sty is to advise, inform, and report concerning
the deserving persons who attend to your Majesty's service. For, as the
matter passes before so many eyes, they cannot do else than to write
with great consideration and exactness of truth. One of the men who has
served your Majesty in these islands with ardor, eagerness, and care,
and who has occupied, since the day of his entrance into this city,
posts of great importance (as will appear in detail by his papers),
is General Don Andres Perez Franco. The limitations of a letter do not
allow us to mention his good qualities as a skilled and successful
soldier; for besides being that, God has given him good fortune in
feats of war. In matters of government and of peace, he is so excellent
and accomplished that he has been considered by most of the people
of Cavite, where he has been chief commander most of the time, as a
father rather than as a commander. God has endowed him with affability,
valor, and ability to govern and command with generosity, and actions
which make him loved, feared, and respected. That is apparent to this
cabildo, and we know that it is public and notorious. Will your Majesty
please honor him according to his many good services, so that others
may imitate him, and that they may be encouraged by his example to
serve your Majesty. [_In the margin_: "Consult the memorial."]

Your Majesty granted this archbishopric to Don Fray Hernando de
Guerrero, bishop of Nueva Segovia, an aged religious, and one well
known in these islands. He presented in this cabildo the ordinary
decree which the royal Council generally gives to the persons presented
by your Majesty, in order that the government might be given into
his charge until the bulls come from his Holiness. Inasmuch as this
cabildo is at present deprived of this jurisdiction--given to it by a
canonical law by special brief and indult of his Holiness, obtained
by your Majesty, ordering the senior bishop to govern, by virtue of
which the reverend father, Fray Pedro Arce, archbishop of Zubu, is
governing this church, a holy person and one of blameless life--this
cabildo answered that no one can give what he does not possess; that
the said bishop had the government; and that this cabildo had nothing
more to answer. However the said archbishop insisted upon it as he was
deceived by certain ill-informed lawyers. He even went to the royal
Audiencia, who delayed undeceiving him for many days and after many
meetings.