PHILIP IV of Spain.

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El Rey Instruccion y orden, que se ha de guardar en hazer y formar las matriculas, 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 in

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