733, and countersigned by Don Miguel de Villanueva, his Majesty's
secretary, it is under the royal protection. In that decree the royal
arms are ordered to be placed in the church and seminary. The brothers
are ordered to go out in a body to make the stations on holy Thursday,
and entire faith is to be given in all the tribunals to the instruments
of the secretaries of that holy executive board. The charitable works
administered by that holy executive board are numerous; for, besides
the support and rearing of the girls, it maintains the hospital of
St. John of God, of the city of Manila, with generous alms. It may be
said that there is no estate that does not experience its charity;
for it spends annually in alms and charitable works alone, more
than seventy thousand pesos for the relief of poor, self-respecting
Spaniards, for those who are imprisoned, and for masses for the souls
in purgatory--in such manner that from the year 1600 until the present
one of 1751, in which this history is written, the alms that have been
administered by that holy executive board exceed five million pesos,
in addition to the supplements which it has made to the general fund
of these islands in cases of extreme necessity, and at the invasions
of enemies, which amounted between the years 1645 and 1735 to the sum
of one million sixty-nine thousand and ninety-nine pesos. Besides the
above that holy executive board is patron of twenty-nine collative
and ten lay chaplaincies, and maintains two fellowships in the royal
college of San Jose.

There are other charitable institutions in this community, although
none so universal and large. They have been founded in the cathedral
church, in the tertiary order of the seraphic order [of St. Francis],
in the convent of Dilao, in that of Binondo of St. Dominic and in
their beaterio, in the convent of the calced Augustinian fathers,
and in that of the discalced Augustinians. The Society of Jesus
also administers some charitable funds, of which the proceeds are
applied by their founders to various purposes of divine worship,
alms for the orders and the poor, dowries for poor Spanish girls,
Indian and mestizo women, hospitals, prisons, and suffrages for the
blessed souls in purgatory.

There is another royal seminary in the city of Manila. It was
established in the year 1591, while Don Fray Domingo de Salazar was
bishop, and Perez Dasmarinas governor, in certain houses given for
its foundation by Captain