Fernandes (Gonçalo)

He was an early settler of this island, whose identity the old Madeiran genealogies shroud in mystery, although he appears to have been a son of King Afonso V and of the king’s niece Dona Joana, the ‘Excelente Senhora’. The annotator of the ‘Island History’ (Historia Insulana), following several genealogists, says that ‘this man has glimmerings of the Man in the Iron Mask, in Paris, and came to Madeira expressly forbidden to leave this island. He lived in grand style, and every year the royal household sent him in abundance all that he needed, yet it was never known who his parents were. When he died on 13 July 1539, he was buried in his chapel, on which he had placed as arms the Portuguese quinas in saltire over the cross of the Order of Christ (Ordem de Cristo). His name is inscribed on the marble tombstone, which bears in half-relief the figure of a boy with his face resting on his left hand and his elbow on a skull, pointing with his right hand to this maxim from the Book of Wisdom: Sic et nos nati continuo desivimus esse. His arrival in Madeira after the peace concluded between Afonso V and Empress Elisabeth led to the conjecture that he was that king’s son and that reasons of state prevented his being acknowledged.’ The chapel referred to here is the one that stood near the sea, on the bank of the stream of Serra de Água (‘water sawmill’), in the parish (freguesia) of Arco da Calheta; we shall deal with it in a separate article. It was the seat of an entailed estate (morgadio) founded by Gonçalo Fernandes, to which his son Pedro Gonçalves de Andrade succeeded. This entailed house (casa vinculada) later passed to the Freitas da Madalena family, whose last representative was the holder of the entail (morgado) Nuno de Freitas Lomelino.

On this legendary figure we find the following further interesting details in the Dicionário Portugal, volume VI, p. 373: ‘. . . Gonçalo Fernandes, whose real name was Dom Gonçalo Afonso de Aviz Transtamara Fernandes, son of Afonso V and of the unhappy queen Dona Joana of Castile, the Excelente Senhora, who was forced to take the veil at Santa Clara in Coimbra. It was he who should have succeeded John II on the throne, had his birth not been concealed, for reasons of political expediency with Spain and for fear that he would be killed. He was exiled to the island of Madeira and forbidden to leave it, although he lived there the life of a prince, which was his by right. The Royal Household let him lack nothing needed to display that grandeur, sending him every year caravels laden with everything he required. With the death of John II and the confinement of Dom Gonçalo, the royal line was broken; for this reason Manuel I came to occupy the throne of Portugal unlawfully, and the succession of the Braganças was more irregular still.’