[9] As the reader will observe, this letter from Corcuera is, in part, almost the same as that preceding; but it contains a considerable quantity of matter (including several appended documents) which is not found elsewhere, and is for that reason presented here. It is probably one of the letters sent, either partly or wholly in duplicate, by other routes to Spain, so that at least one set of the despatches might reach the home government.
[10] Here used in a technical sense—the option or right to take action or enjoy an advantage alternately with others, as in appointments to ecclesiastical benefices, etc.; the creoles evidently demanding to share those appointments with the clergy brought over from Spain.
[11] Several of the matters discussed in the above letter are answered by the following royal decree:
The King. To Don Sevastian Hurtado de Corcuera, knight of the Order of Alcantara, my governor and captain-general of the Philipinas Islands, and president of my royal Audiencia therein. Your letter of June 30, 636, on ecclesiastical matters has been examined in my royal Council of the Indias, and reply is now made to you. You say that the religious of the Order of St. Augustine need correction, since they had not obeyed the bulls of his Holiness nor the decrees which have been issued in regard to the alternation; and that it was expedient not to allow them any more religious for eight years. Because they have many religious, as well as on account of the reasons that you bring forward for that, it has seemed best to me to charge you that you shall cause the decree for the alternation to be punctually executed, without allowing any more religious in each mission than the number which, conformably to my royal patronage, shall be enough for its needs; and that the rest of them occupy themselves in missions and preaching for which they were sent there. As for what you wrote me about the advanced age of the archbishop of those islands—who is so old that his hands and head tremble, and that it would be desirable to give him a coadjutor, and that you would arrange for giving him two thousand pesos of income besides the four thousand which the said archbishop receives, without drawing it from my royal treasury or from my vassals—I charge you to make known to me the measure or means by which that sum could be obtained without loss to my royal exchequer or my vassals, so that I may consent to your carrying it out if it be worthy of acceptance. In order that the religious of St. Dominic and of the other orders who are laboring in those islands may live with the concord and good example which is proper, and that they may not appropriate more Indian villages than those which are allowed them by my decrees, you shall not permit them to select any new ones beyond what shall be conformable to my patronage; and you shall, with the agreement of the archbishop, endeavor to unite some of the villages to others; and in those which are newly established you shall make the same effort, by introducing secular priests when you find them intelligent and competent. Madrid, September 2, 1638.
I the King
Countersigned by Don Gabriel de Ocaña y Alarcon, and signed by the Council. (Conserved in Archivo Historico Nacional, in the Cedulario Indico, tomo 39, folio 225b.)
[12] Para el efecto de propaganda fide: evidently an allusion to the Congregation of the Propaganda (vol. xxi, p. 164, note 40), and may be freely rendered, “for carrying on the work of the [Congregation for the] propagation of the faith”—Collado’s friars being assigned to mission work only.
[13] Expenses incurred either directly under the factor—one of the royal officials—or in the trading ports established by the Spaniards.
[14] The above shows the form in which the accounts from this point are entered. For the sake of greater condensation, we have reduced the balance of the document to the following tabular form.
[15] From this and many other entries in these tables, it appears that much of the money reported as paid from the royal treasury never really left it, but that accounts were simply canceled. The benefit of these transactions would accrue to the purchaser of the pay-check, for he bought at a discount from the original holder; and, until the law whereby all the creditors of the royal treasury made a voluntary gift to the king of two-thirds of the account was enforced by Corcuera, he could use the pay-check at its face value, thus making immense profits, or canceling his debts to the royal treasury at small cost to himself.