Concordias were only attempts to restrain existing abuses and they could not provide for the perpetual new aggressions suggested by the facile weapon of excommunication through which the Inquisition could overcome the resistance of the secular authorities. The distribution of quicksilver, for instance, to the miners was a matter jealously reserved to the viceroy and the junta of the treasury but, when the Inquisition wanted it for some mines belonging to it in Zacatecas, it forced, by threats of excommunication, the royal officials to supply its demands. Viceroy Mancera, in a letter of December 8, 1666, complains of this and of a case in which the royal treasurer of Guadalajara owed a personal debt to the tribunal of 980 pesos and the commissioner there, by order of the acting inquisitor and visitador, Medina Rico, forced the auditor of the treasury to pay it out of the royal funds, by threats of excommunication and of a fine of 500 pesos. Mancera endeavored by courteous remonstrance to obtain restitution but, after the inquisitors had insulted him, he only succeeded in getting 600 pesos returned. In reporting these matters to the king, the Council of Indies pointed out forcibly how incompatible with subordination and good government were these arbitrary extensions of inquisitorial jurisdiction over matters wholly foreign to the objects of its institution.[498] Indeed, the existence of so uncontrollable and disturbing an element goes far to explain the ill-success of Spanish colonial administration. In 1615, Fray Isidro Ordoñez, commissioner in San Francisco del Nuevo Mexico, under pretext of a fictitious order from the tribunal, gathered a band of soldiers and citizens, to whom inquisitorial orders were supreme, and seized Don Pedro de Peralta, Governor of New Mexico, and held him in irons for nine months. Peralta managed to complain to the tribunal, which summoned Ordoñez to the capital and assigned to him his convent for a prison, but Peralta obtained no satisfaction beyond a declaration that there had been no cause for his arrest, while Ordoñez, in place of the severe punishment which he merited, was permitted to attend the general chapter of his Order in Rome, as procurator of the province of Mexico.[499] Another Governor of New Mexico, Diego de Peñalosa, fared even worse when, for indiscreet words about priests and inquisitors and expressions verging on blasphemy, he was exposed to the humiliation of appearing as a penitent in the auto de fe of February 3, 1668--thus virtually incapacitating him for further service.[500] It was not without grounds that the Council of Indies, in 1696, addressed a formal remonstrance to Carlos II, recapitulating a long array of abuses and violences, showing the impossibility of enforcing observance of the Concordias or obedience to the royal commands. Prelates and governors were alike sufferers from the irrepressible audacity which admitted no