Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 07).djvu/131

commanded the royal officials, under pain of excommunication, to pay them the stipends assigned them from your royal treasury—amounting to one thousand five hundred pesos annually, for four prebendaries. According to my information your said officials owed them nothing whatever, in accordance with the agreement made with them in the month of July of the year eighty-seven—namely, that from that day they were to be paid their entire current salary; and of that due them they were to be paid little by little, as your royal treasury was so overburdened. At this notification they replied to the bishop that he could not be judge of that case, as it was a secular one and they were laymen. Of necessity, they appealed to the Audiencia; and the bishop ordered that they be declared excommunicated. This was publicly done, and their names written on the public list, on a Saturday evening. After the Audiencia saw what difficulties would follow on the excommunication of your royal officials, and after it had examined the proceedings in the report made to the judge, it passed an ordinance, asking and requiring the bishop to absolve and reinstate the officials until the documents could be examined in the council-room. To this he gave a certain reply, and after considering this, with the documents, another decree was made, in which it was declared to the bishop that he was not the judge of the cause, which the Audiencia ordered to be retained under its own jurisdiction. As I was not present at this decision it was ordered that I be notified, and that I should appear in the suit in defense of your royal jurisdiction. Therefore, on the Monday next following, I presented before the said bishop a petition requesting