Chapter 11

With the arrival of a ship which has come from Xapon to the island of Mariveles, at the mouth of this bay (whence I do not know where it went), I received the letters which came for me. I learned by them that nine armed ships were ready to sail from that country to join on this coast two others which came out earlier to cruise along the coast of China. It appears, however, that they certainly have left Xapon, as this was made known and affirmed by a Dutch factor, who fled from them in Malayo. His declaration accompanies this letter, to the effect that this fleet is already equipped, and that it has been detached merely to come to these coasts to rob the ships from China, and to bring about an encounter with those from Nueva Spaña, keeping a place to retire to and fit up in some Japanese ports. I am not surprised if this also is true, as it has been learned from many besides this factor that the Flemish and English nations have a hundred vessels and more in these parts, besides those that are expected, and are said to be coming. But God is before and above all. Your Majesty will arrange and decree what is most suitable; meantime, while I live, and remain here, I shall do what I can, and, with the divine favor, I expect no evil result.

_Don Alonso Fajardo de Tenca_

[_Endorsed_: "See whether this letter is a duplicate, for it is old."]

DOCUMENTS OF 1622

Letter to the king. Alvaro Messa y Lugo; 1621 and July 30, 1622. Letters from the archbishop of Manila to the King. Miguel García Serrano, O.S.A.; 1621-22. Royal decrees regarding the religious. Felipe IV; December 31.

_Source_: These documents are obtained from MSS. in the Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla.

_Translations_: All these are made by James A. Robertson.

Letters from Auditor Messa y Lugo to the King

Sire:

Immediately upon my arrival in this country, I informed your Majesty, at the first opportunity, of everything possible, both of the condition in which I found affairs here, and of what I could conjecture in the beginning made by the new governor, Don Alonso Fajardo--of whom I immediately conceived suspicions and fears--and in the little that I saw of the beginnings of his government, by which he would not satisfy the need of the country for justice and [good] administration. Then in my next despatch, [26] [I informed you how this idea was confirmed] by the demonstrations which may be called want of prudence; then, at intervals, I continued to add to my letters whatever occurred that was more intimately connected with this particular. Thus have I been doing on all the other occasions when ships have sailed from this country, both for Mexico and via Yndia, in addition to what the Audiencia has written to your Majesty. Although it has been impossible to inform your Majesty so minutely of everything, because it must be done with all possible caution and secrecy, in order to escape the violence and force of the governor--who with extraordinary vigilance and solicitude examines the mails, in order to seize the letters--and this obstacle has been aided by the multitude of affairs, still less, Sire, can that be attempted now when they have an exact number. But the extravagance of the governor's actions seems to be in excess of human capacity, and of such sort that, although it be morally impossible to point them out, it is more impossible, even when inadequately described, to believe them; for in my opinion it is incredible when spoken or heard, and scarce will be believed when seen, at least to men who recognize the loyalty that they owe to their God and their king. Accordingly, and as it is so necessary, in order to fulfil the obligations of my conscience, to inform my king, continuing the account that I have given hitherto of the wretched condition to which the governor has reduced the country (and this cannot be specific and particular, because of the multitude of his reckless acts or excesses, as above stated), I shall relate, as succinctly as possible, some little that will serve as an indication of what I shall leave unsaid. Hence, Sire, I say that, from what we see here, what the governor is doing is to expend your Majesty's royal revenues on the one hand, uselessly, without the careful consideration of facts which is necessary to obtain results for the service of your Majesty, and with very indolent attention; and on the other hand, contriving to secure with them his own advantage, under color of service to your Majesty, by sending your Majesty's ships to Yndia, Macan, and other regions for his own negotiations, under pretext of sending them for military stores and other things for the royal service. In this way he defrauds your Majesty of a vast sum of ducados, a thing that could be given another name. In still another direction [he acts unjustly], by giving warrants to pay due-bills, and that not to the owners of those bills, but to persons who buy them at one-third and less [of their face value]. To such persons does he open the doors to pay them, while they are shut on the wretched owners without recourse. [That is done] perhaps, in order to make them sell their claims; for of the two-thirds or more remaining from the face value of the due-bill for their service of wealth, a great share of profit falls to the governor, as is openly muttered. This is affirmed by many conjectures, and especially by the fact that it all passes through the hands of his retainers and partisans, and those of his household. All this is done to the neglect of building ships and preparing the supplies necessary for the defense and conservation of the country.

The governor is also managing to make vast profits from consignments of goods; and--as is hinted, and even affirmed, however secretly he attempts to keep his affairs--a great part of the consignments are supplied by the royal treasury of your Majesty, and the royal income from the licenses given to the Chinese to remain in the country aids him not a little. That sum amounts nearly every year to one hundred and thirty thousand pesos, for many of the Chinese remain, thus incurring the risk of another insurrection, notwithstanding the so strict decrees in which your Majesty orders the very opposite, and prohibits their remaining. That money was formerly collected and placed in the treasury through the intervention of the royal officials. The governor has ordered it to be collected by one of his servants and paid whenever the latter chooses, so that vast sums are always due to the treasury. I have been assured that forty thousand pesos are still owing this year, which it is said that the governor is using for his trading, as well as even the salary which is generally given the collectors. For that reason, when the servant receives the money that the Chinese pay for their licenses, it is weighed, and if it is under weight, he demands two or three reals more; but when he delivers that part of it which he chooses to pay into the treasury, as I have said, he does not deliver it by weight, but by count, and thus keeps the profit of the two or three reals. That amounts to about four thousand pesos. It is sometimes even said that what he delivers into the treasury on the principal account he pays in warrants bought by the schemes and channels above mentioned. So many of these things are attributed to his master, the governor, that I am ashamed to relate them, for I do not believe them--or at least I suspect that they are exaggerated. For it is even said that that servant gives false licenses instead of the true ones, which he distributes to the Chinese at the same price as the good ones, and keeps the money for them. It is said that the governor has money taken from the royal treasury secretly at night. Thus do they say, and attribute things to the governor by so many and so diverse roads, that one is scandalized on hearing them--both about the royal revenues and about other particular things in the matter of profit. What I know for certain is that the governor does not have the accounts audited annually in January, as your Majesty orders, by the president and two auditors. On the contrary, the accounts for years before he assumed the government are so far behind that they have not yet come to those of his government, although he has been here three years. In those accounts preceding--although I am one of the two auditors whom your Majesty orders to audit the accounts together with the president; and although I say many things about his negligence--I have not been sufficient, for he is the one who has to take action therein. I believe that he has not attended to this matter, but rather has utterly neglected it; for I am persuaded that, in reaching the accounts of his own term, he has to keep things very private for the above-mentioned reasons. I do not know whether he fears to have the accounts made public; and besides that I should be the judge of them, for he knows that many worlds could not, through God's mercy, move me one jot from my strict observance of your Majesty's service.

Also the governor tries to violate justice, and to prohibit the punishment of evildoers, [at the same time] prosecuting and punishing the good and innocent; for he protects the former and abhors the latter, inasmuch as the one class do his will, while the others note and hate the evil things that he does. To them he offers insults, and to the others he gives offices and honors. In suits there must be nothing done but his pleasure, even though the suits be pending in the Audiencia, especially if they belong to persons devoted to him, or to those whom he hates; and he acts therein with so great violence that, when his desires are not carried out, he stops the course of the suits and takes them to his own house, so that the Audiencia may not pass any sentence contrary to his will. No one dares to demand justice from him, or any clerk to notify him of the vote of the Audiencia, while the parties to the suit call out to God in the streets. When it suits his pleasure, he takes charge of the criminal causes, and says that he does not wish a case to be prosecuted further, or that such a person be punished. Consequently, the number of the evildoers (and it is for them that he acts thus) increases so greatly that the scandal arising from it is pitiful. Malefactors also are more numerous because, when the whim takes him to forsake the other methods, the governor orders the warden of the prison to let the prisoners go, even when they are imprisoned for serious crimes; or he does this secretly, so that no one should know it, and under pretext that they are needed for war or your Majesty's service. But he does the very opposite if it is a matter not to his taste, even though the prisoners be guiltless. His actions are still more objectionable when he goes to inspect the general prison, where he prevents the auditors from having any vote, and they are allowed to do only what he wishes; while he threatens them that he will dash out their brains with a club, and other serious things.

The governor also makes a practice of neglecting and not observing the decrees and orders of your Majesty, interpreting them to his own satisfaction, or pretending that he has not got them, when he does not wish them to be known, even though he should be plainly told of them; and even if he knows it, he regards everything according to his own pleasure and preference. If any one murmurs or says a word, he is prosecuted, and his innocence is punished with violent imprisonment. The governor even takes away his natural defense so that he cannot appeal or demand justice; and the governor searches for contrivances to annoy those who do not approve his doings.

The governor also makes a practice of being so absolute in everything, that he does not only what is mentioned above so summarily and in general terms--for, as I have stated to your Majesty in the beginning, it appears difficult in each of these subjects to enumerate the things that he does (even, in my judgment, only the weighty and more serious ones)--but also in regard to various other matters does he act and proceed in the same manner. Consequently, I believe that there is no man who will not affirm that from the time that the governor entered this country, he has done no good thing, but all in disservice of your Majesty, at least in the regular procedure. For if he calls treasury meetings, if he sometimes attends the Audiencia and sessions, or does any other act by reason of his office, there is no one who does not understand that the ends and objects of his acts are his own conveniences, vengeance, and passions or the conduct of his own affairs and those of all his following--as has been apparent to me at many times, on occasions when I have been able to be present by virtue of my office. Yet he neither wishes the auditors to counsel or advise or influence him, nor that a word be said about his actions. On, the contrary he manages to get all his affairs approved especially by those persons holding office, such as regidors, royal officials, and others, and not only laymen but ecclesiastical persons. Consequently he seeks with most strenuous efforts the life of those laymen who do not approve his acts, both in public and in private. He threatens to proceed against them, either personally or through intermediaries, for the most remote and trifling irregularity that can be imagined; and he brings suits without hesitating, when he finds no witnesses, to secure others, even though they be false. To them he furnishes offices and other accommodations for that service, as many dare to say; and there is no longer any redress or protection, or at least that which is usually a safeguard destroys them. Consequently they endeavor to please him, without considering what he asks or what they do. Hence it results that neither the royal officials nor the regidors, nor any other persons whatever whom he may need--either that they may give him their approval, or that they may suit his pleasure--whether in violation of ordinance or decree of your Majesty or for whatever he might desire, exercise their offices with freedom. Thus outraged and tyrannized over is all this community--so much so, that I have been told secretly that the regidors have sent your Majesty a chart of a certain victory which they pretend that the governor has gained from the Dutch enemy who generally frequent these coasts, in which they pretend that the governor burned and put to flight their ships by his plans and arrangements. God knows the truth, and whether that is so; but I can never persuade myself of so great corruption; for such a thing never happened, and the governor has here a sufficiently wretched reputation. In this matter, and regarding a matter of such gravity, it was told me that when a regidor who privately told it was asked how they had done such a thing, he had answered by asking what they would have done if a traitor had come to govern them. Although that is not public, but was told in private, your Majesty will learn it there by its effects if that chart has reached you. But what is public is that the governor says that your Majesty should have patience; and since you sent him here he will conduct affairs according to his own pleasure. He either threatens ecclesiastical persons, even though they are friars, that if they do not act the same as the laymen, he will take from them the stipends given them by your Majesty, or he does not pay them; and he has oppressed them so that not even do the preachers dare to utter truths in the pulpit, both by his threats and because he dishonors them, and says that they are living in concubinage, and that he will have them stabbed. However, the chief reason why they have ceased to preach, as I have been told, is because all conclude that it is a matter that has no remedy, and that, since they attain no results, they do not care to ruin themselves; and so they abandon it as a matter already adjudged. By these acts of violence on the one hand, and with the flattery of some on the other, he obtained a guaranty to your Majesty in order, as is understood, to screen by it, or at least to moderate, the enormity of his acts. He also avails himself, for this purpose, of threats to the notaries, of nothing less than the galleys and their ruin; or they are given to understand that they must not give official statements of anything requested from them, especially to persons who he thinks will write to your Majesty. He has under his influence one Pedro Muñoz de Herrera, who is clerk of court for the Audiencia, with whom he negotiates those statements that he wishes; and there is even a very evil rumor that the latter will give them even though they are not true, and that he gives them from the official records as demanded, even when these are defective--not only by what is known of the person of each one, but because the governor has favored, protected, and placed him by force in the Audiencia. [This has been done] both in a murder that the governor committed on the person of his wife, and in many other matters. Finally in violation of your Majesty's decrees which order that the offices be sold, he has, after having granted some gratuitously for his own objects, without selling them, refused to adjudge the office of secretary held by Pedro Muñoz to one Diego de Rueda, who bid eight thousand pesos for it, in order that Pedro Muñoz might not be deprived of it; while he gave it to the latter for one thousand five hundred pesos, which the said Muñoz had bid for it, and that sum was paid in purchased pay-warrants, in order to give it to him gratis, as is well known. He manages the clergy in the same way; and, as he suspected that the cabildo of the church wrote a letter to your Majesty last year, they have, since he learned something of this matter, endured a little tempest until they have been able, by certain paths that they have learned, to watch him. This present year I fear that they will not write, in view of the extraordinary care with which they see that the governor seizes the letters that are sent to your Majesty. The whole country is so fearful of such interference that each one, I think, will seek an extraordinary way in order to save his letters. Some are thinking of putting them in boxes of merchandise, for which reason I fear that some will be left; and, as I have said, it might be that these will be the letters of the cabildo of the church--not only because of the aforesaid reason, but because, although I see that the archbishop is annoyed at the acts of the governor, and as I understand, those affairs cause him internal anxiety through his desire of remedying them, there is among outsiders considerable grumbling because he flatters the governor and humors him in many ways (which leads people to think that the cause for it is certain accommodations for his servants and relatives that the governor gives him); and because of certain injuries which they think could at least be abated with less compliance [on the archbishop's part]. But I do not agree with that, notwithstanding that I might commend [more] effort [by the archbishop]; for I know the governor's temper.

The governor also makes a practice of neglecting and sleeping over affairs of good government, a policy that is fitting [27] for the conservation of the country in peace and in the service of God; and he lives in a profound slumber, and neglects taking any precautions whatever--although the enemy so frequently invades these coasts, with new forces each day on the sea; while on the land are great numbers of Chinese Sangleys and Japanese. This has long caused many men of loyalty and high standing to be anxious with the memory of the past insurrection of the Sangleys; and not less is the anxiety caused by the Japanese, for they are numerous and are an extremely warlike race. [28] And although the governor has orders and decrees from your Majesty that only the number who would be necessary for the ordinary service of the trades of the country shall remain here; and although the facts are well known to him, besides that he has been often told of this, both in and out of official meetings: yet he does not discuss its remedy, but only talks of making outside demonstrations by which he will accomplish much. But one would believe that he means that he will do much evil. May God in His mercy keep that evil far away. The governor does the same in what concerns the enemy on the sea; for not only does he not discuss, nor has he discussed, the building of ships in order to be prepared, as did Don Juan de Silva, to go to meet the enemy, but on the contrary, when he reached this land, although the galleons built by Don Juan de Silva had been wrecked, and although the Audiencia which was then governing had ordered, notwithstanding that the treasury did not contain a single real, some ships to be built, so that they might be finished in place of those which had been wrecked, yet the governor, on finding them on the stocks at his arrival, ordered all work to cease, and only two ships were finished. He ordered even those vessels to be reduced in size, whereat there are not wanting those who grumbled that he did it in order to have trading-ships instead of warships. [29] He has not built any others during all these three years, although the employees in the accountancy of the royal treasury assure me, and it is without doubt so, that he has spent three millions [of pesos] of your Majesty's royal incomes from these regions, and of the funds brought from Nueva España, during three years. That is a very great pity here, for it is to be presumed that he has spent a great portion of that sum in paying due-bills bought at one-third and less [their face value], as I have said above. The employees of the accountancy have assured me that five hundred thousand pesos were paid in that way last year, and that fact is very well known. It is also known that the due-bills outstanding have been exhausted, so that now they are being sought very anxiously in the same districts, but cannot be found.