they also must be examined. You shall advise me of all that you do
in this matter. Given in San Lorenzo, November fourteen, one thousand
six hundred and three.

_I The King_

By order of the king our sovereign:

_Juan de Ybarra_"


With the above royal decree was despatched another to the royal
Audiencia, in which its observance and fulfilment is ordered and
charged; and another to the same archbishop, which only contains the
statement that he is strictly charged with its fulfilment. [15] His
Majesty says in it that it is advisable to do this for the relief
of his royal conscience and that of the archbishop himself. Those
decrees having arrived in the ships that came in the year six hundred
and five, Don Fray Miguel de Benavides, archbishop at that time, as
soon as he received them, presented all three in the royal meeting
held on the second of June, of the said year, and they were obeyed
and ordered to be fulfilled. But as the said archbishop died within
two months, he could not carry them out; and consequently they were
left unobserved, because the cabildo succeeded to the government of
the vacant see. Afterward, Archbishop Don Diego Vazquez de Mercado,
either because he knew nothing about them, or because he was so
far prevented by his age and infirmity (as all know), did not put
them into practice. At his death, Don Fray Diego de Arce, bishop
of Zibú, governed this archbishopric; but he did not know of the
said decrees. But as they have come to my notice, and since we are