Barradas (Diogo)

Speaking of the daughters of Tristão Teixeira, first captain-donatary of Machico, Gaspar Frutuoso adds the following, without it seeming closely related to what precedes it: ‘And this captain Tristão, because of a misfortune that befell a certain Tristão Barradas in his house, a man held to be a fidalgo (nobleman of the lesser nobility), whom this captain punished by keeping him bolted in a fetter, grinding flour at a mill. The King ordered him to come to court and to bring with him his daughter Catarina Teixeira (as has been said): he was imprisoned in Lisbon for the punishment he had inflicted on Barradas, and by sentence he was exiled to the island of Príncipe; and before he went, the King married his daughter most honourably. He spent some years in this banishment, at the end of which the King summoned him back and restored him once more to the captaincy, and he governed for many years after that.’

It is a curious episode in the customs of the age, and it gives the measure of the despotic power of the donataries in the early days of colonisation. Their civil and criminal powers were so broad that they excluded only the trial of cases involving the death penalty or the cutting off of a limb, as may be read in the article Judicial Administration.

On the episode briefly narrated here, the reader should consult the document transcribed on p. 138 of the 1925 edition of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra). It is exceptionally interesting and gives us an approximate idea of how justice was administered in the time of the donataries.