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Ch. VI THE CATALANS IN GREECE, 1311—1 380 221 
"lieutenancy" for some time, as Peter was aware when a chancery clerk prepared
the letter of the preceding day. As a legal gesture, however, Peter asked
Peralta to give up the cas tell e ciutat to the newly appointed Dalmau, and
stated further that "we have received a letter which you have sent us dealing
with the affairs and the state of the duchies of Athens and Neopatras, asking
us for aid and succor and that we should send you our vicar or lieutenant.
. ., to which [letter] we reply with the full expression of our thanks for
the affection and good will which you have for us and for our crown as a
loyal vassal and our natural servitor."189 
On September 30 the king wrote Peralta again; this time he referred to a
letter he had received from Louis Fadrique. Indeed, he was by now very well
informed of events in the duchies, for he had talked at length with Bernard
Ballester and Francis Ferrer, who had come to Barcelona as messengers and
envoys of the Catalan barons and municipalities in Greece. He was sending
Ballester back to Greece as his royal ambassador, and his subjects overseas
were to take care that Ballester should return to Barcelona promptly with
some other suitable person "with full and sufficient authority to swear fealty
and render homage and to have us for your natural lord." When this feudal
formality was over and done with, Peter said that he would without fail send
to Greece a "vicar with such force that you will be satisfied, and in the
meantime you have the said noble Don Louis [Fadrique] of Aragon as vicar
of the said duchies. . . ." He closed with a statement of the extreme displeasure
which Peral ta's capture and continued imprisonment had caused him.190 
It is small wonder that Galcerán of Peralta and Louis Fadrique had
written the king of Aragon-Catalonia, urging him to give force to his ducal
claims and send help to his new dominions. Even Louis's father-in-law, Matthew
Cantacuzenus, wrote him from the Morea (presumably at Louis's behest), offering
him some sort of assistance against the Navarrese invasion.191 Letters also
reached Barcelona 
 189. Dipl., doc. CCCLXXIII, p. 454. Louis Fadrique had also written the
king and received a similar reply (ibid.). 
 190. Dipl., doc. CCCLXXXIII, pp. 463—464; Rubió i Lluch, LosNavarros,
doc. XVII, pp. 
229—230. A similar letter of the same date (September 30, 1379) was
addressed to Peralta's erstwhile opponent, Louis Fadrique (Dipl., doc. CCCLXXXII,
pp. 462—463), and a letter of a year later, September 10, 1380, records
that "Johannes de Ortubia. . . tenet captum nobilem virum Galcerandum de
Peralta qui. . . velut fidelis servitor noster eandem civitatem [Thebas]
defendit.. ." (Dipl., doc. CD, p. 489). The last text is addressed to the
grand master Heredia, states that Urtubia was demanding large sums for Peralta's
release, and directly accuses the Hospital of being implicated in the seizure
of Thebes. 
 191. Dipl., doc. CCCLXXIX, p. 460, in which Peter IV answered Matthew on
September 
13, 1379.