Philip had at this time (1579) special reasons for dreading an open rupture with England, for he had for some time past been planning a stroke which would, if successful, enormously increase his power for harm at sea, in relation to both France and England. In August 1578 Sebastian of Portugal, the only son of Philip’s sister, Juana--as much a victim of atavism as was his cousin, Don Carlos--perished in his mad crusade against the Moors, and his successor on the throne was the aged, childless cardinal, King Henry. He was recognised as being only a stop-gap, and after him the claimants were numerous, mostly descended, although in different degrees, from the king, Don Manoel. The Duchess of Braganza was daughter of his son Duarte, Philip was son of the elder daughter of Don Manoel, the Duke of Savoy was a son of the younger daughter, Beatrix, whilst the children of Alexander Farnese were the offspring of a younger sister of the Duchess of Braganza. The most popular pretender, however, was Don Antonio, Prior of O Crato, an illegitimate son of Luis, a younger son of Don Manoel. The fundamental laws of Lamego, now believed to be apocryphal, but then accepted as genuine, excluded foreigners from the throne, but Philip asserted that a Spanish king was not a foreigner in Portugal, and began his intrigues for the succession immediately after Sebastian’s death. The Perez party had managed to get the old Duke of Alba disgraced and sent into arrest on an absurdly inadequate charge of conniving at his son’s marriage against the king’s wish, and De Granvelle had remained in honourable exile from Spain for many years. But when the great task of winning Portugal had to be undertaken, Philip knew that glib, brilliant Perez, with his biting tongue and ready pen, was not the instrument he wanted; so the stern soldier and the crafty statesman were recalled to their master’s councils. It was a black day for Perez, although he probably did not realise at the time how fatal it was to be. During the short reign of the cardinal-king, money and intrigue were lavished on all hands to corrupt and terrorise the Portuguese nobles to Philip’s side; the aged king himself was finally worried into his grave by pressure exerted upon him to approve of Philip’s claim, and when he died, the council of regency left by him were by various means coerced into accepting the King of Spain as their sovereign. But not so the Portuguese people or the clergy; they clung, almost all of them, to the Prior of O Crato, the popular native claimant, ambitious, ready, and sanguine, for the Portuguese bitterly hated the Spaniards, and the true native heiress, the Duchess of Braganza, was timid and unready; and before Philip and Alba could arrive Antonio was acclaimed the national sovereign. Around him all that was patriotic grouped itself, and for a short time he ruled as king. Philip was moving on to Portugal with that “leaden foot” of which he was so proud, and by the autumn of 1580 he had