Leonor Téllez de Meneses

Leonor Téllez de Meneses or Leonor Teles in Portuguese (Trás-os-Montes, Portugal; c. 1350- Valladolid, between 1390-1405/1406) She was queen of Portugal and one of the protagonists, along with her brothers and her daughter, Infanta Beatriz, of the events that led to the succession crisis of the kingdom of Portugal of 1383-1385 that culminated in the defeat of her son-in-law, the king Castilian Juan I, and his armies in the battle of Aljubarrota. The historian Alejandro Herculano called her "the Portuguese Lucretia Borgia."

Family environment

Leonor's father was Martín Alfonso Téllez de Meneses, a Portuguese wealthy man, major butler and supposedly lover of Queen María of Portugal - the wife of King Alfonso XI. A member of the Téllez de Meneses lineage, an important family originally from Tierra de Campos, Martín Alfonso Téllez was murdered in 1356 by order of King Pedro the Cruel. Leonor's mother was Aldonza Eanes de Vasconcelos, daughter of Juan Méndez de Vasconcelos and Aldara Alfonso Alcoforado.

Leonor had two brothers: Juan Alfonso Tello, VI count of Barcelos, mayor of Lisbon and admiral of the Lusitanian kingdom, who fell in the battle of Aljubarrota, and Gonzalo Téllez de Meneses, count of Neiva and lord of Faria.

Her sister, María Téllez de Meneses, had married after being widowed by her first husband, Álvaro Díaz de Sousa, with Juan de Portugal, illegitimate son of Pedro I and Inés de Castro and suitor, after the death of King Ferdinand I, to the throne of Portugal. María was murdered in 1379 by her husband Juan, who accused her of adultery and it is suspected that Leonor - fearing for the succession of her daughter Beatriz and her position as regent - was involved. María was a chambermaid to her sister-in-law the Infanta Beatriz and When Leonor visited her sister at court, she met King Ferdinand I, who fell passionately in love with her.

He had a half-sister, his father's illegitimate daughter, called Juana Téllez de Meneses, who married, through Leonor, Juan Alfonso Pimentel, first count of Benavente, who supported the cause of the Castilian king during the crisis. succession and went into exile in Castile.

Leonor was also the niece of Juan Alfonso Tello, IV count of Barcelos and I count of Ourém, whose daughter, Leonor, was the wife of Pedro de Castro "el Tuerto", son of Álvaro Pérez de Castro, count of Arraiolos, brother of Inés de Castro, lord of Cadaval y Ferreira and Constable of Portugal. The Téllez de Meneses and the Castros were among the most powerful and influential families in the kingdoms of León, Castile and Portugal.

Queen of Portugal

Marriage with Fernando I

In 1365, Leonor had married Juan Lorenzo de Acuña (João Lourenço da Cunha), II lord of Pombeiro. She had a daughter who died in childhood and a son, Álvaro de Acuña, heir to her father's lordship. According to the chronicler Fernão Lopes, Leonor abandoned her son when she married King Ferdinand. She called him Álvaro de Sousa, passing him off as the son of Lope Díaz de Sousa and "a woman from his House called Elvira [...] to consider himself a virgin to the King, saying that her husband would never sleep with her." King Ferdinand later attempted to obtain the annulment of Eleanor's first marriage, citing ties of consanguinity, so as not to weaken the legitimacy of their daughter, Beatrice of Portugal. This was one of the arguments put forward by João das Regras in the courts of Coimbra in 1385, after King Ferdinand had died, to allege that the Infanta Beatriz was not a legitimate daughter because the papal dispensation for the first marriage had been obtained, a fact. that King Ferdinand hid, and that, therefore, Leonor was not free nor could she marry another. It was in those Cortes when, seeing that all the pretenders to the crown - the Infantes Castro and the Infante Juan, Master of Avis - were illegitimate, the dynastic line had been truncated and the people, through their representatives, could elect a new king.

Before marrying Leonor, several marriages had been discussed for the infant and later King Ferdinand I of Portugal. In 1358 he had negotiated a marriage with Beatriz, the first-born daughter of King Pedro I of Castile, a marriage that was never celebrated. In 1364, Ferdinand's marriage was arranged with the Infanta Juana, daughter of Pedro IV of Aragon, and years later, at the end of 1369, with another daughter of the same Aragonese king, the Infanta Leonor, which was also not celebrated. In 1371 King Ferdinand suffered a defeat when he invaded Galicia and one of the stipulations of the Treaty of Alcoutim was the marriage of the Lusitanian monarch to another Eleanor, this time Eleanor of Trastámara, daughter of Henry II of Castile. Any of these marriages would have been to the liking of the Portuguese people, although the latter marriage according to the stipulations in the Treaty of Alcoutim could imply "a threat to the sovereignty of the Portuguese kingdom." The king secretly married Eleanor in the second half of 1371, breaking his engagement with the Castilian infanta. In May 1372, the official wedding was celebrated, far from the court, in the small town of Leça do Balio. From the beginning, the infants Juan and Dionisio, sons of Inés de Castro, showed their rejection of this marriage, as well as by the "elevation of Leonor and her relatives."

King Ferdinand had given Eleanor in the letter of deposit of January 1372 several villas, all associated with the lordships of the queens of Portugal, among them Abrantes, Alenquer, Torres Vedras, Vila Viçosa, Almada, Sintra, Atouguia, Óbidos, Sacavém, Frielas and Unhos, which also included houses, ports, fishmongers, real rights and other assets, and in April of the same year he donated Aveiro. The king's generosity was also due to the fact that Eleanor had not brought a dowry for her marriage because "her family had not yet recovered financially from the loss of the first dowry," since legally the wife lost the dowry to of the abandoned husband. In 1374 Leonor exchanged Vila Viçosa for Vila Real de Trás-os-Montes and in 1376 she bought Pinhel.

From her marriage to the Portuguese monarch in 1373, Infanta Beatriz was born, wife of Juan I of Castile and lady of Villa Real (today Ciudad Real), Valladolid and other places as a dowry from her husband the king. According to the clauses of the agreement for this marriage, negotiated by Juan Fernández Andeiro, both kingdoms would remain separate, Leonor would be the regent and the son that Beatriz and Juan I had would inherit the throne, who would be educated in the kingdom of Portugal from He was three months old and would assume the throne when he turned fourteen.

Government and discontent

Leonor began to actively participate in the governance of the kingdom after her marriage. «Although there was popular discontent because the queen was absolute owner of the government and with her the Castilians (...) Portugal entered a process of prosperity (...) thanks to the promotion of agriculture, commerce and the creation of the fleet which, together with the superb walls of Lisbon, were the glories of that reign.

Part of the people's rejection was due to the positions that the queen offered to the empergilados, those loyal to King Pedro I of Castile, and not to his bastard brother, Enrique II. One of these empergilados was the Galician Juan Fernández de Andeiro. In 1369 during the first Fernandina War, Andeiro was one of the Petrists who received Ferdinand I in La Coruña when, after the death of Pedro I of Castile, the Lusitanian king, as great-grandson of Sancho IV of Castile, He proclaimed himself heir to the Castilian throne and invaded Galicia. In 1380, Andeiro was at the court of England as an emissary of Ferdinand I on a mission. He disembarked upon his return in Porto and then went to Estremoz to meet the Portuguese king. There he spent several days hidden in the tower, since, according to the clauses of the Treaty of Alcoutim signed in 1371 after the first Fernandina War, those who had supported the cause of the late Castilian king should be expelled from Portugal. It was during his stay in Estremoz, according to Fernão Lopes, that a romance arose between Leonor and Juan Fernández de Andeiro, although the sources used by the chronicler to reach such a conclusion are not known. Between the years of 1381 and 1383, Andeiro was one of the closest privates to Fernando and Leonor.

Regency crisis

In his will, granted in 1378, King Ferdinand removed his half-brothers, the infants Juan, Dinís and Beatriz - children of Inés de Castro and frequently called the Infantes Castro - from the line of succession, since he accused Dionisio and Beatriz of having conspired together with Diego López Pacheco to poison him. In September 1383, Leonor gave birth to a girl who died shortly after birth. It was rumored that due to King Ferdinand's long illness, she was not his daughter.. The following month, on October 22, the Portuguese king died, either due to tuberculosis or due to gradual poisoning. Queen Leonor did not go to the funeral, according to the chronicler Fernão Lopes, "saying that she felt bad, e nom podia lá hir" due to her recent birth, or according to others, "suspicious of the murmur of the people."

Leonor assumed the regency after being widowed, advised by the "imperegilados", on behalf of her daughter Beatriz, already married to the Castilian king. According to the marriage treaty of John I of Castile and the Portuguese infanta, death of the king of Portugal Leonor would be the ruler and governor of the Lusitanian kingdom.

There were two parties, one that supported the claims of King John I of Castile and the other, represented by the bourgeoisie of Lisbon, whose objective was to expel foreigners from the government so that only the Portuguese could govern. This party proposed the marriage of the widowed queen with the master of Avis, but Eleanor rejected this proposal. In Lisbon, the supporters of the master of Avis, who rejected Beatriz for fear of the loss of independence from Portugal, organized a conspiracy to murder Juan Fernández de Andeiro. The first two attempts failed. One of them was organized by Leonor's brother, Juan Alfonso Tello. The third and last attempt took place on December 6, 1383. The master of Avis stabbed him and once on the ground, Rui Pereira finished killing him. This occurred in the royal palace next to Eleanor's chamber. The master asked for forgiveness for what had happened, as well as to prevent his son-in-law, the Castilian king, from entering the kingdom of Portugal. Leonor demanded that Andeiro be buried with dignity but the maester refused. It was Leonor who was in charge of burying her friend Andeiro that night in the Church of San Martín.

In January 1384, she turned to her son-in-law, King John I, to help her avenge Andeiro's death.

While King Juan I was in La Guardia at the beginning of 1384, he received a message from Leonor telling him how the master of Avís in his presence had killed the count of Ourém (Fernández de Andeiro) and the Bishop of Lisbon and she had gone to Santarém and that she understood that the Lisbons did not want her or Beatriz, but that she had brothers and relatives very seized in Portugal.

López de Ayala

John I asked her to abdicate the regency, although some of the queen's advisors tried to dissuade her and warned her of the danger and illegality, since she could not renounce a regency that "had been attributed and sworn to in the courts" and that only the courts could authorize. Leonor remained firm in her intention and had the resignation deed drawn up. After the transfer of power in January 1384, John I began to call himself king of Portugal, merged the arms of both kingdoms and began to confirm royal diplomas without mentioning his wife, Queen Beatrice: «D. Joao, by grace of God, King of Castela, Leão, Portugal, Toledo and Galiza.

Shortly afterwards, Leonor fell out with her son-in-law, among other reasons, because the king did not appoint one of his privates as chief rabbi of the Jews of Castile. She asked those who supported her to defend the master of Avis and not the king of Castile: "... that you farieis bem de vos ir todos para o Mestre, pois é vosso natural e senhor que vos fará melhor." The queen also wrote to the cities that the Castilian king intended to occupy, so that they would not obey him. When the king marched to Coimbra, accompanied by the two queens, Gonzalo Téllez, Leonor's brother, as well as her uncle Gonzalo Méndez de Vasconcelos, were guarding the city. Leonor participated in a conspiracy to kill her son-in-law and, according to the chronicler Fernão Lopes, she was discovered in the presence of her daughter Beatriz, who confronted her mother saying: "Oo mother, Lady, in a year you would like to see me widowed and orphaned." and disinherited?"

Exile in Castile

Once Eleanor's conspiracies were discovered in March 1384 and she was "blamed for being an intriguer," John I "took the advice of those who said that the queen should be imprisoned and sent to Castile and ordered that she be taken to the monastery of Tordesillas." » where «já esteverom Rainhas vehuvas e filhas de Reis».

Like rainha D. Leonor foi levada pera Castella. Poz el-rei este feito em conselho como eseles com quem devia de fallar, dizendo: que lhe parecia razão prender a rainha sua sogra e to send pera Castella pera algum mosteiro, e não consentir que mais estivesse em Portugal, por as cousas que haviam ocurridodo (...) D'estas contrairas razões teve-se el-rei ao conselho primeiro, que era bem de prender e levar a Castella, e foi logo deliver to Diogo Lopes de Estunhega. E partiu el-rei de Coimbra e veiu-se a Santarem, e d'ahi encaminharam-se com la pera Castella, pera a porem no mosteior Torre de sihasl.

There, Leonor remained in the convent of Santa Clara, who never returned to Portugal until after the death of the Castilian king, and already in 1391 she was in Valladolid, the manor of her daughter Beatriz and the city where they had gone into exile. many Portuguese nobles after the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385. In the neighborhood of San Juan he bought some houses where he later had a convent founded, which his testamentary, Fernán López de la Serna, who was called Our Lady of Mercy of the Calzada. According to Juan Antolínez de Burgos, Leonor had an affair with Zoilo Íñiguez with whom she had a son, who died in infancy, and a daughter named María who later married a nephew of the queen's will, Fernán López de la Serna, also her tutor. Also, according to tradition, while in Valladolid she met her first husband but there is no evidence to confirm if there was any relationship between them.

Not far from Valladolid, in the city of Toro, was his daughter Beatriz. It is also not known if mother and daughter maintained any contact since Beatriz was hurt by her mother's conspiracy to assassinate her husband, King Juan I, and in turn, Leonor was sad because her daughter "did not support her when her husband, in bad faith, he dispossessed her of the regency", although when this happened, Beatriz was a girl of eleven years.

Death and burial

The year of his death is not known since there is no documentary evidence about the year of his death - probably in 1405 - nor is the place of his burial known with certainty. Joze Barbosa in his work Catalogo das Rainhas de Portugalsays that he died on April 27, 1386 in Tordesillas and that he was buried in a convent in Valladolid, without specifying which of them. However, his death had to be between 1390 and 1406. Leonor was still alive in 1390 when her son-in-law, King Juan I of Castile, at the courts held that year in Guadalajara, included her in the expenses of his house. Also the Castilian king, in his will granted in July 1385, entrusted his son with the future Henry III of Castile to always honor his wife, Beatriz, as well as his mother-in-law Leonor Téllez. When Henry made his will on December 4, 1406, he mentioned Beatrice but not her mother-in-law Eleanor.

The queen's wishes to be buried in the monastery of San Francisco in Santarém together with King Ferdinand were not fulfilled. Antolínez de Burgos states, without citing any source, that Queen Leonor was buried in the convent of Nuestra Señora de la Merced in Valladolid, where Leonor had moved in 1390, when upon the death of the Castilian monarch, Leonor left Tordesillas and settled in Valladolid.

During restoration work on the convent in 1626, a niche was found with two boxes, which supposedly contained the remains of the queen and her son, where a plaque was later placed, dated 1384, identifying the place as the of the burial of both. The date is wrong since the date of death of the queen was not known.

Ancestors

Predecessor: Beatriz de Castilla	Queen Consort of Portugal and Algarve 1372-1383	Successor: Felipa de Lancaster
Predecessor: Alfonso (in 1247)	Regent of Portugal and Algarve 1383-1384 Interregno in the name of his daughter Beatriz de Portugal and Juan I of Castile proclaimed kings, in war against Master Juan de Avis defender and regedor do Reino	Successor: Juan de Avís (in 1384)