Friar Diego de Salamanca, of the order of Augustines, succeeded Bastidas. He continued the construction of the cathedral, but soon returned to the metropolis, leaving the diocese to the care of the Vicar-General, Santa Olaya, till 1585, when the Franciscan friar Nicolas Bamos was appointed to the see. He was the last Bishop of Puerto Rico who united the functions of inquisitor with those of the episcopate, and a zealous burner of heretics. After him the see remained vacant for fourteen years; since then, to the end of the eighteenth century there were 39 consecrated prelates, 9 of whom renounced, or for some other reason did not take possession. The most distinguished among the remaining 30 were: Bernardo Balbuena, poet and author, 1623-'27; Friar Manuel Gimenez Perez, pious, active, and philanthropist, 1770-'84; and Juan Alejo Arismendi, who, according to the Latin inscription on his tomb, was an amiable, religious, upright, zealous, compassionate, learned, decorous, active, leading, benevolent, paternal man. Of the rest little more is known than their names and the dates of their assumption of office and demise.
* * * * *
The year 1842 was, for the secular clergy, one of anxiety for the safety of their long and assiduously accumulated wealth. The members to the number of 17 individuals, including the bishop, drew annual stipends from the insular treasury to the amount of 36,888 pesos, besides which they possessed and still possess a capital of over one and a half millions of pesos, represented by: 1. Vacant chaplaincies. 2. Investments under the head Ecclesiastical Chapter. 3. Idem for account of the Carmelite Sisterhood. 4. Legacies to saints for the purpose of celebrating masses and processions in all the parishes of the island. 5. Pious donations. 6. Fraternities and religious associations for the worship of some special saint. 7. Revenues from an institution known by the name of Third Orders. 8. Capital invested by the founders of the Hospital of the Conception, the income of which is mostly consumed by the nuns of that order. And 9. The ecclesiastical revenues of different kinds in San German.
All this was put in jeopardy by the following decree:
"Doña Isabel II, by the grace of God and the Constitution of the
Spanish Monarchy, Queen of Spain, and during her minority Baldomero
Espartero, Duke of 'la Victoria' and Morella, Regent of the kingdom,
to all who these presents may see and understand, makes known that the
Cortes have decreed, and we have sanctioned, as follows:
"ARTICLE I. All properties of the secular clergy of whatever class; rights or shares of whatever origin or denomination they may be, or for whatever application or purpose they may have been given, bought, or acquired, are national properties.
"ART. II. The properties, rights, and shares corresponding in any manner to ecclesiastical unions or fraternities, are also national properties.
"ART. III. All estates, rights, and shares of the cathedral, collegiate and parochial clergy and ecclesiastical unions and fraternities referred to in the preceding articles, are hereby declared for sale."
* * * * * The 15 articles that follow specify the properties in detail, the manner of sale, the disposition of the products, administration of rents, etc.
The law was not carried into effect. Espartero, very popular at first, by adopting the principles of the progressist party, forfeited the support of the conservatives—that is, of the clerical party, and the man is not born yet who can successfully introduce into Spain a radical reform of the nature of the one he sanctioned with his signature September 2, 1841. From that moment his overthrow was certain. Narvaez headed the revolution against him, his own officers and men abandoned him, and on July 30, 1843, he wrote his farewell manifesto to the nation on board a British ship of war.