[1615]. Carta de Bento Barbosa, homem do mar, para a sua mulher, Ana Lopes, lavadeira.

Family letter from Bento Barbosa, sea man, to his wife, Ana Lopes, laundress.

The author gives news to his wife, saying that he is alive and telling her the adventures and illness he has gone through, thus justifying the fact that he has not written or showed up earlier.

The defendant in this process is Ana Lopes, who admitted to be guilty of bigamy. She told the Inquisition that, twelve years earlier, she had married Bento Barbosa, in Lisbon, with whom she had a child, who died in his infancy. After two years of marriage, her husband went to India, and she only got from him one letter (PSCR0382), in which he tells her about his adventures and illness. Since many years went by without any news from him, she presumed that he was dead and, following other people's advice, she got married again in 1623, this time with Varão Gonçalves, from Coimbra. In August of that same year, she got two letters from her first husband (PSCR0383 and PSCR0384), whose authenticity she proved by the handwriting and some specific words that she knew well. She immediately left her second husband and confessed to the Inquisition. Later, however, an official document from a notary attested that she had never been legally married to any of those men. No other registry about the fate of Ana Lopes is included in the process.