Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/565

Rh HISTORY.] PORTUGAL 543 Edward II. of England, and agreed with him in 1311 that the Knights Templars had been greatly maligned ; and on their suppression by Clement V., recollecting the great services which the military orders had rendered to Portugal and their great power, Dom Diniz founded the Order of Christ, and invested it with the lands of the Templars, thus at once obeying the pope and avoiding a serious dis turbance at home. The king showed his love of agricul ture by the foundation of agricultural schools and homes for farmers orphans, as well as by encouraging improved farming, and by establishing the pine forest of Leiria, his love of justice by wise laws, checking, though not abolish ing, the feudal courts, and by the appointment of royal corregidors in every town of which the crown possessed the franchise, and his love for commerce by his commercial treaty with England, and by the foundation of a royal navy, of which a Genoese, named Emmanuel Pessanha, was the first admiral. But his real affection was for litera ture : he encouraged a school of Portuguese poets at his court, and established a university at Lisbon, which, after many changes, found a permanent home at Coimbra. 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 Isabel 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 Re Lavrador, in 1325. ft so Affonso IV. pursued his father s policy of making family T - alliances with the kings of Aragon and Castile, and in 1328 married his daughter, Donna Maria, to Alphonso XI. of Castile, who neglected her, and for her sake Affonso IV. declared war against Castile. Peace was made through the intervention of St Isabel in 1340, when Dom Pedro, son of Affonso, married Constance Manuel, daughter of the duke of Penafiel, and Affonso IV. himself promised to bring a strong Portuguese army to the help of Alphonso XI. against the emir of Morocco, Abu Hamem, who had crossed the straits to assist the sultan of Granada. The united Christian armies won a decisive victory at the river Salado, in which Affonso especially distinguished himself, and earned the title of &quot;the Brave&quot;; from that time he re mained at peace with Castile, and further strengthened his position in Spain in 1347 by marrying his daughter, Donna Leonora, to Pedro IV. of Aragon. The later years of the reign of Affonso IV. were stained by the tragedy of Donna Ines de Castro. (See vol. v. p. 202.) xl: 1. The first act of Dom Pedro on ascending the throne in 1357 was to punish the murderers of Ines; and further, to show his love for her, he had her dead body disinterred and crowned, and afterwards solemnly buried with the kings and queens of Portugal in the convent of Alcobaga. The spirit of stern, revengeful justice which had marked the commencement of his reign continued to show itself in all matters of administration ; he punished priest and noble with equal severity, and the people gave him the title of &quot;Pedro the Severe.&quot; Like his grandfather, he greatly valued the friendship of England, and was on intimate terms with Edward III., who in 1352 had ordered his subjects by proclamation never to do any harm to the Portuguese. A curious sequel to the commercial treaty of 1294 was executed in 1353, when Affonso Martins Alho, on behalf of the maritime cities of Portugal, signed a treaty with the merchants of London guaranteeing mutual good faith in all matters of trade and commerce. This is the most interesting feature of Dom Pedro s short reign. The accession in 1367 of Ferdinand, the only son of Pedro by Constance, marks a crisis in the history of the Portu guese monarchy. As a natural result of the long peace which had succeeded the final conquest of Algarves, the people of Portugal had grown richer, more cultivated, and more conscious of their nationality, while the court had grown more and more dissolute and more out of conson ance with the feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy was to continue to exist, it was obvious that it must become again a truly national monarchy, as it had been in the days of Affonso Henriques, and that the kings must remember their duties and not think only of their pleasures. The life and reign of Dom Ferdinand 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 him self to marry Leonora, daughter of the king of Aragon, suddenly claimed the thrones of Castile and Leon in 1369 on the death of Pedro the Cruel, through his grandmother, Beatrice of Castile, and was favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora. But the majority of the Castilian nobles did not wish to see a Portuguese monarch on their throne, and welcomed the illegitimate Henry of Trastarnare as Henry II. of Castile. The contest ended in 1371 through the intervention of Pope Gregory XL, Ferdinand agreeing to surrender his claims on Castile and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry II. However, in spite of the pope, this treaty was never carried out ; Ferdinand had seen and fallen passionately in love with Donna Leonora Telles de Menezes, daughter of a nobleman in Tras-os-Montes and wife of Joao Lourenc.o da Cunha, lord of Pombeiro. For love of this lady, whom he eventually married, he refused to fulfil his treaty with Castile ; but Henry II. strongly resented this insult, and taking up arms invaded Port ugal and laid siege to Lisbon. Ferdinand entered into negotiations with John of Gaunt, who also claimed Castile through his wife Constance (daughter of Pedro the Cruel), and he signed a treaty of alliance through his ambassador, Joao Fernandes Andeiro, with Edward III. of England. Donna Leonora, however, did not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374 Ferdinand made peace with Castile through the mediation of Cardinal Guy of Boulogne. The queen was now supreme, and terrible in her tyranny. She had not even the merit of constancy, for she fell in love with Andeiro, the late ambassador to England, and in duced the king to make him count of Ourem. Ferdinand himself continued to aspire to the throne of Castile ; and in 1380, after the death of Henry II., he again sent Andeiro to England to procure assistance for a new war against Henry s successor, John I. Richard II. of England received the ambassador graciously, and in 1381 the earl of Cambridge, brother of John of Gaunt, arrived with a powerful force, and his son Edward was betrothed to Donna Beatrice, Ferdinand s only child, who had been recognized as heiress to the throne by a cortes at Leiria in 1376. But the Portuguese king, as usual, failed to keep faith, and in 1383, under the influence of the queen, he deserted the English, who then ravaged Portugal and made peace with John I. of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty John I. engaged to marry Donna Beatrice, and it was arranged that Queen Leonora should be regent of Portugal until Beatrice s eldest son came of age. Six months after wards, on 22d October, King Ferdinand died, and Donna Leonora assumed the regency. But she did not hold it long. The whole Portuguese Regency people detested her, and their feeling of nationality was of outraged by the contemplated union of their crown with e01 that of Castile. Dom John, grandmaster of the Knights of St Bennett of Aviz, and an illegitimate son of Pedro the Severe, shared both the personal hatred for the queen and the political desire for independence, and on 6th December he headed an insurrection at Lisbon and slew the queen s lover, Andeiro, in the precincts of the palace. Leonora fled to Santarem and summoned John I. of Castile to her