Note 39 — Chapter XV

The kings, although so tyrannical in government, and in power so beyond the affliction and trouble which authority and ostentation incur, yet according to the condition of their poverty maintain the form and authority of a court. Peace affairs are in charge of a chief justice or counselor, called zarabandal. That is the greatest court title and he decides the causes and suits, and advises concerning the sentence. In the outside villages where the king does not reside, the chiefs meddle wherever they wish, without other law than their power and will, and their unbridled greed; and the one injured has no recourse, for, in quarrels between the plebeians and chiefs, the king always takes the part of the latter—who are more powerful, and are those who can make trouble for him, and even deprive him of his kingdom. For his principate is founded more on the recognition that they make of his nobility than on any absolute power which secures to him their vassalage; since a slave will say “no” to the king in what does not suit him. That happened in Joló, in the presence of Father Alexandro Lopez. When the father was negotiating through the medium of the king to have the ransom for a Christian put at a humane figure, the other, a Joloan slave by condition, who had the Christian in his power, said to the very face of the king, when the latter asked him to conform to the prices settled upon in the treaty of peace,39 that he would not do it; and that was the end of the matter. That signified that the king’s power in execution extended just so far as his vassals wished, and that they would obey him just so far as it pleased them.