This second volume of the collection of handwritten gazettes from the Évora’s Public Library brings to the public the “Diaries” gathered in the CIV/1-6 d Codex, which covers, with a few flaws, the period from 1732 to 1734.

Once more, here lies a vast set of information about diplomatic maneuvers, military movements, everyday life of the Nobles, maritime traffic, commercial vicissitudes, the health situation in the Court, assignments to positions in Law, urban crime and the King´s work. All these news were believable information, confirmed by other sources along with rumors and a large range of voices, lost in time. In these gazettes we can also follow the unforeseen trajectories of less distinct individuals, such as, for example, the surgeon Isaac Eliot. After being noticed by the success of his art, he was accused of his wife’s murder. Several news describe the entire process, from November 1731 (still in the first volume of this collection), until the final moment of his execution, stated in this volume. Through the gazettes that are now edited, it is also known that, at the time, the episode came to inspire the manufacture of painted fans.
The total number of weekly records in this volume exceeds one hundred. One (and only one) is from 1734: the year in which, during months, the regular writing of the handouts was suspended. During this period, the author of the “Diary” sent the Court’s news through familiar letters. To give an idea of the changes, the remaining texts produced in this chronological period were transcribed and published as an appendix to this volume.

Several sources’ confrontations appear in footnote. Firstly, the gazettes were compared with the last part of the manuscript of the “Diary of the Count of Ericeira”, from the Library of Ajuda, and with the edition prepared by Eduardo Brasão in the 1940s. Secondly, they were confronted with the notes in some sheets from the “Colecção Pombalina”, which cover only a few weeks in 1733. Finally, the confrontation with another codex from the National Library, titled “Novidades de Lisboa” (News from Lisbon), and an incomplete notebook, a handwritten miscellany from the General Library of the University of Coimbra.

From this path results a much broader set of data concerning six years of the long reign of the king John V, referring to the characters and episodes spoken in the Court. This book reveals a much better knowledge of the source itself: the various authorship questions, the multiplicity of the circulation channels of this handwritten news and the diversity of their register, both in notebooks as in flyers.