Foreigners sometimes sought to avert trouble by pretending Catholicism and thus placed themselves in the power of the tribunal, which was constantly on the watch for them. In 1654, for instance, Fray Luis de Betancor was summoned and interrogated as to his knowledge of such cases, to which he replied that, some twelve years before, Evan Pugh, an English surgeon, had come to Adeje to cure Doña Isabel de Ponte, and sometimes went out to hunt with her brother Juan Bautista de Ponte. He remembered that one day, when he had finished celebrating mass, he was told that Pugh had stood at the church-door with his hat in his hand, and it was currently said that he confessed to Fray Juan de Medina. Similarly, in 1674, we find the Hollander Pieter Groney testifying that when he sailed from the Texel in 1671 Juan de Rada was a fellow-passenger, who told him he was a Protestant and as such joined in the services during the voyage, but, when the ship was visited on arrival he swore that he was a Catholic and had since then acted exteriorly as a Catholic, though, when they lived together for a couple of months, he ate meat freely on fast days and he regarded him as a Protestant rather than as a Catholic.[340] What was the outcome in these cases cannot be told, but the investigations illustrate the careful watchfulness of the tribunal and the dangers incurred by residence within its jurisdiction. Even his official position did not protect from prosecution Edmund Smith, the British consul at Tenerife, when he was accused, in 1699, of maltreating converts to Catholicism and of persuading and threatening those inclined to it, even, it was said, shipping them away when other measures failed.[341] In the 18th century, while foreign vessels were closely watched and a vigilant eye was kept on resident Protestants, they were no longer molested with investigations and denunciations. If, in 1728, Philip V ordered the expulsion of all foreigners, it was not on religious grounds, but to put an end to frauds on the revenue. None, however, were expelled, although some professed conversion to save themselves from annoyance.[342] A similar impulse seems to have impelled Dr. James Brown, a physician of Tenerife, who wrote, in March, 1770, to the tribunal, from the Augustinian convent of La Laguna, in which he had sought asylum from the captain-general, who was seeking to seize him and send him to England. To secure its protection he asserted his desire to abjure his errors and to be received into the Catholic Church, but in this he failed for, on July 14, he was ordered to leave the islands within forty days.[343] * * * * *