Alphonso had married Marie Isabelle de Savoie-Nemours, whose Jesuit confessor, Father de Ville, listened sympathetically to the story of the outrages she endured. Father de Ville and his colleagues were not less sympathetic when Marie Isabelle transferred her affection to the King's handsome young brother, Dom Pedro, and they entered into a plot to replace Alphonso by Pedro. The chief plotter seems to have been Father Vieira, whom the French historian regards as the glory of the Portuguese Province at that time. Vieira was not without ability, but he was a turbulent and meddlesome politician, and so eccentric in his religious ideas that he fell into the prison of the Inquisition. The Jesuits secretly engaged the nobles in a plan to dethrone and divorce Alphonso and replace him by his brother. Divorce is, of course, unknown to the Catholic Church, but it has never failed to discover a flaw in a marriage which it was expedient to undo, and, with something very like levity or cynicism, the Jesuits and the Queen determined to accuse the King of impotence and get the marriage annulled: a king who was notorious for his amours and had had a child by one of his mistresses. Pedro was then informed of the Queen's amiable disposition and the support of the nobles, and the conspiracy began. The King was recalled from his licentious pleasures by an announcement that the Queen had retired to a convent and demanded the restitution of her dowry. He flew to the convent, but found his brother there with an armed force to protect the Queen, and, after a fruitless struggle, he was compelled to abdicate and to testify to the virginity of the Queen. We have the word of the English ambassador that Father de Ville and his colleagues were the chief authors of this audacious plot, or "comedy," as the Jesuit apologist calls it. The marriage was dissolved in March (1668), and it was arranged that a deputation of the Cortes should wait upon Marie Isabelle, and entreat her to marry Pedro, as Portugal was too poor to return her dowry. The marriage was celebrated a few weeks later, Alphonso was sent into a comfortable exile, and the Jesuits returned to power at the court. Sincerely as we may applaud the purification of the sordid palace and the relief of the young Queen, we must recognise that the procedure betrays a considerable lack of moral delicacy.