ordinance or decree of your Majesty or for whatever he
might desire, exercise their offices with freedom. Thus outraged and
tyrannized over is all this community--so much so, that I have been
told secretly that the regidors have sent your Majesty a chart of a
certain victory which they pretend that the governor has gained from
the Dutch enemy who generally frequent these coasts, in which they
pretend that the governor burned and put to flight their ships by his
plans and arrangements. God knows the truth, and whether that is so;
but I can never persuade myself of so great corruption; for such a
thing never happened, and the governor has here a sufficiently wretched
reputation. In this matter, and regarding a matter of such gravity,
it was told me that when a regidor who privately told it was asked
how they had done such a thing, he had answered by asking what they
would have done if a traitor had come to govern them. Although that is
not public, but was told in private, your Majesty will learn it there
by its effects if that chart has reached you. But what is public is
that the governor says that your Majesty should have patience; and
since you sent him here he will conduct affairs according to his own
pleasure. He either threatens ecclesiastical persons, even though
they are friars, that if they do not act the same as the laymen,
he will take from them the stipends given them by your Majesty, or
he does not pay them; and he has oppressed them so that not even
do the preachers dare to utter truths in the pulpit, both by his
threats and because he dishonors them, and says that they are living
in concubinage, and that he will have them stabbed. However, the
chief reason why they have ceased to preach, as I have been told, is
because all conclude that it is a matter that has no remedy, and that,
since they attain no results, they do not care to ruin themselves;
and so they abandon it as a matter already adjudged. By these acts of
violence on the one hand, and with the flattery of some on the other,
he obtained a guaranty to your Majesty in order, as is understood, to
screen by it, or at least to moderate, the enormity of his acts. He
also avails himself, for this purpose, of threats to the notaries,
of nothing less than the galleys and their ruin; or they are given
to understand that they must not give official statements of anything
requested from them, especially to persons who he thinks will write to
your Majesty. He has