Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/90

70 of the audiencia might give rise. This body issued a counter proclamation declaring Gelves to be actuated by malicious motives, and that his order was intended chiefly to draw attention from a defeated plot on the part of his nephew, Francisco Pimentel, to gather forces in support of the uncle while pretending to raise them for Acapulco. Pimentel had been arrested, and all local authorities were charged to aid the audiencia in suppressing similar attempts.

Meanwhile clergy, oidores, and local authorities of Mexico had combined to gather evidence against the viceroy, and in support of their acts, and this evidence together with exculpatory letters were forwarded by the fleet under Oquendo which set sail for Spain shortly after the riot. The audiencia appointed for this mission Doctor Hernan Carrillo Altamirano, legal adviser of that body, who had become the sworn enemy of Gelves because of his interference with certain of the doctor's irregular sources of income. The municipality of Mexico commissioned at the same time Cristóbal de Molina y Pisa, one of the regidores whom Gelves had placed under arrest, and provided him with letters from different sources, and for the most influential officials in Spain. In the representation to the king they depicted Gelves as a tyrannical, unscrupulous, self-willed, and violent man, who had made himself so generally feared and hated by all good citizens as finally to compel them to rise in self-defence.