Note 2 — Memorial and Relation of the Filipinas

[Chapter I treats “of the first discoverers of the Filipinas, and of their location.” In rapid survey Los Rios sketches the expeditions of Magalhães, Loaisa, Villalobos, and Legazpi, although wrongly placing the latter’s death in 1574 instead of 1572. The location of the islands is briefly described and the names of some of the principal ones given, among them “Mindanao, which is the largest, and with which we are at war, although it had formerly rendered your Majesty homage.” Continuing his narrative, the governorships of Guido de Labaçares (whose death is wrongly stated as occurring in 1575), Francisco de Sande, the two Ronquillos (who are mentioned as brothers), and Santiago de Vera, are lightly mentioned. Limahon’s expedition against Manila (wrongly ascribed to the period of Legazpi’s governorship), and Sande’s expedition to Borneo are particularly mentioned. The latter sacked the Bornean king’s city “with but little justification.” In his time also the Chinese trade begins to be steady. Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa on coming to assume the governorship, according to the terms of his contract, brings a number of colonists, “who were called rodeados2 because they had come by way of Panama ... He was a peaceful man, although—because he had brought two sons with him, besides other relatives, whom he allowed to live with considerable laxity; and because numerous complaints had been written from the city to his Majesty— [193] his Majesty, seeing the great trouble experienced in preaching the gospel, the evil example that those sons and relatives furnished, and the harm that this would cause unless it were stopped, removed Ronquillo from his governorship, and sent the royal Audiencia to govern, and as governor and captain-general its president, one Santiago de Vera.” On the latter’s arrival he finds Diego Ronquillo governing because of Gonzalo’s death. An Indian, in snuffing the candles on the latter’s catafalque, accidentally sets fire to some rich draperies. The fire remains unnoticed and smoulders until, the friars in attendance having left the church, it bursts into flame, and the city is entirely burned, and the site of the fort, Santiago, becomes a lake. Tomas Vimble (Candish), who captures the Santa Ana near California in 1587, sets all its crew ashore, with the exception of a priest whom he hangs. Alonso Sanchez’s voyage to Spain and Rome as procurator-general is influential in the suppression of the Audiencia and the election of Gomez Perez Dasmariñas as governor. Sanchez “wrote some treatises about the justification of the kings of España, and their right of title to the Filipinas, which merit that time do not bury them, although they exist in the archives of the Council of the Indias. He seems a prophet in many of his statements in those treatises.”3