THE CHRISTIAN REALMS 239restored Sancho and ordered Urraca to abandon her husband, who
went into fruitless exile in Cordoba.
Sancho I, restored by the caliph, was in no position to undertake
the raids on Umayyad territory that had marked the reigns of several
of his predecessors, but instead he concentrated on an attempt to
impose royal authority effectively on Galicia. This, however, was to
prove a fatal venture, for in the course of negotiations in 966 he was
poisoned by a Galician magnate called Gonzalo in the newly created
western frontier zone of the kingdom, an area roughly equivalent to
the centre of modern Portugal and he left the throne to a son aged
five, who succeeded as Ramiro III (966-985). A regency was exer-
cised for him by his aunt Elvira (967-975), daughter of Ramiro II and
abbess of the convent of San Salvador in Leon. This long regency and
another which marked the early years of the reign of Alfonso V (999-
1027) are indicative of a significant change in attitude to royal gov-
ernment on the part of the dominant elements in society. To some
extent it is suggestive of the hold now exercised by dynastic loyalty
and the principle of primogeniture that the succession of a legitimate
but infant monarch should be preferred to the selection of a maturer
candidate from a minor branch of the royal line. However, more
significant may be the fact that the powerful marcher aristocracies
now had a vested interest in keeping royal authority weak, something
easily achieved during a minority. This same period saw the first
establishment, at least as far as the available evidence is concerned,
of an entrenched hereditary nobility, able to pass office as well as
family wealth and social standing from generation to generation. The
emergence of such aristocratic dynasties, as occurred from the later
ninth century on in the Frankish Carolingian Empire, reduced the
practical importance of the monarchy and produced smaller but
stronger units of local self-government in the form of virtually inde-
pendent counties.^24 The scale of such a development in the Leonese
kingdom was reduced by its much more limited size, and the mar-
riage links of the family of Fernan Gonzalez of Castille with the royal
dynasty of Pamplona (or Navarre) led in 1035 to the transformation
of that almost autonomous county into a small kingdom.
Even in the centre of government the great lords of the frontier
marches could playa preponderant role, eclipsing the Palatine nobles
who had been so important in earlier decades. This resulted from
their military strength, based on the growing population of the fron-
tier counties, and their need to be self-sufficient in defence. Thus,