take that trouble--that he was acting as cura in virtue of
the bull of St. Pius V and of his assignment [to that parish] by the
[royal] patron.

On the fifth of March there was preaching in the royal chapel by a
Recollect friar, against whom the governor issued a royal decree very
sharply rebuking him, which he caused to be read to all the religious
orders. A few days later, the archbishop sent an act to the prior of
Pasig, ordering him to officiate as cura to the people of Cainta. [39]

About Christmas, the royal magazines in Panay were burned, and in them
some six thousand cabans of rice. On the first of March, Saturday, the
Augustinians set fire to the cottage on the ranch which the college
of the Society of Jesus at Yloilo owns in Suaraga. On the following
Saturday, March 8, fire visited the Augustinians, destroying a visita,
a church and convent, and more than forty houses in the village. Item,
and the following Saturday, March 15, the church and house were
burned in the village of Dumangas, without their being able to save
their valuables, or to prevent the burning of the pious offerings
[colectas] of Cebu, which had been stored [in that convent]; and,
besides this, more than two thousand cabans of rice.

On the sixteenth of March, Passion Sunday, while Father Diego de
Ayala was saying mass in the village, the church was entered by armed
men, with Bachelor Teodoro de Aldana, the notary of the archbishop;
the prior of Pasig, with two laymen; and other people. After mass
was ended, they read to the Indians an act by the archbishop, which
commanded them, under penalty of flogging and the galleys, to appear
within three days before the prior of Pasig, resorting to the latter
for religious ministrations, and to repeat the sacraments.

On the seventeenth of March, the father procurator, Antonio de Borja,
[40] presented a petition to the governor that he, as vice-patron,
should take measures regarding the violent spoliation which the
archbishop had inflicted on the Society. The governor referred the
petition to the royal fiscal, as being his Lordship's counselor,
but the said fiscal excused himself. Then it was referred to Doctor
Cervantes, to Fray Francisco de Santa Ynes, and to many other persons,
both ecclesiastics and laymen, but all excused themselves; and in
these proceedings much time passed, so that it was the end of May
before anything was accomplished.

On the nineteenth of March, in the afternoon, the sec