Juan de Tovar or Juan Fernández de Tovar, later known as Martín Fernández de Tovar (- 1500), was a Castilian nobleman, belonging to the House of Tovar, Lord of the villages of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena, and Chief-guard to King Henry IV of Castile. After the monarch's death, he did not recognize the king's half-sister, Princess Isabella, as sovereign, thus joining the party of the Marquis of Vilhena, Juan Pacheco, and the Archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, in support of the king's alleged daughter, Joanna la Beltraneja, and her husband Afonso V, King of Portugal. For this reason, Tovar had the lordships of Cevico and Caracena confiscated in 1489 by the Catholic Monarchs, who sentenced him to death, and fled to France the following year. In Portugal, he was known by the name Martim Fernandes de Tovar, for having aligned himself with King Afonso V against the Catholic Monarchs and in favour of Joanna la Beltraneja. He was also known as the father of the navigator Sancho de Tovar and as the head of the Tovar family in the country.
Family
Tovar was born under the name Juan, son of Sancho Fernández de Tovar, Lord of Cevico, and Chief-guard to John II of Castile, a cadet branch of the House of Tovar. His father, Sancho de Tovar, is documented as early as 1432 in possession of the Lordship of Cevico.. In 1449, Sancho de Tovar, "son of Juan de Tovar", renounced to the Count of Urueña, Juan Téllez-Girón, all the rights he had in the majorat of the House of Tovar. Juan de Tovar, his paternal grandfather, was also Lord of the towns of Cevico and Caracena, and Chief-guard to John II of Castile. He married Catarina Manuel, daughter of Pedro Manuel (Rico-Homem and Lord of the towns of Montealegre and Meneses) and Juana Manrique. According to Salazar y Castro, Juan de Tovar was also the paternal great-grandson of Sancho de Tovar, Lord of Cevico and Keeper of the Kingdom, and Teresa de Toledo.
In 1460, Juan de Tovar married Leonor de Vilhena, receiving from his future wife a dowry of 700 thousand maravedis, promising her, in return, 200 thousand maravedis. Leonor was Portuguese and from a noble family: Sister of Rodrigo Afonso de Melo, Count of Olivença, both part of the numerous offspring of Martim Afonso de Melo, Chief-guard to the King Edward, alcalde and frontier of Olivença, and Lord of Ferreira de Aves (deceased before 1469), and Margarida de Vilhena. On her father's side, she was the granddaughter of another Martim Afonso de Melo (Chief-guard to John I and alcalde of Évora) and Beatriz Pimentel, daughter of João Afonso, Lord of Bragança. On the maternal side, she was the granddaughter of Rui Vaz Coutinho.
Lord of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena
In 1465, Tovar was already Lord of the villages of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena, as is attested on April 2 of that year, when Henry IV of Castile grants Juan Fernández de Tovar, Lord of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena, son and successor of Sancho de Tovar (already deceased), 40,000 maravedis per year of tenace to maintain 20 spears in his service. The lordships of Cevico de la Torre and Caracena had been in the Tovar lineage since 8 June 1368, when Henry II of Castile, by charter passed in Real regarding Toledo, granted them to his Chief-guard Sancho Fernández de Tovar, Juan's great-grandfather and brother of the Lord Admiral of Castile Fernando Sánchez de Tovar. The Lordship of Cevico might have initially been part of the Lordship of Berlanga, owned by the main branch of the Tovar. This main branch was dismembered in order to favor a secondary branch of the lineage.
Although he only documented himself in possession of the lordship in 1465, Juan was already involved in the administration of the lordship before that date. In 1460, he delivered in perpetual census the mill of Rebollosa de Pedro to the municipalities of Manzanares, Sabero and Termantia, places belonging to the jurisdiction of Caracena. The condition for this was that the inhabitants pay Tovar 75 bushels of bread, namely: 50 of wheat and 25 of rye, per day of San Miguel further authorizing the inhabitants of these three villages the cutting of wood from all the hills of Caracena whenever its destination was for the use of the mill. The inhabitants of the three counties were obliged to give the peons that were necessary for the mill's work, preventing them from using the mill's water to water their vegetable gardens, meadows and bread lands, except on Saturdays and Sundays.