The only event of importance during the regency was the plot of Dom Pedro Francisco de Mendonça and Dom Antonio de Cavida to restore Affonso VI. to the throne, in 1674. It was fortunately discovered in time; the ringleaders were executed, and Affonso VI. was removed from the Azores, where he had been trying to make a party, and established at Cintra, where he died in 1683. The regent then ascended the throne as Pedro II. and added the title of “king” to the power he had enjoyed for fifteen years; but in the same year he lost his wife, for whose sake he had overthrown his brother. His reign was marked by the same characteristics as his regency; and his strict economy and maintenance of peace gave an opportunity for the exhausted country to recover. He was an excellent administrator, not only from inclination, but from a desire to be independent of the Cortes, which he summoned as seldom as possible, and never after the arrival of the first consignment of gold from Brazil. In his foreign policy he made a point of remaining on good terms with both France and England, and he refused to interfere in the internal affairs of Spain. His friendship with England was kept up through his sister, Catherine, who, by his instructions, kept herself aloof from ministerial quarrels, and remained quietly in her adopted country after her husband’s death, all through the stormy reign of James II. and the Revolution of 1688, and who did not return to Portugal until 1692. With France he was more wary, for he feared the ambition of Louis XIV., and was apprehensive of the danger to Portugal which the accession of a Bourbon prince to the throne of Spain might cause. [Illustration: PEDRO II. (_From a Print in the British Museum._)]