Chapter V: The Consolidation of Portugal

No better ruler than Diniz, or Denis, could be found for a country which, after centuries of war, needed to have a period of peace and quiet. He was a poet, and loved literature; he was a great administrator, and loved justice; he was a statesman, and avoided foreign wars; he was a far-seeing man, and prepared for the extension of Portuguese energies beyond the sea by encouraging commerce; and, above all, he saw the need of agriculture and of the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and in every respect he nobly earned the sobriquet of the “Ré Lavrador,” or “Denis the Labourer.” From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, for it marks the development of the people into an independent nation, but, like all peaceful reigns of quiet progress, it is not signalized by many striking events.

The civil war, which Diniz had waged with his father, was followed on his accession to the throne by a fierce struggle between Diniz and his brother Affonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended in a compromise. He then married, in 1281, Donna Isabel, daughter of Pedro III. of Aragon, who was canonized in later years for her pure and unselfish life. His reign is only marked by one war with Sancho IV. and Ferdinand IV. of Castile and Leon, which was terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV. married Constance, daughter of Diniz, while Affonso, the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, the sister of Ferdinand, but his reputation none the less stood very high in the peninsula, as is shown by his being chosen in 1304 to act as joint arbitrator with the King of Aragon between Ferdinand of Castile and his cousin, Ferdinand of Lacerda. Still more interesting are the king’s relations with Edward I. of England, with whom he exchanged many letters, chiefly on commercial subjects, and with whom he made a treaty of commerce in 1294. He had much correspondence also with Edward II., and in particular he agreed with the English king in 1311 that the Knights Templars had been greatly maligned. When that famous order was suppressed by Pope Clement V. in compliance with the wishes of Philip le Bel of France, Dom Diniz took a course which demonstrated his political wisdom. He recollected the great services which the military orders had formerly rendered to Portugal, and bore in mind their influence and power, and he therefore founded the Order of Christ in conjunction with Pope John XXII. in 1319, and invested it with all the property of the Templars, thus at once obeying the Pope and avoiding a serious disturbance at home. He showed the same wisdom with regard to the knights of Santiago in Portugal, whom he persuaded Pope Nicholas IV. to release from the control of the Grand Master of the Order in Castile, and to establish on an independent footing.

These few lines touch on every important event, in regard to foreign affairs, which occurred during the long reign of Dom Diniz, but they give no idea of the progress of Portugal during this period of nearly fifty years. Agriculture was greatly encouraged by the monarch, who founded agricultural schools and homes for farmers’ orphans, and established model farms. He did much by showing honour to agricultural pursuits to raise them in the consideration of his nobility, and he attempted to wean his people in general from the notion that war was the only occupation fit for a free man. He undertook several important agricultural experiments himself, established farmers in the still barren province of the Alemtejo, paid special attention to the cultivation of vines in the north, and planted the great pine forest of Leiria by which he hoped to reclaim the sandy regions in that neighbourhood. He was also a great builder, and did much to improve the three royal cities of Lisbon, Coimbra, and Santarem, in which the Court used to reside, and he built the towns of Salvaterra and Villa Real. In administrative matters, the feudal system, under which the country districts were ruled was left almost untouched, as were the charters and franchises of the greater cities and towns, and the only important measures passed by the Cortes in 1286 and 1291 were still more stringent laws of mortmain directed against the Church than that passed in 1250. It was in the administration of justice that the greatest reforms were introduced. The period of great chancellors, who were statesmen rather than lawyers, which commenced with Julião, and included Gonçalo Mendes, Vicente, and Estevão Annes, was over, and a new class of chancellors was appointed. These men were invariably ecclesiastics, and looked forward to a bishopric, as the reward of their services. They were essentially lawyers, learned in the Roman law, which they had studied at Padua and Bologna; and applying the maxims of their studies to the common law of Portugal, which was largely founded on Visigothic ideas, they began to build up a system of Portuguese law, of which the importance became visible later. Diniz did not venture to abolish the feudal courts, though he checked their abuses, and among other reforms, he appointed royal “corregidors” in every city and town belonging to the Crown in lordship, who were to act as judges of appeal from the feudal and city courts, as well as to take charge of the police. His wise encouragement of commerce appears in his commercial treaty with England, and by his establishment of a royal navy, commanded by a new official, entitled the “Almirante Mor,” or Lord High Admiral, which office was first granted to a distinguished Genoese sailor, Emmanuel Pessanha.

But the greatest qualification of Dom Diniz for the sovereignty of a country, which had at last got time to learn the arts of peace and to become civilized, was his affection for literature and his encouragement of education. It was Diniz, who, in 1300, founded the first Portuguese university at Lisbon, which after many changes between that city and Coimbra, found its permanent home in the latter city, and became the centre of literary influence in Portugal. The king was also a poet of exquisite taste, and in the number, beauty, and variety of his songs he proved himself the greatest poet of his Court. Educated by Aymeric d’Ebrard of Cahors, whom he made Bishop of Coimbra, he shows in his poems the influence of the troubadours, and not of the trouvères who had thronged his father’s Court. He had inherited poetic feeling and power of expression from his father, Affonso III., who was no mean poet, and who is said to have written a powerful “sirvente” against Alfonso X., but his father had during his long residence at Paris been impressed with the poetry of northern France, and had invited trouvères only to his Court. Dom Diniz, both by education and feeling, belonged to a different school, and preferred the softer themes and methods of the troubadours. With the Courts of Love which he introduced into Portugal came the substitution of the Limousin decasyllabic for the national octosyllabic metre, and the ancient forms were lost in the intricacies of the “ritournelle.” But the best service done by Diniz and his poetic courtiers was in developing the Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and flexible literary language. The king went further; as he grew older, he threw off the trammels of Provençal forms, and perceiving the beauty of his people’s lyrics, he wrote some quaint and graceful “pastorellas” inspired by their influence, which are full of poetic life and truth. The effects of the influence of Dom Diniz, in the words of a recent writer on Portuguese literature, “pervade the whole of Portuguese poetry; for not only was he in his ‘pastorellas’ the forerunner of the great pastoral school, but by sanctifying to literary use the national storehouse of song, he perpetuated among his people, even to the present day, lyric forms of great beauty.”[5] Literary excellence and the growth of a national poetry form the natural sequel of the attainment of national independence; and it is interesting to observe that the king, who peacefully consolidated the Portuguese kingdom, was the founder of Portuguese literature. Camoens happily hits off in a couple of stanzas the characteristics of his reign.

“See, next that Diniz comes in whom is seen
the ‘brave Afonso’s’ offspring true and digne;
whereby the mighty boast obscurèd been,
the vaunt of lib’eral Alexander’s line:
Beneath his sceptre blooms the land serene
(already compast golden Peace divine)
With constitution, customs, laws and rights,
a tranquil country’s best and brightest lights.

The first was he who made Coimbra own
Pallas-Minerva’s gen’rous exercise;
he called the Muses’ choir from Helicon
to tread the lea that by Mondego lies:
Whate’er of good whilere hath Athens done,
here proud Apollo keepeth ev’ery prize:
Here gives he garlands wove with golden ray,
with perfumed Nard and ever-verdant Bay.”[6]

Personally dissolute, as the nature of much of his poetry and his encouragement of the troubadours and their Courts of Love show, the stories told of the Court of Dom Diniz are far from edifying. Yet some of them are full of romantic interest, and exhibit the more constant love of the south instead of the airy fancies of Provence. Of these stories, the most romantic of all is perhaps that of Donna Branca or Blanche, the sister of Diniz and the abbess of Lorvão and Huelgas, who loved a humble carpenter Pedro Esteves, and was the mother of a son, João Nunes do Prado, who became Master of the Order of Calatrava, and was beheaded by Pedro the Cruel of Castile. It is this story which has furnished the plot of one of the most striking of modern Portuguese dramas, Almeida-Garrett’s “Donna Branca.” The king’s favours to his bastards, João Affonso and Affonso Sanches, whom he successively made Mordomo Mor, and Pedro Affonso, whom he made Alferes Mor and Count of Barcellos, involved him towards the end of his reign in bitter disputes with his only legitimate son, Affonso. Open war at last broke out between Dom Diniz and his heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented by S. Isabel riding between the armies in 1323, and making a peace between her husband and her son, which lasted until the death of the great peace monarch, the “Ré Lavrador” in 1325.

Immediately on his accession to the throne, Affonso IV., the successor of Dom Diniz, gave full vent to his rage against his half brothers, and with the consent and assistance of the nobility of Portugal, he beheaded João Affonso and confiscated all his lands, as well as those of Affonso Sanches, who had escaped to Castile. This act of revenge, or of justice, as he called it, consummated, he settled down as a worthy successor of his father, and fostered all the schemes of Diniz for the development of Portugal. He also continued his father’s policy of peace with Castile, and made a formal alliance with that country in 1327 when he married his daughter Donna Maria to Alfonso XI. of Castile. This marriage did not prove a happy one; the king neglected his young wife for Leonora de Guzman, and treated her so badly that in 1336 Affonso IV. invaded Castile. A terrible war was impending, when S. Isabel once more played the part of peacemaker. Leaving the convent of Poor Clares at Coimbra, whither she had retired after her husband’s death, she hurried to Estremoz, where the two armies were facing each other, and made peace between the opposing monarchs. Alfonso XI. promised to treat his wife better, and the Infant Dom Pedro, the only surviving son of the King of Portugal, was granted the hand of Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of Penafiel. The strength of the new alliance was soon tried; for in 1340 Abu-l-Hasan, king of Morocco, crossed the straits to come to the help of the king of Granada, with a great army. Alfonso XI. sent his wife to beg for the assistance of the Portuguese chivalry, and Affonso willingly complied. In the great battle of the Salado on 29th of October the Moors were utterly defeated, and the two generals who were most conspicuous on the Christian side, were Affonso IV. of Portugal, who won the sobriquet of Affonso “the Brave,” and Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile. This victory also marks an advance in Portuguese poetry, for on it was written the first Portuguese epic by Affonso Giraldes, the forerunner of Camoens.

It is interesting during this reign to notice the close intimacy growing up between Portugal and England, which was to have many important results. Directly on his accession, Affonso IV. determined to maintain the friendly relations which Diniz had commenced, and in 1325 he sent an ambassador to propose a matrimonial alliance with the English royal family, probably with a view of contracting a marriage between his elder daughter, Donna Maria, and the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. The English Court, then under the influence of Queen Isabella, replied that the ambassador was not of sufficiently high rank for his application to be received. Accordingly, in the following year, Affonso sent his Lord High Admiral, Dom Manoel Pessanha, and Dom Rodrigo Domingues on the same mission, but their embassy led to no result, probably owing to the disturbed state of affairs in England, and Donna Maria married, as has been said, the King of Castile. Friendly communications continued, nevertheless, between Portugal and England, and in 1344 Edward III. sent two ambassadors, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to draw up a treaty of alliance with Affonso IV. This was followed by the mission of Andrew of Oxford, Richard of Saham, and Philip Borton to ask for the hand of Donna Leonora, the King of Portugal’s younger daughter, for Edward, Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince. The marriage was agreed upon, and in 1347 Robert Stratton and Richard of Saham arrived to fix the day for the passage of the infanta to England. But at this moment matrimonial alliances of more political importance occurred to each of the high contracting parties, and in this very year Donna Leonora was married to King Pedro IV. of Aragon, and the Black Prince to the Fair Maid of Kent. The rupture of this marriage scheme did not break the friendship of the two kings, both of whom perceived the wealth to be obtained for their countries and themselves by encouraging commerce. The business relations between the two nations soon became very close, and the wine of Portugal was freely exchanged for the long-cloth of England. On July 25, 1352, Edward III. issued a royal proclamation, ordering his subjects never to do any harm to the Portuguese, and on October 20, 1353, a curious sequel to the commercial treaty of 1294 was signed in London by Affonso Martins Alho. This young wine merchant had been sent to England as representative of the merchants of the maritime cities of Portugal, and the treaty he negotiated with the citizens of London was one guaranteeing mutual good faith in all matters of trade and commerce, with many other technical clauses referring to special lines of business. The very fact of this treaty or agreement being signed is a proof, not only of the close connection between Portugal and England, but of the high degree of wealth, intelligence, and business capacity possessed by the merchants of both countries.

The later years of the reign of Affonso IV. were marked by a fearful pestilence and a sad tragedy. In 1348 the plague, or, as it was more commonly called, the Black Death, reached Portugal, after traversing Europe, and more than decimated the inhabitants of Lisbon. On January 7, 1355, Donna Ines de Castro was murdered in the streets of Coimbra. The history of the various dynasties of Portugal is full of romantic stories, some with ludicrous, and others with tragical, endings, which illustrate, not only the characters of the respective monarchs, but the tendencies of their different epochs. The story of Donna Branca, the princess who loved a carpenter, has been told, with the comment that her son became Grand Master of the wealthy Order of Calatrava; the romance of Dom Pedro’s life ended more tragically. Dom Pedro was the only son of Affonso IV. and Beatrice of Castile who had survived his first year. He was born in 1320, and had married in 1336, in order to cement his father’s alliance with Castile, the Donna Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of Penafiel. In her suite as lady-in-waiting came the Donna Ines de Castro, daughter of Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile, and hero of the battle of the Salado, and sister of Alvaro Peres de Castro, first Constable of Portugal. Dom Pedro fell in love with the beautiful Castilian lady, and though, during his wife’s lifetime, he always treated his wife with the utmost consideration, and was the father by her of Dom Ferdinand, afterwards King of Portugal, and of Donna Maria, afterwards Queen of Aragon, it was well known at the Portuguese Court that the love of Dom Pedro’s heart was centred on Donna Ines. In that dissolute Court little attention was paid to the conduct of the prince; princes were in those days privileged persons, and he was known besides to have another lady-love, the Donna Theresa Lourenço, who was the mother of João, afterwards King of Portugal. It was not until after the death of his wife that it was perceived that Dom Pedro’s love for the Donna Ines was more than the ordinary fancy of a prince, and was an absorbing passion. For love of her, he refused to marry any of the foreign princesses proposed to him by his father, and it is probable that he went through a form of marriage with her after his first wife’s death. However that may be, King Affonso determined to put an end to his son’s infatuation by murdering the object of it, and by his directions Donna Ines was murdered in the streets of Coimbra by three courtiers, Alvaro Gonçalves, the “Meirinho Mor” or Lord Chamberlain, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco. This is the tragedy which Camoens has celebrated in an immortal passage,[7] and which has since become a common theme for the playwrights of the world, good, bad, and indifferent; and it may be said, that it is not so much in the murder itself, as in the events which followed it, that the most romantic part of the story is to be found. Dom Pedro was absent on his estates in the south when he heard of the murder of Ines. He at once collected his vassals, and prepared to attack his father, but, as had happened in the days of S. Isabel, the Queen, Beatrice of Castile, interposed, and a compromise was made, by which father and son agreed to see each other no more, and to abandon active hostilities, and this compact lasted until the death of Affonso “the Brave” in 1357.

The first act of Dom Pedro on ascending the throne was to punish the murderers of Ines de Castro, and he induced the King of Castile to surrender Alvaro Gonçalves and Pedro Coelho to him. Pacheco had escaped to England, and could not be found, and thus escaped the fate of his accomplices, who were slowly tortured to death in front of the royal palace at Coimbra before the eyes of Dom Pedro. The king four years later had the strange ceremony performed, which is far better known than the circumstances of his love affair with Donna Ines. On April 24, 1361, either to show his undying affection for her, or to confirm the story of his marriage and legitimate his children by her, he had her body disinterred at Coimbra, and conveyed to the Convent of Alçobaça, where it was solemnly crowned, and then buried. It is usual to speak of the Convent of Alçobaça as if it had been the burial-place of all the kings and queens of Portugal up to this time. Such was not the case; only Affonso II. and Affonso III. and their queens were buried there. Count Henry and Donna Theresa had their last resting-place in the Cathedral of Braga, Affonso Henriques and Sancho I. and their queens in the Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, Diniz in the Convent of Odivelas, near Lisbon, S. Isabel in that of the Poor Clares at Coimbra, Affonso IV. and his queen in Lisbon Cathedral, and Dom Pedro’s wife, Constance Manuel, in the Convent of S. Francis at Santarem.

The spirit of stern, revengeful justice which had marked the commencement of the short reign of Dom Pedro continued to show itself in all matters of administration; the king loved to dispense justice in person, and the rigour with which he treated all culprits, noble and priest as well as merchant and vagabond, won for him the title of “Pedro the Severe.” This severity was not unpleasing to the people, and many tales are extant of the king’s visits _incognito_ to the law courts, and of his rigorous punishment of unjust judges. Many of the famous stories told in the “Arabian Nights” of the Caliph Harun-ar-Rashid are also told of Dom Pedro, and in them his Chancellor, Vasco Martins de Sousa, played the part of the Vizīr, as companion and butt. In matters of policy Dom Pedro followed in his father’s and grandfather’s steps, avoiding interference with the other kingdoms of the peninsula, and maintaining a close political and commercial connection with England. His reign was too short to leave much trace on the history of Portugal, for he died in 1367 at Estremoz, and was buried at Alçobaça by the side of Ines de Castro.

The accession of Ferdinand, called “the Handsome,” the only son of Dom Pedro by Constance Manuel, marks a crisis in the history of the Portuguese monarchy. As a natural result of the long era of peace and prosperity which had succeeded the final conquest of the Algarves, the people of Portugal had become more wealthy, more cultivated, and more conscious of their nationality than almost any people in Europe while the Court had become more and more dissolute, and more out of consonance with the feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy was to continue to exist, it was obvious that it must again become a truly national monarchy, as it had been in the days of Affonso Henriques and of Diniz, which should lead the way in finding new outlets for the growing energies of the people, and that the kings must remember their duties, and not think only of their pleasures. The affection the people showed for Dom Pedro, who was by no means a good king, but rather a despot of the Oriental type, was a proof that they were ready to recognize with gratitude the efforts of a just monarch, and their energies, now that, owing to long peace, they were the richest nation in the peninsula, only needed to be directed. Neither the priesthood nor the nobility showed any disposition to check the dissoluteness of the Court. The bishops lost their old commanding influence, as the Papacy, on which they depended, became degenerate, and the nobles, now that they had no longer wars to occupy them, either became courtiers and abettors of the vices of the kings and princes, or else lived on their feudal estates and imitated them. The people had now no share in the government. The power which the Cortes had obtained during the reign of Affonso III. was in abeyance, because the king did not need its help against his bishops and nobles, but it was only in abeyance, and ready to spring forth again into new life.

The life and reign of Ferdinand “the Handsome” are marked, like those of his father, by a romantic amour, which, if not so tragic as the story of Ines de Castro, had far greater political importance. Ferdinand was a weak and frivolous, but ambitious, king, who, after binding himself to marry Leonora, daughter of the King of Aragon, suddenly surprised every one by claiming the thrones of Castile and Leon in 1369, on the death of Pedro “the Cruel.” This claim was derived through his grandmother, Beatrice of Castile, and was good in law, and Dom Ferdinand was favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora. But the majority of the Castilians, both noble and plebeian, had no desire to see a Portuguese monarch on their throne, and therefore espoused the cause of the illegitimate Henry of Trastamare as Henry II. of Castile and Leon. The war which followed turned to the advantage of the Castilian pretender, and the contest ended in 1371 by the intervention of Pope Gregory XI., when Ferdinand agreed to surrender his claim to the throne of Castile, and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry II. However, in spite of the Pope, this treaty was never carried out, for at the marriage of his half-sister, Beatrice, the daughter of Dom Pedro and Ines de Castro, to Sancho Count of Alboquerque, King Ferdinand saw and fell passionately in love with Donna Leonor Telles de Menezes, daughter of a nobleman in the Tras-os-Montes, and wife of João Lourenço da Cunha, Lord of Pombeiro. This passion was the king’s ruin, for the object of it was a sort of Portuguese Lucrezia Borgia, of whom horrible stories are told, which historical research has unfortunately shown to be only too well founded. At this very period, when she first met the king, she made no attempt to repulse his advances, though she was a married woman, and she bore an undying feeling of revenge against her sister, Donna Maria Telles, for her attempts to repulse the amorous monarch. In spite of her sister’s efforts, Donna Leonor managed to captivate the king, who, in his infatuation for her, and in compliance with the dictates of her ambition, refused to marry the daughter of Henry II. of Castile. This refusal exasperated the people of Lisbon, who knew that the Castilians would not tamely suffer such an insult, and a great popular tumult and riot burst forth in the city. The story of this riot has been admirably told by the chief modern historian of Portugal, Alexandra Herculano, in one of his historical novels, and it affords a striking example of the political foresight of the people, and of their conviction of a coming revolution. The popular leader was a tailor named Fernan Vasques, under whose command the mob burst into the palace at Lisbon, hunted in vain for Donna Leonor, and made King Ferdinand swear to marry the Castilian infanta on the very next day. But Ferdinand escaped the same night to Santarem, and once there with his beloved, he forgot his oath, and sent all the troops he could collect to punish the rioters of Lisbon. They made but little resistance, being unprepared for their sovereign’s want of faith to his plighted word, and Fernan Vasques, the tailor, and his principal followers were beheaded. This cruel punishment inflicted, the king betook himself to Oporto, and there married the Donna Leonor at the Church of S. João do Hospital, although her first husband was still alive. It shows to what a depth of degradation the Portuguese nobles had sunk that all the nobility, with the exception of Dom Diniz, one of the king’s half-brothers, acquiesced in this bigamous marriage, and recognized Donna Leonor as queen. At the head of those who submitted were Dom João or John, the elder son of the late king by Ines de Castro, and Dom John, known as “the Bastard,” the Master of the Knights of Aviz, and the son of Pedro by Theresa Lourenço.

The people of Lisbon were right in believing that the Castilians would regard the marriage of Ferdinand to Donna Leonor as a deadly insult to their infanta. Henry II. at once invaded Portugal, and laid siege to Lisbon; Ferdinand lived meanwhile quietly at Santarem with his queen, and made no effort to intervene; and the war would have ended badly for Portugal, had not Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who happened to be in Spain as legate, interfered, and by using all the authority of the Church, forced Henry II. to retire, and to make a treaty of peace with Ferdinand at Santarem. Even after this proof of the power of Castile, and after the sufferings incurred by the people of Lisbon during the siege, Ferdinand refused to keep the peace. He would not believe that Henry II. was firmly established on the throne, and in 1373 he treacherously renewed the negotiations which he had entered into the year before with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This son of Edward III. claimed the throne of Castile for his wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro “the Cruel,” and Ferdinand signed a treaty of alliance with Edward III., through his ambassadors, João Fernandes Andeiro and Vasco Domingues, by which he agreed to support the claims of the English prince. But Donna Leonor did not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374, Ferdinand as usual broke his plighted word, and again made peace with Castile.

The queen was now supreme; her weak and vacillating husband was her slave, and the tyranny which she exercised was odious in the extreme. Her wealth was great, for the king had in his infatuation granted her for her own use the lordship of many of the most important cities belonging to the Crown, including Villa Viçosa, Abrantes, Almada, Cintra, Saccavem, Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Vedras, and Pinhel, and she had obtained great estates for her brothers, of whom the elder, João Affonso Telles de Menezes, became Count of Barcellos, and the younger, Gonçalo, Count of Neiva. Her former husband, João Lourenço da Cunha, tried to revenge himself for the loss of his wife by attempting to poison the king; she at once had his lands confiscated, and ordered his execution, which he only escaped by a timely flight into Gallicia. Her revenge upon her sister, Maria Telles de Menezes, whom she had never forgiven for opposing her marriage with the king, was horrible in its wickedness, and affords an indisputable proof of her cruelty of disposition. Maria, who was as beautiful as her sister, and far more virtuous, had inspired a real passion in the bosom of Dom John, the king’s half-brother and the elder son of Ines de Castro. The young couple were married in 1376, and were as happy as they deserved to be. Enraged at their happiness, and the more so, because they had a little son, whereas her own sons both died in childhood, the queen set to work, like Iago, to instil the passion of jealousy into the young husband. She was soon successful, and Dom John murdered his wife with his own hand, in his palace at Coimbra, while she was vainly protesting her innocence. When the deed was done, the queen came into her dead sister’s presence, and laughingly informed the unhappy wife-murderer that the accusations were untrue. At this mockery, Dom John would have slain her, and on being prevented by her guards, he fled to Castile. Donna Leonor had not even the merit of being constant to her uxorious spouse, but carried on an open intrigue with João Fernandes Andeiro, the former ambassador to England, whom she persuaded the king to make Count of Ourem. Ines Affonso, the wife of Gonçalo Vaz de Azevedo, first Grand Marshal of Portugal, happened to hear a declaration of love made by the queen to her lover, and she informed Dom John “the Bastard,” Master of the Knights of Aviz. Some spy told the queen, and she determined at once to rid herself of the pair. She had a letter forged, purporting to be written by them to the king of Castile, full of treasonable passages, and on the strength of it, she obtained the king’s order for their arrest. When they were safely in prison, she tried to persuade her husband to sign an order for their execution without trial. King Ferdinand, who had a real affection for his half-brother, refused, and Donna Leonor thereupon forged his signature to an order for them to be beheaded at once. Fortunately for Portugal, the governor of the Castle of Evora, where they were imprisoned, Vasco Martins de Mello, refused to obey, and the future saviour of Portugal escaped.

The wonder is that the Portuguese people submitted so long as they did to this tyranny, and it shows how deeply they felt the debt due to their great monarchs, such as Affonso Henriques and Dom Diniz, that they made no attempt to overthrow their unworthy descendant. So strong was their attachment to the hereditary principle, that at a great Cortes held at Leiria in 1376, the queen’s only surviving child, the Donna Beatrice, was recognized as heiress to the throne. This declaration was of the greatest importance, for it governed the future rule of succession in the kingdom; and by declaring females able to succeed rejected the well-known Salic law, which prevailed in France and other countries. The queen steadily encouraged the king’s ambition to sit upon the throne of Castile, and when his hopes revived, on the death of Henry II., she persuaded him once more to send her lover, the Count of Ourem, as ambassador to England. Richard II. received him cordially, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, next brother to John of Gaunt, and better known by his subsequent title of Duke of York, agreed to bring military assistance to the aid of Ferdinand. In 1381, the Earl of Cambridge arrived accordingly with two thousand English men-at-arms, and, as had been suggested by the Count of Ourem, his eldest son, Edward, afterwards second Duke of York, was solemnly betrothed to the Donna Beatrice, the heiress to the throne of Portugal. The feeble Ferdinand, as usual, refused to keep faith, and terrified by the approach of a Castilian army, he deserted the English, who immediately began to ravage the country round their camp near Oporto, while he made peace with John I. of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty, which was signed on April 2, 1383, and in which the hand of Donna Leonor is clearly to be perceived, it was arranged that John I. should marry Donna Beatrice, who was but eleven years old, and that Leonor should be Regent of Portugal if Ferdinand died, until Beatrice’s eldest son came of age. At the wedding, which took place at once, Ferdinand was too ill to be present: but the queen and her lover were there in his stead, and behaved with such unseemly hilarity that many of the Portuguese nobility, headed by Nuno Alvares Pereira, who was to be known in Portuguese history as “The Holy Constable,” could not refrain from openly expressing their disgust. Six months afterwards, on October 22, 1383, King Ferdinand died, and Donna Leonor assumed the regency in the name of her little daughter, the Queen of Castile.

(_From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720._)]

But she did not hold it long. The whole Portuguese people detested her, and their spirit of nationality was outraged by the contemplated union of their crown with that of Castile. Dom John “the Bastard,” the Master of the Order of Aviz shared both their personal hatred for the queen, who had tried to take his life, and their political desire for independence; and on December 6th, he headed an insurrection in Lisbon and slew the queen’s lover, Andeiro, Count of Ourem, with his own hands in the palace itself. The people everywhere applauded his action, and attacked the friends of the queen; in Lisbon the Archbishop Martinho and the Abbot of Guimaraens were killed upon the same day, and the example was followed in the provinces, where among other notable murders, the abbess of the Benedictine nuns was killed at Evora, and the Lord High Admiral, Lançarote Pessanha, at Beja. Leonor among whose faults want of courage could not be reckoned, fled to Santarem, and not only summoned her son-in-law, John of Castile to her help, but began to raise an army from among the vassals of her own adherents. At this news, Dom John felt a momentary movement of weakness, and spoke of retiring to England, but the people of Lisbon, through the mouth of the popular leader, the cooper, Affonso Annes, so eloquently begged him not to desert them in their peril, but to stay and be their ruler, that he consented on December 16th, to remain, and named two of his wisest adherents, João das Regras and Nuno Alvares Pereira, to the offices of chancellor and constable.

Dom John then took upon himself the title of Defender of the Realm; but he knew how little chance Portugal could have against Castile without some powerful ally, and he therefore sent first Thomas Daniel and Lourenço Martins, and then his Chancellor and the Master of the Knights of Santiago to beg for help from England. The longed-for aid seemed tardy, and Dom John proceeded to put Lisbon in a state of defence, and despatched the “Holy Constable” to raise an army in the northern provinces. In 1384, John of Castile slowly entered Portugal with a great army and joined Donna Leonor at Santarem. But the allies soon quarrelled as to the government in future of the country they both believed to be already conquered, and Donna Leonor recommended her adherents to join Dom John. Not satisfied with this, she planned to poison her son-in-law; but her intention was discovered in time, and the wicked queen was sent by John of Castile to the convent of Tordesillas, in his dominions, where she ended her days in 1386. This act of justice done, the king of Castile laid siege to Lisbon. The resistance was worthy of the cause, which was indeed that of the continued existence of Portugal as an independent country. The priests fought at the head of their parishioners; the archbishop of Braga behaved as a gallant knight; and Dom John showed his fitness to be the monarch of a warlike people. A terrible pestilence, which broke out in the besiegers’ camp, did more mischief than the bravery of the besieged, and John of Castile had to retire discomfited. But it availed little to have repulsed one Spanish army; the relative sizes of Portugal and Castile, made it obvious that the struggle would be a severe one; the independence of Portugal was at stake, and the Portuguese fought as men fight for their existence as a nation. The heroic Constable enforced the lesson of the successful defence of Lisbon by his defeat of the Castilians at Atoleiros, but it was felt to be necessary to take yet stronger measures, if the war was to end in a triumph.

The first of these measures was to legalize the position of Dom John, the gallant leader of the people. A great Cortes was summoned to meet at Coimbra, and in it João das Regras declared the throne of Portugal to be elective on April 6, 1385. This proposition was agreed to by acclamation, and after the Chancellor had produced a Papal bull, declaring the children of Dom Pedro by Ines de Castro to be illegitimate, the Cortes unanimously elected Dom John “the Bastard,” to be king of Portugal. This measure legalized the position of Master of the Knights of Aviz, who took the title of John I., and is known in Portuguese history as John “the Great”; and the people believed the measure to have the sanction of heaven when the news arrived that the Holy Constable had won a great victory over the Spaniards at Trancoso, in which four hundred Castilian knights were killed. The spirits of the Portuguese were further raised by the landing of five hundred of the famous English archers, under the command of three squires in the service of John of Gaunt named Northberry, Mowbray, and Hentzel; but this assistance was counterbalanced by the arrival of two thousand French knights, who had joined the king of Castile. The two armies met at Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385, and it was there that the independence of Portugal was secured, and the House of Aviz made good its title to the throne. The Holy Constable commanded the vanguard; Mem Rodrigues de Vasconcellos the right, and Antao Vasques de Almada the left; while Dom John rode from place to place and never failed to be in the post of danger. Ten pieces of ordnance were used, this being their first appearance in the military history of the peninsula; the English archers did yeoman service, and repeated the glories of Crécy and Poitiers, and after a hard-fought struggle the Spaniards fled in confusion. Then did John I. feel himself king indeed; and he erected on the spot where his victory had been won, the magnificent convent of Batalha, which recalls in its name the famous Battle Abbey erected on the field of Hastings. This victory was followed up by another at Valverde, and then by the news that John of Gaunt was on his way with a powerful English army. The Portuguese felt that they had anew achieved their independence.

On May 9, 1386, the Treaty of Windsor was signed by which the kingdoms of Portugal and England were declared to be united henceforth in the closest bonds of friendship and alliance; and it proved to be the corner-stone of the policy of the House of Aviz. On July 20, 1386, John of Gaunt reached Corunna with two thousand English lances and three thousand archers, accompanied by his wife Constance of Castile, and two of his daughters, Philippa and Catherine. He marched triumphantly through Gallicia; and at Oporto on February 2, 1387, the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was sealed by the marriage of King John to Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. This marriage was followed by another, that of Catherine, only child of John of Gaunt by Constance of Castile to Henry, Prince of the Asturias, and heir to the throne of Castile. These marriages settled the peace of the peninsula, for in concluding them, John of Gaunt abandoned his claims to Castile, and insisted as one of the conditions, on a truce between his two sons-in-law. This truce continued till 1411, when at last the title of John as King of Portugal was recognized, and peace between Castile and Portugal was solemnly declared.

King John “the Great” was now firmly seated on his throne; an effort of his half-brother Diniz, the younger son of Ines de Castro, to overthrow him in 1398, failed entirely, and foreign monarchs hastened to recognize his power. Through this hero, and the race of heroes who fought under him, the independence of Portugal was secured, and a new career opened before its people. The era of consolidation was over; the era of foreign discovery and of Asiatic conquests was to begin.