In 1583, Cristóvão Benavente, in a report addressed to Philip I on the archive’s operations, catalogued the existing records and those he deemed should be transferred to the Torre do Tombo. This report reveals that the royal archive was progressively developing into the central archive of state administration. Its role extended to incorporating documentation no longer needed for administrative purposes, including records from defunct public institutions and private registries, such as the chancellery archives of the Military Orders (P. Azevedo and A. Baião, O Arquivo da Torre… , 1989 [orig. 1905]).

I n a study published in 1989 on the regulations of the Archive of Simancas (considered the oldest state archive governance document) , José Luis Rodríguez de Diego argues that Benavente’s report served as the foundation for the Instrucción para el gobierno del Archivo de Simancas of 1588. Rodríguez de Diego suggests that Philip I’s visit to the Torre do Tombo and his interest in its organisation, reflected in his request for Benavente to prepare the report, were instrumental in shaping the structure of the Simancas Archive. He claims that the king, when inquiring about “el orden y concierto” of the documents of the Torre do Tombo, aimed to " “draw lessons to apply to his central archive at Simancas” (J. L. Rodríguez de Diego, Instrucción para el gobierno… , [1989?], p. 56).

Although the incorporations gradually contributed to “expanding” the archive’s documentary collection, other measures had the opposite effect, leading to its depletion due to the selection and elimination of documents . Indeed, for functional and pragmatic reasons, the selection and elimination of documents occurred at the Torre do Tombo Archive in very early times. This refers to the period of King Afonso V, during which Gomes Eanes de Zurara served as the Keeper of the Archives. At that time, a first copy of ancient chancery books was ordered to be made—aptly termed a “new reading”—with the corresponding destruction of the original books. This intervention is recorded in the first book of the Chancellery of King Pedro I, stating: “(...) the most serene lord, King Afonso the Fifth of Portugal (...) having learned that many registry books of past kings lay in his Torre do Tombo (...) due to the great prolixity of writings they contained, which were of no benefit, and further because they were perishing from age, ordered that this book be made containing only those that were substantive for perpetual memory and that the others be discarded, as they were of no use to anyone (...). And I, Gomes Eanes de Zurara (...) keeper of the said tower, to whom the lord entrusted this task, hereby certify this order was carried out” (J. P. Ribeiro, Dissertações chronologicas… [Chronological dissertations...], 1810, pp. 325-326).

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