that they remain there, and are often employed in vicariates, curacies,
and benefices, to the injury of the natives, and the patrimonial rights
of the country. After examination of the matter by my royal Council
of the Indias, I have considered it proper to issue the present,
by which I order you not to permit any of the secular priests from
those districts [of Eastern India] to enter those islands; nor shall
you admit them to any exercise of office, for this is my will. [Given
in Madrid, March twenty-six, one thousand six hundred and thirty-two.]
_I the King_
By order of the king our sovereign:
_Don Fernando Ruiz de Contreras_
Signed by the Council.
[_Endorsed:_ "To the governor of Philipinas, ordering him not to
allow any of the secular priests who might go from Eastern India to
the islands to enter therein or admit them to any exercise of office."]
_Order to the city of Manila regarding the Mexican trade_
The King. To the council, justices, and magistracy of the city of
Manila, of the Philipinas Islands. In response to what Don Juan Nino
de Tavora, my governor and captain-general of those islands, wrote me,
in the former year of 1629, about your petition for the fulfilment of
the decree of 1593 which permits the inhabitants of that island to
go to sell their goods in Mexico, or to send them under charge of a
satisfactory person--and not to send or consign them, except it be in
the second place--in a section of a letter which I wrote on December 4
of the former year of 630 to the said my governor, I charged him that,
if the encomenderos living in that city who had sent persons with
their possessions to Mexico proceeded dishonestly, or formed trusts
[_ligas_], or monopolies among themselves, they should be punished
according to law; and that if, in addition to the inconveniences that
should arise in the observance of the said decree, others should be
discovered, he should advise me thereof, so that suitable measures
might be enacted. I also had my viceroy of Nueva Espana ordered
to watch carefully what the inhabitants of Mexico did, so that he
might apply the advisable remedy. Now, Don Juan Grau y Monfalcon,
your procurator, has informed me that the decree given in the said
year of 593, ordering that the inhabitants of those islands might send
persons to Nueva Espana to sell or take care of their merchandise; and
that no one might consign them, except to one of the persons appointed
for that purp
|