Under pretext of the arrest and removal of Don Geronimo de Silva, Licentiate Legaspi, not heeding the second nomination from the ships, exercised the office of captain-general, carrying the staff of office and making them lower the banners to him, and address him as “your Lordship,” and his wife as “my lady.” He immediately appointed his elder son to the post of sargento-mayor of this camp, and his younger son to a company, while another company was assigned to a relative of Auditor Don Matias Flores y Cassila. Others were assigned to brothers of the said Don Matias, the fiscal, and other auditors, except Don Albaro, who refused to have anything given to his household. Upon seeing the illegality of those appointments, I issued an act declaring them vacant and restoring those posts to those who had held them before.
I did the same in regard to the posts that I found filled for the ships which I am despatching now to Nueva Espana, as those appointments were not made to suitable persons. Such were holding them with their followers by illegal means and had no services or qualifications, although there are persons of excellent abilities, as are those who now hold them.
The ships are the best and most suitable that have sailed hence for a number of years past, and are of five hundred or six hundred tons burden apiece. They are well equipped with artillery and other necessities. They are heavily laden, for, although the enemy was along the coasts in smaller craft than other years, this year the Chinese came and have brought the Portuguese from Macan. Regarding the danger that might be feared on the coast of Nueba Espana from a Dutch fleet which we heard would pass through the strait of Magallanes, I left the viceroy warned, so that when those ships can reach that coast, he will have a sentinel and lookout at the island of Cedros, in front of the gulf of California—where they are ordered to reconnoiter the enemy’s condition, and where the foe never expect them—and with a port to windward of the cape of Corrientes, which is the place where they may be awaited; with that I trust, God helping, that they will be secure.
Eleven of the fourteen Dutch ships that passed [the strait] this year went to Capulco; they were those which the pirate took from Olanda. Seven of them were large ships, and four small; three of them were captured in Piru. They reached Terrenate with all of them, and with eight hundred men aboard. Accordingly I believe that they will come here in a few months; and as this state and its conservation depends on maritime forces (as does that of all the islands of the world); and as the building of three ships of the size of these two (which, as it could not be avoided, are going to Nueva Espana) resulted, I hope from the willingness with which the fathers of the Society offer to make two ships for me in the province of Leyte (where they have their missions), and the Franciscans another in those of Camarines, that they will be provided for me. The condition of the royal treasury and your Majesty’s heavy expenses on the point of Cavite require that very urgently.