The sainted king’s severity on another occasion is more creditable to him. On his entry into the town, two young women threw themselves at his feet and implored vengeance on their betrayer, Fernandez Gonzalo--the Alcalde himself. The high rank of the offender did not save him from instant decapitation, and his head was within an hour gazing down on the scene of his amours from the Puerta del Sol. Whether the betrayed damsels or any one else were benefited by these drastic measures, the panegyrists of the righteous king forgot to tell us. Still it was an age when strong measures were called for; and recognising this, the citizens themselves instituted the famous Santa Hermandad or Holy Brotherhood for the maintenance of public order and suppression of brigandage. The organisation received the royal sanction, and was endowed with many privileges. It supplied the place of a regular police force for all Castile for at least three centuries, and readers will remember the frequent references to it in the pages of “Don Quixote.” Toledo had not yet become a capital in the sense of being the permanent residence of the sovereign. Saint Ferdinand and his immediate predecessors and successors were essentially soldiers. Their Court was the camp, and in the unremitting war of reconquest it was necessarily transferred from place to place, from one confine of the ever-expanding kingdom to the other. When at Toledo the king resided at the Alcazar--which in Moorish days had been a fortress constructed of _tapia_ (a species of concrete), and which was fortified with masonry by Alfonso VI. The building was enlarged and embellished, and made more suitable for a royal residence by Sancho el Bravo (1284-1295). But the state of affairs in what may be termed the Epoch of the Reconquest (1085-1252), was obviously not favourable to the development of the building arts. Toledo possesses few memorials of these days, for such edifices as may have been founded at or before that time have undergone such transformations as to render them practically the products of later ages. Such supplies and energies as were not absorbed by the all-important business of war were naturally diverted to the building of the cathedral, which was not, as we shall see, completed for another two centuries. Mediæval history concerns itself almost exclusively with kings and princes, battles and treaties. Of the life of the people in Spain, as elsewhere, we hear very little. From stray references in the records we glean the information that the streets of Toledo were filthy and unpaved, and frequently encumbered with the carcases of beasts. Over the gates the heads of malefactors were ever rotting, poisoning the already vitiated air. We have concise details, too, of no particular interest, as to the municipal constitution of the city. Beyond this meagre information, we know something of the history of Toledo only so far as it was also the history of Spain.