The audiencia real  of Mexico City summoned my 13x-great-grandmother Antonia de Benavides to testify in the trial of Alonso de Ávila (aka Dávila) Alvarado and his brother Gil González Dávila, who were accused of conspiring with don Martín Cortés, the Marqués del Valle , to overthrow the government. Her testimony was not critical to the case, but it is one of the very few examples that exist of a woman’s testimony in a high-profile criminal trial of the era.   We can imagine

Leonor Díaz de Benavides was the mother of Alonso de Benavides, conquistador of Mexico City, and Cristóbal de Benavente, fiscal of the royal audiencia of Mexico

After Fernando Cortés and his army fled from Tenochtitlan during the Noche Triste , they encamped at Tepeaca, where Cortés drafted...

Antonia de Benavides represented the branch of the Benavides family that remained in Mexico. She and her husband Antonio Ruiz de...

A contemporary historian of the era, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera , foreshadowed the capture of the valuable shipment by the French. He described Benavides as an hijo d’algo  (nobleman) who had visited him, providing a first-hand account of some of the events after the conquest of Tenochtitlan. Cortés had given Benavides the command of one of the ships carrying the tribute for the king of Spain, the value of which was estimated at more than 200,000 ducats. Benavides had told Marty

Alonso de Benavides was a Spanish nobleman, soldier and smelter (fundidor) who departed Spain for the “New World” of the Caribbean Indies on 17 February 1517.