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The king had taken a new Italian wife , of course , but two years had passed without the issue of an heir from that quarter so that the significance of the marriage diminished monthly . Still , Alfonso had achieved the end that he [ 335 ] could not but regard as most essential , regardless of the sacrifice it required . So it was that at the center of dozens of incipient intrigues sat the king , old and even venerable by the standard of the day , but nonetheless the undeniable and absolutely essential factor in every hope . If as has been argued recently , in Asturias it was precisely in the eleventh century that a massive shift began from a predominantly hoe culture to a plow culture , the net effect would have been the displacement of even existing small proprietors as the ability of each farmer to work more land increased dramatically . Before the [ 249 ] end of the year he was obviously in control of some of the fisc lands in Portugal as evidenced by his grant to the church of Coimbra on November 13 , 1094 . Not only had they constantly added their status to the authority of the royal charters from the very initiation of the reign but their own proper charters , extended throughout the same period , show the king 's dowager sisters as the possessors of very considerable portions of the dynastic fisc and able to alienate it by their own right . Then she struck south to Tabeiros and Salnes , where there was a concentration of fisc lands , probably to secure provisions . ( 74 ) Certainly he would have had control of the fisc lands assigned to the infantaticum , that is , set aside for the support of an infanta , since his marriage to Urraca .