Source: Amy Notes (ID702)
Author: Howard, Amy (ID633)
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out of context? have a spy in SA on Moral?s watch be the way the English find out when the situado i
out of context? have a spy in SA on Moral?s watch be the way the English find out when the situado is coming and maybe that?s when a situado ship was lost to corsairs.
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A royal auditor made a fortune auditing SA's treasury accounts
Date Created: 2023-10-12 20:56:17
Source: The King?s Coffer (ID 83)
Author: Bushnell, Amy (ID 32)
Content_id: 589
The auditor who reopened them [SA's accounting books] was Pedro Redondo Villegas, accountant of the royal munitions foundry in Cuba, who was asked to go to Florida in 1598 in place of his colleague who was in prison. The instructions given him were to: 1. Investigate the condition of the royal soldiers, artillery, and forts. 2. Correct accounting procedures at the treasury. 3. Audit the accounts of the royal officials and anyone else through whose hands royal monies or supplies had passed. 4. Recover deficits from the individual’s property, bondholders, heirs, and successors. As duly commissioned judge of accounts (juez de cuentas) he had the magisterial power to subpoena witnesses and notarial records and to execute property judgments without recourse. Appeals from his decisions were to go, not to the Mexico City audiencia, but to the Council. [Note 28: Cedula to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/5/1598] During his absence from home, Redondo Villegas received his regular salary of 100,000 maravedis, out of which he paid 200 ducats to a substitute. In Florida he was given an additional 60 escudos a month, plus 20 escudos for an assistant. Governor Mendez de Canzo supplied him with a residence, 6 escudos a month for expenses, a plaza with unspecified supplements for his Cuban clerk, and, when that clerk went back home, the services of a youth from the governor’s own household, dignified with the title of taker of accounts (tomador de cuentas). The auditor and his assistants charged 2 reales per folio for copying the audited accounts with the verifying annotations in the margins. Not counting his perquisites of house, assistants, or expense account, Redondo Villegas cleared 790 escudos a year by being in Florida. The royal officials claimed that this was why he prolonged his stay, copying unnecessary papers and opening accounts long closed, while payment was stopped on their salaries. [Note 29: Cedula to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/5/1598; Bartolome de Arguelles and Juan Menendez Marquez 1/23/1602; Gov. Mendez de Canzo 1/2/1602] The royal officials particularly disliked his changes in their bookkeeping system. In obedience to a cedula which they had been ignoring, the auditor required them, beginning January 1, 1600, to keep a duplicate of the treasurer’s record of drafts against the situado. He also refused to accept any precedent from the Indies Fleet without a cedula endorsing it for Florida; anything the treasury officials had allowed without such validation—whether free medicines, extra rations, office supplies, or tax exemptions—he threatened to charge to them personally. They were also forced to report the 60,000 pesos surplus in their coffer. [Note 30: Cedula to the royal officials 10/28/1598; Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600; Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/15/1602] ...The problem of audit and appeals was never solved to suit the royal officials. In 1605 Philip III AN83 created three Tribunals of Accounts in the cities of Mexico, Los Reyes (Lima), and Santa Fe (Bogota). They were to serve as intermediaries between the local treasuries of their audiencias and the Council in Spain, compiling the annual financial summaries and sending out roving auditors. The tribunals were empowered to give quittance in cases of fiscal litigation, thus serving as a final court of appeals. Two auditors independent of the tribunals were appointed, one to reside in Caracas and the other in Havana. In 1609, the poorer and more distant coffers, which included Espanola, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, were subordinated to the closest tribunal and its roving auditors. Florida was too insignificant to be mentioned. [Note 36: The 1605 Ordinances of the Tribunals of Accounts are found in Recop.] The 1605 decentralization, far from being the end of the territorial autonomy, or a turning point in the fiscal organization of the Florida treasury, for years had no measurable effect on it whatever. St. Augustine was a jurisdiction unto itself. The Florida officials, receiving the situado from the Mexico City treasury, declined to answer to the Mexico City tribunal. They asked that in their case the old system be followed of a visiting auditor and appeals direct to the Council. [Note 37: Juan Menendez Marquez, Alonso de las Alas, and Alonso Sanchez Saez 3/12/1608] AN84 So it was, perhaps by default.