[Endorsed: “To the governor of Philipinas, ordering him not to allow any of the secular priests who might go from Eastern India to the islands to enter therein or admit them to any exercise of office.”]
Order to the city of Manila regarding the Mexican trade
The King. To the council, justices, and magistracy of the city of Manila, of the Philipinas Islands. In response to what Don Juan Niño de Tavora, my governor and captain-general of those islands, wrote me, in the former year of 1629, about your petition for the fulfilment of the decree of 1593 which permits the inhabitants of that island to go to sell their goods in Mexico, or to send them under charge of a satisfactory person—and not to send or consign them, except it be in the second place—in a section of a letter which I wrote on December 4 of the former year of 630 to the said my governor, I charged him that, if the encomenderos living in that city who had sent persons with their possessions to Mexico proceeded dishonestly, or formed trusts [ligas], or monopolies among themselves, they should be punished according to law; and that if, in addition to the inconveniences that should arise in the observance of the said decree, others should be discovered, he should advise me thereof, so that suitable measures might be enacted. I also had my viceroy of Nueva España ordered to watch carefully what the inhabitants of Mexico did, so that he might apply the advisable remedy. Now, Don Juan Grau y Monfalcon, your procurator, has informed me that the decree given in the said year of 593, ordering that the inhabitants of those islands might send persons to Nueva España to sell or take care of their merchandise; and that no one might consign them, except to one of the persons appointed for that purpose, who would reside in Mexico, was put into execution; but that, in violation of it, many of the inhabitants secretly send large quantities of merchandise to Mexico, entrusting those goods to the passengers and sailors without registering them, although that city has persons of credit and trust in Mexico. Thus result many embarrassments and frauds to my royal duties. He petitioned me to be pleased to have my royal decree issued, ordering that such unlawful acts be not permitted. The matter having been examined in my royal Council of the Indias, bearing in mind what my fiscal said there, I have considered it fitting to advise you of the aforesaid, so that you may understand it, and I order you, in so far as it pertains to you, to keep, obey, and execute, and cause to be kept, obeyed, and executed, what has been enacted in this respect. Madrid, March 25, 1633.
I the King
By order of the king our sovereign:
Don Fernando Ruiz de Contreras
[1] In 1552 Felipe II ordered a royal monopoly on playing-cards to be established throughout his western dominions. All cards were to be stamped with the royal arms. The manufacture and sale of them was sold in 1578 to Hernando de Caseres, who paid a royalty of one real for each pack. The value of the privilege gradually increased as well as the price of cards paid by the public. (Bancroft’s History of Mexico, iii, pp. 663, 664.)
This monopoly was established in the Philippines in 1591, by Gomez Perez Dasmariñas; see Vol. VIII, pp. 169, 271; and IX, p. 62.