The “Entail of the Month” initiative in September highlights the entailment established in 1552 in Funchal by Pedro Leme. The Leme family were merchants family from Bruges who settled in Portugal during the reign of Afonso V. The precursor was Martim Leme (or Marten Lem), identified as a Squire of the King’s Household, merchant and resident in Lisbon.

The presence of the Leme family in Portugal, especially in Funchal, became consolidated in 1552 with the institution of the estate of Pedro Leme, son of António Leme, a nobleman and knight in the royal household. In his will, the testator stipulated that the centre of his estate would be a farm he had inherited from his mother, located in Funchal’s Parish of Santo António, and to which he added the properties acquired in the meantime through to the date of his death.

The estate’s administration remained in the family until the 19th century. In this century, the Leme’s influence was shaped by the development of socially fruitful matrimonial alliances with the administrators of other local entailments. In the 1820’s, there were two marriages with the Ornelas family, owner of the Caniço estate, a subject for a past Entail of the Month. Just before these tied bonds were abolished, the property once bequeathed by Pedro Leme became part of the estate under the house of the Counts of Carvalhal, a prominent family at the heart of Madeiran society.

To find out more details about this entail, go to this page with all the Entail of the Month information. Here, you may also find out about the other entails made available in the meantime, at: https://www.vinculum.fcsh.unl.pt/entail-of-the-month

You can also contribute to this initiative by making suggestions for future entails of the month and any details you may be able to provide. To this end, please contact the project at: vinculum@fcsh.unl.pt.

The VINCULUM project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Professor of NOVA FCSH and researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies, awarded the first ERC Consolidator Grant to a Portuguese researcher in the field of History.