During the early part of the year Charles had already appointed the cathedral prebendaries. Marroquin remarks that his Majesty was somewhat hasty in the matter, and not sufficiently considerate toward those who had so long shared with himself the labor of supporting the church at Santiago. These, he declares, it would be unreasonable for him to dismiss, though he is at a loss to conjecture whence the means to support his diocese would be derived. He well knew the perverse temper of the colonists and their antagonism to the cause of the church. Nevertheless he forwarded to the cabildo a provision handed to him by the viceroy Mendoza ordering the church tithes which were usually paid in kind to be delivered by the natives direct to the bishop at places where their value would be real and available.[VIII‑9] His mind was full of doubt as to the manner in which this regulation would be received by the encomenderos. The tone of his letter indicates misgiving, united with a rare spirit of self-negation, and he appears rather as a pleader than as a claimant for his rights.[VIII‑10] "You will pay," he says, "what is due in a proper manner; if not, I command that no scandal be raised about it." Nor were his apprehensions unfounded. The settlers in Guatemala were a stiff-necked people. They would not go to church, and they did not intend that the delivery of the tithes should cost them anything if they could avoid it. They could not spare their Indians to carry the tithes a distance of many leagues to the places appointed. The bishop must send for them. They and not the ecclesiastics had conquered the province, and they did not see that either God or the emperor had any claim upon it. The cabildo immediately appealed to the viceroy, and meeting with no sympathy in that quarter addressed themselves directly to the emperor.[VIII‑11] Their representations gained for them some concessions, whereupon they pressed the matter further and protested against paying tithes at all. Though the bishop was now at a loss whither to turn to obtain the means for carrying out his various plans, he none the less labored with unceasing perseverance,[VIII‑12] and on his return to Guatemala, at the end of 1537, brought with him two friars of the order of Merced, Juan Zambrano and Marcos Perez Dardon.[VIII‑13] [Sidenote: THE FRIARS OF LA MERCED.] After the conquest of Mexico, certain members of this order obtained the royal permission to proceed to the newly discovered countries for certain charitable purposes. When the subjugation was completed many of them settled in towns built by the Spaniards, but no convent of their order existed in New Spain at a very early date. To Bishop Marroquin they are indebted for the establishment of their first monastery in North America. This was founded in 1537[VIII‑14] at Ciudad Real in Chiapas, and in the following year frailes Zambrano and Dardon organized a similar institution in Santiago.