Implementation of the Portuguese edict

The Portuguese edict was enforced: the Jews gathered at the ports for embarkation, including that of Porto, were forcibly baptized instead of being allowed to leave.

King Manuel I had signed an expulsion edict to obtain the hand of a Spanish infanta, but he did not wish to lose the population that sustained his commerce; he therefore had the departing Jews summoned to the ports, then detained them and had them baptized en masse, first taking away their children. From that point on, there were no more Jews in Portugal, but rather New Christians whose descendants would be pursued for two and a half centuries by the Holy Office, and some of whom would make their way to Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London to return to Judaism.