Vasco da Gama was ordered out of his home town of Sines in 1507 and asked to leave Portugal before the King made him a count in 1519

Vasco da Gama was born at Sines, where his father was the alcaide. The town belonged to the military Order of Santiago. After the India voyage, King Manuel granted him a perpetual annuity of 300,000 reis, partly paid from the fish tithes of Sines. He also granted him the town of Sines itself in December 1499^†. The Order's master, Jorge de Lencastre, refused to give up the town^†. On 21 March 1507 a royal letter ordered da Gama to leave Sines within 30 days and not to return without the master's permission, on pain of a 50-cruzado fine. He was named Admiral of India, and in 1504 he received another 400,000 reis a year from Lisbon's salt tax. The title of count he had been promised did not arrive. In 1518 he asked permission to leave the kingdom. The King told him to wait until December, and if he still wanted to go, "we shall not hinder your departure." In 1519 the Duke of Bragança gave him the towns of Vidigueira and Vila de Frades in exchange for his 400,000-reis hereditary pension plus 4,000 cruzados in gold. On 29 December 1519 he became Count of Vidigueira. His remains were taken to Vidigueira in 1538. In 1880 they were moved to the Jerónimos monastery at Belém, where Ravenstein wrote in 1898 that they were "supposed" to rest. A historian later found documents suggesting the wrong bones had been exhumed, and a second set was moved to Belém in 1898^†. His heirs became Marquises of Nisa in the 1640s.