The Will of Nuño de Guzmán; President, Governor and Captain General of New Spain and the Province of Pánuco, 1558
For several years the life and times of Nuno Beltran de Guzman has occupied my scholarly interests. On two occasions I have carried out extended periods of research in Spanish archives. In the notary archive of Valladolid I spent three weeks in a fruitless search for Guzman's will. I reluctantly concluded that the document was not where it ought to be and accepted the likelihood that it would never be found—if indeed it was extant. I was therefore astonised to see the will advertised in 1973 as an item for sale in Catalogue No. 490 of the firm of Hellmut Schumann AG (Zurich, Switzerland). The asking price was an astronomical 11,000 Swiss Francs for eighteen folios. At that time the equivalent value in U. S. dollars was nearly $4,000.00.