3.  The Confraternity has always attended to the support of the poor in the prison.  A brother is assigned to this duty, who causes food for the poor prisoners to be prepared daily at his own house, and takes care to have it sent to them with great regularity.  He also provides the said prison with water sufficient for the prisoners, which is their greatest want. [38] Thus they alleviate the misery of the prisoners.  The said prison is always attended by one of the brethren of high station, that he may attend to the care and prompt decision of the cases of poor prisoners.

4.  This Confraternity attends to providing a shelter for the daughters of poor conquistadors and colonists, and for other women whom they consider thus in need; and has placed them in a seminary in this city, supporting them there until they enter the married state, and then it gives them assistance according to their rank.

5.  The Confraternity takes great care to place orphan boys where they may be cared for, and to protect them.  Those who desire to give themselves to exercises of virtue and learning it places in a college of the Society of Jesus, paying for each one a hundred pesos for his board.

6.  The Confraternity also aids with clothing, which it collects from charitable persons, which the said brethren give to both men and women, who would suffer greatly without this assistance and care, from lack of clothes.  Many women would not go to mass for lack of cloaks and other things needed, if this alms were not given them.

7.  It gives aid to many sick persons who, as incurable and beyond remedy, are discharged from the royal hospital—­the physicians directing them, if they wish to recover, to go to certain baths about twelve leguas from the city. [39] They are assisted to do this, that they may recover their health.

8.  Every week when they hold their meeting and assembly they give assistance to many persons who do not receive continued assistance, and they also aid many who are on their way to Nueva Espana—­discharged ensigns, sergeants, and soldiers.  These are assisted in proportion to their rank, as their need and their service to your Majesty are known.

9.  The Confraternity has also given aid outside of this city, by sending to the provinces of Pintados much aid to the Portuguese, of both the higher and the lower classes, who by the destruction of Maluco and Ambueno by the Dutch have been obliged to come to these regions with their families and households.  Without this assistance they would have suffered severer privations.

10.  It has undertaken to provide persons to go [i.e., to the scaffold] with those who suffer under the law, and to bury them; and it takes up the dismembered bodies of those who have suffered, and the bodies of the drowned, burying them in consecrated ground with much care, and showing honor to their bodies and bones, thus greatly edifying the natives.