the contents of the said decrees of March sixteen of the said year six hundred and fourteen, ordering that the said archbishop make no change in the usual practice in the appointment of fiscals, and that the said governor investigate.  And, since this is necessary, I render those decrees to be null and void, and without effect.  I order the president and auditors of my royal Audiencia of the said islands not to violate or exceed the contents of this my decree, or consent that they be violated or exceeded, now or henceforth, and in no manner.  On the contrary, they shall give the protection and aid that may be necessary for its execution and observance.  This I shall regard with approbation.  Given in Madrid, August thirty, one thousand six hundred and twenty-four.

I The King By order of the king our sovereign:  Juan Ruiz de Contreras Signed by the members of the Council.

[Endorsed:  “In order that the decrees above inserted, ordering that the missionaries of the Filipinas Islands have no prisons or jails; that they may not condemn, except those who have commission from the archbishop; and that they appoint no other fiscals than those whom he shall assign them; notwithstanding the decrees that were given ordering no innovation in the former practice, be followed in the appointment of the said fiscals.”]

Letter to the archbishop

The King.  Very reverend father in Christ, archbishop of the metropolitan church of the city of Manila in the Filipinas Islands.  The letter which you wrote me on the thirteenth of August of last year, 1623, has been received and considered in my royal Council of the Indias.  In regard to your statement that, on account of the haste in which were sent from Mexico the ships which arrived that year at those islands with assistance, the archbishop did not send you the papers for convening the council, and that you therefore did not carry out your plan for doing so, but that the necessary measures for it would be taken this year:  I command you, on receiving the despatches, to execute the orders contained therein with the care and punctuality that is desirable, and that I expect from you.

I appreciate the diligence which you exerted in preventing the attempt to nominate for provincial of the Order of St. Augustine a person who did not possess the qualifications which are necessary and requisite.  You should always be on your guard against such things, and attempt to preserve the desirable peace and concord among the orders.

You advised us that it was necessary to have some ecclesiastical person to be charged with the guardianship and the mode of governing the seminary of Santa Potenciana, and to examine the persons who are to live there.  It was resolved to order the president of the Audiencia, jointly with you, to inform us of what takes place, and that in the meantime you were both to join in providing the most effective way of administering the said seminary, with regard to both the persons who enter it and those who leave it, with this justification, that it be necessary.  Accordingly, you will endeavor, for your own part, to have these orders executed.