A decree issued by Governor Fausto Cruzat y Gongora, September 22, 1695, recites the two royal alms above mentioned, which had been assigned from tributes of vacant natives. In response to a petition by Father Juan de Montemayor, S.J., that 1,000 pesos be given the college annually until the 20,000 pesos be paid in full, he assigned to the said college 383 1/2 tributes from the encomienda of Tubig, Sulat, and Pamboan, in the province of Leyte, "so that there may be paid annually, five hundred and thirty-three pesos four tomins one grano ... on account of the eighteen thousand six hundred and eleven pesos six tomins which are still to be paid of the twenty thousand pesos." [42] A royal decree of May 3, 1722, grants the title of "royal ad honorem" to the college of San José. This decree is as follows: "Inasmuch as Augustin Soler of the Society of Jesus, procurator-general for his province of Filipinas, has represented to me that his province has charge in the city of Manila of a seminary of grammar, philosophical and theological collegiates, under the advocacy of St. Joseph, which was founded by Don Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa, adelantado of Mindanao, which by its antiquity and royal writ of King Don Felipe IV enjoys precedence in all public functions to the other colleges; and inasmuch as in consideration of the notoriety in that community of the great profit which has followed and is experienced in the said college, in virtue and letters from the many erudite men who have graduated from it to maintain the luster of the cathedral church of that city and the other churches of their islands, the greater part of those who today obtain their prebends being among those who have been raised and have prosecuted their studies in the above-mentioned college, he petitioned me, in consideration of the above-said and so that its collegiates may have the greatest application in said studies with the luster, esteem, and credit that is due because of the particular blessing which results to that community in general, to deign to receive it under my royal protection, by conceding it the title, privileges, and preeminences of royal college, without any burden on my royal treasury, with the permission to place on its doors and the other accustomed places, my royal arms, and to make use of the title of such in the instruments which it presents, and the letters which it writes to me: therefore, this matter having been examined in my assembly Council of the Indias, together with what was declared thereon by my fiscal, I have considered it fitting to condescend to [heed] his instance, receiving (as by the present I do receive and admit) the above-named college of San José under my royal protection. I honor it with the title of Royal ad honorem, in case that it has no patrons, and with the express conditions that it never has any, and that it cannot produce any effect of burden on or embarrassment to my royal treasury by reason of this title. Therefore,