The Titón and the Herver: the English Cervantes family.
A 400 year old story of silversmiths and spies link to the English relative of Miguel de Cervantes
On March 30 1593 in Utrera, Sevilla province: staying at an inn, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra established an improvised office, not as a writer, he is yet to write about Don Quijote, but as a Royal Commissioner for Felipe II. He had arrived with the mission to supply the ships of the Spanish Armada in the journey to the Indias, with wheat, chickpeas, cheese and oil at the requisitioning and paying of the town halls and Englishmen in Andalucía. Before a village notary, the one-armed of Lepanto authorises the mule driver Juan de Balbuena to transport the stockpiled merchandise, and signed with Cervantes unmistakable signature.
The signature of Juan Titon de Servantes - Utrea Town Hall
On November 28 of the same year 1593, and in the same place Utrera, Cervantes, royal commissioner for Armada provisions, his name appears again. But it is another. This day, months after the visit of Miguel, is Juan Titón de Cervantes who presented himself before the Utrera town hall, to urge the pending 296 bushels of wheat of the 500 agreed.
There are many more Cervantes in Sevilla, but the historian Julio Mayo, the municipal archivist on Los Palacios, next to Utrera, thinks it is not by chance that this Juan shared a surname with Miguel. The coincidence of work, of job and of time (the writer maintained in his post until 1594) the zone and the chief (the royal provider Cristóbal de Barros) affirm that the two Cervantes are related and perhaps Miguel with 46 years, and veteran commissioner of provisions for the military Armada from 1587 (such as the Invincible Armada against England in 1588) placed his cousin Juan aged 37.
Mayo explained that the signature of Miguel de ‘Cerbantes’ in Utrera was found last year the Sevilla Provincial Historical Archive and days later a signature of Juan Titón de ‘Servantes’ (then the surname was also written with s or b) in the Utrera Municipal Archive. He adds excitedly, that the most important and groundbreaking part of his work, thanks to another Cervantes commissioner, has discovered the author of excellence in Spanish letters had an English family.
The relatives of Anglo Saxon origin were the Titón, such as Juan; and other relatives the Herver. Titón descends from the surname Tintam; Herver from Herbert. In addition to his office companion, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is linked to the families of two nuns with English surnames in the Sevilla Convent of Santa Paula, the scenario for part of his novel ‘the Spanish English’
We know that Shakespeare knew El Quijote as his contemporary, which he ignored and today we can reveal after 400 years of the deaths of both, the Spanish genius had British culture and blood parentage.
