The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

The death of King Henry hurried on matters, and Philip, in order to establish himself peacefully on the throne, entered into negotiations with the Duke of Braganza. The King of Spain solemnly promised the duke that he should have Brazil in full sovereignty with the title of king, and that a marriage should be arranged between his daughter and the Prince of the Asturias, heir to the conjoined thrones; and the duke, who hated war and loved peace, accepted these terms, in spite of his wife’s opposition. But, to the surprise of Philip, another competitor for the crown, to whom he had paid no attention—Dom Antonio, the Prior of Crato—declared himself king at Santarem, and, entering Lisbon without opposition, struck money and began to raise soldiers. This Dom Antonio was the son of Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, the second son of Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” by Violante de Gomes, surnamed “the Pelican,” one of the most beautiful women of her time. Dom Antonio alleged that his father was secretly married to his mother, and reminded the people, in a proclamation, that, even if the marriage were not legal, one of the greatest of all the kings of Portugal, the victor of Aljubarrota, was a bastard also. But the Portugal of the close of the sixteenth century, enervated by wealth and luxury, oppressed by the Inquisition, and with its free population reduced in numbers, possessed none of the energy of the Portugal of the fourteenth century, and felt no inclination to fight against the King of Spain, the son of the great Emperor Charles V., and the uncle and friend of their lamented monarch, Dom Sebastian. The brave, but hot-headed and noisy Prior of Crato could not be compared in warlike prowess or statesmanlike qualities to John of Aviz, and he had no “Holy Constable” to support him; and the Cortes of 1580, unlike that which in 1385 had listened to the manly words of João das Regras, and declared John “the Great” king of Portugal, listened to the promises of Christovão de Moura, and rejected the Prior of Crato. Dom Antonio raised a few soldiers, but the Duke of Alva who entered Portugal at the head of twenty thousand men, defeated them without difficulty at Alcantara on August 26th, when the pretender fled to France, and Philip II. was proclaimed king.

In 1581 Philip II. of Spain and I. of Portugal, as he now styled himself, solemnly entered Lisbon, and in the presence of a great Cortes held at Thomar he swore on April 15, 1581, that he and his successors would observe the following conditions, which had been settled by his agents. He swore that he would maintain the privileges and liberties of the Portuguese people; that the Cortes should be frequently summoned to meet in Portugal; that the viceroy or chief governor should always be a native, unless the king should give that charge to one of the royal family; that the royal household should be kept up on the same scale as hitherto; that all offices, civil, military, and judicial, and all dignities in the Church, and in the orders of knighthood, within the kingdom, should be conferred upon Portuguese subjects alone; that the commerce of Africa, Persia, and India should be reserved to them, and carried on only in their vessels; that he would make no royal grant of any city, town, or royal jurisdiction to any but Portuguese; that forfeited or lapsed estates should never be absorbed in the royal domain, but be regranted to some relative of the last possessor or to some other Portuguese subject; that the king should reside as much as possible in Portugal, and that, when he did come, he should not take the houses of private individuals for his officers, but observe the custom of Portugal; that there should be always resident at the royal court an ecclesiastic, a chancellor, a treasurer, and two masters of requests, of Portuguese birth and nationality, to manage all business relating to their country; that the revenue of Portugal should be kept distinct from that of Spain, and spent in the kingdom; that all matters of justice should be finally settled there; that Portuguese noblemen should be admitted to offices in the households of the King and Queen of Spain; that all customs duties at the land frontiers should be abolished; and that King Philip should at once grant three hundred thousand crowns out of his royal treasury to redeem prisoners, repair cities, and relieve the miseries which the plague had brought upon the Portuguese people. All these conditions Philip II. solemnly swore to observe, and he was in consequence recognized as King of Portugal, not only in Portugal itself, but in Brazil and the Indian settlements, where Fernão Telles had succeeded the viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, as governor-general.

The other candidates for the crown of Portugal were obliged to acquiesce in Philip’s success; the Duke of Braganza, though greatly disappointed at only receiving the office of Constable of Portugal and the Order of the Golden Fleece instead of the sovereignty of Brazil, was too apathetic to resist, and, in face of his apathy, the Dukes of Parma and Savoy were forced to surrender their claims, which were obviously inferior to those of the Duchess of Braganza. Only the Prior of Crato persisted in his attempts to win the throne from Philip by relying on the old dislike of the Portuguese people for the Spaniards. He was cordially received in France by Catherine de’ Medici, who, though Italian by birth, was true to the French policy of trying to weaken Spain; and through her influence a strong French fleet of sixty ships of war, with many troops on board, was sent, under the command of Philip Strozzi, to the Azores, which had recognized Dom Antonio in 1580 as king of Portugal, and had refused to acknowledge Philip. But the ill-luck of the Prior of Crato followed him; the French fleet was defeated at Terceira by the Spanish admiral, Don Alvaro de Bacam on July 26, 1582; Strozzi was killed, and Dom Antonio escaped with difficulty to England. There Elizabeth received him cordially, and in 1589, the year after the defeat of the Great Armada, she sent a strong fleet, under Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris, to help him win back his “kingdom.” This attempt also proved a failure; Maulā Ahmed ibn Mohammed of Morocco was prevented from advancing to the prior the loan of two hundred thousand crowns, which he had promised on receiving Dom Antonio’s son, Dom Christovão, as a hostage, by Philip’s timely surrender of Arzila; Drake and Norris quarrelled, and the English retired without effecting anything of importance. The unfortunate prior, finding that Elizabeth would do nothing more for him, once more went to France, where he died in great poverty and distress on August 26, 1595. He was buried in the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois at Paris, where the inscription on his tomb styles him “King of Portugal”; and he left several children behind him, who were not recognized as legitimate, owing to the fact that their father had taken a vow of chastity on becoming a Knight of Malta.