A 31 de Dezembro de 1705 falecia no Palácio da Bemposta, em Lisboa (hoje Academia Militar, à Estefânia), D. Catarina de Bragança, rainha viúva de Inglaterra, regressada a Portugal em 1693.
Lido aqui:
Considerada das pessoas mais ricas no país, do seu
Inventário constam “um relógio de ouro para algibeira de cada parte tem seu
retrato de pintura he mostrador e há nelle vinte e oio diamantes rosas quatorze
por banda todos engastados em prata avaliado em hum conto e duzentos mil réis.
“E outro relógio também de algibeira mostrador e de horas
com campainha tem a caixa por fora lavrada de transparente chapa de mostrador
cadea de rozinhas tudo de ouro dentro de outra caixa de tartaruga tauxiada do
mesmo, o jogo dentro e chaves de latão obra da fabrica nova avaliado em cento e
vinte mil réis.
“E outro relógio de algibeira mostrador que lhe falta hum
vidro tem a caxa e cadea de prata, jogo e chaves de latão avaliado em três mil
réis. […]
“E huma ampulheta guarnecida de filigrana de prata e hum
estojinho redondo de prata dourada guarnecido de filigrana branca avaliado tudo
em seis mil réis. […]
“E hum relógio quadrado para sima do bofete que se disse ser
de horas quartos e repetição a caixa he de evano quadrado com a guarnição de
prata lavrada e transparente que se seguem, a saber pella face de diante e de
detrás, e quatro pees redondos lavrados quatro maçanetas da mesma obra huma
chapa que o cobre pella parte de sima, que tem huma cifra com coroa e dois
meninos, e pella parte de diante na face de diante há quatro serafins também de
prata, e só a fabrica e mais fabrica do engenho são de metal, e nas quatro
fazes da caixa há quatro vidros cristalinos.
“E outro relogio para sima do bofete que se disse ser de
horas e de quartos metido em huma caixa de pao evano qudrada com quatro vidros
e em sima he a argola de bronze e deste metal he a chave está metido em hum
caixãozinho de bordo.
“E outro rellogio pera cima do bofete que também se disse
ser de horas e de quartos he de huma face somente e metido em uma caixa de
pereiro tinto.
“E hum relogio de sol aberto em huma chapa de bronze
redonda, tem de diâmetro três palmos e he geral para muito meridianos do Mundo.
[…]
“E um relogio chamado Borometre para pronosticar os tempos
com cano de vidro com azougue he de seis palmos de comprido, e tem huma taboa
em que se encosta”.
Trata-se de uma lista de objetos medidores de tempo
valiosos, mas mais pela sua qualidade de jóias do que pelo seu valor relojoeiro
intrínseco. Nela não figuram, por exemplo, as chamadas complicações (funções do
mecanismo que vão para além de marcar horas, minutos e segundos). Não há fases
de lua, calendários perpétuos ou outras funções astronómicas. Nem sequer
funções sonoras que vão para além do assinalar de horas, meias horas e quartos,
como sejam os carrilhões ou as repetições minutos (funções a pedido, contra as
anteriores, que são à passagem dos ponteiros).
No diário de um cronista da época, Samuel Pepys, numa
entrada referente a 24 de Junho de 1664, lê-se: “Depois do jantar, para
Whitehall, aí encontrei-me com mr. Pierce e ele mostrou-me o quarto de cama e
de vestir da rainha (Catarina de Bragança) onde só tinha algumas pinturas
religiosas e livros de devoção. À cabeceira da cama tinha uma pia de água benta
e, ao lado, um relógio cuja lamparina ardia e no qual ela podia ver as horas
durante a noite.”
Um relógio noturno (com vela no interior, a iluminar o
mostrador), que teria pertencido a Catarina de Bragança, e adquirido em leilão
no estrangeiro, faz hoje parte da coleção de relojoaria da Casa-Museu Medeirose Almeida, em Lisboa, a mais valiosa do país. É assinado Edward East. Foi
adquirido em Londres, em 1972, num leilão da Christie’s.
Relojoeiro inglês nascido cerca de 1602, faleceu cerca de 1697. Foi fundador, em 1632, da Clockmaker’s Company, tendo sido mestre e relojoeiro dos reis Carlos I e Carlos II. Fez vários tipos de relógios, de grande qualidade, entre eles relógios nocturnos, característicos pelos seus mostradores. O filho, James East, foi relojoeiro de Catarina de Bragança, de 1662 a 1688.
Os relógios noturnos terão sido uma invenção italiana,
adotada pelos ingleses. São poucos os exemplares chegados à atualidade, pois o
facto de serem iluminados no interior por candeias de azeite fazia que a
madeira das caixas secasse, sendo fácil incendiarem-se.
Ocasião para recordar o artigo de Mário Costa na revista Olisipo de Janeiro de 1956 sobre as festividades, em Lisboa e Londres, por ocasião do seu casamento.
Friday 24
June 1664
Up and out
with Captain Witham in several places again to look for oats for Tangier, and
among other places to the City granarys, where it seems every company have
their granary and obliged to keep such a quantity of corne always there or at a
time of scarcity to issue so much at so much a bushell: and a fine thing it is
to see their stores of all sorts, for piles for the bridge, and for pipes, a
thing I never saw before.1
Thence to
the office, and there busy all the morning. At noon to my uncle Wight’s, and
there dined, my wife being there all the morning. After dinner to White Hall;
and there met with Mr. Pierce, and he showed me the Queene’s bed-chamber, and
her closett, where she had nothing but some pretty pious pictures, and books of
devotion; and her holy water at her head as she sleeps, with her clock by her
bed-side, wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any
time. Thence with him to the Parke, and there met the Queene coming from
Chappell, with her Mayds of Honour, all in silver-lace gowns again: which is
new to me, and that which I did not think would have been brought up again.
Além disso,
Queen
Catherine in the Diary
Throughout
the Diary, Queen Catherine is someone that Sam hears of, perhaps sees from afar
on occasion, but doesn’t directly interact with. Regardless of his distance
from Catherine, his observations and reports of the Court gossip surrounding
the Queen and the Court of Charles II have provided priceless insight into her
life, and the world in which she lived. Sam first writes of Catherine’s
contemplated arrival when he hears privately from Lord Sandwich that he has
been made an Embassador by King Charles II in order to bring the Queen over
from Portugal. Sam records assorted details of her life ranging from her 17
October 1661 pre-arrival dietary change in status afforded to her in her
homeland, “now that the Infanta is become our Queen, she is come to have a
whole hen or goose to her table, which is not ordinary” ; excitement over her
arrival “At night, all the bells of the town rung, and bonfires made for the
joy of the Queen’s arrival, who came and landed at Portsmouth last night”; the
horribly upsetting Bedchamber Incident and his first actual sight of Catherine
when Mr. Pierce took me into Somersett House and there carried me into the
Queen-Mother’s presence-chamber, where she was with our own Queen sitting on
her left hand (whom I did never see before); and though she be not very
charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look, which is pleasing…The
King and Queen were very merry; and he would have made the Queen-Mother believe
that his Queen was with child, and said that she said so. And the young Queen
answered, “You lye;” which was the first English word that I ever heard her say
which made the King good sport; and he would have taught her to say in English,
“Confess and be hanged.” The company being gone I walked home with great
content as I can be in for seeing the greatest rarity…
Sam also
writes, with mixed feelings, of the neglect that Catherine felt living with a
Libertine husband whose ongoing involvement with his mistress Lady Castlemaine
and desire for the lovely Frances Stuart, were a sad and constant struggle for
Catherine.
Sam expresses the Court’s hopes for Catherine to fulfill her role and bring forth a royal heir on both 9 Oct 1662 and again on 7 June 1663 when he shares the gossip that “Mrs. Turner, who is often at Court, do tell me to-day that for certain the Queen hath much changed her humour, and is become very pleasant and sociable as any; and they say is with child, or believed to be so.” After these fruitless attempts to carry a child, Sam notes the Queens’ visit to Tunbridge to take the waters. Sam details the weeks of harrowing illness that the Queen endured in October 1663, which nearly killed her. His writing records the early years of a marriage marred with a husband’s infidelity and neglect and a young Queen’s hopes at fulfilling her role in spite of the Court around her.
Outside of the Diary
Sam’s Diary
offers rich insights into the life of this very devout, sadly neglected, yet
dignified woman, and offers substance to the words of Lillias Campbell
Davidson, Queen Catherine’s biographer who explains in the preface to
Catherine’s biography that:
The court of the second Charles of England fluttered with dazzling and frivolous beauties. They obscured the softer light of other women who boasted only such trite and gentle virtues as womanliness, the fear of God, modesty, honesty and truth. Queen Catherine’s contemporaries detested her for her creed and her piety, for her uselessness as a political tool, for her bitter misfortune of childlessness, for the stumbling block that she innocently formed to their greed and ambition. They have left her portrait to posterity painted in malignant colours. They drew her hideous, repulsive fool, too dull to be wicked, to narrow and prudish to have a heart. It is time that the blots should be sponged from the picture. Catherine lived in her husband’s court as Lot lived in Sodom. She did justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with her God in the midst of a seething corruption and iniquity only equaled, perhaps, in the history of Imperial Rome. She loved righteousness and her fellows, and, above all, the one man who won her heart on the day of her marriage, and kept it till the grave shut over her. She was one of the best and purest women who ever shared the throne of England. She had equal qualities of head and heart, and both were beyond the average. It has been a pleasant and wholesome labor to trace her blameless life, and to unfold the wrappings that have long hidden the character refined and ennobled by much unnecessary suffering.
Surprisingly,
and somewhat sad are the two places that Sam’s life and that of the Queens’
overlapped long after he ceased to write in his Diary. First, both Sam and
Queen Catherine became targets of the Popish Plots, although the charges were
unrelated to each other. Luckily for both, after each experienced a frightening
set-up and horrifying scrutiny, they each emerged innocent of any of the false
charges filed against them. By far, the most touching link between the two will
take place as both have moved on in years and have poignantly felt the
bittersweet lessons that life and maturity have afforded them . Upon her return
to Lisbon many years after the death of her husband, Catherine’s biographer
Lillias Campbell Davidson (p 481), tells us that:
Those who
had esteemed her and loved her in the country she had left, did not now forget
her. In 1700 Pepys wrote to his nephew in Portugal to wait on Lady Tuke, and if
the honour of kissing the hand of the Queen-Dowager were offered him, to be
sure to present to that royal lady, whom Pepys held in great honour, his
profoundest duty.
Perhaps the greatest honour that Sam afforded Catherine was to present her to history, in her humanness, within the pages of his Diary. For more comments and interesting discussion about Queen Catherine please refer to the annotations below (where some of the links set forth herein have been drawn from).
Outro inglês contemporâneo de Catarina de Bragança se lhe
referiu. John Evelyn (1620 - 1706) foi escritor e cortesão. Membro fundador da
Royal Society, o seu diário abrangeu o período de vida adulta, de 1640, quando
era estudante, a 1706, ano em que morreu.
Referências a Portugal e a Catarina de Bragança no seu
diário:
8th May,
1661. His Majesty rode in state, with his imperial crown on, and all the peers
in their robes, in great pomp to the Parliament now newly chosen (the old one
being dissolved); and, that evening, declared in council his intention to marry
the Infanta of Portugal.
27th June,
1661. I saw the Portugal ambassador at dinner with his Majesty in state, where
was excellent music.
28th
November, 1661. I dined at Chiffinch's house-warming, in St. James's Park; he
was his Majesty's closet-keeper, and had his new house full of good pictures,
etc. There dined with us Russell, Popish Bishop of Cape Verd, who was sent out
to negotiate his Majesty's match with the Infanta of Portugal, after the
Ambassador was returned.
1st
December, 1661. I took leave of my Lord Peterborough, going now to Tangier,
which was to be delivered to the English on the match with Portugal.
9th June,
1662. I heard the Queen's Portugal music, consisting of pipes, harps, and very
ill voices.
HAMPTON
COURT
Hampton Court is as noble and uniform a pile, and as capacious as any Gothic architecture can have made it. There is an incomparable furniture in it, especially hangings designed by Raphael, very rich with gold; also many rare pictures, especially the Cæsarean Triumphs of[Pg 359] Andrea Mantegna, formerly the Duke of Mantua's; of the tapestries, I believe the world can show nothing nobler of the kind than the stories of Abraham and Tobit. The gallery of horns is very particular for the vast beams of stags, elks, antelopes, etc. The Queen's bed was an embroidery of silver on crimson velvet, and cost £8,000, being a present made by the States of Holland when his Majesty returned, and had formerly been given by them to our King's sister, the Princess of Orange, and, being bought of her again, was now presented to the King. The great looking-glass and toilet, of beaten and massive gold, was given by the Queen-Mother. The Queen brought over with her from Portugal such Indian cabinets as had never before been seen here. The great hall is a most magnificent room. The chapel roof excellently fretted and gilt. I was also curious to visit the wardrobe and tents, and other furniture of state. The park, formerly a flat and naked piece of ground, now planted with sweet rows of lime trees; and the canal for water now near perfected; also the air-park. In the garden is a rich and noble fountain, with Sirens, statues, etc., cast in copper, by Fanelli; but no plenty of water. The cradle-work of horn beam in the garden is, for the perplexed twining of the trees, very observable. There is a parterre which they call Paradise, in which is a pretty banqueting-house set over a cave, or cellar. All these gardens might be exceedingly improved, as being too narrow for such a palace.
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