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The buttresses have offset string courses, and square crocketed pinnacles just as at Batalha; there has even been an attempt to copy the parapet, though only the trefoil corbel table is really like the model, for the parapet itself is solid with a cresting of rather clumsy fleurs-de-lis.
Soon after, the peace of the Peninsula was assured by the marriage of Catherine, the only child of John of Gaunt and of Constance of Castile, to Enrique, Prince of the Asturias and heir to the throne of Castile. But it is time now to turn from the history of the foundation of Batalha to the buildings themselves, and surely no more puzzling building than the church is to be found anywhere.
Now, though the walls are thick, there are no buttresses, and the skill and daring required to build a vault sixty-five feet wide and about a hundred feet high resting on side walls on one side and on piers scarcely six feet thick on the other must not only excite the admiration of every one, especially when it is remembered that no damage was caused by the great earthquake which shook Lisbon to pieces in 1755, but must also raise the wish that what has been so skilfully done here had been also done in the Capellas Imperfeitas at Batalha.
Except the two round buttresses at the west end and one on the north side which has Manoelino pinnacles, all are the same, breaking into a cluster of Gothic pinnacles rather more than half-way up and ending in one large square crocketed pinnacle very like those at Batalha.
The inside calls for little notice: the arches are pointed, and the capitals carved with not very good foliage, but the west front is far more interesting. As at the Graça it is plastered and whitewashed, but ends not in a gable but in a straight line of cresting like Batalha, though here there is no flat terrace behind, but a sloping tile roof.
Far more interesting than this church, because much better preserved and because it is clearly derived, in part at least, from Batalha, is the cathedral of Guarda, begun by João I. Guarda is a small town, not far from the Spanish border, built on a hill rising high above the bleak surrounding tableland to a height of nearly four thousand feet, and was founded by Dom Sancho I. in 1197 to guard his frontier against the Spaniards and the Moors.
'Senhor, it is the heart of the saintly infante, was the answer he received, and without a word Enrique turned his horse, and accompanied by his knights rode on to Batalha, where he laid the casket in the grave which awaited it. Twenty-seven years after his death Fernando's body was obtained from the Moors, and was carried over to Portugal.
A Provost-Marshal and his favourites. A fall. Convent of Batalha. Turned out of Allenquer. Passed through Sobral. Turned into Arruda. Quartering of the Light Division, and their Quarters at Arruda. Burial of an only Child. Lines of Torres Vedras. Difference of opinion between Massena and Myself. Military Customs.
November 30th I left Tunantins in a trading schooner of eighty tons burthen belonging to Senor Batalha, a tradesman of Ega, which had been out all the summer collecting produce, and was commanded by a friend of mine, a young Paraense, named Francisco Raiol.
For example, the unusually large transverse arches of the nave occur at Batalha, and the large plain western door is clearly related to such later doors as those at Leça do Balio or of São Francisco at Oporto.
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