is leaving a will. As judge, I set about
collecting his property with much diligence, involving considerable
hardship. That caused me certain fevers, for as he died in the country
outside this city in a garden his property was in great peril. Of this
I gave your Majesty an account after the property was collected and
placed in order, with the precautions that I had taken--by which,
notwithstanding the suits that had succeeded, I would continue
to retain and reserve the property in case that your Majesty were
pleased to send [some one to take] the said auditor's inspection or
residencia. In conformity with that I had sent documents both to the
probate court of Mexico and to the House of Trade at Sevilla, so that
the property that the said auditor possessed there might be collected,
and that your Majesty might be advised. Finally, I continuing in my
office and the governor in his purpose--which was stimulated by his
inability to reduce me to what I can morally believe, besides the
public rumor and report--and he being most desirous of taking from
me my office of probate judge, especially after the property had
been entered in the accounts of the probate court; and I had begun
the administration of the property of Licentiate Andres de Alcaraz:
for certain purposes, which I do not dare to state, although they are
reported, for I do not dare believe them, still by this and by many
other reasons, and more because he had seized certain of the letters
that I have written to inform your Majesty (for which, as persons in
his confidence assure me, with whom he has communicated the matter,
he has felt, and still feels, special anger and fury against me),
he resolved to remove me, even though it should be by arbitrary act,
from the Audiencia. Of that I am morally persuaded, and it is well
known. Seeking occasion for this, but not finding it, and wearied
perhaps in waiting for it, it happened one session that, while
Licentiate Legaspi and Don Juan de Valderrama, auditor and fiscal,
were at the door of the hall of his house, a message came in which Don
Antonio Rodriguez de Villegas excused himself on the grounds of ill
health. As the governor never attends the sessions of the Audiencia
except for his private ends, under pretext of your Majesty's service,
he was very angry that Don Antonio should excuse himself that day; for
he was trying to secure the passage of a resolution [by the Audiencia]
that I should go out to make the inspectio