Crossword-Solution: MOURA 5 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 7

Don Juan de Idiaquez was chief secretary of state and of war; the Count de Chinchon was minister for the household, for Italian affairs, and for the kingdom of Aragon; Don Cristoval de Moura, the monarch's chief favourite, was at the head of the finance department, and administered the affairs of Portugal and Castile! The president of the council of Italy, after Granvelle's death, was Quiroga, cardinal of Toledo, and inquisitor-general.

Enormously long letters, in the King's: name, were prepared chiefly by the two secretaries, Idiaquez and Moura.

But Philip's scrawl was like that of 'a' clown just admitted to a writing-school, and the whole margin of a fairly penned despatch perhaps fifty pages long; laid before him for comment and signature by Idiaquez or Moura, would be sometimes covered with a few awkward sentences, which it was almost impossible to read, and which, when deciphered, were apt to reveal suggestions of astounding triviality.

And we may cast a glance upon him as he sits in his cabinet-buried among those piles of despatches--and receiving methodically, at stated hours, Idiaquez, or Moura, or Chincon, to settle the affairs of so many millions of the human race; and we may watch exactly the progress of that scheme, concerning which so many contradictory rumours were circulating in Europe.

God be praised for all, who gives us small chastisements to make us better, and then, like a merciful Father, sends us infinite rewards." And in the same strain he wrote; day after day, to Moura and Idiaquez, and to Philip himself.