1703. Carta de Heitor Furtado [de Rebelo] para Francisco Mendes de Castro, seu parente.

Private letter from Heitor Furtado [de Rebelo] to Francisco Mendes de Castro, his relative.

The author expresses his relief that the wife of his relative is already in good health, asks about their new grandchildren and gives him some news, also on a journey that he will do.

The defendant in this process is Álvaro Nicolau Nogueira, a businessman resident in Lisbon, arrested by the Inquisition for Judaism in 1704, along with his three sisters. Their process opens with a long defense letter, delivered to the Inquisition table by the father João Ribeiro in August 1704, accompanied by three sheets with several missives that should serve to support certain statements made in the point 16 of the same letter. According to this point, the brothers Jorge Mendes Nobre, lawyer, and Diogo Mendes Sola, captain of horses, also arrested by the Inquisition for Judaism and who are witnesses against the defendant, were enemies of Álvaro Nicolau Nogueira and his brother, Francisco Mendes de Castro, also a businessman in Lisbon. The two brothers had asked them for bail money several times, but as they did not pay what they owed, Álvaro Nicolau Nogueira and Francisco Mendes de Castro failed to accept their applications, cutting off relations with them. The five letters included in the process are related to this hostility between the two intervening parts.