Having already heard which places declared for King Fernando and what the names were of certain noblemen who came over to his side, you will need to know just how the king received them and whether he deemed himself lord of the towns, large and small, which had sided with him. If we take first of all the manner in which he received them, we can state that he gave them a very honourable and hospitable welcome, for, quite apart from the fact that the king was generous and bountiful both to his own people and to foreigners, he expressly bestowed a great welcome on the latter and shared out vast largesse among them, to the point where his own people found fault with him and sometimes told him so in his Royal Council. His answer to the noblemen who spoke to him about this was that his own people had houses and lands in which they could live in comfort, whereas those who rallied to him without any means of support needed good lodgings and many favours from him. He then begged them always to show these foreigners great respect, declaring that they would always reveal themselves to be valiant noblemen by honouring and welcoming any valiant men who came to them bereft. Indeed, it would be a lengthy process to express in detail all the acts of generosity that he vouchsafed to them.

For this reason, we would like you to know that, after the death of King Enrique, on one occasion King Juan, his son, was lodging in a cluster of small houses in a township of Castile called Medina del Campo. While he was having supper in a narrow room in one of them, there was a group of noblemen outside debating many matters. Among their number was a certain Fernán Pérez de Andrade, along with Álvaro Pérez de Osorio, García González de Grijalba and others, and they began to discuss the acts of beneficence performed by the kings of Portugal and Castile, asking which were the more generous. Some of them claimed that King Enrique had been most generous, while according to the whim that took them, others named King Alfonso or other former kings of Castile.