The 5 Lousada Dukes, the Duque de Losada, and his Miranda family

 The Baruch Lousada family's claim to a Dukedom may to some have found justification in early Iberian noble ancestry going back to before 1492, but we have found nothing on this. We do know that the grandfather of the wife (and first cousin) of Isaac #92 the 1st Lousada Duke was Baron d'Aguilar, but ref 35 asserts that the Curiels had Portuguese royal ancestry (albeit not derived in wedlock) which was inherited by the Baruch Lousadas through the Lamegos. Perhaps the desire to hold the Dukedom arose because of family jealousy (see note 8 below). In any event the 5 Lousada Dukes - from the branch of the family that remained in Jamaica (see note 7 below) - assumed the title of the Duque de Losada as from 1848. The English Dukes called themselves Duke de Losada y Lousada (see note 9 below).

The chart illustrates why any sort of close relationship could not have existed between the Duque and the Dukes and we do not believe that Isaac officially inherited the title in 1848. Isaac after all descended from his Livorno and Amsterdam forbears via Barbados and Jamaica (but see note 10 below), whilst the Duque descended from the powerful Guzman clan of Spain. In the 1626-43 period Gaspar de Guzman (the Count-Duke d'Olivares) utilized Portuguese New Christian financiers for the Flanders campaign, drew them to Madrid and protected them from the Spanish Inquisition, but this link did not appear to involve the Baruch Lousadas except via the Lamegos, and neither family was ennobled in this period. The Guzman and Zuniga clans held the post of Sumiller de Corps at the side of the King of Spain for almost 2 centuries from 1619.

If the Duque wanted to vary the conditions of inheritance of his title so that on his death it went to a non-descendant, he would primarily have been thinking of 2 relatives of the next generation shown in the chart above - Jude Tadeo Miranda y Villacis (his nephew) who succeeded him as Sumiller de Corps, and Gaspar Melchior Jovellanos y Ramirez (son of a cousin) a poet, lawyer and politician whose career the Duque otherwise advanced. However there is no evidence that he wanted to pursue this course and indeed it was not in his gift to do so - but in that of the King in Naples perhaps in consultation with the King in Madrid. There is even less reason to believe the Duque may have wanted his title to go to less-related or unrelated parties like the Baruch Lousadas as some have suggested!

Notes:
1. The genealogy of the 1915 and 1969 claimants was provided by Maria Jose Surribas from official Spanish records at the Archivos Estatales at the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte. They were unsuccessful (see ref 164) in their 1915 claim and 1969 claim for the title, and thus there is no indication of the title in their obituaries! The reason why the 2 claimants were unsuccessful is that the title was Italian, but the 2 cases were somewhat different as we note here.
2. We have images of the 1st and 2nd Lousada Dukes.  
3. The 'Yorkshire Lousadas' (some of whom later lived in Taunton) were so called by Peter Lousada's father, who founded a family of 'Bedfordshire' Lousadas!
4. It was Isaac a great-grandson of Emanuel #41 who assumed the title as the first Lousada Duke in 1848. Emanuel #41 had two grandsons named Emanuel - #135 son of Aaron #125 and #87 son of Jacob #36. This has caused confusion. Emanuel #87, not Emanuel #135, made the first moves to acquire the trappings of nobility. Emanuel #135 did however marry his cousin Esther sister of Emanuel #87 and daughter of Jacob, so his son Isaac #92 was a double descendant of Emanuel #41.
6. Isaac #92 was born on 21 Feb 1784 in the year after the Duque de Losada died - but his second cousin Emanuel #142 was born on 23 Dec 1783 so an elaborate explanation was put forward to explain how Isaac #92 not Emanuel #142 had priority!
7. The Baruch Lousadas arrived in Jamaica around 1705 but they claimed to have had ancestors in Jamaica before the English takeover of the island from the Spanish in 1655. This earlier Jamaican ancestry must have been Lamego or rather Curiel. The Dukes came from the branch that remained in Jamaica after the the 2nd English branch was established from Jamaica with the arrival in London of Jacob #36 in 1743.
8. Francis a younger brother of Emanuel #93 was made Marquis of San Miniato in 1846 and this may have provided a spur to Emanuel as suggested by a great-great-grand-daughter of Isaac #92. However, the application of Francis to become Marquis of San Miniato reveals that he knew full well the family's 'succession' to the title of the Duque de Losada, and that his older brother Emanuel would become Duque/Duke - thus any envy may have been felt by Francis not Emanuel!
9. As for example in the official British passport of Emanuel the 2nd Duke. The name combined Castilian Spanish and Galician-Portuguese in a peculiar and unprecedented way. This disguised the embarrassing fact that the 'Losada' title was Italian and had effectively expired - for the Duque was Spanish, had no offspring, and left Italy permanently in 1759. The new name seems nicely free of the taint of expiry that the old name carried, whilst carrying a reference to the original name. The phrasing appears in the 'lurid documents' and may derive from the Spanish herald as once of his obfuscatory devices. A nobility authority showed itself to be shockingly gullible when it printed a passage in which the name of the Duque's title was given in the hybrid form used by the Dukes!
10. From his will and the naming of his first-born son, it is probable that the natural father of Aaron Baruh Lousada #376 of Barbados was named David as shown above. David, and the most prominent Baruch Lousada of this generation in the records - Isaac #42 - were sons of Amador de Lousada of Vinhais in Portugal.