.

_I The King_
By order of the king our sovereign:
_Juan Ruiz de Contreras_
Signed by the members of the Council.

[_Endorsed_: "In order that the decrees above inserted, ordering that
the missionaries of the Filipinas Islands have no prisons or jails;
that they may not condemn, except those who have commission from the
archbishop; and that they appoint no other fiscals than those whom
he shall assign them; notwithstanding the decrees that were given
ordering no innovation in the former practice, be followed in the
appointment of the said fiscals."]

_Letter to the archbishop_

The King. Very reverend father in Christ, archbishop of the
metropolitan church of the city of Manila in the Filipinas Islands. The
letter which you wrote me on the thirteenth of August of last year,
1623, has been received and considered in my royal Council of the
Indias. In regard to your statement that, on account of the haste in
which were sent from Mexico the ships which arrived that year at those
islands with assistance, the archbishop did not send you the papers
for convening the council, and that you therefore did not carry out
your plan for doing so, but that the necessary measures for it would
be taken this year: I command you, on receiving the despatches, to
execute the orders contained therein with the care and punctuality
that is desirable, and that I expect from you.

I appreciate the diligence which you exerted in preventing the
attempt to nominate for provincial of the Order of St. Augustine a
person who did not possess the qualifications which are necessary and
requisite. You should always be on your guard against such things, and
attempt to preserve the desirable peace and concord among the orders.

You advised us that it was necessary to have some ecclesiastical person
to be charged with the guardianship and the mode of governing the
seminary of Santa Potenciana, and to examine the persons who are to
live there. It was resolved to order the president of the Audiencia,
jointly with you, to inform us of what takes place, and that in the
meantime you were both to join in providing the most effective way
of administering the said seminary, with regard to both the persons
who enter it and those who leave it, with this justification, that
it be necessary. Accordingly, you will endeavor, for your own part,
to have these orders executed.

Your statements regarding the foundation that was being established
so that the yo