The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 14 of 55 / 1606-1609 / Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of The Catholic Missions, As Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century

by Unknown

I have been pleased to hear of the improvement in the orders regarding the good treatment of the natives, and the very great care which you exercise in looking after them, and in seeing that they be relieved from all hardships which can be avoided; and I command you to continue to do so. I charge you also not to relax in the efforts which you say that you are making that the work on the great church may be urged on; and that you gather materials and begin to rebuild the hospital for the Spaniards, which was burned in the fire in the year 1603—although difficulties will not fail to arise therein, in accordance with the poverty which you say exists in that country.

I thank you for the care which you have taken of the seminary of Santa Potenciana, and that its inmates should live in due seclusion; and I have been pleased to hear that you should make efforts to have me send orders to the viceroy of Nueva España to send some religious women thither for the improvement of the seminary.

It will be well if you have my royal arms placed on the houses of the cabildo of that city, as you say that you will do. Ventosilla, November 4, 1606.

I The King
By order of the king our sovereign:
Juan de Ziviza

Documents of 1607

• [Petition for a grant to the Jesuit seminary in Leyte.] January 18.
• [Artillery at Manila in 1607.] Alonso de Biebengud; July 6.
• [Letter from the Audiencia to Felipe III, on the Confraternity of La Misericordia.] Pedro Hurtado de Esquivel; July 11.
• [Trade of the Philippines with Mexico.] December 18.
• [Passage of missionaries via the Philippines to Japan.] Conde de Lemos, and others; 1606–07.

Sources: The first three of these documents are obtained from the Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla; the last two, from the Archivo general at Simancas.

Translations: The first document, and the third paper in the fifth, are translated by James A. Robertson; the second and third, by Henry B. Lathrop, of the University of Wisconsin; the second paper of the fifth, by Norman F. Hall, of Harvard University; the remainder, by Robert W. Haight.