nt to ask for him, with censures, as he declared
that the clerk was a familiar of the Holy Office. The judge replied
that he had arrested the clerk to get his confession, because of
the said protest which he had authenticated; that he had already
taken that confession, and needed him no longer; and that the father
commissary should ask me for him, for I had arrested him. The father
commissary replied that he was not satisfied with that reply, and that
the clerk should be given to him. But the judge answered by producing
proof that he did not hold the clerk prisoner, and could not hand
him over. Thereupon, it appears that the father commissary calmed
himself, and turned upon me in good earnest. At the earliest light
he sent a youthful and somewhat impudent friar to me, to notify me of
the act--which I enclose herewith [13] so that your Highness may see
whether this is the way to treat one who occupies such a post as I,
and whom his Majesty has delegated in his place. Considering that the
cause pertained to me, because that clerk had committed an offense in
the exercise of his duty, and that the father commissary was exceeding
his commission--and still more did he whom the father commissary sent
to notify me so discourteously and impudently--I took the act from
his hands, and sent him to his superior of the convent at the port
of Cavite, with orders to keep him there and reduce him to order, as
I did not wish him to excite the community, as the friars were doing.

The fathers of St. Dominic took opportunity from this occurrence to
utter blasphemies against me, and to declare me excommunicated for
preventing the exercise of the Holy Office (as if the preservation of
the royal jurisdiction would be a hindrance to that holy tribunal,
which only undertakes what concerns it)--saying that I was deposed,
and was not governor, nor could I be governor. They declared that the
senior auditor should immediately assume the government, arrest me,
and send me to a fort. They confirmed this by the father commissary
bringing from Cavite father Fray Francisco Pinelo--an eloquent man,
and a bold preacher in the pulpit--whom he caused to preach in his
convent in this city on the second Sunday in Advent. At the beginning
of his sermon, he proceeded to read a bull, translated into Romance. He
declared that it was issued by Pius V, and that his Holiness ordered
therein that whoever should prevent the exercise of the Holy Office
should be infamo