the heirs claim that your Majesty should cause them to be paid for the expenditure of their property.  I offer the advice that even if they were not obliged to carry out the conquest, your Majesty is not their debtor, since you have commanded that such conquests are not to be made on your account and at your cost.  Hence these expenses are owing by him who commanded them to be incurred.  Since I have been in your Majesty’s service I have placed this matter in a clear light, as was not previously the case.  When claims were made for wages and other expenses, the Audiencia commanded them to be paid from the royal treasury; and thus many such payments have been made on the account of those who really owed them.  At the present time the judges, being informed in regard to these claims, have decided that they are not due from your Majesty.  Accordingly your Majesty is not only not obliged to pay them, but has a right to claim satisfaction, for the expenditures from the royal treasury, from the property of the governor Don Francisco; and, in case it is insufficient, from the property of the assessor by whose advice they were incurred.

As to the provision of an incumbent for this office, it should be noticed that most affairs in this country depend upon it—­especially the proper care of the Indians, which is most important; for with this office is united that of being their protector.  I have always striven to attend to this matter carefully, as I have done in other matters pertaining to your royal service.  This I shall continue to do in these islands until an appointment is made:  and I petition your Majesty to grant me, when that shall come, permission to leave this kingdom, the governor that shall be in office making me a sufficient allowance for my passage hence.  God keep the Catholic personage of your Majesty, with the increase of your realms.  Manila, July, 1606.

The licentiate Rodrigo Diaz Guiral

The Terrenate Expedition

Sire: 

In the Council of War for the Indias there have been presented two letters from Don Pedro de Acuna, governor and captain-general of the Filipinas, written to your Majesty on the first and seventh of July of the year 605 just past, copies of which are enclosed.  In them your Majesty, if so pleased, will see in what condition is the expedition for the capture of Terrenate, and how the governor went in person with it, with a great deal of confidence in a favorable outcome, on account of the excellent reenforcement that had been sent to him under the command of the master-of-camp, Juan Desquivel.  Although they were fewer in number than what he had asked for, nevertheless he was pleased with the companies that he had seen, and he expected to join with them some men from that garrison and some other available men, and some Indians (Panpangas and others from that vicinity) among whom are excellent arquebusiers and musketeers, who approve themselves