For that reason has arisen in this province the resentment that is just, and it is commended to our Lord with many fastings and disciplines.  Will your Majesty examine this matter with those royal eyes, so void of passion, and set it right, as I have here petitioned, for thus will it be expedient for the royal service of His Divine Majesty and that of your Majesty.  May His Divine Majesty augment, keep, and preserve you, as we, all these your faithful vassals, desire—­who (and I, the most wretched of them) prostrate ourselves before the royal feet of your Majesty, which we kiss a thousand times.  Given in Sant Francisco in Manila, July 31, 1620, and by your royal Majesty’s most unworthy servant,

Fray Pedro de San Pablo, minister provincial.

We, the provincial and definitors of the province of Sant Gregorio of the Philipinas Islands, of the order of the discalced religious of our seraphic father St. Francis, the humble and loyal vassals of your Majesty, declare that, inasmuch as our Lord God took to Himself and allowed to die the first fathers and founders who had come hither, with great virtue and sanctity, from the provinces of the discalced religious of the kingdom of Castilla, those who were in this province set about appointing some heads from the religious reared in this country.  Because of that, this holy province began to be divided into great factions some few years ago; and it has been so divided that it would break the heart of one who knew it [as it was] before.  The sole cause of fomenting these factions is that the fathers of the Observance have passed to this province and these islands, in violation of a royal decree of your Majesty, and dwell among us wearing the habits of discalced religious, fomenting these factions and divisions, to the great loss and ruin of all good and reform.  Those troubles are prevailing in this province because the latter is directly governed by the father commissary-general of Nueva Espana, who is of the same observance and not a discalced religious.  We are suffering great detriment at present, and many scandals have arisen, to the great loss of our credit and the welfare of these conversions.  This is especially true of that of the kingdoms of Xapon, which the said father commissary-general of Nueva Espana has attempted to wrest from us with great violence, although that is greatly to the disservice of His Divine Majesty, and that of your Majesty.  Such also would be the case if our holy order cannot be established in that and other fields of conversion—­discalced, poor, and reformed, and with as great admiration as that with which it has been hitherto established and preserved amid all these nations.