astical dignitaries, both
secular and regular, and with all the ecclesiastical estate; for many
consequences, very important for the general and individual good of
all that land and all those provinces, can be expected from the good
example resulting from this. At Toledo, on the twenty-fifth day of May,
in the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-six.

_I The King_

By order of the king, our sovereign:

_Joan de Ybarra_

Signed by the president and members of the Council.

Letter from Luis Perez Dasmarinas to Felipe II

Sire:

With some misgiving and anxiety, Sire, I have considered whether
or no I should write this to your Majesty, but necessity and not my
wish obliges me. For some reasons I would like to leave it unwritten,
particularly because I do not care to contradict myself and appear,
in what I am about to write and ask of your Majesty, to change my
ground from what I have written to your Majesty before about some of
my affairs. I cease not to fear and dread that the reason of this may
appear from what I write now and what has before been written, to be
an invention, artifice, or plot. It is not so, although I confess it
does in some wise appear so. Speaking with frankness and truth, Sire,
which is the way in which I have concluded to write this, and as one
should always write, particularly to your Majesty, the fact is, Sire,
that my affairs have taken a different turn from what I expected when
I wrote to your Majesty. By the compassion and grace of God I have no
longer that wish, intent, and desire, which I have expressed in other
letters to your Majesty, concerning my wish and desire of obtaining
a state more quiet and safe and less disturbed, and less dangerous
for my past and present salvation. In order not to tire or occupy
your Majesty with an affair of so little weight and moment, although
it means much to me, I declare, Sire, that, according to my desire
and intention, I wrote to your Majesty exempting myself and bidding
farewell to human and temporal pretensions, thinking that they were
not necessary for me, and rather desiring to assist with what I had,
some persons in need, debt, and obligation. Since then my affairs here
have gone in the usual and ordinary way of the world, which is unlike,
even contrary to, human project, plan, and judgment. Many times things
are planned very differently from what actually happens afterwards,
as is verified by my case. For I thought to have s