Segovia was another ancient centre of this manufacture, which Larruga considers to have been transferred hither upon the extinction of the factories of Cameros, Burgos, and Palencia. However this may be, the _fuero_ of Sepúlveda, signed by Alfonso the Sixth, tells us that clothworks existed here as early as the eleventh century. Towards the end of the fourteenth, when Catherine of Lancaster was married to the Infante Don Enrique, the English princess brought over, as part of her dowry, a flock of merino sheep. These are believed to have pastured near Segovia--a city where Catherine made her home for many years. In any case, Segovian cloths improved considerably from about this time, and by the reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, when thirty-four thousand persons were employed in the manufacture and twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth were produced annually, were thought (especially the baizes and the serges) to be unsurpassed in Europe.[27] Sovereigns, including Charles the Second and Charles the Fifth of Spain, and Henry the Eighth of England, were among the patrons of these fabrics, while as late as the year 1700 the Franciscan friars engaged in redeeming captives from the Turks, reported that "at Constantinople, whither they had carried Segovian cloths as presents to the principal rulers of that country, those cloths were spoken of in terms of high approval." [27] Colmenares, who wrote a history of Segovia down to the reign of Philip the Second, says that in his time the clothmakers of this town were "true fathers of families, who within and without their houses sustain a multitude of persons (in many cases two and three hundred), producing, with the aid of other people's hands, a great variety of finest cloth: an employment worthy to be ranked with agriculture, and that is of the utmost profit to any city, or to any kingdom." Early in the seventeenth century, and owing to a series of causes such as impertinent or improvident legislation, heavy taxes, and the importation of foreign cloths, the trade showed symptoms of decay.[28] Bertaut de Rouen wrote in 1659, referring to the Spanish character at this time: "Bien souvent le pain leur manque, comme j'ay veu dans _Almagro_, petite ville située dans le meilleur pays d'Andalousie, et dans _Segovie_, qui est une des grandes villes d'Espagne, et où il y avoit autrefois des plus riches marchands à cause des draps et des chapeaux que l'on y faisoit, qui a esté longtemps le sejour des Roys de Castille, et qui n'est qu'environ à douze ou quatorze lieuës de Madrid, où il n'y avoit point de pain dans toute la ville le jour que j'y arrivay, et il n'y en eut qu'à quatre heures après midy, que l'on le distribua par ordre du _Corregidor_, aussi bien qu'à Almagro."