sent to my predecessor, Don Juan Nino de Tabora,
in the year twenty-nine, your Majesty once more ordered that this be
ordained by your royal Council of the Indias. But, notwithstanding
what pertains to the patronage and what your Majesty orders,
the religious have refused to do this, or to obey you. They offer
certain cool excuses, and, although they see that that decree is
executed in Piru and Nueva Espana, they refuse to obey in anything
which pertains to the patronage, and which your Majesty orders by a
special decree, unless it suits them very well to obey it. And since
your Majesty has now sent an obedient governor, and one who does what
he is ordered, he is the most evil man in all the world; and they
parade him in their pulpits, attempting to ascertain and publish
what belongs to God alone alone--[asking] whether the continence
of the governor and his endeavor not to furnish a bad example, is
the virtue of chastity, or the fault of nature. These things, Sire,
are taught here in the pulpits by the Dominican friars. The guardian
of St. Francis said publicly in the pulpit of the cathedral church
(because the computer of accounts had presented an account against him)
that he would show a balance due against the king of Espana--talking
in this so discourteous manner of his natural lord, as if he were
English, French, or of any other nation; and charging your Majesty
with the fact that Fray Francisco Jimenez had gained Oran for you,
and that another Franciscan friar had quieted and pacified Nueva
Espana. From these things, he drew up results against your Majesty
in the pulpit. He said of the accountant, Juan Bautista de Cubiaga,
a Vizcayan (who is so well known that no one can be ignorant of his
birth, and of the great fidelity and disinterestedness with which
he serves your Majesty), that he was a Gascon devil, besides other
very insolent words--although the said friar is a Mallorcan or a
native of Cerdena [_i.e._, Sardinia], which one could presume to be
a more barbarous place than Espana. This is preached in the pulpits,
and is winked at; for these religious are exciting and stirring up
the community at any opportunity, and in order to avoid scandals,
the mildest course possible is being taken. These religious, Sire,
are very numerous, and must be trying to excite all these islands. They
show humility only when the hostile Indians go to sack their missions;
and then they come to ask for soldiers, and to set forth ma