His son and successor, Don Pedro of Castile, is known to history as “Pedro the Cruel,” which name well illustrates his character. Cruel and licentious to a degree never before shown in any occupant of the throne, Pedro followed his father’s pernicious example, his amour with Doña Maria de Padilla being maintained while his lawful wife was a prisoner by his command. Though for a time popular with the masses, owing to his inclination rather toward the people than the nobility, his lust, covetousness, and cruelty caused a revolt. He overcame his opponents, but signalled his return to power by the murder of his half–brother, Don Fadrique, his mother, many of his relatives, and his wife. It is charged against him that he cut the throats of the Emir of Granada and fifty of his nobles, while they were his guests under a flag of truce, and committed other atrocious deeds. His half–brother, Henry, having escaped to France, returned with an army, but Pedro appealed to the son of the English Edward III, the “Black Prince,” and that gallant adventurer, then fighting in France, came to his assistance. By his aid he discomfited his enemies, but his cruelty to prisoners so disgusted his noble ally that he retired and left him to his fate. Henry then appeared with a small force, around which the people eagerly gathered, and Pedro was defeated and taken prisoner. The last act of this terrible drama took place in a tent where the half–brothers, sons of the same father, met in deadly combat, which ended by Pedro’s being stabbed in the back, and pouring out his life–blood at the fratricide’s feet. Thus were the sins of Alfonso XI quickly visited upon his children, and the kingdom which he had founded threatened with disruption. Pedro the Cruel was killed in 1369, and as Henry II his half–brother, the regicide, assumed his place, claimants arose to contest his dubious title to the throne, and among them John of Gaunt, the English Duke of Lancaster, Pedro’s son–in–law. At the same time, as enemies, he could count the Kings of Moorish Granada, Aragon, and Navarre. But he defeated the machinations of all these opponents and eventually reduced the kingdom to a state of peace, in which it continued till his death, in 1379, which was occasioned by a pair of poisoned boots, sent him as a present by the treacherous Emir of Granada.