Their family possessions were broken up by repeated partitions, but various members of the ancient stock were scattered over the whole country north of the Ebro and formed fresh alliances and made fresh acquisitions by marriage and inheritance. Thus the line of the counts of Aragon, who ruled the town of Jaca and the province of Sobrarbe, early entered into matrimonial alliances with the family of the counts of Ribagorza. The royal house of Navarre was also connected by marriage with both families, and, on the extinction of the male line in both at the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh, King Sancho, who was in a position to enforce the claims of kinship with the sword, took possession of Aragon, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza, and on his death bequeathed the province of Aragon, as has already been stated, to his natural son Ramiro (1035). The latter assumed the title of “king of Aragon,” and endeavoured by fraud and force to gain a fitting extension to the territory of his kingdom. An attempt which he made to wrest Navarre from his elder brother Garcia was frustrated, but, on the other hand, after Gonsalo, the other brother, had been assassinated, he succeeded in gaining possession of his territories of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, whether by popular election or otherwise cannot be certain. Ramiro also took the field against the Saracens, but the power and personal abilities of the emirs of Saragossa (Mundhir ben Yahya and the Banu Hud) prevented him from gaining any brilliant successes. At the same time he continued to give proof of his piety by founding abbeys and giving gifts to the church in the spirit of the counts before him. The abbey of San Juan de la Peña was the most favoured sanctuary of all, and was richly endowed with lands and revenues, privileges and liberties by the king and the nobles of Aragon. The donation which the king had sent to Pope Alexander II when he introduced the Roman liturgy into Aragon was declared by Gregory VII to be a tribute due to the apostolic see.