We begin with Portugal, where the first destructive blow fell on the Society. A Portuguese Jesuit, Father Franco, has left us an admiring chronicle of the doings of his colleagues down to the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. His work (_Synopsis Annalium Societatis Jesu in Lusitania_, 1726) entirely confirms the feeling that the life of the vast majority of the Portuguese Jesuits is not material for history; it is little more than a record of the deaths of undistinguished (but always very saintly) Jesuits, with a few discreet references to those events at court which are of real interest. It is true that Father Franco appends a list of thousands of Jesuits who have gone to spend or lose their lives in Brazil or India, but we shall see that in the period with which we are dealing these missionary fields provided much comfort and little danger. The heroic age was over; it was the age when royal confessors enabled their brethren to sun themselves indolently in the warmth of royal favour. The close of the reign of John IV. in 1656 saw the power and wealth of the Jesuits greater than they had ever been before. We saw that at the revolution of 1640, when Portugal won its independence from Spain, the Jesuits had so nicely distributed their forces that some were sure to be on the winning side; and John IV. was not the man to inquire too closely into their conduct. His court soon filled with Jesuits. Father Nuñez, a man of great piety and austerity, who had an excellent moral influence on the noble dames of the court, guarded the consciences of Queen Luisa and her children. Father Fernandez, a very different type of Jesuit, was confessor to the King, and had great political influence. He was a member of the State-Council and Bishop of Japan, and he bore his dignities with a consciousness which greatly irritated the nobles. When his humbler colleague, Nuñez, died, he became confessor to the Queen also, and attained a great ascendancy over the King. When the Viceroy of India, remarking that Jesuits were forbidden to engage in commerce, took from the Jesuits in that country property worth twenty thousand crowns a year, which they had acquired by commerce, Fernandez induced the King to overrule him and order the restoration of the property. In addition, John IV. gave large annual sums to the foreign missions, and a comfortable sum as "viaticum" to each priest who left Portugal for the missions; and he made them presents of palaces, and showered other benefits on them.