He arranged that the food for the provision of the warehouses be bought by the parish priests, and that they be paid in cash instead of demanding them through apportionment.
He went out to defend the loyal troops who were maltreated and insulted by the English generals who treated them like dogs. He offered ten thousand pesos for the heads of Drak, Esmith, and Broche. [169]
He granted general exemption from tribute, polos, and personal services, in view of the fact that the English said that they had gone to the islands to free the people from them, which measure proved very useful.
He ordered that in Bacolor and surrounding villages, the bell be rung at nine o'clock at night for all people to retire, and not to be seen on the streets, in order to avoid disorders.
He forbade the sending of skins to Manila in order that the English and Chinese might not use them.
[He forbade] illuminations at night, on the eve and day of the anniversary of birth and the saint's day of the king and prince of Asturias.
He prohibited by edict the Pangasinans from living with their herds on the lands of San Ysidro in order to avoid disorders with the inhabitants of the village over the pastures.
He prohibited games of dice, cockfighting, and cards, in order to avoid the excessive thefts and robberies that were committed. He ordered whoever committed a theft of the sum of one peso to be punished with the capital penalty.
He published a judicial defense in reply to the considerations of father Fray Antonio de las Huertas, of the Order of the Preachers, to a memorial which was presented in the royal Council of the Yndias by Father Luis de Morales, of the Society of Jesus, provincial of his order for the province of Filipinas.
Father Pedro de Espinar of the Society of Jesus, provincial general of his order for the provinces of Yndias in Madrid, is the author of the memorial. [170]
It is the defense of the Society of Jesus against the writings of the archbishop of Manila, Pardo, and his partisans, published in Madrid, and the Roman court, which attributed to the Jesuits complicity in the questions aroused by the governor of Filipinas and the Audiencia. [171]
This capital having been taken by assault, October 5, 62; your archbishop-governor, auditors, troops, and citizens having been made prisoners; the fort of Santiago and port of Cavite having been surrendered; all the islands having been ceded afterwards, and four millions of pesos; and the city having been sacked with the greatest severity for the space of forty-eight hours: I having declared myself that same day, in the province of Bulacan, where I was, as royal Audiencia, governor, and captain-general of said islands, in accordance with the law, very great was the effort of your archbishop to efface this image of your Majesty which had remained in these islands, represented, although unworthily, in my person. In order to show that more conclusively, I enclose his own manifest letters with the testimony. Those letters gave motive to this your royal governing Audiencia to form an informatory process from them of pure and naked fact, in order to instruct your royal mind. I shall not refer to them in extenso in this my representation which is directed to your Majesty. Upon examining them, will you please state which of the two proceeded more in accordance with right, law, and religion, to the love and fidelity which each one owes his sovereign as a good vassal: the reverend archbishop, who tried by so many methods, to cast to the earth this legitimate image which represented and defended your royal rights, even to the point of declaring him a traitor, rebel, and disobedient to his own sovereign, and to that of Gran Bretaña; or I, who suffering and enduring all these things, made use of your royal power, insulted and abased by so many enemies and traitors, by making you truly recognized again in these vacillating fields of Christianity, until you became the terror of all the many enemies who had declared against you, reducing the greatest and most principal from a victorious conqueror to a truly starving prisoner. For the latter did not even have more than nor even as much as the balance of the cannon of the fort which he occupied, a limit set for his soldiers under pain of losing life if they went beyond it. [172] Thus did I redeem not only the relief and liberty of this most afflicted community and its environs, but what is more yet, its wealth and the most principal thing, the religion and the honor due your Majesty, which being so exposed seemed about to be entirely lost.