The reigns of John I., surnamed “the Great,” and of his two successors, occupy nearly a century, during which Portugal was learning to become the greatest nation in Europe. It was the age of exploration and discovery, during which the acutest intellects and the most daring natures in Portugal were dreaming of a new route to India, and were endeavouring to discover it. It was an age of growth, abounding in statesmen, mariners, and chroniclers, who were to have their successors in the all too short but immortal period of Portuguese greatness, in such men as Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Camoens. The history of these maritime explorations and discoveries, of the painful and slow progress down the western coast of Africa, and of the great schemes and efforts of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” will form the subject of a separate chapter; but it is first expedient to study the history of the Portuguese people and monarchy at home during this period, and to see how, from the reign of John I., a new spirit appeared alike among the kings, and the merchants, and the soldiers, which was to culminate in the glories of the heroic age. King John, after the victory of Aljubarrota had firmly seated him on the throne, felt it necessary to give Portugal such an interval of peace after the great efforts of the Castilian wars, as King Diniz had given it after the cessation of the wars against the Moors. This peace was secured by a wise foreign policy, of which the key-notes were, a close alliance with England, and systematic non-interference with the affairs of Spain. He had seen the value of the assistance of England in the final throes of his struggle with Castile, and the English monarchs on their side felt the advantage of having such an ally as Portugal to act as a thorn in the side of Castile, should the Spaniards come to the help of the French. The statesmanlike idea of Henry II. of England when he supported the proposal of the Count of Flanders for the hand of the daughter of Affonso Henriques, that this marriage should cement an unwritten alliance of England, Flanders, and Portugal, against France, Scotland, and Castile, seems to have been in the minds of the English statesmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Just as Scotland afforded a convenient base of operations, whether military or political, for France against England, so did Portugal give a similar position for the English to act from against Castile, and the subsequent history of Portugal shows how generously and wisely England treated her southern ally. The people of the two nations gladly supported the political ideas of their monarchs and rulers. Each country could supply what the other wanted. From Portugal, the English merchants could obtain fruits and wines, which found a ready market, and the Londoners, not satisfied with supplying the home demand only, distributed these products of the south among the countries of the north, and notably in those lying round the