Sire:

This capital having been taken by assault, October 5, 62; your archbishop-governor, auditors, troops, and citizens having been made prisoners; the fort of Santiago and port of Cavite having been surrendered; all the islands having been ceded afterwards, and four millions of pesos; and the city having been sacked with the greatest severity for the space of forty-eight hours: I having declared myself that same day, in the province of Bulacan, where I was, as royal Audiencia, governor, and captain-general of said islands, in accordance with the law, very great was the effort of your archbishop to efface this image of your Majesty which had remained in these islands, represented, although unworthily, in my person. In order to show that more conclusively, I enclose his own manifest letters with the testimony. Those letters gave motive to this your royal governing Audiencia to form an informatory process from them of pure and naked fact, in order to instruct your royal mind. I shall not refer to them in extenso in this my representation which is directed to your Majesty. Upon examining them, will you please state which of the two proceeded more in accordance with right, law, and religion, to the love and fidelity which each one owes his sovereign as a good vassal: the reverend archbishop, who tried by so many methods, to cast to the earth this legitimate image which represented and defended your royal rights, even to the point of declaring him a traitor, rebel, and disobedient to his own sovereign, and to that of Gran BretaÑa; or I, who suffering and enduring all these things, made use of your royal power, insulted and abased by so many enemies and traitors, by making you truly recognized again in these vacillating fields of Christianity, until you became the terror of all the many enemies who had declared against you, reducing the greatest and most principal from a victorious conqueror to a truly starving prisoner. For the latter did not even have more than nor even as much as the balance of the cannon of the fort which he occupied, a limit set for his soldiers under pain of losing life if they went beyond it.1 Thus did I redeem not only the relief and liberty of this most afflicted community and its environs, but what is more yet, its wealth and the most principal thing, the religion and the honor due your Majesty, which being so exposed seemed about to be entirely lost.

I protest, Sire, that whatever I say in this my representation and advance in my treatise, is not for the purpose of injuring that venerable prelate whom I have ever regarded with the respect due the prince of the Church; and if I transgress in any way, and do not express myself with that moderation suitable, I protest that my words may not serve as an offense to his dignity, and that I have been actuated in this by only a real affection, with the desire that your Majesty may be informed of the acts of turbulence which have occurred in these domains, in order that you may better provide for the best government and relief of them.

So far as I am concerned, I claim or desire no other satisfaction than what I have in this as I have desired to serve your Majesty, since the greatest satisfaction is for your royal piety to consider itself as well served by me if you find it consistent.2 But if it should appear to your supreme comprehension that the so public excesses of your reverend archbishop, as appear from the said testimony, of which I shall enclose some here, merit satisfaction, this alone concerns your Majesty.

I am unaware as to the motives of said prelate, that made him, although it had no bearing on the end, for which he despatched me from the fort, and so to the injury of your Majesty’s interests, when finding himself a prisoner of war with my associates, order me in a letter of October 10, 62, among other things: “to observe faithfully the treaties which were being arranged with the British chiefs in Manila.” Although I answered him from the province of Bulacan in the most courteous and fitting terms, this was not sufficient to restrain his pen, and on the twenty-sixth of the same month he wrote me pouring out instead of ink, blood and rage against my loyal procedure.

In the so great consternation in which the loss of Manila placed your vassals, and for this reason many of the criminal class having fled from prison, and continuing their depraved morals, they threw into disorder the environs of this city and its immediate villages. Your reverend archbishop did not allow the perverse Orendain and Don Cesar Fallet3 the declared enemies of your Majesty, to stir from his side. They, availing themselves of the disturbances caused by these malevolent persons, painted those disturbances to his Excellency, saying that there was sedition and unrest among all the Indians, who, having conspired against the Spaniards, were persecuting them as wild beasts; that already in one province one of them had elevated himself as emperor and refused obedience to your Majesty; that the province of Bulacan was in the same condition; that all the others would follow their example; that one of these days they would have SeÑor Anda tied up, if they did not first deprive him of life; that consequently, as it was advisable to the services of both Majesties and for the public quiet, and so that so much Christian blood might not be shed, his Excellency ought to yield all the islands, and cause SeÑor Anda to descend; that if he did not condescend to do so, nothing else would result than the ruin of all these domains, the loss of Christianity, and the execution by the English of the sentence that had been pronounced of putting to the sword all the Spaniards; that your Majesty would never be able to consider yourself as well served; and that consequently he should have a regard to his conscience.

I understand well, Sire, how if he considered all those motives, and that from them would follow the total ruin of these islands, he should then on that account have condescended to redeem them [from ruin] by ceding them, in regard to the fact that this could not be of any service to the English, since it only concerns your Majesty. But to give credit to these two traitors, who knowingly exaggerated these disturbances to him, and not to proceed, with more knowledge, to write me in place of the letters ordering the Spaniards to descend, to inform him regarding the condition of the provinces, and advise me, for my course, of what was happening in Manila, by directing prudently so glorious an end after the twenty odd days that the fort had been taken; and continuing the obligation to surrender these domains with the tenacity which his above-cited letters show, (although the most of the suggestions of the two traitors were now seen to be false, as the provinces were quiet), he proceeded to sign the cession, and even after seeing the Catholic arms so flourishing and powerful, whose victories, patent to all the world, were incredible to his Excellency, yet he prosecuted this undertaking even to the grave.4 In truth, Sire, I do not know what apology that venerable prelate can give your Majesty for such actions.

In view of an anonymous letter which your royal Audiencia received in Bulacan, in regard to the English having offered a reward to whomever would take them my head, and other methods, in which apparently the reverend archbishop was prudently walking, I despatched to this latter a request and petition asking him to abstain from such procedures and not to summon the alcaldes, natives, or Spaniards who had retired, both because his powers had expired, and because although he did possess such powers, they ought to be used to the benefit of your Majesty, and not in opposition to you. But this did not even restrain him in the idea that had taken possession of him, since already from the twenty-third day, he had ordered me to descend to Manila, and although he saw my resistance in my accommodating myself to his ideas, which were so opposed to your royal rights, he wrote me lastly on the fourth of November in the terms that his said letter shows,5 and which I myself am ashamed to mention, referring myself to the enclosed testimony.

He ordered the alcalde-mayor of Bulacan, Don JosÉ Pasarin, who recognized me from the first as your royal Audiencia, to cause all the Spaniards and their families to descend to Manila, even threatening him with censures if he did not obey. This order included among the Spaniards my assembly secretary, my advocate, my fiscal, and Doctor Don Domingo AraÑaz,6 one of the advocates of this city. But neither they nor said alcalde-mayor, recognizing the very great service which was being done for his Majesty and for religion in [not] consenting to the ideas of the reverend archbishop to deprive me of those whom I considered capable of some aid in sustaining the weak remnants of your Majesty’s adherents, would pay any attention [to the order]. On the contrary, they were the ones, who with my attendants accompanied me in all my labors, and formed my only consolation in the total abandonment and persecution which I suffered during the first six months. For all the other Spaniards who were in that province, carried away either by these persuasions, or through their terror and the threats of the enemy, or from seeing the many atrocities committed by the Indians against them through some trouble that they had had with them, at the most, I am sure, by their natural inclination to live according to their own wishes, or for the reason of the party of your Majesty being so few in numbers, went down, and some with their possessions, to render obedience to the English.

He ordered the marquis of Monte Castro to return to Manila; and Don Andres Blanco, who could not do so through his indisposition, to send his son, availing himself, in order to oblige them the more, of the expressions which may be seen in the letters of testimony which are worth your Majesty’s attention.

He wrote in terms apparently so Christian to the provincials of the Franciscan and Recollect orders, and recognizing himself as the greatest sinner, confesses that he alone is the cause of all these misfortunes and that God is punishing his flock for his sins.

Anyone would believe, in view of this so simple understanding of himself, and a so clear confession of his defects, that it was a true repentance and grief at seeing the miseries and havoc from which this city and its environs were suffering, in spiritual and temporal matters. But it is not so, Sire, for at the same time, he sends pastoral letters to said provincials, for the Indians of their provinces, in which, with the greatest simulated virtue, and pretending the greatest advantages to your royal rights, he persuades them to become subject to the English. For that purpose he sings a thousand praises of this nation but for the purpose of surprising the incautious simplicity of these silly Indians, for whom he had said letters translated into their languages in order that the poison which they held might work effects more favorable to his ideas.

Neither the threats of the enemy, nor the ostentation which this one made of his power, nor the alliance of the apostate Sangleys, declared in his favor and against your Majesty, nor the abandonment in which I remained because of the absence of the few Spaniards, who were in the provinces, nor the endurance of which I made use to dissimulate many things which I heard and saw among these poor miserable Indians for want of instruction, education, and communication with civilized people, nor the schisms and rebellion of some provinces: none of these things, Sire, was so keenly felt by me as the acts of the reverend archbishop, which were so irregular and far from the truth; of a prelate, who instead of furnishing an example, served as a stimulus to the traitors who leaning on the authority which is represented among such lofty subjects, were confident of the virtue and zeal of this prelate, only to become inflamed against me and avail themselves of his destructive ideas of this your state and religion.

It is left for the supreme intelligence of your Majesty to consider the great grief caused this royal Audiencia which was governing, to see an ecclesiastical prelate who had just been military and political head, who spared no means in order to sacrifice these your domains, which he ought to have conserved for so many reasons, or at least have maintained an indifferent attitude in the condition of prisoner.

What Catholic and loyal vassal of your Majesty could see without great grief a pastor persuading his sheep in said letters that they should submit to Gran BretaÑa? Further on, he says: “If you do as I exhort and advise you, you will receive the reward from God, and for the contrary, the punishment; and if you observe, this, you will be good vassals of my king and my faithful children.”

In truth, Sire, such propositions in writing from an ecclesiastical prelate are of the greatest scandal for the community and very suspicious for the faith due to both Majesties.

What doctrine, what religion is this, in which one sees that a pastor, so repentant and full of grief for the troubles of his flock in the power of the heretical enemy, at the same time, with so efficacious and mild words induces those who are free to surrender to the same enemy! That is the same as to deliver them to the wolf so that that animal may tear them to pieces, and destroy them with the same hardships which he bewails in the others. To recognize a sin, to confess it with show of repentance and to commit a greater of the same kind: what doctrine, I repeat, is this?

A rare thing, the eagerness with which this reverend prelate undertook and prosecuted a matter so extraordinary and harmful! A good proof of this truth is what results from the above-cited letters written to the subjects abovesaid, and which are expressed in the said testimony which I enclose. The archbishop signs some as governor of Manila, although a prisoner; in others as governor and captain-general; and in others, he adds, “of these islands.” But if these islands had been already ceded to the enemy, and that surrender had been made, who could commit a greater incongruity than to call himself governor of what he had already lost, since he surrendered and ceded it to the English?

The letter which he writes to the Marquis of Monte Castro begins thus: “Yesterday afternoon, the present governor of Manila and his council imprisoned, etc., Manuel Antonio, archbishop-governor.” Consequently, at one and the same time we have three governors—the Englishman, recognized by the archbishop; the latter, for thus he signed; and myself, because your Majesty gave me that post by your laws.

Whether the honors of such post ought or ought not to be kept for him does not serve as an excuse to the reverend archbishop; or that he had hopes of again holding such office by the right of postliminy: for this at most does not go beyond honors, and hopes are kept without in any way becoming real, for this office was confirmed in me already by virtue of laws lvii and lviii, book ii, tÍtulo xv of the RecopilaciÓn;7 and even according to the first, by the right of postliminy, the reverend archbishop had no right to administer that office, again, since it orders expressly that when your royal Audiencia assumes the office, it hold it until your Majesty appoints to it.8

The fact is that in the despatches sent by the English to the traitor Diego Silang to Ylocos, and in the edicts which they published, when they name the reverend archbishop, they say “ex-governor.” How could it be otherwise, as he was in the domains of the king of Ynglaterra, and was not the one appointed by the latter, and their governor would be opposed to your Majesty. That was the manner of procedure in regard to the title, until his burial. He performed judicial acts by means of the false secretary Monrroy and others in whatever he thought best, with the most special circumstance that he was always in favor of the English and opposed to the rights of your Majesty and your vassals.

And hence it is seen that although the English treated him with the greatest contempt, and confessed that I was acting as a loyal vassal of your Majesty, he would never relinquish the title of governor, or recognize in me your royal Audiencia, in accordance with the laws; and he died in the same conviction, as one may see by his last will, when he left to the governor, who should come from EspaÑa, a carriage and its horses, so that he might make use of it, and ordered this cabildo to deliver to the same a sealed box, containing the papers, which were to be sent to your Majesty. Thus was it done without any mention of me, except to persecute me, as if I were not governor in your Majesty’s name.

Of this fact and others, my successor, Don Francisco Javier de la Torre, will give account. The latter brought to the royal assembly the measure in regard to your royal seal which was melted by order of the archbishop, who always refused to send it to your royal Audiencia. And although I petitioned it from him in my first letter of October 20, 62, and there followed in regard to it a measure on which I report separately in so far as it concerns me, the pretext that is inferred because of such a demonstration with this so estimable jewel of your Majesty is surprising; and it is surprising to say that he executed it because of its difficulty in the gates of the city and the risk which it ran of falling into the hands of the enemy. However, it is a fact that there was no danger at all. For when I petitioned it of him, I told him that he could deliver it to the person who carried my letter, a man in whom I had complete confidence. Besides he could have sent it safely by the religious whom the English used as their ambassadors to me, or by the adjutant whom the reverend archbishop himself sent to me to inform me of the suspension of hostilities. But since his intention was no other than to deprive this your image of whatever rights could represent it, legitimately and truly, on that account it was more difficult for him to send the royal seal of so little bulk than to me the withdrawal from the fort of the sum of more than one hundred thousand pesos of property which your Majesty needed for your troops, and which I placed in the royal storehouses of those provinces.

It appears that the disrespect committed toward so sacred a jewel in which your Majesty is immediately represented, cannot be greater, and it would surely have been treated with more honor if it had fallen into the hands of the enemy. This fact is sufficient to confirm the persecution that was declared, by which he aimed to erase your royal name from these domains. For in truth, what other impulse could he have had, when it is public and well known that the English meddled with nothing that concerned his palace after the sack? Above all he was immune and free from this for a long time after, and no one would deny that if he delivered it safely to the cabildo when melted, in the same way he could have delivered it entire.

By the letter written by the above-mentioned prelate, under date of October 30, 62, to Don Andres Blanco, your Majesty may see that he treats me as a rebel. The English condemned me as a rebel and disobedient to both Majesties on the fourth of November. It resulting from said sentence that I was condemned by both parties, it is proved conclusively that I was condemned by the reverend archbishop before I was condemned by the English, and that the archbishop concurred with them when they sentenced me. And it is a fact, and all Manila knew it and saw him present at the council of the English on the day on which they pronounced so unheard-of a sentence.

With these facts cited, and signed by the hand of the reverend archbishop, one can recognize clearly the faith that is merited by a letter which it appears that he wrote in regard to his actions and the protests of which I am told he made before dying. If all those who died were St. Pauls and the reverend archbishop had shown the actions of such an one and of a royal vassal of your Majesty, it is certain that his sayings and expressions ought to be of great appreciation. But since he was so opposed to the rights of your Majesty, to those of religion, and that which is least to my honor, it has been absolutely necessary to draw up this informatory process purely and nakedly made, so that after examining it, your Majesty may take the most advisable measures.

I confess to being the least and most useless of your vassals, but in fidelity, zeal, and disinterestedness to your Majesty’s service, I do not yield to the highest. Consequently, so far as it concerns me, I would have kept quiet about the ugly stigma of traitor, simply in order not to reveal the omissions of a prelate, recognizing its nullity because of the defects of jurisdiction in this one and in the English; and that I cannot be a rebel to your Majesty when defending your states, nor to the English since I am not nor have any desire of being an English vassal. Hence said sentence well understood becomes a new proof of my nobility and loyalty. It is a shame to the truth of the nation that it has had a vassal of so extraordinary thought, and that he could take example from the very enemy. For although it is true that these followed the rules, because of their utility and convenience in this matter, of the reverend archbishop, notwithstanding that they gave me the title of general and commander-in-chief of the troops of your Majesty in the provinces, and finally recognized me as your Audiencia, governor, and captain-general. However, the reverend archbishop, although your vassal, and so honored, passed to the other life, without doing it. It is a fact that the English declared me a rebel and traitor; confiscated and sold my property as such; declared your troops in public edicts to be canaille and robbers; and your artillery captured in the foundry of Bulacan for more contempt, was placed under the gallows of this city. Barbarous and unheard of are these acts of disrespect against the supreme honor of your Majesty, to whom it alone belongs to ask for the fitting satisfaction, and to me to report it. But surely the English would not have incurred them, had the reverend archbishop borne himself as he ought to have done as a prisoner and had he not treated me as an insurgent. But since the reverend archbishop and his partisans and many traitors of both estates whom your Majesty has had, forced the title of rebel and insurgent against me; and although I was unworthy, I was the only one in whom your royal name was conserved which since it was becoming utterly despised in these islands, it appeared absolutely necessary to me, because of the vassalage which I owe to your Majesty, to defend your name, although opposed by so many dangers to my life, surrounded by traitors and assassins, who came from Manila to attack my person, which without a soldier or the slightest war equipment, during the first six months it was conserved, I believe, by divine Providence alone for defending a cause so just as the side of your Majesty.9 On the day when they captured the fort, the enemy had more friends in it than your Majesty, but much of it was in imitation of a prelate who had just been governor, whose persuasions and threats were alone directed to surrendering everything to the English.

Even if I had understood the law badly, and I had no right by it to be the governing Audiencia, it was sufficient to have hoisted your royal standard, so that every loyal vassal might follow it, and with greater reason, those of character, distinguished and honored by your Majesty.

I received a letter from the governor of Zamboanga, Don Ygnacio Andrade, which an English captain left him for the reverend archbishop, written in the port of San Jorge, June 7, 1762, and signed by Jorge Pigot, Governor of Madrast. By its expressions one can see the close and previous correspondence which the reverend archbishop had with the English. It must be noted that the said captain, Darrimple [i.e., Dalrymple] whom it cites later as having sounded all these islands, of which repeated advices were given to the reverend archbishop, came to cast anchor in this bay, in the year 61, without allowing aboard his vessel the guard which the fort sent to him. And instead of securing him, he showed him many courtesies. That captain dined at the palace, examined all the walls, its strength, the beach, even the powder factory, sounded the entire bay, and information having been given to the fort of this innovation, by a sentinel, yet he was allowed to go out freely when he pleased. For those special favors, the said governor of MadrÁs gives him [i.e., the archbishop] many thanks, and although it is not expressed in the letters, the head of the staff which he sends him. The said governor of Zamboanga sent it as a gift from the English to the reverend archbishop, who did not care to have his name mixed up in a matter so delicate.

Lastly, I add for the more complete conviction of your reverend archbishop, the fact that he refused to send the seal to this your royal Audiencia, which existed as long as it cared in the barrio of Santa Cruz; and that rice growers lived outside the walls of this city, where trade and commerce with the provinces was both free and continuous, and whence I got the one hundred thousand pesos of said effects, and most of the war supplies which were the greatest danger, but not the royal seal.

May God preserve the Catholic royal person of your Majesty for the protection of these fields of Christendom. Manila, July 23, 764.10

Don Simon de Anda y Salazar