before a considerable section of the African littoral beyond Cape Verde, and gave much new information on the trade-routes of north-west Africa and on the native races; while Gomez, in his first important venture (after 1448 and before 1458), though not accomplishing the full Indian purpose of his voyage (he took a native interpreter with him for use “in the event of reaching India”), explored and observed in the Gambia valley and along the adjacent coasts with fully as much care and profit. As a result of these expeditions the infante seems to have sent out in 1458 a mission to convert the Gambia negroes. Gomez’ second voyage, resulting in another “discovery” of the Cape Verde Islands, was probably in 1462, after the death of Prince Henry; it is likely that among the infante’s last occupations were the necessary measures for the equipment and despatch of this venture, as well as of Pedro de Sintra’s important expedition of 1461.
The infante’s share in home politics was considerable, especially in the years of Affonso V.’s minority (1438, &c.) when he helped to make his elder brother Pedro regent, reconciled him with the queen-mother, and worked together with them both in a council of regency. But when Dom Pedro rose in revolt (1447), Henry stood by the king and allowed his brother to be crushed. In the Morocco campaigns of his last years, especially at the capture of Alcazar the Little (1458), he restored the military fame which he had founded at Ceuta and compromised at Tangier, and which brought him invitations from the pope, the emperor and the kings of Castile and England, to take command of their armies. The prince was also grand master of the Order of Christ, the successor of the Templars in Portugal; and most of his Atlantic and African expeditions sailed under the flag of his order, whose revenues were at the service of his explorations, in whose name he asked and obtained the official recognition of Pope Eugenius IV. for his work, and on which he bestowed many privileges in the new-won lands—the tithes of St Michael in the Azores and one-half of its sugar revenues, the tithe of all merchandise from Guinea, the ecclesiastical dues of Madeira, &c. As “protector of Portuguese studies,” Dom Henry is credited with having founded a professorship of theology, and perhaps also chairs of mathematics and medicine, in Lisbon—where also, in 1431, he is said to have provided house-room for the university teachers and students. To instruct his captains, pilots and other pioneers more fully in the art of navigation and the making of maps and instruments he procured, says Barros, the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, together with that of certain Arab and Jewish mathematicians. We hear also of one Master Peter, who inscribed and illuminated maps for the infante; the mathematician Pedro Nunes declares that the prince’s mariners were well taught and provided with instruments and rules of astronomy and geometry “which all map-makers should know”; Cadamosto tells us that the Portuguese caravels in his day were the best sailing ships afloat; while, from several matters recorded by Henry’s biographers, it is clear that he devoted great attention to the study of earlier charts and of any available information he could gain upon the trade-routes of north-west Africa. Thus we find an Oran merchant corresponding with him about events happening in the negro-world of the Gambia basin in 1458. Even if there were never a formal “geographical school” at Sagres, or elsewhere in Portugal, founded by Prince Henry, it appears certain that his court was the centre of active and useful geographical study, as well as the source of the best practical exploration of the time.
The prince died on the 13th of November 1460, in his town near Cape St Vincent, and was buried in the church of St Mary in Lagos, but a year later his body was removed to the superb monastery of Batalha. His great-nephew, King Dom Manuel, had a statue of him placed over the centre column of the side gate of the church of Belem. On the 24th of July 1840, a monument was erected to him at Sagres at the instance of the marquis de Sá da Bandeira.
The glory attaching to the name of Prince Henry does not rest merely on the achievements effected during his own lifetime, but on the subsequent results to which his genius and perseverance had lent the primary inspiration. To him the human race is indebted, in large measure, for the maritime exploration, within one century (1420–1522), of more than half the globe, and especially of the great waterways from Europe to Asia both by east and by west. His own life only sufficed for the accomplishment of a small portion of his task. The complete opening out of the African or south-east route to the Indies needed nearly forty years of somewhat intermittent labour after his death (1460–1498), and the prince’s share has often been forgotten in that of pioneers who were really his executors—Diogo Cam, Bartholomew Diaz or Vasco da Gama. Less directly, other sides of his activity may be considered as fulfilled by the Portuguese penetration of inland Africa, especially of Abyssinia, the land of the “Prester John” for whom Dom Henry sought, and even by the finding of a western route to Asia through the discoveries of Columbus, Balboa and Magellan.
See Alguns documentos do archivo nacional da Torre do Tombo acerca das navegações ... portuguezas (Lisbon, 1892); Alves, Dom Henrique o Infante (Oporto, 1894); Archivo dos Açores (Ponta Delgada, 1878–1894); Gomes Eannes de Azurara, Chronica do descobrimento e conquista de Guiné, ed. Carreira and Santarem (Paris, 1841; Eng. trans. by Raymond Beazley and Edgar Prestage, Hakluyt Society, London, 1896–1899); João de Barros, Decadas da Asia (Lisbon, 1652); Raymond Beazley, Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1895), and introduction to Azurara, vol. ii., in Hakluyt Soc. trans. (see above); Antonio Cordeiro, Historia Insultana (Lisbon, 1717); Freire (Candido Lusitano), Vida do Infante D. Henrique (Lisbon, 1858); “Diogo Gomez,” in Dr Schmeller’s Über Valentim Fernandez Alemão, vol. iv. pt. iii., in the publications of the 1st class of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Munich, 1845); R. H. Major, The Life of Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator (London, 1868); Jules Mees, Henri le Navigateur et l’académie ... de Sagres (Brussels, 1901), and Histoire de la découverte des îles Açores (Ghent, 1901); Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis (Lisbon, 1892); Sophus Ruge, “Prinz Heinrich der Seefahrer,” in vol. 65 of Globus, p. 153 (Brunswick, 1894); Gustav de Veer, Prinz Heinrich der Seefahrer (Danzig, 1863); H. E. Wauwerman, Henri le Navigateur et l’académie portugaise de Sagres (Antwerp and Brussels, 1890). (C. R. B.)
HENRY OF ALMAIN (1235–1271), so called from his father’s
German connexions, was the son of Richard, earl of Cornwall and
king of the Romans. As a nephew of both Henry III. and Simon
de Montfort he wavered between the two at the beginning of the
Barons’ War, but finally took the royalist side and was among the
prisoners taken by Montfort at Lewes (1264). In 1268 he took
the cross with his cousin Edward, who, however, sent him back
from Sicily to pacify the unruly province of Gascony. Henry
took the land route with the kings of France and Sicily. While
attending mass at Viterbo (13 March 1271) he was attacked by
Guy and Simon de Montfort, sons of Earl Simon, and foully
murdered. This revenge was the more outrageous since Henry
had personally exerted himself on behalf of the Montforts after
Evesham. The deed is mentioned by Dante, who put Guy de
Montfort in the seventh circle of hell.
See W. H. Blaauw’s The Barons’ War (ed. 1871); Ch. Bémont’s Simon de Montfort (1884).
HENRY OF BLOIS, bishop of Winchester (1101–1171), was the
son of Stephen, count of Blois, by Adela, daughter of William I.,
and brother of King Stephen. He was educated at Cluny, and
consistently exerted himself for the principles of Cluniac reform.
If these involved high claims of independence and power for the
Church, they also asserted a high standard of devotion and
discipline. Henry was brought to England by Henry I. and
made abbot of Glastonbury. In 1129 he was given the bishopric
of Winchester and allowed to hold his abbey in conjunction with
it. His hopes of the see of Canterbury were disappointed, but
he obtained in 1139 a legatine commission which gave him a
higher rank than the primate. In fact as well as in theory he
became the master of the Church in England. He even contemplated
the erection of a new province, with Winchester as its
centre, which was to be independent of Canterbury. Owing both
to local and to general causes the power of the Church in England
has never been higher than in the reign of Stephen (1135–1154),
Henry as its leader and a legate of the pope was the real “lord of
England,” as the chronicles call him. Indeed, one of the ecclesiastical
councils over which he presided formally declared that the
election of the king in England was the special privilege of the
