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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
In this year 1390, about which we have already written, while the king was in a place called Alcalá de Henares during the month of October, there came to him some Christian knights, who for a long time had been living in Morocco, ever since the time of King Rodrigo, when Spain was conquered. The Moors called them Farfanes and the king had sent for them, promising he would endow them generously in his lands. With the permission of the King of Morocco, to whom he had sent to ask for them, they left that kingdom and came to Castile, bringing their children and wives with them. On a Sunday, the ninth of that month, after attending mass, the king mounted a roan, accompanied by the Archbishop of Toledo and many knights and other people, and rode out to see those Christians arriving from Morocco. Coming out of the Burgos gate, he spied a stretch of ploughed land close by and put his horse to a gallop over it. Careering along, it stumbled and fell, bringing the king down so forcefully that his body was so completely fractured that he immediately died. Those who were present came up hurriedly to help him but they found him to be lifeless and utterly dead. He was just over thirty-two years old, and had reigned for eleven years.
When the archbishop saw what had happened, he immediately had a pavilion brought and set it up where the king lay, sent for physicians, and gave out word that the king was not dead but was lying speechless, as sometimes happens. He did not allow anyone to approach the king but in the meantime sent letters throughout the kingdom to the towns and cities and to the appropriate people, to the effect that they should remain loyal to his son the prince, the first-born of the kingdom. He also wrote to the queen, his wife, who was in Madrid. But this secrecy lasted a very short while, for soon it was common knowledge, and he had the king taken to a chapel in the bishop's palace, in Alcalá. The next day, the queen was with him, together with the Bishop of Sigüenza and others.
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