far as to secure the banishment of da Gama from Sines in 1507. This prompted da Gama to make his final break with Jorge, leave his beloved Order of Santiago and switch to the rival Order of Christ. Jorge de Lancastre dedicated himself to defending his two knightly orders, Santiago and Aviz, from the unremitting poaching by Manuel's Order of Christ. In May 1505, Jorge managed to secure a royal order prohibiting knights from leaving his orders without his express permission. But Manuel soon obtained from Pope Alexander VI two bulls to undermine him — one from July 1505, giving the King of Portugal the right to dispose of the property of all three Orders; another in January, 1506, authorizing knights to move freely from other Orders to the Order of Christ. However, Jorge continued to resist, and made a point of punishing knights who left without permission (for example, seizing the Sesimbra commenda of João de Menezes, Count of Tarouca, for having taken up the position of Prior of Crato without his consent). In 1509, Jorge introduced a new set of rules for the Order of Santiago, overhauling its administration in a centralized fashion, bringing it closer in line with the rules of their Spanish brethren. But with so many defections, Jorge found it hard to maintain his political footing, and his star was quickly waning. In 1516, the humiliation was complete when Manuel secured from Pope Leo X the authority to appoint Jorge's successors as grand masters of the orders of Santiago and Aviz. Later Years King Manuel died in late 1521, and was succeeded by his son, John III of Portugal. But the conflict with Jorge de Lancastre continued, the opposition standard taken up with more energy by Jorge's son, João de Lancastre, Marquis of Torres Novas. The sons of the old rivals butted heads politically and, increasingly, in the scandal sheets. In the late 1520s, João led the opposition to the marriage of King John III's brother, Infante Ferdinand, to Dona Guiomar Coutinho, a prominent noble heiress to the great feudal estates of Marialva and Loulé, on the grounds that he had already secretly married her. The King responded by locking up João de Lancastre in the Castle of São Jorge for some years (an episode later dramatized by Camilo Castelo Branco in his play O Marquez de Torres-Novas). Jorge himself produced a notable scandal late