The rural districts he treated on a different principle. He granted large tracts to noblemen, military orders, and cities on the express condition that they should be cultivated and populated within a fixed period under pain of revocation of the grants. This plan proved effective in the Beira and northern Estremadura, which King Sancho hoped would be sufficiently secured against invasion by the great fortresses on the Tagus, Lisbon, Santarem, and Abrantes, but was quite inapplicable to the Alemtejo. This province he had, in imitation of his father’s policy, entirely portioned out among the great military orders before its recapture by Ya’kūb. He not only confirmed his father’s and grandmother’s large grants to the Templars, Hospitallers, and Knights of the Sepulchre, but greatly increased them; he showed especial favour to the Portuguese order of chivalry, the Knights of St. Benedict of Aviz, which Affonso Henriques had founded; and he introduced from Spain the Order of Caceres, to which he granted Alcacer do Sal, Palmella, and Almada, and that of Calatrava, to which he granted Evora, Alcanede, and Jurumenha, thus attracting to his kingdom some of the most famous warriors of Spain. It was true that the conquests of Ya’kūb had annulled the effect of these grants, but the knights looked upon their possessions across the Tagus, as only in the temporary occupation of the Mohammedans, and were inspired by this feeling into redoubled alacrity in guarding the line of the Tagus, and with an ardent desire for the war against the Moors to begin again. [Illustration: PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE IGREGA DOS JERONYMOS AT BELEM. (PRESENT STATE.) (_After a Photograph._)]