And it will happen most frequently that the number will reach three or four thousand, counting one or two children to each household.  From the foregoing your Majesty will realize clearly the countless number of souls under your Majesty’s charge, and who are waiting for your Majesty to provide them with ministers of religion, in order that they may be drawn out of their present darkness, and placed on the pathway of salvation.  At Manila, June twenty-fifth, 1585 [sic; should be 1588].

Letter from Vera to Felipe II

Sire: 

In the past year of 87, I sent your Majesty an account of the condition of this land, by the usual route, and also one by way of India.  As the voyage is so uncertain and dangerous, another duplicate is sent herewith; and I beg your Majesty to have it examined, as it is important for your service.

On the twenty-seventh of February of this year, I had news from the Pintados Islands that, on the seventh of the said month, at one of the islands about eighty leagues south of Lucon, an English ship had been seen.  With their small boat they had seized a Spanish sailor who was coasting along carelessly in a small bark.  He did not flee from the enemy, as he took them to be Spaniards and friends; for it is unusual for ships from England to come here.  Next day the English learned that a galleon of your Majesty was being built in the shipyard of Caigoan on the island of Panay.  An attempt was made to land troops for the purpose, as is supposed, of burning it; but it was defended by some carpenters and calkers who were working thereon.  By this it may be inferred that the enemy carried but a small force.  After this resistance, the enemy went to Mindanao, leaving on an islet in their course the mariner whom they had taken prisoner. [10] From him I ascertained the fresh destruction planned for this country.  He says that several Spaniards, who were his fellow-prisoners on the English ship, told him that your Majesty’s galleon “Santa Ana” had been captured near California, a country on the mainland which is continuous with Nueva Espana.  The galleon left this port in June of the past year, 87; and as no other ships but ours have ever been sighted on this voyage, which is through so remote regions, they have always sailed with little or no artillery, and with as little fear from corsairs as if they were on the river of Sevilla.  Thus the English easily captured the galleon, plundered and burned it, and hanged a canon of our church.  The other persons were sent in a small boat to land, where it is believed that some of them have died of starvation and hardships.  From this galleon there was plundered a thousand marcos of registered gold, and there must have been as large a sum unregistered; twenty-two and one-half arrobas of musk, an abundance of civet, and many pearls, and the richest of silks and brocades.  At this capture, the enemy took with them [from the “Santa Ana”] several