundred thousand maravedis to the revenue in the city alone. With the important part played by the Jews in the internal policy of Spain I have dealt at greater length in my work on Toledo in the present series. During the regency of Doña Maria Molina, Valladolid was the usual seat of the court. But Burgos continued to be the scene of great functions of state. The marriage of the Duke of Brittany and the sister of Fernando IV. was celebrated here in January 1311; and several Cortes and councils met here. From Fernando the city obtained many privileges and favours--the town and revenues of Villafranca de Montes de Oca being granted to the municipality. We pass over the civil wars and intrigues which distracted the reign of Alfonso XI., and find Burgos ruled by one born within its walls--Pedro the Cruel. Seville is more intimately associated with this picturesque and sinister personality, but here it was that he caused the governor, Garcilaso de la Vega, to be beaten to death in his presence, and watched the bulls in the arena without trampling on and tossing the mangled body of the victim. De la Vega’s remains were then placed in a casket, which was hung from the castle walls that all might fear the king’s justice. In 1355, after a busy butchering expedition, Pedro decorated a room in the castle with the heads he had collected, the slaughtered grandees, Lope de Bandaña, Gonzalo de Melendez, and Jofre Tenorio, contributing in this way to the adornment of the chamber and the delight of their lord. It was at the old capital of Castile that he was residing when Enrique de Trastamara with Bertrand du Guesclin and the White Company crossed the border. Pedro fled, and his brother was crowned at Las Huelgas. When the tide had temporarily set in Pedro’s favour, it was in the cathedral of Burgos that he and the Black Prince swore to the terms of their alliance. But in the following year (1368) Enrique’s star was once more in the ascendant, and a king, innately almost as vicious as our Henry VIII., had gone to join his hosts of victims on the other side of the tomb.