53. He summoned the auditors in order to show this letter to them, but they did not come as they were busy, answering that they would come if the matter were urgent. But the instances of the general of the day before having been repeated for the reply, it was sent to him in said letter between seven and eight in the morning of the said day, the twenty-ninth. But after eleven o'clock on the same day, the general sent his letter of the thirtieth of the same month (which corresponds to our date of the twenty-ninth) with the message for me not to bother myself, that that letter was to be signed by myself and the auditors, to whom he sent word that if they did not do it, he would have them immediately thrown into a galley. Instantly upon receiving this message they immediately appeared, and signed the letter together with the archbishop, both the original letter in English and its translation into Spanish. It was sent to the said general, and said auditors only gave notice that they had made their protest before the notary, and that it should not be written at the foot of said letter, in order that the general might not happen to see it, if he asked for said original letter. With such fear did they proceed, but the archbishop showed them the copy of his letter above-mentioned, in which is manifest his protest with the declaration of repeating it a thousand times. 54. This point has been treated with prolixity, for besides being one of the most serious, and one of greatest pain, it has been shifted and juggled [adviterado?] variously, blackening enormously the conduct of the archbishop, even to affirming that it is evident that he had an understanding with the English for this cession, in a journal full of false entries and of black impostures, composed by the fiscal. But God be thanked, that the evidence of this criminal calumny is false, and the weak apprehensions or inferences on which it is founded have been clearly dissipated. For what is affirmed is false, namely, that the cession of the islands had been discussed or made before October 26, and that letters had been written for their surrender, as the first council was held on the said day, and the second on the following day (the twenty-seventh and the twenty-eighth). On the twenty-ninth, the archbishop made his resolution, and wrote the rough drafts of said letters with his own hand on the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth. The statement also is false, namely, that on the twenty-ninth, said letters were sent with one of the same date in which the archbishop answered the general ceding the islands. For these original letters are yet in possession of the secretary of the assembly, and neither then nor at any time have they been sent or delivered. So true is this that the commanders having gone--Draper on the twelfth of November [151] of the past year, and Cornish on the first of March of the present year, who never asked him for a letter for the surrender of the