eat numbers had already flocked to the Philippines
and roamed wherever they thought fit, without licence from the Bishop,
whose authority they utterly repudiated.

Affirming that they had the direct consent of His Holiness the Pope,
they menaced with excommunication whosoever attempted to impede
them in their free peregrination. Five years after the foundation of
Manila, the city and environs were infested with niggardly mendicant
friars, whose slothful habits placed their supercilious countrymen
in ridicule before the natives. They were tolerated but a short time
in the Islands; not altogether because of the ruin they would have
brought to European moral influence on the untutored tribes, but
because the Bishop was highly jealous of all competition against the
Augustine Order which he assisted. Consequent on the representations
of Alonso Sanchez, His Majesty ordained that all priests who went to
the Philippines were, in the first place, to resolve never to quit the
Islands without the Bishop's sanction, which was to be conceded with
great circumspection and only in extreme cases, whilst the Governor
was instructed not to afford them means of exit on his sole authority.

Neither did the Bishop regard with satisfaction the presence of the
Commissary of the Inquisition, whose secret investigations, shrouded
with mystery, curtailed the liberty of the loftiest functionary, sacred
or civil. At the instigation of Alonso Sanchez, the junta recommended
the King to recall the Commissary and extinguish the office, but
he refused to do so. In short, the chief aims of the Bishop were to
enhance the power of the friars, raise the dignity of the Colonial
mitre, and secure a religious monopoly for the Augustine Order.

Gomez Perez Dasmarinas was the next Governor appointed to these
Islands, on the recommendation of Alonso Sanchez. In the Royal
Instructions which he brought with him were embodied all the
above-mentioned civil, ecclesiastical and military reforms. At
the same time, King Philip abolished the Supreme Court. He wished
to put an end to the interminable lawsuits so prejudicial to the
development of the Colony. Therefore the President and Magistrates
were replaced by Justices of the Peace, and the former returned to
Mexico in 1591. This measure served only to widen the breach between
the Bishop and the Civil Government. Dasmarinas compelled him to
keep within the sphere of his sacerdotal functions, and tolerated no
rival i