ino de Tavora, member of my Council of War, my
governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands, and president of
my royal Audiencia therein, or the person or persons in whose charge
their government may be: I ordered you by a decree of September 10,
627, to appoint to the office of protector of the Sangley Chinese
(which was held by the fiscal of that Audiencia) a person who should
prove competent, with the salary that was assigned to him; and to order
that my said fiscal of those regions exercise the office no longer. You
were ordered to charge the person whom you thus appointed to watch
over the said Sangley Chinese most carefully, so that they might not
be troubled or annoyed, or any ill-treatment shown them; and that any
balance left any year in the fund that he keeps should remain there,
in order that the Sangleys may be assessed so much less the following
year. When that order was executed, you were to inform me of what had
been done and what took place in respect to those who are mentioned
in the said decree, as well as the advantages or troubles that its
execution might cause, as is contained more in detail in the decree,
to which I refer. Doctor Don Juan de Quesada Hurtado de Mendoza,
whom I have appointed as my fiscal of that Audiencia, has reported to
me that, having petitioned that the documents be given to him as to
his predecessors, and one of them being the decree that orders that
the fiscal of that my Audiencia be the protector of the natives and
the Sangleys, he found that the above decree had been despatched,
ordering you to appoint a competent person. The cause therefor was
that Fray Melchor Manzano, of the Order of St. Dominic, urged it for
private purposes, until he actually obtained it. The fiscal declared
that it was advisable for my service to have the decree suspended,
and that my fiscals of that Audiencia exercise the said office, as
they had always done; and that the said Fray Melchor Manzano, while he
was in those islands, and other religious of his order, having made
themselves protectors of the said Sangleys, and having petitioned
the governor to order that the fiscal be not the protector of them,
and that the salary of whoever should be protector be moderated,
the said governor did not change the custom of whether the fiscal
should or should not be the protector. In regard to the salary,
it was moderated only to eight hundred pesos. When the matter came
before that my Audiencia, it de