María Alfonso Cervatos
(–c. 1378)

Biographical

The marriage of María’s parents significantly improved their fortunes, allowing both to expand their holdings through shared ownership of various properties, which ensured a prosperous life for their children and raised the family’s status through carefully arranged marriages. María herself married Juan González, who brought with him an estate of great antiquity—one of the oldest in the kingdom of Castile—while her dowry included several of the family’s properties. Widowed early by Juan’s death in 1330 during King Alfonso XI’s campaigns against the King of Granada, María received royal favour in the form of revenues. She soon encountered difficulties with the lordship of Fuentearmegil, which had been seized by Infante Juan Manuel’s vassals in an act of feudal aggression. With the king’s intervention in 1331, she regained the estate and later passed it to her daughter Beatriz as a dowry for her 1339 marriage to Lope Rodríguez de Quijada. After their deaths without issue, the property reverted to the crown in 1353. María never remarried, instead devoting herself to the management of her estates, expanding them through new acquisitions. She drew considerable income from these through rents and leases. Influenced by her niece Sancha, a nun at the convent of San Clemente el Real, María joined the convent in 1375, bequeathing her properties in Cuerva to her brother, Gudiel Alfonso Cervatos, who established a mayorazgo that passed to his heirs.

Place of birth: Toledo
Place of death: Toledo
Place of burial: Convent of San Clemente el Real in Toledo

Daughter of Gonzalo Alfonso Cervatos and Sancha Díaz, she married Juan González, Señor de Fuentearmegil (†1330) in 1327, and had issue.