COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT.
335
Arms of Puebla De Los Angeles. with regard to privileges and immunities. Doubt also penal ss as to repartimientos.[1] Meanwhile the queen, by cédula of the 20th of March, 1532, sanctioned the proceeding, and instructed the audiencia to advance the settlement as fully as lay in its power, granting exemption from taxation for thirty years. She also conferred upon the town the title of city, and granted it a coat of arms[2] appropriate to its name of Puebla de los Angeles.[3]
Yet for some time discontent prevailed among the colonists, and their numbers decreased considerably.[4] But this unfavorable state of affairs did not last for many years, as in 1535 a subscription to the amount
- ↑ 'Les mécontents répètent sans cesse aux colons qu'ils les perdent et se perdent eux-mémes, puisque cet essai prouve qu'on peut gouverner le pays sans repartimientos.' Id.
- ↑ Medina, Chron. de San Diego de Mex., 243; Puga, Cedulario, 76. The arms consisted of five towers, through the central one of which rushed a rapid river. The shield was surmounted by an imperial crown, and supported by two angels holding in their hands the letters K and V, which, as Medina conjectures, signified Charles V. In the orle is inscribed the motto: 'Angelis suis Devs Mandavit de se ut custodiant te.' I reproduce a wood-cut representation of these arms from Gonealez Dávila, Teatro Ecles., 1., between pp. 70 and 71, in which an error of se for te occurs in the motto. Calle asserts that the coat of arms was granted on the 20th of July, 1538, and the title of 'muy Noble, y Leal' on February 24, 1561. Mem. y Not., 61.
- ↑ Salmeron, in March 1531, informed the crown, without giving any reasons, that this name had been adopted subject to his Majesty's approval. Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xiii. 196. Tradition, however, assigns reasons for the name. One is that Bishop Garcés saw, in a dream, angels surveying the site, Concilios Prov., 1555-65, 243; and another one informs us that while the Spaniards were employed in founding the city a great multitude of angels appeared in a dream to Queen Isabel and indicated to her the site. Garcia, Hist. Beth., lib. iii. 19.
- ↑ Luis de Castilla made declaration in Toledo 1534, that he had been at Puebla and that the vecinos were dissatisfied. Although he had heard that there were 60 colonists when it was first settled, when he was there there were only 17. These complained that Tlascala and Cholula had not been assigned to them in repartimiento, though a promise to that effect had been made. Puebla, Probanza, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, xvi. 557-9.
