84 - How Count Sancho married Princess Beatriz, and King Enrique departed for his own kingdom

Summary

With all this accomplished, and the kings very much in harmony, they decided to celebrate the wedding of Princess Beatriz, the [half-]sister of King Fernando, with Don Sancho, the brother of King Enrique, as had been stipulated in the treaty. Over the next two days, grand feasts and jousts were held, and she was handed over to her husband. In these, the said Count Sancho jousted with Martim Afonso de Melo, and the latter struck him in such a way that he knocked him and his horse to the ground. There were other notable encounters of good knights in these jousts, in which, however, thanks be to God, no one was injured.

There another marriage was negotiated, namely that of Dona Isabel, the bastard daughter of King Fernando, whom he had fathered before he married, with Count Alfonso, the son of King Enrique, she being at the time eight years of age, nearly nine, and he probably about eighteen. They were espoused by verba de praesenti at the hands of the aforesaid papal legate, and a very great celebration was held, as befitted such personages. This betrothal that the count made with her, however, was not according to his wish, but rather under pressure and compulsion from his father the king, who insistently ordered him to accept her, according to what the count secretly revealed to certain people before they were betrothed, and which he later said openly, once they were at a distance from Santarém.

When King Enrique departed from Portugal for his own kingdom, he took with him this Dona Isabel, and with her several honourable knights whom the king sent in her company. The King of Castile arrived at a city of his called Santo Domingo de la Calzada. When he had been there for some three months, he held a Royal Council with: Don Gómez Manrique, the Archbishop of Toledo; Don Alfonso, the Bishop of Salamanca; Pedro Fernández de Velasco and Fernán Sánchez de Tovar, as well as with other prelates and knights we do not care to name.

When all were present, King Enrique said that they knew well how on the twenty-second day of the previous March a treaty of peace and good friendship had been signed between him and King Fernando of Portugal.