26. The prebends endured this persecution with incredible patience. Again the governor wrote a letter, [endeavoring] to mediate in the question of granting a dispensation [to the cabildo] for their irregular government, and engaged the bishop of Sinopolis as his agent. Ybanez went to the dean to tell him that all would be settled according to his satisfaction, but this was nothing but a falsehood and invention; for the dispensation [136] was conferred with the utmost ignominy for the cabildo and prebends, for the greater glory and triumph of the Dominicans, the managers of this scene-shifting. 27. They obliged the prebends to make certain declarations, which were fraudulent and misleading, so that it was difficult not to blunder in the replies, which were directed by Father Verart, the mainspring of all these plots. They made the prebends take an oath; the latter consented to this, and submitted to everything, in order to extricate themselves from so much annoyance and to be free from enemies so powerful and so persistent. 28. The archbishop commanded the prebends to make a statement of detestation [of their errors], in which were contained things prejudicial and inimical to the royal jurisdiction and prerogatives; and others, complimenting the archbishop and his friars and various private persons. On the same day a conference had been held in which it was asked whether the said prebends were worthy of being dispensed; it was decided that they were, because those who were following the current with the archbishop were very influential, but those who were more judicious and learned thought that there was no reason why the said dispensation was necessary. [137] 29. On the following day the archbishop again declared the members of the cabildo to be excommunicated, alleging that although the bishop of Troya had absolved them, he had done so only ad reincidentiam, for such time as the bishop should choose. In the said act he also commanded that in the afternoon of the same day they should go to the cathedral to receive absolution and dispensation; and on the next day they must all go to the church of Santo Domingo, to make amends to the friars for imagined injuries. 30. The function of the absolution and dispensation was celebrated with the greatest publicity, and in a very marked, offensive, and injurious manner. An enormous number of the lower class of people were called in, from the neighboring villages--and especially from Binondoc, which is a village in charge of the Dominicans; for that purpose, the sermons which would occur that afternoon in some churches were suppressed, so that all the people could go to see a performance that would so exalt the Dominican fathers.