Cortés's heir was tried for treason, Mexico seized and sold the estate, and Lucas Alamán hid his bones from 1823 to 1946

A royal cédula of 6 July 1529 made Hernán Cortés Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca. The grant gave him civil and criminal jurisdiction over about 23,000 vassals and was entailed as a mayorazgo in 1535. Cortés signed his will in Seville in October 1547 before the notary Melchor de Portes. On 2 December he added a codicil and died the same day. The will funded the Hospital de Jesús in Mexico City. On 16 July 1566 his heir, Martín Cortés, 2nd Marquis, was arrested for a plot against the Crown. On 3 August 1566 the authorities beheaded his associates, the brothers Alonso de Ávila and Gil González de Ávila. Martín was sent to Spain and lost the estate until 1574^†. The title passed by inheritance to the Pignatelli Aragón Cortés family, Dukes of Terranova and Monteleone, in Italy. Spain's Junta Central seized the estate on 12 October 1809. After independence, Mexico seized the duke's property again. It was returned in 1834 and 1835, and the duke's agent, Lucas Alamán, then sold 25 houses for more than 500,000 pesos within two years. In 1823, when Congress debated sending Cortés's remains to the San Lázaro charnel house, Alamán had hidden them inside the Hospital de Jesús church. A document he gave the Spanish embassy in 1843 led researchers to the urn in November 1946. Since 1947 the bones have been in a wall niche in the same church. In 2001 Álvaro de Llanza y Figueroa applied to Spain's Ministry of Justice to succeed to the title.