400 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON), 



[Vol. XX. 



affairs in Ceylon, promised to urge upon the viceroy the 

 importance of immediately dispatching to the island a force 

 sufficient, with that already there, to effect the conquest of 

 the Kandyan kingdom, wrongfully held by the usurper Dom 

 Joao Mudaliyar alias Vimaladaham Surya. This promise 

 Pero Lopes fulfilled as soon as he reached Goa ; and the 

 matter having been discussed in council 1 , it was resolved to 

 send Pero Lopes himself with three hundred 2 men on this 

 enterprise, and that he should be the first to hold the office 

 of captain-general of the conquest of Ceylon. Accordingly, 

 in April 1594, Pero Lopes de Sousa set sail from Goa with an 

 armada consisting of a galley and eight foists well provided 

 with captains, soldiers, munitions, and provisions 3 ; and at 



casado, both of whom are mentioned by Couto supra, X. x. xvii.) 

 must have been acting during the absence of Pedro Homem. The 

 latter, as we have seen, was away from Col umbo on the Sitavaka ex- 

 pedition from the beginning of March until about the middle of May, 

 therefore either it was in March that Pero Lopes arrived from Malacca, 

 or else, if earlier, Pedro Homem was absent on some other enterprise 

 not recorded. 



1 The curious details recorded by Ribeiro (loc. cit.) may have some 

 grains of truth in them ; but I cannot substantiate them. According 

 to Ribeiro, one of the conditions made by Pero Lopes in consenting to 

 undertake the enterprise was that a nephew of his was to marry Dona 

 Catharina : most of the other writers say that it was Pero Lopes 

 himself who wished to have her. The Rajavaliya, however, tells 

 quite a different tale (see infra, p. 401, note 8 ). 



2 This is the figure given in the royal letter of 26 February 1595, 

 cited above, on the authority of a letter of the viceroy's dated 13 

 April 1594, which had been dispatched overland to Portugal. King 

 Philip expresses his approval of the choice of Pero Lopes for this 

 expedition. 



3 So says the Vida de M. de Alb. (i. xxiv.). Ribeiro (Fatal. Hist. 

 i. vii.) states that the armada consisted of " many rowing vessels and 

 some galleys, and in them one thousand two hundred Portuguese 

 soldiers, all very fine, and the other necessary provision." Sa y Menezes 

 (see C. A. S. Jl. xi. 553) gives the same number of soldiers. The 

 document printed in Col. de Trat. i. (221) has " 1,250 native Portuguese, 

 besides mixties and Indians," Baldseus's version of which (Ceylon iii.) 

 adds a cypher to the 1,250. From a royal letter of 2 January 1596, 

 printed in Arch. Port. -Or. iii. (581), it appears that the captain of one 

 of the ships was Sebastiao d'Aguiar, and that he was killed in the 

 attack on the Kandyan tranqueiras. 



