How the Licentiate Luis Ponce, after he had exhibited the Royal Decrees and met with obedience, ordered the Residencia of Cortés and those who had held judicial office to be proclaimed, and how he fell ill of sleeping sickness and died of it, and what else happened.

After he [the Licentiate] had exhibited the Royal Decrees, and they had been obeyed with much reverence by Cortés, by the Municipality, and by the rest of the Conquistadores, he ordered a Residencia General to be proclaimed against Cortés and against those who had held judicial office, and had been Captains. Since many persons were ill-disposed towards Cortés, and others were in the right in what they petitioned, what haste they made to lodge complaints of Cortés and to present witnesses, so that the city was seething with lawsuits and claims made against him ! Some said that he did not give them the share of gold they were entitled to, others brought action because he did not give them Indians in accordance with His Majesty’s commands, but gave them to servants of his father, Martin Cortés, and to other unworthy persons, servants of noblemen of Castile ; others claimed for horses killed in the wars, for although there had been much gold with which he could have paid them, he had not satisfied them, in order to keep the gold himself. Others lodged complaints on account of personal insults that they suffered by order of Cortés, and one Juan Juarez, his brother-in-law, brought a wicked claim against him on account of Cortés’s wife Doña Catalina Juarez la Marcayda. At that time a Fulano de Barrios had arrived from Castile, and Cortés married him to a sister of Juan Juarez and sister-in-law of his [own], and that claim which Juan Juarez had brought was settled for the time.