The capitular members assembled in the Manila convent, and all were unanimous in [their purpose to] elect as provincial father Fray José de la Cuesta, prior of Bulacán, an able religious. He was very learned and experienced in the Greek language, which chair he had filled by substitution in the university of Salamanca, because of the death of his father, Master Andrés de la Cuesta Olmedo, the regularly-appointed professor of that subject. But that hope was frustrated, for God had taken him to himself two days before the chapter, to the general sorrow of all the province—especially of our father Fray Diego de Ordás, who had brought him from his province of Castilla in the fine mission that entered this province in the year 1635. Accordingly, the chapter was convened under the presidency of father Fray Juan de Borja, the third definitor, because of the deaths of the [two] others, Fray Pedro Mejía and Fray Pablo Maldonado. Our father, Fray Alonso Coronel,[52] a religious of great virtue and prudence, and such an one as the times needed—also of the said mission conducted by our father Fray Diego de Ordás—was elected, April 29, 1662. The definitors elected in the chapter were fathers Fray Gonzalo de la Palma,[53] Fray Luis de Medina,[54] Fray Isidro Rodríguez, and the lecturer Fray Antonio Carrión, and the visitors, father Fray Juan de Vergara[55] and Fray Juan de Isla.[56] They passed the acts necessary for the efficient government of the province and for the administration of the doctrinas where were missions of new reductions of people, especially on the outskirts of the province of Ilocos—which is also the farthest [from Manila] in this great island called Luzón. There father Fray Benito de Mena[57] was progressing finely with the conversion of the Indians of Aclán and Vera in the mountains contiguous to Cagayán, of which we shall treat more fully hereafter.
[All the past dangers and difficulties are now overshadowed by the attempts of the Chinese pirate Kuesing, the recital of which takes up the rest of this chapter and the following one. Chapter xxvii deals principally with the rising by the Chinese of the Manila Parián, and their punishment (1662–63); and chapter xxviii, with raids of the Joloans and Mindanaos among the Visayas (1662–63), in which father Fray Francisco de Mesa, O.S.A.,[58] loses his life. These various topics will be sufficiently treated hereafter.]
CHAPTER XXIX
Arrival of the new governor, Don Diego Salcedo; and of the mission of religious which came the same year.
(1663–64)
It was the will of divine Providence that, after so many and continual returns of the galleons to port, as aforesaid, the ship “San José” which had left the port of Cavite in the past year of 1662 under charge of Commander Francisco Garcia del Fresno—a native of Cadiz, and very skilful on the sea; and afterward artillery general for his Majesty—should reach Nueva España in safety. The viceroy of Nueva España was the conde de Baños, Marqués de Labrada,[59] who, after he became a widower, left the vanities of the world, took the discalced Carmelite habit, was ordained a priest, and died, bequeathing fine examples of virtue and admonition. His example was later followed by his son, Don Juan de Leiva, who received the habit of a lay religious of our father St. Augustine in the convent of San Felipe in Madrid. The successor of Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, namely, the master-of-camp Don Diego Salcedo, a native of Bruselas—a son of a Spanish gentleman (a native of Cuenca) and a Flemish lady—was then in the city of Méjico. He had been a very brave soldier in the Low Countries for many years, and for his services had been made master-of-camp of an army of Walloons.[60] For that reason, and because he was a favorite of Don Juan de Austria, whose captain of the guard he is said to have been, he was granted the government of these islands. On account of the fact that so many galleons had put back [to these islands] he had been detained in Méjico for several years.
In the same city was also found father Fray José de Paternina,[61] a son of the convent of Badaya, who had been detained for three years with a mission of ten religious who had been sent from the province of Castilla by the procurators of this province of Filipinas, the father masters Fray Gaspar de Lorenzana and Fray Francisco de Aguilera. That mission was conducted with the money which was left owing to this province by its procurator and definitor, Fray Cristóbal Enríquez, who had died in the city of Cáceres, his native place.
At that time our most reverend father-general of all the Order of St. Augustine, the master Fray Pablo Luquino, was at the court of Madrid. He had gone to visit the provinces of España and Portugal. Moved by his great zeal, he aided greatly with his authority in the collection of that mission, which was small because of the scarcity of means for its transportation, but large because of the great lack of religious in this province. As his vicar and prelate of that mission, he appointed father Fray Diego de Jesús, a son of the convent of Salamanca and a native of Béjar, and then master of novices in the convent of San Felipe in Madrid. But the latter having petitioned our most reverend father-general to be excused from it, because of legitimate reasons that he had, father Fray José de Paternina, a native of the town of Álava, and son of the convent of Santa Catalina in Badaya, was assigned for that duty in his place. He conducted eleven religious of the province of Castilla and of this province, as they were given the habit in order to pass thither.[62] They reached Méjico, where they were detained three years because of the lack of the galleons from these islands, as we have related.
At the same time Don Andrés de Medina, with a Peruvian gentleman, a man most skilful in astrology, mathematics, and cosmography, had arrived at Méjico from Madrid. He had offered to his Majesty to discover the islands called Salomón because of their great wealth.[63] These are the islands which Adelantado Alvaro de Mendaña y Neira went to discover in the year 1595, with four vessels which he took from Callao in April of the said year. His chief pilot was Pedro Fernández de Quirós, who is mentioned in the first part, book 3, chapter 16, page 476.[64] After having endured many hardships, and after the adelantado had died, his men reached the port of Cavite under command of the adelantado’s wife, Doña Isabel Barreto, in February of 1596, and later returned to Nueva España in the galleon “San Gerónimo.” Mention of that discovery will be found in the relations of Doctor Don Antonio de Morga, which I omit here, as it is foreign to our subject. Don Andrés de Medina brought royal decrees ordering the viceroy of Nueva España to give him vessels in the South Sea, and men, for that discovery and conquest; but it was impossible to do so at that time, because of the lack of ships, which is constant on the said sea. However, in order to content him, because of the letters and decrees that he bore, the viceroy, Conde de Baños, appointed him commander of the galleon “San José,” after removing its commander, Francisco Garcia del Fresno, who had brought the galleon from Filipinas. That was contrary to the royal ordinance, which prohibits the viceroys to change the commanders (unless the commander has died), and those who have the future succession to the governorship of the Filipinas.