The morgadio was created to ensure that the assets remained in the possession of a single individual, in the understanding that it was the most effective means to serve God and the kingdom while keeping the founder’s memory alive and providing a basis for improving the household. The properties entailed by Cristóvão de Brito are representative of social evolution as felt during the sixteenth century, with the addition of land assets, a house in the parish of São Lourenço, Lisbon (a parish to which Cristóvão’s ancestors and relatives were linked, as mentioned above), and 400,000 reais in interest rates.

From the outset, this was a significant group of assets which provided for the administrator of the morgadio. The administrator was cast in an idealised way, considered to be a key figure in bringing past, present and future together. This connection was expressed in the obligation to use the Brito surname and the lineage’s heraldry. The successor to the entail was required to be a layperson, as the entail was instituted “for married, legitimate descendants”, preferably male, ideally the eldest son. The succession excluded the intellectually disabled, the “ferocious” and “the mute and crippled”; in short, all those unable to govern themselves or the entail adequately. In addition, every generation was responsible for improving the institution, adding the real estate removed from the terça, which is to say from the testamentary reserve that people could dispose of at their will, according to the legal framework in force at the time. Seen as a point of support for kinship organised around the representation of the administrator’s power (who, in a way, was seen as pater familias), the entail also helped define authority roles on behalf of the family’s interests. If the potential successor should marry against the administrator’s will, they would lose to the next of kin the right of succession.

A house, land and money, lengthening the family name and heraldic symbols through time – such was the compound, projected as a chain linking founder and successors until the end of time, to be transmitted via a universe of blood relatives. Such was a part of the “body”, as established through the morgadio, whose completeness lay in the pious and spiritual dimensions. Using part of the income from the entailed assets, Cristóvão de Brito ordered two daily masses to be said, one of them in the convent of Madre de Deus in Lisbon. To support and adorn the offices that interceded for the salvation of souls, the founder also made dispositions for liturgical implements (including a candlestick with the motto of Queen Leonor) and an altarpiece devoted the Assumption of Mary.