When Don Antonio, the sometime Prior of
Crato, Sebastian's natural cousin, and a bold, ambitious,
enterprising man, had raised the standard of revolt, the friar
had been the most active of all his coadjutators. In those days
Frey Miguel, who was the Provincial of his order, a man widely
renowned for his learning and experience of affairs, who had been
preacher to Don Sebastian and confessor to Don Antonio, had
wielded a vast influence in Portugal. That influence he had
unstintingly exerted on behalf of the Pretender, to whom he was
profoundly devoted. After Don Antonio's army had been defeated on
land by the Duke of Alba, and his fleet shattered in the Azores
in 1582 by the Marquis of Santa Cruz, Frey Miguel found himself
deeply compromised by his active share in the rebellion. He was
arrested and suffered a long imprisonment in Spain. In the end,
because he expressed repentance, and because Philip II., aware of
the man's gifts and worth, desired to attach him to himself by
gratitude, he was enlarged, and appointed Vicar of Santa Maria la
Real, where he was now become confessor, counsellor and confidant
of the Princess Anne of Austria.
But his gratitude to King Philip was not of a kind to change his
nature, to extinguish his devotion to the Pretender, Don Antonio--
who, restlessly ambitious, continued ceaselessly to plot abroad--
or yet to abate the fervour of his patriotism.
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