Bastardy, aristocracy and military orders in modern Castile: the Fajardo lineage

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the Fajardo lineage during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This study of the aristocratic household of the Vélez earls begins with a discussion of their late-fourteenth-century ascent to the status of ‘adelantados’ of the Kingdom of Murcia. Both prestige inherited from noble ancestors and individual merits or ‘noble individualism’ played a decisive role in the promotion of this family at court and the entry of its members into military orders. This lineage demonstrated its nobility and purity of blood thanks to the favourable testimony of a loyal client-network. Having examined the power and influence of its dominant core, this paper goes on to focus on various illegitimate branches of this lineage, which were quickly legitimated and raised into the upper strata of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Castilian society. With the support and approval of their legitimate relatives, several of the illegitimate descendants of the Fajardo family gained access to military orders, attained important offices, and even married into legitimate branches of the lineage, thus securing a noble title for their descendants. This study of the Vélez household thus approaches a little-known subject by examining the way in which Spanish aristocratic families protected their illegitimate offspring, and the speed with which they covered up their ignominious origins.