The seventh was Balthazar Colombo, a descendant of a Domenico Colombo, who was, according to the claim, the same Domenico who was the father of Columbus. His genealogical record was not accepted.
The eighth was Bernardo Colombo, who claimed to be a descendant of Bartholomew Columbus, the Adelantado, a claim not made good.
These last two contestants rested their title in part on the fact that their ancestors had always borne the name of Colombo, and this was required by Columbus to belong to the inheritors of his honors. The lineal ancestors of the other claimants had borne the names of Cardona, Portogallo, or Avila.
Nuño de Portogallo succeeds, and the line later changes.
From Nuño de Portogallo the titles descended to his son Alvaro Jacinto, and then to the latter's son, Pedro Nuño. His rights were contested by Luis de Avila (grandson of Cristoval, brother of Luis Colon), who tried in 1620 to reverse the verdict of 1608, and it was not till 1664 that Pedro Nuño defeated his adversaries. He was succeeded by his son, Pedro Manuel, and he by his son, Pedro Nuño, who died in 1733, when this male line became extinct.
The titles were now illegally assumed by Pedro Nuño's sister, Catarina Ventura, who by marriage gave them to her husband, James Fitz-James Stuart, son of the famous Duke of Berwick, and by inheritance in his own right, Duke of Liria. When he died, in 1738, the titles passed to his son, Jacobo Eduardo; thence to the latter's son, Carlos Fernando, who transmitted them to his son, Jacobo Filipe. This last was obliged, by a verdict in 1790, which reversed the decree of 1664, to yield the titles to the line of Francesca, sister of Diego, the fourth holder of them. This Francesca married Diego Ortegon, and their grandchild, Josefa, married Martin Larreategui, whose great-great-grandson, Mariano (by decrees 1790-96), became Duke of Veragua, from whom the title descended to his son, Pedro, and then to his grandson, Cristoval, the present Duke, born in 1837, whose heir, the next Duke, was born in 1878. The value of the titles is said to-day to represent about eight or ten thousand dollars, and this income is chargeable upon the revenues of Cuba and Porto Rico.
In concluding this rapid sketch of the descent of the blood and honors of Columbus, two striking thoughts are presented. The Larreateguis are a Basque family. The blood of Columbus, the Genoese, now mingles with that of the hardiest race of navigators of western Europe, and of whom it may be expected that if ever earlier contact of Europe with the New World is proved, these Basques will be found the forerunners of Columbus. The blood of the supposed discoverer of the western passage to Asia flows with that of the earliest stock which is left to us of that Oriental wave of population which inundated Europe, in the far-away times when the races which make our modern Christian histories were being disposed in valleys and on the coasts of what was then the Western World.