In the city of Manila, on the seventeenth of May, one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine, the president and auditors of the royal Audiencia, Court, and Chancillería of the Philipinas Islands, having examined this information which was remitted to this royal Audiencia by Estevan de Marquina, alcalde-mayor of the village of Tondo and its presidio, concerning the advisability and importance that the Christian Sangleys living in the said village of Tondo, and in the other villages of its jurisdiction, and those who become Christians in the future, shall not abandon the occupations which they had before they became Christians, as they have been accustomed to do, but shall continue to exercise and practice them in the same manner as before--for, by thus abandoning their occupations, that people are unoccupied and slothful, and spend their time in games and vicious amusements, whence result the harm and trouble which may be considered: they declared that, in order to remedy that state of affairs, they ought to order, and they did so order, that, now and henceforth, the said Sangleys shall practice and exercise the occupations which they had practiced and exercised before they became Christians, and shall, under no consideration, abandon them--this being understood to apply to those becoming Christians in the future, and to those who have been Christians for six years previous to the present--under penalty that whoever disobeys this decree shall be sentenced to row in the galleys for four years, in a place prescribed, without pay, to which they declared that they delivered them, and they did so deliver them, immediately as condemned persons. They declared that they ordered, and they did so order, the alcalde-mayor of Tondo and of the Parian, and other magistrates of this city and of these islands, to take great care in the execution and fulfilment of the aforesaid, under penalty of being punished. Thus they voted, ordered, and decreed. They ordered that the said magistrates, each in his own jurisdiction, should make the necessary inquiries, in order to ascertain who are the Sangleys that come under the provisions of this act, and the occupations which they follow. Before me: _Pedro Hurtado Desquibel_ _An act decreeing that no alcaldes-mayor or other magistrates shall leave their jurisdictions without undergoing residencia; and that those who shall not have done so, or given a report of the convictions and fines and tenths of gold which shall have been in their charge, shall not be appointed._