Castro, Inez de, a lady of noble birth, secretly married to Pedro, son of Alphonso IV., King of Portugal, after the death of his wife Constantia (1435). The old King Alphonso, fearful that this marriage would injure the interests of his grandson Ferdinand, resolved to put Inez to death. Three noblemen, Diego Lopez Pacheco, Pedro Coelho, and Alvarez Gonsalvez, were his counsellors, and carried it out themselves by stabbing Inez within the convent where she lived. Two years after King Alphonso died, and Pedro, inducing the King of Castline to give up to him two of the murderers, who had taken refuge there (the third, Diego Lopez, managed to escape), put them to death with cruel tortures. The king then made public declarations of the marriage that had taken place between him and the deceased Inez; and had her corpse disinterred and placed on a throne, adorned with the diadem and royal robes, to receive the homage of the nobility. The body was then buried with honors. The story of Inez is one of the finest episodes in Camoens's "Lusiad."


Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.