67. Item:  We command that our president and auditors shall have no authority to direct the payment of any money from our royal exchequer, or to expend anything from it, without more express license and command—­except when cases occur in which the delay required to submit them to us for consultation would cause irreparable injury.  In such case, when it shall seem advisable to our president and auditors and the officials of our royal exchequer they shall expend therefrom that which they all jointly shall regard as requisite, and shall make expenditures in no other manner.  The warrant which they shall give for this shall be signed by them all, on penalty that what is expended contrary to the tenor hereof shall be paid from their own property.  They shall immediately report the amount thereof, the purpose and manner of the expenditure, and the necessity for which it shall have been made.

Fines paid into the royal treasury

68. Item:  We command that our treasurer shall receive all fines, in whatever manner they shall be applied by our auditors, whether to our treasury, or to court rooms, or to other expenses.  Our alguazil-mayor shall take charge of the enforcement of them.  The amounts so received by the said treasurer shall be immediately brought before the officials of our royal exchequer, who shall deposit them in the chest of the three keys, and enter in a record everything thus collected from the said sentences.  They shall keep separate the fines for the treasury and those for court rooms; and our said president and auditors shall supervise the care thereof taken by the treasurer, who shall at the end of each year, on account of the said sentences [condenaciones] and the receipt thereof, send to our Council of the Yndias a condensed report thereof, attested by his signature and that of the officials, and a certificate from the clerks of the said Audiencia as to the sentences given.

69. Item:  There shall be in the possession of our president a record in which every clerk shall enter in his presence, every week, the sentences passed in presence of the said clerk, on pain of being obliged to pay them from his own property.  When the president and auditors shall have need of anything, they shall give a warrant for it on our treasurer on account of those moneys collected under judicial sentences passed for similar objects.

Probate matters

70.  Further:  We command that our Audiencia shall audit the accounts of the administrators of the estates of deceased persons, and shall see if they have observed the ordinances and decrees given with regard thereto.  These accounts shall be audited in the month of January, on pain of loss of salary for two months, to be taken from that due the first third of the year, unless they show that they have audited the said accounts in the said month.  We command further that, for the good administration of the estates of deceased persons, our said Audiencia shall appoint each year an auditor who shall be judge of such administration, and may try the matter as if the whole Audiencia were to try it.