Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/168

148 Augustinian lay-friars did not shrink from assassinating the former provincial of their order.

It was perhaps the viceroy's undue interference in ecclesiastical matters that excited the enmity of the archbishop. During his administration the same ridiculous dispute arose which had occurred during the regime of his predecessor, concerning the precedence of the attendants at the procession of corpus christi. Neither would yield the point, and the matter was settled only by an agreement that neither the pages of the viceroy nor those of the archbishop should assist. The latter, named Mateo Sagade Bugueiro, was a man of rather haughty character, and ere long new difficulties arose between him and the representative of the crown, occasioned by the controversy of the former with the commissary-general of the holy crusade. The archbishop also publicly accused the viceroy of withholding and intercepting his correspondence with Spain, but finally a reconciliation was effected, and after that time a better understanding prevailed.

The religious zeal of the viceroy well nigh cost him his life. It was his custom each afternoon to pay a visit to the cathedral, then in course of completion, in order to inspect the progress made during the day, and afterward to attend vespers in one of the chapels. While kneeling at prayer on the evening of the 12th of March 1660, a soldier named Manuel Ledesma y