An attempt was made to utilise his talents in a new direction. He was requested to write a chronicle of the Franciscan Tertiaries, undertook the task in 1651, but was compelled to abandon it in 1653 owing to his ‘many occupations.’ In a letter of this period addressed to the Patriarch of the Indies, Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, Calderón declares that he had meant to cease writing for the stage when he took orders, and that he had yielded to the personal request of the Prime Minister, Luis de Haro, who had begged him to continue for the King’s sake. In the same letter Calderón states that he had been censured for writing _autos_, that a favour conferred on him had been revoked owing to the objection of somebody unknown—_no sé quién_—that poetry was incompatible with the priesthood, and he ends by asking the Primate for a definite ruling: ‘the thing is either wrong or right; if right, let there be no more difficulties; and, if wrong, let no one order me to do it.’ The drift of this alembicated letter is clear. The favour revoked was no doubt a chaplaincy at Toledo, and Calderón politely gave the Primate to understand that he should supply no more _autos_ till he received an equivalent for the post of which he had been deprived. His hint was taken; he was appointed ‘chaplain of the Reyes Nuevos’ at Toledo in 1653, and his scruples were quieted. For the rest of his life he wrote most of the _autos_ given at Madrid, and he readily supplied show-pieces to be performed at the palace of the Buen Retiro. Some idea of the importance attached to these performances may be gathered from the _Avisos_ of Barrionuevo, who tells us that—while the enemy was at the gate, while there was not a _real_ in the Treasury, while the King was compelled to dine on eggs, while a capon ‘stinking like dead dogs’ was served to the Infanta, and while the court buffoon Manuelillo de Gante paid for the Queen’s dessert,—there was always money to meet the bills of the stage-machinist Juan Antonio Forneli, to maintain a staff of from twenty-four to seventy actresses, and to import from Genoa hogsheads of costly jasmine-oil for stage-purposes.