Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/609

fine himself to financial matters; he suggested a radical change in the tenure of office. He disliked that public officers should take root in Hew Spain, as if they expected to pass here the rest of their lives. He preferred that the meritorious should have their rewards elsewhere; those who had been neglectful or criminal should be punished. The corregimientos had been often improperly bestowed, and the old settlers thereby much offended. ^[1] It had been provided by royal order of September 4, 1560, that no corregidor appointed by the audiencia for two years

The accounting by viceroys and oidores he recommended to be at short periods, and not as heretofore in many instances at intervals of sixteen or twenty years. They should certainly be held to account before they died. He also rejected to the presidency of the audiencia being vested in the viceroy, instead of in a jurist. The oidores, he said, usually voted as the viceroy desired.^[2]

Velasco was much annoyed at this meddling of Valderrama, as he termed it, with viceregal affairs, and in the midst of the dissensions^[3] which followed, he threatened to throw up the office; but Valderrama dissuaded him, saying that he was simply doing his duty.^[4] Heath, that great comforter and final rest, soon came to the viceroy's relief. He had been ill for some time, when a diseased bladder suddenly terminated his career the 31st of July, 1564.

The funeral was conducted with a pomp such as

tributes would be collected, and the treasury benefited accordingly. Valderrama, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., iv. 366-7.

1. should have another term without having first been subjected to a residencia and come out of it with a clean ecord. Puga, Cedulario, 210.
2. 'Dá á parientes, amigos y criados de Oidores, y ansí todos le han menester. Y es cosa recia votar un Oidor contra lo que el Virey quierey dice.' Valderrama, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., iv. 357-9, 364. The appointment of a jurist to preside over the court became the practice some years later.
3. On announcing to the crown the visitador's arrival he spoke of him as a 'persona de tanta calidad, letras, y conçençia.' Carta, in Cartas de Indias, 276.
4. The old man was poor and overburdened with debt. A letter from him in his son's handwriting, of August 1, 1562, to the king's secretary, Francisco de Eraso, shows how depressed he was: 'estoy viejo y pobre, y con poca salud, y quan olvidado me tiene S. M. para no me hazer merçed ni a mis hijos, y que la muerte está cerca.' In Id., 275.