Research Library · Torre do Tombo · Data
Prince Henry the Navigator is usually pictured alone on the cliffs of Sagres. The royal registers of Portugal tell a different story. We took every act in the Torre do Tombo's online catalogue that names him, 359 in all, from 1416 to 1504, and asked three simple questions. When was he in the king's books? Where were his people? Who were they? The answers point to Lagos, not Sagres. They also show a man who worked through a large household of squires, servants and crossbowmen spread across the kingdom.
How this was made. These are the archive's own catalogue summaries of the chancery registers, not our readings of the documents. An AI model (Claude Haiku) extracted the type of act, the person, the office and the place from each summary. We checked a random sample by hand, and we geolocated the places. The table is free to download at the end of this page.
What is known already. Henry's household and its spread across Portugal have been studied in Portuguese, notably by Maria Cristina Cunha and Maria Cristina Pimenta (1984) and by João Silva de Sousa, A Casa Senhorial do Infante D. Henrique (1991). Alberto Iria traced his movements in the Algarve (1960). What is new here, to our knowledge, is an open English dataset, the maps and charts, and a few details picked out below.
1. When he appears in the king's books
Read this chart with care. The peaks in 1439, 1446 and 1451 are years for which register books survive. The gaps are mostly years for which they do not. A gap does not mean Henry did nothing that year. What the chart does show is the shape of his relation with the Crown:
- 1439. In the first months of Afonso V's reign, Henry has his old grants confirmed in a block. These cover the soap monopoly, the tuna fisheries of the Algarve, the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo, and the royal fifth of the prizes taken by his ships.
- 1440s–1450s. Most acts now concern his people rather than himself. The king appoints his squires and servants to offices, exempts them from taxes and pardons them.
- After 1460. His name lives on in the registers for forty years, as kings confirm what his men held “as in the life of the Infante”, and as his property is used to settle his debts.
2. Where his people were
The map shows the whole kingdom, not one corner of it. Henry was Duke of Viseu, lord of Covilhã and governor of the Order of Christ at Tomar, and his men held office in all three places. But the largest circle is at Lagos, the port from which his caravels sailed to Africa.
Lagos: a port run by his men
In the Lagos entries Henry's squires and servants hold almost every office of the town, and some of them keep these offices for decades after his death:
| Date | Person | Described as | Office or grant at Lagos |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1446 | João Dias | outfitter of the Infante's fisheries | exemption from service |
| 1446 | Leonel Gil | squire of the Infante | clerk of the royal sales tax |
| 1446 | Lançarote | knight of the Infante's house | coudel (officer of the militia) of Lagos |
| 1450 | Martim Vicente | pilot | tax exemptions, at the Infante's request |
| 1452 | Afonso da Costa | — | commander (alcaide-mor) of the castle, at the Infante's request |
| 1453 | João Fernandes | squire of the Infante | royal receiver (almoxarife) |
| 1453 | João Mourato | squire of the Infante | clerk of the dues paid by the Jews |
| 1461 | Pero Jorge | servant of the Infante | clerk of the town council and of orphans |
| 1463 | João Godinho | knight of the Infante's house | clerk of the royal sales tax |
| 1464 | Fernão Valarinho | squire and servant of the Infante | houses that had belonged to Henry, against what Henry owed him |
| 1471 | Rui Raxa | squire and servant of the Infante | sesmeiro (allocator of land) |
| 1496 | Pero Vaz | squire and servant of the Infante | clerk of tolls, of the fish tithe and of the Jewry |
The knight Lançarote made coudel of Lagos in May 1446, in place of Diogo de Calvos, is very probably the Lançarote of Zurara's chronicle, the tax officer of Lagos who led the expedition of 1444, whose captives were landed and divided at Lagos in Henry's presence. We have now read the register entries themselves. In March 1453 he is still “cavaleiro da casa do Infante Dom Anrique”, when the king grants a favour at his request. No entry gives his surname, so the identification with Zurara's man remains ours. An almoxarife of Faro called Lançarote Gonçalves, replaced in 1464 because of “feitos e malefiçios”, may or may not be the same man: nothing we have read links the two. Lagos had another of Zurara's captains in office: a Soeiro da Costa was the king's almoxarife there in 1439–1441.
Sagres: settled with pardoned convicts
Henry founded a new town on the headland by Cape St Vincent, later called Vila do Infante. Its older name was Terçanabal, and it appears exactly once in the 359 entries. On 10 April 1451 the king, “at the request of the Infante D. Henrique”, commuted the sentence of a fisherman from Viana. The man had been accused of theft and sentenced to exile at Castro Marim, and was now sent instead “para a vila de Terçanabal”. Henry was peopling his new town with pardoned offenders, as Portuguese kings did with frontier towns. It is a long way from the legend of a school of astronomers and map-makers.
Ceuta shows the same practice on a larger scale. Eight of its eighteen entries are pardons that send men to serve in the garrison there.
3. Who his people were
Squires (escudeiros) far outnumber everyone else. They were the working men of a great household, who could be sent as captains, receivers, clerks or envoys. The criados were men brought up in his house. The besteiros da câmara, crossbowmen of his chamber, were privileged townsmen spread over the kingdom, from Porto to Coimbra. Among the rest are a chaplain, a pilot, and a merchant of Bristol, João Antão, who in 1441 was licensed to bear arms in Portugal at Henry's request.
4. After his death: houses for debts
Henry died in debt, as our earlier articles showed from his own charters. The registers show what that meant for his men. In July 1464 Afonso V gave Fernão Valarinho, “squire and servant of the Infante D. Henrique, living in Lagos”, houses in Lagos that had been Henry's. They were given “em desconto da dívida do Infante D. Henrique”, in part payment of what the Infante owed him. Others received confirmation of the offices they had held “as in the life of the Infante”, some of them until the 1490s.
5. What this does and does not show
- These are catalogue summaries. They can be short, incomplete or wrong. We have checked only a few of them against the register pages.
- The places are where the offices or grants were, not where Henry was. The acts were issued wherever the king was. They tell us where Henry's people and interests lay, not where he slept.
- Counts by year follow the survival of the register books.
- The extraction was done by an AI model and checked on a random sample of fourteen entries, all correct in type, person, office and place. Errors in the rest are possible. Please tell us if you find one.
- The Lançarote identification and the reading of Terçanabal as the town at Sagres are ours.
6. The data
Download the table (CSV, 359 rows). Each row has the date, the archive reference and register, the king, the type of act, the person, the household term, the office in Portuguese and English, the place, approximate coordinates, and the catalogue summary in Portuguese. Version 0.1, unverified working data; free to reuse with credit to the Torre do Tombo and to AntiqueParchments.com.
Sources
- Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, online catalogue digitarq: Chancelaria de D. João I, D. Duarte I, D. Afonso V and D. Manuel I, entries naming the Infante D. Henrique (searched November 2026). Register entries read for Lançarote: Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 5 (1446), liv. 3, f. 31v (1453), liv. 9, f. 98 (1463), liv. 8, f. 127 (1464); for Soeiro da Costa, liv. 18 and liv. 2 (catalogue).
- Maria Cristina Almeida e Cunha and Maria Cristina Pimenta, “A casa senhorial do Infante D. Henrique: organização social e distribuição regional” (1984).
- João Silva de Sousa, A Casa Senhorial do Infante D. Henrique (Lisbon, 1991).
- Alberto Iria, Itinerário do Infante D. Henrique no Algarve (Faro, 1960).
- Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, trans. C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage (1896–99).
- Our earlier articles: Paid in Silver, What Happened to Henry's Silver, Prince Henry in His Own Hand.
Map outlines from Natural Earth (public domain). Charts and data by AntiqueParchments.com Research Library. Corrections are welcome. Updated 5 November 2026: register entries on Lançarote read and added.