Rodrigo Bastidas, a native of Santo Domingo, was Manso’s successor.  He was appointed Bishop of Coro in Venezuela in 1532, but solicited and obtained the see of Puerto Rico in 1542.  He was a man of great capacity, virtuous and benevolent.  He advised the suppression of the Inquisition, asked the Government for facilities to educate the youth and advance the agricultural interests of his diocese, and commenced the construction of the cathedral.  He died in Santo Domingo in 1561, very old and very rich.

Friar Diego de Salamanca, of the order of Augustines, succeeded Bastidas.  He continued the construction of the cathedral, but soon returned to the metropolis, leaving the diocese to the care of the Vicar-General, Santa Olaya, till 1585, when the Franciscan friar Nicolas Bamos was appointed to the see.  He was the last Bishop of Puerto Rico who united the functions of inquisitor with those of the episcopate, and a zealous burner of heretics.  After him the see remained vacant for fourteen years; since then, to the end of the eighteenth century there were 39 consecrated prelates, 9 of whom renounced, or for some other reason did not take possession.  The most distinguished among the remaining 30 were:  Bernardo Balbuena, poet and author, 1623-’27; Friar Manuel Gimenez Perez, pious, active, and philanthropist, 1770-’84; and Juan Alejo Arismendi, who, according to the Latin inscription on his tomb, was an amiable, religious, upright, zealous, compassionate, learned, decorous, active, leading, benevolent, paternal man.  Of the rest little more is known than their names and the dates of their assumption of office and demise.

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The year 1842 was, for the secular clergy, one of anxiety for the safety of their long and assiduously accumulated wealth.  The members to the number of 17 individuals, including the bishop, drew annual stipends from the insular treasury to the amount of 36,888 pesos, besides which they possessed and still possess a capital of over one and a half millions of pesos, represented by:  1.  Vacant chaplaincies. 2.  Investments under the head Ecclesiastical Chapter. 3.  Idem for account of the Carmelite Sisterhood. 4.  Legacies to saints for the purpose of celebrating masses and processions in all the parishes of the island. 5.  Pious donations. 6.  Fraternities and religious associations for the worship of some special saint. 7.  Revenues from an institution known by the name of Third Orders. 8.  Capital invested by the founders of the Hospital of the Conception, the income of which is mostly consumed by the nuns of that order.  And 9.  The ecclesiastical revenues of different kinds in San German.

All this was put in jeopardy by the following decree: 

“Dona Isabel II, by the grace of God and the Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy, Queen of Spain, and during her minority Baldomero Espartero, Duke of ‘la Victoria’ and Morella, Regent of the kingdom, to all who these presents may see and understand, makes known that the Cortes have decreed, and we have sanctioned, as follows: