Luísa de Gusmão: the Andalusian duchess who ruled Restoration Portugal

By the evening of Saturday 27 February 1666 the queen mother of Portugal could no longer speak. She lay at the Grilo, an estate above the Tagus at Xabregas, just east of Lisbon, where she had founded a convent and lived in its seclusion. Her doctors had diagnosed dropsy, and since the Wednesday her breathing had been so laboured that they gave her only hours to live.2 sources2 sources

Her two sons were at Salvaterra, up the Tagus, with the court. She had confessed, made her will and, on Friday 26 February, written to each of them; a third letter went to her daughter in England. On the Saturday, at about five in the afternoon, she slipped into the last crisis. Word ran through the house that the king was coming; when he did not appear, she raised her hand and blessed the door through which her sons would enter.1 source1 source

Her last words, by the account of the Count of Ericeira, a general of the war with Spain and its chronicler, were to ask everyone present to forgive her any offence. As the clock struck eight Afonso VI and his brother Pedro came in with the Count of Castelo Melhor, the man who now ran the kingdom. They knelt and asked for her blessing. She could answer only with her eyes. They kissed her hand and went back to the palace.2 sources2 sources

She died at nine o'clock that night. Ericeira did not hide what had happened at Salvaterra when her letters arrived: Pedro wept, and the king made a show of not caring and mocked his brother's tears. Four years earlier the same son had taken the government from her by force.1 source1 source

Luisa Francisca de Guzmán, as she was born, came from the top of the Castilian nobility. Her father was the 8th Duke of Medina Sidonia, whose family had held the captaincy-general of the Ocean Sea and the coasts of Andalusia since 1588 and kept a small court of its own at Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Her mother was a daughter of the Duke of Lerma, Philip III's all-powerful favourite.2 sources2 sources

Ericeira gives her birth as Sunday 13 October 1613 at Sanlúcar de Barrameda. The Spanish Royal Academy of History's biographical dictionary agrees on the date and the town, although the heading of its online entry names Huelva. Her surname is Guzmán in Spanish; in Portugal she has always been Luísa de Gusmão.2 sources2 sources

Portugal then had no king of its own. Since 1580 its crown had been worn by the Habsburg kings of Spain, and the greatest Portuguese house was the ducal family of Bragança, which had its own claim to the throne through Duchess Catarina, a granddaughter of King Manuel I who had claimed the crown in 1580. The match with a Medina Sidonia was promoted by the Count-Duke of Olivares, Philip IV's chief minister, who hoped to bind the Braganças to the Crown; the bride's family was the senior branch of his own Guzmán lineage.2 sources2 sources

The wedding took place at Elvas, on the Portuguese side of the border, half-way between the Bragança palace at Vila Viçosa and Badajoz, where the bride's party entered Portugal. Valladares and Borgognoni date it to 12 January 1633; Ericeira has 11 January.3 sources3 sources

She had seven children, five of them before her husband became king. Two were stillborn, and two more died in the same year, 1653. Three outlived her: a daughter who became queen of England and two sons who each became king of Portugal.1 source1 source

On 1 December 1640 a group of Portuguese nobles rose in Lisbon and proclaimed her husband King João IV; our article on the Restoration of 1640 tells that story. Ericeira says that when the conspirators' offer reached Vila Viçosa, the duke would not commit himself without his wife's opinion, and he went to her rooms to ask for it.1 source1 source

The story spread early. Borgognoni traces it from a Spanish-language play printed in Lisbon in 1645 to the Italian historian Giovanni Battista Birago in 1647. An English traveller, Richard Flecknoe, put it more bluntly in a letter of 1648.1 source1 source

Her own family paid a price. From 1640 her brother, the 9th Duke of Medina Sidonia, and a cousin, the Marquis of Ayamonte, sounded out foreign powers about a rising in Andalusia. The duke was accused of conspiring against Philip IV and fell from favour. Valladares notes that Bragança commanders on the frontier facing Huelva knew to spare her brother's lands where they could.2 sources2 sources

As queen consort she kept a low profile. The new dynasty needed a king to promote, not a queen, and Valladares suggests that memories of the last woman to govern Portugal, Philip IV's cousin Margaret of Savoy, the vicereine overthrown in 1640, told against giving her an executive role. She did stand in for her husband when he went to the Alentejo front in 1643. In 1653 she lost both her eldest son, Teodósio, and her daughter Joana.2 sources2 sources

João IV died on 6 November 1656. His will left the government to his wife, with all the justice and authority he himself held, and made her guardian of their children. The new king, Afonso VI, was 13. An illness in early childhood had left his right side damaged, and Ericeira wrote that his understanding had plainly suffered the same injury.2 sources2 sources

Some ministers urged her to put off swearing him in as king until it was clear whether he could ever rule. She refused, judging that to open her government by questioning the heir would invite a civil war on top of the war with Spain, and Afonso was sworn as king on 15 November 1656, on a stage built in the Terreiro do Paço, Lisbon's palace square.1 source1 source

She set up a small council that met at night in the Secretariat of State, the Junta Nocturna, which settled matters by majority vote and sent her only the gravest ones. She balanced its two great rivals, the Count of Odemira, whom she made Afonso's governor, and the Count of Cantanhede, so that neither held power alone. Valladares adds that the Council of State warned her, without success, to share power more widely with the old councils and courts.3 sources3 sources

The war came quickly. In 1657 Philip IV massed troops at Mérida, and Spanish forces took Olivença and Mourão on the Alentejo border. In 1658 a Portuguese army failed before Badajoz. That autumn the Spanish besieged Elvas; the regent changed commanders, raised a relief army, and on 14 January 1659 it broke the siege, a battle our article on the Lines of Elvas describes. She declared that if Philip came to the front in person, she would go to Elvas herself.2 sources2 sources

A plan to marry her daughter Catarina to Louis XIV of France foundered on the size of the dowry France wanted, and in November 1659 France and Spain made peace at the Treaty of the Pyrenees, leaving Portugal alone. The regent turned to England, first to Oliver Cromwell in 1657 and then, after 1660, to the restored Charles II.3 sources3 sources

Her envoy, Francisco de Melo e Torres, offered a dowry of 2 million cruzados, Tangier, Bombay and trade in Brazil and Asia; in return England promised military help against Spain and the Dutch, and respect for Catarina's religion. The treaty is dated 23 June 1661, and in November the regent doubled the sisa, a sales tax, to pay the dowry. The wedding of Catarina and Charles II in May 1662 is the subject of its own article.2 sources2 sources

At home the regent's problem was her son. The paper later read out in her name complained of men of low rank and bad habits brought into the palace, close to the king, who committed scandalous crimes by night and day. His favourite, António Conti, had rooms next to the king's chamber, met foreign envoys and kept state papers. Ericeira, whose account is openly on the queen's side, says she meant to hand over the government but was persuaded that she could not in conscience do so while Conti stayed at the king's side.1 source1 source

Her advisers, among them the Duke of Cadaval, the Marquis of Marialva and the Jesuit António Vieira, agreed that Conti should be seized inside the palace while the king sat with his mother at the council table. On a Saturday morning in June 1662 the duke and the court magistrate went for him. Conti locked himself in an inner room and, trying to see who might help him, forced his head between the bars of a window and could not pull it out.1 source1 source

Cadaval seized him by the hair and sent to the royal shipyard for axes to break down the door. The Count of Castelo Melhor, the gentleman of the bedchamber on duty that week, arrived and quarrelled with the duke, but Conti opened the door on a promise that his life would be spared. He was rowed out to a ship that sailed at once for Bahia, in Brazil. The regent then had a paper read to the assembled nobles, councils and city representatives explaining why.1 source1 source

The arrest gave her enemies their argument: that she meant to keep power and pass the crown to Pedro, whom, they said, she loved more. Valladares sees two factions behind it, one around Castelo Melhor that wanted a strong king, and one around Cadaval, Marialva, Soure and Ericeira's own family that wanted government through the councils. Rumours that the second group was talking to Madrid pushed things to a head.2 sources2 sources

At midday on Wednesday 21 June Afonso climbed into a litter with Castelo Melhor and had himself carried to the quinta at Alcântara, then just west of the city, without a word to his mother. From there he summoned the nobility and wrote to the provinces that he had taken over the government. Most nobles called at the palace first to hear the regent, and she sent them on to Alcântara. That night she wrote to her son.1 source1 source

On Friday 23 June, the eve of St John, Afonso came back to the palace in a coach with his brother. In front of the councils and nobility the regent took the purse with the royal seals from a chair of crimson velvet and gave it to him, saying that these were the seals with which his kingdoms had given her the government under his father's will, and that she now gave him both. The king took them without a word. He was 18; Valladares notes that the age of majority had been set at 20.2 sources2 sources

Castelo Melhor took the old office of escrivão da puridade, a kind of chief secretary, with what Ericeira calls absolute power to govern. The councillors who had advised the queen on Conti's arrest were sent into exile. She stayed on in the palace, without governing, until March 1663; a nineteenth-century Augustinian history dates her departure to 15 March.3 sources3 sources

She had long wanted a convent of her own. In her youth she had known the Augustinian Recollect nuns of the Encarnación in Madrid, and she chose to found a house of Discalced, or barefoot, Augustinian nuns on their model, with four or five friars to serve them. For the site she acquired an estate on the Tagus at the Grilo from Francisco de Melo e Torres, the diplomat who had negotiated the English marriage, now Count of Ponte and later Marquis of Sande.3 sources3 sources

Her confessor, Manuel da Conceição, persuaded her to found a house for friars too. The head of the Augustinian order licensed it on 5 July 1663, and in April 1664, in the presence of the king, his brother and the court, the first five friars took the reformed habit at the Grilo. It was the start of a new Portuguese congregation. By May 1674 it had ten convents and three smaller houses.1 source1 source

Valladares writes that in these last years she seems to have worked to bring Pedro to the throne, partly for what he calls Pedro's undeniable gifts for kingship and partly out of resentment towards those who had pushed her aside, Afonso included. In her final letter to Pedro she commended to him the fear of God and obedience to his brother.2 sources2 sources

On the morning after her death the Council of State met at the Grilo and her will was opened. Her funeral followed the pattern of her husband's. As she had ordered, the body was taken to the hospice of the Discalced Carmelite friars in the city: the litter of black velvet went by the Campo de Santa Clara, through the Porta da Cruz, along the riverside, the Rua Nova and the goldsmiths' street to the square of São Nicolau, where the brothers of the Misericórdia carried the coffin into the church.1 source1 source

The king and his brother went with the body only until it was out in the street, then shut themselves in the palace for nine days. The law courts closed for four, and the court and kingdom went into the same mourning as for João IV. Ericeira opened his eulogy of her with the line: Castile gave her being, and Portugal the crown.1 source1 source

Without her, Ericeira wrote, nothing checked the king, and Castelo Melhor's power became absolute. It did not last. On 23 November 1667 Pedro took the government from his brother. Spain then recognised Portugal's independence in a peace signed for Spain in Madrid on 5 January 1668 and ratified in Lisbon, in Afonso VI's name, on 13 February, with Charles II of England as mediator.2 sources2 sources

When the architect Raul Lino rearranged the royal pantheon of the Bragança dynasty at the monastery of São Vicente de Fora in 1932 and 1933, Luísa de Gusmão headed the list of kings, queens and regents laid to rest there. The historian Eduardo Sucena warns that the pantheon's labels have contained errors, so the attribution of individual coffins is not beyond doubt.1 source1 source

The first test of the new dynasty was the six years after João IV's death, when Spain set out to recover Portugal and the crown sat with a boy who could not rule. By the time the regent, an Andalusian by birth, handed over power, the Spanish offensive had been stopped at Elvas and the English alliance was signed.3 sources3 sources

Historians are still working out how much of that was her doing. Borgognoni notes that until recently the only book devoted to her was Hipólito Raposo's biography of 1947, and that three new studies, by Ana Paula Avelar, Monique Vallance and Maria Paula Marçal Lourenço with Ricardo Pinto, appeared only in 2011 and 2012. He reads her, alongside Mariana of Austria in Spain, as a queen who ran foreign policy and war in her son's name.1 source1 source

Valladares is more sceptical of the heroine. He sees in the chronicles a stock figure, the manly queen that early modern political culture invented whenever it had to justify a woman in power, and argues that a nationalist historiography turned an Andalusian noblewoman defending the interests of her two houses into a Portuguese patriot. Both readings start from the same facts: the regency, the alliance with England and the loss of power in June 1662.1 source1 source