Benin, 1600–1660

In 1600 Ehengbuda had ruled Benin since about 1578, by the traditional dating. His father Orhogbua had planted a war camp on Lagos Island, the place the Edo called Eko, and Ehengbuda held the Yoruba rulers to the west as tributaries. His wars with Oyo ended in a treaty that fixed the frontier at Otun, in Ekiti. Benin remembers him as the last of its warrior kings.

About 1606 Ehengbuda went to inspect his father's war camp at Lagos. On the way home by canoe a storm overturned the royal boat, and the king drowned with his chiefs and warriors; their bodies were never found. Tradition says that after his death no Oba was to lead an army again, and command passed to the Iyase. His only son, Odogbo, was the heir.

About 1603 a Dutch general sent Ulsheimer, a German surgeon in Dutch service, to Benin's Lagos river in command of an armed sloop. A walled town of the king's had rebelled, and Benin's army had no guns to break its gate. Ehengbuda, who stayed in Benin City, had his agents ask the Dutch for theirs, and twelve men hauled two cannon to the town.

After half a day of firing the gate gave way. The Benin army stormed in, killed the men, carried off the women and children and burned the town, whose name Ulsheimer did not record. Ehengbuda paid the Dutch five lasts of pepper. Even then, Ulsheimer wrote, the king showed himself to his people only once a year.

The army that took the town was led by a Benin general; the king never left his city. Ben-Amos and Thornton read Ulsheimer's account, with a Dutch report of 1602 that mentions a military captain, as a sign that war was already passing from the Oba to his chiefs. Ehengbuda's own battles with Oyo had been led by his Iyase, Ekpennede.

Osogboye, heir to the throne of Owo, had been sent to Benin City to be educated and served Ehengbuda for years as emada, a state sword-bearer. When the ruler of Owo died, in 1600 by Owo's king-list, he left to claim the throne without the Oba's leave. Ehengbuda sent messengers to fetch him back; Osogboye feigned a grave illness, and the Oba let him be crowned.

A year later Osogboye, recovered, sent gifts to Benin asking the Oba to approve him as Olowo and promising to keep paying tribute, and Ehengbuda granted it. Owo kept its own king and paid Benin; the king-list gives Osogboye a reign to 1648. The story is Egharevba's and Akomolafe's, undated within Ehengbuda's reign.

Odogbo had been doubted since boyhood: some said he looked like a girl, others that he had been born female. By Egharevba's tradition Ehengbuda made him walk naked from Uselu into the city, with attendants later called ifieto, to show he was a man. He succeeded about 1606 (Talbot says about 1610) as Oba Ohuan, with his father's Iyase still commanding the army.

One recorded tradition names Ohuan's mother as Ohogha, from the village of Ayen. An Oba's mother was normally made Iyoba, queen mother, about three years into his reign and sent to her palace at Uselu. Egharevba says Ohuan did not send his mother there; the same tradition says she went home to Ayen with gifts, blamed for not bearing a proper male heir.

When Ogina's faction took over the government, Ohuan left the city for the village of Evbohuan. There he spent months gathering men, then marched back, defeated Ogina and retook his capital; later traditions credit his recovery to magic. The rest of his long reign passed in peace, and Egharevba credits him with founding towns and villages. He died, about 1641, with no son and no brother.

Ogina, said to come from Okogo near the capital, was the Iyase Ehengbuda had appointed, and under Ohuan he became the first Iyase to hold the whole command of Benin's army. Egharevba says he had betrayed Ehengbuda with one of his wives; a tradition collected by Roese and Bondarenko names her as Ohogha, placed in Ogina's care while she was pregnant.

About three years after the accession, by Osadolor's dating (Egharevba puts it at the accession itself), Ogina turned against the young king. Other chiefs went over to him, and the council began to meet at his house rather than at the palace. Osadolor reads the struggle as a continuation of Ehengbuda's own quarrel with his earlier Iyase, Ekpennede.

Beaten by Ohuan's returning army, Ogina was banished to Okogo, the village he came from, and died there. Egharevba and the traditions Roese and Bondarenko collected say he was afterwards worshipped as a deity.

Osadolor writes that the Obas named no further Iyase for the rest of the century, so that no chief could again become a rival in arms. Dapper's material from the 1640s and an Iyase leading a rising about 1689 suggest the seat stood empty for decades rather than the whole century. Other town chiefs took non-command war duties, and the Ezomo led the army in practice.

With Ohuan's line ended, the throne began passing among separate branches of the royal family, and the senior chiefs had a hand in each choice. The new Oba, Ahenzae, was sixteen; Egharevba makes him a great-grandson of Orhogbua, Talbot only a relative. Egharevba dates his reign from about 1641 to about 1661, Talbot from about 1630 to 1650. A young king meant powerful courtiers.

The Osuan was one of two priests of the royal cult, with the Osa, appointed since Ewuare's time; at the great rites they held up the Oba's hands. Egharevba says the treasures of earlier kings were squandered in Ahenzae's youth, the royal coral beads lost at dice to the Osuan. Ben-Amos and Thornton record a tradition that Ahenzae himself gambled them away.

In August 1651 the king, Ahenzae by Egharevba's dates, received the Spanish friars once they had learned the court's ceremonies. No one had read him the Pope's letter left with his official; he handed it back, and it was put into Portuguese and then into Edo. He offered to lodge the friars in the palace, and at a second audience promised land for a church and interpreters. Neither promise was kept.

When the chief minister twice ordered the friars back to Ughoton in the king's name, the king's brother-in-law told them the order was the minister's own and the king knew nothing of it, so they stayed. The friars' reports record what he said, not whether it was true. He later received the friars left in the city and helped win them leave to go.

Eson, Ahenzae's mother, had been made Iyoba, the queen mother, about 1643 by Fagg's dating. She received the friars' presents at the second audience and showed them affection. When the three friars left in the city came to her by night, short of food and asking leave to rejoin their companions, she and the king's brother-in-law gave them food and an order letting them go.

Two brothers of Agbor's royal house came separately to Benin with large followings, each claiming the throne. Benin's right to judge rested on a tradition that Agbor's first ruler had been sent from Benin. Ahenzae heard them in council, recognised one as heir, installed him as Obi Eze and sent him home with an escort. The story is Egharevba's and is undated within the reign.

On his chiefs' advice, to prevent a civil war in Agbor, Ahenzae kept the losing brother in Benin and placed him with Chief Ihama of Idumwihogbe, with whom he lived for several years. When the prince died without children, Ahenzae ordered that his goods and enslaved dependants pass to Ihama, whose wealth and standing grew with them.

The friars met Ahenzae's chief minister, whom they called the Beedor Major, the overseer. No foreigner could speak to the king without him standing by as a second interpreter, and their narrative calls him an old official who kept the king ill-informed and had him show himself only once a year. The friars never name him; one historian takes him for the Uwangue, head of the palace society Iwebo.

After the second audience he refused every further meeting and twice ordered the friars back to Ughoton in the king's name. When Ángel sent the king a clock and offered to show him how to wind it, the minister returned it, saying the king did not want it. The friars blamed his anger at a meagre present; Ryder thinks politics and religion weighed more.

When Ángel and Felipe appeared in the innermost court during the festival, the Beedor Major sent word that they must leave, then came in person to order them out. After their first words palace servants threw them out and shut the doors. That evening ten men came from the palace with orders to leave the city, and the next day the two were led away under guard.

With the prefect, Ángel, held by the Dutch at Elmina, leadership passed to José de Xijona. The others reached Ughoton, Benin's river port, in June 1651, all sick. José went on to the capital with the letters of the Pope and of Propaganda Fide. A court official took them and later said the king had read them and need not see him. After about a month José went back to Ughoton.

Released after some forty days, Ángel reached Ughoton to find the friars dying: José, Eugenio of Flanders and Tomás de Huesca, who had been held with him at Elmina, died within days of each other. Leaving the sick in two companions' care, he went on with Felipe de Híjar and entered Benin City on 10 August 1651. After the first audience he sent for the three left behind.

Blocked by the chief minister, Ángel tried every route: the king's mother, his brother-in-law, other officials, the gift of a clock. A chief warned that anyone who taught the friars a word of Edo would be killed, and those who had been helping them fell away. Short of food and money, the friars lived on what English traders gave them, including a barrel of cowries.

After months of waiting Ángel and Felipe went in with the crowd of chiefs to a palace festival at which five men were to be sacrificed; an old man they did not know guided them through the courtyards. They stepped out before the king and his chiefs and denounced the sacrifice. Ryder dates it May 1652; Felipe says the first day of Lent; Kenny gives Lent 1653.

Thrown out, the two were held four days in a grove guarded by five tame leopards, with little to eat, then taken to Ughoton and kept there for weeks. After Pentecost the mission moved to Arbo, where two Dutch and two English traders fed them for five months, and an English ship took them to Príncipe. Felipe's reports of 1654 preserve the story.

Bartolomé de Viana, a priest, had come up from Ughoton with two lay brothers when Ángel sent for them. When Ángel and Felipe were taken away, the three stayed in the capital, short of food. They went by night to the king's mother and brother-in-law, and at the end of Lent were taken to Ughoton with the mission's baggage. He returned to Spain with Felipe.

Alonso de Tolosa, a lay brother, wrote the account of the night visits: the friars asked the king's mother and brother-in-law for leave to go and a boat to Arbo, where Dutch and English traders could help them. The two gave them food for a few days and an order letting them go. On the voyage home he stayed at Cape Verde to nurse the sick Ángel.

Gaspar de Sos, a lay brother of the Capuchin province of Aragon, shared the appeals to the king's family and the move to Ughoton. Reunited, the mission went on to Arbo and then by English ship to Príncipe, São Tomé and Cape Verde. No act of his own is recorded beyond that; he sailed on to Lisbon with Felipe and Bartolomé.