The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 24]

ROYAL ORDERS, 1632-33

Letter to Tavora
The King. To Don Juan Nifio de Tavora of my
Council of War, my governor and captain-general
of the Filipinas Islands, and president of my royal
Audiencia there. Your letter of June 20 of the past
year 630, concerning the exchequer, has been examined in my royal Council of the Yndias, and an
answer is given you in this concerning the matters
thereof in which decision has been made, and those
which require reply.
I have considered what you say in regard to the
inexpediency of including these islands in the monopoly of playing-cards established in Mexico; 8
also the act which you issued to the effect that the
[monopoly] contracted for with Don Francisco de
la Torre, a citizen of that city, should be put into
87 In 1552 Felipe II ordered a royal monopoly on playing-cards
to be established throughout his western dominions. All cards
were to be stamped with the royal arms. The manufacture and
sale of them was sold in 1578 to Hernando de Caseres, who paid
a royalty of one real for each pack. The value of the privilege
gradually increased as well as the price of cards paid by the public.
(Bancroft's History of Mexico, iii, pp. 663, 664.)
This monopoly was established in the Philippines in 1591, by
Gomez Perez Dasmarifias; see voL. vIII, pp. I69, 271; and ix,
p. 62.
**'-* "