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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. iXXl. 



refused, and the viceroy was instructed to have him sum- 

 marily executed should he venture to set foot in India. A 

 subsequent attempt to escape led to his confinement in 1614 

 at Alemtejo, his life being spared out of consideration for the 

 great services of his brother. 



No considerable success was announced till 1609, when Don 

 Hieronymo captured Balane, where he erected a fort, and 

 subsequently attacked and burnt the Sinhalese capital of 

 Candia ; about the same time he received a communication from 

 the queen, who proposed to desert to the Portuguese with her 

 son and treasure ; shortly after peace was made with the king. 



The king of Jaffnapatam, who was nominally a vassal of 

 Portugal, had long been suspected of treasonable practices, 

 and he was also oppressing his Christian subjects. Under the 

 pretext of visiting a shrine on the opposite coast he had 

 recently succeeded in smuggling across a considerable portion 

 of his treasure, and was believed to be purchasing help for the 

 Sinhalese from among the princes of the Choromandel coast. 

 It was therefore decided to dethrone him, and not to appoint 

 a new king over the country for the future. But the condition 

 of affairs at the end of 1610 was in the highest degree unsatis- 

 factory. A secret memorandum of the period by a Portuguese 

 who had had fifteen years' experience of the country, and 

 which was referred for a confidential report to the viceroy, 

 the Vedor da Fazenda in Ceylon, and to SamarakonMudaliyar, 

 sets out the state of things in a very clear light. Seven 

 thousand villages, great and small, were at the time within 

 the Portuguese territory ; these were looked after by fifty 

 thousand may orals or village headmen, each of whom paid a 

 parddo a year, while the marallas* and fines yielded close on 

 six thousand parddos. The yearly collection of cinnamon 

 yielded two thousand bahars, out of which seven hundred 

 were presented to the general, fidalgos, clergy, captains, &c, 

 while the rest was sold on the king's account at an average 

 price of six parddos the bahar. The areca crop, though not 

 properly attended to, yielded eight thousand amanoes, valued 

 at twenty thousand parddos ; there was a good collection of 



* Ribeiro, p. 129. 



