Manuel II swears his oath: the acclamation of Portugal's last king, 1908

On Monday 4 May 1908 the president of the Chamber of Deputies reminded members that the acclamation of King Manuel would take place on Wednesday, and asked leave for the hall to be made ready for the ceremony. The same afternoon the Chamber of Peers agreed that both houses would meet together that day for what its record called the ratification of the king's oath.2 sources2 sources

Security was tight. For the first time, peers and deputies had to sign the tickets they handed out for the gala sittings, and the tickets could not be passed on. Sebastião Baracho, a peer, refused to accept his on those terms. On 9 May he protested in the chamber that the rule treated members of parliament as suspects, and mocked the prime minister for keeping the troops in their barracks, after rumours of a military plot, as proof that all was calm.1 source1 source

Manuel had been king for three months, since the afternoon his father and brother were shot dead in Lisbon. Now, aged 18, he swore the oath that the Constitutional Charter of 1826 required of every king before his acclamation, given into the hands of the president of the Chamber of Peers with both chambers assembled.3 sources3 sources

The king used the day to reward two soldiers who had been wounded trying to protect the royal family on 1 February. On 9 May the Conde de Arnoso complained to the peers that the government had done nothing for them until the king himself took the initiative on the day of his acclamation.1 source1 source

Not everyone at São Bento believed in the oaths they swore. Deputies took an oath of their own on taking their seats, and two days later Manuel de Brito Camacho, one of the seven republican deputies, rose to protest that he had been made to swear to a religion he did not profess and to be faithful to institutions he fought. He tabled a one-line bill abolishing the political oath, first proposed by monarchist reformers in 1873.2 sources2 sources

Manuel was born in Lisbon on 15 November 1889, the younger son of King Carlos and Queen Amélia. The throne was meant for his brother, Luís Filipe. Manuel had a thorough education, spoke French from the age of six, played the organ and loved history and literature. In June 1904, aged 14, he took his oath as a cadet at the Naval School.3 sources3 sources

On 1 February 1908 he was in the open carriage crossing the Terreiro do Paço when two gunmen killed his father and brother, a story told in our article on the Lisbon regicide. A bullet hit him in the arm. He was proclaimed King Manuel II at three o'clock the next afternoon.2 sources2 sources

Sir Francis Villiers, the British minister, called on him soon after the killings and found him plunged in grief but composed and dignified. Those around the new king praised his intelligence and judgement. A republican writer in the magazine Ocidente reported that Manuel had told the Council of State his age and knowledge were not yet enough to decide affairs of state, and that he put his trust in the Crown's old counsellors.2 sources2 sources

The royal family blamed João Franco, the prime minister who had governed by decree since 1907, for the catastrophe. Manuel dismissed him almost at once. On 4 February Admiral Francisco Ferreira do Amaral formed a cabinet of the two old parties and independents, known as the government of acalmação, or calming down.3 sources3 sources

It did what its name promised. Press freedom returned and suspended newspapers reappeared. Republican leaders were released, the sailors of the naval mutinies of April 1906 were amnestied, and the prime minister agreed with the Progressive and Republican leaders to hold parliamentary and municipal elections that year.1 source1 source

Not everyone approved. Edward VII of Britain, Portugal's oldest ally, was irritated by a government that left out Franco's party, which he read as weakness and as giving the regicides what they wanted. O Século, then the most influential paper in Lisbon, set out its own terms for the young king.2 sources2 sources

The calm did not last. Disturbances in Lisbon went on through 1908, and the monarchist parties soon fell back into their quarrels. In December the Regenerador leader Júlio de Vilhena turned against Ferreira do Amaral, and the cabinet fell. Counting Franco's, Portugal had three governments in 1908 alone, each under a different leader.1 source1 source

Parliament was no steadier. One sitting ended with the 72-year-old finance minister fighting a duel with a deputy who had accused him of fraud; two shots were fired and both missed. At another, most deputies walked out when a speaker they disapproved of rose, leaving too few for a quorum. After more chaotic sittings, at which desks were smashed, General Sebastião Teles resigned.1 source1 source

Meanwhile the republicans grew. The election of 5 April 1908 raised their group in the chamber to seven deputies. On 1 November they won every seat on Lisbon's city council, though they stayed weak in most of the country. At the last election of the monarchy, in August 1910, they won 14 seats.3 sources3 sources

They mocked the king's youth without mercy. In August 1909 the republican deputy Afonso Costa told the chamber during a debate on a trade treaty with Germany that what Senhor Dom Manuel understood about sugar was that sweets taste good, because he was at the age when one eats sweet things behind mama's back.1 source1 source

The court answered with publicity. Queen Amélia sponsored a campaign to make the new king known. The illustrated weekly Ilustração Portuguesa led the way, and the monarchist press followed, celebrating him in prose and verse. He was nicknamed “o Reizinho”, the little king.2 sources2 sources

His first official journey was to Porto. He left Lisbon by train on Sunday 8 November 1908 and was cheered by large crowds; the tour of Porto, the Minho and the coastal Beira lasted until 22 November. Ilustração Portuguesa sent Joshua Benoliel, the pioneer of Portuguese press photography, who took 134 of the 147 pictures it printed of the visit.1 source1 source

Not every republican was impressed. In a public letter to the king dated 10 December 1908, the journalist João Chagas warned that the warm welcome in Porto was an illusion and that the throne was already lost.1 source1 source

In February 1909 Manuel received Alfonso XIII of Spain at the ducal palace of Vila Viçosa. Brito Camacho dismissed the two monarchs as two lads, heads of state at an age when most men are not yet even head of a government department. Two months later, on 24 April, Manuel toured the ruins left by the Benavente earthquake, which has its own article.2 sources2 sources

In November 1909 he paid a state visit to England, where, Villiers reported, he made “an extraordinarily favourable impression” and was invested with the Order of the Garter. The Portuguese government hoped a British bride would steady the throne, and two princesses were considered; nothing came of it.2 sources2 sources

Edward VII died on 6 May 1910, two years to the day after Manuel's acclamation. Manuel called at the British legation to offer his condolences in person, the first time a king of Portugal had done so at a foreign legation, and went to the funeral at Windsor.1 source1 source

When Manuel opened the new Cortes on 23 September 1910, no opposition peers or deputies attended, an attempt to cheer him drew only a faint response, and his reception in the streets was markedly cold. Less than a fortnight later the revolution began.1 source1 source

On 4 October, Villiers wrote, the king was deserted by all but his household. Not a single army or navy officer came to the Necessidades palace while warships shelled it from the river. Manuel left by car for Mafra, and on 5 October he sailed from Ericeira with his mother and grandmother on the royal yacht Amélia. The revolution itself is told in our article on 5 October 1910.1 source1 source

The yacht reached Gibraltar on the night of 6 October. Manuel and his mother went on to England, staying first with her brother, the Duke of Orléans, at Wood Norton near Evesham. In January 1911 they rented Abercorn House in Richmond. He later settled at Fulwell Park in Twickenham, west of London, with his wife, Queen Augusta Victoria.3 sources3 sources

During the First World War he joined and funded Red Cross work for the wounded. On Sundays he and the queen often lunched at Buckingham Palace with George V and Queen Mary. He played tennis each week with the professionals at Queen's Club and sat in the committee box at Wimbledon.2 sources2 sources

Monarchists at home still plotted in his name. When Henrique Paiva Couceiro restored the monarchy in Porto in January 1919, Manuel had not been consulted, stayed in England and later condemned the rising, as our article on the Monarchy of the North explains.2 sources2 sources

In 1920 Manuel began gathering books and documents for a history of his namesake, King Manuel I, hoping to shed new light on the expulsion of the Jews. The biography was never written. Instead the project grew into a collection of Portuguese books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rivalled in size only by the National Library in Lisbon and the Public Library of Évora.2 sources2 sources

Old private libraries were coming onto the market in Portugal in the first quarter of the century, and Manuel is said to have bought six trunks of books from the heirs of António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro, whose collection of Camões was the most complete then known. In London the antiquarian booksellers Maggs Bros searched for books for him; his main contact there was the bibliographer Maurice Ettinghausen.3 sources3 sources

In 1924 Maggs found him a librarian. Margery Withers was 18, had just come back from a year in Switzerland, and could read Portuguese because she spoke Spanish, learned in Patagonia, where she was born. She started on £3 a week. The king's books were then valued at about £32,000.1 source1 source

Manuel decided to describe every book in a catalogue with historical notes, in Portuguese and English side by side. He wrote every word of his entries by hand; Withers made the bibliographical descriptions and drafted the translations. He hated cuts. “I will not delete a single more line!”, he wrote to her of one article.2 sources2 sources

His introduction to the first volume explains why he did it. He wanted to show the achievements of the Portuguese in the age of the voyages, and to offer “sincere and grateful homage to the country where we live and where we have been so kindly welcomed”. Then the exile shows through.1 source1 source

On Thursday 30 June 1932, Withers found the king at his desk with the first bound copy of the second volume. He asked whether she would like it or would rather wait for one with a proper wrapper, and when she took it he signed it “Manuel R.” He gave her the next day off to watch the tennis at Wimbledon, where she saw him leave the committee box in the late afternoon.1 source1 source

He died at Twickenham the next day, 2 July 1932, of oedema of the throat. He was 42 and had no children. As his will asked, his body was taken to Lisbon and buried in the pantheon of the Braganzas at the monastery of São Vicente de Fora.4 sources4 sources

Queen Augusta Victoria kept Withers on to finish the bibliographical part of the third volume, which Manuel had barely begun and which was to have covered his collection of Camões. Fulwell Park was sold in 1934 and the books were packed for Vila Viçosa. The house was pulled down, and the streets built on its grounds include Manoel Road, Portugal Gardens and Lisbon Avenue.2 sources2 sources

The oath of 6 May 1908 was the last a Portuguese king swore. The Republic came 882 days later.2 sources2 sources

What Manuel left behind outlasted the crown. In a will written in 1915 he left his personal artistic and cultural heritage to the Portuguese people. The state and his heirs, his mother and his widow, turned it into the Fundação da Casa de Bragança, set up in 1933, which the director of its museum-library calls the first foundation in Portugal. It runs the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, several churches and five castles.2 sources2 sources

His books are the heart of its library. They include the Vita Christi printed in Lisbon in 1495, the Manueline Ordinances of 1514, early works by the mathematician Pedro Nunes and the historian Damião de Góis, and a Camões collection the foundation describes as perhaps the most complete of sixteenth-century editions.1 source1 source