ABSTRACT
In Portugal, the leading nobility was identified with a group of 50 or so aristocratic houses which monopolised most of the titles. From the end of the seventeenth century, then, the composition of the estates of the great houses of the Braganca dynasty stayed relatively stable. In the eighteenth century the acquisition of new property, or its incorporation into family estates by way of marriage, was rare. The 'fully owned' country estates provided the Portuguese aristocracy on average with a little over one-fifth of their income. The behaviour of the Portuguese titled elite was determined by the fact that it was their position in Court society which defined the worth of each house and its master. Everything changed, however, with the establishment and consolidation of the elite at the new Court of Braganca. Positions obtained at the Court of the new dynasty created the conditions for perpetuating the material wealth of the aristocratic houses.
