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Family Partnerships and International Trade in Early Modern Europe: Merchants from Burgos in England and France, 1470–1570

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Constance Jones Mathers
Constance Jones Mathers
Affiliation:
Constance Jones Mathers is Associate professor of history atRandolph–Macon College.
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Abstract

In fifteenth– and sixteenth–century Europe, international trade was often conducted by family partnerships. Commonly, one partner remained in the family's native land, while one or more family members established themselves temporarily or permanently abroad. In this article, Professor Mathers describes the mercantile activity of three families from the Spanish city of Burgos who profited from family partnerships that linked trade from northern Spain to England and France. She also examines the ways in which family inheritance practices and alternative family investments and expenditures affected the capital and continuity of the partnerships.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1988 , pp. 367 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1988

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References

1 Notarial documents in Burgos have provided much of the information in this study, although they barely begin before the 1530s. They will be cited as APN (Archivo de Protocolos Notariales of Burgos). Several authors provide short biographical summaries, emphasizing commercial activities, of many major Burgalese merchants. Childs and Caunedo del Potro both focus on the end of the fifteenth century: Childs, Wendy R., Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Totowa, N.J., 1978), 224–31Google Scholar; del Potro, Betsabe Caunedo, Mercaderes castellanos en el Golfo de Vizcaya (1475–1492) (Madrid, 1983), 263–90Google Scholar; Lorenzo Sanz has information about those merchants who were active in Seville in the second half of the sixteenth century: Sanz, Eufemio Lorenzo, Comercio de España con America en la época de Felipe II (Valladolid, 1979), 1: 261–86Google Scholar. More detailed studies of a number of families have been published in Burgos' Boletín de la Institución Fernán González (which until 1946 was entitled Boletín de la Comisión Provincial de Monumentos); those by Manuel Basas Fernández, published between 1953 and 1967, are especially likely to be about merchant families and their business activity.

Readers who want a more general view of merchants in early modern Europe can turn to Braudel, Fernand, The Wheels of Commerce (New York, 1982Google Scholar), which covers the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, or Jeannin's, Pierre much shorter Merchants of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1972Google Scholar). The most thorough work dealing with merchants based in northern Spain and their business environment is Lapeyre, Henri, Une famille de marchands: les Ruiz (Paris, 1955Google Scholar), which draws upon the business correspondence of Simón Ruiz, an international financier in Medina del Campo in the second half of the sixteenth century. Merchants in Seville receive the attention of Ruth Pike in one chapter of Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972), 99–129Google Scholar. Like Pike, Lockhart, James draws on notarial documents for his chapter on merchants in Spanish Peru 1532–1560 (Madison, Wis., 1968), 77–95Google Scholar. Villena, Guillermo Lohmann in Les Espinosa: Une famille d'hommes d'affaires en Espagne et aux lndes à l'époque de la colonisation (Paris, 1968Google Scholar) fails to show any connection between his genealogical study of the Espinosas of Medina del Campo and Seville and the career of his protagonist Licenciate Gaspar de Espinosa, judge and entrepreneur in the New World.

2 Klein, Julius, The Mesta: A Study in Spanish Economic History, 1273–1836 ([1920]; rpt, Port Washington, N.Y., 1964), 34–35Google Scholar (origins); Fernández, Manuel Basas, El Consulado de Burgos en el siglo XVI (Madrid, 1963), 235–52; 231–32Google Scholar (quotation).

3 See the graph comparing “England's exports of raw wool and woollen cloth 1347–1544” in Carus-Wilson, E. M., Medieval Merchant Venturers, 2d ed. (Frome, 1967), xxii–xxivGoogle Scholar. The “nation of Spain” in Bruges, subordinate to Burgos' merchant guild, received about 13,000 sacks a year between 1504 and 1508, at a time when “other northern markets for Spanish wool were negligible.” Phillips, Carla Rahn, “The Spanish Wool Trade, 1500–1780,” Journal of Economic History 42 (Dec. 1982): 777–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. By 1549, the members of the “nation of Spain” were said to be importing 50,000 sacks each year. However, the amount of wool reaching Bruges fell in the late 1550s; ibid., 780–82. For Burgalese exports, by far the highest figure yielded by the records of the customs duty (imposed in 1558) came in 1560 and was 18,437 sacks (13,013 to Flanders, 2,885 to France, and 2,539 to Italy). Basas, Consulado, 264. Burgos' merchant guild blamed the customs duty for the decline in total wool exports, when in 1582 it claimed that at its peak twenty-five or thirty years earlier Castile had exported 65,000–70,000 sacks of wool in one year to Flanders, France, and Italy, compared to the contemporary figure of 20,000–25,000 sacks. Ibid., 264.

4 Klein, Mesta, 35.

5 Basas, Consulado, 192–201 (tolls); 156 (charters); 155–67 (fleets); 38 (destinations); 162, 168–83 (protection).

6 Phillips, Carla Rahn, “Spanish Merchants and the Wool Trade in the Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal 14, no. 3 (1983): 277–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar (warehousing wool in Bruges); Klein, Mesta, 39 (pragmatic).

7 Basas, Consulado, 68–77.

8 Ibid., 107–28, esp. 111–12, 122–23, 108–9, 117.

9 Phillips, “Spanish Merchants,” 276–77. A major disaster for Burgalese insurers has been described by Phillips, William D. Jr., and Phillips, Carla Rahn, “Spanish Wool and Dutch Rebels: The Middelburg Incident of 1574,” American Historical Review 82 (April 1977): 312–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Juan López Ossorio, “Principio, grandezas y caída de la noble villa de Medina del Campo” [1616], included in y Fernández, Ildefonso Rodríguez, Historia de la muy noble, muy leal y coronada villa de Medina del Campo (Madrid, 1903–1904), 331–37Google Scholar (clearinghouse activity); 21 (May and October fairs); 121 (exemption; in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel, the town consented to a levy of 11 mills on merchandise sold at the fairs [p. 324]).

11 Mathorez, Jules, “Notes sur les rapports de Nantes avec l'Espagne,” Bulletin hispanique 14 (1912): 384–90Google Scholar; Mollat, Michel, Le Commerce Maritime Normand à la Fin du Moyen Age (Paris, 1952), 115Google Scholar. Diego de Soria, who was the most prominent Burgalese merchant of the final quarter of the fifteenth century, began his career about 1460 “in the duchy of Brittany” as a factor for the Pardo company. Martínez, Nicolás López, “Testificaciones inquisitoriales de mercaderes burgaleses en 1491,” Burgense 14 (1973): 547–48Google Scholar.

12 Carla Phillips places great stress upon the existence of a Spanish mercantile “network”; see Phillips, “Spanish Merchants,” 262–71.

13 The first commercial successes of these families occurred too early for more than the skimpiest sort of documentation to exist. In 1499, the Calendar of Patent Rolls of Henry VII of England mentions Fernando de Bernuy, “merchant of Spain, alias of London, alias of Cales, alias of Bruges.” Mollat, Michel, “Le rôle international des marchands espagnoles dan les ports de l'Europe occidental à l'époque des Rois Catholiques,” Anuario de historia económica y social de España 3 (1970): 51Google Scholar. Diego de Castro de Londres was a prior or consul of the merchant guild in Burgos in 1498–99 (Basas, Consulado, 267), and it can be shown also that there was a Diego de Castro in Bruges in 1507 whose business was selling Spanish wool and buying cloth. Gilliodts–van Severen, Louis, Cartulaire de l'ancienne estaple de Bruges (Bruges, 1905), 2: 375Google Scholar. The fathers of Gómez and Juan de Quintanadueñas were partners exporting wool to Bruges and perhaps to Rouen. Fernández, Manuel Basas, “El mercader burgalés, Gómez de Quintanadueñas,” Boletín de la Institución Fernán González, no. 155 (1961): 562Google Scholar. These families did not forgo the opportunities offered by the wool trade in later years: when Diego de Bernuy died in 1519, he had wool on hand destined for Florence and was in the process of buying wool in Molina (see note 41); in 1547, his son was still buying wool in Molina (see note 53). The Castros and Quintanadueñas are also both on record as buying wool in the late 1540s (see notes 27 and 68, respectively).

14 Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 15, 61, 70, 214.

15 Connell–Smith, Gordon, Forerunners of Drake: A Study of English Trade with Spain in the Early Tudor Period ([1954]; rpt, Westwood, Conn., 1975), 15–16Google Scholar. For the last third of the fifteenth century, Childs cites the names Covarrubias, Castro, Salinas, Salamanca, Pardo, and Maluenda, all known in Burgos and Bruges as well as in England. Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 57, 88, 216, 224–29.

16 Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 64–65, 59, 88, 216. According to Bowden, Peter J., The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England (New York, 1962), 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “In earlier times imports of such wool [Spanish] had been negligible, and it was not until the reign of Henry VIII, when the making of felt hats was firmly settled in England, that the trade became established on a regular basis.” It may be concluded, therefore, that although Ferdinand and Isabel had not only favored the export of wool but also specifically encouraged a Spanish factory, or selling agency, in London, their efforts must have been in vain. For their actions, see Klein, Mesta, 37, 39. Perhaps, in the context of Bowden's statement, it is worth mentioning that in the notarial archives of Burgos, the first documents that mention an Englishman come from 1557 and 1558: they show the Burgalese merchant brothers Francisco de Haro and Diego de Haro, in a new type of transaction in these notarial documents, arranging a “putting–out” operation, in which they were to provide black lambswool to a local hatmaker, who (in the 1558 contract) was to produce three hundred dozen broad–brimmed hats, at the rate of six dozen each week. Apparently the Haro brothers had agreed to supply the hats to “Roberto Aton, Englishman, citizen of Bermeo.” APN, Prot.2931, 24 July 1557; Prot.2932, 16 Aug. and 15 Nov. 1558; Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 224 (quotation).

17 Ibid., 181–85, 203, 211; Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 18.

18 Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 216, 224–25; Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 16, 32, 33, 37, 44, 65, 66; Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, 519, says that the Ceville family of Rouen had “a factor” in London in 1509 named Juan de Castro.

19 Basas, Consulado, 267; APN, Prot.2539, 25 April 1547; Actas (city council minutes), in the Archive of the Ayuntamiento of Burgos [hereafter cited as AMB], 14 Oct. 1533.

20 Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 17–18, 63; APN, Prot.2539, 25 April 1547, describes this son as already deceased.

21 Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 216.

22 Ibid., 224; APN, Prot.2005,18 Feb. 1539. A maravedi was a money of account; there were 375 maravedis in a ducat.

23 APN, Prot.3219, 9 Oct. 1546.

24 Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 18, 17, 156.

25 APN, Prot.2539, 25 April 1547; AMB, Actas, 14 Oct. 1533 “(Juan, son of Diego”: title as regidor).

26 Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 16–17, 100–103, 130–31, 154.

27 APN, Prot.3219, 3 Sept. and 9 Oct. 1546; Prot.2539, 4 June 1547.

28 Carande, Ramón, Carlos V y sus banqueros (Madrid, 1967), 3: 130, 134, 174, 230Google Scholar.

29 APN, Prot.2539, 8 Feb. 1547. They collected another 2,446,339 maravedis from the tax revenue of the servicio ordinario in 1548. Prot. 2537, 24 April 1548.

30 APN, Prot.2537, 18 May 1553; Prot.3219, 3 Sept. 1546 (young Diego, witness); Prot.2537, 14 Feb. 1553 (Compane).

31 Caster, Gilles, Le Commerce du Pastel et de l'Épicerie à Toulouse de 1450 environ à 1561 (Toulouse, 1962), 95, 100, 144Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 381 (1450), 86 (“feeble”; 1470), 91 (1475; “epoch”); 93, 104–7, 132–33 (Burgalese initiative); 157 (1520; “native” exporters), 381 (“new spirit”). Woad from Toulouse was not a new product in international commerce, for it had been a major import of Bristol merchants in the early part of the fifteenth century, brought in English ships from Bordeaux and Bayonne; however, the French control over Gascony at the end of the Hundred Years' War had hurt the trade. Carus–Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, 36–37, 44–47.

33 Carus–Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, 104. In 1500, the Castros, together with García de Mazuelo, bought 1,080 sarcinées, the largest purchase on record to that date; Childs, Anglo–Castilian Trade, 64–65,108.

34 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 84.

35 Jalón, Valentín Dávila, Nobilario de la Ciudad de Burgos (Madrid, “Prensa 1955), 2: 229–31Google Scholar. The will actually lists Fernando, Rodrigo, Cristóbal, María, Juana–Francisca, and Martina; but “Juana–Francisca” is probably an error in transcription for “Juan” and “Francisca,” for Diego did have a sister named Francisca and another brother, Juan de Bernuy, who was to settle in Toulouse. A son of Diego and Doña Isabel Orense referred to Juan as his uncle; Martín, Remedios Morán, El señorío de Benamejí (Córdoba, 1986), 90Google Scholar. That Juan was the brother of the first Diego de Bernuy to come to Burgos was stated explicitly by Juan: Douais, C., “L'art à Toulouse,” Revue des Pyrénées 13 (1901): 596Google Scholar. (Thanks to Barbara B. Davis for a copy of this article.) Douais also states that Juan died at the age of seventy–five (p. 598); as will be seen below, he was killed in 1540, so that his year of birth would have been 1465, during his father's first marriage. There is no reason to doubt that he was a legitimate son. French historians of Toulouse, including Douais and Caster, have not realized that “Jean” died in 1540 and therefore conflate him and his son Jean, so that remarks about his age or his “second marriage,” etc., may or may not be accurate.

36 It is usually assumed that many Burgos merchants were descendants of Jews or even judaizantes (secret Jews). There is little evidence for this assumption. This article includes an appendix that presents what is known in this regard about the Castro, Bernuy, and Quintanadueñas families.

37 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 100, 112, 138. Caster also cites an unfamiliar “Alonsso de Bernie, négocianant de Burgos” in 1488. Ibid., 138.

38 Dávila, Nobilario, 232; AMB, Actas, 3 Nov. 1515, fols. 181, 183; 30 May 1517, fol. 125. Doña Isabel Orense de la Mota was the daughter of Juan Alonso de la Mota, who was not only a comendador of the Military Order of Santiago, but also one of the six alcades mayores, who were members of the city council, distinguished from the sixteen regidores by little except a higher salary (5,000 instead of 4,000 maravedis).

39 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 116, 139; Dávila, Nobilario, 232.

40 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 139–40]. A sarcinée in French was a cargo in Spanish and weighed 122 kilograms (268 pounds). Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 91. A sarcinée grosse was presumably more. The Bernuys transported 2 1/2 cargas (5 fardeles) of woad in each cart when they sent it from Burgos to Segovia. APN, Prot.3219, 9 Nov. 1546. Balles and fardeles, like bales or bundles, are vague terms. In the wool trade, the basic unit was the sack, which consisted of 10 arrobas (11.5 kilograms per arroba, or 253 pounds per sack) for wool destined for France or Italy, but 8 1/2 arrobas for wool consigned to Flanders. Basas, Consulado, 261–63.

41 Dávila, Nobilario, 232–33; Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 261–62 (inventory).

42 Pérez, Joseph, La révolution des “Communidades” de Castille (1520–1521) (Bordeaux, 1970), 36Google Scholar.

43 AMB, Actas, 20 June 1521, fol. 224v; Manuel Basas Fernández, “Mercaderes y corsarios españoles en torno a la Paz de las Damas (1529),” Hispania 22 (1962): 396Google Scholar (1523); APN, Prot.2877, 26 May 1529; Prot.2877, 7 July 1529.

44 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 61, 140–45.

45 Ibid., 138, 149. Thanks to Barbara B. Davis for confirming and refining details of this description.

46 Girón, Pedro, Crónica del Emperador Carlos V (Madrid, 1964), 159–60Google Scholar. Since Girón died in 1546, there seems to be no doubt that 1540, rather than 1556 as stated by Caster (Commerce du Pastel, 148) is the date of this fatal event. Diego de Bernuy had told the city council in February “that at present he needs to go abroad on certain business of his…” AMB, Actas, 24 Feb. 1540, fol. 59.

47 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 145–48 (records for 1543–45); according to Caster, Saint–Etienne was married to Jean (Juan) Bernuy's sister, but since Caster is confused about when one Jean Bernuy was succeeded by the next, it is not clear to which he is referring.

48 Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 90.

49 APN, Prot.2005,18 Feb. 1539; Prot.3219, 6 Oct. 1546, 9 Oct. 1546, 9 Nov. 1546,16 Dec. 1546; Prot.2539, 5 April, 4, 10, 16 May 1547; Prot.2537, 23 May 1548.

50 APN, Prot.2539, 2 May and 4 May 1547; Prot.2537, 23 May 1548.

51 Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 89. Another 1,700,000 maravedis remained to be paid later. Doña Isabel made her will in 1548, but lived until 1550. Dávila, Nobilario, 232–33.

52 Fernández, Manuel Basas, “El Mercader y Regidor Diego de Curiel,” Boletín de la Institutión Fernán González, no. 151 (1961): 165–67Google Scholar. The final accounts revealed that the Toulousans owed their Spanish partner 2,517,697 maravedis. This money had still not been paid in 1570.

53 APN, Prot.2539, 17 May 1547 (wool); Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 261 (his father); Prot.2539, 11 May and 17 May, 1547 (anjeos); Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 92 (Maluenda, copper, iron). On 31 December 1545, Diego García de Medina submitted accounts amounting to 4,805,041 maravedis for ironworks in San Sebastián. Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 92. Canton, F. J. Sanchez, ed., Floreto de anécdotas y noticias diversas (Memorial Histórico Español, 1948), 48Google Scholar bis: 232 (holandas).

54 de Heredia, Vicente Beltrán, Cartulario de la Universidad de Salamanca (1218–1600) (Salamanca, 1971), 3: 71–72Google Scholar.

55 Carande, Carlos V y sus banqueros, 397. The text is in AMB, Actas, 9 Aug. 1552, fols. 220–220v. This was the “asiento of Miguel de Zamora and his company. …it is public knowledge that Diego de Bernuy and Juan de Santo Domingo and Alvaro de Cuevas are participants in it….” (Actas, 26 Aug. 1552, fol. 231). Notarial documents in Burgos in 1553 refer to Miguel de Zamora, linens, France, license, in various combinations. APN, Prot.2537, 14 Feb., 5 April 1553.

56 Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 351.

57 Ibid., 110. Alvaro was the son of Doña Isabel Orense de la Mota's brother, Alonso Díez, de Cuevas. Mathers, Constance J., “Relations Between the City of Burgos and the Crown, 1506–1556” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1973), 171, 494–96Google Scholar; cf. Dávila, Nobilario, 237, 239. Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 95; cf. 273.

58 Caster, Commerce du Pastel, 206–8 (quotation, 208). Cf. Girard, Albert, Le Commerce français à Séville et Cadix au temps des Ilabsbourg ([1932]; rpt. New York, 1967), 390–91Google Scholar, for collapse of woad exports by 1558, attributed to competition from indigo and decline of textile industry in Castile.

59 Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 95 and 273 (inventory); 112 (loan and title), adding that he received a royal license to sell up to 15,000 ducats of his entailed property to raise the money. Dávila, Gil González, Teatro eclesiástico de las Iglesias Metropolitanas y catedrales de los Reynos de las dos Castillas … (Madrid, 1650), 3; 45Google Scholar. Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 83–84, reports another version of this story, which features Diego de Bernuy Orense instead of the Marshall.

60 Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 118–21; Basas, “Diego de Curiel,” 165–67; de Prada, V. Vázquez, Lettres marchandes d'Anvers (Paris, n.d. [1960]), 168, 171Google Scholar. The latter, citing letters of contemporaries from the Simón Ruiz archive, says that Diego de Bernuy in 1569 “had liabilities of 160,000 ducats [60 million maravedis], plus a mortgage of 70,000 ducats [26,250,000 maravedis] on his entailed property. He promised to pay, with a year's delay, with 7% interest.” In 1580, “The Court intervened this time to freeze most of his property on behalf of his creditors; it left him only what was necessary for his personal subsistence.”

61 Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, 520 (quotations), 515–16.

62 Ibid., 113, 509–10, 512.

63 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 562–565.

64 Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, 512.

65 Ibid., 511–15, 522. Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, (p. 511) comments that “three families figured most prominently, the Civille, Saldaigne and Quintanadoines. It will be necessary to refer constantly to them.”

66 Ibid., 515, 121, 113, 226–27.

67 Ibid., 113–15, 516; Basas, Consulado, 38, 159 (quotation).

68 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 572.

69 Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, 516–19.

70 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 572.

71 Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand 166–68 (“bazaar,” 168), 232–33.

72 APN, Prot.2877, 20 July 1529; Prot.2888, 15 Feb. 1530.

73 APN, Prot.2877, 14 May 1529.

74 Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, 155.

75 Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 136, 182 (quotation).

76 Severen, Gilliodts–van, Cartulaire, 3: 5Google Scholar.

77 APN, Prot.3219. 12 Nov. 1546.

78 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 571–72 (Simancas., CR, leg.94).

79 APN, Prot.3219, 10 Dec. 1546.

80 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 571–72.

81 Mathorez, J., “Notes sur les Espagnols en France dépuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'au règne de Louis XIII,” Bulletin Ilispanique 16 (1914): 363Google Scholar (Juan's date of death); Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 574–75.

82 Mollat, Commerce Maritime Normand, 517, 522; 517(citing APN, Prot.2533).

83 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 563.

84 Vézquez, , Lettres marchandes d'Anvers, 2:39, 43, 57Google Scholar.

85 Fernández, Manuel Basas, “Los libros mercantiles de la Compañía de García y Miguel de Salamanca,” Boletín de la Institución Fernán González, no. 152 (1960): 230–34Google Scholar; AMB, Actas, 8 Feb. 1526, fol. 49v (Royal title as judge of the mint to Diego García de Salamanca, by renunciation “of the office that Juan de Quintanadueñas, your brother, made to you”); APN, Prot.3219, 10 Dec. 1546 (Andrés de Salamanca, “son of Diego García de Salamanca,” appears as a witness to the marriage contract of Juan de Quintanadueñas of Burgos); cf. Prot.2539, 14 Jan. 1547. Although the close connection is obvious, it is nevertheless conceivable that there was another Juan de Quintanadueñas in Burgos; if so, presumably he would have been either a brother or a cousin of Gómez.

86 Basas, “Salamanca,” 234–35, 237–39. After 1565, the company was making major investments in exporting cloth via Seville to the New World, to judge by its insuring woolen cloth consigned to Nombre de Dios for almost 3 million maravedis (7,950 ducats) in 1565. In 1566, the Salamancas sent linen and woolen cloth from Seville to New Spain, having insured it for 6,496,875 maravedis. Ibid., 238–39.

87 The basis of the Salamancas' trade was the export of wool from Burgos to Rouen: 54 sacks in 1553, 96 sacks to Rouen and Nantes in 1554, 438 sacks in 1556, 719 sacks in 1559, 620 sacks in 1560. The investment in wool also grew: 693,657 maravedis in 1554; 2,495,678 maravedis in 1555; 7,105,317 maravedis in 1557; 6,463,292 maravedis in 1560; 4,594,159 maravedis in 1561; 6,127,753 maravedis in 1562. The goods that the Salamancas brought into Spain show their involvement with Rouen, Nantes, and Flanders: French linen, woolen cloth, playing cards, and woad (available at Rouen); Flemish wax, tapestries, and oil; Breton linen, salted fish, and bundles of anjeos; in 1566, 88 bundles of anjeos were to go to Bilbao, 114 to Seville. Exports from Seville to Rouen were oil, cochineal (red dye), and probably other products of the New World. Ibid., 234, 235–40.

88 Ibid., 230, 233. 236, 238. One of their last ventures must have involved shipping wool to Bruges, for Miguel de Salamanca had the largest claim against the insurers in the case of the wool that was loaded as early as 1570 and seized at Middelburg in 1574 (4,603,125 maravedis for 525 sacks of wool). Phillips and Phillips, “Spanish Wool and Dutch Rebels,” 316–17.

89 Jeannin, Merchants of the Sixteenth Century, 73.

90 See notes 97 and 98 for Doña Isabel and her husband. For Diego de Bernuy Orense, see Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 106, 109, 263–76.

91 For city council, see Mathers, “Relations Between the City of Burgos and the Crown,” 21–27, 78, 169–77. For merchant guild officials, the basic list is from Basas, Consulado, 267–68. He lists 100 names from 1494 to 1562; I have added 17 from miscellaneous sources, including Juan de Castro in 1540 (AME, Actas, 17 Feb. 1540, fol. 52) and Gómez de Quintanadueñas in 1546 or 1547 (APN, Prot.2539, 31 Dec. “1547”).

92 The capital involved in these enterprises included not only the capital of the directing partners, but also that of silent partners. For example, Juan de Astudillo had over 3 million maravedis invested in the Castro company even after he ceased to be an active partner, which his heirs withdrew not long after his death (APN, Prot.3219, 9 Oct. 1546). The Castro company also had almost 500,000 maravedis that Gonzalo de Quintanilla, guardian of the heirs of the noble regidor Francisco Sarmiento, had invested in the company of “Juan de Castro, Regidor, and Luis de Castro” (APN, Prot.3219, 27 Oct. 1546), and perhaps other amounts from other investors. These investments would be subject to the same influences as those of the active partners.

93 Both the Laws of Toro (1505) and the notarial documents make it clear that the value of the “third” depended on the size of the estate at the death of the bequeather, not at the time of the donation. “Leyes de Toro” in Los Códigos españoles (Madrid, 1849), 6: 560–61Google Scholar.

94 APN, Prot.2539, 25 April 1547 (Castro); Dávila, Nobilario, 232 (Orense); Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 563, 568–75.

95 Duby, Georges, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest (New York, 1983), 275–76Google Scholar.

96 APN, Prot.3219, 10 Dec. 1546; Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 575.

97 Girón, Crónica, 24; MS. 6149 of Biblioteca nacional (text of 1533); Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 97–100; Dávila, Nobilario, 232 (Juan). When her husband, the first Diego de Bernuy of Burgos, died in 1519, he had left net assets of 31,850,293 maravedis, with all but 3,271,957 maravedis being business–related. Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 261–62. It is uncertain how much of this belonged to his widow as bienes gananciales. Diego had probably favored his eldest son, Fernando, with a third of his estate, since y Martínez, Mariano Alcocer, Catálogo genealógico entresacado de la Contaduría de Mercedes (Valladolid, 1927), 153Google Scholar, mentions an entail in Fernando's favor, although implying that it was established by his mother. Diego certainly established an entail on the fifth of his estate in favor of his son Diego de Bernuy Orense. Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 96–97.

98 Size of her estate: Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 325–31, 262–63. The 2 million maravedis figure (rounded off from 2,333,333 maravedis) is derived by subtracting the third and the fifth (that is, eight–fifteenths of the estate) from a rounded–off figure of 40 million maravedis, and dividing the remaining estate by the eight possible heirs.

99 For a later period, cf. Fayard, Janine, Les membres du conseil de Castille à l'époque moderne (1621–1746) (Geneva, 1979), 353–67, 397ff.Google Scholar, contrasting entailed property with bienes libres (free goods): the latter consisted less of real estate, and had three times more censos and other private obligations than juros.

100 Dávila, Nobilario, 232 (Juan); Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 89 (withdrawal), 98 (Diego), 327–28 (table). The dates when she purchased the juros and censos are not given, but she may have invested the proceeds from her stake in the company in them.

101 Basas, “Quintanadueñas,” 568; APN, Prot.3219, 10 Dec. 1546.

102 APN, Prot.2521, 15 and 20 May, 19 June 1536; AMB, Actas, 31 Feb. 1540, fols. 39v–41v.

103 MS. 6149 of Biblioteca nacional, “Papeles diversos,” fol. 256v, for his mother's entail; Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 319–21 (Burgos area); 149–50 (Tomillos); 146 (Benamexí; also APN, Prot.2539, 4 Feb. 1547); 351 (censos); 152 and 154 (Alcalá).

104 Morán, Señorío de Benamejí, 112 (marshall); 111 (marriage); 118 (date); 117 (residence).

105 Phillips, “Spanish Merchants,” 267–68; cf. Phillips, “Spanish Wool Trade,” 792–93 and Phillips and Phillips, “Spanish Wool and Dutch Rebels,” 328–29.

106 Law 27 of the “Leyes de Toro” in Los Códigos españoles, 6: 561.

107 Caunedo del Potro, Mercaderes, 286 (quotation); 40 (reference to entail); 163 (various purchases, death in 1507); Mathers, “Relations between the City of Burgos and the Crown,” 125, 496, 561, 602 (descendants).

108 Lane, Frederic C., Andrea Barbarigo: Merchant of Venice, 1418–1449 ([1944]; rpt., New York, 1967), 12Google Scholar.

109 Ibid.

110 Phillips, “Spanish Wool Trade,” 780–81.

111 González, Nazario, Burgos: La ciudad marginal de Castillo (Burgos, 1958), 140Google Scholar (from a document of the first half of the sixteenth century).

112 Dávila, Nobilario, 227–28, 296–97, 340.

113 Martinez, Nicolás López, “Documentación relativa al deán Quintanadueñas,” Burgpnse 4 (1963): 377–78Google Scholar; Dávila, Nobilario, 112 (quotation).

114 Ibid., 117.

115 y Bovadilla, Francisco Mendoza, Tizón de la Nobleza de España (Cuenca, 1852), 12Google Scholar.

116 Dávila, Nobilario, 234–35.

117 Ibid., 230–31.

118 Ibid., 229–31, 242; “el muy onrrado y noble diego de Vernuy …,” 230; Miller, Townsend, The Castles and the Crown (New York, 1963), 175Google Scholar (Juan, Torquemada).