But the heads of the clergy did not hesitate to adopt such means, for it was necessary to destroy the reputation of a conqueror of the enemies of the cross which the king of Portugal must still have enjoyed in the Roman curia, where the solemn testimonies of praise lavished upon him more than once by Gregory IX could not be yet forgotten. It was necessary to snatch the crown from the soldier’s helm and place it on a dishonoured brow, that they might afterwards roll it in the dust before the priestly sandal. But up to a certain point Sancho offered a pretext for such calumny by the fatal repose of the preceding years, and perhaps some obscure event, the loss of some unimportant tower or grange of Ayamonte in the east or Tavira in the west, a loss exaggerated by ecclesiastical malice, gave the absurd assertion some appearance of truth.
The description of the state of Portugal, drawn up by the Roman curia, although exaggerated, was based on facts proved by various documents and memoirs of that time, and above all by the inquisitions of the following reign. But these very inquisitions prove that the members of the secular clergy and monastic orders were not innocent of the public evils, especially as regards robbery and the diminution of the patrimony of the crown. They complained of the contempt in which canonical censure was held, but the fault was theirs. The spiritual sword was blunted by excessive use; excommunication, interdict, denial of burial in consecrated ground accompanied all the pretensions of the ministers of the altar, even those which the rudest of men could plainly perceive to be dictated by shameful cupidity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the nobles as well as the burgesses and peasants laughed at the chastisement which the clergy themselves taught them to despise. It was this contrast which throughout all Europe wounded the most enlightened men and gradually undermined the foundations and political influence of the church. The representation of the prelates was therefore doubly disloyal, attributing to the king alone the evils of which they were no less guilty, and describing the crimes and excesses of the laity towards the clergy, but forgetting to mention the abuse of divine things and the cupidity and lawlessness of the clergy.
The truth is, however, that this new phase of the interminable conflict between the clergy and the civil power did not arise from the cause assigned, but from the conjunction of circumstances which gave the bishops the means of gaining a decisive victory over the crown. The idea of deposing a king through the initiative of the church was old, and was considered so feasible that in grave cases the popes did not hesitate to allude to it clearly in their comminations and threats. In Portugal especially, as a kingdom in a manner dependent upon the papal throne, such a course must have seemed even easier, as the king was without moral or material means of defence.j
Censures were passed on the monarch for his persecution of the dean of Lisbon. His subsequent repentance disarmed the pontiff; and, notwithstanding the complaints of the people that the laws were silent, and brute force only triumphed, he would doubtless have ended his reign in peace, had he not resumed or permitted the spoliation of the church. At length, both clergy and people united their murmurs; they perceived that the king was too feeble to repress the daily feuds of his barons, who broke out into open war and committed the greatest excesses. They applied to Innocent IV, who, in concert with the fathers of the council, issued a decree by which, though the royal title was left to Sancho, the administration was declared to be vested in the infante Alfonso, brother of the king.
No sooner did Alfonso hear of the extraordinary proceedings of the pope and council, than he prepared to vindicate the title which it had conferred upon him. He was then at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the lordship of which belonged to him in the right of his wife Matilda. Having sworn before the papal commissioners to administer Portugal with justice, and leaving the government of Boulogne in the hands of his countess, he embarked at that port, and safely landed at Lisbon. At first the king intended to oppose the infante; but seeing how generally the deputies owned him,—how all classes, nobles and citizens, prelates and peasants, joined his brother,—he retreated into Spain, to solicit the support of his cousin, Ferdinand III. As that saintly monarch was too busy in the Andalusian wars to assist the fugitive king in person, he recommended the interests of his guest to his son Alfonso. The Castilian infante showed no want of zeal in behalf of his relative. He collected a considerable army, and invaded Portugal. Arriving before Leiria without much opposition, he was preparing to storm that fortress, when he was visited by a deputation from the archbishop of Braga, which conjured him, as a true son of the church, not to incur excommunication by opposing the execution of the pontifical bulls. The Castilian infante listened, and obeyed: he led back his army; and the deposed monarch, now bereft of all hope, retired to Toledo, where, early in 1248, he ended his days. So long as the latter lived, some of the fortified places in Portugal refused to acknowledge the regent; but on his death without issue—there is no evidence that he was ever married—his brother was peaceably acknowledged as his successor.
Alfonso III, on arriving at a height which, a few years before, his ambition could scarcely have reached, was not without apprehensions that the Castilian king or infante might trouble him in his usurpation, and assembled the three estates of his realm to deliberate on the means of defence. Fortunately for his ambition, both father and son were absorbed by their Andalusian conquests. To secure, if possible, the good will of the former, he sent a considerable aid to the Christian camp, which was readily received by the hero. In the meantime he himself resolved to profit by the reverses of the misbelievers, and finish the conquest of Algarve. At the head of a sufficient force, he accordingly penetrated into that province, and speedily recovered the places which the Mohammedans had again surprised. In a subsequent expedition, his ardour or avarice led him to encroach on the possessions of Alfonso el Sabio, Ferdinand’s successor. The Castilian army marched against the Portuguese, who were compelled to retreat. The Castilian king did not stop here. On the pretext that Algarve, as chiefly conquered by his subjects, the knights of Santiago, belonged to him, he invaded that province, and quickly reduced its chief fortresses. The Portuguese was glad to sue for an accommodation; and it was at length agreed that he should marry Doña Beatrice de Guzman, a natural daughter of the Castilian, and with her receive the sovereignty of Algarve. As the province had been conquered by the subjects of both crowns, equity would have indicated its division by the two monarchs; but as such a division would probably have led to future wars, the present arrangement might be a politic one. The Castilian appears to have reserved to himself the sovereignty of Algarve, his feudatory being required both to pay tribute and to furnish a certain number of forces whenever he should be at war. The cession, with whatever conditions it was accompanied, was disagreeable to the Castilians, who thought that their monarch had sacrificed the interests of the state in favour of his daughter. The marriage was solemnised in the following year (in 1254), and a few years afterwards Portugal was declared forever free from homage to the Castilian kings.
From the facility with which this matrimonial connection was formed, it would be inferred that the Portuguese was become a widower. But the countess Matilda still lived, and was anxious to return to her lord. Her only defects were her barrenness and her age—two which, though no canonist would recognise, were sufficient in the mind of so unscrupulous a prince as Alfonso. She sailed for Portugal. He refused to see her; and when at length she forced her way into his presence, he heard, unmoved, her entreaties, her expostulations, and threats. The queen (for such history must call her) retired to Boulogne, and laid her complaints before the pope and her liege superior, St. Louis. After a patient examination of the case, Alexander IV expedited a bull, by which he declared Matilda the lawful wife of Alfonso, and annulled the recent marriage with Doña Beatrice. The king persevered in his lust, as he had already done in his usurpation, even when excommunicated by the pope; and he and his household were interdicted from the offices of the church. A second time is she said to have visited Portugal, but with as little success. She had married him when poor—when almost an exile from his native court—and had thereby raised him to power and riches: and her unshaken attachment—unshaken even by his sickening ingratitude—proves that though the empire of the passions had ceased, she possessed an uncommon share of woman’s best feeling. Her last act, by which she bequeathed a considerable sum to this faithless deserter, was characteristic enough of her ruling misfortune. On her death, in 1262, his prelates obtained from the pope a bull to render legitimate the present marriage.h
Alfonso determined to bridle the power of the bishops, in spite of his oath at Paris. Perceiving that this could only be done with the help of the mass of the people, he summoned a cortes at Leiria in 1254, to which representatives of the cities were elected and sat with the nobles and higher clergy. With the help of the cortes—one of great importance in the constitutional history of Portugal—he dared the interdict laid upon the kingdom for having married again (the daughter of Alfonso el Sabio) whilst his first wife (Matilda, countess of Boulogne) was alive. Finally, however, on the petition of the archbishops and bishops of Portugal, Pope Urban IV legalised the disputed marriage in 1262 and legitimated his eldest son, Dom Diniz, while in 1263, Alfonso X made over to him the full sovereignty of Algarve. On the other hand, the people made use of their power, and in a full cortes at Coimbra in 1261 the representatives of the cities boldly denounced Alfonso’s tampering with the coinage, and compelled recognition of the fact that taxes were not levied by the inherent right of the king but the free consent of the people. After a prosperous and successful reign Nemesis came upon Alfonso in the rebellion of his eldest son Diniz[140] in 1277, which continued until 1279, in which year the king died.
The period of war and of territorial extension in the peninsula was now over, and the period of civilisation was to dawn. Territorially and constitutionally Portugal was now an established kingdom; it remained for it to become civilised and thoroughly homogeneous before the great heroic period of exploration and Asiatic conquest should begin.
No better man for such work than the new king, Dom Diniz, could have been found; he was himself a poet and loved letters; he was a great administrator and loved justice; above all he saw the need of agriculture and the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and nobly earned the title of the Ré Lavrador, or Diniz the Labourer. From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, though, like all reigns of peaceful progress, it is not signalised by many striking events. It began with a civil war between Diniz and his brother Alfonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended in a compromise; and in 1281 Diniz married Isabella, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon, who for her pure and unselfish life was canonised in the sixteenth century. His reign is marked by only one war with Sancho IV and his successor, 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 Constanza, daughter of Diniz, while Alfonso, the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, sister of Ferdinand. At the end of this reign war broke out between the king and the heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented in 1323 by St. Isabella riding between the armies 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.c
Treachery and abuse of power were so frequent that, notwithstanding various diplomatic disloyalties, Diniz was considered one of the most loyal and just princes and lords of the two kingdoms. For this reason the two great kingdoms of Aragon and Castile appointed him arbitrator in the most serious disputes, and submitted to his judgment. Although the genius of war did not weave martial crowns for him, as conqueror in battles—for during his time no great honours fell to the Portuguese arms—yet he was ever at the head of the national armies in all the campaigns; knowing that his most powerful allies had been destroyed and others had betrayed him, he had the skilful audacity to penetrate forty leagues into the interior of Castile, and availing himself of the opportunity afforded by his opponents’ weakness, he increased the Portuguese dominion by two castles and eleven important towns, as though he were the most successful of warriors. The civil dissensions which disturbed his reign both arose from the same causes and circumstances, mediæval feudalism, assisted by Castilian elements. Taking for leaders first the brother and then the son of Diniz, the rebels combatted royal power in the kingdom, which, supported by the people, daily increased feudal privileges and forces.
The husband of Isabella was as rapid and successful in his measures against his brother as he was undecided and weak in repressing his son. In the first instance his courage was heightened by the just ambition of safe-guarding his throne; whereas, in the second instance, it was weakened by paternal affection and respect of legitimacy in the succession of the crown.
However, the principal glory of Diniz was not won with his sword. Of his epoch a perfect king, penetrated by his country’s needs, he notably increased the territory of Alfonso Henriques, but above all he raised to an amazing height the edifice of internal organisation, the foundations of which had been laid by Sancho I. His disloyalties with respect to the neighbouring kingdoms, his rare moments of repressive cruelty, the errors into which he may have fallen as a politician, the many faults into which he was in truth led by an ardent and sensual character—Diniz redeemed them all by the general and profound reform he effected with regard to Portuguese society.
He raised the population of the country, as none of his predecessors had done, by the means we have spoken of; he brought agriculture to a pitch of prosperity which we now marvel at; he created the internal industry and commerce, promoted municipal organisation, favouring labour, encouraging markets, and raising the spirit of the people; he safeguarded navigation by establishing vast societies of mutual aid between merchants, and definitely established a navy, with which he defended the coasts and the Portuguese merchant ships against pirates, and equipped his subjects for the discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which brought universal and eternal fame upon Portugal. He built nearly fifty fortresses, reorganised the popular militia, and nationalising the military orders with praiseworthy abnegation, he widely prepared the defence of the country, and bequeathed to Dom João I the possibility of opposing a formidable invasion by Castile and establishing once for all, with immortal glory, the independence of the country.
He was a zealous administrator, wise and economic, so that with the national resources he left the public treasury wealthy. Of a tolerant spirit, prudent and just in the application of the laws, no prince of his own times surpassed him in these qualities, then most rare. With gentle measures, affectionately and frequently protecting individual rights, he was one of the most determined opponents of the excessive privileges of the nobility and the church. Having received civil power, bound beneath the yoke of the Portuguese clergy, in their turn fettered to the Roman tiara, Diniz not only raised this power, but even succeeded in giving life to the national episcopacy.
The establishment of the councils begun by previous governments largely progressed, and the cortes, continuing to summon the deputies of the people, was a new and powerful aid towards the destruction of mediæval, ecclesiastical, and military feudalism in Portugal. With the laws respecting mortmain decreed and executed with civic firmness and superior wisdom, the clergy were deprived of territorial power and the sovereign right of administering justice; civil actions were brought before secular tribunes, which by a usurpation of jurisdiction had up to that time been brought before ecclesiastical tribunals.
The nobles were prohibited from raising new seigniorial castles, and many of the old were levelled; they were deprived of their traditional rights of deciding mutual disputes with the sword, of making knights, of exempting themselves from the royal tax, turning into fiefs and boroughs the lands they had seized without just cause, and even those with which they had established merely personal relations, and finally by giving judgment in causes in which the nobles claimed for themselves exclusive knowledge, the feudal nobility was totally destroyed, as was the temporal power of the church. Up to then the beneficial influence of the times sufficed to totally undermine the old oligarchic institutions of the Middle Ages, which were an overwhelming oppression of the people, and absorbed the forces of the state.
Finally Diniz, who was the greatest poet of the first four centuries of Portugal, founded to his honour the Estudaria de Santo Eloy in Lisbon, and also the university, causing general enthusiasm; and by spreading the love of letters and study in the country, laid the foundations of secular and public instruction and opened to the Portuguese people the gates of science, and consequently those of civilisation and liberty.
After the work of Alfonso Henriques, that of Diniz is the most important which Portuguese history records to us: the first was the founder of the military nation; the second, that of the cultured people. The union of those two works gave to Portugal centuries later the possibility of realising, in the long evolution of mankind, her glorious mission of enlarging the known world.k
Alfonso IV, surnamed the Brave, had scarcely grasped the reins of sovereignty, when he exhibited, in a manner little becoming royalty, his vindictive feelings towards his illegitimate brother, Alfonso Henriques, who, to escape his wrath, had just fled into Castile. Having collected some troops, and been joined by a prince of Castile, he entered Portugal, laid waste the frontiers, and put to the sword every living being that fell in his way. The king now took the field in person, and laid waste the neighbouring territories of Castile. These harassing though indecisive hostilities might have continued for years, had not St. Isabella left her retreat in the convent of St. Clair, which she had founded, and prevailed on her son to permit the return of the exile.
Another defect of the new king gave great offence to the people—his neglect of public business, and his addiction to the chase. The first twelve years of Alfonso’s reign were distracted by hostilities with his namesake of Castile, the husband of his daughter. Though these hostilities were chiefly owing to the perversity of the infante Don Juan Manuel, it cannot be denied that the Portuguese king had abundant reason for dissatisfaction with his son-in-law. The usage experienced by the Castilian queen at the hands of her husband; her mortification at seeing a mistress, Leonora de Guzman, not only preferred to herself, but the sole depository of the royal favour; the studied insults to which she was daily exposed both from her husband and his minion, at length exhausted her patience, and drew forth some complaints to her father. The influence, too, which Don Juan Manuel obtained in the Portuguese court through the marriage of his repudiated daughter Constanza with Pedro, son and heir of the Portuguese king, was uniformly exerted to embroil the two crowns. Alfonso of Portugal at length sent a herald at arms to defy his son-in-law, on the ground both of the unjust treatment of the queen, whom her husband was suspected of seeking to repudiate, and of the continued detention of Constanza. His next step was to enter Castile and ravage the country as far as the vicinity of Seville.
The war was now as destructive as it was indecisive and even inglorious: it was one of mutual ravage, of shameless rapine, and unblushing cruelty. Instead of meeting each other on a fair field, they seemed intent on nothing but laying waste each other’s territory, and collecting as much booty as they could carry away: sometimes, however, the contest was decided on the deep, but with little success to either party. At length, through the efforts of the pope, the two princes agreed to a truce, and to the opening of negotiations for peace. But one of the conditions was the removal of Leonora de Guzman—a condition which Alfonso of Castile, who was entirely governed by that lady, was in no disposition to execute, but the preparations of the Mohammedans, which he knew were chiefly directed against himself, and the loud complaints of his own subjects, forced him to promise at least that it should be conceded. To the departure of Constanza, the restitution of some insignificant fortresses which had been reduced, and even to the return of his queen, the Castilian felt no repugnance; but though he consented for Leonora to leave the court, he recalled her immediately after the conclusion of peace. To his queen, however, he no longer exhibited a marked neglect: on the contrary, he treated her with all the outward respect due to her character and station; and the good understanding was confirmed by her admirable moderation.
In the wars which the Castilian had to sustain against the Mohammedans, the Portuguese—so nobly did he forget his wrongs when the interests of Christendom were at stake—was no inefficient ally. He was present at the great battle on the banks of the Salado, in which the barbaric power was so signally humbled. This aid he continued readily to supply, until the death of Alfonso of Castile, by the plague, before Gibraltar, in 1350.
The tragedies represented in Castile by Pedro the Cruel, successor of Alfonso XI, were fully equalled by one in Portugal. Soon after his marriage with Constanza, Pedro, the infante of Portugal, had become passionately smitten with one of her attendants, Doña Iñes de Castro, a lady of surpassing beauty, and frail as beautiful. That he made love to her, and that his criminal suit was favourably received, is indubitable, both from the deep grief which preyed on the spirits of Constanza, and from the anxiety of the king, lest this new favourite should be the cause of the same disturbance in Portugal, as Leonora de Guzman had occasioned in Castile. To prevent the possibility of a marriage between the two lovers, Alfonso caused Iñes to hold over the baptismal font a child of Pedro’s—in other words, to contract a near spiritual affinity. But the man whom the sacred bond of wedlock could not restrain was not likely to be deterred from his purpose by an imaginary bar. After Constanza’s death in childbed, 1345, he privately married the seductive favourite. How soon after the death of the first wife this second union was contracted, whether immediately, or after Iñes had borne him three children, has been matter of much dispute. It appears that the marriage was celebrated on the 1st day of January, 1354, when Iñes must have borne him four children, of which three survived. It also appears that a papal dispensation was obtained for it, and that it took place at Braganza, in presence of a Portuguese prelate and his own chamberlain. However secret this step, it was suspected by some courtiers, who, partly through envy at the rising favour of the Castros, and partly through dread of the consequences which might ensue, endeavoured to prevail on the king to interfere in behalf of young Ferdinand, the son of Pedro and Constanza, and the lawful heir to the monarchy. From the boundless influence possessed over the mind of Pedro by Doña Iñes, it was feared that the true heir would be set aside from the succession in favour of her offspring. In the end, they wrung from him a reluctant consent to her death. The king, hearing that his son had departed on a hunting excursion for a few days, hastily left Monte-mor, and proceeded to the convent of St. Clair, at Coimbra, where Iñes then was. On learning his approach, she at once apprehended his object. Her only resource was an appeal to his pity. Taking her three children by the hand, she issued from the convent to meet him, prostrated herself at his feet, and in the most pathetic terms begged for mercy. Her beauty, her youth, her deep emotion, and the sight of her offspring—his own grandchildren—so affected him that, after a struggle between policy and nature, the latter triumphed, and he retired. No sooner, however, was he in private with his confidants, than they censured his compassion, though natural in itself, as ruinous in its consequences to his family and kingdom, and obtaining his consent hastened to the convent. The unfortunate, guilty Iñes fell beneath their daggers. The fate of this lady has called forth the deepest commiseration of novelists and poets, and has given rise to some vigorous effusions of the tragic muse.
When Pedro returned from the chase, and found his wife so barbarously murdered, his grief was surpassed, if possible, by his thirst for revenge. He leagued himself with the kindred of Iñes; and though he could not fall on the murderers, who were protected by the king, he laid waste the provinces of Entre-Douro-e-Minho, and Tras-os-Montes, where their possessions chiefly lay. King Alfonso was in consternation at the unexpected fury of his son. In the end he proposed, as the price of reconciliation, that the obnoxious nobles should be banished, and his son admitted to the chief share of the administration. Pedro accepted it, laid down his arms, and proceeded to court where he was received with an affection truly paternal, and where he engaged, though with a fixed resolution of breaking the engagement, never to seek revenge on the assassins of Doña Iñes.
Alfonso did not long survive this forced reconciliation with his son. His death, which happened at the beginning of 1357, is said to have been hastened by remorse for the tragical deed of which he had been the occasion. That he exhibited great repentance is certain; but his character was unamiable. He had been a disobedient son, an unjust brother, and a harsh father. The rebellion of his son was but fit retribution for his own conduct to the royal Diniz. His justice too often degenerated into blind vengeance. During his reign (in 1348) Portugal was afflicted with the plague, which spread throughout most of Europe, but which raged with more violence in that kingdom than anywhere else. Whole towns are said to have been left desolate, and some priests to have abandoned their flocks to the care of the monks.h
If we consider Alfonso IV—not isolated, nor in the light of our present-day views and social conditions as a son or as a father (even in this character we can bring forward the virtuous and exemplary spouse), but principally as leader and as king, in the moment when he assumed and exercised his power—we must confess, in face of the numerous documents relating to his external policy and his enormous legislation, that he is one of the most important figures, and that his government was one of the most advantageous, the most brilliant, and the most able of the intelligent and energetic governments which presided over the national formation of Portugal. In the character of this king there is a certain harmonious stamp of austerity which gives him a decided and characteristic originality in the midst of the free customs, and, we may say, of the traditional moral license of the kings of his time. Dom Diniz, the father of King Alfonso IV, in spite of the perfect devotion of his wife, was the easy prey of adulterous loves, and far from disguising them, flagrantly and heedlessly published them by the generosity of his gifts, calling to himself his bastard children and lavishing favours upon them, and confessing even by public documents the rewards conferred on his mistresses.
As to Dom Pedro, the Romeo of Iñes de Castro, we know that he was not so absorbed by this fatal passion but that the nation’s history owes to him the bastard progenitor of the second dynasty. In this instance Dom Alfonso presents a totally distinct character from that of his son; an exemplary husband, he made every effort to raise by royal authority the moral tone in the relation between the sexes, and to check the dissolute customs of the times. He made severe laws against those who availed themselves of such usages and customs up to that time in vogue, which seduced by endearments, or other means, various virgins and widows leading honest lives to make use of them for their evil purposes; he denounced “any man or woman guilty of panderage, and keeping in their houses for this purpose virgins, married women, religious, or widows.” At the exact moment that he was publishing some of his most severe laws upon this matter his son gave cause of scandal by his real or apparent cohabitation with Doña Iñes de Castro. Finally he left the kingdom to his successor in perfect internal and external peace, and it would be cruel injustice to deny that under his government the work of the political consolidation of Portuguese society made important progress.k
Pedro I was scarcely established on the throne before he gave way to his uncontrollable desire for vengeance on the murderers of Doña Iñes. Knowing that they had sought protection in Castile, and how eager his namesake of that country was for the surrender of several Castilians, who, in like manner, had obtained an asylum in Portugal, he paid court to that monarch, with whom he entered into a close alliance, and to whom he despatched ten of his galleys to serve in the war against Aragon. Having declared the fugitive nobles, who were three in number, Pedro Coelho, Alvaro Gonsalves, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco, traitors to their country, and confiscated all their possessions, he either proposed or received the proposal—there is some doubt from which of the two monarchs it originally came, or whether it may not be equally attributed to both—for the arrest of their personal enemies. On a given day the obnoxious Castilians were arrested in Portugal, the Portuguese in Castile, and were surrendered to their respective executioners. Of the three Portuguese, however, Pacheco escaped.
The escape of even one victim was gall to the Portuguese king; but he resolved to satiate his rage on the two who were placed in his reach. Both were thrown into a deep dungeon, put to the torture, with the view of eliciting whether others were implicated in the same crime. They withstood the acute torments they were made to endure with a firmness truly admirable—a circumstance that increased beyond measure the rage of Pedro, who was present at the hellish scene. With Coelho in particular, whom not a word, not a groan had escaped, he was so exasperated that he seized a whip and struck him on the face. This indignity affected the high-spirited knight far more than his present sufferings. Regarding the king with eyes full of fury, he loaded him not merely with the keenest reproaches, but with a torrent of abuse. The latter foamed at the mouth, and ordered his victims to be transferred from the dungeon to a scaffold erected in front of his palace. There he appeared at the window, expressing a savage delight at the new torments they sustained. At length the living hearts of both were plucked from their bodies; hearts and bodies were next consigned to the flames; and when consumed, the ashes were scattered by the winds.
The next proceeding of Pedro was to honour alike the remains and memory of the unfortunate Iñes. He convoked the states of his kingdom at Castanedo, and, in their presence, made oath on the holy Gospels that, in the year 1354, he had married that lady. The witnesses of the fact, the bishop of Guarda and his own chamberlain, were likewise publicly sworn, and the bull of dispensation produced which Pope Innocent VI had granted for the celebration of the ceremony. No doubt was entertained by the assembled nobles and clergy that Iñes had been the lawful wife of their prince; and she was unanimously declared entitled to the honours usually paid to the Portuguese queens. That the legitimacy of her offspring might never be disputed, copies of the papal dispensation and of the oaths taken on this occasion were multiplied and dispersed throughout the kingdom. The validity of the marriage being thus established, Pedro now proceeded to show due honour to her remains. He ordered two magnificent tombs, both of white marble, to be constructed, one for himself, the other for that lady, and placed them in the monastery of Alcobaça. He then proceeded to the church of St. Clair at Coimbra, caused her corpse to be brought from the sepulchre, to be arrayed in royal ornaments, to be placed on a throne with a crown on the head and a sceptre in the hand, and there to receive the homage of his assembled courtiers. From that church it was conveyed on a magnificent car, accompanied by nobles and high-born dames, all clad in mourning, to the monastery of Alcobaça.[141]
As the subsequent transactions of the Portuguese king with his namesake of Castile have been already related [in the history of Spain, Chapter III], nothing now remains but briefly to notice his internal administration. It is allowed to have been as rigorous as it was whimsical. With the view of correcting the extravagance which had long seized on the higher orders of his people, he made a law that whoever bought or sold on credit should be punished—if the first offence, by stripes; if the second, by death. In his own household he set the example of paying for everything in money the instant it was purchased. If he was thus severe against thoughtless imprudence, he could not be expected to be more lenient towards guilt. Of the vices which he visited with unpitying vengeance, fornication and adultery were the most obnoxious to him. That the lover of Iñes de Castro should thus hold in abhorrence those which he had so long practised might create surprise, were it not proved by general experience, not only that we are most forward to condemn in others imperfections to which ourselves are prone, but that kings are too often eager to plead exemption from obligations binding on the rest of mankind. Hearing that the bishop of Oporto lived in a state of concubinage, the royal moralist laid on him unmercifully with a whip. As he was one day proceeding along a street, he heard a woman call another by an opprobrious name. He speedily inquired into the affair; and, finding that the latter had been violated previous to her marriage by her husband, he consigned the offender to the executioner. Suspecting that the wife of a certain merchant was unfaithful to her conjugal duty, he caused her to be watched until he detected her in the actual crime; both lady and paramour were immediately committed to the flames. An old woman prostituted her daughter to a Portuguese admiral; the woman was burned, the admiral sentenced to lose his head—a sentence, however, which he escaped by flight. Other offences against the laws were punished, sometimes in proportion to their magnitude, but generally to his caprice. An inferior officer of the law one day complained that a gentleman on whom he had served a process had struck him and plucked him by the beard; Pedro turned to the presiding judge, and said, “I have been struck, and my beard has been plucked, by one of my subjects!” The judge, who understood the appeal, caused the culprit to be arrested and beheaded. Perceiving that causes were frequent, tedious, and expensive, and shrewdly divining the reason, he purged his courts of all advocates and proctors,—of all who had a manifest interest in litigation, and reduced all processes to a simple statement of the case by the parties concerned, and of the sentence by the judges, reserving, however, to himself the privilege of deciding appeals. If we add that Pedro was liberal of rewards, and fond of music and dancing, the character of the royal barbarian will be completed.
Ferdinand I, son of Pedro and the princess Constanza, was ill fitted to succeed monarchs so vigorous as his immediate predecessors. Fickle, irresolute, inconstant, without discernment, directed by no rule of conduct, obedient only to momentary impulse, addicted to idleness, or to recreations still more censurable, the very benevolence of his nature was a calamity.
After the death of the Castilian Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand, considering himself the true heir to the crown, assumed the regal title and arms of Castile. His ambition was lamentably inadequate to an enterprise so important as that of encountering and attempting to dethrone the bastard usurper Henry of Trastamara. From the recesses of his palace, he appeared to witness the invasion of his kingdom and the defeat of his armies with indifference. When, in 1373, Lisbon itself was invested by the Castilian king, the defence of the place was abandoned to the valour of the inhabitants, and to their deep-rooted hatred of the Spanish sway. The same year, indeed, peace was made through the mediation of the pope; but it was often broken by Ferdinand during the reign both of Henry of Trastamara and Juan I, the son and successor of that prince. The marriage of Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand, with Juan, in 1382, and the treaty for uniting the two crowns, have been related in the history of Spain [Chapter V], and to that history the reader is referred for an account of the obscure and indecisive, however destructive, wars between the two kingdoms.
During these transactions proposals were frequently made for restoring permanent harmony by matrimonial alliances. At first Ferdinand cast his eyes on the infanta Leonora of Aragon, whom he engaged to marry; but, with his usual fickleness, he escaped from the obligation. He next promised to raise a daughter of Henry of Trastamara, also named Leonora, to the Portuguese throne. When the time approached for the celebration of this marriage, Ferdinand fell passionately in love with one of his own subjects—a Leonora like the rest.[142] To beauty of the finest order, Leonora added a sprightliness which charmed and a wit which captivated him; but these were far inferior to her ambition, and unsupported by one single principle of honour or virtue. She was already the wife of Dom João Lourenço da Cunha, lord of Pombeiro. “Of that we are well aware,” said Ferdinand; “but they are related by blood, and they married without a dispensation: the engagement may easily be annulled.” Proceedings for the cassation of the marriage were instituted in the ecclesiastical courts; and as the husband offered no opposition to them,—doubtless because he had no wish to contend with a plaintiff whose cause was backed by legions of soldiers,—it was declared null. Not considering himself safe in Portugal, Dom Lourenço fled into Castile, evidently little afflicted at the loss of an unprincipled woman.[143] There is reason to believe that it was Ferdinand’s original intention to make her his mistress; but she had too much policy to become the tool of one whom she had resolved to rule; and she assumed the appearance of so much modesty, that to gain his object he was forced to marry her.
But this marriage was strictly private—a precaution adopted as well to stifle the murmurs of his subjects as to prevent the indignant remonstrances of Henry. It was, however, suspected, and the very suspicion produced great dissatisfaction throughout the kingdom—nowhere so great as in the capital. A mob, formidable from its numbers, assembled in the streets, and headed by a tailor, proceeded to the palace to reproach the king for his imprudence. Ferdinand said that he had neither married nor intended to marry Leonora. This declaration satisfied the mob; who, however, insisted that he should take an oath the following day to the same effect in the church of Saõ Domingos—a promise which he readily made. At the time appointed, they proceeded to the church, but found to their mortification that, during the night, the king and Leonora had fled to Santarem. In the height of their fury they apostrophised both in no measured terms. Their insulting conduct so incensed the queen that she procured a royal order for the arrest and execution of the tailor and his chief associates. The fear which this act of severity struck into the people emboldened the king to publish his marriage. The nobles and prelates now hastened to court, to recognise their new queen. All readily kissed her hand with the exception, of Dom Diniz, son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro, who accompanied his refusal in open court with expressions of contempt. Ferdinand drew his poniard, and would doubtless have laid his obnoxious brother at his feet, but for the interference of two nobles who arrested his arm. Even João, the grand-master of Aviz, a natural son of the late king, who is about to perform so memorable a part in the national history, bowed before the triumphant Leonora. To render her power more secure, she began to act with great policy, disarmed hostility, and secured to herself an undisturbed possession of her new dignity.
The insult to the royal family of Castile involved in this imprudent marriage was one of the causes which led to the hostilities that followed—hostilities in which the country was laid waste, from Badajoz to Lisbon, and that capital invested. On the conclusion of peace, in 1373, which was cemented by the marriage of a natural daughter of Ferdinand with a natural son of Henry, tranquillity visited the kingdom for some years; but the Portuguese court, through the ambition and wickedness of the queen, was often distracted and disgraced. As Ferdinand had only a daughter—the princess Beatrice—by Leonora, and as no hopes of future issue appear to have been entertained, the infante João, brother of the king, (not the bastard of that name who was the grand-master of Aviz, but the eldest surviving son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro), was regarded as the presumptive heir to the crown. To set him aside from the succession was now the object of the queen. Fortunately for her purpose, the imprudence of the prince presented her with the means. Struck with the personal charms of Donna Maria, sister of the queen, he privately married her. The step was not hidden from Leonora; who, so far from betraying her knowledge of it, and to lull her intended victim into profound security, proposed to the infante the hand of her own child, and with it the throne of Portugal. As she expected, her offer was declined; but she was resolved to move heaven and earth rather than see her sister and brother-in-law in the possession of supreme power. The former she appears to have hated: her destruction was certainly planned with demoniacal coolness. Sending one day for the infante, she assumed the appearance of intense affliction; assured him that she knew of his marriage with her sister; but that regard for him and his honour, as well as for the honour of the royal family, would not permit her to conceal that sister’s depravity. “You are betrayed, prince!” was the substance of her address. “Maria loves another, to whom she grants her favours!”
Unfortunately, João, who was unacquainted with her real character, and who could not suppose her capable of deliberately destroying a sister, implicitly believed her; and in the madness of his rage, hastened to Coimbra, where the princess then abode. She met him with her usual smiles, and, on being repulsed, falteringly demanded the cause. “Because,” replied the infuriated husband, “you have divulged our marriage and sacrificed my honour.” “Bid your attendants retire,” pleaded the poor woman, “and I will satisfy you.” “I come not to hear your excuses,” João returned furiously, “but to punish your guilt,” and at the same time his dagger found a way to her heart. She fell into the arms of her weeping attendants, while he mounted his horse and fled. The cause of all this wickedness affected inconsolable grief, threw herself at the royal feet, and cried for vengeance on the murderer. But whether she found the king averse to justice, or whether she feared the indignation of the infante, who, sooner or later, would become acquainted with the innocence of Maria, she suddenly changed her proceedings, and obtained permission for him to return to court. But there everyone shunned him—no one more eagerly than Leonora; so that, seeing his hopes of Beatrice at an end, he retired into the province of Entre-Douro-e-Minho, where he was soon acquainted with the bloody perfidy of the queen. Having reason to distrust his safety, he fled into Castile, his heart torn by remorse for the fate of one whom he had passionately loved, and whose bleeding image was incessantly before him.
Though on the accession of Juan I of Castile Ferdinand readily renewed the peace between the two crowns, and consented to marry his daughter Beatrice to the heir of the Castilian, his characteristic fickleness was such that he soon resolved to resume hostilities. To engage the duke of Lancaster in his cause, he sent a trusty messenger to England, Dom João Ferdinand Andeiro, who concluded a league with the Plantagenet. To conceal this negotiation from the world, especially from the Castilian, he pretended great anger with Andeiro, whom he arrested, and confined to the fortress of Estremos. During his agreeable captivity in this place, he was frequently visited by the disguised king, who was sometimes accompanied by the queen, and was made to unfold the conditions he had contracted, and solicited for his advice. As his person was unexceptionable, his address elegant, and his manners prepossessing, he soon won so far on the credulous Leonora that she became the willing partner of his lust, and still more of his ambition. In the hostilities which followed the arrival of the earl of Cambridge, he was released, and, by her influence, was invested with the lordship of Ourem.