or proceeded against except by your Majesty or the
royal Council, or by your order. Nevertheless,
the president, in virtue of his superintendency over
the Audiencia, may ordain to the auditors what may
be just and reasonable in matters that pertain to
the government and its conservation; and even, in
the heated arguments that are wont to arise between
the auditors, has authority, in case the nature of
the affair might require it, to retire each auditor
to his own house, until they make up the quarrel;
and, should he deem it advisable, he may inform your
Majesty. For the ordinance does not say that
the president and alcaldes shall proceed, arrest,
sentence, and execute justice in criminal causes affecting
the auditors. All that, in my opinion, was meant
to amend the express privilege of law as contained
substantially in the corpus juris [civilis];
[32] and even then serious causes would have to be
understood by criminal causes; ultra multa cum tiberº
farsnaci e regni col. 9, ttº 4, pº. 3. [33] But
it says only that the governor shall try criminal
causes, which means that, in crimes that are not such
by reason of the office, but personal and serious crimes
of the auditors, he shall investigate, together with
the alcaldes, and advise your Majesty; and the word
“try,” instead of meaning to arrest and
execute justice and other equivalent things, only denotes
simple jurisdiction which belongs to civil cases, and
not authority, either pure or mixed. [34] Otherwise
your Majesty could avoid the visits and residencia
which you send to the Audiencia. Accordingly,
to try criminal cases means that they be treated civilly
without allowing them to be [cases for either] pure
or mixed authority, by arresting or proceeding; but
only to investigate and advise your Majesty, except
in capital causes that have the capital penalty.
In such cases it would be advisable for the Audiencia,
and even for the president alone, to secure the criminals,
if they should be auditors and nearest [to the king],
but not by virtue of the ordinance, but by virtue
of the ordinary authority of law, and the privileges
of public protection—citing [the paragraph]
ne delicta, etc., in case that it was
unable, because of the crime and the person, to be
secure in any other way than by imprisonment which
befits the crime, and in accordance with the teaching
of the law divi fratres f fin ff de poen. [35]
Therefore the Audiencia ought to arrest the governor
for four murders that he has lately committed (and
which will be told later), solely to assure and advise
your Majesty, with judicial consideration, so that
you might decree your pleasure in respect to his person.
But [they ought] to punish his accomplices, who were
numerous, and who are not near [to the king], but
most of them men who, without that crime, deserve
to be severely punished for others; but they are all
passed by, in virtue of peace and harmony, by Licentiate
Hieronimo de Legaspi and Don Juan de Valderrama, the