Note 3 — LETTER FROM PAZUENGOS TO MESQUIDA

Against us in particular, is aroused a very perplexing storm, … the case, that in the college of Manila, a [mis]sion was held during Lent. On the next to the last day, Father Puch explained the seventh command[ment] and named the kinds of robbers that existed. He named alcaldes-[mayor?] of provinces, adding what St. Xavier said of these at seeing … that they received the decree deleantur de libro viventium.3 On the … day, while I was resting, I received a bloodthirsty denunciation from Señor Galban, which I [sho]wed to Father Puch, who explained on Sunday afternoon in great-detail what I have mentioned, and what he ought to say. But on the third day, I received a royal provision passed by an extraordinary meeting of the assembly, in [which] they told [me] to censure Father Puch who was to be ordered to give sat[isfaction] to the royal assembly, and to the public for the excesses committed upon the alcaldes-mayor. The last two days of the mission, I formed their … assessorship at the university of Santo Thomas, and at four of the … all acquitted, and I with them, Father Puch. Thereupon, I presented myself before the royal assembly on the twenty-seventh [of] March, and they have been silent until now. They gave the matter for review to the fiscal, who presented himself in person on the seventeenth of May with a fiscal review, in which he censures and reproves my conduct, and reproves and censures that of Father Puch. He censures all the religious orders, for, he says, we are all united in incriminating the alcaldes-mayor; that there is no obedience to the king in the islands; that the religious are the masters of the islands, despotic, tyrannical, cruel. He requests the royal assembly to reproduce before the king our sovereign, the memorial of Palafox against the religious, and that secular priests be assigned to the ministries; and that although the provision taken in the royal assembly ought to be urged on me, and although another ought to be despatched against the Dominicans, already the conspiracy of all the religious is known, and that the royal assembly will obtain nothing more than disrespect, disobedience, and insults, and that it will be best to inform the king, our sovereign, of everything, passing by my petition of testimony made in triplicate in order that I might have recourse to his Majesty. I have seen nothing, and have been informed of nothing. Thereupon, I sought my remedy, and have recourse with three testimonies to the king, our sovereign. I greatly fear, however, that the matter will be neglected in Madrid, and the connivance of our procurators; but for this I also ask the remedy farther on.