The process of settlement of the south and some parts of the interior by northern Portuguese, carried out by his predecessors, had a great development in his reign and the new lands were populated. There were also urgent economic problems to be solved. The Moors had made Alentejo the granary of Portugal, but war had undone their work, and large tracts of land were now barren and depopulated. Commerce and education had similarly been subordinated to the struggle for national existence. The machinery of administration was out of date and complicated by the authority of feudal and ecclesiastical courts. The supremacy of the Crown, though recognized, was still unstable. It was Denis who initiated the needful reforms. He earned his title of the "rei lavrador" or "farmer king" by introducing improved methods of cultivation and founding agricultural schools. He encouraged maritime trade by negotiating a commercial treaty with England (1294) and forming a royal navy (1317) under the command of a Genoese admiral named Emanuele Pessagno (Manuel Pessanha). In 1290 he founded the University of Coimbra, which began its existence in Lisbon and was transferred to Coimbra in 1308 and moved definitively in 1537. He was a poet and a patron of literature and music, proclaiming Portuguese to be the language of the state. His chief administrative reforms were designed to secure centralized government and to limit the jurisdiction of feudal courts. He encouraged and nationalized the military orders. In 1290 the Portuguese knights of the Order of Santiago were definitely separated from the parent Castilian order. The Knights Hospitaller in Portugal and the Order of Saint Benedict of Aviz had already been established, the traditional dates of their incorporation being 1113 and 1162. After the condemnation of the Templars by Pope Clement V (1312) an ecclesiastical commission investigated the charges against the Portuguese branch of the order, and found in its favour. As the Templars were rich, influential and loyal, Denis took advantage of the death of Clement V. to maintain the order under a new name; the Order of Christ, as it was henceforth called, received the benediction of the pope in 1319 and subsequently played an important part in the colonial expansion of Portugal. Afonso IV adhered to the matrimonial policy initiated by Dinis. He arranged that his daughter Maria should wed Alfonso XI of Castile (1328), but the marriage precipitated the war it was intended to avert, and peace was only restored (1330) after Queen Isabella had again intervened.