The law of the casados: married men in the Indies ordered home to their wives

A whole título of the Recopilación de leyes de las Indias exists to force men who crossed the Atlantic to return to the wives they left behind: audiencias to find them and ship them home with their goods, licences refused to married men, no bail for those jailed for it, and from 1578 the same rigour inside the Indies. The crown states its reason — "remediar el daño, que las mugeres padecen en ausencia de sus maridos" — and the laws record how the rule was evaded.