{
  "id": "asiento-de-los-lanzas-en-el-banco-de-los-nobles",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "A seat on the nobles' bench in the Audiencia of Lima: the honours of the viceroy's guard, reported by a judge who saw them taken",
  "summary": "The cédula of 1568 ordered that the viceroy of Peru's mounted guard be styled Gentiles-Hombres or Continuos de la guarda del Reyno. A judge of the Audiencia of Lima who sat there records that he saw them given a seat on the nobles' bench when they came to its estrados, the same privilege as encomenderos, and that they swore a particular oath in almost the form the encomenderos used, to guard the kingdom and the person of the viceroy.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "encomienda",
    "military",
    "military-history",
    "peru",
    "lima",
    "americas",
    "spanish-empire",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "colonial-administration",
    "legal-history"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "lanzas-y-arcabuzes-del-peru"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cedula-de-las-lanzas-y-arcabuzes-de-1568"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "reformacion-de-las-lanzas-y-arcabuzes-del-peru"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "prorrata-y-reversion-de-los-sueldos-de-las-lanzas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "precedentes-antiguos-de-las-guardas-de-los-virreyes"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cargas-militares-y-juramento-de-los-encomenderos"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "feudatarios-y-domiciliarios-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "relaciones-de-gobierno-de-los-virreyes"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tributos-y-tasas-de-los-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "milicias-de-pardos-y-morenos"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What honours did the viceroy of Peru's guard enjoy?",
    "What was the Banco de los Nobles in a Spanish American audiencia?",
    "Why were the Lanzas of Peru called Gentiles-Hombres?",
    "Did soldiers of the viceroy's guard swear an oath?",
    "What privileges did encomenderos have in the courts of the Indies?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Scope. This entry covers §§19-21 of libro III, capítulo XXXIII of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana, running from the right column of page 431 of the 1736 impression to the left column of page 432. The chapter as a whole treats the companies of Lanzas, Arcabuzes and Alabarderos raised in Peru in 1554, their consignment on the rents of vacant encomiendas, the cédula of 1568 and the reform of 1618, all of which are covered in separate entries; this range is the passage on their name, their standing and their oath. The run of classical and Spanish precedents that follows at §§22-28 is treated separately.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The names were given for the weapons, and the crown replaced them with a title of honour. At §19, returning to \"los Lanzas, Arcabuzes, y Alabarderos del Perú, facil es de entender, que estos nombres se les pusieron por el genero de armas, de que les mandaron usar\", the author referring the antiquity and etymology of the words to Sebastián de Covarrubias. He then adds: \"Pero por mayor honor, dice la Cedula del año de 1568. cuyas palabras he referido, que los Lanzas, y Arcabuzes se llamen Gentiles-Hombres, ò Continuos de la guarda del Reyno.\" The cédula of 1568 is the same instrument that fixed the companies' numbers and pay; it was not opened here in its own register and is known only as this book prints it.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The honour was concrete, it was taken in a courtroom, and the author says he watched it. At §20, \"Y por esto, y porque quiere, que se parezcan à los Encomenderos, ví que en el Perú, quando iban à los Estrados de la Real Audiencia, se les daba assiento en el Banco de los Nobles, como à ellos, que es un privilegio considerable, de que ya dixe algo tratando de él, en quanto à los Encomenderos, y diré mas en otro lugar.\" The verb is first person and past: the author sat as an oidor of the Audiencia of Lima from 1609, and reports the practice as something he saw rather than as something a cédula prescribes. No cédula granting the seat is cited at this place.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The book's own cross-references at this point disagree with one another, and the disagreement is reported rather than resolved. The footnote keyed to §20 reads \"Supr. hoc lib. c.25. n. 62. & dicam infrà, lib.5. cap.\" — and head 62 of the printed SUMARIO of libro III capítulo XXV is indeed \"A los Encomenderos se les dà assiento en los Tribunales. Y no los pueden prender por deudas\", so the footnote points where it should. The body of §21, referring the encomenderos' oath, sends the reader instead to \"el Cap.XXIV\"; but capítulo XXV is the chapter headed \"DE LAS CARGAS DE LAS ENCOMIENDAS, y en particular de las Militares, y del juramento, que por razon de ellas están obligados à hacer los Encomenderos\", and the passage of capítulo XXIV read here, §§36-38 on page 363, treats the incompatibility of holding two encomiendas, not the oath. The earlier paragraphs of capítulo XXIV were not opened, so this entry states the discrepancy and does not conclude that the cross-reference is an error.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "They swore, and the oath is described by reference to the encomenderos' oath. At §21, \"tambien se les parecen en el Oficio, ò Servicio Militar, que se les manda hacer en guarda, y defensa del Reyno, y de la Persona de los Virreyes, que representan la de su Magestad, y de ello hacen particular juramento al modo, y forma casi, que los Encomenderos, segun lo que de él dixe en el Cap.XXIV. Y como le solian hacer los Soldados antiguamente entre los Romanos, cuyas varias formas, que son muy dignas de leerse, y saberse, refiere Vegecio, y otros Autores.\" The words of the soldiers' oath are not printed at this place, and the qualification is the author's own: \"al modo, y forma casi\" — almost, not exactly, that of the encomenderos.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "What the honour cost and who paid for it, stated here because the chapter states it elsewhere and this passage does not. The men given a seat on the nobles' bench were salaried out of the rents of encomiendas that had fallen vacant in Peru — that is, out of the tribute of Indian towns — as the same chapter sets out at §§2-5. Nothing in §§19-21 mentions that, and nothing in them says what those towns paid or whether anything changed for them. The oath described at §21 runs to the guard and defence of the kingdom and of the person of the viceroy; neither the Indians of the tributary towns nor any duty towards them is a term in it. The privilege in the Audiencia is a privilege before the court in which Indians and their protectors also litigated, and the pages read here do not consider the two together.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "What this entry establishes and what it does not. It establishes that a cédula of 1568 directed that the mounted guard of the viceroy of Peru be styled Gentiles-Hombres or Continuos de la guarda del Reyno; that a judge of the Audiencia of Lima records in the first person having seen these men seated on the nobles' bench when they appeared at its estrados, the same privilege the encomenderos had; that the treatise explains both the name and the seat by the crown's wish that they should resemble encomenderos; and that they swore a particular oath in almost the encomenderos' form, to the guard and defence of the kingdom and of the person of the viceroys. It establishes nothing about how long the practice lasted, whether it was ever challenged, or whether any written instrument granted it — the only authority given for the seat is the author's own observation. It does not establish the words of the oath, which are not printed here. The author is a minister of the Council of the Indies describing honours conferred in a court on which he sat.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-lanzas-asiento-y-juramento"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Colonial precedence — who sat where, and on what bench — is the kind of detail that survives in specialist monographs and nowhere a reader or an agent can reach. This object prints a first-person report of it by a judge of the court where it happened: Solórzano, an oidor of the Audiencia of Lima from 1609, writing that he saw the viceroy's guardsmen given a seat on the Banco de los Nobles at its estrados, \"como à ellos\", the encomenderos, and calling it a considerable privilege. That single sentence does more than record an honour. It shows the crown deliberately building a salaried military company in the image of the encomienda — the name Gentiles-Hombres granted by the cédula of 1568 \"por mayor honor\", the seat, and an oath sworn \"al modo, y forma casi\" of the encomenderos' — at exactly the moment when Madrid had stopped granting encomiendas in Peru. The object also does something the treatise does not: it says in its own claim who paid for the men on that bench, the tributary towns of encomiendas that had fallen vacant, and records that these three paragraphs never mention them. And it prints a checkable oddity rather than smoothing it — the footnote to §20 sends the reader correctly to capítulo XXV n. 62, while the body of §21 sends him to capítulo XXIV for an oath that capítulo XXV is headed as treating.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-22",
  "media": [],
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    "name": "A seat on the nobles' bench in the Audiencia of Lima: the honours of the viceroy's guard, reported by a judge who saw them taken",
    "description": "The cédula of 1568 ordered that the viceroy of Peru's mounted guard be styled Gentiles-Hombres or Continuos de la guarda del Reyno. A judge of the Audiencia of Lima who sat there records that he saw them given a seat on the nobles' bench when they came to its estrados, the same privilege as encomenderos, and that they swore a particular oath in almost the form the encomenderos used, to guard the kingdom and the person of the viceroy.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/asiento-de-los-lanzas-en-el-banco-de-los-nobles",
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    "dateModified": "2026-09-22",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Política Indiana, libro III, capítulo XXXIII, §§19-21 — the name, the precedence and the oath of the viceroy of Peru's guard: at §19, returning 'à los Lanzas, Arcabuzes, y Alabarderos del Perú, facil es de entender, que estos nombres se les pusieron por el genero de armas, de que les mandaron usar', with the etymologies referred to Sebastián de Covarrubias, and 'Pero por mayor honor, dice la Cedula del año de 1568. cuyas palabras he referido, que los Lanzas, y Arcabuzes se llamen Gentiles-Hombres, ò Continuos de la guarda del Reyno'; at §20 the first-person report of their precedence, 'Y por esto, y porque quiere, que se parezcan à los Encomenderos, ví que en el Perú, quando iban à los Estrados de la Real Audiencia, se les daba assiento en el Banco de los Nobles, como à ellos, que es un privilegio considerable, de que ya dixe algo tratando de él, en quanto à los Encomenderos, y diré mas en otro lugar', the footnote reading 'Supr. hoc lib. c.25. n. 62. & dicam infrà, lib.5. cap.'; and at §21 the oath, 'Y tambien se les parecen en el Oficio, ò Servicio Militar, que se les manda hacer en guarda, y defensa del Reyno, y de la Persona de los Virreyes, que representan la de su Magestad, y de ello hacen particular juramento al modo, y forma casi, que los Encomenderos, segun lo que de él dixe en el Cap.XXIV. Y como le solian hacer los Soldados antiguamente entre los Romanos, cuyas varias formas, que son muy dignas de leerse, y saberse, refiere Vegecio, y otros Autores'",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=huEykw_YtzYC&pg=PA431"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "A seat on the nobles' bench in the Audiencia of Lima: the honours of the viceroy's guard, reported by a judge who saw them taken"
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}