here a sufficiently wretched reputation. In this
matter, and regarding a matter of such gravity, it
was told me that when a regidor who privately told
it was asked how they had done such a thing, he had
answered by asking what they would have done if a
traitor had come to govern them. Although that
is not public, but was told in private, your Majesty
will learn it there by its effects if that chart has
reached you. But what is public is that the governor
says that your Majesty should have patience; and since
you sent him here he will conduct affairs according
to his own pleasure. He either threatens ecclesiastical
persons, even though they are friars, that if they
do not act the same as the laymen, he will take from
them the stipends given them by your Majesty, or he
does not pay them; and he has oppressed them so that
not even do the preachers dare to utter truths in
the pulpit, both by his threats and because he dishonors
them, and says that they are living in concubinage,
and that he will have them stabbed. However, the
chief reason why they have ceased to preach, as I have
been told, is because all conclude that it is a matter
that has no remedy, and that, since they attain no
results, they do not care to ruin themselves; and
so they abandon it as a matter already adjudged.
By these acts of violence on the one hand, and with
the flattery of some on the other, he obtained a guaranty
to your Majesty in order, as is understood, to screen
by it, or at least to moderate, the enormity of his
acts. He also avails himself, for this purpose,
of threats to the notaries, of nothing less than the
galleys and their ruin; or they are given to understand
that they must not give official statements of anything
requested from them, especially to persons who he thinks
will write to your Majesty. He has under his
influence one Pedro Munoz de Herrera, who is clerk
of court for the Audiencia, with whom he negotiates
those statements that he wishes; and there is even
a very evil rumor that the latter will give them even
though they are not true, and that he gives them from
the official records as demanded, even when these
are defective—not only by what is known
of the person of each one, but because the governor
has favored, protected, and placed him by force in
the Audiencia. [This has been done] both in a murder
that the governor committed on the person of his wife,
and in many other matters. Finally in violation
of your Majesty’s decrees which order that the
offices be sold, he has, after having granted some
gratuitously for his own objects, without selling them,
refused to adjudge the office of secretary held by
Pedro Munoz to one Diego de Rueda, who bid eight thousand
pesos for it, in order that Pedro Munoz might not
be deprived of it; while he gave it to the latter for
one thousand five hundred pesos, which the said Munoz
had bid for it, and that sum was paid in purchased
pay-warrants, in order to give it to him gratis, as
is well known. He manages the clergy in the same