The Jesuits, from their first entrance into the kingdom, had exercised a great influence over the destinies of Portugal. This influence, which they had in part lost during the interval that Portugal was under the sway of the Spanish monarch, became paramount under the new dynasty. The Jesuits governed in the name of the two queens, the widow of John IV. and the wife of Alphonso VI., who had married her brother-in-law during the lifetime of her first husband, whom she dethroned, and chained to a rock.[323] Under John V., their power reached its climax, and it was while they ruled the nation that “Portugal fell exhausted under the protecting power of England, never again to recover her position.”[324] At the commencement of Joseph I.’s reign, which we are now considering, they possessed an equal and again unlimited power; but at that juncture a man arose to arrest their progress. This man was Carvalho. He was born in 1699, of a family of the middle class, or at the most of the lowest grade of the nobility. He was endowed with many rare qualities, with a great aptitude for business and administration, with unequalled energy and courage, and with a mind vast and capable of great designs; but he was proud, vindictive, cruel, and not seldom unjust. To arrive at power, Carvalho (subsequently Count of Oeyras, and Marquis of Pombal, under which last name he is better known to history, and by which we shall henceforth designate him) had courted the friendship of the Jesuits, and was by them brought into favour. He soon became the favourite, and then the master, of the weak and contemptible Joseph I. Pombal, in appearance, shewed himself grateful to the Jesuits, and to the last moment assured them of his friendship. But whether, in his capacity of statesman, he thought them to be prejudicial to the welfare of the Portuguese nation, or whether he began to hate them, because the fathers, perceiving that they could in no way govern such a man as Pombal, had leagued with the nobility, a class of citizens whom the vindictive minister wished to annihilate, it is unquestionable that at a certain period Pombal resolved, if possible, to rid Portugal of these dangerous monks. But, prudent and crafty, he dissembled his sentiments till a pretext or a favourable moment should arrive.