d of the men as well,
and the use of ermine and of all fine and Costly furs was carefully
restricted. In Castile the same movement was taking place, and Alfonso
X., who followed Fernando, issued similar laws, wherein women were
forbidden to wear any bright colors, to adorn their girdles with pearls,
or to border their skirts with either gold or silver thread. As in Italy
at about the same time, and notably in Florence, extravagant wedding
feasts were condemned, no presents of garments were permitted, and the
whole cost of a bride's trousseau could not exceed sixty maravedis, a
maravedi being a gold coin containing about sixty grains of the yellow
metal.

It was in the midst of this brilliant period of national well-being that
Spain was called upon to celebrate a wedding festival which far
surpassed in magnificence anything that had ever before been seen among
the Christians of the peninsula. The sister of King Alfonso X. of
Castile, Eleanor, was given in marriage to Edward Plantagenet, the
attractive young heir to the English throne, and it was in honor of this
event that all Burgos was in gala dress in the month of October, 1254.
All were on tiptoe with excitement, crowds thronged into the old
cathedral city, and the windows and housetops were black with people, on
that eventful day when the stalwart prince rode in through the great
gate, with a glittering train of nobles at his back, to claim his bride.
Prince Edward was a magnificent specimen of physical manhood, towering
almost head and shoulders above his fellows, and the gorgeous
entertainments which were prepared for him and his followers gave good
opportunity for all to witness his courtly grace and his distinguished
bearing. The chronicles of the time are full of the most superlative
descriptions of this whole affair, and often they seem lost in
wonderment, lacking words with which to describe the scene properly.
Before the wedding, in accord with mediaeval custom, Edward received
knighthood at the hands of King Alfonso. In that same old monastery at
Las Huelgas where the youth Fernando had kept his lonely vigil before he
had been knighted by his noble mother, Queen Berenguela, the English
prince now kept his watch; and when the morning came and he stood, tall
and fair, clothed in a robe of white, ready to receive the accolade,
before a company of chosen knights and ladies, the scene must have been
wonderfully impressive. The bride, Eleanor, had been a great fa