316
Copy of a letter
C.R.M.
that the prelates of the orders of these Philippine Islands wrote last year, in 1584, via Malacca, to Your Majesty.
Confident that it is your Majesty's intention that we should satisfy your Majesty's royal conscience by endeavouring in these lands that the natives should come to know God, this being the principal responsibility with which your Majesty entrusted us in sending us here, we hereby inform your Majesty of the obstacles and impediments we have encountered, so that being so informed, your Majesty may issue an order to remedy these and we may fulfill this mission to which Your Majesty dispatched us.
Our work in relation to this mission has until now been with the land-owners and private individuals who, although they placed many obstacles in our path and caused us much anxiety, did not make us lose heart because, although there were many - though not all - who caused us difficulties, as they were private individuals we could at times plead with them, at times threaten them, at times have recourse to the governors who were mostly in our favour or at least they were sometimes able to conceal their antagonism towards us. And we protested about this as it appeared to us then that simply not putting the preventive measures that we requested into place, caused many obstacles.
But the obstacles are now larger and more numerous, and they are preventable because they are made in the voice and name of Your Majesty under the pretext of defending the Royal Jurisdiction, as if it had ever or would ever have occurred to us, nor have we any need in order to discharge our mission, to interfere with any matter relating to such jurisdiction.
Your Majesty is well aware and it is recorded how hated and persecuted the evangelical ministries have been in all the Indies, but in these islands this is even more the case, since we have stood up to the