Juan de Tovar

Juan de Tovar or Juan Fernández de Tovar, later known as Martín Fernández de Tovar (- 1500 ), was a Castilian nobleman, belonging to the House of Tovar, Lord of the villages of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena, and Chief-guard to King Henry IV of Castile.

After the monarch's death, he did not recognize the king's half-sister, Princess Isabella, as sovereign, thus joining the party of the Marquis of Vilhena, Juan Pacheco, and the Archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, in support of the king's alleged daughter, Joanna la Beltraneja, and her husband Afonso V, King of Portugal. For this reason, Tovar had the lordships of Cevico and Caracena confiscated in 1489 by the Catholic Monarchs, who sentenced him to death, and fled to France the following year.

In Portugal, he was known by the name Martim Fernandes de Tovar, for having aligned himself with King Afonso V against the Catholic Monarchs and in favour of Joanna la Beltraneja. He was also known as the father of the navigator Sancho de Tovar and as the head of the Tovar family in the country.

Family Tovar was born under the name Juan, son of Sancho Fernández de Tovar, Lord of Cevico, and Chief-guard to John II of Castile, a cadet branch of the House of Tovar. His father, Sancho de Tovar, is documented as early as 1432 in possession of the Lordship of Cevico. . In 1449, Sancho de Tovar, "son of Juan de Tovar", renounced to the Count of Urueña, Juan Téllez-Girón, all the rights he had in the majorat of the House of Tovar. Juan de Tovar, his paternal grandfather, was also Lord of the towns of Cevico and Caracena, and Chief-guard to John II of Castile. He married Catarina Manuel, daughter of Pedro Manuel (Rico-Homem and Lord of the towns of Montealegre and Meneses) and Juana Manrique. According to Salazar y Castro, Juan de Tovar was also the paternal great-grandson of Sancho de Tovar, Lord of Cevico and Keeper of the Kingdom, and Teresa de Toledo.

In 1460, Juan de Tovar married Leonor de Vilhena, receiving from his future wife a dowry of 700 thousand maravedis, promising her, in return, 200 thousand maravedis.

Lord of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena View of Cevico de la Torre, in the Province of Palencia, Castile and León. In 1465, Tovar was already Lord of the villages of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena, as is attested on April 2 of that year, when Henry IV of Castile grants Juan Fernández de Tovar, Lord of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena, son and successor of Sancho de Tovar (already deceased), 40,000 maravedis per year of tenace to maintain 20 spears in his service.

Although he only documented himself in possession of the lordship in 1465, Juan was already involved in the administration of the lordship before that date. In 1460, he delivered in perpetual census the mill of Rebollosa de Pedro to the municipalities of Manzanares, Sabero and Termantia, places belonging to the jurisdiction of Caracena. The condition for this was that the inhabitants pay Tovar 75 bushels of bread, namely: 50 of wheat and 25 of rye, per day of San Miguel further authorizing the inhabitants of these three villages the cutting of wood from all the hills of Caracena whenever its destination was for the use of the mill. The inhabitants of the three counties were obliged to give the peons that were necessary for the mill's work, preventing them from using the mill's water to water their vegetable gardens, meadows and bread lands, except on Saturdays and Sundays.

Loss of the Lordship of Caracena A few years later, Juan de Tovar, then Chief-guard of Henry IV, would eventually lose his Lordship of Caracena. After the death of the sovereign, Juan de Tovar not only did not recognize Princess Isabella as queen of Castile, but he joined the group of the Marquis of Vilhena and the Archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, who supported Joanna la Beltraneja as queen. After the defeat of the marquis of Vilhena at the Battle of Toro, the Catholic Monarchs made peace with Tovar and other knights who had followed the fate of Diego López Pacheco, deciding to be lenient with the uprisings. Juan de Tovar was pardoned by diploma given at Toro on 10 December 1476. Hostilities, however, did not cease. Instead, many of the knights pardoned, and momentarily reintegrated into royal obedience, turned against the monarchs again. Thus, in 1478, when Archbishop Alfonso Carrillo's second attempt to resurrect the Beltraneja party occurred, Juan de Tovar, who was then already called Martín Fernández de Tovar, was one of the conjurors. He provided cover for a new invasion of Castile by Afonso V of Portugal, and occupied the town of Alcalá de Henares in the name of la Beltraneja.

The final defeat of the Portuguese army and its partisans brought harsh punishments for the latter: Diego López Pacheco lost a large part of the towns and lands of the Marquesado de Vilhena, Juan de Tovar was sentenced to death, and the total loss of his landholdings, confiscated by the Spanish Crown. Tovar's protests were to no avail, deciding to sell Cevico de la Torre and Caracena. On 26 January 1486 the Catholic Monarchs issued a decree to the municipalities of Medina del Campo, Tordesillas and Dueñas forbidding the purchase of places and lands from these, under penalty of losing the properties. Their definitive confiscation took place by a decree dated 20 June 1489. The medieval castle of Caracena was one of the stages of the fights between the Tovar and the Acuña in the 15th century. It was seized and confiscated by Pedro de Acuña, Count of Buendía, who agreed with Fernando de Tovar, lord of Caracena, to demolish it. After the acquisition of the lordship in 1491 by Alfonso Carrillo, lord of Maqueda, the castle was rebuilt according to the techniques of the time, adapting it to the use of artillery. The town of Caracena and the village of Inés were later sold by the Catholic Monarchs to their Chief-guard, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña, Lord of Maqueda, a relative of his namesake Archbishop of Toledo, as well as the villages of Madruédano, Santa Maria de Val, and Adanta (lands confiscated from Juan de Tovar a few years earlier). In addition to the mentioned places, the Catholic Monarchs also compensated Carillo with one million three hundred thousand maravedis in cash, and an interest of 675,000 maravedis in annual rent, coming from the alcavalas of Alcalá de Guadaira, and other towns and places in the terms of Seville. Thus, from 1491, Caracena and Inés became part of the dominions of Alfonso Carrillo, who soon rebuilt the demolished castle of Caracena, in the dominions of such lordship, following the techniques of the time and adapting it to the use of artillery. The firstborn of the couple, Francisco de Tovar, inherited the Lordship of Cevisco, and married Catalina Enríquez, daughter of Alonso de Monroy and Beatriz de Zuñiga, lords of Velbis. From the union was born Francisco de Tovar (married to Antonia de Vilhena, Queen Leonor of France's Lady), alcalde and captain of La Goleta, in Tunisia, the last Lord of Cevisco in the Tovar line. After his death, for lack of heirs, the landlord was sold to Juan Manuel (married to D. Catarina de Castela) who died between 1535 and 1543. He was also the son of Francisco and Catalina, Alonso de Tovar, Commander of Lobon and Villanueba de la Fuente, in the Order of Santiago, and ambassador in Portugal at the time of Philip II. brother-in-law of his cousin, Maria de Tovar, His sons Francisco and Sancho de Tovar later protested for the stone of Caracena, with the former even initiating a demand in 1522 to the successor of Alfonso Carrillo, without obtaining any result.

Almost two centuries after these events, Cristóvão Alão de Morais refers to them in his Pedatura Lusitana, published in 1667. Alão begins his work Tobares'' with Martim Fernandes de Tovar, Lord of Cevico and Caracena: "Castilian nobleman who through murder came to this kingdom", adding in a note: "followed the parts of the King D. A. against the King D. Fr. of Castella, by whose order he was beheaded." Next, regarding his son Sancho de Tovar, whom he says passed to India in the armada of Pedro Álvares Cabral (and who sent him to Sofala), he adds in a note that "he killed the lettered man who ordered his father's beheading because he wanted to lose the Lordship of Cevico". This last information contradicts both the documentation and Salazar y Castro's statement that the Lordship of Cevico did not belong to Sancho, but to his brother Francisco, firstborn of Juan de Tovar, in whose line he followed,