Note 19 — Chapter IX · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE GOVERNOR: THE AD INTERIM RULE

The above laws form a precedent for the subsequent authorization of the Audiencia of Manila to assume charge of the government on the death of the governor. This authorization was given on April 12, 1664, but the Audiencia of Manila, like those of Mexico and Lima, had already assumed the functions of the executive on four earlier occasions, and the king, in the cédula of 1664, merely recognized, with some qualifications, a practice which had been followed in the Philippines for half a century. A cédula dated as early as September 13, 1608, had authorized the nomination in advance by the Viceroy of New Spain of a resident of the Islands to assume the governorship on the death of the regular governor.19 The intention of this law seems to have been to guard against the ills incident to a vacancy in the governorship by an arrangement whereby some person should be appointed in advance and thus be ready to assume the command without delay. Whatever the royal intentions may have been, this law was never effective in bringing about the benefits for which it was designed. In fact, this particular provision met with general dissatisfaction in the Philippines, and the audiencia, acting in accordance with the custom observed in other parts of Spain’s dominions, continued to govern on the demise of the governor, ruling two or three years on some occasions, until the arrival of a temporary governor, sent from New Spain. So flagrantly was the prescribed method of procedure violated in the Philippines that in 1630, Visitor Francisco de Rojas y Ornate reminded the Council of the Indies of the existing law (that of 1608) and recommended that henceforth on the death of a governor the audiencia should have nothing to do with administration, but that one of three persons secretly designated by the viceroy should take over the government at once, thus eliminating all possibility of the interference of the tribunal.20