and his sons Edward, Pedro, Henry, and Ferdinand, passed
out of the darkness of their slavery into the light and life of their
heroic age.

[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH OF BATALHA WHERE
PRINCE HENRY LIES BURIED.]

The founder of the House of Aviz, John, the King of Good Memory, is the
great transition figure in his country's history, for in his reign the
age of the merely European kingdom is over, and that of discovery and
empire begins. That is, the limits of territory and of population, as
well as the type of government and of policy, both home and foreign,
secured by his victory and his reign, are permanent in themselves, and
as the conditions of success they lie at the root of the development of
the next hundred years.

Even the drift of Portuguese interests, seawards and southwards, is
decided by his action, his alliance with England, his encouragement of
trade, his wars against the Moors. For, by the middle of his reign, by
the time of the Ceuta conquest (1415), his third son, Prince Henry, had
grown to manhood.

Yet, King John's personal work (1383-1433) is rather one of settlement
and the providing of resources for future action than the taking of any
great share in that action. His mind was practical rather than
prophetic, common-sense rather than creative; but in his regeneration of
the Court and trade and society and public service of the kingdom, he
fitted his people to play their part, to be for a time the "very
foremost men of all this world."

First of all, he founded a strong centralised monarchy, like those which
marked the fifteenth century in France and England and Russia. The
spirit, the aim of Louis XI., of the Tudors, of Ivan III., was the same
as that of John I. of Portugal--to rule as well as govern in every
department, "over all persons, in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as
civil, within their dominions supreme." The Master of Aviz had been the
people's choice; the Lisbon populace and their leaders had been among
the first who dared to fight for him; but he would not be a simple King
of Parliaments. He preferred to reign with the help of his nobles. For
though he distrusted feudalism, he dreaded Cortes still more. So, while
in most of the new monarchies of Europe the subjection or humiliation of
the baronage was a primary article of policy, John tried to win his way
by lavish gifts of land, while resolutely checking feudalism in
government, curtailing local immuni