On the 27th of November of this year we received a document from Your Royal Highness with six orders containing the form and manner in which the Royal Treasury must be conducted in its administration and other things which were herein referred to, and what has passed in the accomplishment of them. The order in which your Majesty states that the Governor is not to keep the keys to the Royal Chest, but that your officer alone must keep them, and that an account must be kept and sent to this Treasury each year. We notified him and he obeyed, but as to its accomplishment he desired us to say nothing to him about it, as things were different here from other places—because all allowances and pay are collected by his order, and thus he wishes the keys to the chest where the money is kept. As to the accounts, he will provide them as should be just, which is the same answer he gave before as shown in the accompanying letter. The order for the administration that must be adopted with the negroes was obeyed by the Governor, and all are placed in compliance with it. We also notified him of the order your Majesty sent, reproving him for speaking so harshly to your Majesty’s Royal Employees.
As the order sent by your Majesty regarding the labor of the estates, all necessary steps have been taken. The one received stating that hereafter one of your employees should be present at the paying of the workmen, and the providing of supplies and ammunition for these forts, was obeyed, and although the Governor also obeyed in the fulfilment of it, he did not do so to the letter and there has been trouble between us ever since.
Juan Cebadilla.
Your Highness:
Don Francisco Larra whom your Majesty has had the mercy to send as Captain of a Company of soldiers to this Garrison of St. Augustine, Fla., is a person of such daring, restless and bold and has a mind—who is led astray by the impulses of his will—that with his manner of acting and talking he has given offense to the better and greater part of the people of this Garrison, not excepting the Ecclesiastics whom he offends and speaks in such abusive and indecent a manner of their character. And so on this account as well as the little respect with which he treats me, not paying the slightest attention to my office extrajudicially. I have admonished him in the kindest terms to correct his ways and fulfill his duties as Captain of the Infantry—not alone was this effort a vain one, but he took a bold and daring step with me, in the presence of the Ministers and principal people of the Garrison—for this incivility and profanation I had him imprisoned in the Fort, expressing to him my wrath and indignation, a copy of which I send you. With this as a warning, I then had him set at liberty. I beg your Highness that seeing this, you will proceed as you think best for the peace of this Garrison. May God give you the prosperity of a Christian.
Francisco Guerra y Vega.
St. Augustine, Fla., September 2d, 1666.