Note 5 — Letter from Alonso Fajardo de Tenza to Felipe III

In the above campaign, the most aid furnished me, by his person, followers, and servants, was from General Don Juan Ronquillo del Castillo. By his intelligence, assiduity, and labor, I was able to make the preparations that I did; and I do not think that it could have been done without him so well, with so incredible rapidity. Will your Majesty be pleased to have this considered in his behalf, on the occasions that arise for showing him honor and favor. That favor that I petitioned your Majesty to show Admiral Rodrigo de Guilleztegui last year, will be very Page 263well extended, for the reasons then advanced. Don Fernando Centeno Maldonado, who is serving in these galleys as commander of them, is a man who, by the honorable rank of his birth, has personal merits and good qualities—so that your Majesty may make use of him in his profession as soldier, or in any other thing, even though it be a position of great labor. He is the man for it, and one who will well use any honor that your Majesty may be pleased to bestow upon him. Many judicial inquiries [informaciones] are made here of merits and services; and although there are some among them of men who have merits, and who have not obtained their reward because of a lack in means to give it to them, or in the failure of their said inquiry to obtain it, the majority consist of the inquiries of men who are or could be ashamed. Of them what they claim might be advanced as a reason for their not deserving even what has been given them. Although it is always to be believed that the auditors, to whom the inquiries are entrusted, ought to make them, not only as judges, but as interested parties, so that sinister inquiries should not be sent to your Majesty’s royal Council to defraud your royal treasury and the merits of those who have served well, I assure your Majesty that I have heard that many inquiries have been made with less justification than might be advisable. Moreover, I am an eye-witness of the evidence taken so earnestly by Auditor Don Albaro de Messa in the assembly in the case of one Juan de Herrera, whose inquiry he had made. Because we did not detail so fully as he wished regarding [the reward] that we informed your Majesty could be given him, he refused to affix his signature after the opinion that he Page 264there gave in favor of Captain Alonso Estever, a valiant man who has served and serves very well. I do not know whether he has signed in his opinion of Captain Antonio de Esquibel, which he also gave to him at that time. In order that your Majesty may know with what passions they proceed in this, and on what this was based, and may see how little was the justification of this protegé of Don Albaro, namely, the said Juan de Herrera (who it is said came here as the servant of the factor Juan Saenz de Quen5—of which I am not at all certain, since he has been a soldier here, and even a collector of tributes and encomiendas, and once alcalde-mayor, when the Audiencia was governing; and after his services in these employments, he was found deserving of an encomienda of two thousand tributes, of being appointed commander in the Nueva España line, and of an allowance); because cognizance was not taken of this in its order, in the report, Don Albaro was made especially angry. There are also other and less justifiable inquiries, for there was an excellent notary, named Gonçalo Velazquez de Lara, who forged many inquiries and other papers; and who recently forged my signature, in order to defraud your Majesty of the fees from the licenses of the Sangley Chinese. I sentenced him to be hanged yesterday, so that he may do it no more, and that others might be warned.