[137] “Señor, let thy yea be yea, and thy nay be nay; for of great virtue is it in the prince, or any man, to be a speaker of the truth, and of great security to his vassals and to his property.”
[138] Toledo and Madrid: their Records and Romances; pp. 99–101.
[139] Andrés Ferrara was a well-known armourer of Zaragoza.
[140] Vol. iv. p. 358.
[141] Escudero de la Peña; Claustros, Escalera, y Artesonados del Palacio Arzobispal de Alcalá de Henares; published in the Museo Español de Antigüedades.
[142] The brothers Marckwart, or possibly one or other of them, are believed to have stamped their arquebuses with a series of small sickles, thus:
[143] An old account copied into a book (see [p. 89], note) in the National Library at Madrid, and dating from the reign of Sancho the Fourth, states that Pedro Ferrández, saddler, received a certain sum for making various saddles, including two “de palafrés, wrought in silk with the devices of the king.”
[144] “In mediæval Spain, good riders were often designated as ‘Ginete en ambas sillas,’ that is, accustomed to either saddle, i.e. the Moorish and the Christian, and I now understand why chroniclers have taken the trouble to record the fact. Strangely enough, the high-peaked and short-stirruped saddle does not cross the Nile, the Arabs of Arabia riding rather flat saddles with an ordinary length of leg. The Arab saddle of Morocco, in itself, is perhaps the worst that man has yet designed; but, curiously enough, from it was made the Mexican saddle, perhaps the most useful for all kinds of horses and of countries that the world has seen.” Cunninghame Graham: Mogreb-El-Acksa, p. 66. The same writer naïvely adds the following footnote to the words Ginete en ambas sillas. “This phrase often occurs in Spanish chronicles, after a long description of a man's virtues, his charity, love of the church, and kindness to the poor, and it is apparently inserted as at least as important a statement as any of the others. In point of fact, chronicles being written for posterity, it is the most important.”
[145] As I have stated in another chapter, the precious stones and metals were continually employed in arms and harness, both of Spanish Moors and Spanish Christians. In 1062 Pedro Ruderiz bequeathed to the Monastery of Arlanza all his battle harness, together with his silver bit (frenum argenteum). Thousands of such bequests have been recorded. The Chronicle of Alfonso the Eleventh says that after the victory of the Rio Salado, this monarch found among his spoil “many swords with gold and silver fittings, and many spurs, all of enamelled gold and silver…. And all this spoil was gathered by the king into his palaces of Seville (i.e. the Alcázar), the doubloons in one part, and the swords in another part.” The testament (sometimes considered to be a forgery) of Pedro the Cruel mentions “my sword in the Castilian manner, that I caused to be made here in Seville with gems and with aljofar.” In 1409 Yusuf, King of Granada, presented Juan the Second and the Infante Don Enrique with silver-fitted swords. Referring to a later age, Davillier discovered at Simancas a detailed list of weapons sumptuously decorated with gold and coloured enamels, made for Philip the Second by Juan de Soto, “orfebrero de su Alteza.” Recherches, pp. 149–151.