ABSTRACT
The arms on Jacobus’s seal would most likely have been used by a son of Alfonso’s younger brother, the Infante Enrique (March 1230–11 August 1303), who now becomes a much stronger candidate than Alfonso for the paternity of James; I will call him Enrique to distinguish him from other Henries. There was no armorial distinction for bastards at the time. 1 Enrique had no known children from his only and late marriage, following his release from captivity, but the same form of arms was used by his acknowledged natural son, Enrique Enríquez de Sevilla (c. 1246–before 28 February 1323), fathered when he was about sixteen (his mother was doña Mayor Rodríguez Pecha), and by that son’s descendants. For reasons that will become apparent, Enrique had more compelling cause than Alfonso to conceal the existence of a bastard born in the 1260s. And in one of James’s papal dispensations (from Clement V in 1306; see below), his illegitimate birth is said to arise from the union of an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. Alfonso was married throughout the period when James was conceived, and Enrique was not; his paternity will be assumed in what follows.
