diocese came under the wise
spiritual guidance of the Canon of Avila, D. Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon,
who was not only a learned theologian of great reputation, but a priest
of uncompromising moral austerity. He devoted himself with great ardor
to reforming the church in the West Indies. On a single visit to Florida
he was reported to have made as many as four thousand converts. On his
return to Cuba he inaugurated a reign of unwonted severity. He had been
deeply shocked by the levity and frivolity of his diocesans; he had
learned that even ordained priests and personages in high official
positions were in the habit of attending public balls and masquerades,
the latter especially offering opportunity to indulge in polite
intrigues and adventures of a dubious nature. He justly opined that men
in clerical garb and those in responsible government offices lowered
their dignity and abused the trust reposed in them by participating in
such entertainments. He prohibited his diocesans under threat of
excommunication to attend such amusements and by this rigorous
restriction of the gayeties in which the people had been accustomed to
indulge, made not a few enemies. When he died on the sixteenth of March,
1676, public rumor attributed his death to poison administered by some
person in revenge for his interference with the social life of his
diocese.

Spain was at this period at the lowest ebb of her power. Financially she
was on the brink of bankruptcy. Her commerce was paralyzed by stupid
laws. The scandalous conduct of her officials had sadly lowered her
prestige. Nature herself seemed to conspire against the once so powerful
empire. Storms and inundations had swept over the country and ravaged
the land, until its very soil had become unproductive. Tempests along
her shores had destroyed even the ships lying in port. The mentally and
physically feeble monarch, Charles II., was a helpless puppet in the
hands of his favorites. A believer in witchcraft, astrology and the
black arts and devoted to superstitious practices, he left the affairs
of state to his prime ministers who conducted them with varying ability.

When Ledesma's governorship terminated on the thirty-first of August,
1680, there was appointed in his place D. Alonso de Campos Espinosa. But
as Valdes and other authorities on Cuban history have nothing to record
about his official career, it must have been only provisional, and was
certainly very brief. For in Septemb