if your Majesty shall not consider this satisfactory, they shall pay
to the treasury the maximum price for which any of the offices shall
have been sold." [16] [_In the margin_: "Gather what has been decreed
and bring it here for all the councilors. Bring the general decree
which was despatched ordering those offices to be sold. Inform the
governor and Audiencia that there must be no innovation."]

Some years [_illegible words in MS._] in the additional two per cent
duty that your Majesty ordered to be paid on the goods sent to Nueba
España from here, attentive to the petition that they presented. I
assure your Majesty that the trade has so greatly decreased, and
the succors that the inhabitants here furnish to the royal treasury
are so great, that even if the continual personal service with which
they generally serve your Majesty did not deserve such a favor, this
additional duty should be remitted; for I consider it impossible
that at the price goods are bought here they can pay the duty. Will
your Majesty decide what is most advisable, and order what is your
pleasure. [_In the margin_: "Let those [papers] necessary be brought."]

Your Majesty has no need so pressing in any part of the world as that
your governors should have authority to remove or promote religious
missionaries to the natives from the districts where they are, because
of their lawless and loose mode of life. That has come to such a pass
that they have lost respect, by their deeds, for the alcaldes-mayor,
and the said religious do not pay any attention to their jurisdiction
or to the royal patronage. The Augustinians, who are more exorbitant
than others, are very owners of the wills of the Indians, and give
out that the quiet or disobedience of the latter hinges on them. For
when the alcalde-mayor of Balayan tried to restrain the excesses
that he saw, they entered his house armed, and bound and flogged him;