of these islands, regarding their obligations in the exercise
and discharge of their duties, and, because it is fitting that
his Majesty's orders in those decrees be observed and fulfilled,
they ordered, and they did so order, that the said royal officials
should be notified that in the exercise of their offices they should
observe the said royal ordinances, decrees, and instructions of the
king our sovereign, who has given them, as they are held, exercised,
and observed, and as they must be exercised and observed, by the royal
official judges of the City of Mexico in Nueva España, especially
section seventeen of the said royal ordinance. By this act they so
provided, ordered, and decreed.

Before me: _Pedro Hurtado Desquibel_





_An act ordering the commissioners to be present at all sessions of
the Audiencia._

In the city of Manila, on the twenty-first of January, one thousand
five hundred and ninety-nine, the president and auditors of the
royal Audiencia of the Filipinas Islands declared that, whereas,
although by the royal ordinances the commissioners of this royal
Audiencia are obliged to be present at the assemblies, they are not
there; and thus many cases that come up, both civil and criminal,
are delayed in settlement, so that considerable harm and annoyance
result to the parties concerned; and furthermore, that official
and fiscal cases are delayed, because the said commissioners to all