community the sum that the offices cost them.  However, I am ordering the proclamations to be continued; and if there are no persons to buy the offices, after the time-limit has expired I shall appoint the most suitable persons to them, with the guarantee that, if your Majesty shall not consider this satisfactory, they shall pay to the treasury the maximum price for which any of the offices shall have been sold.” [16] [In the margin:  “Gather what has been decreed and bring it here for all the councilors.  Bring the general decree which was despatched ordering those offices to be sold.  Inform the governor and Audiencia that there must be no innovation.”]

Some years [illegible words in MS.] in the additional two per cent duty that your Majesty ordered to be paid on the goods sent to Nueba Espana from here, attentive to the petition that they presented.  I assure your Majesty that the trade has so greatly decreased, and the succors that the inhabitants here furnish to the royal treasury are so great, that even if the continual personal service with which they generally serve your Majesty did not deserve such a favor, this additional duty should be remitted; for I consider it impossible that at the price goods are bought here they can pay the duty.  Will your Majesty decide what is most advisable, and order what is your pleasure. [In the margin:  “Let those [papers] necessary be brought.”]

Your Majesty has no need so pressing in any part of the world as that your governors should have authority to remove or promote religious missionaries to the natives from the districts where they are, because of their lawless and loose mode of life.  That has come to such a pass that they have lost respect, by their deeds, for the alcaldes-mayor, and the said religious do not pay any attention to their jurisdiction or to the royal patronage.  The Augustinians, who are more exorbitant than others, are very owners of the wills of the Indians, and give out that the quiet or disobedience of the latter hinges on them.  For when the alcalde-mayor of Balayan tried to restrain the excesses that he saw, they entered his house armed, and bound and flogged him; that was during the government of the Audiencia.  But lately another alcalde-mayor, in Bulacan, having arrested two Indians, seamen on a ship of your Majesty’s fleet, so that they might serve at their posts, the religious at that place took them out of prison.  Even more oppressive acts occur daily, which need a severe remedy.  I petition your Majesty to have sent to me the decree which was sent to Nueba Espana this past year, with more definite restrictions, so that they may not have any ground for opposing it, and so that their generals, especially he of St. Augustine, may order them to restrain themselves, and so that his Holiness may do the same, the briefs or patents being passed by the Council and everything being sent to me.  So great haste is necessary in order not to fall out with them. [In