ances; and that community is greatly exhausted
for that reason, and your royal treasury deeply in debt. [This affects
the community] not only in material possessions, but also in the loss
of your vassals, many citizens and sailors having perished for that
reason. Although it is believed that your governor and captain-general,
Don Alonso Faxardo, will (as is judged by his method of proceeding),
correct this matter, because he has entered upon his office with so
good beginnings, still, as he is mortal, and as a person may succeed
him who may not attend to this--as others of his predecessors have
failed to do, as has been seen hitherto:

He petitions your Majesty to order that this command be observed
inviolate. The most efficacious expedient would appear to be to place
the governors under a heavy penalty, which they would incur whenever
they did not observe it, and that it be made an important clause in
their residencias.

2. _Item_: That your Majesty issued a decree in the year 605, granting
favor to the citizens of that community, and ordering your governors
that the posts in the trading-ships be given to the deserving citizens
for their profit, and that many be rewarded with this. Inasmuch as
this is very advantageous to your Majesty's service and to the profit
of trade, and inasmuch as the ex-governor always gave them to his
relatives, and thus enriched them greatly, and the latter became
very arrogant; and since, as this was the affair of the governor,
no one dared to bring suit against them; and since this is greatly
to the harm of the royal treasury, because they lade quantities of
merchandise without registering it, and commit many illegal acts, and
will continue always to commit them, for no one dares to speak plainly:

He petitions your Majesty to order the observance of the said decree
by ordering the officials of your royal treasury, that should the
governor appoint to such offices other persons than those whom your
Majesty has ordered, no account be made of it in the royal books, that
no salary be granted them, and that those appointed to these offices
have their residencias taken at the end of the voyage; and that,
until these shall be taken, they cannot be appointed to other posts.

3. _Item_: That your Majesty has granted to the citizens the toneladas
of the said trading-ships, and that your governors allot these,
to each one according to his rank and wealth. The citizens have
been greatly injured in t