MEASURES REGARDING TRADE WITH
CHINA
LETTER TO FELIPE II
Sacred Royal Catholic Majesty:
In order to discuss your Majesty's commands regarding the commerce between the Philipinas Islands and Nueva España, Don Cristobal Mora and I met yesterday and examined a long report which Ledesma had drawn up from many papers which have been sent from both sides, together with a certain clause of a letter to your Majesty by the viceroy, Don Martin Enriquez, written on the twentieth of March of the past year, eighty [-five].[1] In this letter he says that the merchants of that country are greatly disappointed that trade with the Philipinas Islands should be taken away from them; for, although the satins, damasks, and other silken goods, even the finest of them, contain very little silk, and others are woven with grass (all of which is quite worthless), the people mainly resort to this cheap market, and the prices of silks brought from Spain are lowered. Of these latter, taffetas had come to be worth no more than eight reals, while satins and
- ↑ In the original, ochenta only—y cinco evidently omitted by some oversight, as the date is written "1586" at the end of the document.
