According to my information your said officials owed them nothing whatever, in accordance with the agreement made with them in the month of July of the year eighty-seven—­namely, that from that day they were to be paid their entire current salary; and of that due them they were to be paid little by little, as your royal treasury was so over-burdened.  At this notification they replied to the bishop that he could not be judge of that case, as it was a secular one and they were laymen.  Of necessity, they appealed to the Audiencia; and the bishop ordered that they be declared excommunicated.  This was publicly done, and their names written on the public list, on a Saturday evening.  After the Audiencia saw what difficulties would follow on the excommunication of your royal officials, and after it had examined the proceedings in the report made to the judge, it passed an ordinance, asking and requiring the bishop to absolve and reinstate the officials until the documents could be examined in the council-room.  To this he gave a certain reply, and after considering this, with the documents, another decree was made, in which it was declared to the bishop that he was not the judge of the cause, which the Audiencia ordered to be retained under its own jurisdiction.  As I was not present at this decision it was ordered that I be notified, and that I should appear in the suit in defense of your royal jurisdiction.  Therefore, on the Monday next following, I presented before the said bishop a petition requesting that he absolve the persons excommunicated, and declare himself not to have jurisdiction over that cause.  To establish the fact that the recognition thereof did not belong to him, I stated in the first argument of my petition that it could not pertain to him as the royal officials were mere laymen, and not subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but to the royal.  I alleged further reasons that the cause was secular and temporal.  Among other things, the bishop replied to the petition that he was not satisfied with a proposition that I had offered, in reference to the holy office of the Inquisition.  This caused exceeding disturbance and scandal in this city, because the bishop was not content with saying what he did in reply to my petition; but to every person who entered his house he said that I had been guilty of a heresy, and unlettered persons who heard this gave it credit.  Moreover, as there is here a commissary of the Inquisition, he called together many friars and certified this proposition, separating it from the petition and paying no attention to my purpose therein, or to the circumstances under which I made it.  I am sending a report of all the proceedings, in order that your Majesty may provide for the future, as to whether the bishop is to be the judge, and have entrance and privilege to cause the salaries to be paid from your royal treasury, which your Majesty in kindness and mercy had ordered to be assigned to the prebendaries and curates.