Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, First Duke of Lerma

Spanish nobleman

• Born: 1553
• Birthplace: Seville, Spain
• Died: May 17, 1625
• Place of death: Valladolid, Spain

The duke de Lerma inaugurated the position of válido, or king’s favored minister, in the court of King Philip III of Spain. Lerma’s administration became synonymous with corruption, representing the political decline that took place in imperial Spain at the same time the empire reached the apogee of its cultural golden age.

Early Life

Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, who would become the duke de Lerma (LEHR-mah), was the son of the marquis de Denia and de Lerma and included in his illustrious lineage King Ferdinand of Aragon and Saint Francis Borgia. His uncle, the archbishop of Seville, supervised his education, and at first the young nobleman seemed destined for a career in the Church. However, his father held important positions in the court of King Philip II and obtained favors there for his son. At an early age, the budding courtier skillfully learned and applied the techniques and habits of ingratiating himself with those who could advance his fortune.

In 1575, Sandoval y Rojas inherited his family’s lands and titles, becoming marquis de Lerma, but its fortunes were at a very low ebb. At court since adolescence, he became an intimate adviser and friend to the heir to the throne, who in 1598 became King Philip III. Pious and habituated to spectacles, indolent and indifferent to governing, the new monarch found in his wily adviser the perfect complement to himself. The marquis de Lerma proved someone in whom the king could confide, entrust royal authority, and delegate the task of manipulating the court and managing state affairs. Within hours of becoming king, Philip III conferred on Lerma the novel position of válido, or most favored royal minister. In 1599, the king created him duke de Lerma.

Life’s Work

Supported by the king’s authority and friendship, Lerma came to control vast resources of patronage and funding. Such control had previously been distributed among various councils and agencies, but they now came under the single control of the uniquely sanctioned válido. Moreover, as the king’s principal chamberlain, Lerma controlled and restricted access to the monarch by anyone else. Lerma remained in power until 1618, the apogee of the golden age of Spanish literature and the arts. His name, however, has become a byword for corruption and venality, representative of the decay of Spanish royal authority and government.

Lerma consolidated his own power first through nepotism, having numerous members of his family appointed to government and ecclesiastical positions. His two sons were elevated in the aristocratic hierarchy and given court positions providing sizable incomes and properties. The uncle who had mentored him was raised to archbishop of Toledo. His brothers-in-law were appointed viceroys in Naples and Peru. Moreover, Lerma created a subhierarchy of válidos who answered only to him. These subordinates thrived on the incomes and bribes of their government appointments and operated an extensive system of spies throughout the Habsburg realms and in foreign courts, alerting Lerma of his critics and opponents.

Members and intimates of the royal family grew increasingly alarmed at the extent of Lerma’s power and the voracity of his appetite for more. To protect himself from these opponents, Lerma persuaded the king to move his court from Madrid, the center of intrigues against the válido, to Valladolid, northwest of the capital. This was the center of Lerma’s family properties. There, over the next decade, he converted the Lerma castle into a palace, stocking it with one of the largest art collections of its time. Keeping the court in Valladolid allowed the válido to have more of his kinsmen and intimates ingratiate themselves with Philip III and obtain royal favor.

Nonetheless, after the death in 1603 of the king’s grandmother, one of Lerma’s fiercest opponents, the court returned to Madrid. By 1609, Lerma shaped two of the most significant policies of the reign of Philip III. In that year and the following, all Muslims (known also as Moors) who did not convert to Catholicism were expelled from Spain. With this act, the country was consolidated as an exclusively Catholic stronghold. The king thereby strengthened his sobriquet of Philip the Pious.

In foreign policy, Lerma obtained in 1609 a peace treaty of twelve years with the Protestant United Provinces of the Netherlands. For forty years, the United Provinces had been in rebellion against Spanish Habsburg rule. The Dutch used the peace to their advantage, augmenting their naval and commercial maritime prowess and becoming a powerful challenge to the Spanish and Portuguese empires a decade later.

A breach in the power of Lerma began to appear in 1607, when one of his closest advisers was accused of massive corruption and incompetence in office. The scandal was aggravated by the beginning of a national economic crisis that endured for the remainder of the decade. Further crises due to corruption by Lerma’s subordinates followed. Moreover, the válido himself had amassed a fortune worth, in modern terms, hundreds of millions of dollars. Nonetheless, he continued to retain the confidence of the king. Indeed, in 1612, the king announced that Lerma’s signature would be equal in authority to his own.

The phenomenon of a favored royal minister was not unique to Spain in the seventeenth century. Since the beginning of the Age of Discoveries, with growing empires, more complex global trade patterns, and expanded bureaucracies, royal governance in Europe had become ever more complex. King Louis XIII had a powerful, favored minister in Cardinal de Richelieu. King Charles I of England had one in the first duke of Buckingham. Such figures were necessary to maneuver the growing intricacies of government business and court politics, generously lubricating them with royal patronage and favor yet not directly compromising or damaging royal authority.

A powerful alliance against Lerma, however, steadily mounted. It consisted of the king’s wife, his confessor, marginalized members of upper nobility and the high councils, and, ultimately, Lerma’s eldest son. The nepotism and venality of Lerma’s administration were abundantly apparent. Moreover, the extreme suspicion and intricacy with which he conducted state affairs had added a further dimension of morosity to the imperial Spanish bureaucracy.

Anticipating an eventual downfall, Lerma had requested from the pope, beginning in 1614, to be nominated a cardinal. Beyond the piety of an elevated ecclesiastical position, a cardinalate provided Lerma with status and protection against indictment. By the beginning of 1618, the pope made Lerma a cardinal. By the end of the year, Philip allowed him to withdraw to his now luxurious country properties in Lerma. His enemies, nonetheless, succeeded in obtaining weighty fines against him, amounting to annual payments equivalent to tens of millions of dollars.

Significance

Philip III made the duke de Lerma’s eldest son his next válido, and elevated him to duke de Uceda. The king’s second válido, however, had nowhere near the power of the first, and the king himself soon died in 1621. Nonetheless, the position of válido, which Lerma had inaugurated, continued with the next king, Philip IV. Lerma died on his estates four years after Philip III. The most lasting image of Lerma is a portrait of him in gleaming body armor and mounted on a white charger, painted in 1603 by Peter Paul Rubens.

Bibliography

Allen, Paul C. Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598-1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. Reviews policy making and strategies devised by Lerma for Philip III to pacify territories under Habsburg control.

Darby, Graham. Imperial Spain, 1469-1715. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964. Analyzes the economic conditions and sociopolitical developments in the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire and the Habsburg Dynasty.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Spain in the Seventeenth Century. London: Longman, 1994. Examines the economic, political, and military conditions of reign of Philip III in relation to his Habsburg predecessors and successors.

Elliot, J. H., and L. W. B. Brockliss, eds. The World of the Favourite. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Includes an article on Lerma as válido and compares his role to that of favored royal ministers at other courts in seventeenth century Europe.

Feros, Antonio. Kingship and Favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598-1621. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Revisionist assessment of the administration of Lerma and reign of Philip III, contravening standard interpretations of corruption and incompetence.

Sánchez, Magdalena S. The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Reviews strategies and roles of major female figures around Philip III, his grandmother, wife, and an aunt, who opposed Lerma’s manipulation of him.

Schroth, Sarah. The Private Picture Collection of the Duke of Lerma. Ph.D. dissertation. New York University, 1990. Based on archival inventories, this work estimates that the art collection of Lerma included approximately fifteen hundred paintings, inaugurating fashion for major art collecting at Spanish court.

Smith, Hilary Dansey. Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age: A Study of Some Preachers of the Reign of Philip III. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Examines objectives, styles, and methods of rhetorical eloquence in sermons and religious discourse.