Governor Don Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, a magnanimous gentleman, determined to found a royal college under the title of San Felipe in honor of Felipe IV, in whose reign he assigned four thousand pesos from the royal treasury for twenty becas, until other means should be carried out for their support. He joined it to the college of San José of Manila, which is under the charge and direction of the Jesuit religious of the Society. The latter college is the older in foundation of the two in the city, leaving out of account the seminary of San Juán de Letrán, which together with the college of Santo Tomás is in charge of the religious of St. Dominic. Both colleges are gardens of letters and virtue which adorn the ecclesiastical estate, both secular and regular. Very many very eminent persons, both seculars and regulars, [85] have graduated from those colleges, and up to this time three bishops, and Doctor Endaya y Haro, who after being dean of the cathedral of Plasencia, España, is at present archdeacon of Alarcón, a dignity of the cathedral of Cuenca, one of the greatest dignities of España, besides many others who require a separate history. The twenty becas were given to the finest youths in Manila on the day of St. Sebastian of that year, 1641, amid great applause and gatherings, and they were given the title of royal collegiates. [86] The religious of the Society of Jesus took charge of the management and instruction of that college with that care and zeal which they usually display. But the permanence of that college endured only during the government of Don Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, namely, until the year 1644, when that royal college of San Felipe was destroyed, and the fathers of the Society had to pay the 12,000 pesos which they had spent during those three years on the support [of those pupils], the many good representations made by the said religious--who charged that the royal decree which was couched in very strict terms for that purpose, was obtained by false representation [87]--being of no avail. The new governor Don Diego Faxardo executed that decree with the integrity which these islands experienced in him. The royal treasury owed 8,000 pesos to the fathers of the Society, but they were not allowed to receive them on account. Thus they had to lose those loans. Our province aided them with 8,000 pesos which it had in deposit from some annuities [censos] which their owners had received, and 4,000 were lent them by Captain Manuel Estacio Venegas, a very important person of these islands. [88]... This was the beginning, permanence, and end of that unfortunate college of San Felipe, whose idea we have seen to have been executed and established by the royal will of King Don Felipe V, in the foundation of the royal college of San Felipe newly established in houses that formerly belonged to Captain Gabriel Diaz del Castillo, and afterward confiscated for the properties of Licentiate Manuel Suárez de Olivera, who was also an