“But he has never forgotten his family at Moguer,” concluded my friend, “and although I am only related to him through my wife, he has lately written to me saying that he was coming to Spain, and inviting me to meet him in Seville.”
I may not have got the details of the romance quite right, but there was no doubt about the great man’s loyalty to those he had left behind him, and all through the drive the name of Bethancourt rang in my ears, while I tried in vain to recall what I had previously known of the family.
On looking them up among the multifarious notes which I have a genius for making and forgetting, I found that here was another of Moguer’s links with Spanish history.
In 1344 Pope Clement VI. gave the Lordship of the Canaries, then known as the Fortunate Isles, to Don Luis de la Cerda, a grandson of Alfonso X., with the title of Prince, and instructions to conquer and Christianise them. One would have thought that the islands should be conquered before they were given away, but it seems to have been the custom for the Popes to give away what they did not possess. Some historians assert that Alfonso XI., sovereign lord of the islands, was not best pleased at their being presented to his cousin, and wrote a letter to the Pope which to the frivolous modern eye seems to have been couched in a somewhat satirical vein, for he “thanked His Holiness for having made the gift, although it was in his (the writer’s) sovereign dominion.”
Don Luis de la Cerda, however, did not benefit by the somewhat dubious rights conferred on him, for he went off to France, his mother’s native land, and was there killed in battle two years later, never having visited the Canaries at all; and the next we hear of the Fortunate Isles is that after some vicissitudes they came in the course of a business transaction into the hands of “Mossen Juan de Betancur,” a French gentleman who carried out his enterprise to such good purpose that the people gave him the title of king.
This was in 1417, and meanwhile a good deal of highly profitable traffic had been going on between the “idolaters” of the islands and Seville and other Andalucian ports, including, it would seem, our little Palos and Moguer. Efforts were again being made to convert them, some Franciscan friars had established themselves there, and now Pope Martin V. appointed “Mossen” Bethancourt’s cousin, Don Mendo, as Bishop of the Rubicon, which seems to have been the name given to the diocese, and he came to Seville to swear obedience, as his suffragan, to the Archbishop.
Twenty years later, the commerce with the Canaries becoming presumably more and more lucrative, it was discovered that a great mistake had been made in allowing a Frenchman to acquire the lordship of the islands, and an armed force was sent over from Spain to dispossess Mossen Juan’s son, who now reigned in his stead, on the pretext of misgovernment and disrespect to the friars, who were busy making “new Christians” of “Mossen Menaute” Bethancourt’s subjects.
Mossen Menaute, according to the chroniclers, was not strong enough to fight the Spaniards, but he came pretty well out of the business, for he sold his rights, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Count of Niebla, one of the Medina Sidonia family, and with the proceeds he established himself at Moguer. When his guiding hand was removed, the prosperous trade which had aroused the cupidity of the powers in Spain so quickly declined that the Canary Isles became a source of expense rather than of profit, and changed hands time after time in the next half-century; while “Mossen Betancur” flourished on his new estate, and founded the family with which my travelling companion was so pleased to claim connection.
I got back to Seville none too soon, for the rain which drove me away from Moguer continued and increased, until all the Andalucian rivers overflowed. The railway from Seville to Huelva was under water, and the Columbus country isolated. In the matter of the shaky bridge, however, good came out of evil, for it became so much shakier in consequence of the floods that the authorities were forced at last to take action, and now pilgrims to La Rabida may drive there viâ Moguer and Palos with quiet minds, for there is no longer any imminent danger of the diligence toppling over into the river.