t; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most
common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal
in Madeira.

Dom Sancho II., whose reign had begun with brilliant attacks on the
Moors, had, because of his connection with Dona Mencia de Haro, the
widow of a Castilian nobleman, and his consequent inactivity, become
extremely unpopular, so was supplanted in 1246 by his brother Dom
Affonso III. The first care of the new king was to carry on the
conquest

[Sidenote: Silves.]

of the Algarve, which his brother had given up when he fell under the
evil influence of Dona Mencia, and by about 1260 he had overrun the
whole country. At first Alfonso x., the Wise, king of Castile and Leon,
was much displeased at this extension of Portuguese power, but on Dom
Affonso agreeing to marry his daughter Beatriz de Guzman, the Spanish
king allowed his son-in-law to retain his conquests and to assume the
title of King of the Algarve, a title which his descendants still bear.
The countess of Boulogne, Affonso's first wife, was indeed still alive,
but that seems to have troubled neither Dona Beatriz nor her father. At
Silves or Chelb, for so the Moorish capital had been called, a bishopric
was soon founded, but the cathedral,[61] though many of its details seem
to proclaim an early origin, was probably not begun till the early, and
certainly not finished till near the later, years of the fourteenth
century. It is a church of the same type as Santa Maria at Thomar but
with a transept. The west door, a smaller edition of that at Alcobaca,
leads to a nave and aisles of four bays, with plain octagonal columns,
whose bases exactly resemble the capitals reversed--an octagon brought
to a square by a curved chamfer. The nave has a wooden roof, transepts a
pointed barrel vault, and the crossing and chancel with its side chapels
a ribbed vault. Though some of the capitals at the east end look almost
romanesque, the really late date is shown by the cusped fringing of the
chancel arch, a feature very common at Batalha, which was begun at the
end of the fourteenth century, and by the window tracery, where in the
two-light windows the head is filled by a flat pierced slab. Outside,
the chancel has good buttresses at the angles, and is crowned by that
curious boat-like corbel table seen at Santarem and by a row of
pyramidal battlements. The church is only about 150 feet long, but with
its two picturesque and dilapidated