Restoration of Portugal

Towards the end of December 1640 a ship on its way from Cádiz to the Canary Islands called at Madeira. It brought news that grave events had taken place on the mainland, but it deliberately concealed the details of the revolution of 1 December, and also the fact that the Duke of Bragança had been proclaimed King of Portugal.

It was on 8 or 9 January 1641 that a caravel reached our landing place, and from its crew the whole truth became known. The ship carried letters from the new sovereign to the governor and captain-general of Madeira, Luís Miranda Henriques, and to the bishop, Dom Jerónimo Fernando. They announced the extraordinary event of Portugal’s liberation from the Castilian yoke and ordered that the independence of the nation be proclaimed without delay. All authorities and officials, as well as the members of the clergy and nobility and the representatives of the people, were to swear oaths of vassalage and fidelity to the new king and to the lawfully constituted government.

The news spread quickly through the city and was received with immense joy by the population. The Senate (senado, the municipal council), in agreement with the principal authorities, at once resolved to summon all the nobility, clergy and people to a great meeting in the Council house on 11 January 1641, so that the new monarch could be acclaimed and recognised there.

On that day the following were present at the said place: the governor; the bishop; the ordinary judges Luís Francisco de Oliveira and Diogo Pereira da Silva; the councillors (vereadores) João Baptista Acciaioly and António de Carvalhal Esmeraldo; the municipal procurator (procurador do concelho) Dom António Dias; the guild representatives (mesteres) Pedro Rodrigues, Simão Lopes, Francisco Gomes and Lourenço Gonçalves; the captain of the Castilian garrison, Dom Tomás Velasquez Sarmento; and the representatives of the clergy, nobility and people. The governor then declared to all those present ‘that he had a letter from the most high and most mighty lord King John IV, in which he informed him of the general accord with which he had been raised up as lawful king and lord of his realms of Portugal’.

Once the governor had read this letter, the bishop presented the one he too had received from the new king. The whole assembly then acclaimed John IV with great commotion and enthusiasm, and he was at once recognised as the true sovereign of the Portuguese. A record (auto) of the ceremony just held was then entered in the books of the Senate. It is an interesting document and was first published in the Heraldo da Madeira (‘Madeira Herald’) of 1 December 1906.

The Church celebrated the acclamation (aclamação, formal public proclamation of a new king) of John IV with a solemn Te Deum in the cathedral. On the night of the 11th and on the following nights the whole city was brilliantly illuminated to celebrate an event that filled the hearts of true Portuguese with joy.

The commander of the Castilian garrison, Dom Tomás Velasquez Sarmiento, although he had some forces at his disposal, did nothing to oppose the will of the Madeirans. He handed over the fortresses and accepted quarters both in them and in the towns, and calmly awaited the arrival of a ship to take him to Spain.

The clergy, nobility and people swore their oath of loyalty to the new sovereign on 13 January, in the council house. On the 25th several Portuguese citizens were called upon to take up offices of the Senate that had been held by Spaniards. Pero Catanho was elected people's judge (juiz do povo, elected representative of the craft guilds), Martim Mendes de Vasconcelos councillor, and Gonçalo de Freitas da Silva municipal procurator; Pedro Rodrigues Neto was appointed to the post of market inspector (almotacé).

The new sovereign had been recognised throughout the island without the slightest resistance, and the various public offices had been filled by Portuguese citizens. It remained to present John IV with the congratulations and homage of the Madeirans, and to inform him of the general acclaim with which the news had been received that a genuinely Portuguese monarch sat on the throne.

On the 26th the ship's master Francisco Rodrigues Belo was summoned to the Council. There he was ordered, on pain of a fine of 200 cruzados and four years' penal exile (degredo) away from the island, to make ready within eight days a caravel to carry to the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal) the letters that the Senate was about to write to John IV. On 16 February the councillor Martins Mendes de Vasconcelos and the guild representative (mester) Pedro Rodrigues were elected to bear these letters and to kiss the monarch’s hand at court on behalf of the inhabitants of Madeira.

The councillor Martim Mendes de Vasconcelos declared that all the expenses of his journey to the capital would be met by himself and not by the Senate, ‘for all his possessions were but little to spend in the service of His Majesty’.

The caravel carrying the Senate’s two representatives did not leave for Lisbon until early March. The two councillors João Baptista Acciaioly and Antonio de Carvalhal Esmeraldo, who at first had shown such zeal and interest in the service of the new monarch, stopped attending the council sessions from a certain date onwards. Their absence held up the dispatch of the letters, which by custom had to be signed by all the members of the Senate.

The nobility, the people and the Council, meeting on 26 February, had to elect Antonio de Aragão de Teive and Baltasar de Abreu Berenguer as councillors before the letters addressed to the monarch could finally be signed and sent to the Kingdom in the ship of the master Rodrigues Belo.

On 12 April of the same year, 1641, the nobility, the representatives of the people and the Senate (senado, the municipal council) met once more in the Council’s chambers. They resolved unanimously that, following the example of the cities, towns and localities of the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), Funchal should contribute a voluntary donativo (nominally a ‘gift’ to the Crown; a compulsory war levy) towards the costs of the war that the nation was about to wage against Castile. Many of those present declared that they were resolved to give not only their possessions but also their lives, if need be, to defend their homeland from the Castilian yoke.

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The island of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’),’ says Rebelo da Silva, ‘followed Madeira’s example as soon as it learned of the revolution of 1 December 1640. When the despatches from Funchal arrived on 5 February, the inhabitants, whom a squadron of twelve Ottoman sails had almost blockaded, greeted the news with repeated salvoes of artillery and musketry. The Turks, startled by the noise and ignorant of its cause, thought it prudent to withdraw, and disappeared.’ The separation of the Madeira archipelago from the Castilian dominions did not cost a single drop of blood, and it was accomplished with the evident assent of every social class. The horrors of a 60-year captivity had rekindled the love of liberty in Madeiran hearts, so that as soon as news of the revolution of 1 December became known, everyone united at once to celebrate it with enthusiasm, without fear of the Castilian troops then on the island.

Madeira was the first Portuguese possession to proclaim John IV, and the patriotic fervour with which the ceremony was held shows us that hatred of the usurper and love of national independence were no less intense here than in the Kingdom.