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On leaving Aragon after the signature of the hollow Treaty of Barcelona (1493), Isabel and her husband took up their residence in the Alcazar of Madrid, where, with short intervals, they remained in residence for the next six years. During this period, spent, as will be told by Ferdinand, in almost constant struggle for his own objects in Italy and elsewhere, Isabel was tireless in her efforts for domestic reform. The purification of the monasteries and convents went on continually under the zealous incentive of the new Archbishop of Toledo, Jimenez: the roads and water-sources throughout Castile were improved; the municipal authorities, corrupt as they had become by the introduction of the purchase of offices, and the effects of noble intrigue, were brought under royal inspection and control; and this, though it improved the government of the towns, further sapped their independence and legislative power. The Universities and high schools, which had shared in the universal decadence, were overhauled, and a higher standard of graduation enforced: the coinage, which had become hopelessly debased, in consequence of the vast number of noble and municipal mints in existence, was unified and rehabilitated: sumptuary pragmatics, mistaken as they appear to us now, but well-intentioned at the time, endeavoured to restrain extravagance and idle vanity: measures for promoting agriculture, the great cloth industry of Segovia and oversea commerce, and a score of other similar enactments during these years, from 1494 to the end of the century, show how catholic and patriotic was Isabel’s activity at the time that Ferdinand was busy with his own Aragonese plans. The annals of Madrid at this period give a curious account of Isabel’s prowess in another direction. The neighbourhood of the capital was infested with bears, and one particular animal, of special size and ferocity, had committed much damage. By order of the Queen a special battue was organised, and the bear was killed by a javelin in the hands of Isabel herself, upon the spot where now stands the hermitage of St. Isidore, the patron of Madrid.^[73]