St. Dominic
was excluded from its demand, as appeared from royal provision and
proceedings, which would be presented if it were necessary. After his
order had been placed in charge of the administration of Mindoro,
the Dominicans succeeded in getting the governor, then Don Juan de
Vargas, to ask the father provincial, Fray Joseph de San Nicolas, to
make a renunciation [of those districts]. The father provincial did
it unwillingly, for it was a thing that he neither could or ought to
do in regard to such districts, in order that other religious might
be instituted--as were those of St. Dominic, in the year eighty. Two
grave [Recollect] religious protested in the name of their province,
against the renunciation made by their Recollect provincial; and all
the ministers of Zambales protested against the violence with which
they were despoiled of that administration, without their province
having until then made any other judicial or extrajudicial effort
than the conservation of their right, in order to demand it where and
to what extent it may behoove them to do so. The provincial of his
province had formally ordered his subjects not only not to solicit
the natives of those districts to ask for, or allow them to ask for,
these or other ministers; but they were to admonish them always to
live consoled and contented, and to understand that the instruction
which they received from the fathers of St. Dominic was the same, and
[given with] the same zeal for the welfare of their souls. That order
was obeyed, and there was no notice of its infraction. On the contrary,
information was received that the present Dominican ministers told
the natives that they were returning to carry forward what had been
commenced by the Recollects. That proved that the Recollects did not
keep their convents and churches, which they had abandoned to the
Dominicans; as does the suggestion that father Fray Raymundo Verart
[82] said that Captain Marcos de Rosales, encomendero of Marivelez,
had made to him, for the latter earnestly entreated him to ask
that the Recollects should be restored to the possession of those
ministeries. He offered to make that request to him in writing.

8. Even though the religious of his province had represented to those
natives that they would return to their ancient administration, one
could not argue from that that any injury to the propagation of the
faith, or to the credit of so holy an order [i.e., the Dominican] would