No. 60.— 1908.] 



LIFE OF COUTO. 



5 



better do this he had ordered to be passed the provision asked 

 for, and had also appointed Couto chief guardian of the Torre 

 do Tombo that he was ordering to be built in Goa, to which all 

 the papers in the custody of the state secretary of India were 

 to be transferred 1 . Accordingly a Torre do Tombo was built 2 , 

 the Indian archives 3 were transferred to it, and Couto was 

 installed therein as guarda mor. This installation appears to 

 have taken place in 1596 4 . 



Meanwhile Couto , in obedience to the king's command, set 

 to work to write the history of India from the point at which 

 Barros had left it, and by the end of 1596 he had completed his 

 Decade IV. and had begun Decade V. 5 He found himself 

 somewhat hampered in his task, however, by the refusal of 

 successive viceroys to allow him access to all official documents, 

 the reason given being that many of these were of too confi- 

 dential a nature to pass out of the power of the viceroy. The 

 force of this objection Philip recognized, asking, however, that 



1 See the king's letter to Couto, of 28 February 1595, prefixed to 

 Dec. V. ; the alvard of 25 February 1595, in A.P.-O. iii. 497-8 ; and 

 chap. xiii. of the royal letter to the viceroy, of 27 February 1595, in 

 A.P.-O. iii. 508-9. (In the last Philip tells the viceroy to charge Couto 

 to commence his history where Barros and Castanheda left off, from 

 which it would seem that the king knew of the existence in manuscript 

 of Barros's Decade IV., which ends at January 1539, while Castanheda's 

 eighth book terminates in the latter part of 1538.) In view of these 

 documents, and in the absence of any other evidence, I regard as entirely 

 fictitious the statements of Man. Sev. de Faria that the idea of continuing 

 the history of India originated with Philip, that Couto was recom- 

 mended to him for the work, and that the king incharged the task on 

 Couto, bestowing on him the title of " Chronicler of India." Equally 

 unfounded seems to be the same writer's assertion that it was by Philip's 

 command that Couto wrote Decade X. first. 



2 Inside the fort, next to the Casa da Matricola, or general registry 

 (see A.P.-O. iii. 686). 



3 Such as had survived the ravages of damp and white-ants and the 

 carelessness of officials. 



4 See A.P.-O. iii. 843. 



5 So the king informs the viceroy, in a letter of 3 (? 5) March 1598 

 (A.P.-O. iii. 842 ff.), on the authority of Couto himself, who had written 

 to Philip to that effect, also saying that he was sending Decade X. 

 (which he did not), that he would send Decades IV. and V. that year 

 (he sent the first only), and that he hoped in future to send a volume 

 each year (a hope that was not entirely fulfilled). 



