Note 42 — The Pardo Controversy

After the exile of the archbishop, the actions, conversations, and sermons of the Dominican fathers were so wild and extravagant, against the members of the Audiencia, the ecclesiastical cabildo, and the Theatins [i.e., the Jesuits], that their mildest act was to call all of the latter Pharisees or heretics, and utter other jests of that sort, even from the pulpit. Consequently the royal Audiencia felt obliged to advise its president, then Don Juan de Vargas, that he should apply a corrective to these acts. This was a royal decree, requesting and charging the [Dominican] provincial to send to the port of Cavite the friars Bartolome Marron,42 Raimundo Verart, and P. Pedroche,43 and to make them ready, at the cost of the order, for [the journey to] España; and to send to Cagayan the two lecturers in theology, Fray Juan de Santo Domingo44 and Fray Francisco de Vargas,45 and not allow them to leave that province without a special order from the government. The provincial answered that those religious had not done any of the things that were alleged of them except by his order, and that therefore the blame, if there were any, was his and not theirs; and that all of them were ready to die for the faith. Again he was requested and charged as before, the provincial46 also being summoned to go to España, to give account of his acts. These orders were resisted, whereupon the convent was surrounded with infantry. As the provincial and Fray Pedroche refused to go out afoot, the soldiers took them from the convent, carrying them with the utmost propriety and respect, by order of the provisor, who was summoned for this function. They went away, Father Pedroche hurling excommunications, from which escaped only the alcalde-in-ordinary Pimentel, who conveyed them to Cavite, because he had given them excellent bread and pastries. At this, not only the Dominican fathers and their friends took to flight, but Quintero47 and his barangay—especially when they saw some embarked for España, and others for Cagayan. Then, the news of the change in government having come, was begun the fabrication of a scheme or plot, well covered up, as follows: