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Here is one with no of your freemasonry out-of his sex

The fresh Society held its feast to the St Pedro Advinada’s big date, 1st August, and consisted of 60 Toledan owners and you will hidalgoes, whoever sons passed down its office; several governors, an effective squadron, archers and small subalterns decided by the several alcaldes

What a dazzling achievement the lives of these Toledan archbishops, martial, learned, literary, eloquent, and artistic; every facet of multiple genius. Now they build ships, then cathedrals, colleges or palaces. They print rare editions, collect rare MSS., debate in councils, rule the land, vociferate magnificently from the pulpit, decide on all questions of education and civil law, advise their sovereign, guide foreign <93>politics, voyage in foreign lands, win glorious battles, and write histories and verse! What modern life can match theirs? Even Mr Gladstone has neither built a great cathedral nor won a great battle! This Archbishop of Toledo, a mighty chancellor of Castille, was as charitable a pastor as Victor Hugo’s bishop. Indeed, nothing remains to his discredit as a great and simple nature, but the unavoidable bigotry and injustice of his history. He died on his last voyage back from Rome, and was buried, as his quoted epitaph indicates, in the monastery of Huesta, June 10th, 1247.

Maybe not a word-of fault to the lady, no compliance to the conventional principle regarding gallantry

Alfonso’s crusade against the Moors was followed by dreadful dearth, by famine and sickness, and the entire ruin of villages and farms. Public misfortune habitually forges fresh unexpected miseries for man, and bands of armed robbers and assassins, called golfines, descended in hordes from the mountains of Toledo, of Ciudad Real and Talavera. They pitched their tents in the outlying woods, and in self-defence the Toledans formed their celebrated Hermandad, a brotherhood of citizens sworn to persecute robbers and assassins. This brotherhood was so successful that in 1223 it was qualified as “holy,” and was conceded as a right one head of every flock and cattle that crossed the mountains. The uniform was green, with collar and cuffs of vivid scarlet trimmed with gold, and pointed caps. The inferior officers wore a loose green garment suitable for the road, and capes and bonnets of green, without the bright touch of scarlet and gold, and their uniform may still be seen on a stone station <94>above a sixteenth century porch in a laneway opposite the Calle de la Triperia, where the ancient prison of the Hermandad is catholic singles coupons. They rode in procession, preceded by timbrals and clarinets, and carried a green banner with the arms of Castille. It was this brotherhood that Philip II. presented with a magnificent camp of green cloth which to-day may be seen in the Museum of Artillery in Madrid, and here the Hermandad received their sovereigns when they visited Toledo. The success of this brotherhood provoked the creation of minor fraternities and another Toledan order was started against robbers, San Martin de la Montina, with similar privileges granted by royal ous Hermandad. Later, the Catholic kings instituted the Hermandad nueva, of disastrous memory, formed of one thousand horse and foot with a captain, general, and a supreme council, whose duties and functions were multiplied and extended beyond the province all over the unhappy Peninsula. This brotherhood we know, alas! played a terrible part in the terrible Inquisition, and hunted down bigger and more historic game than mere robbers and assassins.

The hum of the Moorish wars ever accompanied the interior war of discord and turbulent dissensions. When St Fernando entered Toledo as the new sovereign, he found the town groaning under the tyranny of the wicked governor, Fernandez Gonzalo. Two girls, one a young lady and the other a girl of the people, flung themselves before the saintly young monarch to complain of seduction under promise of marriage. San Fernando, who did not trifle in these matters, expressed his horror and demanded the name of the seducer. The instant the governor, Fernandez Gonzalo, was mentioned, he turned furiously to his men and cried, “Cut me off that rasca <95>l’s head this very moment.” Within an hour the gallant governor’s livid features were fixed above the Puerta del Sol. Death itself was the penalty he unhesitatingly meted out without debate for wrong done to women. The man who betrays a woman is a blackguard; then off with his head, and space for cleaner souls. A little drastic, perhaps, but conceive our civilised world in the eyes of a San Fernando. Conceive him presiding over one of our Courts of Justice for the settlement of breaches of promises! So wise his judgment in the esteem of Toledo that to-day the historic scene is in relief on the glorious Puerta del Sol.