gent of the kingdom, he put power in the wrong place.

The Portuguese were always intensely suspicious of foreign government,
and after the age of Leonora Telles they might well refuse a female
Regent. On the other side King Edward's Queen, who had won his absolute
trust as a wife and a mother, was not willing to stand aside for Pedro
or for Henry. She began to organise a party, and she worked on her side,
the nobles and the patriots counterworked on theirs. Don John was the
first of her husband's brothers to take his natural place as a leader of
the national opposition; Henry for a time seemed to waver between
friendship and loyalty; all who knew the Queen loved her, but the people
hated the very notion of a foreign female reign. Like John Knox they
could not be fair to the Monstrous Regiment of Women, and their voices
grew clearer and clearer for Don Pedro and his rights, real or supposed.
The eldest of the young King's uncles, the right-hand man of the State
since his return from travel in 1428, he was the proper guardian of the
kingdom; Henry was a willing exile from most of Court life, though his
support was the greatest moral strength of any government; John had
begun the movement of discontent, but no one thought of him before his
brothers; while they lived his only part was in helping them on their
way.

Donna Leonor recognised her chief danger in Don Pedro, and tried to win
him over. When she summoned Cortes, she pressed him to sign the royal
writs; then she offered to betroth his daughter Isabel to her son; Pedro
secured a written promise, and waited for the opening of the National
Assembly in 1439. Here a fierce outcry was raised by a party of the
nobles against the marriage-settlement of their King, but Don Pedro was
too strong to be put down. He moved on by slow and steady intrigue
towards the Regency he claimed. Henry had now appeared as peacemaker,
and in his brother's interests arranged a compromise. The Queen was to
keep the actual charge of her children, and to train the little King for
his duties; Pedro was to govern the state as "Defender of the Kingdom
and of the King"; the Count of Barcellos, soon to be Duke of Braganza,
the leader of the factious and fractious party, was to be bought off
with the Administration of the Justice of the Interior.

The Queen at first struggled on against this dethronement; fortified
herself in Alemquer, and sent for help from her old home in Aragon. At
this the mob r