Captaincies

Under the original system of colonisation, our overseas dominions were divided, for the purposes of public administration, into provinces of greater or lesser extent, which were then called captaincies. Each was headed by a captain-donatary (capitão-donatário), its supreme local authority, who generally enjoyed wide powers in the conduct of the various public affairs. The first captaincies of our discoveries and conquests were those of the Madeira archipelago: one had its seat on the island of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), and the other two in Machico and in Funchal.

The first comprised only the small island of Porto Santo. Its first donatary was Bartolomeu Perestrelo, who was one of its earliest settlers and, it may be said, the founder of the town (vila) of Baleira, capital of that captaincy. Some authors have fallen into the error of regarding Perestrelo as a navigator and even as the discoverer of Porto Santo, misled by the fact that he was its first donatary, a position that did not always go with the act of discovery. The letter of Prince Henry the Navigator granting the island of Porto Santo to Bartolomeu Perestrelo is dated 1 November 1446, that is, more than twenty years after the colonisation of the archipelago began. We must suppose that Perestrelo had settled on Porto Santo with all the privileges and prerogatives granted to donataries, and that Prince Henry’s letter was merely the legal and authentic confirmation of those privileges. The same must be believed of the other two captaincies of Madeira. In the letter of grant (carta de doação) Prince Henry says: ‘I give charge of my island of Porto Santo to Bartolomeu Perestrelo, fidalgo (nobleman of the lesser nobility) of my household, so that the said Bartolomeu Perestrelo may maintain it for me in justice and right; and should he die, it pleases me that his first son, or any other if such there be, shall hold this charge in the manner aforesaid, and so from descendant to descendant in direct line... shall have... jurisdiction... civil and criminal, save death or the cutting off of a limb...’ This letter mentions various rights, prerogatives and exemptions granted to the first donatary, including the collection of various contributions and taxes. The captaincy of Porto Santo remained in the possession and under the superintendence of Bartolomeu Perestrelo’s descendants until Philippine rule, with the appointment of governors-general, reduced the donataries of the archipelago to a very subordinate and almost purely honorary position, though they continued to collect substantial revenues from the original privileges granted to them. When Portugal fell under the Castilian yoke, Diogo Perestrelo Bisforte was the 6th captain-donatary of the island of Porto Santo.

The island of Madeira was divided into two captaincies, with their seats in Funchal and Machico. After the discovery, in order to begin the colonisation and settlement of its lands, the two discoverers lost no time in dividing and demarcating them, fixing a dividing line that ran from Ponta da Oliveira (‘olive-tree point’) to Ponta do Tristão (‘Tristão’s point’). Frutuoso says: ‘... Ponta de Oliveira, where a boundary mark was planted for the division of the two captaincies, which are divided by this stream, that of Machico lying to the east and that of Funchal to the west, and along it, they say, runs the demarcation from the seashore in the south to the other side in the north’, adding elsewhere: ‘...it comes out at the other point on the southern side, where a branch or stake of olive wood, which had come from the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), was driven in as a boundary mark of this jurisdiction, whence the point took the name Ponta da Oliveira ... ’

The letter of grant (carta de doação) of the captaincy of Machico to Tristão Vaz Teixeira by Prince Henry the Navigator is dated 8 May 1440. In it the grantor states: ‘dou carreguo a Tristão caballeyro de minha casa na minha ylha da madeyra de a terra dees de além da ribeyra do Caniço dez passos como se bay pella ribeyra acima & de hi atrabeçar a serra ate a ponta de Tristam... ’ (I give charge to Tristão, knight of my household, in my island of Madeira, of the land from ten paces beyond the Ribeira do Caniço (‘reed’), going up the stream, and from there across the uplands as far as the point of Tristão...). This document is couched in terms identical to the letter of concession issued in favour of Bartolomeu Perestrelo, and is six years older than the latter. The observation we have already made about the grant of Porto Santo applies here too: it must be supposed that in 1440 only the confirmation in law took place, but that the grant had existed in fact long before. Tristão Vaz Teixeira’s son, grandson and great-grandson succeeded to the captaincy. The last of them, named Diogo Teixeira, was removed from it for lack of the ability to govern it, and died much later in Funchal, in the year 1540. In 1541 the monarch gave the captaincy to António da Silveira, who greatly distinguished himself in India. Some years later he sold it to the Count of Vimioso, and it then passed to his son Francisco de Portugal, who died in a naval battle in the seas of the Azores, after which this donatary captaincy (donataria) reverted to the Crown. Under Castilian rule Tristão Vaz da Veiga (see that entry) was invested in the office of captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of Machico.

It is in the royal letter (carta régia) of 16 August 1461, in which Afonso V confirms the grant of the Madeira archipelago to his uncle Prince Henry, published on p. 451 ff. of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra), that the document granting the captaincy of Funchal to João Gonçalves Zarco, dated 1 November 1450, is inserted. The grants of the captaincies of Porto Santo, Machico and Funchal date respectively from 1446, 1440 and 1450. It is rather strange that the most recent should be that of Funchal, later even than that of Porto Santo, when there are many reasons to suppose that the concession made to Gonçalves Zarco was the oldest of all. We cannot explain this fact, about which the learned annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ keeps the most complete silence.

The privileges and prerogatives granted to João Gonçalves Zarco by the grant of the captaincy of Funchal do not differ essentially from those of the other captaincies. As regards the taxes and dues that the donataries (donatário) could collect for their own profit, the letters of grant mention the following: only they could own mills or watermills for grinding cereals; every water-powered sawmill was to pay them one mark of silver (marco de prata, c. 230 g of silver) a year; the donataries held the monopoly on the sale of salt; nobody could have ovens or bakeries except for domestic use; the tithe of the royal revenues belonged to them; and they could grant land in sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) on conditions that the letters of grant do not specify. In addition, they had oversight of all matters of public administration, and they tried and sentenced all crimes, except cases involving the death penalty or the cutting off of limbs. (see Donataries).

The captaincy of Porto Santo never attained a high degree of prosperity. The smallness of the island, the neglect to which the mother country consigned it from the earliest days of colonisation, the frequent pirate raids, the poor administration of some donataries and governors, the conceited pride of many of its inhabitants, who scorned work because they were descended from old noble families, and the indolence of its residents, brought about by climatic conditions and by other causes besides – all this contributed markedly to the slight development of this donatary captaincy (donataria) (see Fifths and eighths).

The captaincy of Machico, in conditions very different from those of Porto Santo, developed rapidly and grew remarkably prosperous, but this prosperity did not last long. Funchal gradually became the great commercial emporium of the archipelago, the centre of its inhabitants’ bustling activity, the magnet for so many visitors from Portugal and abroad, and the court of the Madeiran nobility, who abandoned their lands and manor houses to lead the coveted and enervating life of the populous towns, etc. It was then that the donatary captaincy of Machico began to fall from the prosperity it had reached, and before long it lost all the importance it had once had as a commercial, industrial and agricultural centre. What Gaspar Frutuoso says on this subject is highly expressive and eloquent:

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…and also on his death (the donatary Dom Francisco de Portugal, who died shortly after 1580) this captaincy fell vacant and reverted to the Crown, and it came to such a state that in this populous jurisdiction of Machico there was hardly anyone who could readily keep a horse, save two or three persons. All this grandeur was turned into poverty; and it was a dream that passed away before the hardships later suffered by all the people of this so noble lineage and so prosperous Captaincy: and if the forebears had everything in abundance, their descendants paid dearly for it afterwards, being reduced to the utmost degree of poverty, for there was never anything in abundance that in time did not come to be wanting. Such are the turns of the world, in which we place so much trust, without ever being fully undeceived of its deceptions.

Only the captaincy of Funchal developed rapidly and steadily, with remarkable growth, and within a short time it reached a truly extraordinary degree of prosperity. Its capital was made a town (vila) in 1451, a city in 1508 and the seat of a bishopric in 1514.