and
grateful for any affection and tenderness that were bestowed upon him.
He was much away too, at first on his voyages to Guinea and afterwards on
the business of his petitions to the Portuguese and Spanish Courts; and
one need not be a cynic to believe that these absences did nothing to
lessen the affection between him and his wife. Finally, their married
life was a short one; she died within ten years, and I am sure did not
outlive his affections; so that there may be something solemn, some
secret memories of the aching joy and sorrow that her coming into his
life and passing out of it brought him, in this silence of Columbus
concerning his wife.

This marriage was, in the vulgar idiom of to-day, a great thing for
Columbus. It not only brought him a wife; it brought him a home,
society, recognition, and a connection with maritime knowledge and
adventure that was of the greatest importance to him. Philippa Moniz
Perestrello was the daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, who had been
appointed hereditary governor of the island of Porto Santo on its
colonisation by Prince Henry in 1425 and who had died there in 1457.
Her grandfather was Gil Ayres Moniz, who was secretary to the famous
Constable Pereira in the reign of John I, and is chiefly interesting to
us because he founded the chapel of the "Piedad" in the Carmelite
Monastery at Lisbon, in which the Moniz family had the right of interment
for ever, and in which the body of Philippa, after her brief pilgrimage
in this world was over, duly rested; and whence her son ordered its
disinterment and re-burial in the church of Santa Clara in San Domingo.
Philippa's mother, Isabel Moniz, was the second or third wife of
Perestrello; and after her husband's death she had come to live in
Lisbon. She had another daughter, Violante by name, who had married one
Mulier, or Muliartes, in Huelva; and a son named Bartolomeo, who was the
heir to the governorship of Porto Santo; but as he was only a little boy
at the time of his father's death his mother ceded the governorship to
Pedro Correa da Cunha, who had married Iseult, the daughter of old
Bartolomeo by his first wife. The governorship was thus kept in the
family during the minority of Bartolomeo, who resumed it later when he
came of age.

This Isabel, mother of Philippa, was a very important acquaintance indeed
for Columbus. It must be noted that he left the shop and poor
Bartholomew to take care of themselves or each oth