Note 2 — Relation of 1626

The captured Spaniards were taken to the court of the king, which is a city more than twice as large as Sevilla.2 They were led manacled through the streets, receiving many blows, and regarded as traitors. That happened in the year 1624. This disastrous event was learned in Manila by way of Macan, but no attention was given to the matter on account of the death of Governor Don Alonso Fajardo. In the year 1625, another Don Fernando de Silva, of the habit of Santiago, came to act as governor. At that [127] time Father Pedro Morejon3 arrived at Manila. He came from Roma by way of Yndia and Camboja (which lies next Siam), and was informed of that disaster there. Governor Don Fernando de Silva, seeing that Father Pedro Morejon, as he had been so long a minister in Japon, had great knowledge of, and access to, the Japanese, and that those Japanese who live in Siam have a great part in the government of that kingdom, suggested to the father to go there as ambassador, to see whether he could get what they had captured from our Spaniards, which belonged for the most part to the inhabitants of Manila. The father replied that he could not neglect, before all else, to go to Macan in order to advise his provincial of his procuratorship to Roma; but that his Lordship should write to him, and that he would return at the beginning of the year 1626, which was the season when one could go to Siam. The governor wrote, and the father provincial of Macan sent Father Pedro de Morejon for the said time, besides another Portuguese father, called Antonio Cardin.4 [128] They reached here in good time. The governor prepared a vessel with some Spaniards of good standing, and despatched them all by the month of January. They reached the kingdom and court of Siam and negotiated what they were able—namely, that the captives be delivered to them, as well as the artillery, and a quantity of iron belonging to our king which the ships were carrying, and which they seized from us, and some other merchandise. For although the king ordered everything to be given up, thinking that the goods were safe, as he had ordered, it was impossible to get them, the soldiers having pillaged them and divided them among themselves.