Episode 104 looks at Elizabeth’s relationship with the Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, when Philip II of Spain took the Portuguese throne. What does a Portuguese succession crisis have to do with Elizabeth? Listen to the episode to find out.
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Links
Elizabethan Foreign Policy in Microcosm: The Portuguese Pretender, 1580-89
The Expedition to Portugal, 1589
Queen Elizabeth and the Portuguese Expedition of 1589
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Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko. And I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is Episode 104. And it’s about Elizabeth I and the Portuguese pretender. So in the grand scheme of Elizabeth’s foreign policy, this is a small piece, but it’s one really worth looking at in depth because she was so often inconsistent in her dealings with other countries. And she also was with the Portuguese pretender as we’ll hear. But I think it really underlined the calculating nature that she viewed these relationships with. So we’re going to talk about that in a couple of minutes.
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So let’s move on to Don António, Prior of Crato, the Portuguese pretender, and how on earth a Portuguese succession crisis relates to Elizabeth I. So let’s start in 1580. In 1580, Portugal was in the middle of a succession crisis. Their young king had died in battle in Morocco in 1578. His uncle who had been regent for him while he was away, became king. The problem was that this king, Henry was also a cardinal. He tried to be released from his vows of chastity so that he could take a bride and continue the dynasty but the Pope wouldn’t allow it. So he dies in 1580 with no heir and on top of that, Sebastian, the young king, his body was never found. So over the years, imposters would pop up and that confused the whole situation.
So at this time, there are three major claimants to the throne. They are Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, King Philip II of Spain, and our dear Don António. Katherine’s problem was that she was a woman, Philip was Spanish and so he was a foreigner, and Don António was actually illegitimate. So Don António was an illegitimate son of the brother of one of the older generation. So it… from the next generation, it all gets very complicated. But he was the illegitimate son of a brother of a king from an older generation. He was actually the grandson of Maria of Aragon, Catherine’s sister, so he’s a great-grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella. He had tried to prove that his parents were legally married after he began his claim to the Portuguese throne but he was never able to do that.
Early on in his life, he had actually joined the knights of St. John, the Hospitallers that we talked about in earlier episodes this year when we were talking about the Ottoman Turks. They were the crusading knights who were based at Rhodes and then Malta and he was actually named to be the Prior of Creto which was an honorary title given to the head of the order. He helped invade Morocco too. He was also taken prisoner at the same battle that King Sebastian was killed in, that was the Battle of Alcácer Quibir. And he actually secured his own release. He kind of fibbed a little bit about it. He was asked about the meaning of the cross of St. John that he wore on his doublet and he replied that it was the sign of a small benefit that he held from the Pope. And it would be something that he would lose if he wasn’t back in Portugal by the first to January 1579. So his captor thought he was a very poor man and he allowed his release with just a tiny ransom.
So he comes back and his country is in the middle of a succession crisis. And that sets the stage for our story. So Philip at this time, Philip of Spain, was at the height of his power. In 1580, the English concerns, going to England, were expanding trade and trying to keep the Netherlands from absolute domination by Spain. But Philip looked poised to take Portugal really easily. Philip had a huge trading network with the Americas. He had lands in the Spanish Netherlands. He was kind of everywhere, right? Elizabeth was reluctant to see Portugal fall into Spanish hands, but at the same time, she didn’t want to go to war with Spain outright at this point. Tensions were rising in 1580 and war seemed likely but it was still a few years before the Armada. And Elizabeth was hesitant to engage full on about this.
So Don António at this point, is pressing his claim, saying that he’s the one who’s the rightful heir. He’s the only one, he’s Portuguese. He’s the only one who can lead Portugal but the Spanish are pushing back on this. So the Spanish ambassador to England at this time, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, he reinforced this by reminding the queen that she didn’t want to offend a king who had “so strong an arm and so long a sword”. But António was really the only other viable option. And he and his agents, like I said, were counting on English support by promising commercial concessions to the English. Philip meanwhile, is trying to secure the Portuguese throne by bribing the Portuguese nobility with gold that he’s bringing back from the Americas. And António meanwhile, is reminding everybody that he is in fact Spanish and not Portuguese.
On July 19, 1580, António was proclaimed King of Portugal in Santarém followed by announcements in several other locations. But after only 20 days, he was defeated at the Battle of Alcântara by the Spanish Army, and that was led by the Duke of Alba. So he goes to the Azores. He sails to the Azores, which are the islands in the Atlantic. He tries to rule Portugal from there and he was only recognized as king in the islands. Philip was able to secure the mainland and also the Madeira islands. So in early 1581, António flees to France. He takes with him the crown jewels and any kind of gold that he can get. And he goes to France, Catherine de’ Medici received him seeing him as a convenient pawn to use against Philip because really, at this time, Philip’s power is an issue for everybody in Europe. So Catherine de’ Medici sees him and says, “Okay, well, we can use this against Philip.” So António promises to give up Brazil to her. He sells some of his jewels. He organizes a fleet, made up of some of the Portuguese exiles, as well as French and English adventures. They go to the Azores but they’re defeated. So he goes back to France, but he was terrified of assassins from Philip, so he decides to leave mainland Europe and go to England. That brings us to Elizabeth.
Earlier on in May 1580, At Don António’s agent in England, Juan Rodriguez de Sousa offered the English a castle on the West African coast in return for any kind of military support that they could offer. Elizabeth agreed in theory to send an expedition to support him, but she agreed only with stipulating three conditions that had to be met first, and this is where she gets really clever.
First, she wanted to receive more specific information about exactly what was needed. Second, the members of the Privy Council had to confer with de Sousa for a better understanding of his objectives. And third, this is the clever part, the king of France has to agree to join the expedition. So Elizabeth’s saying, “Sure, I’ll come in with you if I more clearly understand exactly what it is you need, if you talk to my Privy Council, and France has to agree.” This was kind of a masterful move on Elizabeth’s part, this was kind of biding her time giving Don António some hope, kind of keeping Don António this thing out there to bother Philip right, but not actually committing anything at that time.
So in England, there were some pretty big pressures from the pro-war party. In 1580, Drake had returned from circumnavigating the globe, Francis Drake. And both Walsingham and Leicester, who were the leaders of the pro-war party, they had received enormous profits from this circumnavigation of the globe. Francis Drake arrives back in England with ships loaded with bullion and gold and it makes everybody very, very wealthy. So Walsingham particularly, was pressing for a plan to send Drake to the Azores on Don António’s behalf and he wanted to secure the Spanish treasure fleet at the same time. So you have to remember that at this period, ships were literally back and forth and back and forth from the new world to Spain carrying gold and treasure. So Walsingham says, “Well, we can go to the Azores. We can secure the throne for Don António. Meanwhile, we will capture the Spanish treasure fleet and get even more money.” Don António was providing this perfect front, this perfect opportunity to harass Spain and to distract Spain, also from the Low Countries from Spanish Netherlands. And at the same time, there’s this opportunity for huge profits from the whole thing.
Don António was a really useful person to the English at this point. Elizabeth, of course, was a little bit more cautious. She wanted to keep the question open, she wanted to continue to harass Phillip, she wanted to keep annoying him. And she wanted to see whether France would participate actually in any expedition, or whether they were kind of just talking. So she begins to negotiate with France. This is also when the marriage negotiations between her and the Duke of Anjou are going on. And she’s a little not keen on that. But the French did want to keep pressing that. So the French said they wanted to have a joint Anglo-France push to aid both the Duke of Anjou and the Low Countries and Don António in Portugal. Elizabeth points out though, that there’s a lot of English merchants who have ships and goods in Spain. So it would actually be better for France to be the one to make open war and England would pay a percentage of the cost. And also she wasn’t going to negotiate marriage anymore with the Duke of Anjou. So that’s what Elizabeth comes back with. Henry III of France said that he would be happy to do this all in secret, but he’s not going to make open war until an English marriage is concluded because he’s still a little nervous about the loyalties. So until Elizabeth is safely married to a French person, he’s not going to do any kind of open war against Spain. Still, England decided to move ahead with this expedition to the Azores.
When Don António reached England in June of 1581, it was ready to sail but Elizabeth bought more time. She wasn’t ready to make an open war on Spain. She wanted to keep these negotiations going. At the end of July that year, Walsingham went to talk to Henry III in France. He was instructed to argue in favor of a joint action against Philip. And also he recognized that it would likely result in “A war upon either or both of us and yet we think it good for the king of Spain to be impeached in both Portugal and his islands.” She promised that “We shall be ready to give such indirect assistance as shall not at once be the cause of war.” So she was still not ready for direct warfare with Spain, but she wanted to test things out and kind of use France as an excuse to kind of get this whole thing going.
Spanish Ambassador Mendoza did his best to end the whole relationship to kind of just blow the whole thing up. And yet Don António was still welcomed when he arrived in England. Mendoza urged Philip to write directly to Elizabeth. He wrote, “Until now she has not imagined that Your Majesty would resent anything she thinks fit to do on her bare assurance that she knows nothing of the matter.” Also, she believed that Philip has more need of England than anyone else, which kind of ticked Mendoza off he said, “She has this big head and thinks that you need her and everything.”
So Philip did write to Elizabeth and he told Mendoza to increase the pressure on Elizabeth to surrender. He told Mendoza to “Paint in vivid colors my displeasure if she refuses. If you cannot get her to accede to my request, you may tell the Queen that if Don António leaves her country for any of my dominions, or to injure any of my subjects, I shall understand it to be a declaration of war. This is so important that I need not urge it further upon you.” He also writes to Elizabeth asking her to expel Don António, “If you refuse and like again to abuse our often injured patience, you are to know that for what place soever in our dominions, he departs from your country with hostile minds towards us and our subjects with whatever aids to war or whatever pretexts supplied, I shall understand war to be undeservedly declared upon me by you. If that happens, note it will be taken that I have never lacked loyalty in preserving amity and that when peace so often shaken by you has been quickly broken, I shall not lack force to meet the consequence.”
So Elizabeth withdraws from the Azore trip and she suggests that maybe a few ships go to assist on António’s followers and islands. Don António refuses this. He says “No, we need to have a full fleet or nothing.” And he complained to the queen and he supposedly said at this point that coming to England must have been a punishment for his sins as its people were so fickle. For Elizabeth, there was absolutely nothing fickle about this. She wanted to avoid open war with Spain. And by insisting on French support, which she knew would not happen, she showed that she never really actually meant to support António, but just to kind of test Spain’s resolve in this. It was a really cruel thing to do to Don António. But it did provide Elizabeth with the information that she needed about how Spain viewed Don António, how far they would go to secure him, how important he was.
So then Don António gets really upset. He goes back to France. And Catherine de’ Medici agreed to fund a voyage to the Azores out of her own personal funds. They were still negotiating with England to join in, but Elizabeth really tried to stay out of it. Finally, she agreed to let Don António’s ships, the ones that had been prepared before to go to France. So she says, “Okay, well, these ships that are all ready, I’m going to let them go. They can go to France, and then do whatever you will with them.”
So there were actually two French-backed trips to the Azores, and both of them were unmitigated disasters. By 1583, the occupation of these islands by Philip was complete. So there wasn’t any way of going back there and trying to get people to rise and get support to then fund an expedition to the mainland. So Don António is in a pretty bad position. By this point, he had sold all of the Portuguese crown jewels that he had brought with him. He was fed up with both the English and the French, but he decided to try England and Elizabeth again.
In 1584, the English ambassador in France, Edward Stafford, forwarded Don António’s requests. Don António said he wanted to go to England, he wanted a place to live in or near a port town, and he also wanted a pension of 1000 crowns per month. The Queen, Walsingham wrote in a draft response, was happy to have him come back. They didn’t want him to live in a port town though because it wouldn’t be as safe for him or the realm. And as for the pension, they would work it out later. So again, she was saying, “Okay, well, I’ll give you some of it. But we’ll talk about the money later.” Don António is now faced with a decision – will he stay in France, where he got zero support for his claim to the Portuguese throne now, but he did get a pension, or should he go to England where the pro-war faction at court would support pushing his claim, but there was no guarantee of any money?
This is the period in England though, where it seemed that war with Spain would be inevitable. Philip had seized English ships in Spanish ports in the Spanish Netherlands, Antwerp fell in August of 1585. And in France, another religious war breaks out meaning that France is a little bit distracted. At this point, there’s not really going to be that much interest in helping Don António. And at the same time, Don António begins this PR campaign to show how useful he could be.
In September 1584, a man called Edmund of York, wrote that “The affairs of the king of Portugal, Don António have taken good success here. In the Netherlands, ships were disrupting Spanish trade by saying that any ship that was sailing needed to have the safe passage of Don António.” So admin rights. it is thought that this will annoy the Spanish greatly. So essentially, Don António is licensing pirates in his name. He’s kind of doing that to show how useful he can be. He also put out word that if he appeared in Portugal, everyone would just flock to his standard. All he needs to do is just go back and show up and everybody’s going to rise up in his name. They actually published some tracks talking up Don António is right to the throne, what all he had been through in the last couple of years trying to get it, and how much the people of Portugal wanted him to rule rather than the Spanish, Philip. So he does this all to get more public support for him. So Elizabeth decides to give him a pension and money to cover his debts.
In 1585, he goes back to court, and for the next year until 1586, it was clear that war with Spain was becoming imminent. And Elizabeth at the same time was not ready to gamble any resources that should have been stored up to fight the Armada. So they know at this point that the Armada is coming. Drake had gone to Cádiz and did the Singeing the King of Spain’s Beard in 1587, which bought them another year of not having the Armada attack, but they know at this point, the Armada is coming. Spain is going to invade and rather than giving ships and money to this Portuguese pretender, they need to store that up and they need to make sure those ships are in England to fight off the Spanish Armada. So Elizabeth had a lot less to lose though by befriending Don António obviously, than she had in 1581. So she knows war with Spain is coming. And she needs to now figure out how to walk this line where she can obviously support him and use him. Because she’s doesn’t have anything to lose. They’re already going to have war, it’s really clear. But at the same time, she can’t actually give him any money or any ships. So she needs to kind of try to keep him happy and keep him in England where he can be useful, but not give him any money or anything like that, because she needs that to stay in England to fight the Spanish.
At the same point, Don António also begins negotiations with the Ottoman Turks hoping that they will attack Spain from the Mediterranean and from Africa. And as we saw in the previous episodes, about the relationships with the Turks, this was totally in alignment with Elizabeth’s own negotiations with them on trade during this time. So both of their interests are really starting to align. But Don António is getting impatient. He’s like, “Where’s my ships?” So as war with Spain was pending, his cause was kind of beginning to be forgotten as well because there were other things to think about. And people were kind of like, “Okay, well, there’s that Spanish pretender at court. But look, Spain’s coming.” So Don António, actually tried to escape, leave England in March of 1588, because he wanted to go somewhere where he would get some support, but he was caught, and he was sent back to London. And he was still at this point, nurturing plans in his head that he would escape and go to Holland, and maybe try Holland.
The reason for this shift was that Elizabeth desperately wanted to avoid open war with Spain. And now the problem for Don António, is that he’s a bargaining chip. So Elizabeth still is hoping, hoping against hope that Spain isn’t going to invade, it could be prevented. Even though it’s really clear that it’s coming, she’s still thinking that maybe it can be prevented. And Don António is now something that she can use in her negotiations. So she could say, “Okay, well, I’ll give you Don António back if you don’t invade.” So this is dangerous for Don António. This is a very dangerous period for him. When the arrival of the Spanish Armada finally came that summer, it was a good thing for him because he was no longer a bargaining chip. And at this point, he has no money, he’s completely destitute, but he’s still had his claim to the throne. And he still has this belief that Portugal would rise up for him.
So now after defeating the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth was finally free to respond to him, maybe a little bit more openly. And this also dovetails nicely with Elizabeth’s desires to go back and finish off the job with Spain. Even though she beat the Armada, enough ships got away that she thought “We need to go back and we need to just make sure that this never happens again, and that they can’t go to America that easily and get gold. We just need to call this done.” So Francis Drake favored attacking Lisbon, and that would, it was anticipated cause this large uprising in Don António’s favor, they would then destroy what was left of the Spanish Atlantic Fleet. The whole thing is going to be funded through investments in a joint stock company, and Don António promised to pay it all back when he was king.
So that then leads us to the Portuguese expedition. On April 18, 1589, a fleet sailed. The objectives of the fleet were to restore Don António in Lisbon, to burn the rest of Philip’s ships in Seville and Lisbon. Then they were going to head to the Azores and burn any ships there, and then move to the northern coast of Spain and burn ships in Santander and San Sebastian. But the ships dock in Lisbon. And suddenly, Lisbon does not rise up in Don António’s name. Nobody really seems to care that much. And they kind of were like, “Well, if you conquer us, then I guess we’ll accept him.” But then England’s like, “Well, we can’t conquer you unless you rise up in his name.” So it’s a catch 22. And Lisbon was not going to risk rising up and risk the Spanish wrath on them. And so nobody rises up for Don António. You can only imagine how crushing this must have been for him. He spent the last almost decade of his life convinced he was the rightful king of these people, and that they would welcome him and spreading that all over Europe. And they show up and nobody rises up. So this would actually be the final opportunity for Don António to try to get the Portuguese throne. After this, the myth was busted. There was no more promising that people were going to rise up. Everybody could tell that wasn’t going to happen.
He lived for six more years. But after this disaster, there wasn’t a chance that any monarch was going to support his cause. He had also become useless as a negotiating tactic, since it was really clear that he was useless as a negotiating tactic. Phillip didn’t even care about him anymore, because he was like, “Well, you tried to come and nobody cared.” So It was really kind of the worst thing to happen. It was the worst thing to happen for Don António. He lived in poverty and he went back to England, he was living in poverty there. Then he was invited to come back to France. And he died there in poverty in 1595, so six years after the Portuguese expedition.
So this whole episode, for Elizabeth, shows how cautious she was about avoiding war with Spain, how much she wanted to avoid war. Yet at the same time, she was canny enough to see Don António’s usefulness to see him as an asset. She kept him in England with these promises that she never intended to keep. Other people and her council really wanted to go to war right away. They were really anxious to support Don António to try to make money out of this whole thing. And she was cautious enough to say, “No, we’re gonna wait. We’re gonna see, but we’re gonna keep just enough interest there so that we can experiment and keep him here and keep him as an asset, but not actually go the whole way with supporting him.” As soon as he was no longer useful to her though, she let him leave and try his hand at becoming king. If she had let him do this Portuguese expedition in 1586 before the Spanish Armada, you can only imagine what a disaster that would have been if English ships were lost, if England did that without having had the benefit of defeating the Armada the year before, if it was three years earlier, and they go in and try and do that, it would have not been very good for England at all. So she showed how calculating she could be too. Sadly, at the expense of Don António. Don António had his hopes raised so many times. So many times he thought he was going to be able to go back and be the king, and that he would have English support and yet it never fully seem to be forthcoming. Elizabeth was very calculating, and was able to see him more as an asset, as something that she could use, over him being a human being.
So I think that this is a really interesting little chapter in Elizabeth’s foreign policy. And it shows the character of Elizabeth, how she was able to sustain this for nine years and not given to the pro-war factions and just keep her head about her and keep him there and walk this fine line for the amount of years that she did. I think it’s a really interesting little way of looking at her, this one episode in her foreign policy.
So I’m actually going to leave it there this week. There really aren’t any books about this period. There’s a lot of good academic articles. There’s ones particularly on the Portuguese expedition. One that I looked at a lot was from Oxford University Press, Queen Elizabeth and the Portugal Expedition of 1589. There was also Gordon McBride’s article Elizabethan Foreign Policy in Microcosm: The Portuguese Pretender, 1580-89, that was published in Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies in 1973. So I will go ahead and link to those articles. They’re on Jstore and generally, they require a subscription to use but you do get a couple of free ones each month if you want to check them out and read them in more depth.
You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 8016TEYSKO or through Twitter at @Teysko or the Facebook page facebook.com/Englandcast. I also invite you to join the Tudor History group that we have on Facebook where there’s a lot of interaction of people sharing articles and books and pictures all kinds of stuff like that. It actually was a pop-up group that came out of the Tudor summit and we just kept it going. So if you search on Facebook for the Tudor Summit, you will find that group as well.
Thank you so much for listening. Remember to check out Treasures from Bess for your Tudor treat fix. We have six more boxes I think this month so you can check that out. I will be back in two more weeks with the Tudor Times Person of the Month. I hope you have a great couple of weeks until then and let me know what you think about Elizabeth and the Portuguese pretender. Do you think she handled it properly? Do you think she was cruel? Do you think that she did a good job should she have supported him earlier? I’d love to know what you think. Tweet me @Teysko and let me know or write something on the Facebook page. Okay. I will talk to you soon. Thanks!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop. She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.