1594. Carta de João de Morais, pseudónimo de Francisco Rodrigues, mercador, para Manuel Mendes Sanches, mercador.

Request letter from João de Morais, alias of Francisco Rodrigues, a merchant, to an acquaintance of his, Manuel Mendes Sanches, also a merchant.

The author, who is writing from Seville, asks the addressee to supervise a selling of his merchandise because he suspects the intermediary he has in Lisbon to be acting out of self-interest only. He also asks for a shipping of pepper in case the price justifies it. Finally he asks for news about his son and a mulatto slave he had previously sent in search of him.

Custódio de Carvalho, a priest with New Christian ancestors, helped a relative of his, Francisco Rodrigues, to hide and escape from the Inquisition persecution. In 1594 Francisco Rodrigues was in Seville, from where he sent to Lisbon the three letters published here, with instructions to his son, to a cousin and to another merchant. The letters were always signed with an alias, that of João de Morais, and were mostly concerned with the sugar trade and with the need to have his son with him, in Seville.