The Entailed Estate of City Councilor Pedro Camacho de Villavicencio “the Rich” (1507). The patrimony of the wealthiest knight of his time from Jerez

Abstract

The laws enacted in the Cortes of Toro in 1505 regarding the institution of entail (mayorazgo), which permitted the foundation of such estates without a royal license, were instrumental in consolidating the family patrimony Castile’s urban elites. In Jerez de la Frontera, where the elite had been consolidating itself in a small group of families since the mid-fifteenth century, this mechanism of inheritance was barely applied before the sixteenth century. This situation caused serious damage in the estates of the city’s main knights due to the equal division of wealth among their many descendants. Analysis of the mayorazgo created by Pedro Camacho in 1507, the oldest of those preserved and the first governed by the laws of Toro, is of great importance to understanding the origins of this institution. Beyond this link, the immense patrimony regulated proves the most substantial held by any knight of Jérez at the time.