Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 11).djvu/53

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
1599–1602]
ORDINANCES OF AUDIENCIA
49

Majesty's treasury. By this act they so provided, ordered, and decreed; and the notaries whom its fulftilment concerns shall be notified.

Before me:

Pedro Hurtado Desquibel


An act concerning the order that the alcaldes-mayor are to follow in trying Indian suits.

In the city of Manila, on the twenty-first of January, one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine, the president and auditors of the royal Audiencia of these Philipinas Islands declared that, whereas his Majesty has ordered, in his royal decrees and ordinances, that the suits of the Indians shall be treated summarily, and that processes issued within the limit of the law shall not be so conducted that the said Indians waste their substance by incurring too heavy costs: therefore, in order that the royal will of the king our sovereign might be exactly fulfilled, they resolved and ordered that the alcaldes-in-ordinary and the alcaldes-mayor and other magistrates and notaries, in suits of the Indians, shall observe their instructions and the following articles.

First, when any Indian—whether man or woman—shall enter suit for liberty, or any other matter, against another Indian without giving a traslado,[1] the said magistrate shall order the Indian sued to appear before him and take oath as to the truth of the demands of the plaintiff. If he shall confess it, justice shall be done by settling the case; and if he deny it, the case shall be reserved for evidence within

  1. ↑ The reference or act of delivering written judicial proceedings to the other party, in order that, on examination of them, he may prepare the answer.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.