THE PATRIOTIC EPISODE OF THE FALSE D. SEBASTIÃO DA ERICEIRA

Afonso de Meneses' ostentatious withdrawal from the court to his lands in Mafra had been his public way of showing the grievance he felt at Catherine's order to leave the king's chamber after the regent had heard him say something about his mind, as he recounted in a letter sent in 1560 to António, Prior of Crato, thanking him for the visit he had paid him and explaining the reasons for his voluntary exile in Mafra.

The lord of Mafra, however, didn't shy away from stating his reasons in the letter he sent from the town of Mafra to the regent on 3 February 1561. In it, the son of Count Penela and a great supporter of the House of Bragança, as well as reminding Catherine that King João III had put him on his council "for 18 years", he was captain-major of the cavalry. He had married D. Guiomar Soares, daughter of Lopo Soares. He invokes her house, her person and her quality to emphasise his displeasure and, why not say it, his revolt against the choices made by the regency: he had not been chosen for the governorship of the Kingdom and the king's tutorship and election to the council; it had taken nine months for his place on the council to be ordered, when he had asked for it because it belonged to his father and was due to him; he had not received 40,000 réis that had been vacated due to his wife's death; in the king's service, to which he had been appointed, he had suffered "affronts to the honour of his person, offences, without public or secret reasons"; the queen herself had ordered him to leave "a house to which I should have been summoned, and with words of such scandal and affront to my person and my guts that André Mendes could do no more"; he had not entered the king's house except at the request of the chief chambermaid because he had seen the crying of the child king (D. Sebastião) which stopped when he saw him.

D. Afonso de Meneses was not supported by most of the countless others affected by the loss of prerogatives during Catherine's consulate. On the other hand, his defiant attitude towards the regent and her supporters made the privileged relations he had with Infante Luís, whom he wanted to accompany on his African endeavours, more relevant, as well as with his son, D. António, Prior of Crato, with whom he maintained unequivocal ties of reciprocal friendship.

However, the future consequences of such solidarity in the Mafra region remain to be seen, given that benevolent comments about the Prior of Crato persist in popular tales today.

Perhaps the implications could be even more profound.

What favourable effect might these relationships have had on the advent of the so-called false D. Sebastião da Ericeira, played by the Azorean Mateus Álvares, hermit of S. Julião (Carvoeira), in 1585?

In addition to most of the "rustic people of the towns of Ericeira, Mafra, Torres Vedras and Sintra and other parts", many of the noblemen and clergymen who would support D. António's party in the resistance to Spanish annexation, as a result of the disappearance of D. Sebastião at Alcácer Quibir (1578), would have rebelled in this episode.

Symptomatically, Jorge de Meneses, son of the Count of Castanheira, mentioned in this document, is one of the most prominent noblemen imprisoned because he backed the movement led by Mateus Álvares, an Azorean, son of a bricklayer and a native of Praia da Vitória (Terceira) and a hermit at the hermitage of São Julião (Carvoeira, Mafra).

Mateus Álvares managed to raise about 3,000 men from Ericeira, Mafra and neighbouring regions, who, after many rocky episodes, were defeated (June 1585) near the church of Nossa Senhora do Ó in Porto da Carvoeira (Mafra), by a force of 400 men from two Spanish infantry companies commanded by Captains Calderon and Santo Esteban. Many of the insurgents died in the skirmish, around twenty of the "hermit king of São Gião’s uprisers" were hanged in Ericeira, with some condemned to the galleys (such as the former County Prosecutor, Luís Gonçalves) and many pardoned.

The false king was caught on the run, arrested in Lisbon on 12 June 1585 and hanged after his right hand, with which he had dared to sign the name Dom Sebastião, was severed. His decapitated head was exhibited for a month on the pillory of the capital, his body was butchered, and the pieces displayed by the city gates.