D. Pedro and his Successors , 1540-1561.
Pedro I had been educated in Portugal, and is described by Cavazzi as a wise prince who had inherited all the virtues of his father, and was a great friend of the missionaries. His reign was apparently a short one,332 and he was succeeded by a cousin, D. Francisco, who only reigned two or three years, and left the kingdom to a son,333 D. Diogo.334 Duarte Lopez describes this prince as a man of noble mind, witty, intelligent, prudent in council, an upholder of the missionaries, and at the same time a great warrior who, in the course of a few years, conquered many of the neighbouring countries. His “wars” certainly did not enlarge the borders of his kingdom, and the only war we know of ended in disaster. The Portuguese at S. Salvador, jealous of the growing commercial importance of Luandu, had persuaded the King to send an army against Ngola Mbandi, they themselves furnishing an auxiliary corps. The Kongoese, in spite of this, were defeated on the river Dande (about 1556); and Ngola not only appealed to Portugal for protection, but also allied himself with the Jagas, with whose aid he invaded Kongo (in 1558).
Nor were the relations of D. Diogo with the missionaries quite as friendly as Lopez would lead us to believe. As early as 1549, D. Diogo complained of the overbearing conduct of the Jesuits who had arrived in that year in the company of D. João Baptista, the Bishop of S. Thomé;335 the priests, on their side, accused the King of having shown little respect to the bishop, and of having ordered them to be pulled out of their pulpits, when they denounced his vices and those of his people.336 The Jesuits may have been over-zealous in the performance of what they conceived to be their duty, and too prone to meddle in politics; but they seem to have led clean lives, which cannot be said of all of their clerical brethren. When D. Gaspar Cão,337 the Bishop of S. Thomé and Kongo, a man who took the duties of his office seriously, visited S. Salvador, these priests openly defied his authority. But after several of the recalcitrant priests had been deported to Portugal, whilst others had left voluntarily with such wealth as they had been able to amass, discipline was re-established.338