1687. Carta de Juana Fernández Cano para su marido Miguel de Llerena Bracamonte.

Letter from Juana Fernández Cano to her husband Miguel de Llerena Bracamonte.

The author informs her husband, Miguel de Llerena Bracamonte, of their family situation and of the state of the hacienda, especially of the harvest and the breeding of the pigs. She also tells him to enjoy the trip, but urges him to return soon.

In 1688 Miguel de Llerena Bracamonte, the lord of the house of Castrilla, in Espinosa de los Monteros (Burgos), and a resident in Almendral (Badajoz); denounced to the Council of Castile the wrongdoing of the Chamber of the Alcaldes of Crime at the Chancery of Granada regarding a particular proceeding. In 1685 he had filed a claim for the theft of 100 bushels of wheat from his cellar. At first, Juan Garrido, a neighbour, came under suspicion. However, his innocence was proved and he sued Miguel Llerena Bracamonte for discrediting him. Despite this, the proceeding had an unexpected turn when Mauro Durán, an ordinary mayor, and Predro Moreno, a lieutenant bailiff, whose names were brought up during the theft investigation, decided to arrest Miguel de Llerena Bracamonte. A release request was sent to the Chancery, but the order never arrived because the messenger who carried it, a slave called Domingo Hernández, was murdered in Constantina (Seville). Apart from not being able to leave the prison, the circumstances of the theft and the murder were not resolved. Likewise, Miguel de Llerena Bracamonte was condemned to pay two hundred ducats and also to four years´ banishment.

He then chose to denounce in Madrid the injustice he had suffered. To the damages caused by the imprisonment and the pecuniary punishment, he added his wife´s sudden passing. He blamed the tension undergone by his wife during the proceedings for her death. As a testimony of this fact, he presented two letters in which his wife´s sad situation was manifested. For succeeding in his protest, he asked for help to his holiness nuncio, who promulgated a Pauline urging the possible witnesses of the theft to confess what they knew under penalty of excommunication if they did not. The Pauline was presented by Ana de Llerena, the plaintiff´s sister, who then proceeded to collect witness account of what happened in 1685. The proceeding is incomplete and the sentence form the Council of Castile remains unknown. The letter transcribed in here was underlined and noted by some scribe from the Council. In those annotations on the verso and recto of the letter, it is indicated the amount of money handed to the recipient and the need to punish those responsible for the theft and for the family´s misfortunes.