In 1827-1828 two works appeared that are essential to an understanding of his thought: Memórias para a História, e Teoria das Cortes Gerais... (Memoirs on History, and the Theory of the General Courts...) and Quadro Elementar das relações políticas e diplomáticas (Basic Framework of political and diplomatic relations).

The first work was the result of his participation in a committee composed of members of the Academy of Sciences set up in 1821 to gather together all the documentation relating to the traditional cortes at the request of the cortes ordinárias do Vintismo (ordinary courts of the Vintismo). This committee – of which João Pedro Ribeiro, Abbot Correia da Serra and Joaquim José da Costa de Macedo, all aligned to the current regime, were also part – was disbanded after publishing just one single work relating to the nobility faction in the 1697 cortes. The only person who published a similar study was the Viscount of Santarém, using material collected in 1824 when he was a member of another board in charge of preparing the meeting of the ‘Three Estates’ (as promised by D. João VI following the Abrilada or April Revolt).

The rules for the opening of the meeting and for the swearing in of D. Miguel as king in 1828 were taken from Santarém’s Memórias para a História, e Teoria das Cortes Gerais... . The legal and constitutional principles of the 1143 (pseudo) cortes of Lamego, invoked at the time to declare the Brazilian branch of the Braganza family foreign and to consider the decision of the ‘Three Estates’ as essential, were decisive so that the mere acclamation of the prince as the royal successor would not succeed as a political, institutional and diplomatic solution.

The same way of looking at national history and politics – the Portuguese freedom inherited from the Lusitanian peoples – is embodied in another of Santarém’s texts published anonymously in 1832, Manifesto de Sua Majestade Fidelíssima... (Manifesto of His Most Worthy Majesty), in response to D. Maria II’s manifesto written by the Marquis of Palmela and José António Guerreiro. The whole of the Viscount’s strategy for diplomatic recognition of D. Miguel’s rights to the throne during the five years when he was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (between 1828 and 1833) was based on this re-enactment of the traditional cortes by the descendants of the elites and by those elected by the common people. This collective, which met in Lisbon in June and July 1828, was seen as the legitimate representative of its forebears, following a tradition that went back to the dawn of time, to the first collective decisions of the Lusitanian chiefs, Apimano, Sertório and Viriato.

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