My Mother, Elvira Villarreal de Montemayor, once mentioned that the Montemayors were not the only illustrious side of the family, that her side, the Villarreals, had some distinction too. If one looks at the Spanish equivalent of Burke's peerage one finds twice as many entries for Villarreal as for Montemayor.
I am including an item I found on the Internet about the family name. It seems that Francisco Villarreal was an officer on a ship in the Spanish Armada. Here is a copy of the document signed by King Philip II in 1593 seeking the return of Francisco from the English.(Philip II, King of Spain
Letters
14 August, 1593.) Note the Large signature: "Yo el Rey", which in English is: I, the King.
One of the ships in the Armada was The Santa Mar�a de Montemayor, an 18 gun ship.
Bad feeling between Spain and England had existed since the 1570's. Spain was bringing gold and silver from the Americas, and England wanted some of this wealth. Queen Elizabeth I encouraged Francis Drake and other English seaman to raid Spanish ships and towns. (This is sometimes know as piracy.) Religious differences also caused conflict between the two nations. In the 1560's the English began to aid the Dutch Protestants who were rebelling against Spanish rule. In the early 1580's King Philip II started planning to send a fleet and an army to invade England. He hoped to end the raids and make England a Catholic country again. The Armada left Lisbon in 1588. It entered the English Channel on July 30th and fought long range gun duels with English warships. In the early hours of August 8th, the English sent eight fire ships (vessels filled with gunpowder and set on fire) toward the Armada. The Spanish ships sailed out to sea to avoid the flames. Later that morning 60 English ships attacked a number of Spanish ships and sank how many of them? (Take the quiz and enter your estimate of how many ships the English sank.) They damaged many others. The crippled Armada fled into the North Sea. Heavy winds wrecked many of ships off the coast of Ireland, and only 67 returned to Spain.
Quiz: How many Spanish ships did the English actually sink as a result of their guns?Choose:
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