province by the government,
if his Highness were pleased to order that they be restored to the
plaintiff province his province was ready to do its part, and for that
purpose he renounced this copy of the proceedings, and any other, as
he had nothing to petition or plead. Therefore, in consideration of
the decrees already passed in which he considered himself as cited,
his Highness should deign to issue an order for whatever should
be his pleasure. Consequently, a decree was drawn up embodying the
ordinances that had been made in which the parties were recorded as
having been cited, as they considered themselves as cited, and the
Recollect procurator presented proofs to the effect that his province
had never renounced such ministries, but had always violently protested
against the fact of their having been despoiled thereof, in support
of which it had been prosecuting the cause in the Council. For the
Dominicans, their prior provincial, father Fray Christoval Pedroche,
answered the citation by saying that his province had held those
ministries in encomienda and trust in the name of his Majesty through
the vice-patron, and consequently, if any act of spoliation had been
committed, his province was not a party thereto, just as it was not
a party to the present proceedings. Therefore he was ready to return
them whenever his Highness so ordered; and hence he did not oppose
the claim of the Recollect fathers. In answer to their statement that
they had elected priors for those missions in all their provincial
chapters, and that therein they had no other consideration than the
service of God in those missions and the spiritual welfare of souls,
he petitioned that his province be adjudged as not a party in the
said suit, protesting moreover that he would not plead, or in any way
oppose his Highness's decision. When the parties were cited, an order
was issued by the court that with these decrees be united those which
were enacted by the master-of-camp, Don Juan de Vargas Hurtado, for
the assignment of the Zambals to the Dominican fathers. The decrees
having thus been brought together, various motions were made, in
which proceedings the Dominicans always by joint action refused to
be recognized as a party thereto. Whereupon the members of the court
having examined the proceedings after their previous examination by
the fiscal, declared, that notwithstanding the reply of the father
provincial of the Order of Preachers in which he p