Don Pedro sent his Moors to slaughter his enemies with the threat that if they did not bring back their victims’ heads, they would lose theirs. Despite such ruthlessness the Prince of Wales believed he was the legitimate King of Castile and that a bastard should not rule. Once Don Pedro had been denied sanctuary by his ally, the King of Portugal (his daughter’s betrothal to the King’s son was cancelled), Don Pedro had no choice but to escape to Aquitaine and beg assistance from the Prince of Wales. After fleeing to Seville he made his way to the province that remained loyal, Galicia, and then to Corunna, Galicia’s northern port, where he took a ship to Bayonne. There is no record of what motivated him to murder the Archbishop of Santiago, Suero Gómez, and the dean of Santiago cathedral, Peralvarez, but I thought it reasonable to assume that as Don Pedro had already been excommunicated by the Pope that the Archbishop had made the King unwelcome and refused him entrance to the city and permission to attend communion.

The Jewish community had found sanctuary in Spain and Portugal and co-habited with Christians and Muslims. Castile and Navarre were safer for them than France and the rest of Europe. Most Spanish Jews preserved their Arabic language and nomenclature and remained extensively integrated into the Arab cultural terrain. Synagogues had many architectural and decorative similarities with mosques and were adorned with carvings of animals and vegetation and sacred verses in Hebrew lettering. However, discrimination still existed and complete integration was usually denied.

When Blackstone returned to Bordeaux with Halif ben Josef the Jewish physician, he found rooms on the street named as Arrua Judega which lay at the foot of the hill outside the city walls known as Mont Judaïque. This hill no longer exists and Arrua Judega is now named Rue Cheverus. When Bordeaux was under English rule the Jews were spared the expulsion orders that had been issued by the Kings of France, although various taxes were still levied, including the pepper tax. Charles of Navarre who, like Don Pedro of Castile, gave sanctuary to the Jews, levied a tax on wine but not on grapes. Halif ben Josef’s home town, Estella-Lizarra still exists.