Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/393

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RULE OF THE REGENTE.

373

operations of the mint the merchants lent him without interest or security $2,500,000.^[1]

The deceased had ordained in his last will that his remains should be interred in the temple of the Insigne y Real Colegiata of Guadalupe, charging that the interment should be in the humblest and most trampled spot at the very entrance of the temple. The body remained in state at the palace till the 13th, when the funeral cortége started in the morning for the convent of San Francisco, where it was deposited till the evening, and then it was conveyed to the santuario of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, and there on the 29th of October inhumed in the threshold, as he had requested, with expressive epitaphs on the tomb. The executors, José Martin de Chavez and Joaquin Antonio Dongo, in view of the late viceroy's great regard for the Capuchin nuns, and of his great zeal in the erection and preservation of the casa de ejercicios in the oratory of San Felipe, resolved that his heart should be given to the Capuchin nuns, and his other vitals to the before mentioned casa.^[2]

So soon as the supreme government heard of the death of Viceroy Bucareli, it ordered that his effects should be forwarded to Spain, and that no residencia of his official acts should be had,^[3] a course unprecedented in the history of royal representation.

Immediately after Bucareli's death was officially announced, was opened the pliego de providencia or mortaja, by which the president of Guatemala was to

↑ He was not backward in reimbursing the loan. Alaman, Disert., iii. app. 68. As evidence of his piety and humility, when he felt death approaching he begged to be helped on his knees that he might die in that position, or at least allowed to lie on a bare floor. Uribe, Elogio, 16-20, 28, 38-41.
↑ This is probably the correct version as to the disposal of the heart and other vitals; though it was asserted in Habana that the heart was deposited in Santa Brígida, and the entrails in the cathedral. A contemporary left it written that the heart went to the Capuchin nuns, a moiety of the other vitals to the casa de ejercicios, and the other to the cathedral. Gomez, Diario, in Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. vii. 60, 74-5. Panes, Vir., in Monum. Dom. Esp., MS., 51, 124, merely says that the heart was deposited in the convent of the Capuchin nuns, and the body in the colegiata.
↑ Gomez, Diario, in Doc. Hist. Méx., série ii. vii. 85-6.

[1] He was not backward in reimbursing the loan. Alaman, Disert., iii. app. 68. As evidence of his piety and humility, when he felt death approaching he begged to be helped on his knees that he might die in that position, or at least allowed to lie on a bare floor. Uribe, Elogio, 16-20, 28, 38-41.

[2] This is probably the correct version as to the disposal of the heart and other vitals; though it was asserted in Habana that the heart was deposited in Santa Brígida, and the entrails in the cathedral. A contemporary left it written that the heart went to the Capuchin nuns, a moiety of the other vitals to the casa de ejercicios, and the other to the cathedral. Gomez, Diario, in Doc. Hist. Mex., série ii. vii. 60, 74-5. Panes, Vir., in Monum. Dom. Esp., MS., 51, 124, merely says that the heart was deposited in the convent of the Capuchin nuns, and the body in the colegiata.

[3] Gomez, Diario, in Doc. Hist. Méx., série ii. vii. 85-6.

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