ONE of the most remarkable careers and one of the most famous assassinations in the middle ages were the career and the assassination of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. His life (at least after he had been elevated to the Primacy of England) and his death show him as the great representative of the Church of Rome, standing up for the defence of its rights and dying in their defence; and they show also how necessary, in those dark ages, was a superhuman power, to hold the arrogance and brute force of warriors and princes in check, and bring into subjection their unbridled passions and their insolent usurpations. Even if Thomas à Becket miserably perished in his bold resistance to kingly assumption, his death was a wholesome lesson to the tyrants on European thrones, and raised him higher in the estimation of the world than a victory over King Henry the Second would have done.
Thomas Becket, or, as he is oftener called, Thomas à Becket, rose to his eminent station in State and Church from comparatively low birth. He was born in 1119, the son of a London merchant and an Oriental mother. This lady had followed the merchant to England after his return from the Holy Land, where he had been a crusader. The merchant rapidly acquired wealth, and was able to give his son, who was distinguished by brilliant talents, a splendid education. After having studied for some time at Oxford, the young man was permitted to complete his studies at the University of Paris, which at that time attracted students from all parts of Europe by the reputation of its professors and the superiority of its methods of instruction. From Paris Thomas went to Bologna, in order to study theology; by his travels and the application and zeal with which he pursued his studies, he acquired an exceptional reputation for the extent, variety, and depth of his knowledge. On his return from Italy Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury was charmed with the attainments and learning of the young man, and recommended him to the King for the appointment of Chancellor. The King appointed him and made him also the tutor of his son. In the position of Chancellor he ingratiated himself with the King, and his counsels in matters of State and of importance to the crown proved so valuable that the King soon distinguished him above all other courtiers and officials, and treated him more as a friend than as a subject.
Having inherited immense wealth from his father, and having, moreover, been endowed by the munificence of the King with a number of offices and benefices from which he derived large revenues, the Chancellor made a great display of splendor and wealth. His household eclipsed almost that of the King himself, and looked more like the court of a prince than the household of a citizen. However, he neglected no opportunity to show his loyalty and devotion to the King. In 1159 he accompanied the King to Toulouse, with a retinue of seven hundred knights and twelve hundred mounted men, all of whom he had equipped at his own expense. The King also intrusted him with a confidential mission to Paris, where he was to negotiate the marriage of the King’s eldest son with the eldest daughter of the King of France. The Chancellor succeeded in concluding a family alliance between the two courts, and conducted the young princess personally to England.
In 1162 Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, and King Henry the Second immediately declared that Thomas à Becket should be his successor. When the King’s plan to make him Archbishop was mentioned to Becket, he protested against it, and it would seem, sincerely. He even went so far as to tell the King, when the latter urged him to work for his election, that he was making a mistake in advocating his elevation to the See of Canterbury, using these words: “If I should be raised to that office, you would soon hate me as much as you now love me; for you will meddle in the affairs of the Church more than I can consent to, and people will not be wanting to embroil us.” But the King laughed at these warnings. He supposed that Becket, as Archbishop, would be as complaisant and willing a tool to assist him in curtailing the prerogatives of the Church and transferring them to the crown, as he had been on a former occasion. He therefore continued to use his influence in favor of Becket’s election, and succeeded in placing him in the Archbishop’s See. At first the Pope objected to his election, but he finally ratified it in order to please the kings of England and France, who had both appealed to him in Becket’s behalf.
No sooner had Becket been installed as Archbishop of Canterbury—which dignity carried with it that of Primate of England—than he entirely changed his mode of living. No more luxury, no more display of wealth, no more horses or magnificent costumes for him! On the contrary, the new Archbishop ostentatiously chose the coarsest and plainest garments. Instead of the fine lace shirt of former days he wore a coarse haircloth, dirty in the extreme, and his outer garments were frequently ragged. His food was of the plainest quality, consisting of bread, water, and skimmed milk. He affected austerity in every way, frequently flogged himself for impure thoughts or nominal sins which he might have committed, and every day he knelt and washed the feet of thirteen beggars. He resigned his office as Chancellor in order to devote all his time and zeal to his new office and the affairs of the Church.
The King did not like the change in the Archbishop’s ways, and protested against his resignation, but Becket would not reconsider it. The King rightly guessed that there might be a hidden meaning and a secret ambition in the Archbishop’s sudden conversion to Christian humility, which so strangely contrasted with his past conduct. The storm between the two mighty men, each self-willed and irascible, was brewing, and when it finally broke out, it was fierce and relentless. It never ended until the prelate lay prostrate as a victim of assassins before the altar of the church which he tried to protect from the King’s usurpation.
It was not long before the conflict broke out. It then appeared that the change which had taken place in Becket was not confined to the outer man only, but had also affected his relation to the Church and the State. From a King’s counsellor and servant he had suddenly turned to be the counsellor and servant of the Church, and he carried over into his new station the impulsiveness and stubbornness which had always distinguished him in the service of the King. It is difficult to say which of the two, in this struggle for ascendency, was right, or rather which of the two was the more to blame. For while the King was aggressive, arrogant, domineering, in the consciousness of his power, the Archbishop was imperious, insolent, and inconsistent, inasmuch as he now boldly condemned what he had formerly counselled. But it seemed to be a trait of Becket’s character, that he always devoted himself unconditionally to the master he served at the time, and that from the moment he abandoned the service of the King for that of the Church it was quite natural for him to defend the interests and rights of the latter against the usurpations of the former.
At that time a priest who had committed any crime could be tried by an ecclesiastical court only; consequently very few criminals of this class were convicted and adequately punished; in most cases the accused, even if found guilty, were only reprimanded and degraded. This abuse was carried to such excess that during the first years of the reign of Henry the Second no less than one hundred murders committed by priests had not been punished. A priest had seduced the daughter of a gentleman living in Worcestershire, and, confronted by the angry father of the girl, assassinated him. Public indignation was aroused by this atrocity to such an extent that the King ordered the arrest of the guilty priest and his trial before a civil tribunal. Becket protested against this order, claiming that it was an infringement of the prerogatives of the Church. He ordered an ecclesiastical court to investigate the charges, and the result was as usual, that the punishment awarded was only degradation. The King was furious. He made up his mind to beat the Archbishop at his own game and to punish him for his presumption. He therefore submitted the question of ecclesiastical immunities and of church prerogatives to a council of jurists and ordered them to investigate whether these prerogatives were founded on a solid historical basis. The jurists knew what sort of decision the King wanted, and they gave it. Thereupon the King convened a general council of the high nobility and also of the Church at Clarendon, and there, among other restrictions placed upon the Church, it was enacted that members of the clergy indicted for a crime should be tried by civil tribunals, exactly like other subjects.
Becket, seeing that all the barons and many prelates had submitted to the decree of the council, was compelled to yield, and swore to obey it; but his submission was caused only by his powerlessness. But when this so-called Constitution of Clarendon was sent to the Pope for ratification, he rejected it haughtily and condemned it in the most energetic manner. Thereupon Becket, basing his action on the condemnation of the Pope, openly retracted the consent which he had given to the Clarendon decree, and subjected himself to great austerities and macerations proportionate to the greatness of the sin he had committed in yielding to the royal demands. He even refused to perform any functions connected with his episcopal rank until the Pope had acquitted him of his great wrong against the Church. This action made the rupture between the King and the Archbishop irreparable. Henry swore to have his revenge on a priest who was not only an ingrate but a perjurer. He arraigned him before a parliament convened at Northampton in 1165 as a rebel, as having violated his oath of allegiance. Becket was convicted, his personal estate was confiscated, the revenues of his archbishopric were seized, and Becket himself, abandoned even by his clergy, fled to France, whose King, in spite of the protests of Henry, offered him a refuge.
Becket’s spirit was far from being broken. From his retreat in France he wrote to the bishops of England that the Pope had annulled the Constitution of Clarendon, and at the same time he excommunicated a number of those, bishops as well as other high officials, who had assisted in violating the sacred rights of the Church. The King answered by exiling all his relatives from England, and forbidding his subjects to correspond with him, or to send him money; he even forbade prayers in behalf of the Archbishop to be offered in church.
But the conditions between the Church and the court created by this conflict were such that the King found it expedient to make overtures of reconciliation to Becket, first through the bishops and church officials of England, and afterwards personally. In a conference which he held for that purpose with the King of France, he said to the latter: “There have been several kings of England, some more and others less powerful than myself; there have been also several Archbishops of Canterbury, in my opinion as respectable and as sainted as Thomas à Becket; let him show to me the same deference which the greatest of his predecessors have shown to the least powerful of my predecessors, and there will be no controversy between us.” King Henry also offered to take the clergy of France as umpires in the questions at issue; but when Becket stubbornly refused to be reconciled to the King of England, the King of France lost his patience and withdrew the protection which up to that day he had accorded to him.
These and other changes unfavorable to him finally induced Becket to lend to the King’s proposals of reconciliation a more willing ear, and at last an interview took place between them which resulted in their reconciliation—apparently at least. The interview was much more cordial than might have been supposed from the exceedingly strained relations that had existed between them for years. The Archbishop approached the King as became a subject, and the King met him with the humility shown at that time to princes of the Church; when they parted, Becket bent his knee to the King, who held the stirrup of his horse as the Archbishop mounted. The interview had resulted in settling their differences. Both had made concessions, but the larger part of these had been made by the King. All the Archbishop’s personal property had also been restored to him; he thereupon agreed to return to England and resume the functions of his office. He had been absent seven years.
The people at large, and especially the poor, greeted him with enthusiasm; but the barons kept away, and some of them showed open hostility to the Archbishop, or mysteriously hinted at a speedy ending of his newly regained honors. His arrival in England had been preceded by a messenger from the Pope carrying writs of excommunication for three English bishops who had been especially hostile to Becket. These bishops immediately went to Normandy, where Henry the Second had remained, and laid their complaints before him, laying all the blame on Becket, whom they charged with inflaming the people of England against their King and sowing discord in their hearts. When these matters were laid before him, and also a statement that Becket had excommunicated two barons whom he considered his special enemies, the King got into a rage and exclaimed: “What? Is there among the cowards whom I feed at my table not one brave enough to deliver me from this firebrand of a priest?” These words could have but one meaning. Four of the barons took it upon themselves to deliver the King from the obnoxious priest. The King afterwards declared that he had never intended to suggest the assassination of Becket; but what other construction could be given to his words? The assassination itself was one of the most dramatic in history. The would-be murderers travelled in such haste that a messenger whom the King sent after them to warn them not to kill Becket could not overtake them. Arriving at Canterbury on December 29, 1170, they, with twelve other noblemen, went to the Archbishop’s residence, and expostulated with him concerning the excommunication of certain priests and barons, and when he refused to revoke the excommunications, the barons left him with threats. They returned toward evening. The bell of the church was ringing for vespers, and the Archbishop had gone there. The priests wanted to close and barricade the doors, but he objected. “The doors of the house of God should not be barricaded like a fortress!” said he. Just then the assassins came in, brandishing their swords and calling for the traitor. The priests surrounding the Archbishop fled in terror; only his cross-bearer stayed with him. It was so dark that neither the intruders nor the priest could be seen distinctly. Another voice called: “Where is the Archbishop?” “I am here,” answered Becket. “I am no traitor, but only a priest of the Lord!” They were afraid to kill him in the holy precincts. Once more they asked him to absolve those he had excommunicated. He refused, because they had not repented. “Then you shall die!” they cried. “I am ready, in the name of the Saviour,” he answered; “but I forbid you, by the Lord Almighty, to touch any of these present, priests or laymen.” They heeded him not, but rushed upon him, and with three or four thrusts from their swords, one of them splitting his skull, laid him prostrate at the foot of the altar.
The murderers hurried back to Normandy to get their reward. The news of the murder, when it reached the ears of the King, struck terror into his heart. He knew he was, and would be held, responsible for Becket’s death. Fear seized him, that he would feel the Pope’s wrath, that he would be excommunicated, that England and his possessions in France would be placed under an interdict, that the Saxon population of England, which already revered Becket as a saint, might rise in open rebellion against him. He therefore made haste to disclaim publicly any complicity in the murder, and sent an ambassador to the Pope to assure him of his entire innocence and of his profound grief at the bloody deed. The Pope at first refused to receive the ambassador, and it was only by means of many prayers, promises, and humble supplications that he finally absolved the King of intentional complicity in the heinous crime. The King actually purchased this absolution by pledging himself to support, during three years, two hundred well-equipped horsemen for the protection of the Holy Sepulchre.
But even this act of papal absolution was not deemed sufficient by the King to protect him from the evil consequences of the assassination. To remove this danger the King two years afterwards undertook a pilgrimage to the tomb of Becket, who had in the meantime been buried in the Cathedral with royal honors. As soon as the steeple of the Cathedral appeared on the horizon, the King dismounted, and proceeded on his way barefooted, his bleeding feet leaving a spot of blood at every step. On his arrival at the tomb he prostrated himself, and subjected himself to the humiliation of a severe flagellation at the hands of the monks, each of whom applied to his bare back three strokes from a knotted rope.
Having undergone this public chastisement, the King remained praying and fasting the following night, prostrated on the tombstone. Next morning he returned to London, where, immediately after his arrival, he fell seriously ill from the effects of his pilgrimage.
The Pope canonized the martyr who had so heroically died in the defence of the prerogatives of the Church.
THE assassination of Julius Cæsar and of the first Roman Emperors led to greater demoralization of the people, and thereafter to anarchy, bloodshed, civil war, and ultimately to an atrocious despotism; but at an interval of twelve hundred and forty years after the death of Nero there occurred a political assassination, growing out of personal revenge, which freed a whole people from oppression and placed the murderer among the heroes of mankind and the liberators of nations. We speak of William Tell, the national hero of Switzerland, who in 1307 deliberately murdered Gessler, the Austrian governor.
This governor, who resided at the castle of Kuessnacht, had committed the greatest outrages and acts of despotism against the inhabitants of his gubernatorial district, embracing the so-called three Waldstädte (Forest Cantons),—Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. Until then these Forest Cantons had enjoyed a republican government, and had given to the German Empire a merely nominal recognition, by acknowledging the German Emperor as their suzerain. There is a great resemblance in the relations between these Swiss Cantons and the German Empire to the relations which existed, before the South African war, between the two Boer Republics and the crown of England. Rudolph of Hapsburg, himself a Swiss by birth, who had been elected German Emperor, had pursued a liberal policy toward the Cantons and in special charters had guaranteed to them their inherited rights and liberties. But his son Albrecht the First, who succeeded Rudolph on the imperial throne, resolved to do away with these prerogatives, deprive the Swiss Cantons of their independence, and make them subject to the crown of Austria. Theretofore the German Emperors had been represented in a few cities of Switzerland by bailiffs, who exerted the same authority in the Cantons as our federal judges in United States Territories; but Albrecht changed their duties and authority entirely, investing them with many additional powers, so that they became practically governors of their districts, appointed by the Emperor and administering their office as imperial officials.
Against this change the inhabitants of the Cantons entered their solemn protests; they sent delegations to Albrecht to remonstrate with him; but he gave evasive answers, increased the soldiery protecting the governors, shut his ears to all complaints about their arrogance and growing usurpation, and secretly encouraged them “to do all in their power to break the stubborn resistance of these uncouth mountaineers and boors, and make them obedient subjects of the Austrian crown.” To the strong men of the Cantons, who had never bowed their necks under the yoke of a foreign despot, the tyranny of these Austrian governors became intolerable; their leading men made up their minds to throw it off by all means, and to maintain their independence at any cost. Even the members of the nobility scattered through the Cantons were indignant at the arbitrary and haughty ways of the imperial bailiffs, who treated them with the same arrogance as they treated the common people; they therefore made common cause with the latter, so that practically the imperial officials were isolated in a hostile country, without friends or party.
The public discontent culminated in a secret conspiracy, of which Walter Fuerst of Uri, Werner Stauffacher of Schwyz, and Arnold Melchthal of Unterwalden, were the originators. These three men, each a representative and influential citizen of his own Canton, met at the house of Walter Fuerst and agreed to meet for further consultation on the Ruetli, an elevated plateau, hidden in the woods, near the lake of Uri, on certain nights, each undertaking to bring along ten men tried and true, who had promised to act with them, for life and death, for the deliverance of their country. They also pledged themselves by oath to keep this league a secret from all but the initiated, who like themselves had sworn to coöperate for the deliverance of the country, until the time had come for united action on one and the same day. This was done in the fall of 1307. A later consultation of the conspirators on the Ruetli took place some weeks afterwards, and was attended by the three leaders and thirty others. They were all full of enthusiasm and hope of victory. They all pledged the almost unanimous support of the inhabitants of the three Cantons, and finally agreed that the people should rise in rebellion on New Year’s Day, 1308. The humane feature of this proposed revolution appears from their joint agreement, affirmed under oath, that, in expelling the Austrian governors and their followers from their castles and their country, they would not kill them except in self-defence, but would treat them with leniency and charity. Is it not as if we heard Oom Krueger and his friends of the Transvaal and Orange Free State counsel on measures for their independence? They placed their full confidence in the justice of their cause, the assistance of God, and their own bravery.
The day for the execution of their plot was anticipated by an unforeseen event. Gessler, the Governor of Uri and Schwyz, had made himself especially odious by all sorts of petty acts of tyranny. Among these was an order that the ducal hat of Austria was to be placed on the top of a long pole to be erected on the market space of Altorf and that nobody should pass by it without uncovering his head and showing it respect as if the Duke of Austria (Albrecht, Emperor of Germany) himself were there. The citizens generally complied with the order. But one day William Tell and his little son passed by the hat without minding Gessler’s order. William Tell was the son-in-law of Walter Fuerst, one of the three leaders of the Ruetli conspiracy, and, like Walter Fuerst himself, he was looked upon with suspicion by the Austrian authorities. The openness with which he ignored Gessler’s order was immediately construed as an act of defiance and rebellion. He was taken before Gessler, and the cruel bailiff imposed upon him a punishment which, he thought, would wound him to the heart.
“Tell,” said he to him, “by your act of disobedience you have forfeited your life. But I will be merciful to you,” and pointing to Tell’s crossbow, he continued: “You have the reputation of being the best archer of our Canton, if not of all Switzerland. I have never seen a test of your skill yet; very well, let your skill be tried now, and if it is as great as your reputation it will save your life. There is an apple. Place it upon your boy’s head, and at a distance of thirty steps shoot it with an arrow. But take good aim! For, if you hit the boy, your life will pay for it!”
William Tell complied with the cruel order, and with his usual masterly skill brought down the apple from the boy’s head. Gessler was enraged at the result, and, before dismissing Tell, he asked him with an insidious smile: “Now tell me, William Tell, why did you take two arrows from your quiver before you took aim at the apple on your boy’s head? Tell me sincerely, and whatever your answer may be, your life shall not be imperilled.”
Carried away by his wrath, Tell contemptuously replied: “If I had missed my aim and hit my boy, the second arrow was for you, and, by God Almighty, it would not have gone astray!”
“That’s what I thought,” cried Gessler, and turning to his escort he ordered them to put Tell in chains and take him to the boat on the lake. “Your life,” said he to Tell, “is not in peril; but I will take you to my castle in Kuessnacht; there in one of the darkest dungeons underground you shall be imprisoned, and may find time to repent the rebellious words which you have uttered!”
In the immediate neighborhood of Kuessnacht, on a mountain top overlooking the town, was the fortified castle where Gessler resided. It was on the way to that residence that Tell did the act by which he satisfied his personal revenge and also freed his country from the bloody tyranny of the despot. While Gessler and his prisoner were crossing the lake, a storm arose, which endangered the boat. The fury of the tempest filled the hearts of the boatmen with dismay and terror, and tremblingly they turned to Gessler, saying: “The boldest and most skilful boatman in the Canton is Tell. He may be able to save the boat, but we cannot! Set him free and he may bring us safe to port.”
Gessler ordered the chains to be removed from Tell’s limbs and ordered him to take the helm, promising him life, liberty, and a full pardon if he should bring them safe into port. Tell took the helm, and the boat, obedient to its master’s hand, sped through the storm-tossed waves like a seabird dancing on the surface. But turning round a rock-bound bluff close to the shore, Tell suddenly took up his cross-bow lying on the bench near by, and with a mighty leap jumped on the rock, hurling the boat far back into the hissing and tempestuous flood.
Gessler also escaped from the watery grave, but only to meet his doom on land even before he had reached his home. Tell was lying in ambush on the road from the lake to Kuessnacht. It was the road which Gessler and his party had to take on their return to the castle, if they should succeed in effecting a landing on the shore. After some time Gessler, accompanied by a few friends, came in sight. No sooner had the party entered the defile than Gessler, shot through the heart by Tell’s unerring arrow, fell from his horse.
Tell’s shot was the signal for the general uprising of the people of Switzerland. Years of struggle and warfare against Austria’s nobility and armed forces followed Tell’s heroic act, but the entire independence of Switzerland was finally secured. Switzerland is to this day a free and independent republic, and Tell’s name shines with imperishable lustre not only as its great national hero, but also among the immortal patriots and liberators of mankind.
We are well aware that recent historical criticism has expressed doubt as to Tell’s great act of deliverance, and even as to his existence, and that in some histories the tale is simply relegated to the domain of legend and tradition. But there is no real justification for this decision. It is founded only on a statement in the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus recording a feat of archery in Scandinavia similar to that of William Tell, and performed hundreds of years before Tell’s day.
As Johannes von Mueller, the great historian, judiciously says: “It shows but scanty knowledge of history to deny the truth of a historical event simply because another similar event occurred in another century and country.” But truth or fiction, history or legend, the heroic act and name of Tell will live on, immortal and inspiring, as they have lived during the last six hundred years. Poets and novelists have immortalized the great national hero of Switzerland in song and story. Frederick Schiller, Germany’s greatest dramatist, has made him the central hero of his greatest drama, and has given his name to that great hymn of liberty and patriotism, which stirred up the German nation to its glorious struggle against Napoleon the First. It is one of the few truly patriotic assassinations recorded in history.
AS one of the most cruel and heart-rending tragedies of the middle ages, the love-story and the assassination of Iñez de Castro has lived in song and story for five hundred and fifty years, and still awakens echoes of pity and sorrow whenever read or heard.
Constancia, the wife of Pedro, son of Alfonso the Fourth of Portugal, and heir-presumptive to the crown of that kingdom, died in 1344, and left to her husband a son of tender age, named Ferdinand. Pedro thereupon desired to marry the countess Iñez de Castro, a young lady of great beauty and loveliness, and, like himself, sprung in direct lineage, but on her mother’s side, from the royal house of Castile. Iñez de Castro was of an illustrious family, it is true, but her rank was not deemed sufficient to entitle her to become the wife of the Crown Prince; therefore when Dom Pedro mentioned to his father his intention to marry her, the King positively refused his consent. Dom Pedro, however, instead of obeying his father, secured permission from the Pope, and secretly married her, bestowing upon her the full rank and all the rights of a legitimate wife.
In the meantime the King and his advisers urged Dom Pedro to get married again, and proposed a number of young princesses of renowned beauty and ancestry for his choice. But Pedro, without disclosing the secret of his marriage with Iñez de Castro (rumors of which were nevertheless whispered and busily circulated at the court of the King), persistently rejected all these proposals, giving no other reason for his refusal than his personal disinclination to marry. While Pedro’s father reluctantly accepted his son’s emphatic declaration, the most trusted advisers and counsellors of the King, Diego Lopez Pacheco, Pedro Coello, and Alvaro Calvarez, did not, because they were afraid lest the influence of the beautiful and accomplished Iñez de Castro—no matter whether she was legally married to Pedro or not—would be dangerous and possibly fatal to their own preëminence at the court, as soon as Pedro should succeed his father on the throne. They shrewdly worked upon the King’s mind by insinuating that if the rumor of Pedro’s secret marriage should prove to be true, the ultimate succession of Ferdinand, Pedro’s son by his first wife, to whom the King was very much attached, might be endangered, and that possibly the son of Iñez de Castro would become Pedro’s successor on the throne.
The King summoned Pedro to a private interview, and asked him concerning his relations with Iñez de Castro, informing him at the same time of the rumor of his secret marriage. Pedro denied the truth of this rumor, admitting, however, that Iñez de Castro, while not his wedded wife, was so dear to his heart that on her account he would not consent to form a new matrimonial alliance, no matter how illustrious by birth or beauty the princess proposed to him might be. The emphasis with which Pedro made this assertion satisfied his father that the rumor of a secret marriage was true; and when the King, at the next cabinet council, repeated to his confidants the result of his interview with the Crown Prince, they predicted that the greatest calamities would arise, after the King’s death, from the Crown Prince’s infatuation for Iñez, which they ascribed rather to unnatural evil influences than to the surpassing beauty and loveliness of the young woman. The King, a man of very irascible temperament, became excited and indignant; he declared again and again that, if there were no other means of separating Pedro and Iñez, the young woman would have to die. The council then broke up.
It was but a short time afterwards that Dom Pedro left the court for a few days to go out hunting with some friends. But warned by his mother, who had heard of the King’s evil designs upon Iñez de Castro, he had taken her and her two children to Coimbra, where he left them in a convent to await his return. On the day after his departure, King Alfonso suddenly appeared at the convent and demanded to see Iñez de Castro. Pedro’s wife immediately made her appearance, accompanied by her two children. As she looked upon the King, whose mien was grim and menacing, and who was surrounded by a number of his knights in full armor, a presentiment of some terrible calamity which was to befall her and her two children entered her breast, and from an impulse of both fear, and of hope to save her children, she threw herself at the King’s feet, imploring him to forgive her and to take pity on her innocent children. Alfonso’s heart melted with pity at the sight of so much beauty and innocence. He raised her from her kneeling position and told her to be of good cheer, and that no harm would befall her. And then turning round, he left the convent, followed by his attendants, who were not a little surprised at this peaceful ending of a visit which had promised to be a tragedy.
But while Iñez already congratulated herself on her lucky escape from a terrible death, and even on her good fortune in having softened the King’s heart toward herself and her two children, she was nevertheless doomed to ruin. The three counsellors so hostile to her had not accompanied the King on his visit to the convent; they were waiting for the return of their sovereign at some distance from Coimbra, and were greatly disappointed when they learned from his own lips that, instead of having slain with his own hands, as he had promised to do, the woman who had seduced his son and enthralled him either by her beauty or by the employment of supernatural means, he had changed his mind concerning her, and now spoke feelingly and affectionately of her and her sweet children. The counsellors concealed with great difficulty the irritation and disgust with which the King’s weakness filled them; they immediately proceeded to counteract the favorable impression which Iñez had made, uttering the foulest insinuations and aspersions upon her character. The very change which she had succeeded in effecting in the King’s sentiments toward her was made the means of renewing and corroborating the charge that evil spirits were assisting her in bewitching the royal family for her own selfish purposes. “Since she has so easily captured your majesty,” said one of them cunningly, “who can hope to resist her and her ambitious designs? Poor Ferdinand!”
The artful mention of the name of the young prince, whose right of succession was endangered by the recognition of Iñez de Castro, was sufficient to elicit from the King the promise that his son’s mistress should never be received at the court. Having obtained this concession, the three counsellors found it comparatively easy to persuade him that the original purpose for which they had come to Coimbra—the death of Iñez—was the only salvation for the throne and the dynasty, and that it was his duty as a monarch to remove her as soon as possible in order to avert greater calamities. They told him that it was perhaps right that he had not soiled his royal hands with the blood of one who was unworthy of the high distinction of dying by his sword, but that it was a duty he owed to the state and to the legitimate heir to the throne to order her death at the earliest moment. Alfonso was weak and foolish enough to believe them and to sanction the murder of the fair and innocent wife of his son. That very night Iñez de Castro fell a victim to the daggers of two assassins.
The assassination provoked terror throughout Portugal and Spain, and general were the denunciations of the King and the counsellors who had advised him to commit the crime. But in this case what followed the murder has, even more than the atrocity of the crime itself, made it famous in song and story. The murder of Iñez de Castro occurred in 1355.
A rumor of the tragedy reached Dom Pedro while he was taking dinner at the small tavern of a village, some thirty leagues from Coimbra. The Crown Prince was travelling incognito, and neither the host nor the guests of the tavern, except his own companions, knew him and how deeply he was interested in the terrible news which a cattle dealer had just reported as the latest sensation in the city. Dom Pedro hurried back to Coimbra and to the convent. The rumor was only too true. His idolized wife was dead. Three horrible wounds, each of which would have been sufficient to cause death, disfigured her beautiful corpse; but her countenance shone with angelic radiance and sweetness, and the agony of death seemed to have left no trace on it. When Dom Pedro learned from the nuns how the assassins had demanded entrance in the name of the King and had burst open the bedroom of Iñez and butchered her without mercy, he knelt down by the coffin and swore bloody vengeance against all those who had taken a hand in this inhuman and atrocious crime. He called upon Heaven to assist him in bringing the assassins and their instigators to justice, and laying his hands upon the breast of his murdered wife, he swore that he would not desist from the pursuit of the guilty persons, even if he had to seek them on the throne. The meaning of these words could not be misconstrued, for it was generally understood that, while the three counsellors had proposed the murder, the King had given his consent to it. When Dom Pedro’s threat was repeated to him, the King, highly incensed, loudly proclaimed that Iñez de Castro’s death was a just punishment for her criminal liaison with the Crown Prince, in open violation of the King’s order, and assumed the full responsibility for the murder. The Crown Prince, so rudely repelled by his father and deeply wounded by the disgrace heaped upon his virtuous wife, refused to return to the court; on the contrary, he called his friends, and the friends of Iñez de Castro, her brothers and cousins, to arms. The cruel and unjustifiable homicide he justly ascribed to the calumnies and intrigues of a set of rapacious cut-throats who were ready to sacrifice everything to their own personal interests, and who had deceived the King. In a very short time Dom Pedro found himself at the head of an army, with which he invaded those provinces in which the castles and mansions of the counsellors were situated. With merciless severity their lands were laid waste, their castles razed to the ground, their families and friends killed, and everything was done to make their very names and memories odious to their fellow-men.
By that time the King had also been informed by high dignitaries of the Church that the union between his son and Iñez de Castro had been consecrated, that the Pope himself had granted them permission to get married, and that strict secrecy had been observed simply out of high regard for the King, in the hope that he would never hear of it and would consequently not feel irritated by it. This information had a powerful effect on the King’s mind. He began to see what a great crime he had committed in sanctioning the murder of a virtuous and innocent young wife, whose only fault had possibly been her yielding, against the King’s outspoken wishes, to the Prince’s ardent wooing. And when the Queen, Dom Pedro’s mother, added her supplications and tears in behalf of her son, whom the murder of his wife had made nearly insane from grief, the King became more and more willing to be reconciled to him. He not only forgave his acts of rebellion, but even made amends, as much as he could, for the cruel wrong he had done him.
Under such circumstances it was comparatively easy for the Archbishop of Braga, whom the Pope had authorized to impart to the King the information concerning Dom Pedro’s marriage, to effect a reconciliation between father and son. Thereupon the son returned to the court, where he was received with the highest honors, after he had solemnly promised not to take revenge on the counsellors who had been instrumental in causing the death of his wife, and who had already been so severely punished by the devastation of their lands and the destruction of their castles. To consent to this condition was the cruelest sacrifice on the part of Dom Pedro, but he finally yielded to the tears and prayers of his mother—very likely, however, as we shall see, with a mental reservation.
Two years later, King Alfonso the Fourth died, and Dom Pedro ascended the throne of Portugal. The old King’s death was also the signal for the flight of his three counsellors, Pacheco, Coello, and Gonsalvez, whose absence was first noticed at the King’s obsequies. They had sought refuge in Castile, because they felt instinctively that it would not be safe for them to remain in Portugal, and that the ill-concealed hatred of Dom Pedro might break forth at any moment and punish them terribly for the part they had taken in Iñez de Castro’s death. In fact Pedro had never forgiven the assassins of his wife. On the contrary, his heart had never ceased to yearn for the day when he could not only take full and bloody revenge on her persecutors and murderers, but also restore the honor of her name and memory, which had been sullied by the calumnies of those scoundrels.
Castile was at that time ruled by Pedro the Cruel, one of the worst and most bloodthirsty tyrants that ever sat upon a Spanish throne. Some of his victims had made their escape into Portugal and had found protection at the court of Alfonso, Dom Pedro’s father. But when the counsellors of Alfonso arrived at his court, Pedro the Cruel formed the diabolical plan of delivering them up to Pedro of Portugal, provided the latter would deliver, in exchange for them, the Castilians who had found an asylum in his kingdom. No more agreeable proposition could have been made to the King of Portugal, and the exchange was readily made. Two of the counsellors, Coello and Gonsalvez, were transported in chains to Portugal, and executed with inhuman cruelty. They were put to the torture in the hope of extorting from them the names of other accessories to the crime; thereupon they were burned at the stake, and their hearts were torn out; and thereafter their ashes were scattered to the winds. Pacheco, however, escaped this terrible fate. Being absent from the court of Castile when his two colleagues were arrested, he fled to Aragon.
After having in this manner satisfied his vengeance on the assassins, King Pedro assembled the high nobility and the great dignitaries of his kingdom at Cataneda, and in their presence swore that, after the death of his first wife, Constancia, he had legally married Iñez de Castro; that the Pope of Rome had given him special permission to do so, and that the marriage ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop La Guarda, in the presence of two witnesses, whom he mentioned by name. He ordered these facts to be entered upon the archives of the state and to be proclaimed publicly in every city, town, and village of the kingdom. The children of Iñez de Castro were declared legitimate and entitled to all the rights and prerogatives of princes of the blood, including succession to the throne of Portugal. Proceeding thence to Coimbra, the King ordered the vault in which the remains of Iñez had been deposited to be opened, her corpse, which had been embalmed, to be dressed in a royal robe and placed upon a throne, and her head to be adorned with a royal crown. He compelled his attendants, composed of the highest men of the monarchy, to pass by the throne and bow their knees and kiss the edge of the Queen’s robe,—in fact, to show the same reverence and respect to the dead Queen as they might have shown to the living Queen on the day of her coronation. As soon as this ghastly ceremony was over, the corpse was placed in a magnificent metal coffin and escorted by the King and a most brilliant cortège of knights and noblemen to Alcobaza, a royal residence about seventeen miles from Coimbra, and placed in a royal vault. A magnificent monument, which represented Iñez de Castro in her incomparable beauty and loveliness, was shortly after erected near the vault. It was the last tribute which the love and admiration of her husband could render to her memory.