sses for so many
dollars for their daily livelihood. To this would the archbishop have
brought Don Pedro, to have emptied out his purse, nearly a thousand
dollars daily, toward the maintenance of about a thousand priests, so
many there may be in Mexico, who from the altar sell away their bread
god [sacrament][40] to satisfy with bread and food their hungry
stomachs. And secondly, by the people suffering in their spiritual
comfort, and in their communion of prayers and worship, thought to make
Don Pedro odious to the people. Don Pedro, perceiving the spiteful
intent of the archbishop, and hearing the outcries of the people
against him, and their cries for the use of their churches, secretly
retired to the palace of the Virey, begging his favor and protection,
for whose sake he suffered.

"The viceroy immediately sent out his orders commanding the bills of
excommunication and _cessatio a divinis_ to be pulled down from the
church doors; and to all the superiors of the cloisters to set open
their churches, and to celebrate their services and masses as formerly
they had done. But they disobeyed the vice-king through blind obedience
to their archbishop. The viceroy commanded the arch-prelate to revoke
his censures; but his answer was, that what he had done had been justly
done against a public offender and great oppressor of the poor, whose
cries had moved him to commiserate their suffering condition, and that
the offender's contempt of his first excommunication had deserved the
rigor of the second censure, neither of which he would nor could revoke
until Don Pedro Mexia had submitted himself to the Church and to a
public absolution, and had satisfied the priests and the cloisters who
suffered for him, and had disclaimed that unlawful and unconscionable
monopoly wherewith he wronged the whole commonwealth, and especially
the poorer sort therein.

ARREST OF AN ARCHBISHOP.

"The viceroy, not brooking this saucy answer from a priest, commanded
him presently to be apprehended, and to be taken under guard to San
Juan de Ulua, and then to be shipped to Spain. The archbishop, having
notice of this resolution of the viceroy, retired to Guadalupe, with
many of his priests and prebends, leaving a bill of excommunication
against the viceroy himself upon the church doors, intending privately
to fly to Spain, there to give an account of his carriage and behavior.
But he could not escape the care and vigilance of the viceroy, who,
w