FRAY PRUDENCIO DE, a bishop and historian of Spain of considerable merit, was born according to some at Valladolid, according to others at Monterey, in Galicia, in 1560. Having been educated for the church he took monastic orders, and passed several years in the constant study of the antiquities of Spain. Sandoval was soon after made abbot of San Isidore and historiographer to Philip III., when he responded to a royal request to continue the Cronica General de Morale, by carrying down that history from 1037 to the death of Alfonso VII., in 1097, published in 1600. But by far the most valuable work which Sandoval wrote is his history of Charles V., entitled Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Emperador Carlos V., Vallad. 1604 and 1605; Pamplona, 1614; Antw. 1681. Of this work there are two abridgments in English,—one by James Wandesworth, London, 1652; the other by Captain John Stevens, London, 1703. Sandoval was rewarded for his labour by the bishopric of Tuy, and shortly after by that of Pamplona in 1612. The whole of his life almost was spent in the exploration of the public archives and libraries of his native country. He died at Pamplona on the 17th of March 1621, aged sixty-one years. Bishop Sandoval, besides other works, edited a number of chronicles of the twelfth century, which will be found in Las Cronicas de los Quatro Obispos, fol. 1615 and 1634. Ticknor (History of Spanish Literature, vol. iii. 139, 1849), in speaking of the greatest work of Sandoval, characterizes it as too long. "It fills," he says, "as many pages as the entire work of Mariana, and, though written with simplicity, is not attractive in its style. His prejudices are strong and obvious. Not only the monk, for he was a Benedictine, and enjoyed successively two very rich bishoprics, but the courtier of Philip III. is constantly apparent. ... Still, the history of Sandoval is a documentary work of authority much relied on by Robertson, and one that, on the whole, by its ample and minute details, gives a more satisfactory account of the reign of Charles V. than any other single history extant."