After the end of the Reconquest, the military purpose of defending the borders had been lost. The four Spanish military orders, including that of Calatrava, retained an exclusively honorary and sumptuary character in the 18th century, governed directly by the king, who was the one who granted access to the order once the corresponding blood cleansing tests had been passed. The Marquis of la Ensenada, a Calatrava knight since 1742, used the granting of the Calatrava habit during his Government (1743-1754) as a way of ennobling his political network, creating a patronage network in the order through an inbred system in which the partial members of the Marquis were the witnesses of the blood cleansing fi les of the new applicants and these, in turn, of the following candidates. After the removal of Ensenada for the conspiracy orchestrated by the Duke of Huéscar, the Secretary of State Ricardo Wall and the English Ambassador Benjamin Keene, the process of infiltration of the political network in the Military Order of Calatrava continued, although now without the direct guidance of the Marquis.