The [preparation of the] paper which the orders were to sign was entrusted to one of the bemired ones, the provincial of the Augustinian Recollects; but what he wrote was so unsatisfactory that even the bishop of Sinopolis—who was active in carrying on this affair for the governor, on account of being his intimate friend—did not like it; and the bishop himself therefore drew up the paper, which was signed by all the orders except the Society. Ours preferred to make its own answer, separately; we did so, and I send
News since the year 1688
1. It is asked that the contents of this document may be read attentively; the writer asserts that it is not his intention that corporal injury shall come to the guilty, but only that the truth may be known and these many evils be set forth.
2. Early in January of the said year, very secret conferences were held in the palace, in which Bobadilla, Atienza, and Cervantes took part—all opposed to the auditors, to Zalaeta and Lezama, and to Don Juan de Vargas. They began to favor the designs of the archbishop, and the governor to act despotically, according to the dictation of Verart.
3. The result of the said conferences was the imprisonment of Zalaeta and Lezama, on the twenty-second of January. Their property was sequestered, and with great cruelty their papers were seized; and they were very closely confined in the fort. He[94] asked for a confessor from the Society, but the governor would not grant this, only consenting that he might confess to one of three fathers whom he designated; these were Juan Gonzalez, Don Esteban Olmedo—adherents of himself and the Dominicans—and Doctor Atienza, brother of the Atienza already named.
4. Toledo denounced Don Juan Zalaeta, saying that he gave him a pasquinade so that he could publish it, which was of the following tenor: The governor was seated on a chair, with his favorites Endaya and Verart at his side; at his feet lay the king, his head cut off, and his hands disjointed. This picture explains the state of affairs, which is expressed by the verses that appear below.[95]
5. The cause of Lezama’s imprisonment was a paper which they attributed to him, although it was not known with certainty that he had written it; and both tribunals proceeded against him—the government with imprisonment and sequestration, the archbishop with censures; the two powers agreed very well.
6. Guards were placed in the house of Lezama, from which resulted some extravagant remarks by Doña Josefa, the wife of Bolivar; and these set in motion what will be hereafter related. The wife of Lezama presented a document to the governor, asking for what reason her husband had been imprisoned; he sent the paper to an alcalde-in-ordinary. The said wife had recourse to the Audiencia, who commanded the said alcalde to deliver up the documents under penalty of five hundred pesos, but he resorted to the governor, who forbade him to obey, and imposed a penalty of two thousand pesos if he should surrender the documents.
7. On the same day the governor summoned the auditors to a session and conference, and with language of anger and rage informed them that the alcalde was proceeding by his orders in the said imprisonments, and ever, that they were involved in the same charges. At this they were struck with great fear, with good reason dreading the governor’s outrageous manner of proceeding; and to this fear that some calamity would happen to them also were added the reports that were current of the dungeons that were being prepared, of various persons whom he was arresting and examining, etc.
8. The auditors, now terrorized, secretly retired one night to the college of the Society of Jesus, and carried with them the fiscal, in order to consult as to the measures of which they should avail themselves to secure their persons from the tyranny of the governor, and whether they should remain in the said college in order to administer justice from that place, etc. They could not reach a decision in the matter, and with the same secrecy they returned to their houses; and afterward the fiscal sold them.