ip granted, by an act
in which he designated the city as the prisoner's bounds until his
suit should be ended. The culprit consented to this, thanking his
illustrious Lordship for this concession, and therewith submitting to
his tribunal. Affairs being in this condition, there came [in 1680],
with proprietary appointment as bishop-elect of Nueva Segovia,
a prebend of this holy church, who was an intimate friend of the
culprit; the latter, availing himself of this opportunity, undertook
to shake off the yoke of his illustrious Lordship's authority with an
appeal to the new bishop-elect--who, desiring to shelter the other,
demanded from the archbishop the acts [which he had issued]. As his
illustrious Lordship did not choose to furnish these--as this suit
was firmly established, by the consent of the delinquent himself,
in his metropolitan tribunal--the new bishop had recourse to the
royal Audiencia, asking them to command the archbishop to deliver the
acts. In virtue of the representation made by the new bishop, a royal
decree was despatched to Senor Pardo, in which he was commanded to
deliver the said acts to the bishop of Nueva Segovia; his illustrious
Lordship answered this by saying that the suit proceedings therein
were already established in his own tribunal by the delinquent
having accepted certain acts, and the law, therefore, afforded no
occasion for removing this suit and the proceedings therein from
the tribunal of the metropolitan, and restoring it to the culprit's
ordinary judge. His illustrious Lordship well knew that all these
were frivolous measures of delay, so that the case might not reach the
point of sentence, and the scandals should be left without restraint,
accordingly, although the second and the third royal decrees on this
matter were served upon him, he never consented to yield his rights,
or to acquiesce in the illegal commands laid upon him. For this cause
the officials of the royal Audiencia issued a fourth royal ordinance
and decree, condemning our archbishop to exile; this sentence was not
executed at the time, but with occasion of the new emergencies which
afterward arose, it was enforced with severity in the following year.

Now that the archbishop was on bad terms with the royal Audiencia,
it was easy for the subordinates of his illustrious Lordship to
have recourse to this supreme tribunal in order to challenge the
jurisdiction or appeal from the proceedings of the ecclesiastical
judge