ABSTRACT
WHEN the Marquis was murdered in Lima by the Almagro party the news came with extraordinary celerity to the ships which were about to sail for Spain, and the Emperor Charles V received it at . . . 1 He held that it was an evil service to him, on hearing that the Marquis had been murdered with such cruelty and violence, considering the great services he had rendered to his Majesty and the rich provinces he had added to the Realm. His Majesty wished that the Marquis could have enjoyed some repose in his old age, and that he had not died so ignobly. At the same time, his Majesty had felt that he had also been ill-served by the death inflicted by the Marquis’s brother on the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro in a former year. Taking counsel with his grandson, and with others who attended him for that purpose, and seeing how remote those kingdoms were from Spain, that in the time of the governors there had been great outrages and robberies, and that cruel deaths had been inflicted on not a few lords and principal people, it was resolved that they should be so justly ruled that God our Lord and the Royal Crown should not suffer displeasure. His Majesty therefore decided 338to send out learned men as judges to form a Court of Justice or Audiencia, and also a Royal Chancellery, in order that causes might be determined and that in all things there might be right decisions so needful in such a free country where all men are prone to commit evil. In order that justice might have greater force, it was also resolved that there should be a Viceroy, whose duty it would be to see that the natives were well treated by the Spaniards. The councillors then considered at several sittings whom should be entrusted with so important a service. His Majesty had been informed by many people, and from various directions, of the great oppression the Indians suffered from the Spaniards, and how the latter, in order to extort gold from them, had burned them and thrown them to the dogs; also how they seized the natives’ wives and daughters for their own uses, and committed other atrocities. Above all, there was very great remissness about their conversion; no one caring for the souls of the poor natives. As a Christian prince, fearing God, the Emperor was very anxious to find a remedy for these great evils. He felt that, as universal pastor, he was responsible to God. Nevertheless, his Majesty’s repeated absences from Spain, so important for the worship of God and for his own service, had interfered with the mature consideration of what should be done to avoid these great evils, and of what laws ought to be made for the protection of the Indians.
