6. The Confraternity also aids with clothing, which it collects from charitable persons, which the said brethren give to both men and women, who would suffer greatly without this assistance and care, from lack of clothes. Many women would not go to mass for lack of cloaks and other things needed, if this alms were not given them.
7. It gives aid to many sick persons who, as incurable and beyond remedy, are discharged from the royal hospital—the physicians directing them, if they wish to recover, to go to certain baths about twelve leguas from the city.[2] They are assisted to do this, that they may recover their health.
8. Every week when they hold their meeting and assembly they give assistance to many persons who do not receive continued assistance, and they also aid many who are on their way to Nueva España—discharged ensigns, sergeants, and soldiers. These are assisted in proportion to their rank, as their need and their service to your Majesty are known.
9. The Confraternity has also given aid outside of this city, by sending to the provinces of Pintados much aid to the Portuguese, of both the higher and the lower classes, who by the destruction of Maluco and Ambueno by the Dutch have been obliged to come to these regions with their families and households. Without this assistance they would have suffered severer privations.
10. It has undertaken to provide persons to go [i.e., to the scaffold] with those who suffer under the law, and to bury them; and it takes up the dismembered bodies of those who have suffered, and the bodies of the drowned, burying them in consecrated ground with much care, and showing honor to their bodies and bones, thus greatly edifying the natives.
11. It attends with the necessary secrecy to securing reconciliations between persons at enmity—sometimes of husbands with their wives, and sometimes between other persons; and thus the brethren bring to an end many evils and prevent injuries. They likewise correct many persons of vices of which they have secret knowledge, which without doubt greatly redounds to the service of God our Lord.
12. It attends to the execution of many wills, which are entrusted to it by persons who leave their property to be distributed for pious works and for chaplaincies. Leaving the matter in the care of this Confraternity, they feel certain that their trusts will be executed forever. It is a great consolation to them to know that the execution has been accepted by the Confraternity. In particular, the execution of the wills of poor persons who leave heirs in Nueva España and España, and in Yndia, is accepted by the Confraternity.
13. All of these works of charity are performed by the said Confraternity from the alms which are received from the citizens, from the brethren, and from persons who at death leave them bequests because they see how well is allotted and spent that which is collected. The income is obtained with much pains, because of the smallness of the population. Should your Majesty make a grant to the Confraternity, it could accomplish more in caring for cases of need which every day occur, requiring aid and claiming pity.
Pedro Hurtado Desquivel, clerk of court.
This is an accurate copy of the original section: