DON, of Portugal, duke of Coimbra, was the fourth child and second surviving son of King John of Portugal, and was born March the 4th 1394. His father gave him an excellent education, which joined to strong natural abilities and much application, rendered him one of the most accomplished princes of his time. He was not only very learned himself, but a great lover of learning, and a great patron of learned men. It was chiefly with a view to improve his knowledge that he spent four years in travelling through different countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, with a train suitable to his quality; of which travels there is a relation still extant, but so loaded with fabulous circumstances, that it wounds the reputation it was designed to raise. At his return he espoused Isabella, daughter to the count of Urgel, and grand-daughter to Don Pedro, the fourth king of Portugal, which was esteemed a very great advancement of his fortune. He was elected into the most noble order of the Garter, April 22, 1417, in the fifth year of the reign of his cousin Henry V., grandson of John of Gaunt, by the father's side, as our duke of Coimbra was by the mother. In 1440 he was declared regent during the minority of his cousin Don Alonso V., son of King Edward, who died by the plague. He found some difficulty at first in the discharge of his office, both from the queen-mother and others. But, upon the whole, his administration was so mild and so just, that the magistrates and people of Lisbon concurred in demanding his leave to erect a statue to him. The re- gent thanked them, said he should be unwilling to see a work of their's demolished; and that he was sufficiently rewarded by this public testimony of their affections.

The queen dowager wished to raise disturbances in Portugal by aiming to recover the regency to herself; but the steadiness of the regent's administration, the attachment of the best part of the nobility to him, and his enjoying, in so absolute a degree, the confidence of the people, not only secured the interior tranquillity of the state, but raised the credit likewise of the crown of Portugal to a very great height in the sentiments of its neighbours: for, in the course of his regency, he had made it his continual study to pursue the public good; to ease the people in general, and the inhabitants of Lisbon in particular, of several impositions; to maintain the laws in their full vigour; to give the king an excellent education; and if that had been at all practicable, to diffuse a perfect unanimity through the court, by assuaging the malice and envy of his enemies. The king when he came of age, and the cortes or parliament, expressed their entire satisfaction with the regent's administration; and all parties entirely approved of the king's marriage with Donna Isabella, the regent's daughter, which was celebrated in 1446. The enmity of his enemies, however, was not in the least abated by the regent's being out of office. They still persecuted him with their unjust calumnies, and unfortunately made the king hearken to their falsehoods. The unfortunate duke, when ordered to appear before the king, was advised to take with him an escort of horse and foot. In his passage he was proclaimed a rebel, and quickly after he was surrounded by the king's troops. Soon after he was attacked, and in the heat of action he was killed: nor was the envy of his enemies even then satisfied; his body was forbid burial; and was at length taken away privately by the peasants. His virtue, however hated in courts, was adored by the uncorrupt part of his countrymen. At length, though, by an inspection of his papers, the king saw, when it was too late, the injustice that had been done the man who had behaved so well in so high and difficult an office; and whose papers only discovered signs of further benefit to the king and his dominions. In consequence of these discoveries, the duke's adherents were declared loyal subjects, all prosecutions were ordered to cease, and the king desired the body of Coimbra to be transported with great pomp from the castle of Abrantes to the monastery of Batalha; where it was interred in the tomb which he had caused to be erected for himself. The royal name of Don Pedro occurs often in the history of Portugal, and many who bore the name were singularly distinguished either for great abilities, or external splendour. See PORTUGAL.