Fray Thomas de el Rosario, of the convent of La Puebla de los Angeles.
And three lay-brethren, as follows:
Brother Fray Juan Calvo, of the convent of Santa Cruz, of Segovia.
Brother Fray Juan Martinez, of the convent of Nuestra Señora of Nieva.
Brother Fray Francisco de la Cruz, of the convent of San Estevan, of Salamanca.
That same year, on the first of February, a student, a native of Galicia, and a relative of the archbishop of Mexico, one Antonio de Eguiar y Seijas, took the habit for this province in the hospice of San Jacinto in Mexico; and at the proper time in the following year he professed and immediately came to this his province.
That new reënforcement was very necessary because of the great amount of work to be done in this province. For, besides the Christian districts in its charge, and the Chinese missions, and those of Tunking, on the eleventh of May of the said year, the governor of these islands as vice-patron of these churches, in the name of the king our lord, had entrusted us with the administration of the province of Zambales, which had thitherto been in charge of the Augustinian Recollect fathers.[4] Its administration was now entrusted to our province for the following cause and reason. Those Indians were and are the rudest that are known in these environs of Manila. They are very cruel and bloodthirsty, and fond of murdering people without more cause than their liking for cutting off heads. They were always the bugaboo of the Spaniards, and the terror of the Indians of the other provinces. They could never be wholly conquered, especially those living in Buquil; for they were a people who lived in the mountains where the Spanish arms could not reach them. And less was it possible to conquer them by means of mildness, gentleness, kindness, and caresses, although the preachers of the holy gospel of the Recollects of our father St. Augustine tried to invite and lure them to the knowledge of the true God and to consider the welfare of their souls. Consequently, although those missionaries were among them for more than seventy years, they were unable to reduce them to the mild yoke of the law of Christ. And although they worked with zeal in that attempt, with great merit and profit to themselves, yet they always lived in great disconsolation, at beholding the hardness of those hearts. Not less affliction and trouble was caused to the Indians when they saw fathers and Spaniards in their lands, for since they were so stiff-necked, and accustomed to liberty, they did not look with favor on the payment of tribute or submission and obedience to the fathers. Consequently, they were dissatisfied with the fathers, and discussed various plans to oust them. They did not dare to murder them for fear of the Spaniards, who had a presidio or fort in Paynaven (the center of that province), and because since they were near Manila, any action that they attempted would be avenged by the Spaniards who would send troops of soldiers there by both land and sea. Hence the final plan discussed by the inhabitants of Buquil was to have recourse to the governor, asking him to remove those fathers, and in their place give them Dominican fathers. This was not because of any greater affection that they had for us than for them, but because they imagined that by successive changes, they could better conserve their liberty. This seems clearly to be their end, for before the end of seven years after our entrance into that province, they were dissatisfied with us, and begged fathers of the Society. They are a fickle people and fond of change. Their idea was that one sort of ministers succeeding thus to others, neither the one nor the other sort could get a foothold, or be able to put the preaching or the evangelical instruction on a sound basis among them.
Chart of the harbor bar of Manila, and vicinity of river Pasig, 1757
[Photographic facsimile from original MS. in Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla]