In regard to what you write me concerning the advanced age of the archbishop of those islands (who is so aged that his hands and head tremble), namely, that it would be best to give him an assistant; and that you are arranging to give such assistant an income of two thousand pesos in addition to the four thousand pesos enjoyed by the said archbishop, without taking that sum from my royal treasury, or from my vassals: I charge you to explain to me the method or means by which you can get that money without damage to my royal treasury and the vassals who serve me, so that, if it be worth while to allow it, you may execute it. So that the Order of St. Dominic, and the other orders resident in those islands, may live with the regulation and good example that is proper, and so that they may not increase the number of mission stations granted them by my decrees, you shall allow no new elections in them, which shall not be in harmony with my patronage. With the advice of the archbishop, you shall endeavor to unite some of the stations; and in those that shall be newly founded, you shall endeavor likewise to have secular priests introduced, if you find them intelligent and competent. Madrid. September 2, 1638. I the King By order of the king our sovereign: Don Gabriel de Ocaña y Alarcon APPOINTMENT OF SECULAR PRIESTS TO MISSIONS The King. To Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, knight of the Order of Alcantara, my governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands, and president of my royal Audiencia therein: in one of the sections of a letter which that city [of Manila] wrote to me on June 27 of 636, it is stated that there are two colleges in that city--one that of Santo Tomas, with religious of the Order of St. Dominic; and the other that of San Josef, with religious of the Society of Jesus--both of which have possessed, for several years past, authority to confer degrees in all the sciences. It is also declared that, with this opportunity, many students have excelled in those studies, and especially various sons of poor citizens, who have graduated in all the degrees; but that, since they have no beneficed curacies on which they can depend for support, their studies bring them no advantage. It is said that this is caused by certain religious orders, who have acquired from the archbishop, bishops, and governors the aggrandizement of their orders with many benefices which formerly were administered by secular priests; and that this might be remedied if I would decree that all the benefices which have been annexed to the religious orders during the last twenty years should be restored to the [secular] clergy, and that edicts should be issued in the form which I have ordained. This matter having been considered in my royal Council of the Indias, I have thought it best to issue the present, by which I command you that in the new missions that shall be established, you shall--except when