mbled in the royal courts thereof, having examined
in relation the proceedings prosecuted on the part of the Recollect
province and religious of San Nicolas de Tolentino of these islands,
against the province of Santo Rosario and the religious of St. Dominic
in regard to the restitution of the spiritual administration of
the natives of the province of Zambales, hereupon declared that they
ought to restore--and they hereby have restored--to the said Recollect
province, and religious of San Nicolas of these islands the spiritual
administration of the natives of Zambales, in the same manner as they
held it at the time when the very reverend and devout father provincial
of the said order, Fray Joseph de San Nicolas de Tolentino, resigned,
handed over, and separated them from his administration in the former
year one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine. In consequence whereof
they moreover ordered--and they have so ordered--that there be made
out in due form for the party of the said Order of San Nicolas a
warrant to that effect. Thus was it decreed, ordered, and subscribed
to in the presence of his Majesty's fiscal.

Doctor Torralva
Licentiate Villa
The Fiscal"

In the presence of Antonio de Yepes y Arce, notary-public. Their
decision was heard and obeyed promptly by the party to the suit, and
proper warrants having been received, the spiritual administration of
the Zambals was peacefully restored to the province of San Nicolas
of the Augustinian Recollects. Perhaps the very reverend father
chronicler, Fray Domingo Collantes, [86] did not have at hand these
original documents when he penned the fourth part of the chronicles of
his province of Santissimo Rosario which has been recently published;
and this must be the reason for the so great diversity in the [story
of the] restoration of Zambales, and for the minuteness with which
it is discussed here.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATA

The documents in this volume are obtained from the following sources:

1. Jesuit letters.--From Ventura del Arco MSS. (Ayer library), iv,
pp. 1-3, 69-72.

2. Discovery of Palaos.--From Lettres edifiantes (1st Paris ed.) i
(1717), pp. 112-136, from a copy in the library of the Wisconsin
Historical Society.

3. Recollect missions.--From Pedro de San Francisco de Assis's Historia
general de los religiosos descalzos de San Agustin (Zargoza, 1756),
all that relates to Philippine missions; from a copy in the Library of
Congress. A