[50] That is, assigning to each province its quota of men to be levied for this purpose.
[51] Apparently a variant of the modern Silvela (name of the late premier of Spain).
[52] Two of the general or oecumenical councils of the Church; that of Vienne was convened in 1311, and that of Trent in 1545.
[53] The East India Company of England (formed in 1600) encountered great opposition and hindrances in its early history; they had to compete with the long-established Portuguese and Dutch trade, and could obtain little aid from the English government. In 1619 they formed an alliance with the Dutch company of the same name, but this soon proved ineffective. They had obtained control of Surat in 1612, but were thus involved in continual quarrels with the Portuguese. This company did not secure recognition from the English parliament until 1657; this brought them much prosperity for a time, but they afterward lost much of what they had gained, and in 1680 were expelled by the Dutch from Bantam. See Raynal's account of early English trade in the East Indies, in his History of European Settlements and Trade (Justamond's translation), ii, pp. 1-40.
[54] An oversight of the writer; Bantam is in Java, not Sumatra.
[55] Presentado: a theologue who, having finished his course of study, expects soon to receive the master's degree. Tercio was formerly sometimes used for tercero--"tertiary," or one who professes the rule of the third order of St. Francis, St. Dominic, or the Carmelites.
[56] The Order of Mercy was a military order, founded in 1212 by Jaime of Aragon; it had for its object the redemption of captives from the Moors.
[57] Murillo Velarde states (Hist. de Philipinas, fol. 126 b) that in 1640 and 1641 the Dutch waited near the Embocadero to seize the Acapulco galleons, but that these vessels escaped safely to Cavite by taking a different route; this was in consequence of warnings given them, by a system of fire-signals at the Embocadero, planned by the Jesuit Francisco Colin.
[58] An allusion to the solemn public procession made annually on that day, in which the banner of the city was carried; this was in celebration of the defeat of the Chinese pirate Limahon.
[59] A contemporary description of this earthquake is furnished in a rare pamphlet (Manila, 1641), containing a report of this occurrence made by the order of Pedro Arce, bishop of Cebu; part of it is reprinted by Retana in his edition of Zúñiga's Estadismo, ii, pp. 334-336.