Catherine of Braganza
1638 – 1705 · Generation XXVII · House of Stuart
Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705). Married Charles II Stuart in 1662. Credited with making tea fashionable at the English court. A daughter of John IV, first Braganza king of Portugal, she was raised in near-seclusion, and her marriage treaty of 1661 was sweetened by a dowry that included Tangier, Bombay and two million crowns. Her Catholicism barred her from a Church of England coronation, and she was made to accept Charles’s mistress Barbara Palmer as a Lady of the Bedchamber. Three miscarriages left her without an heir, yet Charles refused advice to divorce her. During the Popish Plot of 1678 Titus Oates accused her of scheming to poison the king, but Charles stood by her and the Lords declined to impeach her. Widowed in 1685, she lived on at Somerset House until 1692, then returned to Portugal, where she supported the Methuen Treaty and twice acted as regent for her brother Peter II. She died at Lisbon’s Bemposta Palace in 1705.
Place in the family
- Catherine of Braganza married King Charles II, a 4× great-nephew of King Henry VIII.
One of 17 people of House of Stuart (from 1371) in this archive. Scotland’s royal house for three centuries before James VI inherited England and wore both crowns.
Partners
- Married King Charles II (1630 – 1685) in 1662
Life
- 1638 — Born
- 1662 — Married Charles II Stuart
- 1705 — Died