Note 52 — Chapter IV · JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE AUDIENCIA; THE RESIDENCIA1

While as a rule the residencias of governors were severe, due largely to the presence of the audiencia, that of Dr. Sande, the first governor to submit to this investigation, illustrates the evils of the residencia as conducted before the establishment of the audiencia. His successor, Governor Ronquillo de Peñalosa, conducted Sande’s residencia and sentenced him to pay a heavy fine, but he appealed the case to the Audiencia of Mexico, by which tribunal, in the meantime, he had been commissioned oidor. We have noted in an earlier chapter Ronquillo’s comments on the abject state into which the administration of justice had fallen when a man could be promoted to a magistracy in a tribunal which had jurisdiction over his own case on appeal.52 However, after the establishment of the audiencia, and until the close of the nineteenth century, the residencia went to the other extreme, and was, as a rule, exceedingly rigorous.