Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 11).djvu/319

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1599–1602]
LETTERS TO FELIPE III
315

ing from it all which the royal officials certify to have been paid here, and also eight thousand pesos for what he says he has paid in Sevilla. I consented to the judgment as far as concerned what was favorable, and I appealed from what was in opposition, to what I had asked to have received as evidence. The opposing side has denied this, and made a declaration of nullity against the aforesaid royal decree of the year six hundred, saying that, according to it, it was ordered that the accountants of the royal Council of the Indias should make a record of this matter, which they did not do; so that everything that was done by its authority is void. Thus the suit remains in this position.

Seeing that I did not find any property of the said Don Francisco Tello with which to fulfil the aforesaid commission, and hearing that he had some property which he kept secret, I asked for and received letters of excommunication and censure against those who might know of property belonging to the said Don Francisco Tello, in order that they should make it known. They opposed this, and tried to delay it as much as possible; but nevertheless it was ordered that the three letters should be given. They appealed from this, and menaced me with the aid of fuerza[1]—with the result that until the sixth of this month the last letter could not be read, so that the examination of the depositions that were taken has been delayed. According to them, it appears that he has no property of any account in these islands, but that what he has is in Nueva España; and whatever I have

  1. See definition of fuerza in vol. v, p. 292. The reference here indicates that Tello or his friends, in order to oppose the fiscal's proceedings, secured the interference of some ecclesiastical judge, who thus committed fuerza.