under his influence one Pedro Munoz de Herrera,
who is clerk of court for the Audiencia, with whom he negotiates
those statements that he wishes; and there is even a very evil
rumor that the latter will give them even though they are not true,
and that he gives them from the official records as demanded, even
when these are defective--not only by what is known of the person of
each one, but because the governor has favored, protected, and placed
him by force in the Audiencia. [This has been done] both in a murder
that the governor committed on the person of his wife, and in many
other matters. Finally in violation of your Majesty's decrees which
order that the offices be sold, he has, after having granted some
gratuitously for his own objects, without selling them, refused to
adjudge the office of secretary held by Pedro Munoz to one Diego de
Rueda, who bid eight thousand pesos for it, in order that Pedro Munoz
might not be deprived of it; while he gave it to the latter for one
thousand five hundred pesos, which the said Munoz had bid for it, and
that sum was paid in purchased pay-warrants, in order to give it to
him gratis, as is well known. He manages the clergy in the same way;
and, as he suspected that the cabildo of the church wrote a letter
to your Majesty last year, they have, since he learned something
of this matter, endured a little tempest until they have been able,
by certain paths that they have learned, to watch him. This present
year I fear that they will not write, in view of the extraordinary
care with which they see that the governor seizes the letters that
are sent to your Majesty. The whole country is so fearful of such
interference that each one, I think, will seek an extraordinary way
in order to save his letters. Some are thinking of putting them in
boxes of merchandise, for which reason I fear that some will be left;
and, as I have said, it might be that these will be the letters of
the cabildo of the church--not only because of the aforesaid reason,
but because, although I see that the archbishop is annoyed at the acts
of the governor, and as I understand, those affairs cause him internal
anxiety through his desire of remedying them, there is among outsiders
considerable grumbling because he flatters the governor and humors
him in many ways (which leads people to think that the cause for it is
certain accommodations for his servants and relatives that the governor
gives him); and because of cert