ANTONIO , claimant of the throne of Portugal, known as the Prior of Crato, was a grandson of King Emanuel the Great and son of Luis, duke of Beja, by a Jewess, Yolande Gomez. On the death of King John III. (1557) he claimed the Portuguese throne, to which Philip II. of Spain was also a claimant. He obtained some support from France and England for political reasons, but the small force which he raised in Portugal was easily routed by the duke of Alva at Alcantara (Aug. 25 158o).
Antonio fled to France, where Catherine de' Medici, who re garded him as a useful instrument against Philip II., connived at the fitting out of a fleet manned by Portuguese exiles and English and French adventurers. This fleet was defeated by the Spanish admiral Santa Cruz (July 27 1582) . Driven from France by the attention of Philip II.'s agents, Antonio found refuge in England. In 1589, the year after the Armada, an English expedi tion under Drake and Norris, financed partly by Elizabeth and partly by private persons, set out to invade Portugal and estab lish Antonio as king. The expedition was a disastrous failure, costing thousands of lives. Antonio spent the rest of his life in exile, dying in Paris Aug. 26 1595. He was the author of a cento of the Psalms, Psalmi Confessionales (Paris, 1592), which was translated into English under the title of The Royal Penitent by Francis Chamberleyn (London, 1659), and into German as Heilige Betrachtungen (Marburg, is frequently mentioned in the French, English and Spanish State papers of the time. A life of him, attributed to Gomes Vasconcellos de Figueredo, was published in a French trans lation by Mme. de Sainctonge at Amsterdam (1696) . A modern account of him, Un pretendant portugais an XVIe siecle, by E. Fournier (Paris, 1852), is based on authentic sources. See also Dom Antonio Prior de Crato—notas de bibliographia, by J. de Aranjo (Lisbon, 1897).