Pombal, SEBASTIAN JOSEPH DE CARVALHO E MELLO, MARQUIS OF, the greatest of Portuguese statesmen, was born 13th May 1699, at the castle of Soure, near Coimbra. In 1739 he was appointed ambassador in London, and six years later was sent to Vienna in a similar capacity. Just before Joseph I. ascended the throne of Portugal (1750), Pombal was appointed secretary for foreign affairs. Among his first acts was to re-attach to the crown a number of domains that had been unjustly alienated. When the great earthquake happened at Lisbon in 1755 Pombal displayed great calmness and fertile resource, so that next year the king made him prime-minister. He crushed a revolt instigated by the great nobles and the Jesuits, and in 1759 banished the latter from the kingdom. Then he abolished slavery in Portugal, set himself to establish good elementary schools, and published a new code of laws. Besides this, he effected the reorganisation of the army, the introduction of fresh colonists into the Portuguese settlements, the establishment of an East India Company, and another for Brazil. The tyranny of the Inquisition was broken. Agriculture, commerce, and the finances were all improved. In 1758 he had been made Count of Oeyras, and in 1770 he was created Marquis of Pombal. On the accession of Joseph's daughter, Maria I. (in 1777), who was under clerical influence, Pombal, who had himself been high-handed, if not despotic, especially towards the Church, was banished from court, while many of his institutions were abolished. He died at his castle of Pombal, 8th May 1782.
See Life by G. Moore (1819); John Smith, Memoirs of Pombal (2 vols. 1843); Carnota, Marquis Pombal (Eng. trans. 1871); and Carayon, Prisons du Marquis de Pombal—his diary (Paris, 1865).