ABSTRACT
The normal appointment for a governor was three years and, on 20 June 1592, apart from the letters considered in the previous chapter, Gómez Pérez wrote to Ibarra, the king’s secretary and secretary of the Council of the Indies, asking to be relieved of his command. 1 Since he had received no word from Spain since he had arrived two years before he must have been quite in the dark. He suggested Luis Navarrete Fajardo as his successor but this was not to be the case, though his son, Alfonso Fajardo y Tenza, did eventually become governor (1618–24). Gómez Pérez pointed out that he had been put to great expense, even though the king had paid him a salary of 10,000 ducats (13,800 pesos), and he now asked for that salary to be continued for another year till he got back to Spain. (As governor he was not permitted to hold an encomienda.) At that time his estate seems to have been worth 100,000 pesos. 2
