THE vVESTERN MEDITERRA'JEAN KINGDOMS 1200-1 'iOOwould have been glad to assert a right to James's crown; yet
a semblance of unity was maintained, expressed most not-
ably in the general cort at Lleida (Lerida) in Summer, 1214,
at which the king's leading Aragonese and Catalan subjects
were pressed to swear fealty to a monarch whom many of
them were actively trying to deprive of his lands, revenues
and rights.^19 As during the Sicilian minority of James's con-
temporary Frederick II, the great lords realised that they
could benefit from protestations of loyalty to a king who was
really helpless to stand in their way. Over the next few years it
seems that royal revenues began slowly to recover, thanks in
significant measure to the hard work of the crown's Templar
financiers, but thanks too to renewed confidence in the pos-
sibility of asking for taxes, as for example at assemblies in
Huesca (1221) and Daroca (1223). Deft manipulation of the
Catalan coinage by King James, which T.N. Bisson has ana-
lysed, brought the crown a profit of^25 per cent in replacing
the old coinage?' More importantly still, compacts were made
with the greater lords in Catalonia, such as Guillem Cabrera
in U rgell, and lands pledged by Peter II in Catalonia and
Aragon were gradually recovered. This would have been
impossible without the support of powerful allies, notably
Guillem de Montcada and the count of Roussillon, Nunyo
Sane;, though even such close advisers all too easily became
locked in conflict among themselves, apparently over trivial
issues of honour. Yet James was rising to an age in which he
could make his own political judgments. In^1228 he set his
sights on Urgell, whose heiress, Aurembiaix, he had promised
to defend; he won back Urgell with a brief and successful
campaign which culminated in a secret contract of concubin-
age between James and Aurembiaix. It would be wrong to
assume that James had quelled internal opposition; but at
this point it became reasonable for him to set his sights on
conquests beyond the borders of his realms.
James's first attempt to establish himself as a crusading
leader against the Moors only excited the antipathy of the
Aragonese lords, who were unimpressed by expensive failure
at the walls of Peiiiscola ( 1225-26). If anything, his poor
- Bisson, Medieval Crown of Aragon, pp. 57, 59.
- T.N. Bisson, 'Coinages of Barcelona' and other studies gathered to-
gether in his Medieval France and its Pyrenean neighbours. Studies in early
institutional history (London, 1989).