Important printed state paper signed by the king - "Yo El Rey" - Philip IV (1605-1665), setting out instructions for a large scale registration of sailors in the Spanish royal navy, addressing the always pressing issue of impressment. Also signed by one of the king's leading military advisers. Philip is probably best remembered as "a peerless patron"; at Buen Retiro, his pleasure palace on the outskirts of Madrid "he was surrounded by a brilliant circle of poets and playwrights - including Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, Francisco de Quevedo y Luis Quiñones de Benavente", the central hall, el Salón de Reinos, decorated by his court painters headed by Velásquez. (Diccionario Biográfico electrónico). He was somewhat less apt in his policy decisions, failing in his efforts at domestic and military reform, too reliant on the junta system implemented under his favourite and chief minister Gaspar de Guzmán, conde de Olivares. Philip was notably more forward thinking, and successful, in his handling of the navy to which he applied a "sensible, pragmatic approach" (Goodman, p. 32). Throughout his reign there was no "weakening of the importance attached to naval forces" (ibid. p. 156), and the Junta de Armadas was the only such committee to survive the eventual fall of Olivares untouched. The present ordinance created regional administrative officials responsible for the initiation of a registry of mariners and the issue certificates to pilots, masters, gunners, carpenters, and other naval tradesmen, who for their part were ordered to provide detailed personal information. This data was to be recorded in a ledger, a copy of which should be sent to the War Council and regularly updated. Failure to comply could result in a severe fine and two years of exile. The directives were to be implemented "generalmente en estos Reynos (in all the territories of the Spanish Empire)", thus including Spanish possessions in America and Asia. The creation of this matricula - "a register of all seafaring folk designed to provide central control over their movements and availability for armada service" - is one of the distinctive features of early seventeenth-century Spanish naval organization, "Nothing like them would appear anywhere else in Europe until Colbert's famous classes maritimes of the 1660s. Madrid's compulsion would arouse resistance on the coast" (ibid., pp. 192-3). The countersignatory, Bartolomé Aguilar y Anaya (c.1563-c.1630), was an influential military administrator under both Philip IV and his father. He entered the service of Álvaro de Bazán, marquis of Santa Cruz at the age of 17, taking an active part in his patron's conquest of Portugal, his campaigns in the Azores and in the preparation of the Great Armada of 1588. On the death of Santa Cruz his rise continued under the protection of the secretary of war, Andrés de Prada who appointed him first officer of the sea section of the war secretariat ("primer oficial en la sección de Mar de la Secretaría de Guerra") in 1594 (DB-e). In 1600 he was granted the formal title of royal secretary, and in 1606 himself became secretary of war; during the second decade of the 17th century he was secretary of the board of galleys, directing the supply of ammunition for the expedition to Brazil in 1625, at which time he had assumed one of the prized seats on the council of war, and in the 1630s he was a member of the highly influential Junta de Armadas. David Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 1589-1665. Reconstruction and Defeat. 1997. Folio. 3 pp. on a single bifolium. Printed order with the king's signature, countersigned by his secretary of war Bartolomé Aguilar y Anaya, manuscript docketing on the first page. In modern marbled paper wrappers. Light toning, some marginal fox spots, but overall very good.
