o to embark in the
morning, and permission was given him. That night, the first of August,
1617, one of the most tragic events that has ever happened in these
islands occurred in our province--namely, that that same night our
father rector-provincial, Fray Vicente de Sepulveda, was choked to
death, and was found dead in his bed at two o'clock in the morning,
with clear signs of a violent death. In that most horrible crime were
implicated three religious--one a priest, one a chorister, and one
a lay-brother, namely, the creole who gave the poison to the father,
and whom his relatives hid; and, as he had money, they helped him to
escape out of these islands. The lay-brother was a European, and the
father priest, Fray Juan de Ocadiz, an American. They [_i.e._, the last
two] were hanged near the atrium of our church, in front of the well,
after we had first unfrocked, expelled, and disgraced them. The two
said men were buried beneath the cloister of our convent, near the
porter's lodge, before the altar of St. Nicolas de Tolentino. [43]

In the interval from the death of our father provincial, Fray Jeronimo
de Salas, which occurred on May 17, until our father rector-provincial
Sepulveda was killed, a singular case happened in our convent, which
was apparently a presage of the said fatality. It happened that in
the fine infirmary of the said convent, which looks toward the sea,
a white cat was found which was rearing three rats at its breasts,
feeding them as if they were its own kind of offspring, and giving a
complete truce to the natural antipathy of such animals. But after
it had reared and fattened them well, it ate them, ceasing the
unwonted truces in its natural opposition. Almost all the people of
the community of Manila and its environs came to see such a thing,
for scarcely would they credit the truth of it, and all affirmed that
it must be the presage of some great fatality.

By the death of the said our father Sepulveda (which was very keenly
felt by our province, and which grieved the hearts of all the members
individually), although the father definitors ought to have taken
up the government, yet they made a renunciation of the right which
pertained to every one of them. Accordingly, announcements were sent
through the provinces to the effect that the provincial chapter should
be held on the last day of October, the thirty-first, of the year 17.

About this time the very illustrious Don Diego Vazquez de Marca