[142] “This name proved terrible to the king,” says Lemos.[g] This name, indeed, in all the three cases, is a most singular coincidence: it did not prove terrible, however it might be pernicious to the interests of the kingdom.
[143] To disarm ridicule by braving it, and to prove how little the affair had affected him, the exiled husband attached to each side of his cap a golden horn.
CHAPTER II. THE PERIOD OF GLORY AND DISCOVERY
[1383-1521 A.D.]
By the death of Ferdinand, his daughter Beatrice, queen of Castile, was the true heir to the throne of Portugal. But the kingdom, far from expecting a foreign yoke, had, on the marriage of the infanta, expressly stipulated that, in case of Ferdinand’s death, the government should be vested in a regent, until she had a son capable of assuming the sovereignty; that son, too, to be educated not in Castile but in Portugal. When that event happened, she had no child—a circumstance that induced her husband to claim the crown in her right, and that filled the Portuguese with vexation. They were satisfied neither with their intended sovereign, Juan, nor with the regent, Leonora, the queen-mother, whom the will of the late king appointed to that dignity. And when, in conformity with the demands of the Castilian, Beatrice was proclaimed in Lisbon, the people either exhibited a mournful silence, or cried out that they would have no other king than their infante João, son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro, and the unfortunate husband of Maria, sister of Leonora, whose tragical fate has been recorded. But João and his brother Diniz now languished in the dungeons of Castile,[144] whither they had been consigned by the king, who knew that, if suffered to enter Portugal, they would speedily thwart his views of dominion. Until these princes could be restored to their country, and until Beatrice should have an heir, the Portuguese resolved to deprive the queen-mother of the regency, in favour of Dom João, the grand-master of Aviz, who alone seemed able to defend their national independence.
[1383-1384 A.D.]