op put to the superiors of the religious,
in the form of cases of conscience. The questions were prepared with
such skill that, with the reply that would be given to them, they would
present weapons against the governor. They proceeded to set down on a
paper whatever he did, even in matters of the political government,
in order to write to his Majesty. That paper certainly twisted the
truth, in many of its statements; and it contained more than sixty
or seventy sections. One of the religious who were concerned in it
gave it to the governor. Just consider, your Grace, what a tax on
his patience this would be, and how it would wound him! Furthermore,
the paper ended with twenty-five excommunications which the governor
was said to have incurred. Everything was quite ready for the greatest
kind of a rupture.

The archbishop went to visit La Hermita, a district where Master Don
Andres Arias Xiron was cura. It was well known that the archbishop
had a prejudice against him, on account of various matters that
had occurred between the two, chiefly because Don Andres was an
intimate friend of the judge-conservator, Don Fabian Santillan. His
Lordship was very harsh with the affairs of the said Don Andres Xiron;
and on Saturday, April 26, after the Ave Marias, he ordered him to
be notified of an act by which the archbishop commanded that within
fourteen hours he be taken before a fiscal at a village outside Manila,
called Calompite. Don Andres tried to answer that act, but they would
not allow him to do so; nor would they give him a copy of the act,
which he requested. He claimed that the notification was null and void,
because it was made at night; but no attention was paid to that. Seeing
that the whole affair was being conducted with violence, very early
on the morning of Sunday, April 22, he presented a petition, appealing
from the said act and claiming the royal aid against fuerza, for which
he made representations in the royal Audiencia. The latter declared on
the following Monday that the archbishop had employed fuerza against
the said Don Andres Xiron; and notified the said archbishop of that
declaration. On Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of the same month, at
three in the afternoon, the archbishop notified Licentiate Marcos de
Zapata y Galves--the only auditor of this royal Audiencia, because of
the death of the others--that he should consider himself as publicly
excommunicated, because he had meddled in ecclesiastical affairs