Note 112 — Chapter XXXIII

As soon as Don Manuel de León assumed his government, Auditor Don Juan Manuel de la Peña Bonifaz appeared as a refugee at the porter’s lodge of our convent of Manila, with which the suits that were expected were avoided.112 However, he was hardly safe here, for a strenuous effort was made to drag him out of the sanctuary. For that attempt a very criminal opinion was given by Licentiate Don Manuel Suárez de Olivera; but the new governor, for greater assurance, referred the matter to Doctor Don Francisco de Pizarra y Orellana, judge-provisor of the vacant see of Manila, and formerly the consecrated bishop of Nueva Segovia. He and the orders gave their opinion to the effect that Don Manuel ought not to be taken from the sanctuary, as his crime was not lacsae majestatis in primo capite113 which Don Manuel Suárez imputed to him for having usurped the government and for the diminution of the royal treasury. Don Juan Manuel passed considerable time in that retreat, until Death with his scythe cut the Gordian knot of that litigation. Some years later, the resolution of the royal Council of the Indias was received, in which all that Don Juan Manuel had done was annulled, as also were the concessions and military titles that he had conferred, as the rules laid down in the famous law Barbaribus Philippus II de offic. Praetor had no place. It is said that capital sentence came for him, but death had executed it. His wife and children were left very poor; but that has always been experienced with the children of auditors in these regions. That plague or punishment is seen in the citizens of Manila, for scarcely can one find a son who attains preëminence by inheritance from his parents. In the daughters alone is that penalty found to be diminished, but it is finally executed on the grandchildren. The suit between the two auditors was also decided by the supreme Council of the Indias in favor of Don Francisco de Coloma, and he accordingly assumed the government at the first vacancy.