As the orders instituting the situado in 1570 explicitly stated that troops in Florida were to be paid and rationed the same as those in the Menendez fleet or the Havana garrison, the first royal officials modeled themselves after their counterparts in the king’s armadas and garrisons rather than his civilian exchequers. [Note 18: Bartolome de Arguelles 5/15/1602; Hernando de Miranda, title of lieut. Gov. to Gutierre de Miranda 9/5/1576.] Treasurer Juan de Cevadilla and Accountant Lazaro Saez de Mercado, taking office in 1580, thought that this system allowed the governor undue power. It was not appropriate to transfer all the fiscal practices from the armadas, they said, when “the exchequer can be looked after better on land than on sea.” [Note 19: Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado 3/6/1580.] Auditor Pedro Redondo Villegas, who came in 1600, refused to accept any armada precedent without a cedula (written royal order) applying it to Florida. [Note 20: Pedro Redondo Villega 4/20/1601; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/15/1602.] Thereafter the officials compared their treasury with wholly land-based ones and demanded equal treatment with the bureaucrats of Peru, Yucatan, Honduras, and the Philippines. As payroll and supply officers for a garrison, however, they continued to envy the Havana presidio’s royal slaves and the new stone fort built there between 1558 and 1578. [Note 21: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, 1/4/1621; Juan Menendez Marquez (seen in Council 4/3/1620); Juan Menendez Marquez II 1/25/1667; Joseph de Prado and Juan Menendez Marquez II 6/30/1668.] (Bushnell KC)