In 1384 Peter the Cruel's nephew, John I. of Castile, was well beaten by the Portuguese at the battle of Aljubarrota, and marked his sorrow by issuing a decree prohibiting the use in any form of dress of silk, gold, silver, seed-pearls, precious stones, or ornaments of any kind, and everybody was ordered to don a simple mourning garb. When, four years after this, John of Gaunt's daughter Catharine came to marry the heir to the crown of Castile, she brought something else with her besides the wide, pointed coif which Spanish widows wore for the next three hundred years. Part of her dower consisted of great herds of merino sheep, which crossed and thrived so well in Spain that the coarse duffel, which had been the only native cloth, gave place in a few years to beautiful fine woollen textures which could vie with those of England and Flanders. Intercourse between nations, the growth of wealth, the spread of learning, and the advance of civilisation were moving with giant strides. The soft arts of peace were practised with greater success than ever, now {219} that the Moslem and the Christian were fast merging into one people in Seville and Toledo, and the refinement of the one was strengthened by the energy of the other. Beautiful stuffs, stiff with gold and gems, gauzy silk, soft cloths, and fine linens, had no longer to be brought from the Moors or the kingdoms across the sea. Seville, Toledo, and Cordova could produce everything that the most luxurious extravagance could desire, and the sumptuary laws for a time were forgotten. In 1452 the Cortes of Palenzuela presented a petition to John II. asking that the stringent sumptuary code of Alonso XI. should be re-enforced. The King, in reply, admitted that the law was a dead letter, and that the extravagance in dress was greater than ever. He says that gold tissue and silks are now ordinary wear, and that gold trimmings and marten-fur linings are used even by people of low estate. "Actually working women," he says, "now wear clothes that are only fit for fine ladies; and people of all ranks sell everything they possess in order to adorn their persons." Still the remedy proposed to him of a revival of the stern code of a hundred years before he saw was an impossible one, and the matter was held in suspense. He died soon afterwards, and his feeble successor, Henry IV., was equally powerless to stem the rising tide of industry and wealth with their natural consequences.