In the other cardinal point of the policy of John “the Great,” the maintenance of a close alliance with England, John II. carefully followed the example of the founder of the house of Aviz. Affonso V. had not neglected this important tradition, and had even promised his sister, Donna Catherine, to Edward IV., in 1461, a marriage only frustrated by the death of the princess in 1463; and the English monarch had solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor in 1471, and again after the battle of Barnet in 1472, and he had also included the name of the King of Portugal, as an ally of England, in his treaty with Louis XI. of France, in 1475. John II. drew the bonds of friendship still closer, and sent important embassies to the three kings of England, who ruled in quick succession in this country. In 1482 Edward IV. ratified the Treaty of Windsor in the presence of the ambassadors of John II., and recognized his new title of “Lord of Guinea,” and in 1484 Richard III. did the same. In 1485 the King of Portugal proposed in a Cortes held at Alçobaça, that his only sister Joanna should be given in marriage to Richard III., but the princess, who was famed for her piety and wished to become a nun, fortunately for herself, refused the alliance, as she afterwards did the hand of Charles VIII. of France. Henry VII. bore no enmity towards John II. on account of his friendship with Richard III., but, on the contrary, showed every disposition to assist him in his struggle with his nobility, and in 1488 went so far as to arrest the Count of Pennamacor, one of the insurgent Portuguese noblemen who had escaped to England, and to imprison him in the Tower. It was in this year also that the last treaty of commerce between England and Portugal, before the famous Methuen treaty in 1703, was concluded at Lisbon by Richard Nanfran and Thomas Savage, who had been sent for that purpose, and to invest John II. as a Knight of the Garter. [Illustration: CHART OF GOA. (_From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 248._)]