Jaime Vélaz de Medrano y Barros, III Marquess of Tabuérniga

Jaime José Ignacio Vélaz de Medrano y Barros, 3rd Marquess of Tabuérniga (Santa Eulalia de Gorgullos, Tordoia, 6 February 1693 – Pinto, December 1753) was an important soldier, noble courtier, and prominent conspirator during the reign of Philip V and Isabel de Farnesio. He married Doña Petronila de Bracamonte y Villalón, the daughter of the Marquess of Fuente el Sol. He was the son of Jaime Vélaz de Medrano y Hurtado de Mendoza, 2nd Marquess of Tabuérniga and Francisca de Barros y Guillamas.

Birth and ancestry

Jaime Velaz de Medrano was baptized on 6 February 1693 in the parish of Santa Eulalia de Gorgullos de Tordoya, in the region of Ordes, in the kingdom of Galicia. His parents were Jaime Velaz de Medrano Hurtado de Mendoza, II Marquis of Tabuérniga, who belonged to a family of Navarrese high nobility, and Francisca de Barros y Guillamas who belonged to a family of Coruña nobility as they were lords of the Temple and Grajal.

His great-great grandfather Don Antonio Vélaz de Medrano y Mendoza had served as a soldier in Naples and Sicily and would later become magistrate in the towns of Malaga (1609–12) and Cuenca–Huete (1612–14).

His great-grandfather, Don Pedro Velaz de Medrano (Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 28 July 1603 – Coímbra, c. 1659), Lord of Tabuerniga, Knight of the Order of Santiago and page of King Philip III. He was a prominent sailor and soldier in the reign of Philip IV who fought in the Battle of the Dunes in 1639 and was Captain General of the Armada de Barlovento and custodian of the New Spain Fleet, but who betrayed the crown in 1648, going to France, for whose King made several corsair raids in the Caribbean.

Among the direct ancestors of Jaime Vélaz de Medrano, his grandfather, the I Marquess of Tabuérniga, Antonio Velaz de Medrano y Altamirano (Labastida, 1637 – Spa, 1683) a prominent soldier in the reign of Carlos II, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Sergeant General of Battle, he held the position of governor of Nieuwpoort in West Flanders and who in 1680 carried out a curious diplomatic initiative when negotiating with the United Provinces of the Netherlands to crown himself prince of the island of Tobago.

Jaime Velaz de Medrano was raised until he was five years old in La Coruña, in the house of his maternal grandparents. From this age, he was claimed by his father and came to reside at court with him. When he was not yet seven, his mother died in a drowning accident in the Jarama River. He then went on to live with his uncle, Antonio, with whom he lived until he joined the army.

The conspiracy of the Marquess of Tabuérniga

Don Jaime José Ignacio Velaz de Medrano led a court intrigue against King Philip V and Elisabeth Farnese. This court intrigue, in the words of historian Pedro Luis Lorenzo Cadarso was a whole series of conflicts that "pitted different sectors of the ruling group, understood both in the political and economic dimension, among themselves or against the superior authority". Velaz de Medrano was a lieutenant of the Spanish Guards. Medrano's membership in this corps ratified that he possessed noble blood in his veins (it was a sine qua non requirement to go through the preceptive process of blood cleansing to prove it). Membership in the Spanish Guard gave the Marquess access to the circles of courtly power.

Background

During the Tabuérniga conspiracy, he was in one of the most turbulent periods of 18th-century Spanish history regarding conspiracies. This was the era when the Court was moved to Seville due to the frail health of King Philip V. During this time and in the subsequent years, numerous intrigues unfolded involving the monarchs. Philip V, who was about to abdicate for the second time, and Isabel de Farnesio, who was fixated on controlling her husband and preventing another exile to La Granja de San Ildefonso, were at the center of this turmoil. Her residence became a hub for those discontented with the current political situation, creating an environment ripe for the boldest conspirators to plot a coup to alter the monarchy's political direction. It was against this backdrop that Medrano's attempt was conceived.

The conspiracy of tabuérniga

The objective was, in appearance, simple: to force Felipe V to abdicate in some way in his son Fernando VI. Don Jaime Velaz de Medrano was of the opinion that it should be the prince Fernando VI who would be the one to take the crown. The III Marquess of Tabuerniga designed a plan that Don Fernando would flee from Seville and, taking advantage of the proximity to the Portuguese border, would go to that country, where he would obtain the moral and material support of Fernando's father-in-law, John V of Portugal to coerce Felipe and force him to renounce the throne in his favor. The instrument that the Marquess had prepared to convince the prince was "a representation to the Prince advising His Highness that he should absent himself from these kingdoms," written in a quarto notebook with 19 pages.

In this notebook, Don Jaime Velaz de Medrano y Barros presented the situation of the monarchy under the aegis of his father Jaime Velaz de Medrano y Hurtado de Mendoza, with Dantesque overtones:

"Spain, sir, respectable patrimony and most beloved homeland of Your Majesty, groans deafly its misfortune because not even breath has been left to try at least to make its pitiful complaints heard and like a living corpse, it lives in its agonies but it lives dying…"

The Spaniards would prefer, according to Don Jaime, slavery to vassalage, since "if the slaves work, the lord supports them: but woe to the vassals! Woe to the vassals! Who sweat blood to be devoured by the insatiable rage of their ambition… The courts trade with justice; the servants of the Royal House suffer inclemency; the troops have been forced to miserable officers, full of work forced to extreme necessity, to the charitable pity of the bishops and convents; commerce suffers losses and scorn; not even the Church forgives such a voracious tooth. In short, all is pain and all is anguish".

He then urged Don Fernando to take an active part in the solution: “How long will Your Highness' dissimulation and tolerance last? All our hopes consist of Your Highness…" He then proposed the way out of the crisis:

"The means is very easy (...) If Your Highness keeps the secret and flies one night to Portugal, everything will be achieved at once, for You will see that at once the opposite machine begins to tremble and that by returning for such a just cause the earth and the heavens will be on Your Highness' side. The way for you to go quickly and without contingency is also very easy: but nothing would be achieved without dissimulation and silence".

Don Jaime José Ignacio Velaz de Medrano concluded his speech with professions of loyalty, love for the king and the kingdom, humility, and devotion. Only "the satisfaction of my King, the good of my country and the glory of Your Majesty, in whose defense I will be as long as I live, I willingly and voluntarily shed my blood, aspiring to no other reward than the noble interest of merit". Medrano planned to entrust this representation to Don Fernando in his own hand on the night of 5 December 1730, taking advantage of one of those occasions when he had access to the intimacy of the princes.

He would never succeed, since hours before the delivery; he was arrested on his way out of his prayers at the Cathedral of Seville. It is unknown who informed on Don Jaime José Ignacio Velaz de Medrano and how it came to Patiño's knowledge, right hand of Isabel de Farnesio, of the plot that was being orchestrated.

Interrogation of the Marquéss of Tabuérniga

The minister responsible for interrogating Medrano wished to know first hand who else was involved. For this reason, he personally interviewed the Marquess in the prison in the town of Gandul. However, he did not get satisfactory answers, so he decided to send him to the fortress of Vélez-Málaga, where he would await a secret and summary trial for high treason. One of the peculiarities of this whole scheme lies precisely in this process.

Francisco Manuel de Herrera, prosecutor of the Audiencia de la Contratación, a man of Patiño's confidence, who acted, in Tabuérniga's own words, as "defense attorney, prosecutor and judge," carried it out. It consisted of a series of interrogations dispatched with an artful attitude on the part of Herrera with the intention of forcing the Marquis to give away his accomplices. Whether out of loyalty or out of sheer lust for survival, Jaime Velaz de Medrano disguised the whole affair with the utmost naiveté, assuring that no one was behind his representation and that he did not even have the slightest intention of handing it over to the prince.

He claimed that the letter was destined only for the eyes of a friar, Fray Pablo de la Concepción, whose ideas against the return to the throne of Felipe he wanted to court and flatter to obtain his support in his pretension of marrying the entenada of an intimate of the friar, the Marquess of Villaverde. Thus, Herrera ended up giving up, but not before sending the pertinent information to Patiño. This information would end up costing the life of the friar, locked up for years in the citadel of the Alhambra, and several years of house arrest for another court figure who appeared in the letters seized from the Marquess: the musician José de Nebra.

Courtly consequences from the conspiracy

This plot had important consequences that affected the rest of the reign of Philip V and Isabella Farnese. The first of these was precisely the opposite of what it sought: the strengthening of the power of the queen and her clique and the increase of her ascendancy over her husband. Although with cyclical crises, the sovereign was able to maintain her hegemonic position during the following decades until the death of her husband, becoming, de facto, the ruler of the Hispanic monarchy. This reinforcement was translated into multiple aspects: the consolidation of Patiño as a political and courtly reference, the deployment of a foreign policy in accordance with Italian foreign policy in line with the Farnese's Italian aspirations, etc. The failure of the attempt did not discourage those disaffected with the princely room, who continued to pull the strings of intrigue in order to bring about the desired change. The multiple plots and the different incidents that occurred throughout the decade of the thirties, sometimes involving Portugal (publication of El Duende) are proof of this.

As a consequence of the latter, and also partly because of the Tabuérniga conspiracy, there was a gradual tightening of the surveillance of Tabuérniga, there was a progressive tightening of the surveillance of the prince's room, a surveillance which, with the arrival of new plots, ended in a real encirclement. The isolation was severe: it was forbidden to admit anyone to the prince's chamber except his governor, his lieutenant governor, his mayordomo and a stable boy. As far as the princess was concerned, only her chief chambermaid, her lady-in-waiting, her mayordomo and another cavalryman could be admitted. The ambassadors of France and Portugal were the only exceptions to this harsh rule. It was strictly forbidden for Their Highnesses to eat in public, to visit any church and to go on public outings or walks. Political repression could affect even the royal persons themselves in the 18th century.

Prisoner at the fortress of Velez-Malaga

Don Jaime prepared to spend several years in prison. He ended up befriending the Alcaide of the fortress, who notably relaxed the conditions of his confinement. He began to go out of the castle, to attend mass in the church to meet with the local nobility.

Medrano and the Marquesses of Fuente el Sol

On one of these outings, he met the Marquesses of Fuente el Sol. Over time, his treatment was pleasant to the family who came to agree to give him the hand of the Marquises daughter, Ana Maria. Filled with aspiration to unite and inherit important titles and lordships in the future, he wrote to the king of Portugal requesting him to "deign to intercede with His Majesty." It is probable that he hoped to obtain the protection of the Portuguese authorities given the ultimate origin of his troubles. At the time his memorial was to arrive in Lisbon, Spanish-Portuguese relations were not going through a good period. In 1735, the ambassadors had been expelled and a war had begun in Colonia del Sacramento that would last two years. The reality is that the response that came from Portugal to the request for intermission of his influence was rather lukewarm. "A person of the greatest confidence of that sovereign" advised that he should send the request "to the king of France, as the most convenient way." Tabuérniga was not in favor of the request. The reconciliation of the two courts in April 1737 brought about a better situation. The marquis traveled in person to Lisbon.

Journey to lisbon

On 10 April 1737 Tabuérniga left Vélez Málaga for Antequera, "before dawn, with a servant and three horses." Once in Antequera, he took a horse-drawn carriage to Seville, where he embarked to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. From there, by sea, he reached the Guadiana river and traveled by boat to Portomarino. The rest of the journey to Lisbon was made by land. In Lisbon, Tabuérniga had an important contact: D. Francisco Xavier de Meneses, IV Count of Ericeira. Ericeira had been one of the most prominent military men during the War of Succession. With Ericeira's help, the marquis was referred to the Jesuit priest Juan Bautista Carbone. Carbone was a native of Naples, although he had resided in Portugal since 1722. He was very close to King Joao V, who highly esteemed his profound knowledge in the field of astronomy. The Jesuit and the Marquis had a meeting at the Jesuit's convent. Four days later, Carbone repeated the verdict that had been sent to Tabuérniga in the answer to his previous letter: "That he should go to France to seek protection." To sweeten the refusal to support his pretensions, Carbone had obtained from the sovereign the concession of a coastal aid to the Marquis, a little more than one thousand and five hundred doubloons of sixty reales. The money would be in Seville, an unbeatable way of guaranteeing the departure from the Portuguese kingdom of such an untimely visitor. What is certain is that the Marquis retraced his steps and returned to his enclosure in Velez-Malaga, without forgetting to collect the Portuguese gift.

Marriage to the daughter of the Marquess of Fuente el Sol

On 11 July 1737, at 5:00 a.m., he showed up at the fortress of Pedro de Bracamonte, brother of the fiancée, accompanied by Ana María herself. He demanded that "she should marry immediately" and adduced "deep and serious motives that obliged him to such a resolution, and that if the case seemed new, the sacrament of marriage would gild everything". The tone of this and other testimonies suggest a premature pregnancy. The first consequence of that visit was to send the kings a "most humble, respectful and obliging memo" asking them to agree to the marriage. The surprise of the sovereigns must have been monumental, as can be deduced from their response: "he does not understand how this delinquent could have treated his marriage (...) because, having been deprived of all communication and correspondence, the adjustment and other circumstances that are supposed seem implausible".

Far from consenting, the monarchs sent D. Pedro de la Cueva, "of the council of His Majesty, his mayor of the crime of the Royal Chancery of Granada," to make an inquiry into the circumstances in which these negotiations had taken place. Cueva brought to light the favorable treatment given to Tabuérniga, his dealings with the Lisbon court, including his escape to the neighboring kingdom. As a consequence of all this, Philip V ordered to reinforce the imprisonment of the prisoner, to isolate him and to put behind bars the Alcaide who had facilitated the meetings between the marquis and the Fuente el Sol. With the collaboration of a servant and his brother-in-law, he organized an escape.

Escape from the prison of Vélez-Malaga

Medrano used a rope over one of the walls of the prison, taking advantage of the guard's, whom he had bought for months. Once outside the prison, he embarked at the nearest port for Gibraltar. There he would wait for his future brother-in-law to bring his fiancée. With a small problem: his future wife had been locked up in a convent until the matter of the royal refusal was resolved, which is why Tabuérniga convinced his future brother-in-law to take his younger sister, Petronila, to the Rock, since as he himself recognized "well, for the importance of our honor, it was the same to marry this sister as the other and, thus fulfilling the reason of state of our families, we did not lack the obedience of our sovereigns, well, for this lady, of course permission had been requested, their majesties had not denied it".

Marriage

Immediately after arriving in Gibraltar, Don Jaime and Dona Petronila were to be married in the Catholic church of the British colony of Gibraltar. His first destination away from Gibraltar was Portugal, where he was coldly received. The Portuguese neighbour did not wish to irritate the kings of Spain in a period in which this bilateral period had been presided over by tension and even by war in Europe and in the colonies.

Journey to london

From Lisbon, he left for London. There Don Jaime Velaz de Medrano would find a place to live, in a country in the midst of a pre-war climate just a few months before the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain. In London, Tabuérniga saw his advantage over the ignorance of the British, he pretended to be a Grande de España (his descendants will actually enherit this title), an unjust victim of the Queen's despotic policies and, more importantly, a magnificent investment for the future given his intimacy with Prince Ferdinand, for whom, Medrano claimed, he had experienced all his calamities, and with whom he could negotiate, once he acceded to the throne, a lasting peace treaty uniting the two crowns. The English authorities believed Don Jaime to a certain extent. In addition, the marquis knew how to win the will of ministers and courtiers in other less honest ways.

Pensions from the Prince of Wales and King George II of Great Britain

His personal charisma won him the friendship of the Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne of England, to such an extent that the latter granted him a pension of 400 pounds for his subsistence. In this way, Jaime Vélaz de Medrano y Barros supplemented his income, in addition to another pension of 600 pounds, in this case from King George II himself, to supplement his income.

Negotiations with England and Spain in Lisbon

In 1746 the Duke of Newcastle, then Southern Secretary and in control of British foreign policy, approached the Marquis of Tabernuiga and proposed that he go to Lisbon to open secret negotiations with Spain about a peace treaty. Jaime Velaz de Medrano agreed, and made contact with the Prime Minister of Spain Sebastián de la Cuadra Medrano y Llarena, 1st Marquess of Villarías in August 1746 – setting out the proposed British terms. As the former King was dead, and Ferdinand VI had taken the Spanish throne – Medrano was in favour with the Spanish court and Villarías told him Spain was ready to agree terms. The talks floundered over the future of Naples and finally broke down, although the Spanish remained open to further discussions at a later date. The Lisbon mission, however, will end in failure. Don Jaime Velaz de Medrano held sway over the Austrian envoy, Count Rosenberg, who even signed a memoir proposing to maneuver at the Spanish court to appoint Don Jaime Velaz de Medrano as First Secretary of State. Marquess Medrano stayed in Lisbon, hoping to be made Secretary of State of Spain – although he was to be frustrated in this goal. In the Portuguese capital, he will prepare the ground for the real envoy on an official diplomatic mission: Sir Benjamin Keene.

The Marquess de Tabuérniga was part of the Duke of Newcastle's widespread intelligence-gathering service, and Newcastle used him to spy on his rival Carteret and other leading opposition figures. Nonconformist by nature, the Marquess Don Jaime Velaz de Medrano decided to take advantage of this proximity to spy on the Prince of Wales and his closest collaborators, passing the information he obtained to the Duke of Newcastle, one of the main British ministers. The beginning of the war with Spain will only reinforce his role. Given the mutual withdrawal of ambassadors, Medrano will manage to become a sort of unofficial representative of Spain in London, corresponding with the Marquis of San Gil, the Spanish diplomat in The Hague, interceding with the British authorities to benefit Spanish interests and, as the conflict progressed, to negotiate peace. The Marquess de Tabuérniga facilitated negotiations by influencing the Lord Carteret, and obtaining several prisoner exchanges in 1744 and 1745.

Return to London

On his return to London, Carvajal asked Don Jaime to help Don Ricardo Wall, a negotiator sent from Spain with the intention of arranging peace between the two powers. The Marquis of Tabuérniga had come to have illusions that he himself would be the one appointed for this purpose. For this reason, he ended up conspiring against the newcomer and hindering his work. It was Wall himself who encouraged his repatriation. Don Jaime's last years unfolded amidst new maneuvers on his part to obtain the recognition and positions. He tried to get Carvajal Ensenada to appoint him to one of the embassies, although without success. The Extremaduran was not in favor of it.

Sir Benjamin Keene decided that Tabuérniga should be given a military government of a square. Keene advised resignation since the golden days of London did not seem to be resurrected in the Peninsula: "Something will be done with him (Medrano), whether to his satisfaction or not, neither you nor I can imagine it, but if he is wise, he should be as happy here as Spain will make him, but with no illusions of ever seeing again the days he spent in England". Keene assumed the sovereigns were not willing to maintain the economic pensions he received in England.

Extended Pension

On 13 June 1749 Ensenada told Sir Benjamin Keene that the king had agreed to grant the Marquess:

"...the same pension he enjoyed in England (...) as a temporary provision for him until he was employed in the Master's service."

The astute ambassador immediately suspected that Ensenada was referring only and exclusively to the 600 pounds solely. The minister de la Ensenada told Keene at Court he had just come from their Catholic majesties of Spain, who had granted the same pension to Tabuérniga that he enjoyed in England:

"Keene had an opportunity, as he always sets me by him, to fish what the pension meant, and he found it was the £600 per annum the King gave the marques, exclusive of the £400 he received from the Prince."

All pressure to increase the latter figure, including maneuvers by the Portuguese ambassador in this regard, was unsuccessful. This decision put their financial situation at risk. London could be relieved of the maintenance of the pensions granted there by receiving assistance in Spain. Shortly afterwards the Marquis of Tabuerniga had to confess to one of his correspondents in England, John Roberts, that he was so short of means that he was forced to live in Villaverde, a small village outside of Madrid, in the palace of the Marquis of Fuente el Sol, without the option of residing at the court itself, far from the mechanisms of power, and still pressured by debts left in London, particularly those of the gentleman Ossorio, for the balance of which he hoped to continue counting on the English pension.

Death

Don Jaime sent Letters to Carvajal, Ensenada, Ordeñana and even to the confessor Rávago, trying to gather support. In these dealings, Jaime was surprised by death in 1753. He died as a result of a tabardillo (A form of murine typhus that occurs in Mexico), in his prime, in the town of Pinto, near Madrid.

A few days later, Carvajal gave a curious order to one of his subordinates. He told him to go to Villaverde to see the widowed Marchioness of Tabuérniga. The king ordered that all the papers of the deceased Marquess of Tabuérniga be collected and bring them to his power to keep them away from public business. Even after his death, Don Jaime continued to make the Spanish chancellery tremble with the unconfessable secrets that could be contained in his writing office. Don Jaime never acknowledged accomplices in a clear-cut way, but it is difficult to imagine that there were none. The fact that he tried to exert epistolary pressure on certain occasions on Don Carlos de Arizaga, lieutenant of Fernando VI while he was prince, it is suspected that this personage, or even his superior, the Count of Salazar, were aware of his intrigues and encouraged them.

The Marquessate of Tabuérniga

When Jaime José Ignacio Vélaz de Medrano came of age, a long lawsuit began between him and his cousin, Andrea Narcisa, to obtain the Marquessate. In fact, his uncle was recognized as the III Marquess of Tabuérniga during his minority. This dispute would end up being resolved in favor of Andrea Narcisa, although the king did not want to completely deprive Jaime of his privileges and allowed him to be titled Marquess of Tabuérniga "for his life," although without any other right associated with the title.

Children

His four children would be born in London:

• Ana Catalina Vélaz de Medrano
• Fernando Agustín Vélaz de Medrano
• María Rafaela Vélaz de Medrano
• Jorge Vélaz de Medrano

His heir and son Fernando Agustín Vélaz de Medrano Bracamonte y Dávila (London, December 23, 1742-Cape of Good Hope, November 22, 1791), was a Spanish nobleman, aristocrat and military man, 15th Marquis of Cañete, Grandee of Spain, 6th Marquis of Fuente el Sol, 8th Marquis of Navamorcuende and 15th Lord of Montalbo, known primarily for his friendship with the literary man José Cadalso. In 1786 Don Fernando Vélaz de Medrano inherited the illustrious Marquessates of Fuente el Sol, Cañete and Navamorcuende on the death of his uncle Agustín de Bracamonte. The last two were associated with the greatness of Spain.

Bibliography

• Lodge, Sir Richard. Studies in Eighteenth Century Diplomacy 1740–1748. John Murray, 1930.