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The Council of the Indies granted Moral limited freedom

Source: The Governorship of Spanish Florida #122

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Again the Council refused to free Moral, but in 1740 a third attempt by the former governor was more successful. In May the prison doctor reaffirmed the earlier list of complaints and added two new ones—dysentery and fever. This time the Council proved more compassionate, granting Moral permission to leave his cell in Cadiz for Madrid, where he had complete freedom as long as he remained within the confines of the Spanish capital. [Note: Certificion de Don Alonso Garcia, medico revalidado por el real protomedicato, 5/9/1740. Despacho del rey al Senor Don Francisco de Varas y Valdes, 6/7/1740.]

For Moral this was a stroke of good fortune. In Madrid he was free to work for his vindication from an extremely advantageous position. From the open files of the residencia, he would build a better case in his own defense by picking out inconsistencies in the testimonies taken against him. In addition, his more vociferous critics were far away in Florida or Cuba. Only their written accusations stood to bear witness against him, and Moral could easily find flaws and contradictions in this testimony. Moreover, three years had passed since Moral’s removal. The heat and excitement of 1737 had waned, and the case was not likely to stimulate the interest of the Council’s prosecuting attorney, who was already overburdened with legal work. With a personal stake in securing his exoneration, Moral was bound to be more enthusiastic and tenacious in dealing with the litigation.

Time was also on Moral’s side. Hearings dragged on over three years from February 10, 1741, until April 20, 1744, and even then the Council could reach no decision. Evidence was so contradictory and the documentation so immense that its members ultimately gave up trying to determine Moral’s guilt or innocence and turned the case over to a special panel of judges for its verdict. This body acted more speedily. Within three months on July 10, 1744, the special court found Moral guilty on all eleven charges and sentenced him to four three-year tours of duty with the Spanish army, probably in an undesirable outpost in Africa. He also had to pay a fine of 2,000 pesos and the costs of his trial, which surely must have been considerable.

This might have closed the whole affair, but Moral was irrepressible. Refusing to accept the court’s judgment, he appealed his case to the Council of the Indies, which showed an amazing penchant for both patience and justice in agreeing to his request. For two years its lawyers again grappled with the residencia papers, now swollen with the record of the hearings on Moral’s litigation. In the end they were so overwhelmed and confused by the mass of documents that they could make no recommendation to their superiors. On October 25, 1726, therefore, the Council ordered a printed resume of the case in the hope of clarifying the issues and insuring justice for Moral. [Note: The decree of 10/25/1746, ordering the printed resume seems strong evidence that two years of investigation had failed to establish Moral’s guilt or innocence. Two years of additional hearings had evidently only confused the case further.]

Once again events favored the former governor, for as it was finally printed, the resume put him in a favorable light. Not only did the condensed version of the residencia fail to recapture the vehement anti-Moral tone of the original documents, but it also pictured him as a martyr, bandied about and abused by the confused machinations of Spanish justice. Moral, it appeared, had suffered greatly from the delays encountered in deciding his fate. In any event, on July 10, 1748..

(Tepaske GSF)