HERRERA y TORDESILLAS, Antonio de, Spanish historian, born in Cuellar, Spain, in 1559; died in Madrid, 29 March, 1625. The name of his father was Tordesillas, but he adopted that of his mother on reaching manhood. In 1579 he became private secretary to Vespasiano de Gonzaga, viceroy of Naples, which place he occupied till the death of the latter in 1591. Philip II. appointed him in 1592 historiographer of the Indies and Castille, and granted him a considerable pension. A short time before his death he was raised to the post of secretary of state. His most important work is "Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firma del mar oceano" (4 vols., Madrid, 1601-'15; new ed., revised by Gonzalez Barcia, 5 vols., with engravings, 1729-'30). There is also an Antwerp edition (4 vols., 1728), but it is very imperfect. Herrera's work covers a period of over sixty years. Although he never left Europe, the excellent material which he had at his disposal enabled him to write with exactness the history of the discovery of America, and of all that followed that event. "Of all the Spanish writers," says Robertson, in his " History of South America," "Herrera furnishes the fullest and most accurate information concerning the conquest of Mexico, as well as every other transaction of America. If, by attempting to relate the various occurrences in the New World in a strictly chronological order, the arrangement of events in his work had not been rendered so perplexed, disconnected, and obscure, that it is an unpleasant task to collect from different parts of his book and piece together the detached shreds of a story, he might justly have been ranked among the most eminent historians of his country." Herrera has been accused of using a bombastic style, of concealing some odious actions of his countrymen, and of a love for the marvellous. His work is an inexhaustible mine of facts, and writers who have treated the same subject after him have taken him for their guide and model. The two first decades were translated into French by Nicolas de la Coste (3 vols., Paris, 1660-'71). There is an English translation by John Stevens (6 vols., London, 1725-'6). Herrera wrote "Descripcion de las Indias occidentales" (Madrid, 1601), which is also found at the end of the first edition of the preceding work. It was translated into Latin by Van Baerl, and inserted in the collection which he printed under the title "Novus orbis, sive Descriptio Indiae occidentalis" (Amsterdam, 1622). Herrera also wrote several other works dealing with European history.