obility,
caused her son to be proclaimed king, and brought about a permanent
union of the two countries without the loss of a single drop of blood.
Having accomplished this task, her next care was to provide in some
suitable way for Alfonso's two daughters. This she was under no
obligation to do, but her sense of justice left no other course of
conduct open to her. She arranged a meeting with their mother Teresa,
who had long since retired to a convent, and, journeying to the
Portuguese frontier, at Valencia de Alcantara in Galicia, these two
women, each the unwedded wife of the same man, came together to settle
the claims of their children to their dead husband's throne. The whole
matter was discussed in the most friendly way, and Berenguela was able
to carry her point that there should be no attempt to unseat Fernando
from the throne of Leon, and at the same time she made a proposition, by
way of indemnity, which Teresa, speaking for her daughters, was quite
ready to accept. The infantas were given by Fernando a pension of
fifteen thousand gold doubloons, in return for which they formally
agreed to abandon all claim to Leon, and this pension, under
Berenguela's direction, was paid in all faith and honor. In November of
the year 1246 this great queen died, and, according to her own
direction, she was buried at Burgos "in plain and humble fashion."

No better eulogy of her life and labors can ever be written than that
which is found in Burke's history of Spain, and no excuse is needed for
giving it in its entirety: Berenguela was one of those rare beings who
seems to have been born to do right and to have done it. From her
earliest youth she was a leading figure, a happy and noble influence in
one of the most contemptible and detestable societies of mediaeval
Christendom. Married of her own free will to a stranger and an enemy,
that she might bring peace to two kingdoms, she was ever a true and
loyal wife; unwedded by ecclesiastical tyranny in the very flower of her
young womanhood, she was ever a faithful daughter of the Church;
inheriting a crown when she had proved her own capacity for royal
dominion, she bestowed it on a strange and absent son, with no thought
but for the good of her country and of Christendom; and finally, as
queen-mother and ever faithful counsellor, she accepted all the
difficulties of government, while the glory of royalty was reserved for
the king whom she had created. Berenguela was ever prese