It is not to be wondered at that King John loved to live in Lisbon, and watch the daily passage up and down the Tagus of the ships, which were making his capital a great commercial centre, when it is remembered how slight was his actual power over the greater part of his kingdom. The other cities were indeed fairly well governed owing to their possession of ancient charters from kings, bishops, or lords, granting them a system of municipal self-government, but the country districts were ruled by the strictest feudal law and custom, and the king was powerless to interfere. Now was to be seen the harm done by the monarchs who had conquered the Alemtejo and the Algarves from the Mohammedans by the distribution of their conquests in estates among the military orders and private individuals. The result was the division of these provinces into enormous feudal counties and lordships, dangerously large to be the properties of subjects in such a small kingdom as Portugal. The condition of the Beira was a little better, and the two northern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and the Tras-os-Montes, were, as they are still, the homes of the sturdy Portuguese peasantry, who gave to the Portuguese armies and fleets their bravest and stoutest soldiers and sailors. Bitterly did John the Great repent the mistake he had made by his large grants to the Portuguese nobility, and his consequent inability to correct the most crying evils of the feudal system. He had, however, at the beginning of his reign, some wise and able counsellors, in the Holy Constable, in Lourenço, the brave Archbishop of Braga, and in his great chancellor, João das Regras. With the help of the latter he managed to get some valuable laws passed in the Cortes affecting criminal procedure and jurisdiction, by means of which he somewhat controlled the feudal methods of holding courts of justice without much offending the great nobility, but he dared go no further in this direction, and had to allow many abuses, inherent in the feudal system, to continue to exist. In every other respect his administration was extremely good; his cities grew in wealth; his navy increased in number of ships; his sailors became famous for their daring; and in minor points many reforms were made, such, for instance, as introducing the use of the Portuguese language into the law courts, and changing the era from that of Augustus to that of Christ, which made the date of the year consonant with that of the rest of Christendom.