ABSTRACT
The overarching idea was of the empire as a family united under the father king, the rey padre, as he was frequently called in loyalist propaganda. Originating during the Hapsburg era, the idea was based on the legal view that the American territories were the patrimonial property of the king. The "modern" Bourbons had resisted this traditional role, but those living in the colonies "clung to the Hapsburg image of the patriarchal state and resisted the Bourbons' political philosophy."1 The king was senor, or lord, to whom, according to Spanish political philosophy, the nation at some time in the remote past had transferred au-
thority.2 He was limited in his exercise of absolute authority by the precepts of Thomism, which required him to rule justly and in the best interest of the people. Also limiting the king's absolutism was the practice of colonial or peninsular officials of refusing to obey or implement laws or decrees of the crown perceived as being inappropriate to local conditions. This principle of obedezco pero no cttniplo can be seen frequently at work in the colonial tini.
