_ 182 _ I should be very grateful if Your Lordship would issue me a writ to reimburse me from the revenues of the kingdom, whatever is considered an appropriate amount of the four hundred and fifty leques spent on the capture of these two fortresses. The expenditure was made by the treasurer of the kingdom, in accordance with an ordinance of which he will give an account. It also happened that the Governor Martim Afonso ordered that the customs house here should be taken over for our Lord the King. In the past most of these things were paid for from the customs house and its revenues, and now not a single real is spent from them. Your Lordship can learn from the secretary what the conditions were on which the King of Ormuz handed it over, and the gist of them is that all the customary annuities, caravan dues and usual expenses, everything that used to be paid from them should be paid, and the rest was to remain with factor. This firman was not only not observed in this matter, which is the main thing, but I now hear that it is also beginning to be broken further, because it also states that Moorish officials who serve in the customs house are not to be changed or removed from their posts, yet it is said here that the post of magistrate of the weighing house has been given to a Portuguese. This post has been held for more than
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