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138 ; but on the following day a resolution of the real acuerdo ordered his immediate return to Tacuba, there to await the proper moment for his installation into office. This did not take place until May 13, 1648, when the bishop-governor, with the usual retinue, made his official entrance into Mexico, and exhibited in the palace his credentials.

His rule was brief and uneventful. An epidemic is said to have caused great devastation at Vera Cruz in the latter half of the year 1648, but in view of the scanty information on the subject, considerable allowance must probably be made for exaggeration. On his decease in April of the following year the audiencia assumed the government; and the senior oidor, Matías de Peralta, acting as president, removed to the viceregal palace. Before the exequies of the late governor were concluded his entire estate had been sequestered, partly to guarantee the sum of twenty thousand pesos, which he had received in advance of salary, and also because suspicions had arisen that a large part of his estate belonged to the crown, and had been fraudulently appropriated by the secretary and nephew of the deceased, Juan de Salazar. To that end the surrender was ordered under severe penalties, of all the property of the bishop, and that of his relatives, to the senior oidor, who, together with the fiscal, had assumed the functions of executor of