Câmara (João Gonçalves da)

The 6th captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of Funchal, João Gonçalves da Câmara, was born in Lisbon in 1541, the son of the 5th donatary, Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, and Dona Isabel de Mendonça. He came to Madeira with his parents when he was only a year old and returned to the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal) at the age of fourteen. He came back to this island in 1566, only to leave at once for the mainland, from where he never returned and where he died in 1580.

In 1566 French corsairs attacked this island, causing the terrible plunder and slaughter that the Madeiran chronicles describe with such horror (see Sack of the French). The government in mainland Portugal then sent a fleet to Madeira to punish the pirates, but it reached Funchal a few days after they had sailed away, their ships crammed with the finest treasures they had found in the city. João Gonçalves da Câmara came with the fleet in command of a ship, without having been able to avenge the damage done to his captaincy by the corsairs’ sack. On the first expedition that King Sebastian made to Africa, João Gonçalves was one of the noblemen who accompanied him most closely, ‘with many tents, horses and servants, and he spent much of his own on it, wishing that an occasion might arise in which he could show the valour of his person’, as a chronicler of his own time states.

João Gonçalves da Câmara never assumed the government of his captaincy personally and directly. He was in Lisbon when his father died in Madeira on 4 March 1580, and he himself died three months later at Almeirim without having returned to the island. He had appointed as his lieutenant (lugar-tenente) and representative in the archipelago his uncle Rui Dias da Câmara, son of the 5th captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) Simão Gonçalves da Câmara.

João Gonçalves da Câmara was the last captain-donatary of Funchal. His successors kept the honours of the office and continued to receive the substantial revenues from the privileges and prerogatives they enjoyed on the island, but they no longer had any direct say in most matters of public administration. Castilian rule, by appointing governors-general, reduced the jurisdiction and powers of the donataries to very limited proportions. It is true that for some time the donataries continued to appoint their own magistrates (ouvidores), but these did little more than collect the revenues, which were considerable. Among other things, these revenues included the rights over water and wind, which King Sebastian confirmed in 1576. An old manuscript states that the exclusive privilege over mills alone made the house of the donataries of Funchal one of the finest in the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal).

We do not know whether Rui Dias da Câmara, or some other representative of the 6th donatary João Gonçalves, remained in charge of the captaincy after the latter’s death on 4 June 1580, until in 1582 the governor-general João Leitão, appointed by Philip II, took over the government and administration of the whole archipelago. It is really from this time that the power of the donataries was reduced to an almost honorary role, which Philippine despotism curtailed more and more until it abolished it completely.