Note 18 — Chapter XLIX

Captains Blas Ruiz de Fernan Goncalez and Diego Velloso, who (as has been stated in the preceding chapter) went from Cochinchina to the kingdom of the Laos to look for the king of Camboja, met with success. They found his son (for the king was already dead), and told him all that the Spaniards had already done to help him, and how they had slain the tyrant who had undertaken to establish himself in the kingdom and had usurped it. They told him that they had come to seek him that they might put him in quiet possession of his kingdom, and other things of this kind, and roused his courage so that he put himself in their hands. Depending upon them, he returned to Camboja with a tolerably large army, which the king of the Laos gave him; and the Spaniards fulfilled their word and established him in his royal throne and palace, causing the largest and best part of the kingdom to be obedient to him. The king in reward of services so faithful and useful gave them lands and vassals in his kingdom. To Blas Ruiz he gave the province of Tran; to Diego Velloso that of Bapano, with titles very honorable in this kingdom. The two captains in their new favor did not forget God, to whom they had so especial reasons to be thankful; or their natural king and lord, from whom also they had received rewards. They informed the king of Camboja of the great good that it would be to his kingdom to know and reverence God by entering into His service through holy baptism, and to have the king of España for his friend. For the first purpose, father Fray Alonso Ximenez and myself were proposed. They urged the great devotion, virtue, and prudence of the holy old man, and the many sufferings which we had both undergone from favoring the king’s own cause; and they said that, if he sent to call us back, we would very readily come to preach the holy gospel. As for the second purpose they said that he ought to send an embassy to the governor of Manila; and, as a sign of the beginning of this friendship, that he ought to ask for some soldiers, by whose aid he might easily complete the pacification of his country. The king assented to all this, and sent his embassy with letters to the governor, telling him that his principal reason for asking for soldiers was that his vassals might be baptized with greater certainty and less difficulty. To father Fray Alonso Ximenez he wrote another letter, in the language and characters which those people use, and sealed with his royal seal, of a red color. In the Castilian language its tenor was as follows: [“Prauncar, king of Camboja, to father Fray Alonso Ximenez of the Order of St. Dominic: Greeting. From what I have heard from the captain Chofa Don Blas Ruiz of Castilla, and from the captain Chofa Don Diego of Portugal, with regard to the conduct of father Fray Alonso Ximenez when the Spaniards slew Anacaparan, I have conceived a great affection for father Fray Alonso Ximenez. Now that I am in my kingdom I beg father Fray Alonso Ximenez to come to it, and to bring with him father Fray Diego. I promise to build them churches and convents, and to give permission to all in my kingdom to become Christians. Though I have shown the two chofas18 great favor and wish to keep them in my kingdom, they are unwilling to stay, because there are no religious here.” The two captains wrote in the same strain to the fathers, begging them to come and reunite this kingdom with the Church.