[Footnote 38: Particularly he "reformed" the Registers of the reigns of Pedro I, D. Fernando, João I, and D. Duarte; and J. P. Ribeiro, who gives a minute account of the state of these Registers and of Azurara's compilation, winds up thus: "Such is the state of the Chancellary books of the early reigns down to that of Affonso V; some are still in their original condition, while others are reformed or rather destroyed, by Gomez Eannes de Zurara."--_Memorias Authenticas para a Historia do Real Archivo_, p. 171. Lisbon, 1819.] [Footnote 39: _Annaes Maritimos e Coloniaes_, No. 1, Segunda serie, p. 34; and J. P. Ribeiro, _Memorias Authenticas_, etc., p. 21.] But Azurara was guilty of a yet graver delinquency than his destruction of the old Registers, and a charge of forgery must be brought against him. A detailed account of this affair may be read in the judgment of the Casa de Supplicação, delivered on January 12th, 1479, from which it appears that a dispute had arisen between the Order of Christ and some inhabitants of Punhete over rights claimed by the former in the River Zezere, a tributary of the Tagus. The Order based its claim on certain documents, one being of the reign of D. Fernando, and said to have been extracted from the Torre do Tombo, in which that monarch purported to confer on the Order of Christ jurisdiction over the towns of Pombal, Soure, Castello Branco and others, to the practical exclusion of his own authority therein.[40] When a copy of this pretended grant was produced in support of the contention, Azurara's successor in the Archives, Affonso d'Obidos, received instructions to produce the Register of D. Fernando for the purpose of comparison, and to bring the scribes engaged in the Archive Office with him; whereupon the grant was found at the end of the Register in a different writing from the rest of the book. Neither d'Obidos, nor the scribe who had copied out the Register, could say how it came there, or who had inserted it, and the latter declared that no such grant existed in the old books from which he had transcribed the present one. On further examination the pretended grant proved to be in the handwriting of "Gomez Eannes, Cleric",[41] a servant of Azurara, and it must have been fraudulently inserted in the Register after the latter had been bound up. On the discovery of this act of forgery, judgment was, of course, given against the Order, and it was fortunate for our Chronicler that the offence he had committed in its interests remained undiscovered until after his death.[42] [Footnote 40: There is a reference to this claim of the Order in the _Definiçoẽs e Estatutos_, etc., p. 201, and to its defeat.] [Footnote 41: This must have been an adopted son of the Chronicler, to whom he had lent his name.]