A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Castro, Inez de
CASTRO, INEZ DE,
Who was descended from the royal line of Castile, became first the mistress of Pedro, son of Alphonso the Fourth, King of Portugal, and after the death of his wife Constance, in 1344, he married her. As Pedro rejected all proposals for a new marriage, his secret was suspected, and the king was persuaded, by those who dreaded the influence of Inez and her family, that this marriage would be injurious to the interests of Pedro's eldest son. He was induced to order Inez to be put to death; and, while Pedro was absent on a hunting expedition, Alphonso went to Coimbra, where Inez was living in the convent of St. Clara, with her children. Inez alarmed, threw herself with her little ones at the king's feet, and sued for mercy. Alphonso was so touched by her prayers that he went away, but he was again persuaded to order her assassination. She was killed in 1355, and buried in the convent. Pedro took up arms against his father, but was at length reconciled to him. After Alphonso's death, Pedro, then King of Portugal, executed summary vengeance on two of the murderers of Inez; and two years after, in 1362, he declared before an assembly of the chief men of the kingdom, that the Pope had consented to his union with Inez, and that he had been married to her. The papal document was exhibited in public. The body of Inez was disinterred, placed on a throne, with a diadem on her head and the royal robes wrapt around her, and the nobility were required to approach and kiss the hem of her garment. The body was then carried in great pomp from Coimbra to Alcobaca, where a monument of white marble was erected, on which was placed her statue, with a royal crown on her head. Mrs. Hemans has written a beautiful, poem descriptive of this solemnity.