Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/453

Rh priests, lay-brothers, or coadjutors who had taken the first vow, and novices who refused to abandon the society, together with sequestration of their estates. The order was confirmed by the pragmatic sanction of April 2d, published the same day, making known the royal action in the premises, and that the exiled would be allowed, out of the income of the suppressed society’s property, a yearly pension of one hundred pesos to each ordained priest, and ninety pesos to each lay-brother, the foreign born and those of immoral conduct being excepted. It was strictly forbidden them to write anything savoring of rebellion against the royal act, under penalty, in the event of violation of that clause, if it were only by a single member, of the forfeiture of the pensions of all his brethren. Nor was this all. Any Jesuit who should, without the king’s express leave, return to the Spanish dominions under any pretext whatsoever, even that of having resigned from the society and being absolved of its vows, would be treated as a prescript, incurring if a layman the penalty of death, and if a priest that of confinement, at the option of the ordinaries.