Nobility, status and property: property entailment in the island of São Miguel, Azores (16th-18th centuries)

Abstract

In the Azores, after the early years of settlement, a “household system” began to develop amongst local nobilities. This system was reinforced since the late 15th century by the process of property entailment. In the island of São Miguel, the most important noble houses, among which stood out several from the city of Ponta Delgada, benefit from an accumulation of entailed property, as a result of endogamous and blood marital alliances and the extinction of some masculine lineages. In this text we provide elements regarding the entailment administration in São Miguel and we comment on some eighteenth-century model cases that serve as an introduction to the complexity of entailment administration and to the juridical conflicts regarding entailed property. However, inspite of the criticism and the juridical land disputes, entailed property would survive political changes in Portugal to be legally extint only in 1863.