44. To the question of the British, which was urgently put to him, in regard to the royal treasury and possessions, the archbishop responded briefly and truly, showing them that the king, his master, had no temporal interest in these islands, but only that strictly of the souls of his vassals, and the causing them to live as civilized beings and Christians, according to the Catholic law for their salvation; and that in order to maintain them with his ecclesiastical and secular ministers, he spent the tributes which were collected with so great right, and the two departments only of buyo and wine. In this regard he distributed very large sums annually from the treasury of Mexico. In no other manner could these islands subsist. 45. The city, orders, and Spaniards having been summoned to the royal palace, in order to express their loyalty and not to take arms against his Britannic Majesty, before his generals, an act in which their loyalty and love to his Catholic Majesty, their legitimate king, shone forth brightly, through the unwillingness, sadness, and repugnance, with which it was celebrated. Slightly before as well and separately was given the word of honor not to take arms during the war or until another arrangement was made by the sovereigns (in a certain Latin form, and which necessarily contained nothing of vassalage to his Britannic Majesty), by the archbishop, auditors, and royal officials present. The polite representation of the archbishop to the generals in the said house where they were lodging, namely, the archiepiscopal, enabled them [i.e., the above officials] to gain exemption from mixing with the others, or in their formula [of loyalty or allegiance to the British sovereign].