One of the principal causes of complaint against the audiencia was a too free permission to brand natives, and it was alleged that the privilege was paid for by associations formed for the purpose. So many were branded and exported that some districts were well nigh depopulated, partly also owing to the retirement toward the interior of large numbers. The clergy, headed by Bishop Zumárraga, who had been invested with the title and duties of protector of Indians, were powerless to stay these outrages, for to men who held in contempt the commands of their earthly sovereign, and in whose natures there was no instinct of piety, the thunder of the church was indeed an empty sound. On one occasion Guzman and his colleagues were present at mass when an over-zealous friar took occasion to upbraid them from the pulpit. He was forcibly removed by order of the president, and ordered into exile; the bishop himself being threatened with violence for daring to remonstrate.[1]
The persecution of Spaniards was directed against nearly every conqueror and wealthy man not of the clique favored by Salazar, particularly the friends of Cortés. With the power given the audiencia to reform the distribution of repartimientos, there was little difficulty in finding the needful pretence to dispossess holders from their estates, and bestow them on favorites, after appropriating to themselves the richest.[2] Those against whom this process of summary eviction did not avail were attacked with judicial arraignment for having infringed the laws concerning gambling, payment of tithes, and the like, and as false witnesses could always be found where true evidence failed, fines were levied to an enormous extent, and collected by hasty sale of property at ruin-
- ↑ Dijo el Presidente . . . me echara del púlpito abajo. Carta, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xiii. 132. The practice, nevertheless, continued, if not so openly, and finally led to the issuing of a royal letter prohibitory of excess in language used in the pulpit concerning lay authority. Puga, Cedulario, 21.
- ↑ In Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xiii. 127-9, is a long list of the most prominent encomenderos thus dispossessed.
