The 2nd Viscount of Santarém was born in Rua da Paz in Lisbon on November 18th 1791 and died in Paris in rue Blanche on January 17th 1856 at the age of sixty-four. He received the title on February 6th 1818 on the occasion of the coronation of D. João VI.

He was the son of the 1st Viscount of Santarém, João Diogo de Barros Leitão e Carvalhosa (1757-1818) and of Mariana Rita Xavier Porcille O'Kelly Ribeiro Rangel (1773-94), a lady of Irish and Italian descent. Many of his paternal ancestors had served the Portuguese Crown since the Middle Ages performing a range of household, military, judicial and diplomatic duties. Among his maternal ancestors were an 18th century Irish governor of Chaves, a Judge Conservator for the Dutch nation [a judge serving the interests of Dutch subjects in Portugal] and an Appeals Judge at the Royal Court of Appeal.

His father, the 1st Viscount of Santarém, played an unofficial but key role in Portuguese political-administrative life between 1807 and 1818 (the year of his death): he was at that time a “true Secretary-General of the Royal House”, in the words of José Sarmento de Matos (in Uma Casa na Lapa [A House in Lapa], p. 182). He was subjected to pressure from Massena (1804) and received death threats from Junot (1808); he suffered the same illness which afflicted the Regent D. João at the time of the Conspiração dos Fidalgos [Noblemen’s Conspiracy] (1806), and throughout the years the governors of the kingdom and General Beresford himself sought his advice, the latter at the time of the Gomes Freire de Andrade conspiracy in 1817.

Manuel Francisco de Barros’ childhood and youth greatly benefitted from the cultured and erudite atmosphere of his father’s house where the family library dated back to the 16th century. He shared the house with his uncle, D. António Roberto de Barros Leitão e Carvalhosa (1763-1829), trained in Canon Law at the University of Coimbra (1788), Archbishop of Adrianópolis (1811), and a nominal peer of the realm although not a permanent member of the Upper House (1826).

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