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SA treasury officials explained why FL was unable to forward tithes to the bishop

Source: The King?s Coffer #83

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Soon after the bishop’s visit, the treasury officials were ordered to begin sending the canons of the cathedral chapter their designated fourth of the tithes and explain why this had been neglected. They protested that no one had ever asked for them, and that anyhow tithes in Florida were grossly overvalued. When the livestock was auctioned, soldiers bid four or five times what it was worth, charging the amount to the back salaries they never expected to see. AN59 In this way cattle worth less than 1,000 pesos had been sold for 4,400, giving a false impression of the provinces’ resources. In order to correct this overpricing, the treasurer and accountant meant in the future to purchase the tithes of livestock as they did the tithes of maize, for rationing the soldiers. They would pay the local clerics, the bishop, and the cathedral chapter in drafts against the situado. The three ecclesiastics serving the parish church and the soldiers’ chapel were paid around 900 pesos a year. [Note 13: Salvador de Cigarroa and Francisco de la Rocha 2/18/1680; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 12/29/1693] If half of the tithes were sent to Cuba, the total revenue must come to 1,800 pesos a year in order to cover clerical salaries, necessitating an annual titheable production of somewhere near 72,000 pesos.

This level of production Florida’s Spanish population was unable to maintain. In 1697 the crown inquired why the bishop was not receiving his tithes. The royal officials answered briefly that in Florida the tithe was paid in the form of grain and was distributed to the soldiers.

(Bushnell KC)