Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/118

102 had been reinstated in the office of corregidor of Querétaro, after having been deprived of it by Iturrigaray. From that time forward he was a secret supporter of the independence party. After the collapse of the Valladolid plot, meetings of the chief revolutionists were held at Querétaro in houses of the presbyter José María Sanchez and the licentiate Parra. The corregidor attended the assemblies at the first-mentioned house, which passed under the name of a literary academy, while his wife Doña María Joséfa Ortiz took still more earnest interest in the success of the undertaking. In Parra's house secret meetings were held and plans of operations discussed. Here met the principal promoters of the revolution, the licentiates Laso and Altamirano, captains Allende and Aldama of the queen's regiment, Joaquin Arias, captain of the, Zelaya regiment, Francisco Lanzagorta, lieutenant of the dragoons of San Miguel, the two brothers Epigmenio and Emeterio Gonzalez and others of less note.

While these preliminary matters were in progress in Valladolid and Querétaro, the leaven of liberty was working in Guanajuato; and indeed to this province may be more specially given the proud distinction of cradle of Mexican independence. And forever famous above all must remain the town of Dolores, situated in the higher level of the sierra de Guanajuato, eleven leagues from the provincial capital. Its beginning dates from the sixteenth century, when viceroys Enriquez and Velasco exerted themselves in uniting the Indians in municipal communities called congregaciones, Dolores receiving the name of Congregacion de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, and being included in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the curato of San Miguel el Grande. In 1717 it was elevated to the dignity of a pueblo, and somewhat later became an independent curacy.

As usual in places of this kind, the parish church