That this relation shall be continued on all occasions. I shall have the care that your Majesty orders, in sending duplicates of this relation until I am advised that your Majesty has received it, and I shall add to it whatever occurs later.  When I learn that your Majesty has received it, I shall observe the order given me, to refer to what I shall have written in what may not be new matter, increased and corrected by the past relations as far as may be advisable.  I shall continue to do that without awaiting any new order for it from your Majesty, whose very Catholic person may our Lord preserve for the increase of new kingdoms and the prosperity of those which you possess, as is necessary to Christendom, and as we your Majesty’s humble chaplains desire.  Manila, August, 1621.

This, Sire, is the relation of that I wrote to your Majesty in the past year of 1621.  I found nothing to correct except the section treating of the number of the convents in charge of the Order of St. Dominic, which is amended in its place in the margin.  Manila, July last, 1622.

Fray Miguel Garcia Serrano, archbishop of Manila.

Royal Decrees Regarding the Religious

Ordering the Dominicans Not To Meddle in Government Affairs

The King.  Venerable and devout father provincial of the Order of St. Dominic of the Philipinas Islands:  I have been informed that the religious of your order are living with great lack of restraint, and are meddling in the government of those islands, from which have resulted and are resulting very great difficulties.  Moreover, the honor and procedure of those who have been men of those islands have suffered; for, both in the pulpit and in other ways, the religious are trying to sully the reputation of those persons when they are not acceptable to them.  Now inasmuch as that is unworthy of any person whatever, and more so of religious who have to furnish an example to all by their retirement from the world and their method of procedure; and inasmuch as it is very advisable to reform that efficaciously:  therefore after examination of the matter by my Council of the Indias, it has been deemed best to charge and order you, as I do, to summon immediately all the religious of your order.  By the best method that you shall deem advisable you shall censure them for their irregularities, and represent these to them; and warn them to engage only in their devotions and the conversion of souls according to their obligations—­which is the main purpose for which they went there—­and that they shall not meddle in government matters, or in any other matter that does not concern their order.  You shall advise me of what you shall do in this matter.  Given at Madrid, December thirty-one, one thousand six hundred and twenty-two. [49]

I The King

By order of the king, our sovereign: 
Juan Ruiz de Contreras
Signed by the Council.