His habit of noticing and praising the precocious talents, and the youthful services of the boy, should suffice to prove the legitimacy of Fernando. Had his birth been shameful, would the Admiral have dwelt complaisantly on this subject? Would he have dared to send him, when a youth, to compliment the Portuguese governor of Arcilla, who had, among his officers, near relations of his first wife, Doña Felippa Mognis de Perestrello? And would this particular circumstance have been related to us by Don Fernando himself?[1] Could a bastard ever have recalled such a circumstance, — one so humiliating to himself?
The legitimacy of Fernando, shown by the unanimous belief of his cotemporaries, justified by the fostering kindliness of Queen Isabella, the regards of the Catholic King, and the particular esteem of the Emperor Charles V., is corroborated by a new proof. The genealogical tree of the family of the Admiral bears the name of Fernando, immediately after that of Diego, his oldest son, and on the same line.[2]
In the genealogies presented by the Colombos (Columbuses) of Italy before the Spanish tribunals, at the time of the trials for the succession, Fernando was always put in the same branch with Diego. The consultation so often cited of the senator John Peter Sordi, for Balthazar Colombo, proves that the celebrated jurisconsult was far from having the least doubt of the legitimacy of Don Fernando.[3] In his memorial to the Court of Appeals, dated the fifteenth of July, 1792, a great jurist of Madrid, Don Perez de Castro, rejecting disdainfully, by a marginal note, the insinuation of the attorney De la Palma y Freitas (overruled in
- ↑ Historie del sign. Don Fernando Colombo, etc., cap. lxxxvii.
- ↑ The genealogical trees of the Columbuses that have been prepared for the last three hundred years, distinguish carefully the quality of the persons. Bastards and adulterines are there so designated; and the name of Don Fernando invariably figures among the legitimate.
- ↑ Joannis Petri Sordi consilium, sect. xi., num. 261.
