In 1622 acute questions arose between the Court and ecclesiastical authorities, as ever inevitably took place in Spain's colonial dominions. Bishops excommunicated viceroys, and viceroys fulminated banishment against bishops: riotings and beheadings followed, and royal interpositions were constantly necessary to uphold or condemn the action of one or the other side. In 1629 an appalling inundation of the City of Mexico took place, following a similar occurrence in 1622, due to the discontinuance of the drainage works which had earlier been begun; and it is stated that thirty thousand of the poor inhabitants of the valley perished as a result. Two years later acute dissatisfaction began to arise at the great acquisition of wealth and power by the clergy, and a memorial sent to Philip IV. by the municipality of Mexico begged that no more religious institutions or communities might be established, asserting that more than half the wealth of the country was in the hands of these, and that there were more than six thousand priests--most of them idle--in the country. From the middle to the close of the seventeenth century the social life of the people developed but slowly. The main events were the conspiracy of the Irishman Lampart to secure independence for the country, the dedication of the cathedral of Mexico, the founding of the town of Albuquerque in the territory of New Mexico--to-day part of the United States, the enactment against the violation of private correspondence, the fortification of the ports on the Gulf coast against the operations of sea-rovers--among them the famous British buccaneer Morgan, the eruption of Popocatepetl (1665), the sacking of the town of Campeche by British ships (1680), the insurrection and murders by the Indians of Chihuahua and New Mexico, the piratical exploit of Agramonte and his band, who disembarked at and looted the port of Vera Cruz, imprisoning the greater part of the population in a church, the exploration of California, and the operations against the French and English settlers upon the Mexican Gulf coast. The last years of the century were disturbed by serious rioting and tumult in the capital, due to scarcity of food and the inundation of the city.