Doctor Don Alvaro de Mesa y Lugo, auditor of this royal Audiencia, is one of the persons who most evidently excel in your Majesty’s royal service, and who most firmly defend everything touching it, in both matters of justice and of revenue.  He has ever been so keen a defender of your Majesty’s interests that he has suffered for that many and very great annoyances and troubles.  Thus has he shown by his actions that he has a very upright conscience.  From this it results that he suffers great necessity, because he has not allowed or opened the door even to the gratuities that seem lawful to others not so well regulated in conscience.  In short, his actions are such that I am obliged to continue in this letter, as in others, to inform your Majesty of his good and praiseworthy qualities.  Will your Majesty, upon knowing them, be pleased to promote him and advance him to other posts of greater importance.  I find him sufficiently capable and deserving of much better posts; for, wherever it please your Majesty to reward him, your Majesty will be well served, and he will be free from the sickness and the lack of health with which he lives in this country, to employ himself much better in your Majesty’s service. [In the margin:  “At hand.”]

I was expecting the bishop of Nueva Caceres this year, according to letters sent me last year.  Not only has he not come, but also not even have I had any letter from him.  Consequently I am appointing a governor of that bishopric for the good and necessary expedition of the ecclesiastical causes, which are falling behind for lack of the judge of appeals.  Although those appeals could go to the tribunal of the bishopric of Zibu, it is necessary to conclude definitively that there be a third tribunal, according to the brief obtained by your Majesty regarding appeals.  Consequently, it is necessary to provide now and henceforth for the government of the bishopric of Nueva Segovia, until the arrival of the rightfully-appointed bishop whom your Majesty may be pleased to send to that church. [In the margin:  “That it is well, and that the necessary provision has been made in this, and the viceroy directed to make him embark.”]

Because we have settled in the island of Hermosa, our obligations to send ministers to those heathen nations who inhabit it, and are without the light of the holy gospel, are increased.  The conquest or settlement has been effected by the energy of Fray Bartolome Martinez of the Order of St. Dominic, the present provincial of this province.  To him is due the excellent success that it has hitherto had; for he himself, with other three or four associates, and no other order, went to explore it.  They remained there and sent one religious here to Manila to report what had been done, and to get an order from the governor for what was to be done in the future.  The island is densely populated, as they will relate to your Majesty.  It will be a pity for those peoples to remain in the obscurity of their blindness,