GRANDEES, gran-dee (Sp. grandes, great men). The name by which the most highly priv ileged class of the nobility of Castile were known after the thirteenth century. The honors of the grandees were hereditary; they held lands from the Crown, were exempted from taxation, could not be imprisoned for debt or subjected to tor ture, and could not be summoned before a civil or criminal tribunal without a special warrant from the King. They were entitled to decide private feuds by an appeal to arms, and had a right to leave the kingdom, and even to enter the service of a foreign prince at war with Castile, without incurring the penalties of treason. Gradually the grandees monopolized the high offices of State, and even invaded the King's Coun cil. Besides these which were common to them with the rest of the higher nobility, the grandees possessed several which were peculiar to themselves, or which they shared only with the so-called titulados—the counts and dukes. Of these, the chief was the right, in all public trans actions, of remaining covered in the presence of the King. The King addressed a grandee as mi prim°, 'my cousin german'; whereas any other member of the higher nobility he called only pariente, 'my relative.' In the national as semblies the grandees sat immediately after the prelates and before the titulados. They had free
entrance into the palace and into the private chambers of the monarch, and on the occasion of religious solemnities they had their place in the royal chapel next to the altar. Their wives shared their dignities, the Queen rising from her seat to greet them. Under Ferdinand and Isa bella, Cardinal Ximenes succeeded in checking the power of the feudal nobility by ignoring their time-honored privileges and rewarding men of low birth with important offices. Charles V. and Philip II. continued the policy of Ferdinand and Isabella, and succeeded in making the gran dees a dependent Court nobility. Gradually three classes of grandees arose out of this merely nominal nobility. It was the privilege of the first class to be commanded by the monarch to be covered before they had begun to address him. At the coronation of Charles V.' at Aix-la-Cha pelle, the princes of the Empire refused to assist at the ceremony if the grandees were allowed to be covered, and for once the grandees renounced the privilege. After the accession of Joseph Bonaparte in 1808, the dignities and privileges of the grandees were entirely abolished, but they were partially reestablished at the restoration in 1814.