Marquisate of Cenete

While being a Roman Catholic bishop at Calahorra and therefore supposed not to have a sexual life leading to descendency, he became attached to Doña Mencia de Lemus, a Portuguese lady-in-waiting of the queen.

They had two sons, Rodrigo, who was once selected in a list of candidates to be the husband of Lucrezia Borgia, one of the children fathered in Rome by the later Spanish Roman Catholic Pope Alexander VI, and Diego, who was the grandfather of the princess of Eboli of the reign of Philip II (see Antonio Perez) By Inés de Tovar, a lady of a Valladolid family, he had a third son (Juan Hurtado de Mendoza y Tovar) who afterwards emigrated to France.

To cut short, the by then Archbishop of Seville, Pedro González de Mendoza, fourth child of poet Iñigo López de Mendoza, was offered by Isabel of Castile to "create new nobility lineages" with his "beautiful children of sin", (the Queen "dixit"), Rodrigo, Diego and their half brother Juan.

The first marquess of Cenete or Zenete, title of 1491, was also awarded by the Catholic Monarchs to Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar y Mendoza, deceased 1523.

[5] The primogeniture of the marquesses included the baronies of Ayora, Alazque, Alberique and Gavarda, places inhabited by moriscos, industrious vassals working very well silks, iron, copper and alums, with Moorish ancestry, in the Kingdom of Valencia, as was Zenete after 1492 with the Conquest of Granada, and the seigneuries of Jadraque, El Castillo del Cid and Alcocer, in Guadalajara.