The King?s Coffer

The first European slavers probably reached the peninsula with their pathogens and iron chains in the 1490s. ...As there is little basis for estimating the population at contact, there is no way of knowing what the initial demographic loss may have been, nor its dislocating effects. [Note 53: Few [researchers] attempt to estimate population at contact.]

[Note 52: Florida first appears in cartographic history on the Cantino map of 1502.] (Bushnell KC)

In the Indies, individual treasuries grew out of the fiscal arrangements for expeditions of conquest. The crown, as intent on collecting its legitimate revenues as on the propagation of the faith, required every conquistador to take along officers of the exchequer. A factor guarded the king’s investment, if any, in weapons and supplies and disposed of tribute in kind. An overseer of barter and trade (veedor de rescates y contrataciones) saw to commercial contracts with the natives and in case of war claimed the king’s share of booty. An accountant (contador) recorded income and outgo and was the guardian and interpreter of royal instructions. A treasurer (tesorero) was entrusted with monies and made payments in the king’s name. If the expedition resulted in a permanent settlement these officials continued their duties there, protecting the interests of the crown in a new colony. There was a strongly commercial side to these earliest treasuries, supervised after 1503 by the House of Trade (Casa de Contratacion) in Seville. The factor in particular served as the House’s representative, watching the movement of merchandise and seeing that the masters of ships enforced the rules against unlicensed passengers and prohibited goods. He also engaged in active and resourceful trading, exchanging the royal tributes and taxes paid in kind for necessary supplies. (Bushnell KC)

In 1524 the newly created Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias) assumed the supervision of overseas treasuries, a duty it retained throughout the Habsburg period except for a brief interval of 1557-62. (Bushnell KC)

In theory, Indians had been legally exempt from tithing since 1533, but in practice this varied. Florida missionaries argued that even a native owed his tithes and firstfruits—to them, not to the crown or the bishop. [Note 4: Friars in chapter to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/19/1681] (Bushnell KC)

During the early 16th century, royal officials were necessarily granted sources of income to support them until their treasuries should have regular revenues. Juan de Anasco and Luis Hernandez de Biedma, De Soto’s accountant and factor, had permission to engage in Indian trade as long as the residents of Florida paid no customs. They and the two other treasury officials were to receive 12 square leagues of land each and encomiendas of tribute-paying natives. [Note 20: Instructions to De Soto and permissions to the treasury officials 5/4/1537] As the century wore on, such supplements to salaries were curtailed or forbidden. (Bushnell KC)

Slaves completed the household. Technically, these could be Indian or even Moorish, like the girl Isabel, who belonged to De Soto’s wife Isabel de Bobadilla and was branded on her face. [Note 37: In lawsuit of Hernan Ponce de Leon vs. Isabel de Bobadilla 1/16/1546.] AN4 (Bushnell KC)

In 1563, trading and raiding corsairs conducting an undeclared war were driven by Spanish patrols from the Antilles to the periphery of the Caribbean: the Main, the Isthmus, and Florida. (Bushnell KC)

By 1565, founding date of the treasury under study, Spanish presence in the Indies was 73 years old. The experimental stage of government was past; institutions of administration had taken more or less permanent shape. A network of royal treasuries existed, some subordinate to viceroyalties or presidencies and others fairly independent. Principal treasuries with proprietary officials were located in the capital cities; subordinate treasuries staffed by lieutenants were at seaports, mining centers, or distant outposts. The factor had become a kind of business manager, administering tributes and native labor. The overseer’s original functions were forgotten as the crown turned its attention from commerce and conquest to the dazzling wealth of mines. As a result of the overriding interest in precious metals, overseers were confined to duty at the mints; in places without a mint their office was subsumed under the factor’s. And wherever there was little revenue from tribute the factorship was disappearing as well. The treasury of Florida had its beginnings in a maritime enterprise. This was no haphazard private adventure, but the carefully organized joint action of a corporate family and the crown. Pedro Menendez de Aviles was a tough, corsairing Asturian sea captain known to hold the interests of his clan above the regulations of the House of Trade, but the king could not afford to be particular. In response to French settlement at Fort Caroline, Philip II made a 3-year contract (capitulacion) with Menendez, naming him Adelantado, or contractual conqueror, of Florida. At his own cost, essentially, Menendez was to drive out Rene de Laudonniere and every other interloper from the land between Terra Nova (Newfoundland) and the Ancones (St. Joseph’s Bay) on the Gulf of Mexico. Before three years were out he was to establish two or three fortified settlements and populate them. [Note 3: “Agreement between Dr. Vazquez of the Council in the name of the King, with Pedro Menendez de Aviles, 3/15/1565.”] The bounds of Florida in the 1565 contract did not include the northern Gulf Coast, called Amichel. This was corrected in 1573 by a codicil extending the adelantado’s territory around the Gulf to the border of New Galicia: the River Panuco, which he proposed to penetrate and settle (cedula to Pedro Menendez de Aviles, 2/23/1573)] He did all of this, but as the French crisis escalated, the king had to come to his support. During the three years of the contract Menendez and his supporters invested over 75,000 ducats; the crown, more than 208,000 ducats, counting Florida’s share of the 1566 Sancho de Archiniega reinforcements of 1,500 men and 17 ships. Despite the heavy royal interests, the new colony was governed like a patrimonial estate. The adelantado nominated his own men to treasury office: his kinsman Esteban de las Alas as treasurer, his nephew Pedro Menendez Marquez as accountant, and a future son-in-law, Hernando de Miranda, as factor-overseer. This was open and honorable patronage, as Menendez himself said: “Now, as never before, I have need that my kinfolk and friends follow me, trustworthy people who love me and respect me with all love and loyalty.” It was also an effort to settle the land, as he once explained: “They are people of confidence and high standing who have served your Majesty many years in my company, and all are married to noblewomen. Out of covetousness for the offices [for which they are proposed], and out of love for me, it could be that they might bring their wives and households. Because of these and of others who would come with their wives, it is a fine beginning for the population of the provinces of Florida with persons of noble blood.” AN8 (Bushnell KC)

The 16th century governors, who could be called the “Asturian Dynasty,” filled the little colony with family intrigues and profiteering. All the officers, treasury officials included, were captains of sea and war who could build a fort, command a warship, smuggled a contraband cargo, or keep a double set of books with equal composure. AN9 (Bushnell KC)

As early as 1549 the offices of factor and overseer had become to be combined in the Indies. Two years before St. Augustine was founded the crown determined that the smaller treasuries did not need the factor-overseer either, and that that official’s duties could be divided between the accountant and the treasurer. A factor-overseer was named for Florida nevertheless, because Spanish occupation there began as an expedition of conquest: a factor was needed to guard the king’s property, and an overseer to claim the royal share of booty and to supervise trade. The adelantado expected Florida to become an important, populous colony with port cities, which would need a manager of commerce. Although the St. Augustine treasury turned out to be a small treasury indeed, it kept a factor-overseer for over 60 years. He was the business manager who received the royal revenues paid in kind and converted them to cash or usable supplies at auction, whether they were tithes of maize and cattle, the king’s share of confiscated goods, tributes, or the slaves of an estate undergoing liquidation. Whatever was to be auctioned was cried about town for several days, for it was illegal for the treasury to conduct a sale without giving everyone a fair chance to buy. Cash was preferred, but the auctioneer sometimes accepted a signed note against unpaid wages. [Note 14: Bartolome de Arguelles 3/30/1601] It was the factor in a presidio, as in an armada, who was accountable for the storage and distribution of the king’s expendable properties: supplies, provisions, trade goods, and confiscated merchandise. For these duties he had an assistant called the steward of provisions and munitions (tenedor de bastimientos y municiones). The first steward for the enterprise of Florida, it happened, was appointed ahead of the first factor. Pedro Menendez named his friend Juan de Junco to the position while they were still in Spain. In 1578 Juan’s brother Rodrigo became factor-overseer and technically Juan’s superior. Rodrigo suggested that stewards were needed at both St. Augustine and Santa Elena, and the crown agreed to consider it. [Note 15: Cedula to Gov. Menendez Marquez 2/9/1580] The other officials saw the need of two stewards, but not of their colleague Rodrigo. Treasurer Juan de Cevadilla, shortly after he arrived, said that in the beginning a treasurer had been in charge of the armada provisions and supplies, assisted by a steward, who was paid 50 ducats a year above his plaza. If the same were done in Florida the factor’s position could be abridged. Accountant Bartolome de Arguelles tried to speed the cutback by saying that it looked as if Factor Rodrigo de Junco had nothing to do. The office of factor was meant for places with mines, he said. The work of an overseer—looking after musters, purchases, and fortifications—was done by the accountant in Havana, and Arguelles thought he could handle it in St. Augustine. [Note 16: Juan de Cevadilla, Havana, 5/12/1580; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591] The Council might have been more impressed with his offer had he not gotten the duties of factor and overseer reversed. (Bushnell KC)

In Pedro Menendez’s contract with the king (as rewritten following news of a French settlement in Florida) the adelantado was promised certain trade concessions, the wages for 300 soldiers, and 15,000 ducats. This was the first stage of the Florida subsidy, lasting three years. (Bushnell KC)

Pedro Menendez, as part of his contract with the king, was entitled to claim an immense area 25 leagues on a side-more than 5,500 square miles, by Lyon’s calculation. He was also privileged to give out large tracts (caballerias) to gentlemen and smaller ones (peonias) to foot soldiers. Although many of these grants were in Santa Elena, when the two presidios were combined the settlers from Santa Elena were given lands in and near St. Augustine as though they had been there from the start. (Bushnell KC)

A final type of revenue-producing royal property was the monopoly. The king had a tendency to alienate his monopolies by giving them out as royal favors (mercedes). Pedro Menendez’s contract, for example, promised the adelantado two fisheries in Florida, of fish and of pearls. Since the pearl fishery did not materialize, this clause meant, in effect, that only the governor or his lieutenants had the right to fish with a drag net or a seine, and this privilege was enforced. AN13 When the dispute over the Menendez contract came to a formal end in 1634, the family’s one remaining property in Florida was this fishery. [Note 46: Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574; Juan Diez de la Calle, Madrid 1646] (Bushnell KC)

To encourage the search for mines the royal contract with Menendez allowed 10 years (from the date of first smelting) during which the quinto on bullion was to be reduced to a tenth. In spite of all efforts, however, no mines were discovered, either of minerals or of gems. Soldiers told tales around the campfire of the great Moyano diamond, but the multicolored mountain from which it came was never seen again. (Bushnell KC)

A secondary source of bullion was buried treasure. It could be the hoard of an Indian chief, the secret cache of a pirate band, or the place where survivors of a wreck had hidden money that was too heavy to carry and would legally belong to the salvors and the king. This source of treasure the crown willingly considered. Twice after the capture of Fort Caroline, Philip II commissioned persons to check out the stories of French prisoners, both of whom claimed to be the sole survivor of a treasure-burying incident. In the second case the cache was supposed to be 35,000 ducats, and the king reminded the governor of Cuba, to whom the matter was entrusted, to collect the quinto. (Bushnell KC)

The prizes of war were another source of the quinto. Ships were captured from corsairs as well as lost to them. Pedro Menendez de Aviles took thorough advantage of a 6-year letter-of-marque entitling him to any prizes he or his men might take, subject to the crown share of 1/3. (Bushnell KC)

Due to a shortage of ships, the crown was often forced to allow trade to foreign vessels. The earliest reinforcements ever to arrive in the new Florida colony, in the Archiniega expedition of 1566, shipped out in Flemish ships whose owners refused to embark from San Lucar without licenses to load return cargoes of sugar and hides in Cuba and Santo Domingo. [Note 66: Cedula to the House of Trade 1/23/1566] The Flemish operated legally; other visitors did not. (Bushnell KC)

From 1567 to 1571 the fiscal offices assigned to Menendez’s armada for the defense of the Indies doubled as garrison inspectors and auditors and possessed Florida treasury titles. (Bushnell KC)

Havana and St. Augustine, one week apart in good sailing weather, had been forced into frequent contact by the necessities of defense and supply. For several years it appeared that the Florida settlements, younger than either Havana or Santiago by half a century, were going to take the lead, especially when the two governorships were combined in the person of Pedro Menendez in 1567, and Havana became little more than a supply depot for the adelantado’s Florida garrisons and Indies Fleet. It received a subsidy for troops the same year Florida did, but for only a third as many. In the Menendez clan, loyalties were wholly personal. The Asturians’ allegiance to Philip II did not extend to cooperation with his servants or compliance with his bureaucracies.

With most of the rest of the clan they also served in the new Indies Fleet (Armada Real de la Guardia de las Costas e Isles y Carrera de las Indias) that Pedro Menendez built in 1568, brought to the Caribbean, and commanded until 1573. (Bushnell KC)

When the [1565] contract was renewed, along with its trading privileges, only 150 men were provided for, and their wages were to be taken from Menendez’s new armada’s subsidy, which was funded equally by the Tierra Firme and New Spain treasuries. (Bushnell KC)

Auditing was done at the convenience of crown-appointed investigators, usually officials from the Fleet. One of these, Treasurer Andres de Eguino, discovered in 1569 that Steward Juan de Junco, Menendez’s earliest treasury appointee, had false scales with which he systematically cheated the king’s soldiers. AN14 Junco’s confederates at once initiated a cover-up. Lieutenant-Governor Las Alas refused Eguino the use of a boat to visit the fort on Cumberland Island and interview the substitute treasurer there. Magistrate Martin de Arguelles ordered Eguino to surrender the book containing his evidence. When the visitador tried to transport Junco and several key witnesses to Spain, Pedro Menendez Marquez, at that time acting governor of Cuba, treated his proposal with derision. [Note 13: Andres de Eguino Florida audit and visita, Havana, 8/9/1569 to 9/9/1570]

Since there were as yet neither products of the land to tax nor royal revenues to administer, the nominal officials of the king’s coffer continued about their business elsewhere: Las Alas governing the settlement of Santa Elena (on present-day Parris Island), Miranda making voyages of exploration, and Menendez Marquez governing for his uncle in Cuba. With most of the rest of the clan they also served in the new Indies Fleet (Armada Real de la Guardia de las Costas e Isles y Carrera de las Indias) that Pedro Menendez built in 1568, brought to the Caribbean, and commanded until 1573. From 1570 to 1574 the fiscal officers of that armada were the acting treasury officials for Florida, loosely supervising the substitutes who kept the supply records and muster lists for the various garrisons. They would not consent to live there. Meanwhile, the king issued Miranda and Menendez Marquez their long-awaited titles. Las Alas, under investigation for withdrawing most of the garrison at Santa Elena and taking it to Spain, was passed over in favor of a young nephew of the adelantado’s called variously Pedro Menendez the Younger and the Cross-Eyed or One-Eyed (El Puerto). Of the three royal appointees Pedro was the only one to take up residence. The others continued to name substitutes. (Bushnell KC)

Because it established claim by occupation to North America from the Chesapeake Bay southward, Florida was an outpost of the empire to be maintained however unprofitable. Any of its unexplored waterways might be the passage to the East. AN16 With this in mind, Philip II had renewed the Menendez contract when it expired, letting the subsidy for the Indies fleet cover the wages for 150 men of the garrisons. Three years later, in 1570, the king changed this provision to give Florida a subsidy of its own. Despite this underwriting of the colony the adelantado remained to all purposes its lord proprietor. (Bushnell KC)

The first epidemic reported among mission Indians was in 1570; the next, in 1591. (Bushnell KC)

In 1570 the Florida subsidy was separated from that of the Indies Fleet, though Florida support remained a charge on Tierra Firme, along with a new subsidy for Havana [Note 2: Cedulas to the royal officials of Tierra Firme and Vera Cruz, both dated 2/18/1574] ...The 23,436-ducat total that the officials of Tierra Firme were told to supply yearly beginning in 1571consisted of 18,336 ducats to ration 150 men and 1,800 ducats for powder and ammunition, and 1,500 ducats for “troop commodities.” [Note 4: Cedula to the royal officials of Tierra Firme 11/15/1571] (Bushnell KC)

“Ambar” was the most precious product naturally available. At 25 pesos the ounce, a pound of it in a tooled leather case made a princely gift to a high official in New Spain. Whether it was ambergris or fossilized resin is still a matter of genial debate. The author leans toward the latter, jewel amber, partly because of the well-founded arguments of Eugene Lyon, and partly from reading in a report attributed to Pedro Menendez Marquez that “from Cape Canaveral to Santa Elena there is a quantity of ambar thrown up on the coast. There are whale fisheries there but it does not come from whales. It is believed to be resin produced by the sea, which hardens in the air.” [Note 84: Anon. 11/20/1655; Juan de la Rosa, San Luis 12/24/1677 in Leturiondo visita of 1677-78; Pedro Menendez Marquez fragment of a voyage description 1573] AN36 (Bushnell KC)

When the Tierra Firme treasury was divided in 1573 into one at Nombre de Dios and one at Panama, Philip II moved responsibility for Florida’s subsidy to the new Spain coffer of Vera Cruz, which had financed the luckless Tristan de Luna expedition to the Pensacola area in 1559. (Bushnell KC)

In 1573 the king moved to establish royal control by appointing Dr. Alonso de Caceres, a distinguished member of the audiencia of Santo Domingo, to investigate Pedro Menendez Marquez’s term as Cuban lieutenant governor. [Note 14: Cedula to the royal officials of Santo Domingo 2/18/1573] At the time, the outside investigator was the crown’s chosen means of detecting frauds and recovering treasury deficits. There were three kinds of investigation: a pesquisa was a secret inquiry into almost anything; a residencia was a judicial inquiry into a bonded official’s completed term; AN37 and a visita was the investigation of an entire local bureaucracy and its activities, past and present. In practice the three were not strictly differentiated. Dr. Caceres first conducted a pesquisa and came up with 50 counts on which to try Menendez Marquez. As judge of the residencia he found him guilty on 38 of them and referred his case to the Council. Caceres had also been ordered to go to Florida for a one-month visita, but he never embarked on it. Menendez Marquez and Esteban de las Alas were heard to boast at the door of a tavern that they would put the judge ashore at Tequesta and let the Indians see that he did no further harm, and it was possible that they meant it. [Note 15: Alonso de Caceres, sentence of Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana 2/20/1574; Francisco Manrique de Rojas, declaration, in act against Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana 6/31/1574] AN38 Without visiting Florida, Caceres nonetheless formed an opinion on how it was being managed. In a lengthy report which avoided direct accusation of the adelantado, he explained that the numerous lieutenant governors and officials in the Florida forts were kinsmen or close connections of the Menendez clan in Cuba, all of them doing as they pleased what would profit them. No one outside their group could ship salt meat or any other foodstuff to Florida, for no skipper would load it. The clan monopolized shipping, priced the supplies, figured the payroll, and took each other’s accounts, “and so they remain with everything.” [Note 16: Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574]

Quintos were also paid on salvage. Salvors worked at their own expense in the 16th and 17th centuries as they do now, receiving the right to a wreck in return for half of what they recovered. This might or might not benefit the treasury. When the Portuguese Juan Fernandez de Cea and his caravel of sailors recovered 2,390 pounds of Jean Ribault’s bronze cannons off the coast of Florida, Pedro Menendez Marquez, then lieutenant governor of Cuba, accepted 1,115 pounds of the cannon without telling the crown. [Note 90: Cedula to Geronimo de Rojas Avellaneda 4/22/1577, and letter from Gov. Juan Bautista de Rojas, Havana, 2/20/1574] (Bushnell KC)

When he died in 1574, acting governorship shifted from his son-in-law Diego de Valasco to the already-mentioned Hernando de Miranda, husband of Menendez’s one surviving legitimate heir. (Bushnell KC)

Pedro Menendez de Aviles for this purpose endowed five of his and his wife’s kinswomen with 200 to 300 ducats each. [Note 16: Domingo de Leturiondo to Gov. Marques Cabrera, San Pedro de Potohiriba 11/28/1685; Maria Menendez y Posada, Madrid, before 11/3/1629, included with a petition of the heir, Madrid, before 6/30/1630; Pedro Menendez de Aviles will, San Lucar 1/7/1574.] (Bushnell KC)

Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, onetime accountant of the Menendez armada, was commissioned in 1575 to visit the forts in Florida, inspect the artillery, and report on the governor and officials. His services were cheap (200,000 maravedis a year instead of the 3,000 ducats the Council would have had to pay someone else), for the reason that he, too, was under sentence of perpetual exile and loss of office, for trafficking as an armada official. [Note 19: Cedula to Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo 12/31/1575; Council re Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo 10/4/1574. He eventually took the assignment at a salary of 275,000 maravedis (Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, Havana, 2/12/1577]

A more likely source of wealth was pearls. In his exploration of the Southeast, De Soto discovered a cache of freshwater pearls belonging to the Lady of Cofitachique and his men packed them into their saddlebags by handfuls. Their story was one to be remembered, and Menendez saw to it that his contract included the rights to a pearl fishery. Pardo and Moyano, exploring the interior at the adelantado’s command, were presented with many fine specimens, but the Cusabo revolt of 1576 put an end to their plans. (Bushnell KC)

In 1576 the Cusabo Indian uprising resulted in the massacre of Pedro Menendez the Younger and two other treasury officials. Governor Miranda abandoned the fort at Santa Elena and returned to Spain to face charges of desertion. [Note 11: Council 10/21/1579; Hernando de Miranda to Secretary Ledesma 1594.] (Bushnell KC)

Transportation costs varied according to whether the ships were chartered or presidio-owned. In 1577 it cost 2,000 ducats to bring a years’ worth of supplies from New Spain in two hired frigates; the governor said that owning the ships would have saved ¾ of it. [Note 37: Pedro Menendez Marquez, Santa Elena 10/21/1577] (Bushnell KC)

the crown categorically refused to allow the enslavement of Florida Indians, even those who were demonstrably treacherous. The native women whom Diego de Velasco had sold (one of them for 25 ducats), Visitor Castillo y Ahedo told through a translator that they were free, “and each one went away with the person of her choice.” [Note 38: Cedula to the governor of Cuba 8/10/1574; Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, Havana, 2/12/1577.] (Bushnell KC)

Treasurer Juan de Cevadilla and Accountant Lazaro Saez de Mercado were shipwrecked twice along their journey and reached St. Augustine 2.5 years after they were appointed. [Note 1: Titles and instructions to Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado 4/13/1577.] The scattering of forces among several forts before 1587 called for multiple substitutes and stewards. (Bushnell KC)

In 1577 a new fund was added to the situado when Governor Marquez and the treasury officials were given permission to collect half their salaries out of it. The governor’s half-salary was 1,000 ducats. When there were three proprietary officials in the treasury, each one getting 200,000 maravedis (533 ducats) in cash, the figure for administrative salaries came to 2,600 ducats a year. Menendez Marquez soon got permission to draw his entire salary from the situado—for a limited period, he was cautioned; but the privilege was extended to succeeding governors, raising the budget for salaries by 1,000 ducats. This was reduced by one royal official’s half-salary when the position of factor-overseer was suppressed. Only when an auditor was residing in St. Augustine did the salaries fund rise above 3,067 ducats. [Note 12: Cedula to Gov.-elect Martinez de Avendano 6/18/1595; Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopes de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles, 9/13/1600; list of cedulas and licenses given to Gov.-elect Fernandez de Olivera, made on 5/12/1613 for Gov. Trevino Guillamas; cedula to the royal officials of New Spain 9/9/1598] (Bushnell KC)

Partly because of the shortage of currency and the inadequate harbor—but also because Florida’s east coast had little to export, once the sassafras boom ended—St. Augustine was not a regular port of call. This meant that whoever was chosen collector of the situado must double as garrison purchasing agent. Wine and flour produced in New Spain and sold in Havana cost over twice as much there, in 1577, as the same provisions in Spain. Governor Menendez Marquez found it necessary to exchange situado silver for gold at a loss and send it to Spain by a light, fast frigate, to buy meat and olive oil. In 1580 the presidio obtained permission to send two frigates a year to the mother country or the Canaries, but as prices and taxes rose there, flour and other foodstuffs had to be found increasingly in the colonies. [Note 40: Gov. Menendez Marquez, Santa Elena 10/21/1577; Gov. Menendez Marquez to Treasurer Martin de Quiros 4/8/1578. The exchange cost from gold to silver at Lima was 12% in 1557.] (Bushnell KC)

Before Castillo y Ahedo could get to Florida, Indians massacred two of the proprietors and one acting official when they landed on the island of Sapala en route between forts. Dona Mayor de Arango, widowed by the death of Treasurer Pedro Menendez the Younger, AN39 lamented to the crown that everything the royal officials had with them had been stolen by the Indians: their belongings, the account books and, by inference, the money they were taking to pay the soldiers. Others said that the Indians had not touched the king’s silver, which was on a different boat. Enough books and supporting materials were produced for Castillo to expand his visit into an audit. It was a frustrating experience; as he said, “In Florida I did not find, nor was there ever, an account which was clear.” [Note 20: Dona Mayor de Arango 12/1577; act on the Indian uprising, La Yaguana, Espanola 1/19/1577; Bartolome Martinez, Havana, 2/17/1577; Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, Havana, 12/28/1578] Dona Mayor left for Havana with 4,000 ducats, which the shipmaster buried for her in the floor of his room. Someone else brought her another 800 ducats. When the auditor realized how much was missing he returned to Havana and put dona Mayor under house arrest. With him, he hoped, was sufficient evidence to indict the whole Menendez clan, living and dead. In the last resort, he said, everything was chargeable to the adelantado. Pedro Menendez Marquez, busy in the Indies Fleet, had been only peripherally involved. The Council sent him to reconquer the Florida provinces from the Indians (who were apt to ally themselves with French corsairs) and told Castillo not to interfere with his finances. [Note 21: Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, Havana, 1/18/1577 and 2/12/1577, and 12/10/1577; Council re Indian uprising 3/20/1577; Pedro Menendez Marquez, Santa Elena 10/21/1577; cedula re Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo 10/13/1578]

Regular (as opposed to patrimonial) administration of the Florida accounts began in 1577 as a consequence of the Castillo visit, but was slow to develop. In 1580 the crown attempted to tighten its control on all overseas treasuries and impose new taxes. Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado were the appointees who brought the orders to St. Augustine, promising, “From now on, the amount being spent will always be known, and the care that is taken of the exchequer.” The Florida treasury, they discovered, was not as stable as it should be. Their predecessors kept them waiting three months to take office. Governor Menendez Marquez denied their authority as royal judges, as administrators of the situado and supplies, and as regidores. He refused to allow them a notary or bailiff to assist with the inspection of ships. He would not let them have a key to the royal warehouse nor show them the payroll for construction of the fort. He tried to make them receive goods without the proper affidavits. He had soldiers building huts half a league from town, and he would not tell the royal officials why. The crown took up these complaints over the next three years in a steady stream of admonitory cedulas. The most significant of these approved the new treasury proprietors’ plan to take turns being situador, converting them almost involuntarily from servants of the crown into Florida entrepreneurs. [Note 22: Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado 3/6/1580; Juan de Cevadilla 5/12/1580 and 1/22/1582]

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)

Pedro Menendez Marquez’s salary as governor of Florida began the day he resigned his title of Admiral of the Indies Fleet—more important than his concurrent one of Florida accountant. [Note 37: Cedula to the royal officials 6/3/1578] (Bushnell KC)

After the revelations of the residencia judge the governorships of Florida and Cuba were separated. The new governor in Havana was sent 200 slaves and the money to complete El Morro. Menendez Marquez, badly needed in the Fleet of the Indies, spent the next three years as an admiral. The Council never communicated his sentence of exile and suspension to him; it hung over his head for the rest of his career. [Note 18: Cedula to the royal officials 6/3/1578; Council re Pedro Menendez Marquez, Madrid, 2/15/1578; Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana 7/1/1574 and 6/15/1578]

The appointee leaving for the Indies from Spain received a number of licenses, of which some served as passports. Ordinarily, one could take his immediate family, three slaves, and up to four servants to the New World. Because the crown was anxious to preserve the faith pure for the Indians, there could be no one in the household of suspect orthodoxy. AN41 To discourage adventurers, testimony might have to be presented that none of the servants was leaving a spouse in Spain, and the official might have to promise to keep them with him for a period of time. AN40 Other licenses served as shipping authorizations. A family was permitted to take, free of customs, 400 to 600 ducats’ worth of jewels and plate and another 300 to 600 ducats’ worth of household belongings. Sometimes the amount of baggage allowance was specified. Because of the crown policy of strict arms control, weapons were limited to the needs of a gentleman and his retinue. An official might be permitted six swords, six daggers, two arquebuses, and one corselet. At the option of the appointee the standard licenses could be supplemented by additional paperwork. Gutierre de Miranda carried instructions to the governor to grant him building lots and lands for planting and pasture as they had been given to others of his quality. AN42 Juan de Posada had a letter stipulating that situadores were to be chosen from the proprietary officials and were to receive an expense allowance. [Note 13: The cedulas are dated 7/6/1579 and 4/21/1592.] (Bushnell KC)

Once more the king came to the rescue, doubling the number of soldiers he would support. [Note 12: Council 10/21/1579] Florida began the slow shift from a proprietary colony to a royal one. (Bushnell KC)

The only person considered capable of holding the provinces against heretic and heathen alike was Admiral Pedro Menendez Marquez, awaiting sentence for misdeeds as lieutenant-governor of Cuba. The Council granted him both a reprieve and the acting governorship of Florida, and he sailed for St. Augustine. Along with the three new appointees to the treasury, he had permission to pay himself half his salary from the yearly subsidy, or situado. [Note 13: Alonso de Caceres, sentence against Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana, 2/20/1574; Council 2/15/1578 and 10/21/1579.] The provinces that he pacified did not remain quiet for long. (Bushnell KC)

When Pedro Menendez Marquez went to Florida with reinforcements to restore a fort at Santa Elena, the crown doubled the size of the garrison but increased the subsidy by only 4,000,000 maravedis, or 10,668 ducats. This was corrected in 1579 when the situado was raised to 47,770 ducats. Soon afterward, the crown accepted the new royal officials’ plan for collecting the situado themselves, by turn, and administering the supplies. [Note 5: Council 10/21/1579; royal officials 3/6/1580. A description of the prior system is found in Nicolas de Aguirre report 11/20/1578, translated in Colonial Records.] The total did not change substantially for the next 90 years. An inflationary rise in the cost of provisions was absorbed by the soldiers, who plazas were converted to a flat 1,000 maravedis per month (115 ducats a year) to cover both rations and wages. ...The 1,500 ducats for “troop commodities” was a bonus (ventajas) fund used for increasing the base pay of officers and of soldiers on special assignment, such as working in the counting house or singing in the choir. It doubled with the size of the garrison in the 1570s, but after the temporary reduction during the governorship of Ybarra the second 1,500 ducats was not restored. (Bushnell KC)

In 1580 the crown gave permission for treasury officials to obtain 30 able-bodied male slaves left over from the building of a stone fort. From time to time these were replenished. [Note 32: Royal officials 1/5/1580, summarized with Council comments 6/4/1580; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591; Int. Gov. Nicolas Ponce de Leon II, n.d., with Junta de Guerra reply of 11/29/1674] (Bushnell KC)

A second crown revenue AN43 from shipping was the import and export duty on trade: the almorifazgo, which later officials would write “almojarifazgo.” It was a complicated tax whose rate could be varied in numerous ways: by the class of goods, by their origin, by whether or not they were being transshipped, by the port of exit or entry (colonial or Indies), by special concessions to the seller, carrier, or consignee, and perhaps most, by the individual interpretations of correct or confused officials. The year after St. Augustine was founded the duties on Spanish imports were doubled from 2.5% to 5% ad valorem on articles leaving port in Spain, and from 5% to 10% on the same articles at their increased value in the Indies. AN44 The tax on wine more than doubled, changing from a total of 7.5% to 20%. Products of the Indies leaving for Spain paid 2.5% at the port of origin and 5% upon arrival. At the time, all this was theoretical as far as Florida was concerned. The adelantado and his lieutenants had been exempted from the almorifazgo for the three years of his contract, and the first settlers for 10 years. The export tax apparently began in 1580, the year the Florida provinces were given permission to send two ships a year to the Canaries or Seville. At the same time the crown granted up to 300 ducats from the situado to build a customs house on the wharf in St. Augustine—a suggestion that became a command three years later. [Note 56: Cedulas to the royal officials 9/30/1580 and to the governor and royal officials 4/26/1583] The governor and royal officials used the proceeds of the export almorifazgo to pay their own salaries until 1598, when the crown assigned that income for the next four years to the parish church. The rate at which the tax was then being collected is unknown. In 1600 the auditor set it at 2.5%. (Bushnell KC)

In 1580 Captain Thomas Bernaldo de Quiros negotiated a treaty of tribute and vassalage with the Indians of Guale, and other tribute arrangements may have existed with the natives of the lower coast. [Note 107: Cedula to the royal officials of Yucatan 3/5/1571; papers of Captain Thomas Bernaldo de Quiros 1/26/1580] (Bushnell KC)

In 1580 a French galleass entered the St. Johns estuary for trade and information. Menendez Marquez took two frigates to the scene and defeated the Frenchmen in the naval battle of San Mateo. (Bushnell KC)

In most places treasury officials had already had their trading privileges withdrawn; they soon lost the right to operate productive enterprises such as ranches, sugar mills, or mines, for every time a royal official engaged in private business there was fresh proof of why he should not. [Note 21: Recop. 2/15/1528 to 10/4/1600] The laws of the Indies lay lightly on St. Augustine, where the proprietors were more apt to be governed by circumstance, and in 1580 the restriction on ranches and farms was removed. [Note 22: Council, Madrid 6/4/1580] (Bushnell KC)

A sobrecedula in 1580 directed the governor of Florida, whose people could scarcely venture out of their forts, to make careful and widespread measurements during the coming lunar eclipse, for the purpose of establishing longitude. [Note 2: Sobrecedula on the eclipse 5/20/1580] AN45 (Bushnell KC)

Roman numerals began going out of use in 1580, but for another 50 years or more a numeral could be written either way.

Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez went on visita (circuit inspection) with Bishop Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano, as captain of his armed escort. [Note 69: Cedula to Gov. Menendez Marquez 7/11/1583; Anon 6/27/1606] (Bushnell KC)

Four years later [after 1580] the Potano Indians of the interior staged an uprising and were driven from their homes. [Note 14: Report on the Battle of San Mateo (between 9/1/1580 and 12/30/1580); Bartolome de Arguelles 8/3/1598).] (Bushnell KC)

In the drafty halls of Spanish government AN51 the left hand did not necessarily know what the right was doing. In 1585 Menendez Marquez, under suspended sentence for fiscal malfeasance, received a letter which read: “It is very inconvenient that ordinarily there is no explanation given to my Council of the Indies of the manner in which the subsidy is distributed and spent at those forts, and the rest of what comes into the hands of those officials. So I have ordered that every year the accounts be taken and sent to the Council. When you receive this cedula have the officials present themselves, the treasurer and accountant and factor, and ask a sworn report from them of the time they have not accounted for, and examine the books. If they are overdrawn, charge it to them and their bondholders and properties and put it into my coffer. At the beginning of every year take the same accounting from them and report to my Council.” It was the same form letter that would be sent five years later to Interim Governor Gutierre de Miranda. [Note 23: Cedulas to Gov. Menendez Marquez 11/22/1585, and Int. Gov. Gutierre de Miranda 5/6/1590] The approved procedure for taking accounts was this: Once a year the governor, with the help of a notary and two regidores as outlined in the Ordinances of 1554, counted the cash in the treasure chest, inventoried the supplies in the warehouse, and struck a balance in the books between receipts and disbursements, deciding one by one whether the entries were legitimate and adequately documented. The royal officials were expected to explain any discrepancy and settle any deficit within three days. Certain difficulties were inherent in this plan. It was unhandy to render accounts yearly when the subsidy to which the accounts were tied did not come every year. It was unseemly to take accounts with the help of regidores, when the only regidores in Florida were the three treasury officials. Taking accounts was also time-consuming and called for a degree of interest and skill. Menendez Marquez, quondam [former] merchant, royal accountant, and smuggler, was capable, if not entirely trustworthy, but most Florida governors were ordinary career officers. [Note 24: Bartolome de Arguelles 11/2/1598; cedula to Gov. Menendez Marquez 3/31/1583; Alonso de Caceres, sentence of Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana, 2/20/1574; Lic. Montoya de la Serna to Juan de Ovando, President of the Council, Monte Real y Bayona 11/30/1572] Mendez de Canzo could not comprehend why one could not make entries into closed books. Pedro de Ybarra, when he got his form letter, answered curtly, “I cannot take accounts. I am a soldier. AN52 [Note 25: Cedula to Gov. Mendez de Canzo 10/22/1599; Gov. Ybarra 5/10/1605] A final problem was that whereas financial summaries went to the Council, fiscal appeals did not. Treasurer Juan de Cevadilla argued that the 1533 cedula referring Florida-Panuco appeals to Mexico still applied, and the crown did not disagree. The fact that Pedro Menendez had obtained a contract codicil to explore and take possession of the coast as far as the southern Panuco border seemed to support the treasurer’s claim. [Note 26: Diego Sans de San Martin for Juan de Cevadilla 1585]

The French crisis of 1565-68 was followed by the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1603 and the Dutch War of 1621-48. (Bushnell KC)

A Spanish monarch had elevated ideals for his treasury officials. By law no proprietor might be related by blood or marriage to any other important official in his district. In Florida this was impracticable. The creole families intricately intermarried and quickly absorbed eligible bachelors. Juan de Cevadilla described his predicament: “[When] Your Majesty made me the grant of being treasurer here eight years ago I decided to establish myself in this corner of the world, and not finding many suitable to my quality I married dona Petronila de Estrada Manrique, only daughter of Captain Rodrigo de Junco, factor of these provinces. If Your Majesty finds it inconvenient for father-in-law and son-in-law to be royal officials I shall gladly [accept a] transfer. But the limitations of the land are such that not only are the royal officials related by blood and marriage, but the governors as well.” [Note 18: Juan de Cevadilla 10/25/1585] AN53 (Bushnell KC)

Incidentally, the guns of St. Augustine (never known to kill anyone but their gunners) AN54 were extremely valuable. Governor Menendez de Canzo, the artillery expert who defeated Drake in the harbor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, advised the king to withdraw the ordnance from St. Augustine altogether because it attracted corsairs. He was convinced that Drake had stopped by Florida in 1586 only for the treasure chest and the guns. [Note 91: Drake took 13 or 14 large bronze guns from the captured fort.] (Bushnell KC)

Pedro Redondo Villegas had secret information that someone had removed 19,000 ducats from the treasure chest just before Drake captured it, and this may have been true. A member of the English raiding party wrote that the coffer he saw had already been broken open and ransacked. [Note 94: Cedula to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/14/1600. The acting officials in 1586 were Alonso Sanchez Saez, Juan de Junco, and Bartolome de Arguelles. Their report on the raid is in 6/17/1586.] (Bushnell KC)

Sir Francis Drake stopped by St. Augustine long enough to burn its two forts (the 5th and just-finished 6th) and the town, which is why subsequent financial reports gave no figures earlier than 1586, “the year the books were burned.” AN55 (Bushnell KC)

It was the treasury officials’ privilege and duty to reside in the houses of government (casas reales) where the coffer was kept. These buildings varied in number and location along with the relocations of the town. During the 16th century St. Augustine moved about with the sites of the fort. According to Alonso de las Alas, the first presidio, known to him as “Old St. Augustine,” was built on an island facing the site of the town he lived in. St. Augustine was moved “across to this side” when the sea ate the island out from under it. In its new location on the bay front the town had a guardhouse, an arsenal under the same roof as the royal warehouse, and perhaps a customs-counting house at the dock. [Note 65: Alonso de las Alas 1/12/1600; royal officials 1/5/1580 (Council summary 6/4/1580); cedulas to the royal officials 9/30/1580, and the governor and royal officials 4/26/1583] There were no official residences. Three successive governors rented the same house on the seashore—Governor Ybarra thought it a most unhealthful location. This St. Augustine, and a new fort on the island of San Juan de Pinillo, were destroyed by Drake in 1586; [Note 66: Juan de Cevadilla, Havana, 8/18/1586] (Bushnell KC)

To consolidate their forces the Spanish again abandoned Santa Elena, and this time did not go back. [Note 15: Bartolome de Arguelles, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Pedro Lopez de San Julian, 1/23/1602.] The 12 Franciscans who arrived in 1587 ready to commence their apostolic mission found Spanish settlement contracted to a single outpost. (Bushnell KC)

The soldiers evacuated from Santa Elena in 1587 were reimbursed for their lost property by 1,391 ducats from the surpluses of the situado. [Note 22: Cedula to the governor 2/21/1590; Santos de las Heras 2/10/1658, and replay 4/7/1660; Junta de Guerra 2/6/1680, in reply to Gov. Hita Salazar 11/4/1678] (Bushnell KC)

At the end of the 16th century Bartolome de Arguelles, who had been in Florida 24 years and traversed it from Santa Elena to the Keys, said it was his impression that there were relatively few natives. [Note 55: Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591] (Bushnell KC)

The first epidemic reported among mission Indians was in 1570; the next, in 1591. (Bushnell KC)

In 1586 permission arrived for an extra 50,000 maravedis a year with which to pay two stewards. It was better to have persons with rewards and regular salaries in positions of responsibility, the authorizing official noted; a plain soldier could not raise bond, and losses would result. [Note 17: Cedula to the royal officials 9/16/1586] Juan de Cevadilla, by now Rodrigo de Junco’s son-in-law, had a brother Gil who became the second steward. This convenient arrangement lasted until Cevadilla died in New Spain in 1591. Junco was promoted to governor but, on his way to St. Augustine from Spain, was shipwrecked and drowned in the St. Johns estuary along with Treasurer-elect Juan de Posada. The kings’ choice for a new factor never made the trip to Florida. For the time being, Accountant Arguelles was the only royal official. With Santa Elena permanently abandoned there was need of only one steward. Arguelles persuaded the incoming governor to remove both Gil and Juan and install Gaspar Fernandez de Perete instead, on the full 50,000 maravedis salary. [Note 18: Bartolome de Arguelles instructions to the steward 5/12/1591] (Bushnell KC)

Juan de Posada, for instance, was an expert navigator who sometimes doubled as lieutenant governor for his brother-in-law Pedro Menendez Marquez. He once calculated for the crown that a good-sized galley, a 100-man fort, or four frigates would all cost the same per year: 16,000 ducats. Posada was bringing back a title of treasurer for himself in 1592 when his ship sank and he drowned off the Florida coast, which he had once called easy sailing. [Note 17: Juan de Posada 1/1581; Bartolome de Arguelles 3/18/1599.] (Bushnell KC)

A [Spanish gentleman's] lady had female companions near her own rank—usually dependent kinswomen, although Governor Menendez Marquez introduced two young chieftainesses to be raised in his house and to attend his wife, dona Maria. [Note 10: Cedula to Rodrigo de Junco 4/17/1592; Catalina de Valdes 1616.] (Bushnell KC)

(There was little he could do about lightning. In 1592 a bolt struck the powder magazine and blew up 3,785 ducats’ worth of munitions.) (Bushnell KC)

In 1592 the obligation was transferred to the royal treasury in Mexico City, where it remained for the rest of the Habsburg period. [Note 3: Cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 4/21/1592.] (Bushnell KC)

The royal treasury of St. Augustine differed from the ones elsewhere mainly in that it had fewer revenues. For various reasons, the economy of Florida never approached that of a settled, populous, or productive region. European settlement there, however early by North American standards, had gotten a late start in Spanish terms. In the rest of the Indies, debate had been going on for years about Indian rationality, just wars and slavery, forced conversions, encomiendas (allotments of tribute or service), and the alienation of native lands—and while theologians and lawyers argued, soldiers and settlers exploited. By the time the Florida conquest began, these questions were more or less settled. Although not advanced enough to be subject to the Inquisition, the Indian had been determined a rational being. He could not be held in servitude or have his lands taken. It was forbidden to enter his territory with arms and banners or to resettle him anywhere against his will. [Note 28: Cedula to Bartolome de Arguelles 8/18/1593.] Florida was to be conquered through the Gospel—not the fastest way. (Bushnell KC)

Juan Menendez Marquez obtained the Florida treasurership in 1593 when he was betrothed to the 12-year-old daughter of the former treasurer, Juan de Posada, and of Catalina Menendez Marquez, the governor’s sister. (Bushnell KC)

In 1593 the crown authorized an unspecified fund for making gifts to Indians: the gasto de indios. Perhaps it was meant to take the place of the allowance for munitions, for Philip II was serious about his pacification policy. Those on the scene never achieved unanimity over whether to accomplish the conquest by kindness or by force. [Note 13: Cedula to the royal officials 9/29/1593] (Bushnell KC)

Captain Francisco de Salazar asked to have stricken from his record the fact that mutinous troops had once forced to him act as governor. [Note 19: Francisco de Salazar 6/9/1593] (Bushnell KC)

Pedro Menendez and most of his lieutenants, including Pedro Menendez Marquez, tried to limit their demands on the natives to carrying baggage and providing food when they were on the march. [Note 106: Alonso de las Alas and Juan Menendez Marquez 12/13/1595; Gaspar Marquez, Chief of San Sebastian and Tocoy 6/23/1606] They even obtained a 6-year grant from the crown entitling Florida to the surplus Indian tribute from Yucatan: maize, blankets, honey, chickens, and wax. (Bushnell KC)

Later in the 16th century Chieftainess Maria of Nombre de Dios village—a real dona Marina with a Spanish soldier for a husband—had each of the 48 vecinos in her district bring the Spaniards one arroba of maize. The royal officials auctioned it off at four reales the arroba but advised the chieftainess not to require this in the future because her people were poor. The officials knew that the unconverted and unconquered were watching. They should not resist becoming subjects of the king on account of a little maize. [Note 108: Alonso de las Alas and Juan Menendez Marquez 12/13/1595] (Bushnell KC)

Nonetheless, when Governor Avendano visited the districts of San Juan, San Pedro, and Guale he imposed a one-arroba requirement on the pacified natives of those places, covenanting with the chiefs not to let the soldiers take any more. Alonso de las Alas, the factor, did the collecting. Avendano, on his way back from this visit, collapsed on the beach from a pulmonary hemorrhage and died. [Note 109: Alonso Sanchez Saez 1/6/1596; Fr. Francisco Pareja et. al. 1/14/1617; Alonso de las Alas 12/11/1595] (Bushnell KC)

One of the grievances against Governor Mendez de Canzo was that he had named one of his relatives, a common retail merchant, captain of a company and let him appoint as ensign a lad “of small fortune” who had been working in the tanner. [Note 2: Bartolome de Arguelles 8/3/1598.] (Bushnell KC)

The royal revenues that treasury officials in the Indies gathered were varied. The Mexico City coffer, from which Florida received the situado, provides a good example. In 1598 its major accounts receivable were, in order of descending value: tribute, taxes on bullion, the monopoly of mercury, import and export taxes, sales tax, the tax of the crusade, the monopoly of playing cards, and the sale of officers. Grouped by category, the revenues of mines supplied the largest share of that treasury’s yearly income, tribute came next, and commerce third. The impecunious crown soon exploited further sources of revenue: the clearing of land titles, the legitimizing of foreigner and mixed blood status, and voluntary contributions. On an infant colony such taxes were imposed lightly if at all, yet after a reasonable length of time a normal treasury was expected to begin producing revenue. This did not happen in Florida, where all the royal revenues put together were not enough for regular forwarding to the king. Still, the funds generated were sufficient to cover a number of ecclesiastical and provincial expenses, to aid in provisioning the garrison, and to occupy the royal officials’ time. The crown’s incomes fell into five categories: 1. Ecclesiastical: tithes and indulgences. 2. Crown properties: lands, productive enterprises, slaves and convicts, royal offices and monopolies. 3. Shipping: freight charges and customs duties. 4. Barter, salvage, and booty: the king’s treasure taxes. 5. Personal levies: tribute and donations. In the Indies the tithes (diezmos) were meticulously divided. One-quarter of the revenue went to the bishop, one-quarter to the cathedral chapter. Of the remainder, 2/9 went to the crown, 4/9 to local clerics, and 3/9 to the construction of churches and hospitals. Therefore, although the tithes were collected and administered by the treasury officials, they were of little or no profit to the crown. In theory, Indians had been legally exempt from tithing since 1533, but in practice this varied. Florida missionaries argued that even a native owed his tithes and firstfruits—to them, not to the crown or the bishop. [Note 4: Friars in chapter to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/19/1681] We will return to the subject of Franciscan exactions under the heading of tributes. The legitimate tithes administered by the royal officials in St. Augustine came from Spanish Christians. (Bushnell KC)

A reduction in expense was not a revenue. The royal officials at the treasury in St. Augustine were supposed to be charging import almorifazgos of their own: 10% ad valorem on cargoes direct from Spain, 5% on the increase in value of Spanish goods transshipped from another colonial port, and 5% ad valorem on any colonial goods, even from another port in Florida. During the 16th century this almorifazgo was haphazardly applied. Accountant Arguelles reported that Governor Mendez de Canzo did not pay taxes on half of what the presidio boats brought him, yet it is evident that the royal officials did not know what percentage to charge. [Note 59: Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598] AN21 (Bushnell KC)

His [Gov. Avendano] replacement Mendez de Canzo, had scarcely arrived in St. Augustine when the Guales rebelled, killing five friars—half of the missionary contingent in Florida. The new governor moved the loyal Indians of San Pedro temporarily nearer the Spaniards and reduced their tribute to a token six ears until their fields should begin producing. Other chiefs who came to render obedience were promised the same concession. Mendez de Canzo eventually brought the insurgents under control by driving them from their villages and burning their crops. As pacification proceeded he restored the missions, returned the people to their homes, and reinstated the tribute. To assure his food supply he called in natives and paid them to clear land and grow maize near St. Augustine. [Note 110: Bartolome de Arguelles 8/3/1598] (Bushnell KC)

When Juan Garcia, backed by his kinsman the governor, foreclosed on the pitiful shacks of soldiers and charged them collection costs (decimas y costas), Accountant Arguelles shook his head in disapproval. Such severity was something new in Florida, which in 1598 was a land as yet without sustenance or productivity. [Note 59: Bartolome de Arguelles 8/3/1598; Juan Nunez de los Rios 1/19/1600] (Bushnell KC)

Mendez de Canzo used 1,500 ducats of his predecessor’s estate to cover a shortage in the situado. [Note 71: Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598] (Bushnell KC)

Cevadilla died in New Spain owing the treasury more than 21,000 ducats; five years later there had still been no audit of his books because the auditor assigned to do it was in prison. The treasurer’s widow, Petronila de Junco (niece of Juan of the notorious scales), entreated the crown to send someone else, as she was being detained in St. Augustine against her will. When a cedula arrived ordering the governor to attend to her, treasury officials Bartolome de Arguelles and Juan Menendez Marquez were serving as interim-co-governors due to the death of Martinez de Avendano. Finding time and Petronila on their hands, they had already started balancing the books of both her husband and her father, deceased Factor Rodrigo de Junco. Cevadilla owned nothing that could be attached, Arguelles reported, and Junco’s accounts were impossible to take because his estate was in Oviedo, most of his bondholders were dead, and Drake had burned the books. As a gesture, the officials put their colleagues Factor Las Alas and Steward Fernandez Perete on half-salary until they should account for what funds had passed through their hands. [Note 27: Bartolome de Arguelles 11/2/1598 and 5/15/1602; cedulas to the royal officials 5/22/1596, and re Petronila de Junco 6/13/1596] When Governor Mendez de Canzo arrived to take office, Arguelles and Menendez Marquez finished the accounts and closed the books.

The peninsula could not be properly explored; as late as 1599 there was uncertainty over whether or not it was an island. (Bushnell KC)

In these first uncertain years the presidios (garrison outposts) were little more than segments of an anchored armada, supported but not rigorously supervised by the crown. (Bushnell KC)

a later St. Augustine [was destroyed], by fires and a hurricane in 1599. [Note 66: Alonso de las Alas 1/12/1600] (Bushnell KC)

The bar at the entrance to their harbor was shallow at low tide, especially after the great hurricane of 1599, which altered many coastal features. Use of the harbor was consequently restricted to vessels under 100 tons or flat-bottomed flyboats on the Flemish model. [Note 51: Alonso Menendez declaration in act on St. Augustine, San Juan de Ulua 5/30/1601] (Bushnell KC)

The first customs house was evidently destroyed in the fires or flood of 1599. To replace it, the officials asked for and received an addition to the counting house. They also were allowed a customs constable on salary and a complement of guards when there were goods on hand for registration or valuation. [Note 64: Bartolome de Arguelles, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Pedro Lopez de San Julian 1/23/1602; Gov Ybarra 2/5/1605] (Bushnell KC)

During the course of the 17th century, the treasury at St. Augustine built up precedents that achieved the practical force of law. Cedulas from the crown were respectfully received and recorded, but not necessarily implemented. In this the officials followed the ancient principle of “I obey but do not execute” (“obedezco pero no cumplo”), a form of particularism expounded for the adelantado in 1567 by his friend Francisco del Toral, Bishop of Merida: “For every day there will be new things and transactions which will bring necessity for new provisions and new remedies. For the General Laws of the Indies cannot cease having mild interpretations, the languages and lands being different, inasmuch as in one land and people they usually ignore things in conformity to the times. Thus it will be suitable for your lordship to do things there [in Florida] of which experience and the condition of those natives have given you understanding.” [Note 22: Letter of 4/5/1567.] The Florida creoles, born in the New World of Spanish parents, referred to long custom to justify their actions, and this argument was taken seriously. [Note 23: Santos de las Heras and Domingo de Leturiondo 10/8/1657; Gov. Marques Cabrera 12/8/1680 and 3/20/1686; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 7/6/1689.] The Franciscan commissary general for the Indies, writing the year after publication of the great Recopilacion de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, observed that some practices in the Indies were not amenable to change after so long a time. [Note 24: Christoval de Viso to secretary of the Council, Madrid, 6/27/1682.] Perhaps it was only right that there should be flexibility in the application of laws. Florida was an exception to the usual colony. It had been founded for reasons of dynastic prestige, and for those reasons it was maintained, at a cost out of all proportion to benefits received. The colony did not mature beyond its initial status of captaincy general. It was a perennial military frontier that was never, under the Habsburgs, absorbed by another administrative unit. The governors were military men with permanent ranks of admiral, captain, sergeant major, or colonel, who took orders from the Council and the Junta de Guerra (Council of War) alone. It was a dubious distinction, for wartime coordination with New Spain or Havana depended upon mutual goodwill rather than any sense of obligation. The French, when not at war with the Spanish, made more reliable allies. [Note 25: Gov. Zuniga y Cerda to Gov. Chacon, castellan of el Morro, Havana, 10/3/1704, with enclosures of 1/11/1701 and 6/7/1704.] In his civil role the governor answered neither to the audiencia (high court and governing body) in Santo Domingo nor the one in Mexico City, and he took orders from no viceroy. In the 17th century the crown moved with majestic deliberation to establish the authority, first of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, then that of Mexico City, over civil and criminal appeals; responsibility for treasury audits was handed back and forth between the Mexico City Tribunal of Accounts and the royal auditor in Havana. These measures did not affect the Florida governorship, which remained independent. As Governor Marques Cabrera explained more than once, no audiencia cared to be responsible for poor frontier provinces. Distances were great, navigation was perilous, and ministers were unwilling to make the journey. AN74 [Note 26: Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 11/24/1660; Gov. Marques Cabrera, 6/14/1681 and 1/25/1682.] If mines of silver had been found within its borders, New Spain would have annexed Florida without delay. Not everyone was satisfied with a separate status. The friars thought that prices would be lower if the governor were subject to some viceroy or audiencia (or were at least a Christian). And royal officials grumbled that there was little point in the king’s having appointed them to a republic of poor soldiers, in which the governor disregarded his treasury officials and answered to no audiencia. [Note 27: Friars in chapter 1/14/1617; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/30/1627.] For their own reasons, the accountant, treasurer, and factor often made the governor look more autocratic than he was. Florida may not have been a popular democracy, but neither was it a dictatorship. There were within the community carefully drawn class distinctions based on inequalities of status and income, and the officials of the treasury were gentlemen, expecting and receiving the honors due to their class. They were not mere quartermasters on the governor’s staff. As proprietors of treasury office and judges of the exchequer they were his quasi-peers, and as titled councilmen of the one Spanish city in Florida they were his civil advisory council, just as the sergeant major and captains were his council of war and the priests and friars his ecclesiastical counselors. The governor who ignored the advice of these men of experience was spoken of disparagingly as “carried off by his own opinions.” (Bushnell KC)

Near town on the commons, the hidalgo’s family like all the rest was allocated land for growing maize, and after the six-month season his cows browsed with those of commoners on the dry stalks. In 1600 the 80 families in town were said to own from two to ten head of cattle apiece. (Bushnell KC)

In a place as precedent-conscious as St. Augustine, the cases defining what was to be done about leaves of absence were important. Factor Alonso de las Alas quarreled with Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez in 1595 over whose turn it was to go for the situado. Las Alas thought he had won, but when he got back from New Spain the treasurer and the governor indicted him for bringing part of the situado in clothing instead of cash. At their recommendation the Council suspended him for four years without salary. [Note 55: Juan Lopez de Aviles 2/23/1600] After his reinstatement Las Alas requested a 2-year leave to go to Spain. The treasurer had obtained a similar leave on half-salary the year before, but the crown felt no obligation to be consistent: Las Alas had to take his leave without pay. [Note 56: Alonso de las Alas 5/24/1602; cedula to Juan Menendez Marquez 3/21/1603] (Bushnell KC)

Disregarding Pedro Menendez’s idea to move the settlement to the site of an Indian village west of the San Sebastian inlet, Governor Mendez de Canzo rebuilt it a little to the south, where the landing was better protected and a curving inlet provided a natural moat. He laid a bridge across the nearby swamp, sold lots, and bought up lumber. In spite of the treasury officials’ disapproval he began paying daily wages to repartimiento workers and put the soldiers to work clearing land. To finance his real development he exacted contributions from those with houses still standing, approved harbor taxes, cut down on bonuses and expense allowances, and diverted the funds sent for castillo construction. The king helped with four years of tithes, 276 ducats from salvage, and 500 ducats besides. [Note 67: Gov. Mendez de Canzo to Gov. Ybarra 1603; Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/18/1600; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598] Following Philip II’s 1573 ordinances for town planning, Mendez de Canzo laid out the plaza in back of the landing: 250 by 450 feet, large enough for a cavalry parade ground. AN75 Around the plaza he constructed a new guardhouse, a royal warehouse doubling as a treasury, and a governor’s mansion. He also built a gristmill and an arsenal and started a counting house onto which a customs house could be added. [Note 68: Bartolome de Arguelles, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Pedro Lopez de San Julian 1/23/1602; cedula to Gov.-elect Ybarra 2/10/1603; Cristobal Gonzalez and Anton Martin (seen in Junta de Guerra 1608); Gov. Ybarra 1/8/1604] The royal officials might have the right to live in government houses, but they did not intend to move into quarters that were inadequate. (Bushnell KC)

In the 16th century the officials of the supporting treasury were supposed to ask for a muster of the garrison and deduct the amount for vacant plazas from the situado. During the 17th century it was more common to use the surplus (sobras) from inactive plazas as a separate fund. [Note 19: Cedula to Gov. Ybarra 6/9/1603; Francisco de la Rocha and Juan de Puey 1/16/1684; Fr. Francisco Martinez memorial, seen in council 6/15/1658] In 1600, encouraged by the presence of a royal auditor, the officials volunteered that funds were accumulating in the treasury from the reserve for munitions, the freight on presidio vessels, and royal office vacancies. The surplus amounted to around 60,000 pesos by 1602—almost a whole year’s situado. They suggested that as it was difficult to find the revenues locally to cover the unpaid half of their salaries, they could draw on these reserves. [Note 20: Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600; cedulas to the royal officials of Mexico City 9/29/1602 and 8/30/1603] The king’s financial advisors, greatly interested, told the officials of the Mexico City treasury to send the next Florida situado to Spain and to reduce future situados to reflect effective rather than authorized strength. From the Florida royal officials they asked an accounting of all unused monies to date. Much later, other officials received permission to collect the rest of their salaries from reserves, but the reserves no longer existed. [Note 21: Cedulas to Gov. Ybarra 6/9/1603 and 7/25/1603; Juan Menendez Marquez 4/21/1603; cedula to the royal officials 8/1/1626, enclosed with Nicolas Ponce de Leon 12/12/1634] The crown had its own opinions on likely surpluses and what to do with them. (Bushnell KC)

Yet in 1600, Juan Menendez Marquez as situador had to charter three boats in San Juan de Ulua and a fourth in Havana. [Note 37: Juan Menendez Marquez, Havana 6/1600, sent from St. Augustine 4/13/1601] (Bushnell KC)

The rare accounts written by situadores en route describe the difficulties of collection, purchasing, and transportation from their point of view. After giving bond and receiving his instructions and power of attorney, the situador was issued a boat and crew. He left them in the harbor of San Juan de Ulua and journeyed up the road past Puebla de los Angeles to Mexico City. There he paid the appropriate bribes and waited for his report on presidio strength to be checked, his supply ship’s tonnage approved, and the situado delivered. All this took time. The situador executed private commissions, saw friends, and enjoyed a taste of big-city life. Perhaps he put a portion of the king’s money out at interest or made other imaginative use of it. By the early 17th century, household items, coarse fabrics, and Indian trade goods were available at the workhouses of Mexico City and Puebla. In Vera Cruz there was flour of questionable quality. The paperwork for this large-scale shopping took more time, for local fiscal judges had to supply affidavits that Florida was not being charged an inflated price. Loading at San Juan de Ulua proceeded relatively undisturbed by port authorities: presidio supplies were exempt by royal order from either sales tax or customs. With his ship loaded, the situador waited with his counterparts from other Caribbean presidios for a warship to escort them and carry their registered money as far as Havana. [Note 41: Santos de las Heras to the Lord Secretary, Mexico City, 3/15/1654; Juan Menendez Marquez, Havana 6/1600, and St. Augustine 4/13/1601; cedulas to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/14/1600, and the royal officials of Vera Cruz 9/29/1593; Bartolome de Arguelles, report on the situadores 1585-1598, 5/15/1602] Floridians preferred to avoid this stop if they could, for creditors lay in wait at the Havana harbor, and Cuban officials acting in the best interests of their island would attempt to attach part or all of the situado. The crown, which had interests of its own, might have sent them instructions to impound the situado for use in Spain. With creditors and crown outfoxed, the situador might still face a long wait until the coast guard reported the seaways clear of corsairs and the fleet was ready to sail northward through the Bahama Channel. There is no telling how much of the Florida situado in both supplies and specie was lost en route. Buccaneers grew so bold in the late 17th century that they sometimes waited at anchor outside the St. Augustine harbor. To elude the enemy, Floridians crossed their bar at low tide; or they sailed in September and October under great danger of storms. The likelihood of disaster was compounded by defective ships. AN76 The Nuestra Senora del Rosario capsized in the very harbor of San Juan de Ulua with 3,000 pesos’ worth of supplies aboard. Another vessel, apparently being bought on time, was lost off Key Largo and the crown strongly advised that payment be stopped on it. [Note 43: Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 5/21/1686; Pilot Gaspar Perez de Mancilla 1/20/1682; Gov. Salina 1/30/1623; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655; cedula to Gov. Torres y Ayala 6/5/1698] A lost subsidy might be ordered replaced, but the sum could only be added to the arrears in the Mexico City treasury already owed to the presidio. (Bushnell KC)

To encourage production, new settlements of Spaniards in the Indies were usually free from tithing for the first 10 years. While the adelantado’s contract did not specify this, it probably held true for Florida. [Note 5: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 4/1/1688] The tithes first gathered were so minimal that they enjoyed a certain independence-by-neglect. At the end of the 16th century the royal officials mentioned that they were collecting them in kind, auctioning the produce like any other royal property and using the proceeds to pay their own salaries. As can be seen in Table 4, the tithes of 1600 amounted to 840 pesos, ¾ of which came from sales of maize, and the remainder from miscellany (menudos), probably other preservable produce. If the tithes of this period were collected at the rate of 2.5%, as they were later in the century, this suggests a titheable production worth over 33,000 pesos. Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez noted in 1602 that the tithes of 1600 had been auctioned immediately after harvest; the tithes of 1601 (which he did not disclose) only appeared to be higher because he and the other officials had stored the maize until its price had risen by half, then the presidio had to buy it to ration slaves and soldiers. [Note 6: Bartolome de Arguelles 3/30/1601; Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 7/10/1685; Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602] AN79 Around this time the crown ordered that the tithes go for four years toward construction of a parish church, a disposition that was gradually extended to 20 years. After that, church construction and maintenance were subsidized by 2,000 ducats from the vacancies of New Spain bishoprics, and the Florida officials were permitted to use 516 ducats of the local tithes to pay secular clergy salaries, letting the remainder accumulate. Whenever the fund reached 4,000 or 5,000 reales the crown sent instructions on how to spend it. (Bushnell KC)

Royal offices were a form of property expected to produce income every time they changed hands. Treasury offices became venal for the Indies in the 1630s; other offices already being sold were ecclesiastical benefices and military patents, which at least once included the Florida captaincy general. In many of its overseas realms the crown sold municipal offices as well, but not in Florida. When a royal cedula dated 1629 arrived asking for a list of the offices it might be possible to fill in that land, Accountant Juan de Cueva responded that there were no new settlements; the only town of Spaniards was the one at the presidio. [Note 38: Juan de Cueva report on offices 1/9/1631 in Gov. Rodriguez Villegas 12/27/1630] One office frequently sold or farmed out in the Indies was that of tribute collector (corregidor de indios). For reasons that will be seen, this office did not exist in Florida. The St. Augustine treasury received revenue from the auction of lesser posts such as public and governmental notary or toll collector on the Salamototo ferry, but this income was inconsequential and almost certainly never reached the crown. [Note 39: Cedula to Gov. Torres y Ayala 1/24/1696] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Mendez de Canzo’s first report to the crown from St. Augustine suggested that the mariners be paid from these ship revenues. The crown responded by requesting the governor to report on all presidio vessel income, what it was converted to and, and on what spent. Accountant Bartolome de Arguelles replied on his own. The governor, he said, saved himself 1,000 ducats a year in freight by use of His Majesty’s flyboat. [Note 53: Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600; cedula to Gov. Mendez de Canzo 11/9/1598; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598] (Bushnell KC)

Auditor Pedro Redondo Villegas, coming to Florida in 1600, ordered that almorifazgos be collected on all imports regardless of point of origin, seller, carrier, consignee, or kinds of goods. In his view, supplies bought with situado funds were as liable to entry duties as the goods purchased by individuals. AN80 The treasury officials in St. Augustine, as purchasing agents for the garrison, were accustomed to buy naval supplies tax-free from the skippers of passing ships. Their defense was that if the treasury charged the skipper an almorifazgo, he added the amount of it to his price and the cost was passed on to the soldiers, which they could ill afford. But when the auditor insisted that even naval supplies were subject to import duties, the treasury officials acceded without further protest; the revenue was to be applied to their salaries. [Note 60: Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600] At San Juan de Ulua, the port for Vera Cruz, the officials imposed an import almorifazgo of 10% on Spanish goods, based on the appraised value of the goods in their port. The Florida officials assumed that their own import tax on the same goods should be 10% of the increase in value between the appraisal at San Juan de Ulua and the appraisal they made in St. Augustine. Redondo Villegas, rummaging about in Juan de Cevadilla’s old papers, found what was probably the tax schedule of 1572-74 saying that the proper percentage was 5 if the goods had paid 10% already. [Note 61: Bartolome de Arguelles, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Pedro Lopez de San Julian 1/23/1602] Presumably this was the rate the royal officials adopted for Spanish merchandise that did not come directly from Spain. They collected it in a share of the goods, which they exchanged preferably for cash at auction. Auditor Redondo Villegas had gone too far. In 1604 the crown repeated the presidio’s 1593 exemption with clarifications for his benefit: (Bushnell KC)

Auditor Redondo Villegas believed that the worst evil in Florida was the trouble between the royal officials and the governor. [Note 83: Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/18/1600] Such a view would be easy to exaggerate. There was after all no point in repeating, letter after letter, that things were going well, especially when governmental business in Florida did not operate smoothly within the law. At such times the creole royal officials and the peninsular governor were in agreement about matters of the treasury, the military, justice, and municipal and provincial government, they formed an impenetrable power block to forward their joint interests and made no report on these to the crown. From St. Augustine, official silence was tantamount to collusion. (Bushnell KC)

the crown categorically refused to allow the enslavement of Florida Indians, even those who were demonstrably treacherous. ...Governor Mendez de Canzo was forced to liberate the Surruques and Guales whom he had handed out as the spoils of war. [Note: 39: Gov. Mendez de Canzo, edict 1/21/1600] (Bushnell KC)

There were many problems with the situado, part due to unavoidable shortages and part to venality and graft. From the beginning there was a scarcity of currency. Both the Vera Cruz and the Mexico City officials were instructed to deliver the situado to its commissioned collectors in reales, since that was the coin in which to pay soldiers. Yet in spite of repeated injunctions to pay in coined reales (reales acunados) the officials preferred to keep their specie at home. Instead they supplied silver in crudely shaped and stamped chunks called planches or even in assayed ingots (plata ensayada) which the soldiers chopped into pieces. AN81 In 1601 Accountant Juan Menendez Marquez acting as situador could collect only 37% of the total in coin. [Note 24: Diego de Velasco 8/31/1575; cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 9/18/1604; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591; Juan Menendez Marquez, Havana 6/1600, sent from St. Augustine 4/13/1601. Ingots were worth two reales less per mark than coined silver (cedula to the royal officials of Vera Cruz 2/9/1580] (Bushnell KC)

The governor understood that if he dissolved the cabildo the treasury officials would report his mismanagements in detail throughout his stay. A common letter of complaint began: “The governors pay little heed to the royal officials and we have no preeminences nor rights of intervention, nor are we allowed our authority as regidores.” At this point the officials filled in their specific grievance “The governor is consenting to trade in this city with Portuguese and Frenchmen,” or “The governor is forcing us to sign prepared libranzas.” Then they attached the standard conclusion: “In all the cases that arise, whether in matters of the exchequer, the city or conversions, he takes action apart from us, and if we present the objects that occur to us he says that we have no intervention whatsoever, and if we ask for this in writing he refuses it, abusing us and speaking disrespectfully to us and threatening us if we do not go along with his opinions.” [Note 80: Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601; Bartolome de Arguelles, Francisco Ramirez, Francisco Menendez Marquez, and Juan de Cueva, 6/2/1627, with reply to the fiscal of the Council 1/12/1628] Perfunctorily the Council would warn the governor to treat the royal officials well and not to place hindrances in the way of their work, then would file the regidores’ letter with the other complaints awaiting his residencia. (Bushnell KC)

Commodity prices did not rise evenly throughout the period. According to the correspondence from St. Augustine, different necessities were affected at different times. From 1565 to 1602 the price of wine rose 40% and that of cotton prints from Rouen, 170%. The price of wheat flour seemed to rise fastest between 1598 and 1602. [Note 51: Bartolome de Arguelles 11/2/1598; Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601.] (Bushnell KC)

After Governor Mendez de Canzo had addressed Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez publicly as “vos,” his epithets of “insolent” and “shameless one” were superfluous. The crown’s reaction to such disrespect toward its treasury officials was to reprimand the offender and order him in the future to “treat them in speech as is proper to the authority of their persons and the offices in which they serve us, and because it is right that in everything they be honored. [Note 83: Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602; cedula to Gov. Menendez Marquez 4/19/1583] (Bushnell KC)

One more revenue from royal offices was the unpaid salary money (vacancias) due to the death or suspension of royal appointees. As we have seen, the vacancies of bishoprics in New Spain formed a regular fund upon which the crown drew for extraordinary expenses. AN82 The same held true for Florida, except that the money was absorbed locally the way vacant plazas were. Surplus salaries due to vacancies were sent to the crown one time only, in 1602. [Note 45: Santos de las Heras and Joseph de Prado 8/21/1653] (Bushnell KC)

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.

The Spanish crown no longer encouraged Indian trade in the late 16th century anyhow; it barely permitted it. St. Augustine was a coast guard station, a military base, and a mission center, not a commercial colony, and the government saw no reason to supply sailors, soldiers, and friars with trade goods. When Governor Mendez de Canzo made peace with the Guale Indians in 1600 the treasurer observed for the royal benefit that it was to be hoped the governor was acting out of a zeal for souls and His Majesty’s service and was not influenced by the good price for sassafras in Seville. [Note 32: Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601. The governor’s visits and pacifications, according to the treasurer, were thinly veiled trips for amber and sassafras (idem 4/21/1603).] (Bushnell KC)

Captain Hernando de Mestas, in a letter smuggled out of prison, said that the notary was his enemy and had refused him his office. “The former notary would not do what he was told,” said Mestas, “so they took the office from him and gave it to the present one who does what they tell him, and he has a house and slaves, while I am poor.” [Note 34: Hernando de Mestas 3/12/1603] (Bushnell KC)

In an effort to economize, and at the recommendation of Governor Menendez de Canzo, the crown attempted to return the garrison size to 150 men; it succeeded only in making his successor, Governor Ybarra, unpopular. [Note 6: Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; Fr. Juan Moreno 4/18/1673; Alonso de las Alas 3/12/1608] It [the 1,500 ducats for “troop commodities” was a bonus (ventajas) fund] doubled with the size of the garrison in the 1570s, but after the temporary reduction during the governorship of Ybarra the second 1,500 ducats was not restored. ...[Note 9: Cedula to Gov.-elect Ybarra 5/19/1603] (Bushnell KC)

Export almorifazgo revenue came mostly the sassafras and peltry of the Georgia coast. Realizing that St. Augustine was not a convenient shipping point, the royal officials sent a representative to San Pedro (Cumberland Island) to record cargoes, collect the tax, and see that the Indians were not cheated. [Note 57: Bartolome de Arguelles 5/15/1602; cedula to the royal officials 11/5/1598; Bartolome de Arguelles, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Alonso de las Alas 4/20/1603] (Bushnell KC)

During an interval of comparative peace the question arose whether products obtained from the Indians subject to the crown were liable to the king’s fifth and the tax on hallazgos and rescates. The Florida officials persuaded themselves that they were not, and thereafter collected only the 2.5% almorifazgo on sassafras or pelts. [Note: 83: Bartolome de Arguelles, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Alonso de las Alas 4/20/1603] (Bushnell KC)

When there was disagreement among the officials as to which of them was to manage the slaves, they were informed that the governor should do it, while they kept track of expenses. Their complaints that the governor used the slaves for personal purposes were ignored. When the slaves were not needed on the fortifications they were hired out and their earnings paid for their rations. [Note 33: Cedulas to the governors of Florida 4/19/1583, 8/11/1593, and 2/10/1603] (Bushnell KC)

Part of the reason Redondo Villegas was overstaying his welcome was that the king had extended his commission and told him to renew collections on the Cevadilla and Junco accounts, which he had determined amounted to 23,258 and 1,606 ducats respectively. AN85 [Note 31: Cedula to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/14/1600] As part of that process he threw Gil de Cevadilla and Juan de Junco the Younger in prison and coerced testimony from them against other parties. One of these was Captain Hernando de Mestas, a favorite envoy of the governor. On his way back from Spain in 1599, Mestas had been captured off Puerto Rico by French corsairs, who rifled through his trunk. Among the items they took was a Council receipt for 4,000 ducats collected from Juan de Orebe Apalua, one of the Cevadilla bondholders. Without this receipt, Mestas was unable to prove he had given the Council the money. Accountant Arguelles, himself in trouble for his easygoing collections, may have known that Mestas was a secret informer. Five days after Arguelles wrote that the auditor had him under pressure, he, the governor, and the auditor were all on good terms and Mestas was in irons in the castillo. An unannounced search of the captain’s house had produced two incriminating letters addressed to the Council. The governor, furious, held Mestas incommunicado under pain of death. Redondo Villegas slapped a demand on him for the 4,000 ducats. If the prisoner did not sign a confession that his secret reports on the governor were untrue, the king’s auditor offered to break his bones with an iron bar and make him no man. [Note 32: Alonso de las Alas 2/23/1600; cedula to Diego Ruiz Osorio, receptor of the Council 11/24/1598; Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602; Hernando de Mestas 3/12/1603] AN86 The ship carrying Redondo Villegas’ precious papers went down in the Bahama Channel, but the governor’s new envoy, Fabricio Lopez, saved the account copies and they eventually reached Spain. A letter that Mestas managed to slip out of the prison got there, too, with one parting shot. With ungrammatic emphasis the captain warned the king to disregard Mendez de Canzo’s tales of a hill of diamonds in the interior (tierra adentro), for “the perfect diamonds in the situado!” [Note 33: Cedula to Gov. Ybarra 7/25/1603; Hernando de Mestas 3/12/1603] What became of Captain Mestas is unknown; the governor was recalled to Spain and suspended from His Majesty’s service for eight years, not for conniving with an auditor, but for having appointed his 10-year-old son Antonio a company captain. [Note 34: Camara of New Spain, Madrid 5/6/1608] AN87 The Cevadilla account was finally reclosed 11 years after the treasurer’s death. Arguelles, Menendez Marquez, and Las Alas each spent years in Spain in litigation. Arguelles received his quittance in 1605; Menendez Marquez was proposed for a 1,000-ducat reward and given the governorship of Popayan; Las Alas’ reputation was rehabilitated after his death. [Note 35: Cedulas to Bartolome de Arguelles 5/26/1603 and 1/31/1604, and Juan Menendez Marquez 5/26/1603; Council 1/21/1615; Francisco Menendez Marquez seen in Council 1/9/1627]

The value of better homes in St. Augustine rose faster than the cost of living during the 17th century, perhaps indicating houses of larger size or improved quality. In 1604 the finest house in town was appraised at 1,500 ducats and sold to the crown for 1,000 as the governor’s residence. [Note 27: Gov. Ybarra 1/8/1604; Juan Menendez Marquez and Alonso de las Alas 11/26/1609.] (Bushnell KC)

By the 2nd half of the 16th century most public offices in the Indies were venal, that is to say, salable by the crown. In 1604 these offices also became renounceable: they could be sold to a second party for a payment of half their value to the coffer for the first time, and 1/3 each time thereafter. Offices of the treasury, however, were not included. It was feared that candidates would use fraud to recover the purchase price or that incompetents would find their way into office, and it was the crown’s sincere purpose to approve only the qualified. This did not mean that no arrangement was possible. Juan Menendez Marquez obtained the Florida treasurership in 1593... (Bushnell KC)

It must have been more pleasant to sail up the Inland Waterway, as Governor Ybarra did in 1604, distributing blankets, felt hats, mirrors, beads, and knives, than to burn houses and trample crops. (Bushnell KC)

Auditor Redondo Villegas had gone too far. In 1604 the crown repeated the presidio’s 1593 exemption with clarifications for his benefit: “Because they are needy and prices are high and their salaries are small I order that they not pay taxes of almorifazgo in those provinces even when it is a contract with some private person, and this goes for what may be loaded in Seville also, or in another part of these kingdoms, on the situado account.” [Note 62: Cedula to the royal officials 9/18/1604] AN88 In other words, goods charged against the situado were not to have export duties levied on them at the point of origin, or import duties in Florida. The royal exchequer was not so distinct from the presidio that one should tax the other. (Bushnell KC)

When Governor Ybarra went on visita to Guale and San Pedro he left Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez in charge. (When Ybarra returned it was necessary to have the notary read the treasurer his duties and ask him not to interfere in the king’s justice.) [Note 39: Cedula to Gov. Salazar Vallecilla 5/4/1643; Gov. Ybarra 11/8/1604 and 12/19/1604. For the treasurer’s side of the dispute, see Juan Menendez Marquez 6/14/1608] (Bushnell KC)

Pacifying the natives by trade was not effective either, for the Spanish could maintain no monopoly. For over 40 years the French continued to trade in Florida, and the Indians preferred them. In a single summer 15 French ships were sighted off the coast of Guale, coming into the Savannah River for pelts and sassafras. [Note 30: Report on the Battle of San Mateo (between 9/1/1580 and 12/30/1580; Pedro Menendez de Aviles (Seville or Madrid) 2/1565; St. Augustine 10/15/1565, and Santa Elena 7/22/1571; Gov. Ybarra 5/10/1605.] (Bushnell KC)

When the royal officials first began collecting harbor taxes, they recognized the need of a customs constable and inspector (alquacil y fiel ejecutor de la aduana) to record what was loaded and unloaded from ships. Otherwise they had to take turns at the customs house themselves, which Alonso Sanchez Saez, at least, was unwilling to do. [Note 9: He had to be kept there under guard. See Gov. Ybarra 2/5/1605 and 12/23/1605] (Bushnell KC)

In 1592 the crown forbade anyone to approach the salvaging and amber-trading Indians without presenting himself to the Florida governor beforehand for permission, and again afterwards to pay his quintos to the Florida treasury. AN90 The penalty for skipping this routine was confiscation of all booty, and a 2,000-ducat fine. Governor Ybarra asked the crown to concede to him 1/3 of the proceeds in these cases on account of the trouble smugglers caused him. The Council replied that judge and informer together could keep 1/3, but the fine could be no more than 600 ducats. Nobody in the coastal trade was likely to have 2,000 ducats, they told the governor, and no one honored a law that was unenforceable. It was the original ordinance, however, with the 2,000-ducat fine, that remained on the books. [Note 89: Cedula re bartering in Florida 4/21/1592; Gov. Ybarra n.d. with Council replay 11/21/1605] (Bushnell KC)

In 1605 Governor Ybarra asked the king to grant him a French ship his men had captured in Guale, plus the quintos on the booty if His Majesty was so minded. The most valuable of his prizes were the rich noblemen aboard, French and English, but the crown refused to let them be ransomed, not even the great corsair Beltran Rogue from St. Malo, worth it was said 200,000 ducats. Instead, Inquisition examiner Francisco de Carranco was sent to St. Augustine, and with the aid of Bishop Altamirano managed to restore all but Rogue to the bosom of the church before Ybarra hanged them as corsairs and the town’s confraternities devotedly buried them. [Note 100: Gov. Ybarra 5/10/1605, 1/4/1606, and 5/16/1607; Juan Rodriguez de Cartaya, Spain, 1/1606; Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano, Bishop of Cuba 9/4/1606] Ybarra was allowed 1,500 ducats from presidio funds for the ship, which the royal officials said was not worth 500 pesos. [Note 101: Juan Menendez Marquez and Alonso de las Alas 11/26/1609] (Bushnell KC)

During the governorship of Mendez de Canzo the friars complained that the chiefs had abdicated their order-keeping powers and the governor refused to assume them, forcing the Franciscans to move into the vacuum. A few short years later Father Geronimo de Celaya was preaching that Governor Ybarra had no jurisdiction over the natives whatever. [Note 46: Gov. Ybarra 7/27/1605] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Ybarra implored the Franciscan guardian to keep the reckless Father Celaya confined in the convent, for “if he shows me disrespect [on the street] I shall have to put him into the fort… for I must have honor to this office.” AN89 [Note 81: Gov. Ybarra to Fr. Pedro Bermejo 7/27/1605] (Bushnell KC)

The strong position taken in this cedula lasted for two years. In 1606 the crown ordered that the export tax be paid on all wine shipped to the Indies, even that going as rations for soldiers. The royal officials in St. Augustine, for their part, levied the import almorifazgo on all merchandise brought in by private persons to sell to the soldiers, over the protests of the company captains, the governor, and at times, the crown. [Note 63: Recop 8/11/1606; Gov. Salinas to the royal officials, and replies by Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez 9/8/1621; Captains Andres de las Alas and Alonso Pastrana to the royal officials 6/12/1623, and Gov. Salinas to same 6/19/1623; cedulas to the royal officials 9/10/1626, and to the president and Council of the Exchequer 8/14/1646] (Bushnell KC)

Father Francisco Carranco of the Inquisition exceeded his authority in Florida, in Bishop Las Cabezas Altamirano’s opinion, by imposing a second tribute for the support of the friars. [Note 111: Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano, Bishop of Cuba 9/4/1606] The details of this exaction are not known, nor how long it lasted. (Bushnell KC)

Bishops came to Florida only two times during the Habsburg era, in 1606 and 1674. The first of these visits coincided with the appearance of an examiner from the Inquisition, Father Francisco de Carranco, to deal with a shipload of heretic corsairs. Once the auto-da-fe was over, Father Carranco left, and Florida received no further representative of that most independent branch of the church until late in the 17th century. [Note 8: Gov. Ybarra 5/10/1605, 1/4/1606, and 5/16/1607; Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano, Bishop of Cuba 9/4/1606] (Bushnell KC)

The accountant, Bartolome de Arguelles, also received a 2-year leave to attend to personal business, and when it expired he did not return. Years later his widow, dona Maria de Quinones, was still trying to collect his half-pay to use for the dowries of four daughters. [Note 57: Council proposals for accountant 4/5/1607; cedula to the governor and royal officials 11/7/1610; dona Maria de Quinones, seen in Council 5/11/1622] (Bushnell KC)

A manifest for the Nuestra Senora del Rosario out of Seville gives the prices asked in St. Augustine around 1607 for ready-made articles imported from Spain. Linen shirts with collar and cuffs of Holland lace cost 48 or 60 reales; doublets of heavy linen were 29, 40, and 52 reales; hose of worsted yarn cost 28 reales a pair; a hat was 34 to 42 reales. Breeches and other garments were made by local tailors and their native apprentices out of imported goods, with the cheapest and coarsest linen running six reales the yard, and Rouen cloth, 10 and 18. Boots and shoes were made by a part-time cobbler from hides prepared at the tannery. [Note 65: Cargo manifest 1607; act against Fr. Alonso del Moral, included with Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683; Gov. Hita Salazar 9/6/1677; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/30/1627.] The cheapest suit of clothes must have run to 20 ducats (27.5 pesos). (Bushnell KC)

Juan Menendez Marquez, an old Indian fighter, had a contrary view. He observed that since the time of his cousin not one governor had extended a conquest or made a discovery: all had gone about gratifying the Indians at the expense of His Majesty. This was not totally true, but it should not have been surprising. [Note 13: Juan Menendez Marquez 3/14/1608] (Bushnell KC)

The people of St. Augustine put their ingenuity to work getting around the hated [import] tax. By law, no one was supposed to board or disembark from an incoming ship ahead of the official inspection, under pain of three months in prison. Interim Accountant Sanchez Saez, syndic and close friend of the Franciscans, may have been the one who suggested that the friars board vessels ahead of the royal officials. In the name of the Holy Office of the Inquisition they could seal boxes of books containing schismatic material, and only they could reopen these sealed boxes. Books were nontaxable items, and the friars, secure against inspection, could introduce high-value goods in the guise of books, untaxed. This was a common practice in the Indies. Governor Ybarra put a quick stop to the friars’ presumption. [Note 65: Gov. Ybarra 4/8/1608] (Bushnell KC)

A municipality usually reserved part of its lands for some kind of profitable use, the income of which was called a propio. The town of St. Augustine, bounded by the sea, a swamp, an estuary, and a creek, seems to have possessed no lands for income. Its only identifiable propios came from a horse-drawn gristmill, which after paying off its own construction brought in 200 ducats a year. [Note 62: Cristobal Gonzalez and Anton Martin seen in Junta de Guerra 1608; Gov. Mendez de Canzo to Gov. Ybarra 1603] AN100 (Bushnell KC)

The interim or substitute official was supposed to be someone familiar with the work of the treasury and possessed of steady character: rich, honorable, and married. It was unwise, though, to choose someone whose connections made him aspire to office himself. Alonso Sanchez Saez came to Florida with his uncle Lazaro Saez de Mercado, the accountant, and became a syndic for the friars. When Lazaro died the governor named Alonso ad interim on half-pay. At the next audit there was some question about his having been related to the former accountant, but the crown ruled that the governor could allow what was customary. Since at that time only a half of salaries was paid from the situado and the coffer had few revenues, the interim accountant’s salary translated into 100,000 maravedis a year for a 400,000 maravedi position. His requests for a royal title and full salary were ignored, as were his complaints about his heavy duties. The next proprietor, Bartolome de Arguelles, kept Alonso substituting in the counting house during his own lengthy absences. [Note 53: Alonso Sanchez Saez 5/8/1586; cedula to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/14/1600; Bartolome de Arguelles 2/20/1600] The embittered nephew, who had inherited the work but not the salary or honor of his office, made a name for himself in St. Augustine by sequestering funds, giving false alarms, and being generally contentious. The governor forbade him to sit on the same bench during Holy Week with the other treasury officials. Alonso circulated a rumor that the governor was a defrocked friar. The interim accountant and his wife, whom he always called “a daughter of the first conquerors,” were eventually expelled from town, carrying the governor’s charges against them in a sealed envelope. [Note 54: Gov. Ybarra to Alonso Sanchez Saez 4/9/1605 and 5/11/1609; Gov. Ybarra 4/8/1608; acts against Alonso Sanchez Saez 2/4/1609] (Bushnell KC)

It was also possible for the senior regidor to supply what was missing from one chest out of the other. Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez borrowed a gold chain and some wrought silver from the goods of the deceased and pocketed 3,000 reales. When a general letter of excommunication was read to cover such an eventuality, he wrestled with his conscience for “many days,” then put the money back. [Note 71: Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598; Francisco Lopez, declaration, in act against Alonso Sanchez Saez 3/17/1609. (Bushnell KC)

Salvage, booty, and barter—these were the paths to riches that appealed to Spanish Floridians, the ones toward which they devoted their valor, their knowledge of the coasts, terrain, and natives, and the ships at their disposal. Until far into the 17th century some of the king’s advisors retained their sanguine expectations. One of them recommended keeping people in Florida just to gather in the amber, gold, and pearls. He estimated that a fort could be supported on the quintos of amber and sassafras alone. [Note 80: Pedro Flores de la Coba 1610] (Bushnell KC)

Sassafras and sarsaparilla, then known as china root, were popular specifics AN101 for syphilis. Found on the Florida coast from Cumberland Island to the Savannah, they were one treasure that brought the Spanish more problem than profit. [Note 81: On the medicinal and commercial importance of Florida plants see…] Between 1595 and 1610 particularly, large numbers of French ships visited the Indians to trade for medicinal herbs, sometimes leaving factors to accumulate the next season’s cargo. The presence of French traders divided the natives into Hispanophile and Francophile factions and was the cause of prolonged war, both civil and internecine. The relatively well known Guale Rebellion of 1597 was only one phase of this long conflict. (Bushnell KC)

Arguelles’ opportunity to supervise the steward did not last. A new factor-overseer, Alonso de las Alas, quickly established his authority over the steward’s position, which he had once held. When Las Alas’ suspension was engineered a few years later, the governor replaced both him and the steward with Juan Lopez de Aviles, a veteran of the Menendez armada. [Note 22: Cedula to Gov. Mendez de Canzo 8/12/1598] The harried interim official complained that of all of the officials he was the busiest and most exposed to risk, answering for the laborer’s wages, the royal ships, and the slaves, besides the rations and supplies. [Note 23: Juan Lopez de Aviles 2/23/1600; Arguelles also complained of an extra load, but it seems clear who was doing the work (11/2/1598)] After Factor Las Alas was reinstated and recovered control of the warehouses, he used them for storage of his own goods (flour, hardtack, wine, meat, salt, blankets), and through a false door, the king’s property found its way into his house. AN103 It was said that 100,000 pounds of flour went out through that door to be baked into bread and sold in one of the shops he and the treasurer owned in town—shops they secretly supplied with unregistered merchandize. Governor Fernandez de Olivera suspended them both. His interim appointees to the treasury found Las Alas short 125 pipes of flour, 5,540 pints of wine, 1,285 pints of vinegar, and 94 jugs of oil—and this was only in the provisions. [Notes 24: Alonso de las Alas 1/24/1602; Gov. Fernandez de Olivera 10/13/1612; Juan de Arrazola, Andres de Sotomayor, and Joseph de Olivera 5/28/1612, with marginal note of 8/12/1613] On his way to defend himself before the Council, Las Alas was wounded by a pirate musketball and died owing the crown 5,400 ducats. Hoffman and Lyon, following his story, were surprised to discover three subsequent cedulas praising Las Alas’ integrity and services during an attempted colonization of the Straits of Magellan to forestall Drake. An heir of the twice-suspended factor was granted 200,000 maravedis, the salary which had accumulated after Las Alas’ death while his post was vacant. [Note 25: Cedula to the royal officials 12/5/1620] (Bushnell KC)

The friars once asserted that the cost of everything given to the natives up to their time, 1612, would not have bought the matchcord to make war on them. AN104 Anyway, since they moved about like deer, without property, there was no way to make war on them. AN105 [Note 13: friars in chapter 10/16/1612] (Bushnell KC)

The quality of silver was another problem. In 1612 the Florida officials sent over 1,000 reales’ worth of miscellaneous pieces to the House of Trade for the receptor of the Council to buy them presidio weapons. The silver from Florida turned out to be of such low fineness that no one would accept it at more than 43 reales the mark. The crown demanded to be told the source of such degraded bullion and specie. In reply, the royal officials admitted that part of the consignment was in adulterated silver and clipped coins, but they had sent it as it had been received in fines, which the crown, in order to retire what was debased, allowed to be paid in any silver bearing the royal mark. They protested, however, that most of the offending silver had come from New Spain and could not be used in Florida, where the soldiers were supposed to be paid in reales. Certainly the base alloy had not been added to the silver while it was at their treasury. [Note 28: Council to the House of Trade 3/27/1612; Juan de Arrazola, Andres de Sotomayor, and Joseph de Olivera 10/8/1612] AN106 (Bushnell KC)

Governor Fernandez de Olivera on his deathbed called a junta and appointed the accountant and treasurer to govern in his stead. (Bushnell KC)

Francisco Ramirez received the accountancy in 1614 by agreeing to marry the former accountant’s widow and support her eight children. [Note 10: Council 5/17/1614 and 7/10/1614] (Bushnell KC)

To the regret of everyone, the natives close to St. Augustine did not long survive conversion. An epidemic between 1614 and 1617 reduced their numbers by half. (Bushnell KC)

In 1615 the Indian allowance was set at 1,500 ducats, but little effort was made to stay within it. Governor Rojas y Borja made 3,400 ducats’ worth of gifts in a single year to the Indians, who called it tribute. Governor Salazar Vallecilla and the royal officials who substituted for him distributed an average of 3,896 ducats’ worth, and in one year, 6,744. [Note 14: Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/30/1627; Joseph de Prado 12/30/1654] Unquestionably, part of this was used for trade, but when the Indian allowance was reduced or withheld, the chiefs attached to the Spanish by that means became surly. [Note 15: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 3/18/1647] Eventually, the fund was used for purposes far from its original intention. Two hundred ducats and two rations of flour were assigned in 1698 from the “chiefs’ fund” to the organist of the parish church and two altar boys respectively. (Bushnell KC)

The price of slaves remained fairly constant during the 17th century. In 1616 Captain Pastrana’s drummer, whose pay he collected, was worth 300 ducats (412-1/2 pesos). [Note 44: Alonso de Pastrana 1616] (Bushnell KC)

The “pests and contagions,” lasting from 1613 to 1617, to the best of the friars’ knowledge killed half the Indians in Florida. [Note 55: Fr. Francisco Pareja 1/17/1617.] (Bushnell KC)

The value of such [material] belongings could be considerable. Governor Trevino Guillamas once borrowed 1,000 pesos against the silver service of his house. [Note 23: Gov. Trevino Guillamas 10/12/1617.] AN109 (Bushnell KC)

A revolt took further toll when Governor Rojas y Borja hanged the chieftainess of Santa Maria (St. Mary’s Island) and sentenced some of her supporters, ears docked, to hard labor on the fort in Havana. Two who were eventually pardoned found that while they had been in exile their countrymen from St. Augustine to Guale had died out almost completely. [Note 112: Fr. Francisco Pareja 1/17/1617; Agustin and Juan, natives of San Juan del Puerta, el Morro, Havana, 7/2/1636] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Trevino Guillamas found their attitude exasperating. “The friars and their rages give me all kinds of trouble, trying to intrude on the royal jurisdiction.” [Note 12: Gov. Trevino Guillamas 10/12/1617] The church was not the governor’s only rival within his own territory. Trevino Guillamas went on: “And with some of the royal officials I have the same difficulties as with friars, for they are of such a condition and nature: they want to have what is not theirs and to keep what is someone else’s.” [Note 13: Gov. Trevino Guillamas 10/12/1617] (Bushnell KC)

When in 1620 Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez was appointed governor of Popayan in South America, he retained his Florida proprietorship by means of his 18-year-old son Francisco. As the treasurer was aged and might not live to return, he requested a futura for the youth, assuring the Council that his son had been raised to the work of the office, had already served as an officer in the infantry, and was descended from the conquerors of the land. The official response was noncommittal: what was fitting would be provided. [Note 3: The story of Francisco’s futura is in Juan Menendez Marquez, n.d., with council action 4/10/1620; Council summary and reply 1/9/1627, to Francisco Menendez Marquez, n.d.; Gov. Rojas y Borja 12/18/1627; residencia of Gov. Rojas y Borja 10/9/1627 to 9/2/1630.] (Bushnell KC)

The French crisis of 1565-68 was followed by the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1603 and the Dutch War of 1621-48. (Bushnell KC)

The royal officials might have the right to live in government houses, but they did not intend to move into quarters that were inadequate. In the time of Governor Salinas the crown finally approved construction of suitable residences to be financed from local revenues and, when these proved insufficient, from the castillo fund. The proprietors were satisfied. “In all the places where Your Majesty has royal officials they are given dwelling houses,” they had said, and now there were such houses in St. Augustine. [Note 69: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez 1/4/1621, and answer 11/10/1621] (Bushnell KC)

The practice of letting some subsidies fall into arrears created new expenses to consume the other ones. A loan was taken out at the Mexico City treasury as early as 1595. Governor Salinas, in an effort to consolidate the treasury’s debts, asked in 1621 for another loan of 30,000 or 40,000 pesos to be paid off in installments of 2,000 pesos from every situado. The crown was unhelpful about retiring this debt. A representative of the Council, making a grant of 150 ducats in 1627 to Florida’s sergeant major, observed that the money was to come from the situado surpluses as soon as there were any, “which will not be for many years because it is so far in debt now.” [Note 32: Cedula to the royal officials 6/18/1595; Gov. Salinas 5/15/1621; Council re Alonso de Arguelles 3/23/1627] (Bushnell KC)

The legal trade with Spain suffered as much from overregulation as from taxes. A cedula of 1621 had licensed the presidio’s two little ships-of-permission to export pelts up to a value of 3,000 ducats a year—1,000 ducats above the former limit. By 1673 the Floridians did not find this small cargo worth their while, yet the crown refused to raise the limit further. [Note 72: Gov. Salinas 8/19/1619 and Council reply n.d.; Francisco de Madrigal to the House of Trade, Madrid 2/9/1673] (Bushnell KC)

The alcabala (sales tax) so violently resisted elsewhere in the Indies was never collected in St. Augustine. The town was primarily a missions center and presidio, and friars, Indians, and soldiers all had alcabala exemptions of long standing. The crown tried to withdraw the privilege of the military in 1621, but there is no sign that anyone in Florida paid any attention. [Note75: Recop 3/21/1621] (Bushnell KC)

In 1621 Governor Salinas was told to appoint a captain to serve during his absences, not a royal official. [Note 42: Cedula to Gov. Salinas 8/14/1621] (Bushnell KC)

In spite of the many obligations of its council, the city of St. Augustine did not have a large budget. The royal officials explained in 1621 that their municipality had no means of raising money (arbitrios) because it was “a closed presidio without vecinos except for the soldiers, with no fruits of the land, no offices to sell, and no fines to apply.” This they told the crown in order to dip into the situado for the money to build themselves houses. [Note 56: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, 1/4/1621] St. Augustine did have a little disposable income from service fees, fines, and properties. (Bushnell KC)

The most important treasure to be salvaged from wrecks, then as now, was gold and silver. When Governor Salinas went in person to the Bahamas, after the hurricane and fleet disaster of 1622, Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez accompanied him to take charge of the bullion they expected to recover. If Indians beat other salvors to a wreck it was sometimes possible to barter with them for part of the treasure. Not only did Floridians do this but also Cubans, Dutch, and English, fighting one another for the privilege. [Note 92: Gov. Salinas 1/31/1623; the royal officials 1/28/1628; Gov. Rojas y Borja 1/20/1625] (Bushnell KC)

Merchant Antonio de Herrera once brought the royal officials a list of 182 men in his debt for clothing and small loans. Although Governor Salinas authorized payment via payroll deduction Herrera was exiled shortly afterward. A few years later he reappeared by special, unexplained permission from the Council, and the soldiers were soon in debt to him again. Salinas, pleading their poverty, paid him with surplus situado funds. Governor-elect Rojas y Borja, of a more accommodating temperament, before he ever left Spain advanced Herrera directly from ensign to sergeant major of the garrison—an unlikely promotion for which the loan shark must have paid handsomely. [Note 44: Antonio de Herrera to Gov. Salinas 12/14/1619, and Gov. Salinas to the royal officials 1/7/1620; Council re Antonio de Herrera 2/17/1623; Gov. Salinas 7/18/1623; Gov.-elect Rojas y Borja to Antonio de Herrera, Madrid 1/22/1624] (Bushnell KC)

The expenses of a local treasury, including the salaries of its officers, were theoretically covered by its income. This was immediately declared impossible in Florida, where the coffer either had few revenues or its officials did not divulge them. The first treasurer, accountant, and factor-overseer occupied themselves in making their offices pay off at the expense of the crown and the soldiers. When instituting the situado, the king made no immediate provision for the payment of treasury officials. In 1577, however, when Florida was changed from a proprietary colony to a regular royal one, the crown was obliged to admit as a temporary expedient that half of the stated salaries might be collected from the situado. This concession was reluctantly repeated at 2- to 6-year intervals. [Note 26: Council 10/21/1579; Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600; Nicolas Ponce de Leon and Francisco Menendez Marquez n.d. and Council replay 8/3/1631] The widows of officials who had served prior to regular salaries were assisted by grants. [Note 27: Council re widow of Pedro Menendez de Aviles (the Younger) 9/20/1584] The royal officials pointed out between 1595 and 1608 that the revenues which they and the governor were supposed to divide pro rata were not enough to cover the other half of their salaries. Fines were insignificant, as were confiscations; the Indians paid little in tribute, and the tithes had been assigned to build the parish church. They did not think the colony could bear the cost of import duties. The treasure tax on amber and sassafras was difficult to collect. [Note 28: Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600; Alonso de las Alas and Juan Menendez Marquez 12/13/1595; Juan Menendez Marquez, Alonso de las Alas, and Alonso Sanchez Saez 3/12/1608] At last the crown resigned itself to the fact that the improvident treasury of the provinces of Florida would never pay its own way, much less support a garrison. The royal officials were allowed to collect the remainder of their salaries out of the surpluses in the situado [Note 29: Cedula to the royal officials 8/1/1626, copy enclosed with Nicolas Ponce de Leon 12/12/1634] (Bushnell KC)

When an additional real [from one to two] began to be assessed for apothecary’s insurance, the soldiers by means of petitions got the charge revoked and what they had paid on it refunded. [Note 47: petition of the Florida soldiers and cedulas of 2/9/1627 and 8/21/1629, filed with another petition of 1/14/1627.] (Bushnell KC)

Francisco’s position was ambiguous: neither interim treasurer nor proprietor. In 1627 word came into St. Augustine that the governor of Popayan [his father, Juan] was dead. When Francisco would not agree to go on half-salary and admit to being an interim appointee, Governor Rojas y Borja removed him from office and put in his own man, the former rations notary. The treasurer’s son went to Spain to argue before the Council that “with his death the absence of Juan Menendez Marquez was not ended that the use of his office should be.” The young man pleaded that he was the sole support of his mother and 10 brothers and sisters, and he bore down heavily on the merits of his ancestors. AN110 Philip IV’s reaction was angry. If the king’s lord and father (might he rest in glory) once saw fit to name Francisco Menendez Marquez treasurer with full salary in the absence of his father, it was not up to a governor to remove him without new orders from the royal person. Rojas y Borja, personally, was commanded to restore Francisco’s salary, retroactively. Since the governor’s term was concluding, he had to sign a note for the amount before he could leave town. Even without a formal futura Francisco had found his right to succession supported by the crown. (Bushnell KC)

When Notary Juan Jimenez outfitted his son Alejandro as a soldier they ran up bills of 70 pesos to the shopkeeper, 11 pesos to the shoemaker, and unstated amounts to the armorer, tailor, and washerman. [Note 66: Juan Jimenez 6/1/1627] (Bushnell KC)

In 1627 the treasury officials accused Governor Rojas y Borja of being in collusion with Portuguese merchant Martin Freile de Andrada and of allowing open trade with the French. [Note 67: Francisco Ramirez, Francisco Menendez Marquez, and Juan de Cueva 6/2/1627, with comment by the fiscal of the Council 1/12/1628] (Bushnell KC)

The governor understood that if he dissolved the cabildo the treasury officials would report his mismanagements in detail throughout his stay. A common letter of complaint began: “The governors pay little heed to the royal officials and we have no preeminences nor rights of intervention, nor are we allowed our authority as regidores.” At this point the officials filled in their specific grievance “The governor is consenting to trade in this city with Portuguese and Frenchmen,” or “The governor is forcing us to sign prepared libranzas.” Then they attached the standard conclusion: “In all the cases that arise, whether in matters of the exchequer, the city or conversions, he takes action apart from us, and if we present the objects that occur to us he says that we have no intervention whatsoever, and if we ask for this in writing he refuses it, abusing us and speaking disrespectfully to us and threatening us if we do not go along with his opinions.” [Note 80: Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601; Bartolome de Arguelles, Francisco Ramirez, Francisco Menendez Marquez, and Juan de Cueva, 6/2/1627, with reply to the fiscal of the Council 1/12/1628] Perfunctorily the Council would warn the governor to treat the royal officials well and not to place hindrances in the way of their work, then would file the regidores’ letter with the other complaints awaiting his residencia. (Bushnell KC)

In addition to fees, fines, and rentals, a municipality had two sources of emergency revenue: sisas and servicios. AN111 Sisas were excise taxes imposed on certain foodstuffs for a specific purpose and a limited time. In order to build a church, Governor Rojas y Borja declared a “tribute” on vegetables, maize, and fish. The regidores disapproved of his action because the tax was regressive, falling most heavily on the poor, and also because they had not been consulted. [Note 64: Francisco Ramirez, Francisco Menendez Marquez, and Juan de Cueva 6/2/1627] (Bushnell KC)

Dutch and English interlopers bartered with the adamantly independent Indias of Ais, Jeaga, and the Carlos confederacy to the south for amber AN112 and the salvaged goods of shipwrecks. [Note 31: Gov. Rojas y Borja 1/20/1625 and 6/30/1628.] (Bushnell KC)

The treasurer’s individual functions were those of a cashier. He received the royal revenues paid in specie and disbursed the sums that he, the other officials, and the governor had approved. The coffer was his particular responsibility; he lived in the building where it was kept. Because little money got to Florida the duties of this office were light. The gossipy Accountant Arguelles said that once the yearly payroll had been met the treasurer had nothing to do. [Note 27: Bartolome de Arguelles 2/20/1600 and 11/2/1598] Perhaps this was why in 1628, the year the factorship was suppressed, the duties of steward were given to the treasurer and the position treasurer-steward was created. [Note 28: Francisco Menendez Marquez 1644-46] In vain Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon warned the king that letting Treasurer Francisco Menendez Marquez have access to the supplies as well as the money would make him more powerful than the accountant and governor together. [Note 29: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 9/12/1638] In 1754, after three sons and a grandson of Francisco had served their own proprietorships in the treasury, a Bourbon king took the further step of suppressing the accountancy and reducing the number of officials to one, the treasurer. [Note 30: Pedro Sanchez Grinan report, Madrid, 7/7/1756] But that is outside the scope of this study. (Bushnell KC)

It was not until 82 years after De Soto’s theft that Governor Rojas y Borja followed up on the promise of pearls. An avid treasure seeker, he sent out three consecutive expeditions, two of them under the joint leadership of a Spanish ensign and a Christian chief. After many hardships the explorers relocated Cofitachique and the lagoon of pearl-producing mollusks. [Note 78: Gov. Rojas y Borja 6/30/1628] But again, exploiting the fishery would have meant extending the conquest, and this the Spanish crown in 1628, the year Piet Heyn captured the treasure fleet, was unready to do. Once more the road to Cofitachique was forgotten. AN113 (Bushnell KC)

Meanwhile, the younger colony was going into debt. As early as 1595 St. Augustine’s obligations in Havana equaled half a year’s situado. As the situados fell into arears Cuban merchants became reluctant to advance goods on credit. The crown ordered the governor of Cuba to furnish St. Augustine with emergency supplies, but this did not keep prices from rising. As the presidio went deeper and deeper into debt it began to take as long to bargain with suppliers in Havana as to collect the situado. [Note 39: Alonso de las Alas and Juan Menendez Marquez 12/13/1595] Santo Domingo’s Dr. Caceres had thought that the only way to correct Florida’s problems was to break the Menendez stranglehold on shipping and have someone in Havana administer the situado. [Note 40: Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574] Investigators and auditors from Cuba were even more convinced that this was the solution. Yet when a Cuban official at last received supervisory powers over the Florida situado it was not to regularize counting house procedure or to solve a difficulty in the balance of trade: the measure was decreed out of the financial distress of the crown. For some time after 1628, when Piet Heyn captured the silver fleet at Matanzas, the empire’s fiscal affairs were in extraordinary disorder. The effect on Florida was that situados fell so far behind and were so slowly paid that no money seemed to come into the coffer at all. When the situados were coming more regularly, with a good share in money, the royal officials made some effort to keep up with their bookkeeping. But as year after year passed and Florida seemed to be forgotten, they grew lax about everything except which of them should go next to Mexico City. Unfortunately for morale in St. Augustine, the loss of the silver fleet coincided with a cutback in the number of proprietors and the introduction of a new tax. The protests of the first accountant appointed after the reduction, Ponce de Leon, were summarized for the Council in 1631: “The Florida counting house is one of the busiest in the Indies and of the most personal labor, because it keeps the accounts and records of all that is spent and distributed on the infantry of that presidio to give them rations of comestibles—something not done anywhere else—and the same for the religious who attend that province, and the mariners who serve there, and the Indians, to sustain and clothe them, all of which requires a great quantity of paperwork. There has also been added to the counting house the offices of overseer and factor, which were consumed, and all the paperwork that went with these offices Your Majesty has ordered to be the accountant’s responsibility. Now in addition, Your Majesty orders that papers and new books be kept on the accounts and records of the tax of the half-annate.” The accountant’s conclusion was ominous: if he was not given another assistant the books were going to get behind. [Note 41: Nicolas Ponce de Leon seen in Council 2/8/1631] As we have seen in Chapter 4, a clerk of the half-annate was approved in the bureaucracy’s good time, which by then was too late.

A gentlewoman maintained her own private charities; Catalina Menendez Marquez, sister of one governor, niece of another, widow of two treasury officials and mother-in-law of a third, kept convalescent, indigent soldiers in her home. [Note 11: Maria Menendez y Posada, Madrid, before 11/3/1629, included with a petition of the heirs, Madrid, before 6/30/1630.] (Bushnell KC)

An incoming governor marveled in 1630 at the way “the Indians… die here as elsewhere.” [Note 56: Gov. Rodriguez de Villegas 12/27/1630.] (Bushnell KC)

Not unnaturally, the members of the Council who made the proposals for treasury office regarded wealth as an evidence of sound judgment, AN116 and a candidate with means had ways to sweeten his selection. By the 1630s—halfway through the period we are studying—the king was desperate enough to extend to the treasury the sale of offices and also of renunciations, futuras, and retentions. (Bushnell KC)

Treasurer Francisco Mendez Marquez was as reluctant to assume the duties of steward as the accountant was to do the work of factor-overseer; only his tactics were different. In 1630 he had his orphaned siblings, five sisters and one little brother, ask the crown for a yearly grant of 100 ducats each from the vacant salary of the factor-overseer. The proposal was denied. [Note 42: Petition of the Menendez Marquez heirs, Madrid, before 6/30/1630. For what it was worth, the six of them at length received a joint grant of 400 ducats from the surpluses of Florida or an encomienda in Peru. Their grandmother and their mother had both had similar grants that never materialized (See Council 6/30/1630 and addendum 9/18/1631; Bartolome de Arguelles 3/18/1599).] At the same time, he named Alonzo Menendez y Posada (not the 7-year-old brother by that name but their 60-year-old uncle) to the office of steward, which he reactivated. [Note 43: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655; act on St. Augustine, San Juan de Ulua 5/30/1601] The crown ignored the move.

When the factor-overseer’s position was suppressed a few years later, the vacated third residence was assigned by cedula to the sergeant major. [Note 70: Cedula to Gov. Rodriguez de Villegas 7/17/1631] (Bushnell KC)

Although the king filled the factorship once more (or honored a commitment) with Juan de Cueva, this time was recognized to be the last. Governor Salinas suggested in 1620 that an accountant and a steward were all Florida really needed. The Council, considering his letter four years later, recommended that the royal will be to suppress the office of factor-overseer in Florida and combine the positions of treasurer and steward. A certain delay in implementing this will would be unavoidable, treasury officials being lifetime appointments, but Florida officials might be given first consideration for vacancies elsewhere. In 1624 Francisco Ramirez, the accountant, was offered a transfer to the treasury soon to be established at the mines of San Luis Potosi in New Spain; Factor Juan de Cueva was to become Florida accountant in his place. Ramirez declined to move. In 1628, the year Francisco Menendez Marquez won his case to be recognized as Florida treasurer, Cueva began serving as accountant in place of Ramirez, who was semiretired. He may have continued his stewardship duties as well, but not with his old title of factor-overseer. After the king’s new appointee arrived in 1631, Cueva left for San Luis himself, to be that treasury’s accountant. [Note 26: Council re the royal officials 9/4/1628; Juan de Cueva, seen in Council 5/25/1629; Council re accountant for Florida 5/24/1630] (Bushnell KC)

The half-annate (media anata) was a separate revenue derived from offices and other royal grants: the return to the crown of half the salary of one’s first year of income. Except in the case of ecclesiastics, it superseded the earlier mesada, or month’s pay paid by a new appointee. Presented as an emergency measure following Piet Heyn’s seizure of the treasury fleet, the half-annate was decreed in 1631, empire-wide, for every beneficiary of the king’s grace, from a minor receiving a plain soldier’s plaza, to the royal infantes, the king’s sons. (Bushnell KC)

Governor Rodriguez de Villegas, when he was dying, named Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon governor of peace, in charge of the exchequer and of justice, and Sergeant Major Eugenio de Espinosa governor of war. ...The crown endorsed these assumptions of power with reservations. Rodriguez de Villegas was charged at his posthumous residencia with having given the post of governor of peace to the accountant, knowing it was incompatible with his duties. [Note 41: Gov. Horruytiner, in residencia of Gov. Rodriguez de Villegas 1633-35] (Bushnell KC)

An official who experimented with informal leaves of absence was Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon. He was a veteran of Indian wars in Santa Marta, a descendent of conquerors in Peru, and most important, son-in-law of a Council of the Indies porter. From the preserved slate of nominees, he was also the only one out of 36 candidates with no previous exchequer experience. When the governor of Florida died in 1631, shortly after his arrival, Nicolas found himself thrust into a co-interim governorship with the psychopathic Sergeant-Major Eugenio de Espinosa. In mortal fear of his partner, who had threatened to cut off his head, he took refuge in the Franciscan convent until the next governor should arrive. He assured the crown that this caused the treasury no inconvenience for he had named a reliable and competent person to do what work could not be brought to the convent. [Note 58: Council proposals for accountant 5/24/1630; Nicolas Ponce de Leon 7/3/1632] AN117 (Bushnell KC)

In his role of royal judge a treasury official bore one staff, and as a regidor he was entitled to another. When the choleric Sergeant Major Espinosa, enraged at Nicolas Ponce de Leon I, was restrained by companions from killing him, he called into the counting house to his adjutant to seize the accountant’s symbol of authority and arrest him. The officer did so, breaking Ponce de Leon’s staff to pieces. [Note 62: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 7/3/1632] (Bushnell KC)

Then, beginning with Eugenio de Espinosa in 1632, each successive sergeant major received a standard cedula naming him interim governor-elect in military matters—a provision which conflicted with the cedula to the governors and caused confusion whenever the governorship fell vacant. Espinosa was a murderous old man obviously unfit to govern. (Bushnell KC)

In 1634, before this happened, Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon summarized what the tithes had been amounting to. The tithes of maize collected between 1631 and 1633 had come to 2,691.5 arrobas, or about 897 arrobas a year. Of this, 406,5 had been sold at 5.5 reales the arroba and the rest at 5 reales, making a 3-year total of 1,707.5 pesos in tithes of maize, which averaged to 569 pesos a year. For the tithes from miscellaneous sources the accountant gave yearly figures, which totaled 468 pesos for the same period. Total tithes averaged 725 pesos a year, indicating a titheable production of around 29,000 pesos a year between 1631 and 1633, less than in 1600. [Note 9: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 12/12/1634] (Bushnell KC)

In the early 1620s and again in 1635 the bishop of Cuba inquired about his fourth of the Florida tithes. The crown, which was making up the difference in his income, referred his query to the Florida governor and royal officials, asking them whether their provinces were not suffragan to that bishop. They replied that don Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano had brought credentials as the bishop of Florida and Cuba when he made his visitation in 1605, but he had not asked for tithes, nor had any been sent to Cuba since. [Note 7: Gov. Horruytiner with Francisco Menendez Marquez and Nicolas Ponce de Leon 5/14/1636; Bishop of Cuba, Spain, 6/4/1622; Archbishop of Havana, Havana 11/25/1635; Santos de las Heras and Joseph de Prado 8/21/1653, with enclosures of 10/27/1626, after 1655, and 7/15/1656] Orders must have followed to send the bishop his fourth, for several years later the royal officials mentioned that tithes were no longer being administered as a royal revenue. [Note 8: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] (Bushnell KC)

Six years later the friars reported that the natives between St. Augustine and Guale were almost totally gone. The Franciscans obtained gubernatorial consent to enter the province of Apalache partly because the depopulating of nearer provinces had depleted the Spanish food and labor supply. [Note 57: Agustin and Juan, natives of San Juan del Puerto, (el Morro, Havana) 7/2/1636.] (Bushnell KC)

A revolt took further toll when Governor Rojas y Borja hanged the chieftainess of Santa Maria (St. Mary’s Island) and sentenced some of her supporters, ears docked, to hard labor on the fort in Havana. Two who were eventually pardoned found that while they had been in exile their countrymen from St. Augustine to Guale had died out almost completely. [Note 112: Fr. Francisco Pareja 1/17/1617; Agustin and Juan, natives of San Juan del Puerta, el Morro, Havana, 7/2/1636] (Bushnell KC)

Nicolas Ponce de Leon did not observe the formality of having his bond notarized. When the document was examined after his death, it was found that of his 21 backers, half had predeceased him, perhaps in the same epidemic, and only five of the others acknowledged their signatures. [Note 16: Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar (arrived 2/8/1684); Nicolas Ponce de Leon 11/20/1637; Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 11/10/1657; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655. The laws regarding bonds are in Recop.] (Bushnell KC)

In 1637 this same Nicolas Ponce de Leon had Treasurer Francisco Menendez Marquez imprisoned on charges of having spent situado funds in Mexico City on gambling and other things “which for modesty and decency cannot be mentioned.” AN119 Perhaps the accountant [Nicolas Ponce de Leon] decided that unmentionable sins deserved closer examination. In 1641… (Bushnell KC)

In 1637 Governor Horruytiner inquired about yet another loan to pay the soldiers, who had had no wages in six or seven years. [Note 33: Gov. Horruytiner 11/20/1637; Martin de Cueva 1/25/1637] (Bushnell KC)

Native malefactors were sent to some other presidio unless there was a labor shortage in Florida. Whether in Havana or St. Augustine, their sentence lengths were often forgotten and their prison service then became indistinguishable from slavery. [Note 35: Agustin and Juan, natives of San Juan del Puerto, el Morro, Havana 7/2/1636; Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 7/27/1647; Juan Menendez Marquez II 1/25/1667] (Bushnell KC)

Another time an Indian led the Spaniards to a chest he had found full of money. [Note 96: Gov. Horruytiner 7/6/1637] (Bushnell KC)

The Franciscans, dependent like the garrison on the situado, did their borrowing separately. In 1638 they were given permission to take out a travel loan from a fund at the House of Trade. [Note 34: Cedula to the governor and royal officials 7/16/1638] (Bushnell KC)

In 1638 the king, in desperate straits, ordered General Carlos de Ibarra to sequester the situados bound for Caribbean garrisons, and followed this with an order for the situadores of the Windward Isles to report to Accountant Pedro Beltran de Santa Crus in Havana each year on their way back to their respective presidios, telling him what payments they had made and what cash they carried. To give him magisterial authority over them, Santa Cruz was named a judge of accounts. [Note 44: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/28/1645 and 5/25/1657]

Florida Accountant Ponce de Leon worriedly wrote to the crown. He and Governor Horruytiner, he said, were keeping Treasurer Francisco Menendez Marquez in prison for his frauds in collecting the situados for 1631 and 1632. They had learned that the incoming governor and the new auditor, who was a vecino of Havana and a close connection of the treasurer, meant to release him. If the treasurer, intent on revenge, was to be let out of prison, the accountant wanted to be transferred to another post where his life would be in less danger. Menendez Marquez was indeed released, and in 1641 Ponce de Leon found occasion to go to Mexico City, where he stayed. [Note 45: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 11/20/1637 and 9/12/1638]

One of the few Indian slaves after [Canzo's] time was the Campeche woman Maria, who was taken into the house of Governor Vega Castro y Parda and subsequently bore a child “of father unknown.” [Note: 39: Parish Register Baptisms 8/1/1640.] (Bushnell KC)

In the 1640s there were great expectations from a wheat farm started by Governor Salazar Vallecilla on the Apalache-Timucua border. There would be other farms and much revenue, he and the royal officials thought, enough to establish an abbacy in St. Augustine similar to the one in Jamaica and keep all the tithes at home. Ponderous inquiries were set in motion, without result. (Bushnell KC)

Beginning in 1640, paper stamped with the royal coat-of-arms (papel sellado) was required for legal documents in the Indies. AN120 A governor’s interim appointment, for instance, must be written up on 24-reale paper for the first page and 1-reale for each page thereafter. Ordinary notarized documents began on 6-reale paper. Indians and indigents were entitled to use paper costing ¼-reale, or omit the stamp altogether. AN121 Perhaps this was why St. Augustine notaries seldom bothered to keep a supply of stamped paper, although when they used the unstamped they were supposed to collect an equivalent fee. [Note 49: Recop 12/28/1638; Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 11/4/1663] (Bushnell KC)

Perhaps the accountant [Nicolas Ponce de Leon] decided that unmentionable sins deserved closer examination. In 1641 he went to Mexico City himself, where he got the viceroy to throw Martin de Cueva, a former situador, into prison and settled down for a leisurely lawsuit before the audiencia. After three years the governor of Florida sent word for Nicolas to return or have his powers of attorney revoked. Nicolas appealed the governor’s order to the audiencia. In 1645 the next governor declared the accountant absent without leave and replaced his substitute, who had let the papers of the counting house fall into confusion. The king finally intervened in the case and ordered the viceroy of New Spain to send the recreant accountant of Florida, who had been amusing himself for the last five years in Mexico City, home to look after his duties. After an absence of seven years Nicolas returned to resume his office and family. His holiday does not seem to have been held against him. [Note 59: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 11/20/1637 and 9/12/1638; Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646; King to the Conde de Salvatierra, Viceroy of New Spain 8/3/1646; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655] (Bushnell KC)

Over the 17th century the viceroy and royal officials of the Mexico City treasury allowed the situados to fall seriously behind. By 1642 the drafts against unpaid situados amounted to 250,000 pesos, four times the yearly subsidy. Four years later the situador was forced to ask for a cedula ordering the Mexico City officials to turn over the current situado to him instead of to Florida’s creditors. ...[Note 29: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 9/25/1642; Juan de Instueta 2/5/1646; Gov. Guerra y Vega 4/8/1666] Although something was applied to these arrearages from time to time, the case seemed hopeless to the unpaid soldiers and to the local men and women who made their shoes and did their laundry. The crown set guidelines for paying back salaries in a fair manner, then circumvented its own instructions by giving out personal cedulas for some individuals to collect their wages ahead of the rest. [Note 30: Juan Jimenez 6/1/1627; Salvador de Cigarroa and Francisco de la Rocha 7/20/1678; Juan Fernandez de Florencia 1/21/1676] The officials at St. Augustine treated payments toward back situados as a totally fresh and unexpected revenue. They inquired in writing whether such money might not be used to build a stone fort or to found Spanish towns. [Note 31: Joseph Prado and Juan Menendez Marquez 6/30/1668; Nicolas Ponce de Leon II 3/24/1675] (Bushnell KC)

According to the Recopilacion AN122 the half-annate was increased by half (making it actually a 2/3 annate) from 1642 through 1649. [Note 40: Council answer 5/30/1628 to Eugenio de Espinosa n.d.] But Governor Luis de Horruytiner, coming to Florida in 1633, paid the 2/3 amount, not the half. It was permitted to pay the tax in two installments, signing a note at 8% interest for the second half, due one year later. This is what Horruytiner did. [Note 41: Gov. Horruytiner 1633 after July] AN123 For the rather complicated bookkeeping of this tax the St. Augustine treasury was authorized to hire a clerk of the half-annate, but collection of the royal kickback did not proceed evenly. (Bushnell KC)

Auditor Santa Cruz, who wanted the Florida situado to pass through his hands, declared that the governor of Florida once had seven different situadores in Mexico City simultaneously, suing one another over who was to make which collections and receiving 30, 40, or 50 reales a day apiece while their boat and crew expenses mounted in Vera Cruz. A single trip cost the treasury nearly 30,000 pesos, he said, out of a subsidy of 65,000. [Note 38: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/28/1645 and 11/20/1655] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Salazar Vallecilla awarded the mission of situado collection to four vecinos of Vera Cruz. Instead of sending clothing, they filled the presidio with wine and rum, and the frauds they committed were spectacular even for Florida. The crown ordered the auditor to proceed against the Vera Cruz villains and everyone with whom they had had dealings. Santa Cruz’s investigation took him to St. Augustine, 15 years after he had been appointed its auditor, and there he saw for himself the state of treasury records. [Note 51: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/28/1645, with marginal comment by the fiscal of the Council 3/3/1646 and 11/20/1655]

From 1638 to the mid-1650s the primary problem was dependence upon moneylenders, compounded with the loss in purchasing power of the notes against unpaid situados and of the soldiers’ certificates of back wages, both of which in the absence of currency were used for exchange. [Note 52: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646 and 2/6/1647; Int. Gov. Nicolas Ponce de Leon 9/20/1651] (Bushnell KC)

To become the Florida governor, Salazar Vallecilla contracted to build a 500-ton galleon for the crown during his first year in office, and was suspended when the year passed and the galleon was not built. [Note 6: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] (Bushnell KC)

When Accountant Ponce de Leon and his substitute allowed the books to get eight years behind, the other officials were told to deduct from salaries the cost of bringing them up to date. [Note 6: Marginal notation on Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] (Bushnell KC)

Active strength was diminished more gradually and effectively by increasing the number of “useless persons” (inutiles) AN125 holding the plazas of soldiers. Perhaps most of these were friars. In 1646 a ceiling was set of 43 Franciscans to be paid out of the subsidy and the additional ones became supernumerary, covered by a separate situado for friars which their lay treasurer, or syndic, was permitted to collect directly. (Bushnell KC)

Contemporary observers of the Spanish empire in America remarked on the favored status of the Florida Indians. Compiler Juan Diez de la Calle noted in 1646 that there were no encomiendas, workhouses, or mines in Florida, and he understood that the Indians there paid no tribute and did no service except a little paid labor in the soldiers’ gardens. Governor Rodriguez de Villegas, an on-the-scene observer, commented that the Indians of Florida were “the least worked and the best treated in the Indies.” [Note 104: Juan Diez de la Calle, Madrid, 1646] (Bushnell KC)

The officials did not always wait to be appointed. Instructed to suspend Governor Salazar Vallecilla for not finishing his galleon, they could find no one so qualified to take his place as themselves. [Note 40: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] ...And the Council of the Indies was advised to fill the vacancy left by Salazar Vallecilla without delay, as the “prince” stood in grave danger “governing itself at the hands of royal officials.” [Note 41: fiscal of the Council, comments of 4/5/1647 on Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] (Bushnell KC)

After several years had passed, Auditor Santa Cruz appointed Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, son of former Governor Luis Horruytiner, in Ponce de Leon’s place. [Note 46: Fiscal of the Council, between 9/17/1667 and 10/21/1667, comments on Gov. Guerra y Vega 8/27/1666] Horruytiner and Menendez Marquez reported that the books had not been properly kept since 1632. Many papers were unsigned, others were in rough drafts innocent of comprehensibility or totals, and a number of supporting vouchers were missing. It would take full-time work by someone, he thought, to bring up to date the accounts of royal slave earnings, almorifazgos and tithes, ship registries, and the record of each soldier’s wages and withdrawals. [Note 47: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646]

According to the rule of collegial responsibility, this delinquency of the accountant’s was just as much the fault of the treasurer. Most of the lapses mentioned involved duties of the steward, and now that the treasurer had been retitled “treasurer-steward” it might have been assumed that he would take care of them. Francisco Menendez Marquez shrugged off the responsibility, saying that since the office of steward had been added to his duties without any allowance for an assistant, he had more work than he could do without keeping the accountant’s books. The crown’s reaction to this impertinence was oddly mild: whatever it cost to put the books in order was to come from the royal officials’ salaries or property, and not be a charge on the treasury. [Note 48: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] Before receiving this letter, Francisco had already named another relative, Juan Ruiz Mejia, to the office of steward at a salary of 200,000 maravedis—a low sum, he said, since the steward had to hire assistants. The treasurer argued that it was time for a new royal office: “The separation of this steward’s office is very much in Your Majesty’s service, so the treasurer can be free to attend to the balancing and settlement of the other business of his office and that of the counting house. For that matter, the place of factor-overseer was most important to the service of Your Majesty… in this presidio. The governor who advised Your Majesty otherwise could have had no other motive than less opposition to his money making.” The crown was unmoved. The treasurer-steward might divide his own salary with an assistant if he liked, and the king stood disposed to honor and reward his servants, but no new royal offices were to be created. [Note 49: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] The pleas of later treasurers received the same response. Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, overwhelmed by the disorder in the counting house, asked for a formal investigation (visita de caja) and audit. His request came inopportunely. The crown had just made a pronouncement about the general uselessness of such investigations and ordered that they be curtailed. In no case was the salary of a visiting auditor to be charged to the royal exchequer; it must come out of fines and condemnations. [Note 50: Recop 6/9/1644] Perhaps because the culprits at the Florida treasury had no property worth the condemning, Santa Cruz did not find the time to visit St. Augustine in the 1640s. Instead he proposed a remedy for the treasury’s problems, which he thought of in terms of the situado. It should not be necessary for the Florida governor and royal officials to send a situador to Mexico City. The officials of that coffer should deliver the Florida subsidy to the treasury at Vera Cruz to be sent, registered on one of the flagships of the fleet, to the officials in Havana. There were merchants in Vera Cruz and Havana who would supply the Florida presidio with provisions and clothing at reasonable prices and at their own risk. Comments on this proposal by the fiscal of the Council show that the officials in Havana were trusted no more than those in St. Augustine. The fiscal thought it would be as well to contract for presidio clothing. As for collecting and transporting the situado. The governor of Florida should farm out the position of situador to the lowest bidder and let him worry about how to get it to St. Augustine. In accordance with this laissez-faire attitude, Governor Salazar Vallecilla awarded the mission of situado collection to four vecinos of Vera Cruz. ...The auditor continued to claim that Florida’s problems stemmed from situado mismanagement at every step, from the choice of situador, through the bribes in Mexico City, to the kind of transportation to Florida. He pressed one of his earlier solutions. A fourth of the situado for Florida could be saved if it were brought to Cuba by the general of the galleons and turned over to the royal officials in Havana, who could either send it on or let the Florida officials come after it the way those of Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico did. The Council of the Indies again ignored the Cuban accountant’s efforts to have a greater say in the Florida subsidies. Its fiscal asked the viceroy to investigate the charges of bribery and told the auditor to go on with his collections. [Note 54: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655, with comment by the fiscal of the council 7/5/1657.]

When Interim Governor Francisco Menendez Marquez suppressed a rebellion of the Apalaches in 1647 and condemned loyal and rebel alike to the labor repartimiento, he explained that the other provinces of Christians were almost used up. [Note 57: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 7/27/1647.] (Bushnell KC)

His son, treasurer Francisco, subdued rebellious Apalache Province almost singlehandedly, executing 12 ringleaders and condemning 26 others to labor on the fort. [Note 69: Francisco Menendez Marquez 2/8/1648] (Bushnell KC)

One reason for the naturalization of the coffer was that the king felt obligated to the descendants of conquerors, and his sense of obligation could be capitalized on for appointments. [Note 2: Pedro Menendez died without a secure hold on Florida and it never became a profitable colony, yet the crown settled 40,000 ducats, a fishery, and numerous honors on the heir to his entailed estate, Martin Menendez de Aviles y Porras, a grandson of the adelantado’s nephew Pedro Menendez the Younger. Anon 8/6/1648.] (Bushnell KC)

While Governor Salazar Vallecilla was under suspension, a ship he had sent to Spain came back with largely unregistered cargo of dry goods and wine. His confederates hid what they could before the return of Treasurer and Interim Co-Governor Francisco Menendez Marquez, who was out in the provinces pacifying Indians, but the treasurer was able to locate 30,000 pesos’ worth and apply price evaluations retroactively to what had been sold. For doing this, he declared, his honor and his very life were in danger. The governor and his henchmen were all Basques, Francisco said meaningfully, and the accountant behaved like one. [Note 70: Francisco Menendez Marquez 2/8/1648] Francisco was probably disgruntled at having been left out of the distribution. He was not ordinarily so solicitous of the king’s coffer. He and the same accountant, Ponce de Leon, had been jointly overdrawn 960 ducats from the almorifazgo account between 1631 and 1640, and during most of that time Ponce de Leon was not in Florida. [Note 71: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655] (Bushnell KC)

Francisco had had good reason for letting the books get behind. When he died [1/8/1648] he had run up a deficit totaling 16,165 pesos. In a place as poor as Florida, embezzlement on such a scale was remarkable. The heirs of the estate paid all but 4,000 of the debt immediately and Santa Cruz gave them six years to pay the balance, using 8,000 pesos worth of cattle, horses, and hogs as collateral. If the auditor was Francisco’s kinsman he gave no indication of it: the first payments (1,950 pesos in libranzas and silver plate) he applied to his own expenses. [Note 53: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655; Salvador de Cigarroa, Madrid, 6/25/1659]

The worst years were yet to come. Between 1649 and 1659 three epidemics descended on Florida: the first was either typhus or yellow fever, the second was smallpox, and the last, the measles. ...These were also the years of famine and of the Great Rebellion of the Timucuans, which left their remnants scattered and starving. (Bushnell KC)

The crown made one brief foray into agricultural production in Florida. In 1650 Governor Salazar Vallecilla’s experimental wheat farm had been in operation for five years. Six square leagues were under cultivation; buildings granaries, and corral were complete; and the property inventory included two experienced slaves, eight horses and mules, eleven yokes of draft oxen, and the necessary plows and harrows. The governor had even sent to the Canaries for millstones and a miller. Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon thought that in New Spain such an hacienda would be worth over 20,000 pesos. Unfortunately Governor Salazar Vallecilla died in the epidemic of 1649-50. When his son Luis, anxious to leave Florida, tried to sell the wheat farm, either no one wanted it or no one could afford it. Ponce de Leon, as interim governor, bought the hacienda for the crown at a cost of 4,259 pesos in libranzas that he estimated to be worth 1/3 less. He predicted that the farm would pay for itself within three years. The fiscal of the Council of the Indies, reading of the purchase, noted that even if the hacienda took longer than that to show a profit it would be valuable if it encouraged the production of flour in Florida. The Council sent word for the royal officials to administer this royal property without intervention from governors, making yearly reports on its progress. [Note 30: Int. Gov. Nicolas Ponce de Leon 9/20/1651, with comment by the fiscal 8/26/1653, and cedula to Gov. Rebolledo 8/15/1653; contract for sale of the Salazar Vallecilla estate 10/16/1651] (Bushnell KC)

a 30-year-old Angola ranch hand sold for 500 pesos and a mulatto overseer for 600... [Note 44: contract for sale of the Salazar Vallecilla estate 10/16/1651] (Bushnell KC)

When the cost of credit was built into a bill of exchange to circumvent usury restrictions, the price could be steep. The spice merchants (mercaderes en drogas) who exchanged the notes against unpaid situados discounted them 18% to 75%. Soldiers trying to spend their certificates for back wages were obliged to pay higher prices and accept inferior goods. [Note 35: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 9/20/1651; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz 11/28/1645; Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646; anon 11/20/1655] (Bushnell KC)

At times the governor’s prerogative to name officers got out of hand. Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, elected governor by his fellow officers in the hectic atmosphere of a plague year, handed out 55 patents including 23 for captain. Almost no one was left for guard duty. (Bushnell KC)

In 1653, when the auditor arrived, Treasurer Francisco Menendez Marquez had been dead for two years and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner was the elected interim governor. The books of the counting house were in worse shape than they had reported. The accounts of the masters of the presidio vessels had not been taken since 1624. The taxes on ship tonnage had not been collected, nor the half-annate. The papers of Steward Alonso Menendez y Posada had accumulated untouched from 1630 to 1649, and the clerks had to divide them into three batches for recording. The books of the soldiers’ wages and deductions had not been kept since 1646. The auditor and his assistants felt like the seven maids with seven mops: “It was a terrible job to bring that up to date. Eight persons worked on it, and every book had over 400 folios covering the infantry and the friars. Since there is only one supplier of clothing and staples, and the outlet for merchandise is the royal warehouse, where everything necessary to life is dispensed against [the soldiers’] salaries—everything for women and children as well as themselves—the treasury and presidio are in total confusion. No one knows what he is owed nor what he owes, not even the royal officials, and the usual thing is to give people more than is owed them.” [Note 52: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655]

In 1654 the presidio managed to free itself from economic vassalage long enough to buy from suppliers other than those affiliated with the moneylenders. One situador (commissioned collector) said he was able to buy flour at 1/6 the price previous agents had been paying. [Note 52: Santos de las Heras, Mexico City 3/15/1654.] (Bushnell KC)

Until midcentury the most common pack animal in Florida was still an Indian. [Note 72: Joseph de Prado 12/30/1654] (Bushnell KC)

Collection charges were nothing new. In 1580, when the subsidy came in care of the governor of Cuba, he kept out 530 ducats for himself, and the collectors charged an exorbitant 1,000 ducats. In the new system initiated by the proprietors who took office that year, one of them went for the situado, receiving an expense allowance of 1,000 maravedis (rounded to 30 reales) a day, double the per diem for a procurador or envoy to Spain. In the six or seven months that a situado trip was supposed to last, the per diem came to 500 or 600 ducats. The largest collection expense was probably for the bribes in the viceregal capital. Accountant-Situador Santos de las Heras said ruefully that to get anything accomplished there cost “a good pair of gloves.” [Note 36: Juan de Cevadilla, Havana 5/23/1580; Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado 3/8/1581; Alonso Sanchez Saez memorial 1/4/1596; Juan Menendez Marquez and Alonso de las Alas 11/26/1609; Santos de las Heras to the Lord Secretary, Mexico City 3/15/1654] (Bushnell KC)

When the amber-trading Indians demanded iron tools Governor Rebolledo made them from 60 quintals (6,000 pounds) of the presidio’s pig iron, plus melted down cannons and arquebuses. [Note 33: Anon. 11/20/1655.] (Bushnell KC)

Meanwhile, Floridians watched with foreboding the rival settlements of Virginia, Barbados, and after 1655, Jamaica. (Bushnell KC)

...a mulatto woman with three small children brought 955 pesos, and two other women sold for 600 and 300. [Note 44: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655; Salvador de Cigarroa, Madrid 6/25/1659] (Bushnell KC)

In 1655, the year the English took Jamaica, the treasury officials were ordered to use the unpaid wages of deserters and the deceased to improve the presidio’s defenses. Accountant Santos de las Heras objected that deserters forfeited their wages, the back wages of the deceased without heirs went to purchase masses for their souls, and, with situados three years behind, nobody was being paid anyway. The king’s advisors replied that the accountant was to pay the living first and let the dead wait. AN128 [Note 22: Santos de las Heras 2/10/1658, and replay 4/7/1660] (Bushnell KC)

Ten years later the auditor added that the bribes at the Mexico City treasury came to 20,000 pesos, of which 18,000 went to the greater officials and 2,000 to the lesser. [Note 38: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/28/1645 and 11/20/1655] (Bushnell KC)

Any situador could make a profit of 26,000 pesos, Santa Cruz insisted, by borrowing money to buy up Florida wage certificates and libranzas at a third to a half of their face value, then redeeming them at face value with situado funds. The rest of the money he could invest in clothing to be resold to the soldiers at high prices. [Note 38: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/28/1645 and 11/20/1655] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Rebolledo, in 1655, joined the campaign [for a new abbacy in SA]. Florida tithes now amounted to 2,000 pesos annually, he said, exaggerating, and if that sum was not adequate to support an abbot, he would gladly dispense with his sergeant major. No Cuban bishop had visited Florida in 50 years. [Note 10: Act on an abbacy 9/30/1645 to 10/5/1645; crown to the audiencia of Santo Domingo 9/13/1656, summarizing a letter from Gov. Rebolledo 10/24/1655; Gov. Juan de Salamanca, Havana 11/1/1658] (Bushnell KC)

The auditor who came to Florida in 1655 found that ¾ of those liable for the half-annate still owed on it. [Note 42: Cedula to the governor and royal officials 12/14/1672; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655] AN129 (Bushnell KC)

The initial treasure tax on amber was 50%, the same as for pearls. This was probably excessive. Governors either sent out the boats without informing the treasury officials, or instructed the officer-in-charge to conceal most of the treasure. For 6 months Governor Rebolledo kept two boats down the coast with a troop of soldiers who were regularly rotated. In return for 600 ounces of amber worth 15,000 pesos he gave the Indians tools, some of them made from scrap iron (mortars, cannons, muskets, arquebuses, and one anchor) and the rest from 60 quintals of good pig iron. For all the iron he paid the treasury only 500 pesos. AN130 Sometime during his term the tax on amber was reduced to a fifth, but when Rebolledo paid anything he paid 6%. [Note 86: Recop 7/27/1594; Juan Menendez Marquez, Alonso de las Alas, and Alonso Sanchez Saez 3/12/1608; anon 11/20/1655] The citizens of St. Augustine disliked the way governors monopolized the amber trade. Friars objected to the way knives and axes were traded freely to heathen tribes they were forbidden to visit “even in dreams.” AN131 The royal officials said that when Indians were prevented from bargaining, Florida received no quintos at all. [Note 87: Gov. Ybarra to Fr. Pedro Bermejo 7/27/1605; Fr. Francisco Pareja et.al. 1/17/1617; Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 9/3/1661] Traders from Cuba and the other islands poached on the peninsular preserves, and European interlopers were attracted to the amber coast much as they had been to the sassafras one. [Note 88: Gov. Rojas y Borja 6/30/1628] (Bushnell KC)

Some wrecks required sophisticated equipment. Don Marcos Luzio, a military engineer from New Spain, recovered 298 marks in silver bullion from the hull of the vice admiral’s flagship Las Maravilla, which went down in 1656 in the Bahama Channel, 70 leagues from Providence Island. Of that salvage operation 143 marks were put into the Florida coffer. Pirates found all but 10 marks 1 ounce of silver when they sacked St. Augustine in 1668, and it was probably the reason why they came. (Bushnell KC)

The crown responded by asking for a report on the tithes of the previous 10 years. Tithes of maize from 1648 to 1657 came to an average of 1,068 arrobas a year, which at 1 peso the arroba brought in 1,068 pesos. The increase in value over the average of 569 pesos a year between 1631 and 1633 was mainly due to the higher price per arroba. For the first time livestock (ganado mayor) appeared as a separate category. The average total titles for the 10-year period came to 1,411 pesos. If tithes were 2.5% of both crops and calves—something of which we cannot be sure—this indicated a titheable ranching and agricultural production of some 56,000 pesos a year. [Note 11: Cedula to the royal officials, received 9/13/1656, and answer from Santos de las Heras and Domingo de Leturiondo 5/31/1658; Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 7/10/1685] This was evidently insufficient to support an abbot, for that idea was dropped. (Bushnell KC)

Before word got back of the crown’s approval, the hacienda had vanished. Ponce de Leon had survived his friend Salazar Vallecilla only a short time. Locally elected Interim Governor Pedro Benedit Horruytiner had been persuaded by the Franciscans that Spanish settlement in the provinces had provoked the Apalache rebellion of 1647. At their request he had dismantled the wheat farm and sold off its inventory without waiting for the due process of auction. Wheat continued to be grown in Apalache and Timucua, as well as rye and barley, but not for the presidio. Most of the grain was shipped out by the chiefs and friars to Havana. [Note 31: Joseph de Prado 12/30/1654; Santos de las Heras and Domingo de Leturiondo 10/8/1657; Gov. Rebolledo 10/18/1657; Gov. Moral Sanchez 9/8/1735] AN160 (Bushnell KC)

The royal officials complained that they could not be present at all the ports in Florida. Governor Vega Castro y Pardo allowed them to station subordinate customs officials at the San Marcos harbor in Apalache, but these did not stay. The governors’ deputies in Apalache were directed to collect duties from visiting ships; in 1657 the friars of that province claimed that this directive had not produced a single real. Perhaps the royal officials should have visited these western ports or named new representatives, but it was not to their advantage. (Bushnell KC)

In 1657, the year after the auditor returned to Havana, Florida Accountant Santos de las Heras came into the harbor with situados rumored to amount to over 200,000 ducats. Using the 1639 cedula authorizing him to keep track of all situados passing through Havana, the auditor demanded a report on what Las Heras carried. The accountant-situador refused. At that time the governorship of Havana was divided between a political and a military governor. Santa Cruz and the political governor confined Las Heras in the cabildo building; the military governor released him and let him sail. When Santa Cruz tried to take testimony as to how much money was really going to the St. Augustine coffer, the military governor forbade the local notaries to assist him in any manner. [Note 55: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 5/25/1657]

In 1655, the year the English took Jamaica, the treasury officials were ordered to use the unpaid wages of deserters and the deceased to improve the presidio’s defenses. Accountant Santos de las Heras objected that deserters forfeited their wages, the back wages of the deceased without heirs went to purchase masses for their souls, and, with situados three years behind, nobody was being paid anyway. The king’s advisors replied that the accountant was to pay the living first and let the dead wait. AN56 [Note 22: Santos de las Heras 2/10/1658, and replay 4/7/1660] (Bushnell KC)

Twenty years later they [FL Franciscans] took out another, and in 1678 they were again forced to borrow, probably against their subsidy, paying 8% on a loan for 3,567 pesos. [Note 34: Fr. Alonso del Moral, Madrid 9/24/1676, re cedula of 3/29/1568; Christoval de Viso to Francisco de Altamira y Angulo, Spain, 7/14/1682] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Aranguiz y Cotes said that in the seven months after he took possession in February of 1659, 10,000 Indians died. (Bushnell KC)

Another monopoly which produced no revenue for the crown was gambling. To the official circular extending the monopoly of playing cards in the Indies, Governor Ybarra responded that people in Florida did not use them. [Note 47: Cedula to the governor 8/29/1584; Gov. Ybarra 12/26/1605] Some years later Sergeant Major Eugenio de Espinosa was granted the right to run a gambling table in the guardhouse, a monopoly he passed on to his feckless son-in-law. [Note 48: Eugenio de Espinosa n.d. and Junta de Guerra 4/1/1659. This privilege he held in common with the sergeant majors of Havana and Panama.] (Bushnell KC)

Ever since the Revolt of the Comuneros in 1520 the Spanish government had looked with suspicion upon representative assemblies. This did not mean, however, that Madrid was unreceptive to representatives from the colonies. Friars in their chapter meetings elected a procurador or advocate to present their problems to the crown, and the cabildo did likewise. In 1659 Salvador de Cigarroa went to Spain and obtained justice for himself and his colleagues against the crooked auditor Santa Cruz. [Note 72: Fr. Francisco Alonso de Jesus, n.d., with a report of the treasury council on 3/2/1630; Fr. Juan Gomez de Palma 1640; Salvador de Cigarroa, Madrid 6/25/1659] (Bushnell KC)

Santa Cruz’s star was going down. Governor Rebolledo and the royal officials in St. Augustine were even then gathering testimony, and in 1659 they sent Salvador de Cigarroa to Madrid as a procurador to expose him at court. The accusations Cigarroa made in Madrid were serious: Santa Cruz claimed to have eight assistants and to have finished the work in ten months, whereas he had actually had two assistants and had not finished. His marginal entries were not in correct form. He had charged people for copies of his judgments and refused to provide any. In all his time as auditor he had neither given receipts for payments against debts nor put anything into the treasure chest. He had released fiscal offenders from prison by a private arrangement: they gave him a portion of what they owed and he reported the debt uncollectible. He had laid a charge of 4,500 pesos for expenses (including 2,500 pesos for the purported assistants) upon the Florida treasury and had tried to embargo the situado on its way through Havana to pay it. From various persons he had extorted 8,000 pesos in libranzas, wrought silver, jewels, and other valuables. After the time of his audit no one could be found to accept (in other words, to buy) a bonded office, for fear of him and his false reports. In response to these charges and to complaints emanating from Cuba, the Council ordered the investigation and punishment of Auditor Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz. The visita was entrusted to the bishop of Cuba; when he died without having done it, the task was handed onto his successor. In 1666, 13 years after his trip to Florida, the auditor was still awaiting trial and the Floridians had still not received a copy of his audit. [Note 56: Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 11/10/1657; Salvador de Cigarroa, Madrid, 6/25/1659; Gov. Guerra y Vega 8/27/1666, with comments by the fiscal of the Council between 9/17/1667 and 10/21/1667]

There was talk of organizing another cabildo with annually elected regidores and magistrates in Apalache, particularly after Governor Aranguiz y Cotes put a 30-man garrison at San Luis and Spaniards began to move there and call themselves its vecinos. AN161 But Spanish population in the province never grew large enough to support a second city. The many schemes to encourage settlement—Canary Island farmers, Campeche weavers, cotton and hemp plantations—were little more than grant proposals that Madrid was unable to find. [Note 45: Junta de Guerra 7/14/1660; Juan Menendez Marquez and Joseph de Prado 9/22/1667] (Bushnell KC)

The treasury officials asked in 1660 to present their audits for review and send their appeals to the seven auditors of the tribunal of accounts in Mexico City. This request was quickly approved, but as it was tied in with forwarding criminal appeals to the audiencia, Governor Aranguiz y Cotes withheld the cedula. It was repeated to the next governor five years later and evidently put into effect. Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, whose association with the discredited auditor was not held against him, was named lieutenant auditor for Florida with a salary of 500 pesos from the situado surplus. [Note 57: Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 11/24/1660, with marginal comment of 11/23/1661; Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 9/7/1663; Juan Menendez Marquez and Lorenzo Joseph de Leon 9/9/1666; fiscal of the Council between 9/17/1667 and 10/21/1667, comments on Gov. Guerra y Vega 8/27/1666] No such arrangement seemed to last long. During the regency of Queen Mariana (1666-75) a reorganization took place. All the treasuries of the Windward Isles, including Florida, were told to present their audits and summaries to the royal auditor in Havana. The officials in St. Augustine objected that this would be impossible as no one exercised the local office of Lieutenant auditor. Some years later, Governor Hita Salazar promised for them that summaries would be sent triennially to the correct tribunal, which he acknowledged to be the one in Cuba. [Note 58: Recop 1665-75; royal officials 3/7/1672; Gov. Hita Salazar 11/15/1680]

A greater share of the amber came from the Indians below Cape Canaveral. They would send the governor a word of a find, and perhaps a small sample, and he would dispatch a presidio boat to them with trade goods. The royal officials were supposed to commission someone to go along with the crew to weigh and record the amber as it was brought in. [Note 85: Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 9/3/1661] AN132 (Bushnell KC)

Nicolas Ponce de Leon II became sergeant major by marrying the illegitimate daughter of Sergeant Major Eugenio de Espinosa. [1663?] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Aranguiz y Cotes in 1663 withheld the cedula that moved the appellate courts in civil, criminal, and exchequer cases from the Council of the Indies to Mexico City. (Bushnell KC)

The next sergeant major, his son-in-law Nicolas Ponce de Leon II, was weakly and fearful. [Note 42: cedula to Nicolas Ponce de Leon II 10/2/1663; Joseph de Prado and Juan Menendez Marquez 6/30/1668] (Bushnell KC)

In 1666 the situados were seven years behind, or some 461,000 pesos. [Note 29: Gov. Guerra y Vega 4/8/1666] (Bushnell KC)

Under their instigation, Apalache was considering breaking off administratively from the capital of Florida. The Florencias, the friars, and the Hispanic Indians all preferred to deal with Havana, only a week’s sail from them and offering more opportunity. [Note 61: Joseph de Prado and Juan Menendez Marques II 9/22/1667.] Whether this would in time have happened, and what would then have become of St. Augustine, is a moot point. Colonel James Moore... (Bushnell KC)

Governor Mendez de Canzo had allowed the ancient post of protector of the Indians to lapse. When in the mid-17th century the crown issued general orders for every administrative district to have such an official, to be called the defender, the possibilities of salary and patronage were quickly taken up. [Note 50: Bartolome de Arguelles 3/18/1599; fiscal of the Council 4/11/1668, comments on Juan Menendez Marquez II 1/25/1667] AN173 Accountant Juan Menendez Marquez II said that the defender should be someone like parish priest Francisco de Soto, able to stand up to governors. In an almost identical letter Governor Guerra y Vega recommended the same man. The governor’s mistress and the accountant’s wife were both Sotos and probably relatives of the candidate. [Note 51: Gov. Guerra y Vega 9/18/1667, and Joseph de Prado and Juan Menendez Marquez II 9/22/1667; Parish Register Marriages and Births] The friars had a different idea. The defender should be their own provincial, who alone had authority apart from the governor’s and no private interests to pursue. The Franciscan commissary general, asked for his opinion, particularly opposed giving the appointment to the treasurer or accountant, even though, as he said, “they are the most notable subjects upon whom this responsibility might be laid, for they have business enterprises of their own and are always thinking of their dealings and investments and would thus acquire even greater control over the Indians.” [Note 52: Fr. Juan Luengo 11/30/1676, attached to and answering a memorial by Fr. Alonso del Moral 11/5/1676] (Bushnell KC)

Juan Menendez Marquez became treasurer when he was betrothed to the daughter of the former treasurer. [Note 17: Two of the Thomas Menendez Marquez daughters married ranchers with property contiguous to their father’s; Joseph de Prado and Juan Menendez Marquez II 6/30/1668.] (Bushnell KC)

Francisco’s son, Accountant Juan II, defended the city from pirates, and in 1671 led a flotilla to attack the English settlement of Charles Town. [Note 69: Juan Menendez Marquez II 7/4/1668.] (Bushnell KC)

Treasurer Joseph de Prado... did not distinguish himself in Florida. During the Robert Searles raid of 1668 he was the only grown man in town to be captured in his bed and carried out to the ships for ransom along with the women. A month later he was sold a license to spend 10 years in Guadalajara for the sake of his health. [Note 60: Gov. Guerra y Vega to Gov. Francisco Davila Orejon Gaston 7/7/1668] (Bushnell KC)

Pirates found all but 10 marks 1 ounce of silver when they sacked St. Augustine in 1668, and it was probably the reason why they came. (Bushnell KC)

Later in the 17th century the same threat from the north that stimulated the construction of the Castillo de San Marcos brought an increase in the size of the garrison. Fifty plazas were added in 1669, (Bushnell KC)

When Charles Town was founded in 1670 they pleaded for help to drive off the colonies before there were too many, but the crown’s hands were tied by a peace treaty, and its reaction—the building of a fort, the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine—was essentially defensive. (Bushnell KC)

Francisco’s son, Accountant Juan II, defended the city from pirates, and in 1671 led a flotilla to attack the English settlement of Charles Town. [Note 69: Juan Menendez Marquez II 7/4/1668.] (Bushnell KC)

From 1672 to 1674 an unidentified pestilence reduced the population even further. [Note 59: Int. Gov. Nicolas Ponce de Leon II (before 11/29/1674)] (Bushnell KC)

Between 1672 and 1689 there was rampant profiteering in the maize and trade goods used to feed and pay Indians working on the castillo. [Note 53: Joseph de Prado and Antonio Menendez Marquez 3/21/1672; Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683; Francisco de Lara 12/12/1672; Francisco de la Rocha and Juan de Pueyo 4/1/1684; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 12/29/1693; Antonio Ponce de Leon 4/29/1697, enclosed with Gov. Torres y Ayala 8/26/1697.] (Bushnell KC)

In some parts of the Indies another kind of title clearance was going on: foreigners could legitimize their presence by a payment (composicion). Several times the crown asked the officials in St. Augustine for a list of resident foreigners, including Portuguese, but as there is no evidence that the aliens paid anything extra into the treasury, this was probably for reasons of military and anti-schismatic security. [Note 29: Gov. Ybarra, report on foreigners 8/1/1607; Gov. Cendoya 3/25/1672] AN186 (Bushnell KC)

Domingo de Leturiondo’s trip in 1672 resulted in the lifting of several trade restrictions and an increased authorized strength for the presidio. (Bushnell KC)

During the construction of the castillo as many as 300 Indians at a time were working in St. Augustine. [Note 45: Fr. Antonio de Somoza 5/2/1673.] (Bushnell KC)

...in 1673 the 43 friars became supernumerary along with their colleagues. This gave the presidio an authorized strength of 350 soldiers... [Note 7: cedula to the viceroy of New Spain 2/7/1677.] (Bushnell KC)

As Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon explained to the crown in 1674, an untrained slave cost 150 pesos in Havana, but after he had learned a trade in St. Augustine he was valued at 500 pesos or more. [Note 44: Int. Gov. Nicolas Ponce de Leon II 1674.] (Bushnell KC)

Bishop Dias Vara Calderon, when he made his visit to Florida in 1674-75, hired three companies of soldiers to accompany his progress: one of Spanish infantry, one of Indian archers, and the other of Indian arquebusiers. [Note 77: Gov. Salazar Vallecilla 5/22/1647; Antonio Ponce de Leon, affidavit, 2/26/1687, and Fr. Domingo de Ojeda 2/20/1687. The three companies were of Spanish infantry, Indian archers, and Indian arquebusiers.] (Bushnell KC)

A case of purchased leave of absence was that of Treasurer Joseph de Prado. Prado did not buy his office: the position was given him when he was almost 50, for his services to the crown. ...In 1674 he left St. Augustine and thereafter replied to no letters. When the 10 years were up... [1684] (Bushnell KC)

All the buildings in town at this time seem to have been of wood, with the better ones tiled or shingled and the rest thatched with palm leaves. By 1666 the government houses, including the counting house and the arsenal, were ready to collapse. A hurricane and flood leveled half the town in 1674, but again rebuilding was done mostly in wood, although there was an oyster shell lime and quarried coquina available on Anastasia Island for the stone masonry of the new Castillo. [Note 71: Cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 11/5/1598; Friars’ information to the governor of Cuba 9/16/1602; Gov. Guerra y Vega 4/8/1666; Nicolas Ponce de Leon II, Antonio Menendez Marquez, and Francisco de la Rocha 10/15/1674; Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678] (Bushnell KC)

When don Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon came on episcopal visit in 1674-75, he arrived in St. Augustine four days after a flood and charitably devoted the tithes laid up for him to relieving the hungry. [Note 12: Nicolas Ponce de Leon II, Antonio Menendez Marquez, and Francisco de la Rocha 10/15/1674] (Bushnell KC)

Bishops came to Florida only two times during the Habsburg era, in 1606 and 1674. (Bushnell KC)

The governor who came in 1680, Marques Cabrera, was a religious mystic who had written a book titled Espejo de buen soldado (Mirror of the Good Soldier). [Note 59: Gov. Marquez Cabrera 6/14/1681. The book was published in 1674 according to the Conner transcript; ten years earlier according to Woodbury.]

In 1675 a governor’s census showed only 10,766 Indians under Spanish obedience in all Florida, and 4/5 of them were in Apalache, 200 miles from St. Augustine across a virtually empty peninsula. [Note 59: Domingo de Leturiondo visita of 1677-78, in residencia of Gov. Hita Salazar.] (Bushnell KC)

To ration the garrison Governor Hita Salazar borrowed produce stored up for sale by the Franciscans. [Note 38: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/16/1689; Gov. Hita Salazar 9/6/1677] (Bushnell KC)

Without royal approval, however, there was a limit to the amount of trading that could be done, and the crown favored the regular commerce of the fleets and New Spain. Throughout the Habsburg period Florida was licensed to send no more than two frigates a year to Seville or the Canaries, and a bare 2,000 to 3,000 ducats’ worth of pelts. [Note 34: Joseph de Prado 12/30/1654; cedula to Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/22/1685; Gov. Salinas 8/19/1619.] The English who colonized in North America suffered no such handicaps. As early as 1678, four ships at a time could be seen in the Charles Town harbor; at St. Augustine the colonists would have been happy to receive one a year from Spain. [Note 35: Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678.] (Bushnell KC)

When Governor Hita Salazar needed to put the castillo into defensible order he gave the first 200 pesos himself, to put others under obligation, and then collected 1,600 pesos from the royal officials of the treasury, the sergeant major, the captain, other officers and those receiving bonuses, with some private individuals who raised cattle. [Note 3: Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678.] (Bushnell KC)

The Parish Register shows how Francisco Perez de Castaneda, who was sent from Xochimilco as a soldier, came to be overseer of the Menendez Marquez ranch of La Chua and was married in the home of don Thomas. [Note 36: Miguel Geronimo Portal y Mauleon’s lawyer 1630; Parish Register Marriage 4/20/1678; Florencia visita of 1694-95.] (Bushnell KC)

Twenty years later a royal order arrived to use the unclaimed wages of deserters and deceased to provide plazas to crippled noncombatants. [Note 22: Junta de Guerra 2/6/1680, in reply to Gov. Hita Salazar 11/4/1678] AN24 Not long afterward the royal officials were told to report on the funds from vacant plazas. It was the governor’s prerogative to allocate the surplus, not theirs, the crown pointed out—a moot point, since a separate cedula of the same date instructed the governor to use the money on the castillo. [Note 23: Cedula to the governor 12/19/1686; cedulas to the royal officials 6/5/1687; the governor 6/5/1687; and the viceroy of New Spain 5/16/1698] (Bushnell KC)

Twenty years later they [FL Franciscans] took out another, and in 1678 they were again forced to borrow, probably against their subsidy, paying 8% on a loan for 3,567 pesos. [Note 34: Fr. Alonso del Moral, Madrid 9/24/1676, re cedula of 3/29/1568; Christoval de Viso to Francisco de Altamira y Angulo, Spain, 7/14/1682] (Bushnell KC)

Treasury officials later claimed that the governors had collected 50 Castilian pesos per ranch. In the 1670s Governor Hita Salazar instituted a regular quitrent along with an accelerated land grants program to raise money for the castillo. Hacienda owners were charged four reales per yugada, which was the area a yoke of oxen could plow in one day, with a minimum of five pesos. [Note 23: Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678; Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 7/10/1685. Four years later the proprietors of Carolina introduced what seemed to have been a similar form of land tenure, with cash quitrents.] AN26 The governor also offered to legitimize earlier land titles and make them permanent. A clear title to a ranch cost 50 pesos per legua cuadrada, though it is not certain whether this was a square league, a league on the side of a square, or a radial distance in a circular grant. [Note 24: Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678. Two petitions, those of Marcos Delgado between 12/10/1694 and 12/13/1694 in the Florencia visita of 1694-95, and of Lorenzo Horruytiner 5/6/1685, suggest that the measurement was radial.] The chiefs of native towns followed suit, selling their extra fields or leasing them to Spaniards. [Note 25: Francisco de la Rocha and Salvador de Cigarroa 3/2/1680] AN25 As it was a royal prerogative to grant lands in perpetuity, the government in Madrid annulled all titles issued by chiefs or governors, at the same time inviting more regular applications. Between 1677 and 1685 land sales and title clearances (confirmaciones) in Florida brought in 2,500 pesos to be applied to castillo construction. [Note 26: Fiscal of the Council, Madrid 10/3/1680, comment on Francisco de la Rocha and Salvador de Cigarroa 3/2/1680; Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 10/6/1685] The crown also disallowed part of the governor’s new taxation schedule. Lands granted at the foundation and still held by the heirs were not to be taxed, ever. AN27 Land distributed after then could be taxed, but at no more than Hita Salazar’s 4 reales the yugada, later reduced to 1 real. [Note 27: Council 10/13/1687, cited by Gov. Marques Cabrera 4/28/1685; Council 10/6/1690, comments on three ranchers 8/28/1689] Disposition of the revenues from lands beyond the confines of St. Augustine was a royal prerogative as much as granting the lands was. (Bushnell KC)

In addition to fees, fines, and rentals, a municipality had two sources of emergency revenue: sisas and servicios. ...Servicios, like the donativos discussed in Chapter 6, were a levy on the higher echelons of society. As one of his fund-raising efforts to put the castillo into defensible order, Governor Hita Salazar gathered 1,600 pesos from the treasury officials, officers, and ranchers. [Note 65: Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678] (Bushnell KC)

It was not until the administration of Governor Diego de Rebolledo in the middle of the 17th century that documentary evidence can be found proving that tere were cattle ranches in Florida. He reported than an Indian revolt had flared in Timucua, resulting in the slaughter of the Spaniards herding cattle there. Between 1680 and 1702 there was a real cattle boom, which had its foundation in the changing character of life in St. Augustine. Up until then most military men assigned to St. Augustine were very unhappy about it and pulled every strong they could to attain a new post in one of the bigger capitals of Spanish America.

[Note 48: In the 1680s, when cattle were plentiful, the soldiers were issued fresh meat weekly instead of salt or dried, but they did not prefer it. See Salvador de Cigarroa and Francisco de la Rocha 2/18/1680 and Gov. Joseph de Cordova Ponce de Leon, Havana, 10/6/1683.] (Bushnell KC)

With housing, labor, and medical care relatively cheap, consumable supplies were the hidalgo’s largest expense. There are two ways to estimate what it cost to feed and clothe an ordinary Spaniard in Florida: by the rations issued at the royal warehouses and by the prices of individual items. In the armadas, fighting seamen were issued a daily ration of 1.5 pounds hardtack, two pints of wine, half a pound of meat or fish, oil, vinegar, and legumbres, which were probably dried legumes. AN193 During the period when the Florida garrisons were administered together with the Menendez armada, this practice was altered to enable a soldier to draw up to 2.5 reales in supplies per day from the royal stores. [Note 48: Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopes de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600; In the 1680s, when cattle were plentiful, the soldiers were issued fresh meat weekly instead of salt or dried, but they did not prefer it. See Salvador de Cigarroa and Francisco de la Rocha 2/18/1680 and Gov. Joseph de Cordova Ponce de Leon, Havana, 10/6/1683.] In spite of admonitions from governors and treasury officials that the cost of food was taking more and more of the soldiers’ wages, the official allotment for rations was not changed, and any extra that the soldier drew was charged to his account. Gillaspie has figured that in the 1680s a soldier spent 2/3 of his regular pay on food, and it was probably more like 70%. [Note 49: Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591; Gov. Martinez de Avendano 7/9/1594; Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655; Gov. Zuniga de Cerda 10/15/1701.] AN194 By the end of the 17th century a soldier’s wages would barely maintain a bachelor. (Bushnell KC)

There were so few Indians in Central Florida that the Spanish gave land in Timucua Province to anyone who would introduce cattle. [Note 59: Ex.-Gov. Hita Salazar 12/15/1680] (Bushnell KC)

In 1680 it was decreed that the governors of Florida were exempt from the tax because His Majesty had declared their post to be one like Chile, known for active war (guerra viva). AN195 Four years later the treasury officials were included under this exemption because of valor shown during a pirate attack. What half-annate those in office had already paid was refunded. [Note 43: Junta de Guerra comment 12/10/1680 on ex-Gov. Hita Salazar n.d.; cedula to the royal officials 2/26/1684; Joachin de Florencia and Thomas Menendez Marquez 4/2/1696] (Bushnell KC)

When the chiefs near St. Augustine began leasing their villages’ old fields to Spaniards the crown hurriedly forbade the practice, not this time because it alienated native lands—which the crown was concerned to protect—but because it infringed on the royal prerogative of imposing tribute. [Note 115: Cedula to the governor 10/15/1680] AN196 (Bushnell KC)

Governor Marques Cabrera delayed three years to publish the 1680 cedula allowing land titles to be cleared by a payment. [Note 4: Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 9/7/1663; Lorenzo Horruytiner 5/6/1685] (Bushnell KC)

Enrique Primo de Rivera, who obtained a contract in the 1680s for hauling provisions to the provinces, made the king’s road passable to carts from present-day Tallahassee as far as Gainesville. (Bushnell KC)

The quitrents which Governor Hita Salazar imposed on farmers were at first applied entirely to castillo construction. In the 1680s the town began receiving a small revenue from land use, but as a royal favor, not a right. [Note 63: Council reply of 10/21/1680 to Gov. Hita Salazar 3/6/1680] (Bushnell KC)

As five Apalachicola chiefs once courteously told Governor Marques Cabrera, if God ever wished them and their vassals to become Christians they would let the governor know. AN206 [Note 29: Act on the Apalachicolas 9/20/1681, enclosed with Gov. Marques Cabrera n.d.] (Bushnell KC)

In theory, Indians had been legally exempt from tithing since 1533, but in practice this varied. Florida missionaries argued that even a native owed his tithes and firstfruits—to them, not to the crown or the bishop. [Note 4: Friars in chapter to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/19/1681] (Bushnell KC)

The long-awaited Recopilacion de leyes do los Reynos de las Indias, published in 1681, was an attempt to codify the laws of the Indies out of more than 400,000 royal cedulas. (Bushnell KC)

Accountant Thomas Menendez Marquez owned the largest ranch in Florida, shipping hides, dried meat, and tallow out the Suwannee River to Havana, where he bought rum to exchange for furs with the Indians who traded in the province of Apalache. Pirates once held him for ransom for 150 head of his cattle. [1682, per Cattle Barony] AN31 (Bushnell KC)

There seems to have been some subdividing of original lots. During the governorship of Hita Salazar, Sergeant Major Pedro de Aranda y Avellaneda bought a lot within the compound of the government houses close to the governor’s mansion, although he had applied for a different one in the compound of the treasury and royal warehouse. The royal officials not only sold it to him but supplied him with the materials to build a house next to the governor’s. The next governor, Marques Cabrera, managed to block Aranda’s building there, but not on the lot beside the treasury. Displeased with what he called the deterioration of the neighborhood, the governor turned the gubernatorial mansion into a public inn and requisitioned for his residence the house of Ana Ruiz, a widow, two blocks away. [Note 72: Gov. Marques Cabrera 1/25/1682 and 6/28/1683; Int. Gov. Aranda y Avellaneda 6/22/1687; Ana Ruiz 8/16/1685; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/18/1687] (Bushnell KC)

At length Governor Marques Cabrera named Sergeant Major Domingo de Leturiondo defender of the Indians, augmenting his salary by a plaza, since there were no tributes from which to pay him. The Council disapproved. It was unnecessary to create a new salaried position when the defense of the Indians was the responsibility of the local magistrates and bailiffs, they said, ignoring the fact that there were no magistrates or bailiffs per se in Florida. [Note 53: Gov. Marques Cabrera 1/28/1682, fiscal of the Council 9/11/1682, and Council answer 9/23/1682; Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/5/1681 and 3/28/1685] The post of defender became an intermittent office activated by the governor in cases of Indian mistreatment, crimes, and rebellions. It was oftenest held by a regidor. [Note 54: Act on the Indian complaints 10/30/1681 to 6/28/1683; act on moving the Guale villages 8/26/1684; Antonio Ponce de Leon, Havana 1/29/1702; Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 11/15/1701; Florencia visita of 1694-95. Except for these 18 folios dealing with a murder case, the Florencia visita is also found in…] (Bushnell KC)

The officials of the Florida treasury urged that a regular judge be sent from the Royal Audiencia of Mexico City to take a residencia, for “with the incoming governor justifying the outgoing, no one dares demand his rights.” [Note 81: Christoval de Viso to Secretary of the Council, Madrid, 6/27/1682; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/30/1627] (Bushnell KC)

The same policy applied to the convicted sentenced to Florida: their labor bought their food. One illiterate black convict who had become a skilled blacksmith during his term in St. Augustine elected to say on as a respected member of the community. [Note 34: Gov. Hita Salazar 10/30/1678; Alonso Solana, report on the blacksmiths, 5/20/1683, in investigation of the trade goods 12/7/1680 to 6/28/1683] (Bushnell KC)

By 1683 the crown, totally unable to supply its colony on the North Atlantic seaboard, was forced to approve Governor Marques Cabrera’s emergency purchases from a New York merchant he called Felipe Federico. This Dutchman first gained entrance to the harbor as an intermediary returning the governor’s son and another lad captured by pirates. Captain Federico and his little sloop, The Mayflower, became regular callers at St. Augustine. Others followed suite. [Note 68: Gov. Marques Cabrera 10/8/1683; royal officials 4/1/1684 and 3/22/1686] AN219 (Bushnell KC)

During the governorship of Cendoya another outlet, the San Martin (Suwannee-Santa Fe), was officially opened for exports. Havana merchants with Florida connections began sending sloops and ketches upriver to the landing that served don Thomas Menendez Marquez’s cattle ranch of La Chua. Back in Havana these merchants paid taxes of one real per hide or jug of lard, and ½ real per arroba of dried meat or tallow. Don Thomas (the same who later became an accountant) himself had a frigate which visited the mouth of the San Martin and also carried rum to Apalache. This Gulf Coast trade was of no benefit to the Florida coffer. By that date the Cubans thought of Apalache and Western Timucua as colonies of theirs rather than provinces of Florida. Marques Cabrera made one last attempt in the 1680s to collect customs in Apalache. The Havana merchants in turn refused to supply or even visit St. Augustine, and accidents befell the boats the Florida governor sent to them. [Note 74: Nicolas Ponce de Leon and Francisco Menendez Marquez 12/24/1632; friars in chapter 9/10/1657; Gov. Joseph de Cordova Ponce de Leon, Havana 10/6/1683] (Bushnell KC)

Buccaneers of mixed nationality were fully aware of the progress of salvage. Those who attacked St. Augustine in 1683 under Sanche de Agramont and Thomas Pain rendezvoused afterward at the old Las Maravillas site. [Note 93: Enrique Primo de Rivera 11/26/1690; Joseph Rodriguez de Santa Maria and Antonio de Valladar Velasco, Havana 9/4/1677; Gov. Guerra y Vega 9/25/1667; Joseph de Prado and Juan Menendez Marquez II 6/30/1668; Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683] (Bushnell KC)

The two men who were royal officials in 1683 never explained why 10 marks of silver were lying under some papers outside the king’s coffer when both of them were abed. Maybe the total was not 10 marks, but more. It was convenient to blame pirates for missing money. (Bushnell KC)

Juan de Ayala y Escobar served as procurador numbers of times in the dangerous war years from 1683 to 1706, carrying messages from Indians chiefs as well as Spaniards. (Bushnell KC)

The bribes involved were practically institutionalized. Governor Rebolledo boasted that 4,000 or 6,000 pesos would clear him of any charge. AN220 Ex-Governor Hita Salazar said that Marques Cabrera purposely delayed his proceeding because Hita Salazar had not given him 3,000 pesos as the other ex-governor and an ex-governor’s widow had. [Note 82: Anon. 11/120/1655; Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar 7/2/1683] (Bushnell KC)

Ex-Governor Hita Salazar, who had been governor of Vera Cruz before coming to Florida and who remained in St. Augustine as a private citizen after his term, once gave his experienced view of the situado. In spite of all the funds it contained—and he listed them: the 350 plazas for soldiers, the subsidy for friars, the allotment for administrative salaries, the 1,500-ducat Indian allowance AN48, and the 1,500 ducats for bonuses—the common soldier still paid twice what he should have for shoddy goods he did not want, bought by profiteers with his own money. [Note 51: Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar, seen in Council 2/8/1684] If private merchants could obtain no foothold in town, and no one could leave who was in debt to the exchequer AN49, then it is no wonder that by the 1680s garrison strength in Florida was being filled with sentenced malefactors and persons regarded as racial inferiors. The entire garrison below officer level was existing under the most inexorable debt peonage. AN50 (Bushnell KC)

When the 10 years were up Governor Marques Cabrera reported that no one knew whether [Treasurer] Prado was dead or alive and asked that the office be refilled. An indifferent Junta de Guerra clerk replied that Prado had paid 600 pesos for the privilege of absenting himself for unlimited periods as he pleased. [Note 60: correspondence re Joseph de Prado 5/30/1684 to 9/16/1686; Junta de Guerra reply n.d. to a letter from Gov. Marques Cabrera 10/6/1686. Such leaves with pay were taxed after 1664 according to a schedule set by law (Recop 1664)] AN224 (Bushnell KC)

Four years later the treasury officials were included under this exemption because of valor shown during a pirate attack. What half-annate those in office had already paid was refunded. The tax was not reinstated for this category of officials until 1727. Regular officers, however, continued to owe the half-annate on their original appointments and for every promotion. [Note 44: Francisco Menendez Marquez II and Salvador Garcia Villegas 4/16/1735, with Gov. Moral Sanchez 4/20/1735; cedula to the royal officials of Santo Domingo 6/18/1660; Recop. 1664] (Bushnell KC)

The problem of gubernatorial succession was researched several times, by both the Florida accountant and the fiscal of the Council, but the crown’s invariable public position was “Let there be no innovation.” [Note 43: Junta de Guerra comment 5/16/1684, on Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683] Its private arrangements were more flexible. Once, when the sergeant major’s health was failing, the governor of Havana was sent secret orders to choose a successor ad interim for Florida if it was left without a governor. Within the captaincy general itself, the military aspect of the governorship continued to be given precedence over the civil. (Bushnell KC)

Governor Marques Cabrera regarded a cabildo with a membership of only three, counting himself, and no other magistrates or officers of the law, as no cabildo at all. In order to have a true deliberative body he appointed two more regidores: Pedro Benedit Horruytiner and Domingo de Leturiondo, men of integrity, knowledge, and experience. [Note 75: Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/5/1681 and 6/14/1681] He said he wanted to avail himself of the law permitting him to audit the accounts with the aid of two regidores and a notary, and he could hardly do so with the two regidores who were treasury officials. [Note 76: Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/30/1684] This reform of the governor’s was probably welcomed no more enthusiastically than his earlier ones, about which the friars were grumbling: “Everything is turned upside down with the new sort of government which Your Grace is trying to introduce everywhere and in everything with these [new orders], not realizing that any innovation in government will cause disquiet and the deterioration of political practices that have long been the custom.” [Note 77: Friars in chapter to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/19/1681. The governor’s claims to innovative reforms were not always reliable. See Bushnell, “That Demonic Game.”] There is no indication that Marques Cabrera’s increased number of regidores was approved. (Bushnell KC)

The long-awaited Recopilacion de leyes do los Reynos de las Indias, published in 1681, was an attempt to codify the laws of the Indies out of more than 400,000 royal cedulas. Florida’s nine-volume set may have arrived at the St. Augustine cabildo in 1685, when it began to be cited locally. [Note 6: Royal officials 10/6/1685] There is no reason to suppose that these general laws were obeyed any more promptly or literally than the king’s direct orders. (Bushnell KC)

The first resident minister of the Holy Tribunal, Father Pedro de Luna, refused even to present his credentials to civil authorities. When Governor Marques Cabrera tried to get him to take action against a curate who had given sanctuary to an English pirate, Luna answered sharply, “I will not use the Holy Office to harass and vilify a dignified priest and bring scandal to Catholic breasts… The Holy Tribunal is to be venerated. By cedulas of His Majesty and apostolic bulls it comes under no other jurisdiction.” [Note 9: Gov Marquez Cabrera to Fr. Pedro de Luna 3/20/1685, and 4/14/1685 reply; Alonso de Leturiondo 6/13/1690 and 6/14/1690] (Bushnell KC)

A governor in Florida might know nothing of the transaction [sale or transfer of public office] until after the death of the incumbent, when the new proprietor presented himself with receipt and title; yet the only known opposition to the sale of treasury offices came from Governor Marques Cabrera and was part of his campaign against creoles in general. When Thomas Menendez Marquez brought in the title to be accountant after the death of his brother, Antonio, the governor refused to honor it, saying that Thomas was local born and unfit. AN226 Marques Cabrera entreated the king to sell no more treasury offices to undeserving persons and to forbid the officials to marry locally—better yet, to transfer them away from Florida altogether. The Junta de Guerra responded with a history of the official transactions in the case. According to its records, Antonio Menendez Marquez had paid 1,000 pesos cash to succeed his brother Juan II in 1673, when Juan was promoted from accountant in St. Augustine to factor in Havana. In 1682 Antonio (who was spending most of his time as situador in New Spain) had bought a futura for their brother Thomas at a cost of 500 pesos. The Junta ordered the governor to install Thomas as accountant immediately with retroactive pay. [Note 11: Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/20/1686 and 10/6/1686 with Junta de Guerra reply n.d.; Francisco Fernandez de Madrigal to Francisco de Arce, Madrid, 11/23/1673.] (Bushnell KC)

Their [treasury officials'] reports could be depended on to get such a headstrong executive into trouble, but the treasury officials did not wholly rely on the slow workings of royal justice. St. Augustine had its own ways to bedevil a governor and to make him write, as Marques Cabrera did to the king: “Next to my salvation there is nothing I long for more than to have the good fortune of leaving this place to wherever God may help me—anywhere, as long as I shall find myself across the bar of this harbor!” [Note 52: Gov. Marques Cabrera 10/18/1686, with his letter to the bishop of Cuba 10/29/1686] AN227 (Bushnell KC)

The share to the royal coffer might be waived to reward heroism. In 1686 five Guale Christians, retreating by canoe from Alejandro Thomas de Leon’s luckless corsairing expedition against Charles Town, were captured at the mouth of the Altamaha River by English fur traders on their way back to Carolina with a boatload of otter, beaver, bear, and buffalo pelts and deer skins. In the night the Guales got free, laid hands on the muskets, and killed four of the traders. They then brought the boat and the peltry down to St. Augustine. The Spanish governor, Marques Cabrera, determined to his satisfaction that the fur traders had been encroaching on Spanish territory. To encourage other Hispanic Indians to similar exploits, he rewarded the Guales with the entire prize and relieved them of labor service—something he said they appreciated more than the booty and of which the crown, when informed, heartily approved. [Note 103: Gov. Marques Cabrera 9/8/1686, with cedula of 9/2/1687] (Bushnell KC)

In the 1680s a controversy arose between Accountant Thomas Menendez Marquez, who had been copying the soldiers’ entire records for them on request, and Governor Marques Cabrera, who wanted to keep the contents of the files confidential. The crown ruled that the accountant could release only the bare facts of dates and posts served. [Note 20: Thomas Menendez Marquez 10/7/1686; cedula to Thomas Menendez Marquez 9/22/1687] (Bushnell KC)

The governor who came in 1680, Marques Cabrera... was much interested in accounting, appointed himself judge of accounts, and spent months going over the papers of interim stewards, accountants, situadores, shipmasters, and construction foremen. To no one’s surprise he uncovered many irregularities. In the books of the treasurer he found taxes and fines ten years delinquent. [Note 60: Gov. Marques Cabrera 11/16/1686, 9/24/1686, 3/20/1686; Gov. Marques Cabrera 1/1/1687]

In 1687 the parish priest suddenly increased the costs on his entire schedule of obventions, from carrying the censer to conducting a memorial service. (Bushnell KC)

Indians dressed in comfortable leather shirts and blankets. Rather than look like one of them a Spaniard would go in rags. [Note 64: Alonso de Leturiondo 4/18/1687; Juan Pinto, declaration, in act against Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/22/1687.] (Bushnell KC)

In 1687 one could acquire a blank patent of captaincy for Florida by enlisting 100 new soldiers in Spain. [Note 5: Junta de Guerra 3/8/1687] (Bushnell KC)

Don Antonio Ponce de Leon usually exercised several positions at once. In 1687 he was at the same time chief sacristan of the church, notary of the ecclesiastical court, and notary of the tribunal of the Holy Crusade. Periodically he was appointed defense attorney for Indians. (Bushnell KC)

Governor Marques Cabrera, being rowed out to the waiting galley on the day he deserted, threw his baton into the sea, crying, “There’s where you can go for your government in this filthy place!” [Note 61: Martin de Santiago, declaration, in act against Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/22/1687] (Bushnell KC)

This gave the presidio an authorized strength of 350 soldiers, which in 1687 the crown increased to 355. The situado was not equivalently raised by 55 plazas of 115 ducats. Its yearly total in 1701 was only some 70,000 pesos, or about 51,000 ducats. (Bushnell KC)

Periodically the crown asked for a list of bonus recipients, and any change was supposed to receive its approval. [Note 9: Cedula to Gov.-elect Ybarra 5/19/1603; cedula to the royal officials 1/1/1635] In time, bonuses were used like plazas, to reward or to pension petitioners. As was to be expected, the crown was more generous in allocation than in fulfillment, and recipients waited years for “first vacancies” and futuras of bonuses in Florida, as grantees waited elsewhere in the Indies for encomienda revenues. [Note 10: Cedula to the governor and royal officials 9/13/1678; Gov. Hita Salazar 11/10/1678] Toward the end of the 17th century the bonus fund was liquidated. As the holders of bonuses transferred or died, their portions were applied toward officers’ salaries in the third infantry company, formed in 1687. [Note 11: Junta de Guerra 3/8/1687; cedula to the royal officials 12/30/1693] (Bushnell KC)

Unfortunately for the crown, before the governor could implement fiscal reforms he was overtaken by events. A local cabal proved too much for his unstable emotions and he fled in a panic to Havana. Ten years later his unpaid salary was still under embargo. [Note 61: Gov. Marques Cabrera to Pedro de Aranda y Avellaneda 4/11/1687; Gov. Torres y Ayala 4/15/1697]

The governor who succeeded him [Cabrera], Quiroga y Losada, was interested in building, not bookkeeping. He asked the crown to relieve him of the chore of taking accounts and give it to a lieutenant auditor. Such an official was eventually appointed, for among the dignitaries in St. Augustine on the day Philip V was acclaimed was an auditor of accounts, but this was long after Quiroga y Losada’s term. [Note 62: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/16/1689; Acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702] Rather than have the accounts be taken in Havana he did them himself, and on the basis of his investigations put the accountant and several others in prison. This action, which had little effect on them, was disastrous for the governor. The influence of Cuba was then at its height. Havana vecino Laureano Torres y Ayala, having spent nearly four years in the powerful position of governor-elect, was about to embark on a six-year term as governor. One of Torres y Ayala’s first acts in office was to release the accountant, who had made him an illegal two-year salary advance out of the money owed to Quiroga y Losada. [Note 63: Thomas Menendez Marquez 4/12/1696 referring to a cedula of 12/14/1693; Gov. Quiroga y Losada 12/12/1691; Gov. Quiroga y Losada as ex-gov., Cadiz, Council summary 10/19/1697] The principal Florida families—Menendez Marquez, Florencia, Hita Salazar, and Horruytiner—united with their man from Havana to ruin his predecessor. Quiroga y Losada’s residencia dragged on for 15 months in St. Augustine, then was moved to Cuba, where Notary Juan de Argote charged the unlucky man 3,500 pesos for the paperwork alone. While the ex-governor was in Mexico City appealing before the audiencia, Argote attached his wife’s gowns and jewels, down to her favorite earrings and the rings from her fingers. Seven years after Quiroga y Losada’s term was over he faced long appeals before the Council, and the chest containing his irreplaceable residencia papers had disappeared between the Canary Islands and Cadiz. [Note 64: Ex-Gov. Quiroga y Losada, Cadiz, Council summary 10/19/1697; Ex-Gov. Quiroga y Losada 12/10/1698; Pedro Diaz de Florencia, Havana, 11/26/1700]

In 1688, soon after a 3rd infantry company was formed, Accountant Thomas Menendez Marquez requested permission to hire a third clerk for the increased paperwork. Instead, he was ordered to reduce his staff from two clerks to one—an order that was neither rescinded nor, apparently, obeyed. [Note 7: Thomas Menendez Marquez 12/12/1688 and 4/12/1696; royal officials 4/21/1697; cedula to the royal officials 5/10/1698; cedula to the governor 4/2/1694, repeated on 3/14/1698; Pedro Sanchez Grinan report, Madrid 7/7/1756] There was by that time another official at the counting house: a lieutenant auditor chosen by the royal auditor and the governor to replace the internal auditor who had been appointed periodically. These two positions are discussed in Chapter 8. (Bushnell KC)

For several years the [land tax] income was assigned exclusively to castillo construction, but starting in 1688 a modest sum was allowed for the expenses of holy days. [Note 28: Charles II to Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/31/1688] (Bushnell KC)

The royal bureaucracy, rigid about rules, was capricious in enforcement. In 1688 Accountant Thomas Menendez Marquez, Francisco’s son, reported that Captain Juan de Ayala y Escobar was bringing in unregistered goods and evading duties and that the governor, Quiroga y Losada, refused to take action. Unwittingly, Thomas brought down on himself the royal displeasure. If he and the other officials ever let this happen again, the crown warned, they would be punished severely. When they had knowledge of fraud they were to act independently of viceroys, presidents, and governors; how to do so was left unexplained. The governor escaped without reproof, and Ayala y Escobar was commended for his willingness to make dangerous voyages on behalf of the presidio. (Bushnell KC)

Governor Quiroga y Losada operated a smooth patronage system whereby men from Havana enlisted in St. Augustine, were rapidly advanced to ensign, given reformado status, and sent home as officers. [Note 15: Anon. 11/20/1655.] AN230 (Bushnell KC)

Charles II, who took a personal interest in holy day celebrations, assigned 55 pesos a year from the quitrents to buy wax tapers for the parish church on the Day of Corpus Christi. Perhaps by coincidence, 55 pesos was the arbitrary limit upon direct local taxation cited in the Recopilacion in 1681. [Note 63: Charles II to Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/31/1688. At the request of the parish priest the allowance was increased to 100 pesos to cover cannon salutes (Alonso de Leturiondo 8/7/1697).] (Bushnell KC)

A Franciscan, whose vow of poverty forbade him to touch money, received his stipend, tactfully called “alms,” in two pounds of flour and one pint of wine a day, plus a few dishes and six blankets a year. He and his colleagues divided among themselves three arrobas (25-pound measures) of oil a year and the same of vinegar, six arrobas of salt, and some paper, needles, and thread. By 1640 the friars were finding their 115 ducats a year insufficient, in spite of the king’s extra alms of clothing, religious books, wax, and the wine and flour with which to celebrate Mass. When they had their syndics sell the surplus from Indian fields to Havana, it was partly because they were 2,000 pesos in debt to the treasury. [Note 50: Fernandez de Pulgar, Historia General de la Florida, after 1640; Alonso de Leturiondo 3/18/1689; Nicolas Ponce de Leon 11/20/1637.] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Quiroga y Losada once wrote the king especially to say that he was having the royal officials wear cloaks on Sundays as it looked more dignified. [Note 67: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/16/1689.] (Bushnell KC)

Three years later the Camara de Indias, which was the executive committee of the Council, approved shipowner Diego de Florencia’s request for a futura to the next treasury vacancy for his son Matheo Luis. [Note 12: Camara 3/19/1689; Juan de la Rosa, San Luis 12/24/1677 in the Leturiondo visita of 1677-78.] Floridians like Florencia were the ones who would know when offices were likely to fall vacant, and they may have been the only ones who wanted them. (Bushnell KC)

Members of the religious community had sources of income other than the regular stipends. The parish priest was matter-of-fact in his discussion of burial fees and other perquisites. If these ran short, he could go to Havana, say a few masses, and buy a new silk soutane. In St. Augustine the value of a mass was set at seven reales... [Note 39: Alonso de Leturiondo 3/18/1689] (Bushnell KC)

Parish priest Leturiondo’s accusations were vehement on a smaller and perhaps more accurate scale. The situador discounted 15% or 16% collection expenses from the priest’s small stipend, he said, and took up to two years to deliver the items ordered. [Note 39: Alonso de Leturiondo 3/18/1689] (Bushnell KC)

One further crown revenue from a monopoly came from the 3 reales per beef charged at the royal slaughterhouse. Governor Marquez Cabrera instituted this fee in the 1680s to pay for construction of the slaughterhouse and raise money for the castillo. It was one of his little perquisites to be given the beef tongues. [Note 50: Three ranchers 8/28/1689] AN240 (Bushnell KC)

Freight charges in the Caribbean were high. Gillaspie estimates that between 1685 and 1689 shipping costs on flour represented 35% of its cost to the presidio. (Bushnell KC)

When Father Leturiondo went out by night bearing the Host to the dying, he summoned 12 soldiers from the guardhouse and had the church bell tolled for hours to make the faithful join the procession. [Note 79: The fiscal of the Council commented that it did not honor the church to advertise the town’s location by night to pirates (Gov. Quiroga y Losada, act on bell ringing, 5/28/1689, and comment on that and the governor’s letter of 8/16/1689, on 7/12/1693.] (Bushnell KC)

It was also possible to buy a benefice. When Captain Antonio de Arguelles, old and going blind, wanted to provide handsomely for his Franciscan son Joseph, he asked friends with influence to persuade the king to give him the position of preacher or some other honor and proudly promised to pay “though it should cost like a mitre.” [Note 7: Antonio de Arguelles to Antonio Ortiz de Otalora 6/11/1690] (Bushnell KC)

The “honors, deferences, graces, exemptions, liberties, preeminences, prerogatives and immunities” promised to the royal official in his title were as dear to him as his salary and substitutes and maybe more so, for they acknowledged his position as one of rank and privilege. He had precedence. He and his family were persons of consequence. Such perquisites of office were partly tangible and partly deferential. Tangible symbols of office were the official’s staff of office (vara), his key to the coffer, and his residence in a government house. In the 17th century it was a common sign of authority to carry a staff. The governor had his baton and so had Indian chiefs. Staves and banners even served as metonyms for office. Nicolas Ponce de Leon II said that “the banner of the militia company being vacant,” his son Antonio was appointed company ensign. [Note 61: Nicolas Ponce de Leon II 8/4/1690] (Bushnell KC)

The next governor, Quiroga y Losada, proposed to sell the government houses and put up a new stone building to contain the governor’s residence, the counting house, and the guardhouse. The royal officials could move into his renovated old mansion and their houses be sold. [Note 73: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 6/8/1690] Six months later—suspiciously soon—the new government house was finished. Appraised at 6,000 pesos, it had been built for 500. Quiroga y Losada had not followed his own submitted plan, for the counting house, treasury, and royal officials were still housed as they had been in buildings that he and the next governor repaired and remodeled in stone. [Note 74: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 5/16/1691 and (as ex-gov.), (Cadiz), Council summary 10/19/1697; royal officials 4/20/1695; cedula to the royal officials 4/8/1698] (Bushnell KC)

Occasionally funds were allocated for some special purpose: ...1,600 pesos to pay the Charles Town planters for runaway slave the king wished to free. [Note 16: cedula to Gov. Torres y Ayala 11/7/1693] (Bushnell KC)

[SA's treasury officials] protested that... 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. AN244 In this way cattle worth less than 1,000 pesos had been sold for 4,400, giving a false impression of the provinces’ resources. (Bushnell KC)

In St. Augustine the value of a mass was set at seven reales, and the chaplain complained that the friars demanded cold cash for every one they said for him when he was ill and unable to attend to his duties. [Note 39: Ignacio de Leturiondo 10/29/1694] (Bushnell KC)

[Note 42: Gillaspie records the following accidents to the ships of Procurador Juan de Ayala y Escobar: 1694 150-ton ship with the 1693 situado is captured. (Bushnell KC)

As native town structure broke down under the barrage of disasters, Indians began detaching themselves from their families and parishes to work as day labor in construction and contract labor on ranches, or as independent suppliers of some commodity to the Spanish: charcoal, wild game, baskets, or pots. Efforts to make this migratory labor force return home to their family, church, and repartimiento responsibilities were largely ineffective. [Note 59: Joachin de Florencia visita of 1694-95, in residencia of Gov. Torres y Ayala] (Bushnell KC)

[Note 42: Gillaspie records the following accidents to the ships of Procurador Juan de Ayala y Escobar: 1695 Sloop loses mast on way from St. Augustine to Havana. (Bushnell KC)

The booty of war in Florida, besides ships and captives, was likely to be furs and skins. Before Spaniards or Hispanic Indians left on campaign they collected testimony on the legality and justice of the proposed war so there would be no question about their right to divide the spoils. [Note 102: Council of war 11/3/1694, and Gov. Torres y Ayala 3/11/1695] AN250 (Bushnell KC)

The second category of treasury income was provided by crown properties. Aside from the presidio’s ships, which are treated later in this chapter, crown properties producing income consisted of lands, productive enterprises, slaves and convicts, royal offices, and monopolies. Wherever Spaniards settled in the Indies they first recognized the lands belonging to pacified Indian towns, then founded their own municipalities, each of which was provided with several square leagues for the use of its vecinos. Other grants of land were personal. Pedro Menendez, as part of his contract with the king, was entitled to claim an immense area 25 leagues on a side-more than 5,500 square miles, by Lyon’s calculation. He was also privileged to give out large tracts (caballerias) to gentlemen and smaller ones (peonias) to foot soldiers. Although many of these grants were in Santa Elena, when the two presidios were combined the settlers from Santa Elena were given lands in and near St. Augustine as though they had been there from the start. [Note 21: Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 3/20/1685] All of the remaining, unused lands (tierras baldias) in the ecumene became part of the royal demesne (realengo). Anyone wishing to use a portion of it for some productive purpose, such as a cattle ranch (estancia de ganado or hato), applied to the governor. If the center or the headquarters of the proposed ranch was no nearer than 3 leagues from any native village and did not encroach upon another holding, the petitioner might be issued a provisional title. [Note 22: Lorenzo Horruytiner 5/6/1685; Florencia visita of 1694-95] Possession was conditional: land lying vacant reverted to the crown. For over a century whatever taxes were paid on these lands held in usufruct went unreported. (Bushnell KC)

Efforts to institute a tribute in Florida were only sporadically successful. No formal tribute system existed on which to build, beyond the communal work bees and a loose sharing arrangement when one town used another’s hunting and gathering grounds. [Note 105: Florencia visita of 1694-95; Francisco Pareja’s “Confessionario;” Francisco de la Rocha and Salvador de Cigarroa 3/2/1680] (Bushnell KC)

As population declined, the burden of serving and feeding the Spaniards fell more and more heavily on the common Indian. From all such duties the chiefs and their families were excused; their class continued to receive the Indian allowance, while their pretensions, if anything, increased. [Note 114: For the variety of Indian services and those exempt from them, see Florencia visita of 1694-95.] (Bushnell KC)

According to the Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson, the wild Indians just south of St. Augustine combed the beaches for amber and would trade five pounds of it for a mirror, an axe, a couple of knives, and three or four twists of tobacco. [Note 85: Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal] (Bushnell KC)

The Quaker castaways of 1696 found that the wild Indians of Ais had stores of silk, linen, and woolen cloth which they doled out to the Spaniards by the yard in exchange for tobacco. [Note 97: Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal] Sometimes after a shipwreck unidentified clothing and other property washed up on the beach. Money from the sale of it usually went to the church, which was charged with masses for the drowned men’s souls. (Bushnell KC)

If the tangible symbols of office were staves, keys, and residences, the deferential symbols of office were precedence and form of address. Precedence was a serious matter. Disputes over who might walk through a door first, sit at the head of a table, or remain covered in the presence of someone else were not just childish willfulness but efforts to define the offices or estates that would take priority and those that would be subordinate. [Note 76: The viceroy of Peru refrained from attending the first day of silver smelting because in his presence the workers had to stand at attention with their hats off.] AN19 When the parish priest Alonso de Leturiondo locked the church on Saint Mark’s Day because the governor had sent someone less important than the treasurer to invite him to the official celebration, it was not solely from offended pride. As he said, he must maintain the honor of his office. [Note 77: Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697] (Bushnell KC)

When two young ladies from St. Augustine were sent to be educated at the convent of Santa Clara in Havana, the question of the habit they were to wear was so unprecedented that it was referred to the Franciscan commissary general for the Indies. [Note 18: Francisco Menendez Marquez, Seville? Before 3/26/1629; Dr. Pedro Fernandez de Pulgar, Historia General de la Florida, after 1640; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Christoval de Viso to secretary of the Council, Madrid, 6/27/1682.] (Bushnell KC)

When, to the professed shock of Father Leturiondo, Governor Torres y Ayala assumed the regal prerogative of a canopy during a religious procession, he may have been protecting his clothes. [Note 68: Alonso de Leturiondo 8/9/1697.] (Bushnell KC)

Was the royal treasurer, Matheo Luis de Florencia, accountable for a deficit in the treasury when he had been in New Spain the entire five years since his installation? The crown referred the question to its auditors. [Note 52: Thomas Menendez Marquez 8/27/1697; Matheo Luis de Florencia 4/1/1692; Gov. Quiroga y Losada 4/18/1692; cedula to the accountant 6/16/1698] (Bushnell KC)

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)

The year 1697 had been one of famine, when even the parish priest’s private store of maize had had to be requisitioned, to his great indignation. As the bishop himself said, in times of hunger all men quarreled and all had reason. [Note 14: Juan de Pueyo and Joachin de Florencia 9/13/1699, answering cedula of 10/2/1697; Juan de Pueyo and Joachin de Florencia 9/16/1699, answering cedula of 7/1/1697; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Diego de Evelina y Compostela, Bishop of Cuba, to Gov. Torres y Ayala 5/30/1697, with Gov. Torres y Ayala 7/2/1697] (Bushnell KC)

The crown’s other ecclesiastical revenue in Florida came from the cruzada, or bulls of the crusade, which Haring has called “the queerest of all taxes.” This was a semicompulsory indulgence whose proceeds had been granted by the popes to the Spanish crown in recognition of its crusading activities. Royal officials and other dignitaries in the Indies paid two pesos a year, regular Spanish subjects one peso, and Indians and blacks two reales. The cruzada must have been permitted to go for local purposes in Florida, for the indulgences were independently requested by the royal officials, a priest, and perhaps a governor. Governor Marques Cabrera once received 5,000 of them, neatly divided between bulls for the living and for the dead. [Note 17: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 4/24/1647; Sebastian Perez de la Cerda 7/16/1681; cedula to Gov. Marques Cabrera 11/27/1683] A cleric known as the minister or subdelegate of the Tribunal of the Holy Crusade did the preaching, and another cleric served as the notary. [Note 18: Gov. Cendoya 3/24/1672; cedula to the governor 2/6/1696; Antonio Ponce de Leon affidavit 2/26/1687] By the end of the 17th century the market was glutted. The royal officials asked that no more indulgences be sent to Florida, where the people were poor and the last two shipments were sitting unsold in the warehouse. AN60 Ignoring pressure from the parish priest and the Council of the Indies, they refused to publicize the bulls any further. [Note 19: Royal officials 4/25/1696; Alonso de Leturiondo 8/23/1697; Council re bulls of the crusade 4/26/1698] (Bushnell KC)

Slaves and convicts not only saved the crown money but were themselves a source of income. The timber they logged and sawed, the stones they quarried and rafted across the harbor from Anastasia Island, AN61 the lime they burned from oyster shells, the nails and the hardware they fashioned—not all was used in the construction of the castillo and government houses. Some was sold to private persons and converted into a revenue of the crown. [Note 36: Bartolome de Arguelles 8/3/1598; Ex-Gov. Quiroga y Losada, Cadiz, Council summary 10/19/1697] (Bushnell KC)

The maize production that the Franciscans exacted of their parishioners was the true tribute in Florida, one with an importance underscored by 50 years of bitter controversy. The friars were determined to sell the grain outside of Florida to pay their debts and finance the adornment of their churches. The governors were resolved to co-opt it for the garrison or to tap the profits. In the end it was military necessity that won. During the governorship of Torres y Ayala the chiefs of Apalache built a fort in San Luis at a cost of 304 pesos for the hardware, blacksmiths’ wages, and workmen’s rations. The money, according to royal officials, came from the “1695 and 1696 tithes of those provinces." [Note 116: Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 7/1/1697] (Bushnell KC)

Charles II, who took a personal interest in holy day celebrations, assigned 55 pesos a year from the quitrents to buy wax tapers for the parish church on the Day of Corpus Christi. Perhaps by coincidence, 55 pesos was the arbitrary limit upon direct local taxation cited in the Recopilacion in 1681. [Note 63: Charles II to Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/31/1688. At the request of the parish priest the allowance was increased to 100 pesos to cover cannon salutes (Alonso de Leturiondo 8/7/1697).] (Bushnell KC)

When the parish priest Leturiondo locked the church on Saint Mark’s Day and left for the woods to dig roots for his sustenance, his mind was so agitated, he said, that he went on foot and took only one slave. [Note 76: Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697.] (Bushnell KC)

Two hundred ducats and two rations of flour were assigned in 1698 from the “chiefs’ fund” to the organist of the parish church and two altar boys respectively. [Note 15: cedula to the governor 8/1/1698] (Bushnell KC)

At the end of the Habsburg period the viceroy of New Spain was instructed to send the surplus of the 1694 subsidy to Spain. It amounted to a third of the sum earmarked for plazas. [Note 23: Cedula to the governor 12/19/1686; cedulas to the royal officials 6/5/1687; the governor 6/5/1687; and the viceroy of New Spain 5/16/1698] (Bushnell KC)

From the time Santa Elena was abandoned in 1587 until Pensacola was founded in 1698, St. Augustine was Florida’s only incorporated town. (Bushnell KC)

Juana Catarina of the important Florencia family, married to the deputy governor of Apalache Province, behaved more like a feudal chatelain than the wife of a captain. She required one native to bring her a pitcher of milk daily, obliged the town of San Luis to furnish six women to grind maize at her husband’s gristmill, and slapped a chief in the face one Friday when he neglected to bring her fish. [Note 12: Don Patricio, Chief of Ivitachuco, and don Andres, Chief of San Luis, Apalache 2/12/1699.] (Bushnell KC)

A different sort of personal levy was the donativo, a special-purpose contribution to the crown from those Spaniards whose rank or lineage exempted them from direct personal taxation. There were 57 such persons in Florida to contribute to the king’s 1698-1700 campaign for the upkeep of the Windward Squadron. Although the governor apologized that St. Augustine was a city without money, some of the donations were sizable. The interim accountant contributed from his salary 100 pesos, the artillery captain, 500 pesos. The crown took no chance on second thoughts: the viceroy was told to take the salary deductions from the situado. [Note 117: Juan de Pueyo 9/10/1699; Governor (either Torres y Ayala or Zuniga y Cerda) 9/16/1699; Nicolas Esteban de Carmenatis to Secretary Sierralta 10/12/1699; cedula to Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 8/14/1700] (Bushnell KC)

From Florida, in the late 17th century, the king could expect little else. One by one his ordinary revenues had been whittled away. The tithes were used for local stipends. The indulgences were gathering mold. Land taxes and slave or convict labor were applied mainly to fortifications. There was no crown-owned productive enterprise. Half the officials were exempt from the half-annate. The usual monopolies were either granted out or unapplied. The limited almorifazgos were used by the officials for their salaries. There was no alcabala. Nothing had been said about quintos for years. The buccaneers who ranged the seaways prevented both barter and salvage. There was no tribute. To the crown’s puzzled inquiries about its revenues the royal officials in 1699 made a blunt reply. The Florida treasury, they said, had only one income: the situado. [Note 118: Joachin de Florencia and Juan de Pueyo 9/16/1699] (Bushnell KC)

The chiefs of Apalache were carrying on a lively horse trade with English-allied Indians in 1700, when the Spanish put a stop to it for reasons of military security. [Note 75: Leturiondo visita of 1677-78; Francisco Fuentes to Gov. Marques Cabrera, postscript on a copy of the Fuentes letter to the Padre, San Luis, 11/27/1682, in act on the Indian complaints 10/30/1681 to 6/28/1683; Juan de Ayala y Escobar, edict, San Luis de Talimali 2/22/1701.] (Bushnell KC)

Its yearly total in 1701 was only some 70,000 pesos, or about 51,000 ducats. [Note 8: Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 10/15/1701] Within that slowly rising total the nonplaza subsidies had varied considerably since 1571. New funds had been created, while old ones had been reduced in amount, changed in purpose, or eliminated. (Bushnell KC)

While the authorities were most interested in artillery and bullion, they did not neglect other possibilities. Governor Zuniga told the assembled chiefs of Guale that native beachcombers who discovered anything of value must tell the deputy governor, who would tell the governor, who would tell the king. [Note 97: Gov. Zuniga y Cerda to the council of Guale chiefs, Santa Maria 2/7/1701] (Bushnell KC)

Although the royal officials kept the required books of annual tax rolls, no more was said of tribute to the crown. The requirement seems to have been commuted to paid service in the repartimiento, maintaining the transportation and communication system, and supporting the provincial garrisons. In 1701 one village of Guales living at San Juan del Puerto was expected to send workers to St. Augustine, run a ferry across the St. Johns River, and supply 60 brewings of cassina a month to the caretaker garrison at Santa Maria. [Note 113: Antonio Menendez Marquez and Francisco de la Rocha n.d. in act on Mayaca and Enacape 3/15/1682 to 9/7/1682; Recop 7/21/1570; council of Guale chiefs, Santa Maria, 2/7/1701 AN271] (Bushnell KC)

The governor’s mansion that the English destroyed in 1702 was afterward appraised at 8,000 pesos (5,818 ducats). In that siege all but 20 or 30 of the cheaper houses were damaged irreparably; 149 property owners reported losses totaling 62,570 pesos. The least valuable houses ran 50 to 100 pesos; the average ones, 200 to 500 pesos. Arnade mentions eight families owning property worth over 1,000 pesos, with the most valuable private house appraised at 6,000. [Note 28: Arnade, Siege of St. Augustine.] (Bushnell KC)

An hidalgo had to be better dressed in his everyday clothes than the common soldier in his finest, and his dress clothes were a serious matter. It was an age when state occasions could be postponed until the outfits of important participants were ready, and the official reports of ceremonies described costumes in detail. [Note 67: Acclamation of Philip V, 1/7/1702, and obsequies for Charles II, 3/28/1702] (Bushnell KC)

In spite of an inflationary cost of living between 1565 and 1702, salaries, wages, and rations allowances did not rise in Florida. The king allowed his officials no payroll initiative. For a while the governor used the bonus fund of 1,500 ducats a year to reward merit and supplement the salaries of lower-echelon officers and soldiers on special assignment, but the crown gradually extended its control over that as well. Out of context, the figure of 400,000 maravedis, which was the annual salary of a proprietor, is meaningless. [Note 31: Treasury official salaries for the Narvaez expedition were set at 130,000 maravedis. By the time of De Soto they were 150,000 (titles to the treasury officials 12/12/1526, 2/15/1527, 4/20/1537, and 10/5/1537)] Table 1 shows the salary plus rations of several positions paid from the situado. Table 1 Yearly Salaries and Rations in St. Augustine in the 17th Century Year Position Salary as Stated Salary without Rations (in ducats) Value of Rations (in ducats) Salary including Rations (in ducats) 1601 Governor 2,000 ducats/yr 2,000 83 2,083 1601 Treasury proprietor 400,000 maravedis/yr 1,067 83 1,150 1646 Sergeant major 515 ducats/yr 515 83 598 1655 Master of construction 500 ducats/yr 500 83 583 1594 Master of the forge 260 ducats/yr 260 83 343 1636 Parish priest 200 ducats/yr 200 83 283 1593 Carpenter 200 ducats/yr 200 83 283 1601 Company captain 200 ducats/yr 200 83 283 1636 Chaplain 150 ducats/yr 150 83 233 1593 Master pilot 12 ducats/mo 144 83 227 1603 Surgeon 10 ducats/mo 120 83 203 1601 Ensign 6 ducats/mo 72 83 155 1630 Overseer of the slaves 1,200 reales/yr and plaza 64 83 147 1693 Sacristan 200 pesos/yr 62 83 145 1601 Sergeant 4 ducats/mo 48 83 131 1601 Officer in charge (cabo) 4 ducats/mo 48 83 131 1641 Friar 115 ducats/yr 115 115a 1601 Infantryman 1,000 maravedis/mo 32 83 115 1676 Indian laborer 1 real/day in trade goods 33 50 83b 1693 Sacristan's sweeping boy 2 lbs. flour/day 36 36c a. Beginning this year, stated supplies were given whose value increased with prices. b. Approximate. Depended upon value of trade goods and maize. c. Varied with the price of flour. The date is that of the earliest known reference after 1565. For comparative purposes, all units of account have been converted to ducats. Rations worth 2.5 reales a day were over and above salary for members of the garrison, among whom the treasury officials, the governor, and the secular priests counted themselves in this case. [Note 32: Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; Juan Menendez Marquez II, 1/25/1667] By 1676, at least, a repartimiento Indian received almost exactly the same pay before rations as a soldier. [Note 33: Fr. Alonso del Moral (seen in Council 11/5/1676); Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601] The soldier, of course, was often issued additional rations for his family, while the Indian got only 2 or 2.5 pounds of maize per day, worth perhaps 1.5 reales—and he might have brought it with him on his back as part of the tribute from his village. [Note 34: Ignacio de Leturiondo (copyist’s date 1707; Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar 5/15/1683, in investigation of the trade goods, 12/7/1680 to 6/28/1683; Gov. Marques Cabrera 12/8/1680, Junta de Guerra summary.] A Franciscan drew his entire 115-ducat stipend in goods and provisions. In 1641 the crown consented to let these items be constant in quantity regardless of price fluctuations. [Note 35: Cedula to the royal officials 11/20/1641] It is ironic that native and friars, both legendarily poor, were the only individuals in town besides the sacristan’s sweeping boy whose incomes could rise with the cost of living. [Note 36: Fiscal of the Council 8/30/1686, comment on Francisco de la Rocha and Juan de Pueyo 4/1/1684] It was acceptable to hold multiple offices. (Bushnell KC)

While visiting Havana, probably in 1701, he [Don Antonio Ponce de Leon] was made ecclesiastical visitador for Florida and church organist for St. Augustine. He returned home from Cuba on one of the troopships sent to break the siege of Colonel Moore, and as luck would have it, the day before he landed, the withdrawing Carolinians and Indians burned the church with the organ in it. Don Antonio presented his title as organist notwithstanding and was added to the payroll in that capacity since, as the royal officials pointed out, it was not his fault that there was no organ. AN285 (Bushnell KC)

When Colonel Moore and his forces arrived to lay siege to the castillo in 1702, the treasury was on the point of being re-shingled. When they marched away, nothing was left of any of the government houses except blackened rubble. [Note 75: Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, orders, 11/6/1702 and 1/6/1703] (Bushnell KC)

In the early 1670s a Valencian named Juan de Pueyo came to St. Augustine and began to work his way up in the counting house, beginning as the clerk of the half-annate. According to the treasury officials, since counting house salaries were low they also gave him the post of constable, which carried its own assistant in the chief guard of the customs house. Pueyo knew the importance of family. He was promoted to chief clerk around the time his wife’s sister married the accountant’s son. As chief clerk of the counting house Pueyo supervised the assistant clerk, and as customs constable, the guards. By 1702 the Valencian, serving as interim accountant, stood at the governor’s left hand during the Acclamation of Philip V as one of the provinces’ first ministers. For someone who had started as an under-bookkeeper he had come a long way. [Note 12: Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683; Parish Register Marriages; Gov. Quiroga y Losada and the royal officials 5/8/1689; Matheo Luis de Florencia and Juan de Pueyo 3/15/1702] AN286 (Bushnell KC)

[Note 3: Cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 4/21/1592. In an effort to relieve specie and provisioning problems, the crown in 1702 ordered the bishop of Puebla de los Angeles to pay the situado out of sales taxes of his city.] (Bushnell KC)

Occasionally funds were allocated for some special purpose: 26,000 pesos to rebuild the town after the 1702 siege of Colonel James Moore; [Note 16: Junta de Guerra 9/18/1703, filed with Duke of Albuquerque, Viceroy of New Spain, 4/10/1703] (Bushnell KC)

Horsemanship displays on the plaza had become a part of every holiday, with the ladies looking down in exquisite apprehension from 2nd story windows and balconies. [Note 74: Acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702.] (Bushnell KC)

The order of procession of feast days and public ceremonies was strictly observed. Treasury officials, who embodied both fiscal and municipal dignities, took precedence over all exclusively religious or military authorities. The two first ministers of Florida at the local Acclamation of Philip V were the interim accountant and the treasurer, “who by royal arrangement follow His Lordship in seat and signature.” The accountant stood at the governor’s left hand and the treasurer, serving as royal standard-bearer for the city, at his right, leading the hurrahs of “Castilla Florida” for the new monarch and throwing money into the crowd.” [Note 78: Acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702] (Bushnell KC)

In 1703 they were again 457,000 pesos in arrears. (Bushnell KC)

[Note 42: Gillaspie records the following accidents to the ships of Procurador Juan de Ayala y Escobar: 1703 Frigate with cargo of pelts is sunk in Vigo harbor. (Bushnell KC)

After the attacks of buccaneers caused the partial abandonment of Guale Province in the 1680s, the maize source dried up, while refugees increased the number of mouths in St. Augustine. Without provisions the militia and Indian auxiliaries could not be called out, nor repartimiento labor be brought in to work on the fortifications. [Note 49: Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 5/21/1686, in residencia of Gov. Marques Cabrera; Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/20/1686; Gov. Quiroga y Losada 12/20/1687.] Food reserves were a military necessity, and the governor and cabildo (municipal council) had emergency powers to requisition hoards and freeze prices. [Note 50: Three ranchers 8/28/1689; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Gov. Zuniga Y Cerda after 3/30/1704.] (Bushnell KC)

[Note 42: Gillaspie records the following accidents to the ships of Procurador Juan de Ayala y Escobar: 1705 74-ton ship is driven onto a reef off Cuba. (Bushnell KC)

During the 16th and 17th centuries Florida was afflicted by a severe demographic slump which reached nadir in 1706. (Bushnell KC)

Colonel James Moore of Carolina and his Creek allies took advantage of the outbreak of Queen Anne’s War in 1702 to mount slave raids against the Indians of Florida. By 1706 the raids had reduced the native provincial population to a miserable few hundred living beneath the guns of the fort. [Note 62: Francisco de Florencia and Juan de Pueyo 8/13/1706.] (Bushnell KC)

Juan de Ayala y Escobar served as procurador numbers of times in the dangerous war years from 1683 to 1706, carrying messages from Indians chiefs as well as Spaniards. [Note 73: Ex-Gov. Guerra y Vega, Madrid 3/28/1673] (Bushnell KC)

Some people were managing to profit by the situation. The Florencia family had led in the opening up and settling of Apalache Province and were the ones who had started trade from there to Havana. Descended from a Portuguese pilot who came to Florida in 1591, for three generations they supplied most of Apalache’s deputy governors and many of its priests, treating the province as a private fief. A look at the names of provincial circuit judges and inspectors (visitadores) shows that these ingenious Floridians even cornered the market on investigating themselves. [Note 60: Cedula to Gov. Ybarra 9/23/1603; Fr. Claudio de Florencia et. Al. 5/7/1707; Parish Register Baptisms 9/10/1597.] (Bushnell KC)

Shipmaster and Deputy Governor Claudio de Florencia’s empty lot sold for 100 pesos after he and his wife were murdered in the Apalache rebellion. Captain Antonio de Arguelles was quoted a price of 40 pesos on what may have been a smaller lot sometime before 1680, when the lot on which the treasurer’s official residence stood was subdivided. [Note 26: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655; Fr. Claudio de Florencia 6/9/1707; Int. Gov. Aranda y Avellaneda 6/22/1687.] (Bushnell KC)

Wheat flour, which rose in 1598 from 58 to 175 ducats a pipe (126.6 gallons), at the new price cost 2.5 times as much by volume as wine or vinegar did in 1607. Nearly 100 years later [1707] wheat was still so costly that the wages of the boy who swept the church for the sacristan were two loaves of bread a day, worth 50 pesos a year. [Note 54: Bartolome de Arguelles 11/2/1598; cargo manifest 1607; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 12/29/1693.] (Bushnell KC)

By 1707 he [Don Antonio Ponce de Leon] had taken over the chaplaincy of the fort as well. [Note 38: Antonio Ponce de Leon 2/26/1687 and 1/29/1702; Juan de Pueyo and Juan Benedit Horruytiner 11/10/1707] (Bushnell KC)

To understand the next chapter in treasury history we must once again digress to the relationship between Florida and Cuba, two colonies grudgingly interdependent. The gradual pacification of the peninsula, accomplished by Florida-based soldiers and friars, brought benefits to the island. Cuban fishermen searched the Florida coastal waters; Cuban traders bartered with the southern Indians for amber and salvage; Cuban armada suppliers floated ships’ masts down the San Martin and other Gulf rivers. [Note 38: Cedula re bartering in Florida 4/21/1592; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia to Gov. Torres y Ayala 4/15/1697. For the ordinary Florida exports to Havana, see Juan de Pueyo and Juan Benedit Horruytiner 11/10/1707.]

[Note 42: Gillaspie records the following accidents to the ships of Procurador Juan de Ayala y Escobar: 1708 Sloop is captured between Havana and New Spain.] (Bushnell KC)

The hidalgo’s cloak, breeches, and doublet were colored taffeta at 16 reales the yard or velvet at 8 ducats. His boots were of expensive cordovan; his hose were silk and cost 4.5 pesos; his shirt had the finest lace cuffs and collar, and detachable oversleeves that could cost 24 ducats. His dress sword cost 8 ducats and his gold chain much more. [Note 68: Gov. Corcoles y Martinez vs. Joseph Benedit Horruytiner 10/11/1712; cargo manifest 1607; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598] (Bushnell KC)

[Note 62: When Gov. Corcoles y Martinez moved to arrest Sergeant Major Ayala y Escobar, he first seized his baton.] [6/19/1712 per Gillaspie] (Bushnell KC)

AN305 (Bushnell KC)

The third category of royal revenues in Florida came from shipping. In St. Augustine, founded as the result of a naval action, ships were highly important. The townspeople were descendants of seafarers, and their only contact with the outside world was by sea. The bar at the entrance to their harbor was shallow at low tide, especially after the great hurricane of 1599, which altered many coastal features. Use of the harbor was consequently restricted to vessels under 100 tons or flat-bottomed flyboats on the Flemish model. Some of the galliots, frigates, barges, pirogues, launches, shallops, and tenders belonging at various times to the presidio were purchased in Spain, Vera Cruz, or Havana, but a surprising number were constructed locally, perhaps in the same San Sebastian inlet where present-day inhabitants build shrimp boats. AN311 The people of St. Augustine referred to their boats fondly by name (Josepfe, Nuevo San Agustin) or nickname (la Titiritera, la Chata). Storms, shallows, and corsairs guaranteed that no vessel would last forever, but woe to the master who by carelessness or cowardice lost one! One source of the crown income from shipping was freight (fletes). Freight charges in the Caribbean were high… Whenever possible, the royal officials and the governor would buy a boat to transport the supplies rather than hire one. And since it cost 300 ducats a year to maintain the presidio boats whether they were in use or not, and the seamen had to be paid and rationed in any case, the vessels were kept in service as much as possible. [Note 52: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655] In them the chief pilot and other shipmasters carried loads of supplies out to the missions and maize back to the town. They patrolled the coast, putting out extra boats after a storm to look for shipwrecks, survivors, and salvage. They also made trips to Havana, Vera Cruz, Campeche, and across the Atlantic. On any of these trips the shipmasters might execute private commissions and carry registered goods for those willing to pay the freight. AN312 (Bushnell KC)

Several general exemptions from the almorifazgos operated to the benefit of people in Florida. The belongings of royal appointees going to the Indies were exempt up to an amount stated in their travel licenses. Everything for divine worship and educational purposes was shipped tax-free, including the supplies and provisions for friars, and any kind of book. AN313 Colonial produced wheat flour and similar staples paid no tax in the port of origin. In 1593 a specific exemption was provided for the Florida presidio: nothing consigned to it from Vera Cruz was to be charged customs. [Note 58: Cedula to the royal officials of Vera Cruz 9/29/1593] (Bushnell KC)

A foreign-owned ship coming to trade without registration was subject to seizure and confiscation, yet most of the merchant ships visiting St. Augustine may have been foreign. AN314 (Bushnell KC)

AN315 (Bushnell KC)

A gentlewoman’s dowry was not intended for household expenses but was supposed to be preserved and passed on to her children. AN319 Debts a husband had incurred before marriage could not be collected from his wife’s property nor was he liable for debts inherited from her family. (Bushnell KC)

Later on, when the English wanted in trade Hispanic Indian slaves or scalps, they had the wherewithal to pay for them. For a single scalp brought to the Carolina governor one warrior was supposedly given clothing piled to reach his shoulders, a flintlock with all the ammunition he wanted, and a barrel of rum. [Note 36: Diego Pena to Gov. Benavides, San Marcos de Apalache 8/6/1723.] The Indians of the Southeast shifted to the English side with alacrity. (Bushnell KC)

The final right of a royal official was not to be mistreated verbally. The form of address for each level in society was as elaborately prescribed as the rest of protocol, and a lapse could be regarded as intentional. The governor was referred to as Su Senoria (His Lordship) and addressed as Vuestra Senoria or Vuestra Excelencia (Your Excellency), abbreviated to Vuselensia or even Vselensia in the dispatches of semiliterate corporals. [Note 80: Fr. Francisco Gutierrez de Vega to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/19/1681; Juan Lorenzo Castaneda to Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, La Chua, 2/3/1705] Friars were called Vuestra Paternidad (Your Fatherliness). A Spaniard of one’s own rank was addressed as Vuestra Merced (Your Grace), shortened in usage to Usarced, Usarce, or Busted (precursors of Usted). [Note 82: Francisco de Fuentes to Gov. Marques Cabrera, Sapala 5/4/1681; Francisco de Bielma declaration, in act against Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/22/1687] Only the king could address officials in the familiar form, otherwise used for children, servants, and common Indians. ...The crown’s reaction to ...disrespect toward its treasury officials was to reprimand the offender and order him in the future to “treat them in speech as is proper to the authority of their persons and the offices in which they serve us, and because it is right that in everything they be honored. [Note 83: Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602; cedula to Gov. Menendez Marquez 4/19/1583] (Bushnell KC)

The names of slaves were significant. Those who had come directly from Africa were identified by origin, as Rita Ganga, Maria Angola, or Arara, Mandinga, or Conga. Those born in the house were identified with the family: Maria de Pedrosa was Antonia de Pedrosa’s slave; Francisco Capitan AN320 belonged to Francisco Menendez Marquez II, who in his youth had been Florida’s first captain of cavalry. AN321 A good Catholic family saw that their slaves were Christian and the babies legitimate. In the Parish Register are recorded the occasions when slaves married, baptized an infant, or served as sponsors to other slaves, mixed-bloods, or Indians. The parish priest entered the owner’s name and, starting in 1664, frequently noted the shade of the slave’s skin color: negro, moreno, mulato, or pardo. One family of house slaves belonging to the Menendez Marquez family are traceable in the registry for three generations. AN147 (Bushnell KC)

A treasury official possessed most of the advantages of an officer plus others of his own. When he served as a judge of the exchequer he was entitled to a portion after taxes, probably a sixth, of all confiscated merchandise. When he was collector of the situado he drew a per diem of 30 reales, which may have been why Juan de Cevadilla asked the crown to supplement his low salary as treasurer with the good salary of a situador. [Note 49: Alonso Sanchez Saez memorial 1/4/1596; Juan de Cevadilla, Havana 5/23/1580] As a manager of presidio supplies the treasury official favored his kinsmen and friends who were importers and cattle ranchers. In time of famine he drew more than his share of flour. As a payroll officer he credited himself with all the maravedis over a real, since there was no longer a maravedi coin in the currency. As a regidor the official took turns with his colleagues at tavern inspection. Each time a pipe was opened he collected one peso [Note 50: Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; cedula to Gov. Quiroga y Losada 6/7/1691; Ex-Gov. Rojas y Borja 7/27/1630] There must have been many similar ways to supplement a salary, some acknowledged and others only implied. (Bushnell KC) AN322

The duties of a royal official were not necessarily done by him personally. An official was often absent, traveling to New Spain or Havana, visiting the provinces, or looking after his property. He chose a substitute, the substitute posted bond, and they divided the salary. If the substitute found it necessary to hire a replacement of his own, the subject of payment was reduced to a private deal between the parties. When a proprietary office fell vacant, the governor enjoyed the right of appointing ad interim, unless the crown had sold a futura and the new proprietor was waiting. Interim officials were paid half of a regular salary, the same as substitutes. [Note 51: An interim ecclesiastical post carried full pay. See cedula to the royal officials 12/30/1686] The routine work of the Florida treasury may have been done more often by substitutes than proprietors, especially in the late 17th century, when officials serving as situadores were kept waiting in Mexico City for years. This raised questions of liability. (Bushnell KC)

In some treasuries precedence among the royal officials was determined by the higher salaries of some or by the fact that proprietors were regidores of the cabildo and substitutes were not. In St. Augustine, where these differences did not exist, the only bases for precedence were proprietorship and seniority. The one who first stepped forward to sign a document was the one who had been a proprietor the longest. (Bushnell KC)

As a proprietor of the exchequer the treasury official had the second highest salary in town, job tenure, free housing, and the opportunity to let substitutes do his work. In his connection with the garrison he could count on regular rations, supplies, and a career for his sons. Because he was a regidor of the cabildo, the whole regional economy was laid before him to adjust to his advantage. And beyond all this were the prized “honors, deferences, graces, exemptions, liberties, preeminences, prerogatives, and immunities.” A proprietary official of the royal treasury was as secure financially and socially as any person could be who lived in that place and time. AN323 (Bushnell KC)

Ch.4 Duties and Organization The work of the treasury was conducted mainly in the houses of government: the counting house, the customs house, the royal warehouse and arsenal, and the treasury. For all of this work the royal officials were collegially responsible, and much of it they did together; but each of them also had his own duties, his headquarters, and one or more assistants. The organization of the treasury is shown in Table 2, with the patron or patrons of each position. Those positions for which wages are known are in Table 3. Table 2 Treasury Organization and Patronage in St. Augustine, 1591-1702 Positions and Dates Created King and Council Governor Royal Officials Treasury Council Other Treasury Council Governor x Accountant x Factor-overseer to 1628 Treasurer to 1628 Treasurer-steward (1628) x Interim officials x Substitute officials x-a x Public and govt. notary to 1631 1631 on-b Commissioned Agents Situador x-c Procurador x Supply ship masters x Provincial tax collectors x Expedition tax collectors x Counting House Chief clerk (1593) x Assistant clerk (1635) x Lieutenant auditor (1666) x-d Internal auditor to 1666 Customs House Customs constable (1603) to 1636 1636 on Chief guard (1630) x Guards (as needed) x Warehouse and Arsenal Steward x Rations and munitions notary x a. With governor’s consent. b. Auctioned. c. Chosen by auditor and governor. d. Most common practice; varied frequently. Table 3 Wages at the St. Augustine Treasury in the 17th Century Position Salary without Rations Per Diem or Daily Rations (in reales) Bonus Total (in ducats) Proprietor 400,000 mrs/yr 2.5 1150 Proprietor as situador 400,000 mrs/yr 30 2062 Captain as procurador 200 ducats/yr 15 20 ducats/mo 938 Interim or substitute official 200,000 mrs/yr 2.5 618 Lieutenant auditor 500 pesos/yr 2.5 444 Chief clerk 1,000 mrs/mo 2.5 200 pesos/yr 260 Chief guard 250 ducats/yr* 250 Steward 50,000 mrs/yr 2.5 217 Customs constable 1,000 mrs/mo 2.5 25,000 mrs/yr 182 Rations notary 5 ducats/mo 2.5 400 reales/yr 179 Public and govt. notary 1,000 mrs/mo 2.5 400 reales/yr 151 Assistant clerk 1,000 mrs/mo 2.5 50 pesos/yr 151 *This figure may include rations. (Bushnell KC)

The title of accountant called for training in office procedures. Roving auditors might find errors and make improvements in the bookkeeping system, yet this could not take the place of careful routine. In the words of New Spain Auditor Irigoyen: “The accountant alone is the one who keeps a record of the branches of revenue and makes out the drafts for whatever is paid out, and any ignorance or carelessness he displays must be at the expense of Your Majesty’s exchequer.” Unfortunately, not every hidalgo who was appointed accountant enjoyed working with figures. Some left everything in the hands of subordinates, signing whatever was put in front of them. The accountant did not handle cash. He was a records specialist, the archivist who preserved royal cedulas, governors’ decrees, and treasury resolutions. He indexed and researched them, had them copied, and was the authority on their interpretation. He kept the census of native tributaries—a count supplemented but not duplicated by the friars’ Lenten count of communicants. [Note 2: Antonio Menendez Marquez and Francisco de la Rocha to gov. Marques Cabrera n.d. in the act on Mayaca and Enacape (between 3/15/1682 and 9/7/1682); Fr. Baltasar Lopez 9/15/1602, in the friars’ information on St. Augustine and Florida 9/16/1602; Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 10/24/1701] It was his business to maintain personnel files, entering the date when an individual went on or off payroll and recording leaves and suspensions. No one was paid without his certification. Sometimes the crown asked for a special report: the whereabouts of small firearms in the provinces, a list of Indian missions and attendant friars with the distances between them in leagues, a cost analysis of royal slave earnings and expenses AN324, even an accounting of empty barrels. Instructions came addressed to all the royal officials and they all signed the prepared report, but the accountant and his staff did the work. [Note 3: Cedula to the governor 3/22/1685; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 4/15/1697; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598; cedula to Pedro Redondo Villegas 11/14/1600] (Bushnell KC)

The counting house was staffed by a number of clerks. Before their positions were made official the accountant sometimes hired an accounts notary (escribano de cuentas) out of his own salary. [Note 4: Lazaro Saez de Mercado 7/18/1582; Alonso Sanchez Saez 5/8/1586] In 1593 the crown approved a chief clerk of the counting house (oficial mayor de la contaduria) to be paid a regular plaza and 200 pesos from the bonus fund. When the accountant was away this clerk usually served as his substitute. The position of assistant clerk of the counting house (oficial menor de la contaduria) with a salary supplement of 50 pesos a year was approved in 1635. The assistant clerk was also known as the clerk of the half-annate (oficial de la media anata), although the half-annate was seldom collected. [Note 5: Gov. Quiroga y Losada and royal officials 5/8/1689; Nicolas Ponce de Leon, seen in Council 2/8/1631, summary; muster of 5/28/1683, enclosed with Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683] If the work load at the office became heavy, temporary help might be hired, but the king did not want this charged to his treasury. When Accountant Ponce de Leon and his substitute allowed the books to get eight years behind, the other officials were told to deduct from salaries the cost of bringing them up to date. [Note 6: Marginal notation on Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] (Bushnell KC)

The treasury officials were a committee of harbor masters, registering the comings and goings of people as well as ships. It was their duty to see that no one entered the provinces without the correct papers, or left without the governor’s consent and their own fiscal release. Impetuous young Pedro de Valdes, betrothed to Menendez’s daughter Ana AN136, was probably the only person ever to stow away for Florida, but convicts, soldiers, and even friars tried to escape. The presidio’s ships had to be manned by Indians and mixed-bloods who could be relied upon to return home. [Note 8: Gov. Marques Cabrera orders to Antonio Matheos 2/28/1687, enclosed with report on Espiritu Santo Bay; Gov. Mendez de Canzo to Vincente Gonzales 3/1/1598 in service record of Hernando de Mestas; cedula to Bartolome de Arguelles 8/18/1593; Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/5/1682] AN137 When the royal officials first began collecting harbor taxes, they recognized the need of a customs constable and inspector (alquacil y fiel ejecutor de la aduana) to record what was loaded and unloaded from ships. Otherwise they had to take turns at the customs house themselves, which Alonso Sanchez Saez, at least, was unwilling to do. [Note 9: He had to be kept there under guard. See Gov. Ybarra 2/5/1605 and 12/23/1605] The crown approved the new position in 1603, with a 25,000-maravedi bonus and no doubt a percentage of goods confiscated. [Note 10: Cedula to the chief constable, other constables and justices, etc. 4/19/1583; Gov. Quiroga y Losada and the royal officials 5/8/1689] The governor appointed as first constable Lucas de Soto, a better sort of soldier sentenced to serve four years in Florida for trying to desert to New Spain from Cuba. By 1608 De Soto was in Spain with dispatches, receiving the salary of customs constable but not doing the work. In 1630 the crown approved a position of chief guard (guardamayor) for all ports, to be chosen by the treasury officials and to select his own assistants. In St. Augustine he was paid a respectable salary of 250 ducats. The royal officials soon objected that the governor appointed all the guards and was thus able to unload ships by night or however he pleased without paying taxes; the customs constable was no more than his servant and secretary. In response to their letter the officials were assigned patronage of the constable’s post as well. Within 10 years they too were letting him serve by proxy. [Note 11: Royal officials 1/12/1608; Gov. Ybarra 2/5/1605; Juan Menendez Marquez, Alonso de las Alas, and Alonso Sanchez Saez 3/12/1608; Recop 10/11/1630; Nicolas Ponce de Leon and Francisco Menendez Marquez, seen in council 10/17/1631; Gov. Quiroga y Losada and the royal officials 5/8/1689; Juan Diez de la Calle, Madrid 1646] (Bushnell KC)

It was a temptation to double up on offices and hire out the lesser one. (Bushnell KC)

AN138 The accountant’s 1591 instructions to the new steward show the care with which royal supplies and provisions were supposed to be guarded. [Note 19: Bartolome de Arguelles instructions to the steward 5/12/1591] Fernandez de Perete must not open the arsenal save in the presence of the rations and munitions notary, a constable, and the governor. To guarantee this, it had three padlocks. He must keep the weapons, matchcord, gunpowder, and lead safe from fire. (There was little he could do about lightning. In 1592 a bolt struck the powder magazine and blew up 3,785 ducats’ worth of munitions.) The steward must protect the provisions against theft and spoilage, storing the barrels of flour off the ground and away from the leaks in the roof; keeping the earthenware jars of oil, lard, and vinegar also off the ground and not touching each other, in a place where they would not get broken; examining the wine casks for leakage twice a day and tapping them occasionally to see whether the contents were turning to vinegar in the hot wooden buildings. [Note 20: Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601] It was the steward’s responsibility to keep a book with the values by category of everything kept in the warehouses, from ships’ canvas to buttons. Once a year the royal officials would check this book against the items in inventory. Anything missing would be charged to the steward’s account. On the first of every month they and the governor would make a quality inspection, in which anything found damaged due to the steward’s negligence was weighed, thrown into the sea, and charged to him. [Note 21: Juan de Arrazola, Andres de Sotomayor, and Joseph de Olivera 5/28/1612] (Bushnell KC)

Every day except Sundays and feast days the royal officials went to the work of the day directly after meeting at morning mass. [Note 31: Gov. Marques Cabrera to the royal officials 9/6/1681, in investigation of the trade goods, 12/7/1680 to 6/28/1683; Auditor Irigoyen was expected to work six hours a day.] It might be the day for an auction, or for the monthly inspection of munitions and supplies. When a pilot came in from coastal patrol his declaration of salvage and barter had to be taken and his equipment and supplies checked in. AN139 A deputy governor in from the provinces would present his report of taxes collected, or a new census of tributaries. The masters of supply ships brought in their receipts and vouchers to find out what balance they owed to the treasury. If the ship had brought a situado, the time required would be magnified several times. Once a week the treasury officials held a formal treasury council (acuerdo de hacienda) attended by the public and governmental notary (escribano publico y gobernacion). Without this notary’s presence there could be no legal gathering for government business, no public pronouncement, and no official action or message. AN140 (Bushnell KC)

Once a week the treasury officials held a formal treasury council (acuerdo de hacienda) attended by the public and governmental notary (escribano publico y gobernacion). Without this notary’s presence there could be no legal gathering for government business, no public pronouncement, and no official action or message. AN141 Any letter not in his script was considered a rough draft; his signature verified a legal copy. The public and governmental notary AN142 was paid a plaza plus salary, which began at 100 ducats a year but around 1631 was reduced to 400 reales. Since no money or supplies passed through his hands he did not furnish bond. [Note 32: Juan de Cueva 1/9/1631, enclosed with Gov. Rodriguez de Villegas, 12/27/1630; Gov. Trevino Guillamas 10/7/1614. The ubiquity of the notary is revealed in Recop.] Although in his public office a notary was supposed to be impartial and incorruptible, it was hard for him to oppose the governor, who had appointed him, could remove him, and might fine him besides. [Note 33: Sebastian de Ynclan 2/24/1600; Alonso de las Alas 11/23/1609; Fr. Francisco Pareja et al. 1/14/1617; Gov. Trevino Guillamas to the royal officials and notary 1/27/1617. Both this notary and the one of rations and munitions sometimes received royal titles, but they were appointed locally. See cedula to Gov. Mendez de Canzo 11/9/1598 and Gov. Trevino Guillamas 10/7/1614] Captain Hernando de Mestas, in a letter smuggled out of prison, said that the notary was his enemy and had refused him his office. “The former notary would not do what he was told,” said Mestas, “so they took the office from him and gave it to the present one who does what they tell him, and he has a house and slaves, while I am poor.” [Note 34: Hernando de Mestas 3/12/1603] In an effort to get the notaryship out of the governor’s power, the royal officials suggested to the crown that the position be put up for public auction. The idea was quickly taken up, but the new system probably changed little. In a town both inbred and illiterate, notaries were not easy to find. When Alonso de Solana was suspended from that office by the king’s command, and again when he died, the highest bid to replace him (and the one the royal officials accepted, was that of his son. [Note 35: Royal officials n.d. and Council reply 10/6/1631; royal officials 4/20/1678; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 1/20/1697; Juan de Solana 2/6/1697 and Gov. Torres y Ayala 2/6/1697] For these reasons of autocracy, patronage, and inbreeding, little reliance can be placed upon local testimony about a controversial topic. As the bishop of Tricale, visiting St. Augustine in the 18th century, explained: “Here there is a great facility to swear to whatever is wanted.” [Note 36: Francisco de San Buenaventura, Bishop of Tricale 4/29/1736] AN143 …Governors tried several methods of managing the royal officials. One was by appointment and control of their notary. (Bushnell KC)

At their treasury council the royal officials checked the contents of the treasure chest against the books of the coffer. Whatever had been collected since the last time the chest was open was produced; they all signed the receipt and saw the money deposited in the coffer and entered into the book of the coffer kept inside it. It was not unheard of for an official to keep out part of the royal revenues, so that they never entered the record at all. As long as the chest was open, those vecinos using it as a safe might drop by to make a deposit or to check on the contents of their own small locked cases, for the treasure chest was the nearest thing to a bank vault in town. AN144 (Bushnell KC)

The treasury officials were not supposed to borrow the king’s money or lend it to their friends, but from the number of deficits found by auditors, they must have done so regularly. When detected, they had to replace the money within three days or face suspension. [Note 37: For typical deficits see Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655] The treasury was not the only source of credit. Soldiers pledged their wages to provide bond for an officeholder or situador. Shipowners sold their vessels to the presidio on time. To ration the garrison Governor Hita Salazar borrowed produce stored up for sale by the Franciscans. Even Indians operated on the deferred payment plan. The Christians of San Pedro sold cargoes of maize to the garrison on credit and so did the heathen on the far side of Apalache. The Guale women who peddled foodstuffs and tobacco required a pledge of clothing from Spanish soldiers, and it was complained that they returned the garments in bad condition. [Note 39: Fr. Baltasar Lopez 9/15/1602, in friars’ information on St. Augustine and Florida 9/16/1602; Gov. Aranguiz y Cotes 11/1/1659; Pueyo visita of 1695] AN145 (Bushnell KC)

After the examination of the coffer the royal officials went on to important deliberations. Dispatches from the crown addressed to “my royal officials” were opened by all of them together. Their replies, limited to one subject per letter AN146, were signed collegially except when one official in disagreement with the others wrote on his own. The notary wrote up a resume of actions taken, which each official signed. If there had been disagreement each one signed after his own opinion (parecer), but the vote of the majority carried. The minutes of the meeting, in the book of resolutions (libro de acuerdos), had the force of a judicial action. [Note 40: Cedula to the governor 10/11/1681] The governor was entitled to attend the treasury council and vote in it, but not to put a lock of his own on the coffer. The royal officials considered it a hazard to the treasury for the governor to hold a key to it, and the crown agreed. No one should have access to the king’s money, plate, and jewels without corresponding responsibility for them. Governors in Florida were forbidden to put a lock on the royal coffer by a 1579 restraining order that was repeated after further complaints in 1591 and 1634. [Note 41: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Nicolas Ponce de Leon 1/5/1634, and Council replay 11/13/1635; Bartolome de Arguelles 5/12/1591] The governor’s vote, although not decisive, had inordinate weight on the council, especially after the number of officials was reduced from three to two. The treasury officials were aware of what this meant. In 1646 they wrote: “The governor who advised Your Majesty on this could have had no other motive than less opposition to his moneymaking, because three, Sire, are not as easy to trample on as just two; and besides, if one of them combines with the governor what can the other poor fellow do, in a place where a governor can do whatever he likes?” [Note 42: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] (Bushnell KC)

The governor was most definite about this right when it was time to commission someone to collect the situado. Once a year the treasury council met to decide on the year’s situador and what he should bring back from Mexico City, Vera Cruz, and Havana. Together they wrote out his instructions, signed his powers of attorney, and accepted his 2,000-ducat bond. Since it was not feasible for the agent to contact them after he left, they must choose someone of independent judgment and wide experience—one of themselves, thought the royal officials. It did not deter them to remember that a proprietor on per diem drew higher wages than the governor. Marques Cabrera, who was suspicious about most of what royal officials did, pointed out that the situador was supposed to answer to them and they could not fairly judge themselves. A governor usually proposed someone from his household. Nevertheless, of the 21 royally appointed officials from 1565 to 1702, 17 are known to have been situador at least once, and many went several times. [Note 43: Gov. Ybarra to the royal officials 1/2/1609; Gov. Trevino Guillamas 1/27/1617; Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/30/1684. Crown policy on the choice of situador was reversed more than once. See Juan de Cevadilla, Havana, 1/22/1582; cedula to the governor 9/9/1598; cedulas to Juan de Posada 4/21/1592 and the governor 11/9/1598 (Bushnell KC)

Another important commissioned agent was the procurador, or advocate, who represented the presidio on trips to Spain. As his primary duty was to bring back soldiers and military supplies, the procurador was usually either an officer with a patent from the crown or someone from the governor’s house who had been appointed an officer ad interim. When he had time the procurador conducted business of his own, and for many this was their main object. The colony was allowed two ships-of-permission per year. Pelts worth 2,000 or (after Governor Salinas requested an increase) 3,000 ducats could be taken to Spain and cargoes brought back for resale, if anyone wanted to bother. Procurador Juan de Ayala y Escobar, who career has been studied by Gillaspie, found the Spanish trade worth his while. His instinct for scenting profit in war and famine was something the crown overlooked in return for his keeping St. Augustine supplied. [Note 44: Gov. Salinas 8/19/1619] (Bushnell KC)

At the weekly treasury council, bills were presented. The treasury officials examined the authorization for each purchase, along with the affidavit verifying the price as normal, the bill of lading, and the factor’s or steward’s receipt for goods delivered. If everything was in order the bill was entered into the book of libranzas (drafts), which was a sort of accounts payable. Each entry carried full details of date, vendor, items, quantity, price, and delivery, as well as the signed certifications of royal officials and the governor. Such entries had great juridical value. A libranza, which was acceptable legal tender, was no more than the notarized copy of an entry. Sanchez-Bella maintains that the libranza, or drafts on the royal treasury, were the primary cause of friction between governors and royal officials in the Indies. [Note 45: Royal officials 3/6/1580] The governor of Florida had been ordered to make withdrawals in conjunction with the officials of the treasury, but many executives found this too restricting. When Governor Mendez de Canzo ordered payments against the officials’ advice he did not want their objections recorded; Governor Trevino Guillamas told them flatly that it was his business to distribute the situado, not theirs; Governor Horruytiner presented them with drafts made out for them to sign. [Note 46: Bartolome de Arguelles 2/20/1600; Gov. Trevino Guillamas 1/27/1617; Francisco Menendez Marquez and Nicolas Ponce de Leon 1/5/1634] The officials were not as helpless as they liked to sound. The governor endorsed the libranzas, but they had the keys to the coffer. [Note 47: Gov. Marques Cabrera to the royal officials 2/20/1687, in report on Espiritu Santo Bay 2/28/1687; Gov. Marques Cabrera to royal officials 5/30/1684, with comment by the fiscal of the Council on 8/23/1686] (Bushnell KC)

The fourth type of royal revenue was the quinto, a tax on treasure. There were two kinds: the true fifth was ordinarily associated with mines or pearl fisheries, but could be applied to other sources of regular extraction: the other quinto, actually a half, was also called the “tax on hallazgos” (finds). It was the royal share of salvage and of booty, which could be either the spoils of legitimate war or of the systematic looting of graves. When both quintos were applied to the same treasure, with the fifth taken out first and the tax on hallazgos from what remained, the king’s share was 60%. (Bushnell KC)

A steady stream of cedulas signed “I the king” arrived to regulate every aspect of government. These orders could be addressed to the governor, the royal officials, one of the officers, or any other individual or group with reason to receive one. Each cedula was supposed to be presented to the cabildo for validation. The governor, royal officials, and public and governmental notary in turn received the written orders of their prince with reverence, kissing them and raising them overhead in ancient ceremonial fashion. AN149 Copies were made of those that were private property AN150, then the royal orders were added to the Books of the Cedulas kept in the counting house. [Note 1: Affidavit of recording a cedula 6/23/1630] Receipt of a cedula did not guarantee compliance. Not every royal order was applicable: some were sobrecedulas (general decrees) sent to part or all of the kingdoms, presidencies, and captaincies general of the Indies. (Bushnell KC)

The copyists who produced these form letters frequently referred to Florida as an island—a natural mistake since the colony was in the administrative category of the Windward Isles (Isles de Barlovento). [Note 3: See cedula to “the royal officials of the island of Florida and its province 12/2/1613; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 5/25/1657] AN151 (Bushnell KC)

The royal officials were no more anxious than the governor to obey a distasteful order. Their standard maneuver was to tell the king that either by an inadvertent error or for some sinister reason he had been misinformed. [Note 5: Juan Menendez Marquez 3/14/1608; Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] No one flatly told the Spanish monarch that he was wrong. (Bushnell KC)

A watchful crown had provided its treasury officials with a number of formal means for exercising power. Of the four functions of nonecclesiastical government into which Spanish administrative correspondence was properly divided, we have so far concentrated on Hacienda, or the exchequer; the royal officials were also active in Capitania, Justicia, and Gobierno. They were importantly involved with the garrison; they were the judges in cases of the exchequer, and they were members of the city council. The proprietors of the treasury in St. Augustine were not powerless before the governor’s military role of captain general. They were able to exert influence on him in a number of ways: first, they were inactive officers of the garrison; second, one of them usually served as the military purchasing agent and collector of funds; finally, they were the official accountants, payroll officers, and stewards. When it came to dealing with the military, the royal officials were privileged and powerful. (Bushnell KC)

All the royal officials born in or acclimated to Florida were reformados. Some had served with distinction for years and found it hard to settle down over their dusty books. In the succession of Menendez Marquez officeholders, the accountant Pedro was also an admiral. Juan served as treasurer during an interlude in a long career of Indian fighting. Francisco took occasional leave of the treasury to pacify rebellious provinces. Juan II rallied the soldiers and saved the fort during the Searles pirate raid. He eventually returned to active service as a sergeant major in Havana and became a Knight of the Order of Santiago. Antonio was an expert on the southern coastal waterways, whom the governor took in search of the buccaneer Agramont. Francisco II was the dashing captain of Florida’s first cavalry company [Note 16: Ex-Gov Marques Cabrera 9/22/1688; service record of Francisco Menendez Marquez II, compiled by Luis Arana.] Men like this were not backward about speaking their minds. The Junta de Guerra once had to remind them that it was the captain general’s responsibility, not theirs, to inform the crown on military matters. [Note 17: Junta de Guerra 1685, comment on a letter from Antonio Menendez Marquez and Francisco de la Rocha 5/25/1683. Gov. Benavides complained that Francisco II meddled in everything, including the military.] (Bushnell KC)

As officers of a treasury associated with a presidio, the royal officials had two other duties that would not have been given them elsewhere: keeping the personnel records of the garrison and accounting for what was stored in the warehouses and arsenal. AN152 It was the accountant, as records specialist, who performed the act of “entering and erasing plazas” from the muster given him monthly by the governmental notary. [Note 18: Nicolas Ponce de Leon 7/3/1632; Juan de Cueva 1/9/1631, enclosed with Gov. Rodriguez de Villegas 12/27/1630] He maintained the individual service records in which every man’s career was recorded from induction to retirement, with supplementary material rich in information about Indian wars, pirate attacks, explorations, salvage, and sea voyages. Officers tried to influence what went into their files. (Bushnell KC)

In order to make effective collections from the debtors to the crown the treasury officials in the Indies were elevated to the dignity of royal judges (jueces oficiales reales) in 1567. In some regions they established autonomous courts and constabularies, but not in Florida, where after the first or second abandonment of Santa Elena the only bailiffs or justices were adjutants of the governor. In vain the crown warned “It is our will that our officials do the attachments, imprisonings, sales and auctionings of property and other judicial proceedings that are necessary to collect what is owing to us,” and “Let the bailiffs of that land execute the orders of the royal officials in the things relative to the treasury without delay.” [Note 25: Recop 2/18/1567; cedulas re the royal officials 6/10/1580, and to Gov. Menendez Marquez 4/19/1583] After 1621 the overseas treasury officials, who had become somewhat high-handed, were no longer supposed to call themselves judges or engage in law enforcement. If this ruling ever reached Florida, it was ignored. The treasurer, accountant, and factor continued to style themselves royal judges and to carry staves of justice. [Note 26: Recop 6/11/1621 and 4/28/1617; acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702; Nicolas Ponce de Leon 7/3/1632] If they had no private constabulary, there were other means of collection. Anybody wanting to leave the provinces was supposed to obtain their fiscal clearance. If a debtor to the crown had managed to escape to another jurisdiction they could pursue him, with royal consent, and require the help of the law. [Note 27: Gov. Menendez Marquez 1/23/1581, reply to Domingo Gonzalez n.d.; Nicolas Ponce de Leon, Mexico City 9/25/1642, and cedula in response 8/4/1643] In practice, they found that only a situador or a royal appointee like themselves was likely to get so deeply in debt to the crown as to be followed out of Florida. The last resort, if a debtor was in prison or deceased, was religious pressure. Letters of excommunication (paulinas) were taken out and read in the main churches of Havana and St. Augustine, calling on anyone holding property of the debtor, owing him money, or knowing of someone who did, to declare it forthwith or call down the wrath of God upon the whole town. AN153 After the letter was read, a solemn procession of parishioners in black veils, carrying a cross draped in black, marched back and forth across town chanting the Laus Deo. [Note 28: Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, Havana, 2/12/1577; Alonso Sanchez Saez 1/4/1596] Little was recovered by this means, which suggests either that there was little to recover or that a Spaniard prized his purse as ardently as his soul. (Bushnell KC)

City employees were paid by the fees (posturas) for their services. The notary charged to copy or notarize papers; he and the town crier kept a percentage of the goods sold at auction; the butcher at the slaughterhouse charged by the carcass; ferrymen collected by the boatload. Obligatory inspections of quality or of measures at the market stalls and wineshops were also done for a fee. [Note 57: Alonso de Caceres, sentence against Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana, 2/20/1574; three ranchers 8/28/1689; Florencia visita of 1694-95] Since not even the regidores were paid a salary they took turns by the month inspecting taverns. Every time a cask of wine was decanted the regidor in attendance collected 12 reales: eight for himself and four for the confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament. [Note 58: Ex-Go. Rojas y Borja 7/27/1630, and Miguel Geronimo Portal y Mauleon’s lawyer 1630] It was a pleasant task, providing not only an extra peso but a show of generosity and a sociable cup of wine. AN154 AN155 (Bushnell KC)

Justice also paid for itself. The costs for the notary, guards, and informers, as well as for the governor or regidor who sat as judge on the case, were paid out of the fines and confiscations imposed by the court. The fort served as the jail, and relatives of the prisoners provided the food. The regidores, vecinos of the town themselves, were not rigorous in the collection of debts to non-Floridians. (Bushnell KC)

The smallest integer was the maravedi, equivalent to approximately 0.1 gram of silver. Gold as well as silver coils could be expressed in maravedis, making it easier to reflect fluctuations in the bimetallic ratio. Perhaps this is why the crown was requiring, by the late 1570s, that all accounts be recorded in that unit. There were 34 maravedis to the real, 272 maravedis (8 reales) to the peso, and 375 maravedis (11 reales) to the ducat. During the 16th century large figures were customarily stated in terms of ducats. Starting around 1600, amounts to be collected on the situado were stated in pesos. The separate subsidies within the situado, however, continued to be expressed in ducats for another 3rd of a century, and fine and bonds were cited in that coin even longer. [Note 5: Juan Menendez Marquez, Havana, 6/1600, and St. Augustine 4/13/1601; cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 6/18/1635] The escudo, whose value was set at 400 maravedis in 1566, was worth 1.1 pesos, or 300 maravedis, in the late 17th century. It was not a common coin and usually entered Florida as part of a pension or salary awarded elsewhere. [Note 6: Enrique Primo de Rivera 11/26/1690] Since all these coins had separately varying exchange rates and availability, contracts designated the one in which they were to be fulfilled, and the added expressions de contado, efectivos, or acunados meant “in cash.”

The form of bookkeeping practiced in 16th- and 17th-century colonial treasuries was not double-entry, although this method was known. The crown preferred the “charge-discharge,” or cargo-data, system based upon personal liability. In this system one was “charged” when he accepted responsibility for a certain amount of money or quantity of property. He was “discharged” when he produced equivalent funds or items of property or acceptable evidence of their correct and authorized expenditure. At the end of an accounting period or, in the case of situadores and shipmasters, after the voyage, one sought discharge by “rendering” his accounts to the proper authority, who was said to “take” them. The “charge-discharge” system, while it emphasized personal liability, also fostered a sense of proprietorship. What was a private responsibility could be of private advantage. Even with intentions that were upright it was possible to confuse one’s own money and property with that of the crown. “Charge-discharge” accounting style did not facilitate a running balance. Both cargo and data entries might appear on the same page with cargo at the top and data below; more often they were on separate pages, in separate sections, or even separate books. Knowing that someone else would be going over their accounts and calling in their deficits, some of the royal officials never balanced their books at all.

In 1578 Visitador Alvaro Flores de Quinones was furnished with a list of the books being kept in Florida. The treasurer and the factor each kept two books, one of data and the other of cargo. The treasurer’s accounts were of monies and credit received and expended; the factor’s, a running inventory of goods by classification. Two other books of primary importance were the book of the coffer and the book of resolutions. AN156 Five secondary books contained salary contracts and service records, musters, probate records, ship registries and merchandise evaluations, and the accounts of situadores and others temporarily charged with monies or supplies. Other books were added as required. St. Augustine’s various ledgers and the supporting vouchers and receipts (cartas de pago) were stored in boxes and cupboards at the counting house. Auditors and their assistants brought special one-hole punched paper (papel agujereado) on which to make copies, which they tied with red tape of wool or linen and forwarded to the Council of the Indies. [Note 9: Nicolas de Aguirre 11/30/1578; Bartolome de Arguelles and Juan Menendez Marquez 1/23/1602. Instructions on books to be kept are in Recop.] When the Council was finished with them, the copies went to the Castle of Simancas near Valladolid, set aside by the Emperor Charles V as an archival repository. [Note 10: From Simancas the account copies were moved in 1784 to the new Archive of the Indies in Seville, where in 1924 many of the 16th century Florida records were damaged and disarranged because of a fire.]

The King’s Coffer Proprietors of the Spanish Florida Treasury 1565-1702 By Amy Bushnell Preface The historiography of Spanish Florida has traditionally concentrated on Indians, friars, and soldiers, all dependent on the yearly situado, or crown subsidy. Other Floridians, poor and common, appear to have had no purpose beyond witless opposition to the royal governor. This was so unusual for a Spanish colony that I was sure the true situation must have been more complex. In the imperial bureaucracy, ecclesiastical, military, magisterial, fiscal, and judicial functions of government were customarily distributed among a number of officials and tribunals with conflicting jurisdictions. I believed that research would reveal an elite in Florida, encouraged by the crown as a counterweight to the governor, and that this elite was pursuing its own rational economic interests. I began by studying a branch of the Menendez clan, the Menendez Marquez family, correlating their ranching activities to the determinants of economic expansion into Florida. Governors came and went, but the Menendez Marquezes exercised power in the colony and held office in the treasury from 1565 to 1743. It became apparent that the way to identify and study a Florida elite was prosopographically, through the proprietors of the royal treasury. Such an investigation would serve a second purpose of wider interest and value: revealing how a part of the Spanish imperial bureaucracy operated on the local level. On a small scale of Florida, imperial organization and crown policies would leave the realm of the theoretical to become the problems of real people. I do not present the results of my research as a quantitative economic or financial history. The audited accounts necessary to that type of history exist; those for the 16th century have been examined with profit by Paul Hoffman and Eugene Lyon, and scholars may eventually mine the exhaustive legajos for the 17th century. But my purpose has been different: to describe the administrators of one colonial treasury in action within their environment. To keep the project manageable I have limited it chronologically to the Hapsburg era, from the time St. Augustine was founded in 1565 to the change of ruling houses, which the city observed in 1702. My main source has been the preserved correspondence between the crown and its governors and treasury officials, who overlapping responsibilities led to constant wrangling and countless reports, legal actions, and letters. In a sense, every scholarly work is a collaboration between the researcher and his predecessors, yet one feels a special obligation to those who have given their assistance personally, offering insights, transcripts, and bibliographies with a generosity of mind that sees no knowledge as a private enclave. The foremost person on my list is L.N. McAlister, the director of my doctoral program. In the course of our long friendship, his standards of scholarship, writing, and teaching have become the models for my own. He and Michael V. Gannon, David L. Niddrie, Marvin L. Entner, Claude C. Sturgill, Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, Eugene Lyon, and Peter Lisca, reading and criticizing the manuscript for this book in various of its drafts, have delivered me from many a blunder. For the new ones I may have fallen into, they are not accountable. Luis R. Arana, of the National Park Service at the Castillo de San Marcos, supplied me with interesting data on the Menendez Marquez family. Overton Ganong, at the Historical Saint Augustine Preservation Board, permitted me to spend a week with the Saint Augustine Historical Society’s unfinished transcript of the Cathedral Records of St. Augustine Parish. Ross Morell of the Division of Archives, History, and Records Management of the Florida Department of State allowed me to see translations and summaries made under the division’s auspices. Mark E. Fretwell, editor of the journal of the St. Augustine Historical Society, granted permission to reprint Chapter 2, which appeared as “The Expenses of Hidalguia in Seventeenth-Century St. Augustine.” El Escribano 15 (1978):23-26. Paul E. Hoffman, John J. TePaske, Charles Arnade, and Samuel Proctor gave me encouragement and advice. Elizabeth Alexander and her staff at the P.K. Younge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, provided a research home. The care they take of that library’s rich resources is something I never cease to appreciate. For financial support I am indebted to the University of Florida, in particular to the Latin American Center, the Graduate School, and the Division of Sponsored Research. The United States government supplied three years of NDEA Title VI fellowships in Spanish and Portuguese, and the American Association of University Women awarded me the Meta Glass and Margaret Maltby fellowship. My greatest acknowledgement is to the people I live with. My writer and scholar husband, Peter, has freed my time for writing without telling me how to do it. He, Catherine, and Colleen, listening with good grace to a hundred historical anecdotes, have helped me to believe that what I was doing mattered. Amy Bushnell Cluj-Napoca, Romania July 6, 1980

The [half annate] tax was not reinstated for this category of officials [treasury] until 1727. (Bushnell KC)

An officer was entitled to these [soldier] privileges and more. Not only might his slaves and servants bring in extra plazas, but he was in a position to sell noncommissioned offices, and excuses and leaves from guard duty. [Note 47: Anon. 11/20/1655, Juan Ruiz Maroto 11/28/1655, and Gregorio Bravo 12/5/1655; cedula to Salvador de Cigarroa 10/24/1680] It was possible for him to draw supplies from the royal storehouses almost indefinitely. AN336 With his higher salary he had readier cash and could order goods on the supply ship, purchase property at auction, or buy up quantities of maize for speculation. [Note 48: Bartolome de Arguelles, instructions to the steward 5/12/1591; Salvador de Cigarroa, Madrid 6/25/1659; anon 11/20/1655; Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602; Salvador de Cigarroa and Francisco de la Rocha 2/18/1680.] (Bushnell KC)

Governor Moral Sanchez, in the eighteenth century, said that the Indians sported freshwater pearls but refused out of their evil natures to say where they got them (Bushnell, The King’s Coffer, p.92).

Another was interference with the mails. Francisco de la Rocha and Salvador de Cigarroa complained that few of the cedulas they were supposed to index ever reached them. Another set of officials, going through the desk of Governor Martinez de Avendano after his death, found many of their letters to the crown, unsent. AN66 Interim Governor Gutierre de Miranda stopped the passage of all mail, confiscating one packet smuggled aboard a dispatch boat in a jar of salt. [Note 48: Francisco de la Rocha and Salvador de Cigarroa 5/4/1684; Alonso de las Alas 12/11/1595; Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo, Havana, 2/12/1577] (Bushnell KC)

Even an applicable cedula might not be obeyed. Governors were known to check the mail pouch and hold out any dispatch they did not want the royal officials to see. In such a case the governor might correspond privately with the crown to get the order rescinded or delayed. AN67 (Bushnell KC)

Governor Moral Sanchez, in the 18th century, said that the Indians sported freshwater pearls but refused out of their evil natures to say where they got them. [Note 79: Gov. Moral Sanchez 9/8/1735] AN365 (Bushnell KC)

A governor appointed to Florida usually left Spain on a presidio frigate loaded with troops for the garrison and also with armor, gunpower, and ammunition. The money for these essential military supplies was sometimes advanced by order of the crown from one of the funds at the House of Trade, the amount being deducted from the next situado by a coffer transfer. In wartime, a presidio-appointed procurador made extra trips to Spain for materiel. The funds for these large, irregularly spaced expenditures accumulated in a munitions reserve. (Bushnell KC)

Safely unloaded in St. Augustine, the situador faced a personal obstacle: the rendering of his accounts. The royal officials checked his purchase invoices against goods delivered, comparing prices with affidavits; they examined his expense receipts and counted the money he turned over. The total of invoices, receipts, and cash must equal the amount of the situado in his notarized papers of transmittal. For any shortage he was personally liable. The closing of a situador’s accounts might be delayed years waiting for all papers to arrive and be in order. When the situador was expected, the officials went into action. The public and governmental notary presented an up-do-date muster; the master of construction turned in the number of days’ labor owed to soldiers. From these and his own records the accountant certified the gross amount due each person on plaza. The factor or his steward (later, the treasurer-steward) supplied the total each soldier had drawn from the royal warehouse against his wages. The accountant deducted this figure, plus the compulsory contributions to service organizations and the notes presented by preferred creditors, to arrive at the net wages the treasurer should count out from the coffer. ...Any time a situador brought actual cash, St. Augustine became a busy place. Tables were set up in front of the guardhouse, and as the roll was called each man came by, picked up his wages, and took them to the next table under the eyes of his officers to pay his debts to local merchants, artisans, and farmers, whose order in line reflected their current favor with the administration. AN68 [Note 45: Francisco Menendez Marquez 2/8/1648; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/31/1627; Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574] For the next few nights, while the soldiers had money in their purses, there was exuberant gambling in the guardhouse. [Note 46: Junta de Guerra 4/1/11659; Francisco de San Buenaventura, Bishop of Tricale 4/29/1736] The influx of currency threw the town into a short-lived flurry of economic activity during which St. Augustine resembled Jalapa during the fair, or opening day at the silver smeltery. Everyone on the payroll was supposed to get food and clothing at cost, but the original price became encrusted with surcharges. [Note 47: Council re Florida soldiers 10/12/1604. Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado summarized the surcharges that were the practice when they arrived, 3/6/1580.] From time to time the crown ordered that the soldiers not be charged import or export duties, nor the cost of supplies for the situador’s vessel, nor the cost of ship repairs and replacements. [Note 48: Cedulas to the royal officials 9/10/1626; to the Council 2/25/1617; and to the governor and royal officials 12/18/1677] They were not to absorb the expense of supplies spoiled or mislaid, nor the 15% or 16% for handling, which may or may not have included the two reales per mark (nearly 8%) charge for changing silver. [Note 49: Alonso de Leturiondo 3/18/1689; cedula to the royal officials of Vera Cruz 2/9/1580] Neither were they to have passed on to them the cost of loss and leakage, given in the form of percentages called mermas to the shipmaster, the steward, and presumably anyone else who transported or stored crown merchandise. According to Pilot Andres Gonzalez, the Council of the Indies allowed mermas of 3% on flour, 4% on biscuit, 4% on salt, and 10% on maize. AN69 Given the density of rat population on the ships of the time, such allowances to a shipmaster may not have been excessive. Vazquez de Espinosa estimated that more than 4,000 rats were killed aboard his ship during a transatlantic crossing in 1622, not counting those the sailors and passengers ate. [Note 50: Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; Juan Menendez Marquez 4/21/1603; cedula to the royal officials 9/18/1604; Pilot Andres Gonzalez 1628. Gaspar Fernandez Parete may have found the mermas enough to live on. He drew out none of his salary as steward, but let it accumulate in the treasury (Bartolome de Arguelles 5/15/1602) AN70] If there was any substance behind the prohibitions against add-on charges—and there is no reason to think otherwise—then prices “at cost” were costly indeed. (Bushnell KC)

For a single scalp brought to the Carolina governor one warrior was supposedly given clothing piled to reach his shoulders, a flintlock with all the ammunition he wanted, and a barrel of rum. ...The bishop of Tricale reported in 1736 that natives who had been baptized Catholic put their hands to their heads saying, “Go away, water! I am no Christian.” [Note 37: Francisco de San Buenaventura, Bishop of Tricale 4/29/1736.] (Bushnell KC)

Ch.2 The Expenses of Position Florida, with its frequent wars, small Spanish population, and relatively few exports, might not seem a likely place for the maintenance of a gentlemanly class, known to Spaniards as hidalgos. But wealth and position are relative, and people differentiate themselves wherever there are disparities of background or belongings to be envied or flaunted. In the small society of St. Augustine, where everyone’s business was everyone else’s concern, social presumptiveness was regarded severely. (Bushnell KC)

From the list of vecinos (householders) asked to respond with voluntary gifts for public works or defense construction we can identify the principal persons in town, for a voluntary gift was the hidalgo’s substitute for personal taxation, to which he could not submit without marking himself a commoner. (Bushnell KC)

Whether transferred to Florida from the bureaucracy elsewhere or coming into office via inheritance, the royal official was presumed to be an hidalgo or he would never have been appointed. This meant, technically, that he was of legitimate birth, had never been a shopkeeper or tradesman, had not refused any challenge to his honor, and could demonstrate two generations of descent from hijos de algo (“sons of something”) untainted by Moorish or Jewish blood and uncondemned by the Inquisition. The advantages of being an hidalgo—someone addressed as don in a time when that title had significance—were unquestioned. There were, however, concomitant responsibilities and expenses. A Gentleman was expected to “live decently,” maintaining the dignity of his estate whether or not his means were adequate. Openhandedness and lavish display were not the idiosyncrasies of individuals but the realities of class, the characteristics that kept everyone with pretensions to hidalguia searching for sources of income. (Bushnell KC)

The personal quality that St. Augustine appreciated most earnestly in a gentleman was magnanimity. The character references written for a governor at the end of his term emphasized alms: the warm shawls given to widows, the delicacies to the sick, and the baskets of maize and meat distributed by the benefactor’s slaves during a famine. They also stressed his vows fulfilled to the saints: silver diadems, fine altar cloths, and new shrines. [Note 4: Ignacio de Leturiondo (copyist’s date 1707) in residencia of Gov. Hita Salazar; Ex-Gov. Quiroga y Losada (Cadiz) Council summary 10/19/1697; Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601; Gov. Mendez de Canzo to Gov. Ybarra 1603; The bishop of Cuba, Diego de Evelina y Compostela, warned one governor that he would need the parish priest’s good report and should keep on good terms with him. (A copy of the bishop’s letter of 5/30/1697 is with Gov. Torres y Ayala 7/2/1697).] When local confraternities elected yearly officers, the governor and treasury officials were in demand, for they brought to the brotherhood gifts and favors besides the honor of their presence. The royal officials consistently turned over a third of their earnings from tavern inspections to the Confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament, and the treasurer gave it his payroll perquisites. [Note 5: Ex-Gov. Rojas y Borja 7/27/1630, in residencia of Gov. Rojas y Borja.] (Bushnell KC)

Alms and offerings were minor expenses compared to the cost of keeping up a household. The royal officials were admonished to be married; the crown wanted the Indies populated by citizens in good standing, not mannerless half-breeds, and a man with a family had given as it were hostages for his behavior. [Note 6: Juan Menendez Marquez II and Lorenzo Joseph de Leon 9/9/1666.] Regular marriage to someone of one’s own class was, however, expensive. According to one hard-pressed official, “The pay of a soldier will not do for the position of quality demanded of a treasurer.” Another argued that he needed a raise because his wife was “someone of quality on account of her parents.” [Note 7: Miguel Geronimo Portal y Mauleon’s lawyer 1630; Juan Rodriguez de Cartaya, sent from Junta to Camara 5/7/1613.] (Bushnell KC)

A woman of quality in one’s house had to be suitably gowned. In 1607 six yards of colored taffeta cost almost 9 ducats, the equivalent of 96 wage-days for a repartimiento Indian. A velvet gown would have cost 48 ducats. [Note 8: Cargo manifest 1607.] A lady wore jewels: ornaments on her ears and fingers, and necklaces. In 1659 a single strand of pearls was valued at 130 pesos. Between wearings the jewelry was kept in a locked case inside the royal coffer, which served the community as a safety deposit. [Note 9: Ex-Gov. Quiroga y Losada, Cadiz, Council summary 10/19/1697; Salvador de Cigarroa, Madrid, 6/25/1659.] (Bushnell KC)

A lady had female companions near her own rank—usually dependent kinswomen, although Governor Menendez Marquez introduced two young chieftainesses to be raised in his house and to attend his wife, dona Maria. (Bushnell KC)

A gentlewoman maintained her own private charities; Catalina Menendez Marquez, sister of one governor, niece of another, widow of two treasury officials and mother-in-law of a third, kept convalescent, indigent soldiers in her home. (Bushnell KC)

The wives and daughters of hidalgos could become imperious: Juana Catarina of the important Florencia family, married to the deputy governor of Apalache Province, behaved more like a feudal chatelain than the wife of a captain. She required one native to bring her a pitcher of milk daily, obliged the town of San Luis to furnish six women to grind maize at her husband’s gristmill, and slapped a chief in the face one Friday when he neglected to bring her fish. (Bushnell KC)

Families were large: seven or eight persons, it was estimated around 1706. [Note 14: Ignacio de Leturiondo (copyist’s date 1707). Gillaspie divided a 1689 census by the hearth count and estimated an average of 2.8 persons per family. This is probably too low; in a presidio there were many single men.] The four generations of the Menendez Marquez treasury officials are one example. In the first generation 14 children were recorded in the Parish Register (all but two of them legitimate). In the second generation there were ten, in the third, nine, and the fourth generation numbered six. The number of recognized, baptized children in the direct line of this family averaged nearest to ten. [Note 15: Parish Register Marriage and Baptisms; Francisco Menendez Marquez II will 9/2/1742, included with probate papers 7/3/1743. Charles Arnade provided a transcript of this document.] All of the hidalgo’s progeny, legitimate or illegitimate, had to be provided for. The daughters, called “the adornments of the house,” had to have dowries if they were not to spend their lives as someone’s servants. A common bequest was a sum of money so an impoverished gentlewoman could marry or take the veil. (Bushnell KC)

All of the hidalgo’s progeny, legitimate or illegitimate, had to be provided for. The daughters, called “the adornments of the house,” had to have dowries if they were not to spend their lives as someone’s servants. A common bequest was a sum of money so an impoverished gentlewoman could marry or take the veil. ...The usual dowry in St. Augustine was a house for the bride AN410, but it could also be a ranch, a soldier’s plaza (man-space or man-pay) in the garrison, or even a royal office. [Note 17: For the social importance of real estate owned by women see Arnade “The Avero Story: An Early Saint Augustine Family with Many Daughters and Many Houses.” For plaza and royal office dowries see Bartolome de Arguelles 3/18/1599; cedula of 9/27/1681 to Enrique Primo de Rivera and a letter of his, 10/18/1695, both with 11/26/1690] …If a man died before all his daughters had been provided for, that duty fell upon their eldest brother, even if a friar. (Bushnell KC)

Girls [royal officials' daughters] were taught their prayers, manners, and accomplishments, and they learned homemaking at their mother’s side; they seldom received formal schooling. (Bushnell KC)

The plan for the sons of the [royal officials'] family was to make them self-supporting. Once a boy had finished the grammar school taught by one of the friars he had two main career options: the church or the garrison. To become a friar he entered a novitiate at the seminary in St. Augustine, if there was one in operation—otherwise, in Santiago de Cuba or Havana. He was then given his orders and joined the missionary friars in the Custody or Province of Santa Elena, embracing both Cuba and Florida. [Note 19: Anon. visita of Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano, Bishop of Cuba 6/27/1606; Fr. Antonio de Somoza 5/2/1673.] If he was meant for a soldier his father purchased or earned for him a minor’s plaza, held inactive from the time he got it at age nine or ten until he started guard duty around 15 or regular service two years later. Whether as friar or as soldier the young man was paid a meager 115 ducats a year including rations—enough for him to live on modestly but not to support dependents. Even so, there were governors who felt that no one born in Florida should be on the government payroll, either as religious or as a fighting man. [Note 20: Cedula from the queen regent Mariana 12/24/1673 AN411 included with Fr. Juan Moreno to Her Ladyship, seen in Council 4/18/1673; friars in chapter, correspondence with Gov. Marques Cabrera 8/9/1685 to 8/14/1585.] Advancement cost money, whether in the church, the military, or the bureaucracy. A treasury official generally trained his eldest son to succeed him and bought a futura (right of succession) if he could. [Note 21: Antonio de Arguelles to Antonio Ortiz de Otalora 6/11/1690; Junta de Guerra 3/8/1687; Gov. Marques Cabrera 10/6/1686 and Junta de Guerra reply, after 1/13/1687.] The patronage of lesser offices was an important right and, if the family possessed any, every effort was made to keep them. When times were peaceful, markets favorable, and other conditions fell into line, an hidalgo might set up his son as a rancher or a merchant in the import-export business, but many sons of hidalgos found none of these careers open to them. Sometimes, they were deposited with relatives in New Spain or Cuba; they left Florida of their own accord to seek their fortunes; or they remained to form the shabby entourage of more fortunate kinsmen, serving as pages, overseers, skippers, or chaplains. [Note 22: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697.] (Bushnell KC)

Sixteenth-century property inventories studied by Lyon show that the contrast between social classes around 1580 appeared in costly furnishings and apparel rather than houses. It made sense, in a city subject to piracy and natural disasters, to keep one’s wealth portable, in the form of personal, not real, property. The goods of an hidalgo included silver plate, carpets, tapestries and leather wall hangings, linens and bedding, rich clothing, and writing desks. The value of such belongings could be considerable. Governor Trevino Guillamas once borrowed 1,000 pesos against the silver service of his house. During the 17th century, houses gradually became a more important form of property. Construction costs were modest. Tools and nails, at five to the real (1/8 of a peso), were often the single largest expenditure. [Note 24: Thomas Menendez Marquez 7/1/1697; Fr. Francisco Alonso de Jesus to Gov. Rojas y Borja, seen by the governor 3/2/1630.] At mid-century it cost about 160 pesos to build a plain wattle-and-daub hut; a dwelling of rough planks and palmetto thatch rented for 3 pesos a month. Indian quarrymen, loggers, and carpenters were paid in set amounts of trade goods originally worth one real per day. When the price of these items went up toward the end of the 17th century, the cost of labor rose proportionately but was never high. [Note 25: Friars in chapter 9/10/1657; Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar 12/7/1680; fiscal of the Council 8/30/1686, comments on Francisco de la Rocha and Juan de Pueyo 4/1/1684.] Regidores set the prices on lots and it is not certain whether these prices rose, fell, or remained stable. Shipmaster and Deputy Governor Claudio de Florencia’s empty lot sold for 100 pesos after he and his wife were murdered in the Apalache rebellion. Captain Antonio de Arguelles was quoted a price of 40 pesos on what may have been a smaller lot sometime before 1680, when the lot on which the treasurer’s official residence stood was subdivided. (Bushnell KC)

Royal officials were entitled to live in the government houses, but in St. Augustine they did not always choose to. After the customs-counting house and the royal warehouse-treasury were complete, and even after the treasury officials obtained permission to build official residences at royal expense, they continued to have other houses. The Parish Register records one wedding at the home of Accountant Thomas Menendez Marquez and another in the home of his wife. Their son Francisco, who inherited the position of accountant, owned a two-story shingled house which sold for 1,500 pesos after he died. [Note 29: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez 1/4/1621; Parish Register Marriages 4/20/1678 and 10/10/1691; Francisco Menendez Marquez II probate papers 7/3/1743.] (Bushnell KC)

In St. Augustine, houses were set some distance apart and had surrounding gardens. The grounds were walled to keep wandering animals away from the well, the clay outdoor oven, and the fruit trees, vines, and vegetables. [Note 30: Pedro Sanchez Grinan, report, Madrid 7/7/1756.] Near town on the commons, the hidalgo’s family like all the rest was allocated land for growing maize, and after the six-month season his cows browsed with those of commoners on the dry stalks. In 1600 the 80 families in town were said to own from two to ten head of cattle apiece. Some distance out of town, maybe two leagues, was the hidalgo’s farm, where he and his household might spend part of the year consuming the produce on the spot. [Note 31: Francisco de la Rocha and Francisco de Cigarroa 3/20/1685; Francisco Menendez Marquez II will 9/2/1742 included with probate papers 7/3/1743; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, edict 11/6/1702.] (Bushnell KC)

A gentleman was surrounded by dependents. The female relatives who attended his wife had their male counterparts in the numerous down-at-the-heels nephews and cousins who accompanied his travels, lived in his house, and importuned him for a hand up the social ladder. [Note 32: Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601; cedulas to Juan de Cevadilla and Lazaro Saez de Mercado 4/13/1577, and to the governor 9/19/1593.] As if these were not enough, through the institution of compadrazgo he placed himself within a stratified network of ritual kin. On the lowest level this was a form of social structuring. Free blacks or mulattoes were supposed to be attached to a patron and not to wander about the district answering to no one. Indians, too, accepted the protection of an important Spaniard, taking his surname at baptism and accepting his gifts. AN412 AN413 The progress of conquest and conversion could conceivably be traced in the surnames of chiefs. Governor Ybarra once threatened to punish certain of them “with no intercession of godfathers.” [Note 33: Juan Menendez Marquez, Havana, 6/10/1600; Gov. Navarrete 11/15/1749; Pedro Sanchez Grinan, report, Madrid 7/7/1756; Gov. Ybarra to Fr. Benito Blasco 12/7/1605.] The larger the group the hidalgo was responsible for, the greater his power base. He himself had his own more important patron. Between people of similar social background, compadrazgo was a sign of friendship, business partnership, and a certain amount of complicity, since it was not good form to testify against a compadre. Treasurer Juan Menendez Marquez was connected to many important families in town, including that of the Portuguese merchant Juan Nunez de los Rios. Although it was illegal to relate oneself to gubernatorial or other fiscal authorities, Juan was also a compadre of Governor Mendez de Canzo and three successive factors. [Note 34: Santos de las Heras to the lord secretary, Mexico City, 3/15/1654; Diego de Evelina Compostela, Bishop of Cuba, to Gov. Torres y Ayala, 5/30/1697, included with Gov. Torres y Ayala 7/2/1697; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598 and 3/18/1599; Alonso de las Alas 1/12/1600; Parish Register Baptisms 9/10/1597 to 3/7/1619.] Servants filled the intermediate place in the hidalgo’s household between poor relatives and slaves. Sometimes they had entered service in order to get transportation to America, which was why the gentleman coming from Spain could only bring a few. One manservant coming to Florida to the governor’s house had to promise to remain there eight years. [Note 35: Cedula to dona Maria de Solis 1/31/1580.] The life of a servant was far from comfortable, sleeping wrapped in his cloak at the door of his master’s room and thankful to get enough to fill his belly. Still, a nondischargeable servant had a degree of security, and though not a family member he could make himself a place by faithful service. The Parish Register shows how Francisco Perez de Castaneda, who was sent from Xochimilco as a soldier, came to be overseer of the Menendez Marquez ranch of La Chua and was married in the home of don Thomas. [Note 36: Miguel Geronimo Portal y Mauleon’s lawyer 1630; Parish Register Marriage 4/20/1678; Florencia visita of 1694-95.] (Bushnell KC)

Slaves completed the household. Technically, these could be Indian or even Moorish... In actuality, almost all the slaves in Florida were black. Moors were uncommon, and the crown categorically refused to allow the enslavement of Florida Indians, even those who were demonstrably treacherous. (Bushnell KC)

Sometimes there was evident affection between the races, as the time the slave Maria Luisa was godmother to the baby daughter of a captain. [Note 40: Baptism of Lorensa, daughter of Captain Dionisio de los Rios, Parish Register Baptisms 8/20/1675.] But on the whole, blacks were not trusted. Too many of them had run off and intermarried with the fierce Ais people of the coast. [Note 41: An unidentified document mentioning the slaves escaping to Ais is in JTC1 between the Alvaro Mexia voyage description of July 1605, and the report of the first Francisco Fernandez de Ecija voyage October 1605.] The 100 slaves in 1606 (who included around 40 royal slaves) were expected to fight on the side of any invader who promised them freedom. Treasury officials objected strongly to the captains’ practice of putting their slaves on the payroll as drummers, fifers, and flag bearers. In their opinion the king’s money should not be used to pay “persons of their kind, who are the worst enemies we can have.” [Note 42: Gov. Ybarra 1/4/1606; Bartolome de Arguelles 8/3/1598; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/31/1627.] AN414 (Bushnell KC)

The four trained adult slaves in the hypothetical household were worth some 2,000 pesos. (Bushnell KC)

All of these dependents and slaves the hidalgo fed, clothed, dosed with medicines, supplied with weapons or tools, and provided with the services of the church in a manner befitting their station and connection with his house. AN415 (Bushnell KC)

There were other servants for whom [the royal officials] felt no comparable responsibility [compared to slaves]. Repartimiento Indians cleared the land and planted the communal and private maize fields with digging sticks and hoes, guarding the crop from crows and wild animals. Ordered up by the governor, selected by their chiefs, and administered by the royal officials, they lived in huts outside the town and were given a short ration of maize and now and then a small blanket or a knife for themselves and some axes and hoes. During the construction of the castillo as many as 300 Indians at a time were working in St. Augustine. [Note 45: Gov. Mendez de Canzo 9/22/1602; Recopilacion de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias 1681; Francisco de San Buenaventura, Bishop of Tricale 4/29/1736; Fr. Alonso del Moral, seen in Council 11/23/1676; Gov. Marques Cabrera 12/8/1680; Bartolome de Arguelles 10/21/1598; Gov. Salinas 11/20/1618; Fr. Antonio de Somoza 5/2/1673.] In an attempt to stop the escalation of building costs, their wages were fixed at so many blankets or tools per week, with ornaments for small change. Indians were not supposed to be used for personal service but they often were, especially if for some misdeed they had been sentenced to extra labor. Commissary General Juan Luengo declared that everyone of importance in Florida had his service Indians and so had all his kinsmen and friends. [Note 46: Recop 5/7/1570; Council 9/25/1662, appended to Gov. Aranguiz y Cotes 11/15/1661; Chiefs of Guale 10/16/1657; Juan Menendez Marquez II 1/25/1667; Fr. Juan Luengo 11/30/1676, attached to an answering a memorial by Fr. Alonso del Moral, summarized 11/5/1676.] AN416 If one of these natives sickened and died he could be replaced with another. (Bushnell KC)

Native healers “curing in the heathen manner” had been discredited by their non-Christian origins and their inefficacy against European diseases, but there was no prejudice against the native medicinal herbs, and even the friars resorted to the women who dispensed them. Medical care of a European kind was not expensive for anyone connected with the garrison. A surgeon, apothecary AN418, and barber were on the payroll, and the hospital association to which every soldier belonged provided hospitalization insurance for one real per month. AN417 [Note 47: Florencia visita of 1694-95; Alonso de Leturiondo, report, Madrid 1700; Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/28/1683; petition of the Florida soldiers and cedulas of 2/9/1627 and 8/21/1629, filed with another petition of 1/14/1627.] (Bushnell KC)

Throughout the Habsburg period the expense of keeping a slave or servant continued its irregular rise, whereas the salary of a royal official remained constant. (Bushnell KC)

Two undisputed facts of life were that imported items cost more in Florida than either New Spain or Havana, and that any merchant able to fix a monopoly on St. Augustine charged whatever the market would bear. Since prices of separate items were seldom reported except by individuals protesting such a monopoly, it is difficult to determine an ordinary price. Even in a ship’s manifest the measurements may lack exactness for our purposes, if not theirs. How much cloth was there in a bundle or a chest? How many pints of wine in a bottle? Sometimes only relative idea of the cost of things can be obtained. (Bushnell KC)

In spite of the high Florida prices, an officer found it socially necessary to live differently from a soldier, who in turn made a distinction between himself and a common Indian. Indians supplemented a maize, beans, squash, fish, and game diet with acorns, palm berries, heart of palm, and koonti root—strange foods which the Spanish ate only during a famine. [Note 55: Captain Alonso de Pastrana 2/29/1624; Florencia visita of 1694-95; Fr. Francisco Perez, seen in Council 7/28/1646; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, 10/24/1701.] An hidalgo’s table was set with Mexican majolica rather than Guale pottery and seashells. It was supplied with “broken” sugar at 28 reales the arroba, and spices, kept in a locked chest in the dining room. [Note 56: Fr. Juan Gomez de Palma, Madrid? 1640; Juan de Pueyo visita of 1695, in residencia of Gov. Torres y Ayala; Francisco Pareja’s 1613 “Confessionario”; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, 5/30/1627.] His drinking water came from a spring on Anastasia Island. Instead of the soldier’s diet of salt meat, fish, and gruel or ash-cakes, the hidalgo dined on wheaten bread, pork, and chicken raised on shellfish. Instead of the native cassina tea he had Canary wines at 160 pesos a barrel and chocolate at 3 pesos for 1,000 beans of cacao. [Note 57: Pedro Sanchez Grinan report, Madrid, 7/7/1756; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697; Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574.] Pedro Menendez Marquez, the governor, said he needed 1,000 ducats a year for food in Florida, although his wife and household were in Seville. [Note 58: Pedro Menendez Marquez, Havana, 5/15/1580.] An hidalgo’s lady did not use harsh homemade soaps on her fine linens; she had the imported kind at three pesos a pound or 19 pesos a box. [Note 59: Fr. Francisco Martinez, memorial, seen in Council 6/15/1658; Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, 5/30/1627.] In the evening she lit lamps of nut oil or of olive oil at 40 reales the arroba, instead of pine torches, smelly tallow candles, or a wick floating in lard or bear grease. There were wax candles for a special occasion such as the saint’s day of someone in the family, but wax was dear: a peso per pound in Havana for the Campeche yellow and more for the white. When the whole parish church was lit with wax tapers on the Day of Corpus Christi the cost came to 50 pesos. [Note 60: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, 5/30/1627; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia, 12/29/1693; Francisco Fuentes to the Padre, San Luis, 11/27/1682, copy in the act on the Indian complaints, 10/30/1681 to 6/28/1683 AN419; Alonso de Leturiondo 3/18/1689 and 8/7/1697; Fr. Francisco Martinez memorial, seen in Council 6/15/1658.] In St. Augustine, where the common folk used charcoal only for cooking, the hidalgo’s living rooms were warmed with charcoal braziers. One governor was said to keep two men busy at government expense cutting the firewood for his house. [Note 61: Juan de Pueyo and Juan Benedit Horruytiner 11/10/1707; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 7/6/1689.] Even after death there were class distinctions. The hidalgo was buried in a private crypt, either in the 16-ducat section or the 10-ducat. Other plots of consecrated earth were priced at three or four ducats. A slave's final resting place cost one ducat, and a pauper was laid away free. It cost three times as much to bury an attaché of Governor Quiroga y Losada’s (36 pesos) as an ordinary soldier (12 pesos), on whom the priest declared there was no profit. [Note 62: Alonso de Leturiondo 3/18/1689; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 12/29/1693.] (Bushnell KC)

Clothing was a primary expense and a serious matter. Unconverted Indians would readily kill parties of Spaniards for their clothes, or so it was believed. AN420 Blankets, cloth, and clothing served as currency. Tobacco, horses, and muskets were priced in terms of cloth or small blankets. Garrison debts to be paid by the deputy governor of Apalache in 1703 were not given a currency value at all but where expressed solely in yards of serge. [Note 63: Bartolome de Arguelles 2/20/1600; Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, edict, 11/6/1702; Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar 12/7/1680; chief of Guale to Gov. Marques Cabrera, Sapala 5/5/1681; Florencia visita of 1694-95; Manuel Solana to Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, San Luis before 5/14/1703.] (Bushnell KC)

The elegant family and household, with sumptuous food and clothing—these were displays of wealth that anyone with a good income could ape. The crucial distinction of an hidalgo was his fighting capability, measured in his skill and courage, his weapons and horses, and the number of armed men who followed him. In Florida even the bureaucrats were men of war. (Bushnell KC)

Treasury officials were ordered to leave their swords outside when they came to their councils, for in a society governed by the chivalric code, war was not the only excuse for combat. Any insult to one’s honor must be answered by laying hand to sword, and the hidalgo who refused a formal challenge was disgraced. He could no longer aspire to a noble title; the commonest soldier held him in contempt. [Note 70: Recop. 4/6/1588; Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601; Gov. Trevino Guillamas 10/7/1614.] (Bushnell KC)

In Florida, every free man and even some slaves bore arms. Soldiers, officers, officials, and Indian chiefs were issued weapons out of the armory and thereafter regarded them as private property. Prices of the regular issue of swords in 1607 and of flintlock muskets in 1702 were about the same: 10 or 11 pesos. An arquebus, or matchlock musket, was worth half as much. Gunpowder for hand-held firearms was 2/3 peso per pound in 1702, twice as much as the coarser artillery powder. [Note 71: Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/20/1686; cargo manifest 1608; Diego de Florencia, purchase order and goods receipt, Santa Maria de Galve 12/2/1702; Florencia visita of 1694-95.] (Bushnell KC)

That other requirement of the knight-at-arms, his horse, was not as readily come by. A horse was expensive and few survived the rough trip to Florida. On shipboard they were immobilized in slings, and when these swung violently against the rigging in bad weather the animals had to be cut loose and thrown overboard. AN421 Until midcentury the most common pack animal in Florida was still an Indian. [Note 72: Joseph de Prado 12/30/1654, with comment by the fiscal of the Council 7/3/1656.] Once horses had gotten a start, however, they did well, being easily trained, well favored, and about seven spans high. Imported Cuban horses were available in the 1650s at a cost of 100 to 200 pesos, with a bred mare worth double. AN422 In the 1680s and ‘90s, mares were selling for 30 pesos and horses for 25, about twice as much as a draft ox. [Note 73: Pedro Sanchez Grinan report, Madrid 7/7/1756; Gov. Rebolledo 10/18/1657; Florencia visita of 1694-95.] Horsemanship displays on the plaza had become a part of every holiday, with the ladies looking down in exquisite apprehension from 2nd story windows and balconies. [Note 74: Acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702.] The Indian nobility raised and rode horses the same as Spanish hidalgos. The chiefs of Apalache were carrying on a lively horse trade with English-allied Indians in 1700, when the Spanish put a stop to it for reasons of military security. By that time a gentleman without his horse felt hardly presentable. AN423 (Bushnell KC)

The hidalgo of substance had an armed following of slaves or servants who were known as the people of his house, much as sailors and soldiers were called people of the sea or of war. Sometimes there were reasons of security for such a retinue. A friar feared to travel to his triennial chapter meeting without at least one bodyguard, and Bishop Dias Vara Calderon, when he made his visit to Florida in 1674-75, hired three companies of soldiers to accompany his progress: one of Spanish infantry, one of Indian archers, and the other of Indian arquebusiers. [Note 77: Gov. Salazar Vallecilla 5/22/1647; Antonio Ponce de Leon, affidavit, 2/26/1687, and Fr. Domingo de Ojeda 2/20/1687. The three companies were of Spanish infantry, Indian archers, and Indian arquebusiers.] About town an entourage was for prestige or intimidation. The crown, trying to preserve order and prevent formation of rival authority in faraway places, forbade treasury officials to bring their followers to councils or have themselves accompanied in public; it was also forbidden to arm Indians or slaves. [Note 78: Gov. Rojas j Borja 11/6/1628; Cedula to Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/22/1685.] AN424 It was not merely the secular hidalgo who enjoyed his following. When Father Leturiondo went out by night bearing the Host to the dying, he summoned 12 soldiers from the guardhouse and had the church bell tolled for hours to make the faithful join the procession. [Note 79: The fiscal of the Council commented that it did not honor the church to advertise the town’s location by night to pirates (Gov. Quiroga y Losada, act on bell ringing, 5/28/1689, and comment on that and the governor’s letter of 8/16/1689, on 7/12/1693.] (Bushnell KC)

With all the expensive demands on him (public and private charities, providing for children, keeping up a large household, living on a grand scale, and maintaining his standing as a knight-at-arms) AN425, the hidalgo was in constant need of money—more money, certainly, than any royal office could presumably provide. As Interim Treasurer Portal y Mauleon once observed through his lawyer, when one’s parents were persons of quality it was not honor that one stood in need of, but a living. [Note 80: Miguel Geronimo Portal y Mauleon’s lawyer 1630.] (Bushnell KC)

Ch.3 Proprietary Office In the provinces of Florida, as elsewhere in the empire of the Spanish Habsburgs, a royal office was an item of property; the person holding title to it was referred to as the “proprietor.” He had received something of value: the potential income not only of the salary but of numerous perquisites, supplements and opportunities for profit; and he had been recognized publicly as a gentleman whom the king delighted to honor. AN426 Perhaps he had put in 20 years of loyal drudgery on the books of the king’s grants. Perhaps on had once saved the plate fleet from pirates. Perhaps it was not his services that were rewarded, but those of his ancestors or his wife’s family. The archives are studded with bold demands for honors, rewards, and specific positions, buttressed by generations of worthies. The petitioner himself might be deplorably unworthy, but such a possibility did not deter a generous prince from encouraging a family tradition of service. Appendix 2 (pages 143-48) shows the proprietors of treasury office, their substitutes and stewards, and the situadores. The date any one of them took office may have been found by accident in correspondence or inferred from the Parish Register. In some cases a proprietor went to New Spain before sailing to Florida, thus delaying his arrival by at least half a year. (Bushnell KC)

During the Habsburg era a process occurred which could be called the “naturalization of the Florida coffer.” To measure this phenomenon one must distinguish between those royal officials whose loyalty lay primarily with the Iberian peninsula and those who were Floridians, born or made. The simple typology of peninsular versus creole will not do, for many persons came to Florida and settled permanently. Pedro Menendez himself moved his household there. Of the 21 royally appointed or confirmed treasury officials who served in Florida, only eight had no known relatives already there. Four of the eight (Lazaro Saez de Mercado, Nicolas Ponce de Leon, Juan de Arrazola, and Francisco Ramirez) joined the Floridians by intermarriage; another (Juan de Cueva), by compadrazgo. One (Joseph de Prado) went on permanent leave, naming a creole in his place. Only two of the king’s officials seem to have avoided entanglement in the Florida network: Santos de las Heras, who spent most of his time in New Spain, and Juan Fernandez de Avila, who was attached to the household of the governor and died after one year in office. From the time the king began issuing titles in 1571 until the Acclamation of Philip V in 1702 was a period of 131 years. The positions of treasurer and accountant were extant the entire time and that of factor-overseer until 1628, making the total number of treasury-office years 319. The two royal officials who remained pristinely peninsular served eight years between them, deducting no time for communication lag, travel, or leaves. Floridians, whether born or naturalized, were in office at least 97% of possible time. (Bushnell KC)

One reason for the naturalization of the coffer was that the king felt obligated to the descendants of conquerors, and his sense of obligation could be capitalized on for appointments. The Menendez Marquez family, descended on the one side from the adelantado’s sister, and on the other from a cousin of Governor Pedro Menendez Marquez, at one time or another held every office in the treasury, and their efforts to keep them were clearly encouraged by the crown. (Bushnell KC)

Another way in which the coffer became naturalized was by purchase, with Floridians coming forward to buy. The sale of offices was not shocking to 16th and 17th century administrators, who regarded popular elections as disorderly, conducive to corruption, and apt to set risky precedents. [Note 4: Gov. Rebolledo 10/1657.] Many types of officers were sold or “provided.” (Bushnell KC)

Proprietary offices were politically attributed to royal favor and legitimized by royal titles, but the king had less and less to do with appointments. His rights of patronage were gradually alienated until all that remained as a royal prerogative was enforcing the contract. The complete contract between the king and his proprietor was contained in several documents: licenses, instructions, titles, and bond. (Bushnell KC)

Instructions for treasury officials in the Indies followed a set formula, with most of the space devoted to duties at smelteries and mints. An official’s copy could be picked up at the House of Trade or in Santo Domingo, or it might be sent to his destination. If he was already in St. Augustine he would receive his instructions along with his titles. (Bushnell KC)

Titles were equally standard in format. There were two of them: one to office in the treasury and the other as regidor of the cabildo. The treasury title addressed the appointee by name, calling him the king’s accountant, treasurer, or factor-overseer of the provinces of Florida on account of the death of the former proprietor. After a brief description of the responsibilities of office the appointee was assured that in Florida “they shall give and do you all the honors, deferences, graces, exemptions, liberties, preeminences, prerogatives and immunities and each and every other attribute which by reason of the said office you should enjoy.” The salary was stated: invariably 400,000 maravedis a year from the products of the land. [Note 14: Many titulos are preserved in the Registros.] This was the only regular income the official was due, for municipal office in Florida was unsalaried. If the appointee was already in Florida, salaried time began the day he presented himself to be inducted into office; otherwise, on the day he set sail from San Lucar de Barrameda or Cadiz. By the time the crown withdrew coverage for travel time in 1695, Florida treasury offices had long been creole-owned. [Note 15: Recopy 6/16/1593; Thomas Menendez Marquez and Joachin de Florencia 12/6/1693; Royal officials 4/6/1696. It was customary in the 16th century to allow three months travel time to some posts in the Indies.] The one thing that never appeared in an officials titles was a time limit. His appointment, “at the king’s pleasure,” was understood to be for life. The governor, by contrast, had a term of five or six years. He could threaten, fine, suspend, even imprison a proprietor, but he could not remove him. And when the governor’s term expired and his residencia (judicial inquiry) came up, every official in the treasury would be waiting to lodge charges. AN427 (Bushnell KC)

The bond for treasury office, whether for the accountant, treasurer, or factor-overseer, and whether for the status of proprietor, interim official, or substitute, was 2,000 ducats. The appointee was permitted to furnish it in the place of his choice and present a receipt. Once such offices began to be held by natives the bond was raised by subscription. As many as 38 soldiers and vecinos at a time agreed to stand good if the treasury suffered loss because of the said official’s tenure. The effect of this communal backing was that if the treasury official was accused of malfeasance and his bond was in danger of being called in, as in the cases of Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, the whole town rose to his defense. Nicolas Ponce de Leon did not observe the formality of having his bond notarized. When the document was examined after his death, it was found that of his 21 backers, half had predeceased him, perhaps in the same epidemic, and only five of the others acknowledged their signatures. AN428 (Bushnell KC)

At the time of induction the treasury official bound himself by a solemn oath before God, the Evangels, and the True Cross to be honest and reliable. He presented his bond and his title. His belongings were inventoried, as they would be again at his death, transferral, or suspension. He was given a key to the coffer, and its contents also were inventoried. From that day forward he was meant never to take an independent fiscal action. Other officials at his treasury had access to the same books and locks on the same coffer. He would join them to sign receipts and drafts. Together they would open, read, and answer correspondence. In the same solidarity they would attend auctions, visit ships, and initiate debt proceedings. [Note 17: The oath for a royal official and collegial responsibility are given in Recop.] Such cumbersome accounting by committee was intended to guarantee their probity, for the king had made his officials collegially responsible in order to watch each other. No single one of them could depart from rectitude without the collusion or inattention of his colleagues. [Note 18: Recop; Camara reply on 5/14/1685 to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/30/1684] (Bushnell KC)

According to Spanish law, a proprietor was not to hold magisterial or political office or command troops. [Note 19: Recop] In St. Augustine the treasury officials were royal judges of the exchequer until 1621. They held the only political offices there were: places on the city council. They were also inactive officers of the garrison, who returned to duty with the first ring of the alarum. In a place known for constant war, a man with self-respect did not decline to fight Indians or pirates. (Bushnell KC)

Encomiendas were another matter. The New Laws of 1542-43 phasing them out for others forbade them altogether for officials of the treasury, who could not even marry a woman with encomiendas unless she renounced them. This created no hardship for the proprietors in St. Augustine. Although Pedro Menendez’s contract had contained tacit permission to grant encomiendas in accordance with the Populating Ordinances of 1563, they were out of the question in Florida—where the seasonally nomadic Indians long refused to settle themselves in towns for the Spanish convenience, and the chiefs expected to receive tribute, not pay it. Eventually the natives consented to a token tribute, which in time was converted to a rotating labor service out of which the officials helped themselves—but there was never an encomienda. (Bushnell KC)

Parishioners brought the Franciscans offerings of fish, game, and produce in quantities sufficient to sell through their syndics. The income was intended to beautify the churches and provide for the needy, but one friar kept out enough to dower his sister into a convent. [Note 40: Friars in chapter to Gov. Marques Cabrera 5/10/1681 to 5/30/1681; Fernandez de Pulgar, Historia General de la Florida (after 1640)] (Bushnell KC)

In the garrison it was possible to collect the pay of a soldier without being one. There were seldom as many soldiers fit for duty as there were authorized plazas in the garrison, and the vacant spaces, called “dead-pays” (plazas muertas) AN429, served as a fund for pensions and allowances. A retired or incapacitated soldier held his plaza for the length of his life. A minor’s plaza (plaza de menor or muchacho) could be purchased for or granted to someone’s son to provide extra income, and if the lad developed no aptitude as a soldier the money did not have to be paid back. Plazas were used variously as honoraria to Indian chiefs AN430, dowries AN431, and salary supplements: a captain traditionally named his own servants or slaves to posts in his company and pocketed their pay. AN432 [Note 41: Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 9/30/1702 and Junta action 8/23/1703; Gaspar Marques, Chief of San Sebastian and Tocoy 6/23/1606; Catalina de Valdes 1616; cedula to the royal officials 10/15/1686; Alonso de Pastrana 1616; Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 11/10/1657.] Understrength in the garrison due to these practices was a perennial problem. Sometimes it was the governor who abused his power to assign plazas. The crown refused to endorse 19 of them awarded by Interim Governor Horruytiner to the sons, servants, and slaves of his supporters. AN433 At other times the government in Spain was to blame. Governor Hita Salazar complained that every ship to arrive bore new royal grants of plazas for youngsters, pensioners, and widows. A few of these were outright gifts; on most, the crown collected both the half-annate and a fee for waiving its own rule against creoles in the garrison. AN434 Again and again governors protested that of the plazas on the payroll only half were filled by persons who would be of any use to defend the fort and the town. AN435 [Note 42: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655, and comment by the fiscal of the Council 7/5/1657; Gov. Hita Salazar 3/13/1679] (Bushnell KC)

A soldier’s plaza was not his sole source of income. On his days off guard duty he worked at his secondary trade, whether it was to burn charcoal, build boats, fish, cut firewood, make shoes, grind maize, round up cattle, tailor, or weave fishnets. AN436 A sawyer or logger could earn 6 or 7 reales extra a day, every family man was also a part-time farmer, with his own patch of maize on the commons and cheap repartimiento labor to help him cultivate it. [Note 43: Ignacio de Leturiondo 10/29/1694; Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez 1/4/1621; Guale chiefs 10/16/1657; Fr. Alonso del Moral, seen in Council 11/23/1676] (Bushnell KC)

The soldier had still other advantages. When traveling on the king’s business he could live off the Indians, commandeer their canoes, or order one of them to carry his bedroom, and cross on their ferries for free. [Note 44: Friars in chapter to Gov. Rebolledo 5/10/1657, enclosed with their letter of 9/10/1657; Antonio Matheos to Gov. Marques Cabrera, San Luis 5/19/1686; Florencia visita of 1694-95] His medicines costs nothing, although a single shipment of drugs for the whole presidio cost over 600 pesos. The same soldier’s compulsory contribution to the hospital association of Santa Barbara, patroness of artillerymen, was limited to 1 real a month. [Note 45: Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; petitions of the Florida soldiers and cedulas (before 1627) to 8/21/1629; Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, enclosed with Gov. Rojas y Borja 5/30/1627; Gov. Rojas y Borja 1/20/1625; Gov. Mendez de Canzo to Gov. Ybarra 1603] AN437 When he became too old to mount guard he would be kept on the payroll, and after he died his family would continue to receive rations. The weapons in his possession went to the woman he had been living with, and his back wages paid for his burial and the masses said for the good of his soul [Note 46: Gov. Fernandez de Olivera 10/13/1612; Gov. Marques Cabrera 3/20/1686; Juan de Pueyo and Juan Benedit Horruytiner 4/18/1708; Santos de las Heras 2/10/1658] (Bushnell KC)

Keys were symbols of responsibility as staves were of authority. When the warden of the castillo made his oath of fealty to defend his post he took charge of the keys of the fort and marched through its precincts with the public notary, locking and unlocking the gates. [Note 63: Juan Moreno y Segovia, affidavit 11/2/1663, enclosed with Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 11/4/1663] A similar ceremony was observed with a new treasury official, who received his key to the treasure chest and immediately tried it. In legal documents this chest was sometimes called the “coffer of the four keys,” from the days when there would have been four padlocks on it, one for each official. At important treasuries another key was frequently held by the viceroy, the archbishop, or an audience judge, who sent it with a representative when the chest was opened. The royal officials resented this practice as impugning their honor. (Bushnell KC)

On the first of every month they and the governor would make a quality inspection, in which anything found damaged due to the steward’s negligence was weighed, thrown into the sea, and charged to him. AN439 (Bushnell KC)

Other governors operated by threat of fines. If Arguelles did not finish a report on the slaves and the castillo within six days—500 ducats; if Sanchez Saez did not remain on duty at the customs house—500 ducats; if Cuevas, Menendez Marquez, and Ramirez did not sign the libranza to pay the governor’s nephew ahead of everyone else—500 ducats each, and 200 ducats from the notary. [Note 49: Bartolome de Arguelles 10/31/1598; Gov. Ybarra 12/23/1605; Gov. Trevino Guillamas to the royal officials 1/27/1617] A truly intransigent official could be suspended or imprisoned in his house—a punishment that carried little onus. Governor Ybarra confined Sanchez Saez three times. Governors Fernandez de Olivera and Torres y Ayala both arrived in St. Augustine to find the officials of the treasury all under arrest. [Note 50: Fr. Antonio del Espiritu Santo 4/16/1609; cedula to Gov. Fernandez de Olivera 9/14/1610, Mexico; Ex-Gov. Quiroga y Losada, Cadiz, Council summary 10/19/1697] (Bushnell KC)

Ch.5 The Situado The Florida coffer had two sources of income: locally generated royal taxes and revenues, which will be treated in the next chapter, and the situado, basically a transfer between treasuries. Although the connections between principal treasuries were tenuous and debts against one were not collectible at another, a more affluent treasury could have charged upon it the upkeep of defense outposts along its essential trade routes. The shifting fortunes of the West Indies can be traced in the various treasuries’ obligations. At first the House of Trade and Santo Domingo did most of the defense spending; then it was the ports of the circum-Caribbean. By the 1590s the viceregal capitals and presidencies had assumed the burden: Lima provided the situado for Chile; Cartagena, the subsidies of Santa Marta and Rio de la Hache; Mexico City, those for the rest of the Caribbean. ...The situado was not a single subsidy but a cluster of them, mostly based on the number of authorized plazas in the garrison. ...The base figure of the situado was not necessarily the amount of money supplied. Superimposed upon it were the yearly variations. Occasionally funds were allocated for some special purpose: [Ex.] 26,000 pesos to rebuild the town after the 1702 siege of Colonel James Moore; a full year’s situado to replace the one stolen by Piet Heyn, and one lost in a shipwreck; 1,600 pesos to pay the Charles Town planters for runaway slave the king wished to free. ...Additional money was sometimes sent for fortifications: commonly 10,000 ducats or pesos, delivered in installments. [Note 17: Cedula to the royal officials of Mexico City 6/18/1635] It was characteristic of these special grants that they were seldom used for the intended purpose. A greater emergency would intervene; the governor and royal officials would divert the fund to that, explain their reasons, and demand replacement. [Note 18: Gov. Fernandez de Olivera 10/13/1612; Francisco de la Rocha and Salvador de Cigarroa 9/3/1681, enclosed with investigation of the trade goods 12/7/1680 to 6/28/1683.] When it was possible the crown obliged. (Bushnell KC)

Throughout the Habsburg period hard specie continued to be scarce in the provinces. In 1655 Auditor Santa Cruz estimated that in 20 years not 20,000 pesos in currency had entered the presidio. In place of money the creoles used such expediencies as yards of cloth or fractions of an ounce of amber. [Note 25: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655; Manuel Solana to Gov. Zuniga y Cerda, San Luis, before 5/14/1703] Wages were paid either in imported goods at high prices, in obsolete or inappropriate things the governor wanted to be rid of, or in libranzas or wage certificates that declined drastically in value and were bought up by speculators with inside knowledge. [Note 26: Gov. Joseph de Cordova Ponce de Leon, Havana, 10/6/1683; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana, 11/20/1655] Although two resourceful Apalaches were caught passing homemade coins of tin, Indians ordinarily used no money, but bartered in beads, blankets, weapons, twists of tobacco, baskets, horses and other livestock, chickens, pelts and skins, and cloth. Great piles of belongings were gambled by the players and spectators at the native ball games. The Spanish governors begged for some kind of specie to be sent for small transactions and suggested 7,000 or 8,000 ducats in coins of silver and copper alloy (vellon) to circulate in the Florida provinces. Where there was no money, they explained, people were put to inconvenience. [Note 27: Summary of proceedings against two counterfeiters, in Pueyo visita of 1695; Gov. Quiroga y Losada 8/16/1689; Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 10/15/1701] (Bushnell KC)

A gentlewoman kept her own name as a matter of course, and if her family was of better quality than her husband’s it was her name that the children took. [Note 13: Bartolome de Arguelles 5/15/1602; Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655; cedula re Petronila de Junco 10/19/1594; Juan Menendez Marquez, Council summary 5/24/1622; See marriage of Francisco de la Rocha, Parish Register Marriages 6/25/1689.] (Bushnell KC)

AN440 (Bushnell KC)

AN441 (Bushnell KC)

The penalty for bringing in contraband goods even in Spanish bottoms was confiscation. The law provided that after taxes 1/6 of the value went to the magistrate, 1/3 of the remainder to the informer, and the rest to the king’s coffer. [Note 69: Recop 8/31/1657] In many parts of the Indies this inconvenience was circumvented by the sloop trade in out-of-the-way harbors. In Florida, which had operated outside the mercantile law from the start, such evasions were necessary only when someone important was out of sorts. (Bushnell KC)

However independent of viceroys or audiencias, the governor of the provinces of Florida was still subject to the crown. The king expressed his will in two ways: by direct orders and general laws, and by encouraging rival authorities within the governor’s jurisdiction. (Bushnell KC)

The second means of keeping a governor in line (or of hampering him, depending on the point of view) was the recognition of separate, sometimes conflicting authorities within his jurisdiction. One of these was the church. St. Augustine’s parish church and secular clergy were suffragan to the bishop of Cuba, yet episcopal authority rested lightly on the colony. (Bushnell KC)

The friars were not subject to the bishop of Cuba; among them, authority flowed the other way. The Franciscan Custody of Santa Elena, created in 1609 and elevated to a province three years later, directed the missionaries in Cuba as well as Florida. The friars valued their ecclesiastical independence highly and, extending it to civil matters, regarded themselves as defenders of all citizens from autocracy. As Father Alonso del Moral said in 1676: “Everyone else here… is subject to the governors, for everything passes through the governor’s hands and everyone is subordinate to his will and orders. [Note 11: Fr. Alonso del Moral, seen in Council 11/23/1676. Conflicts arising between governors and friars have been studied by Geiger and Matter. Both see them as administrative rather than economic.] Governor Trevino Guillamas found their attitude exasperating. “The friars and their rages give me all kinds of trouble, trying to intrude on the royal jurisdiction.” (Bushnell KC)

In Florida, inactive officers were available for temporary assignment on coastal patrols, emergency details, leadership in the militia, or the deputy governorship of provinces. Known as reformados (officers without command), these men drew the pay of privates plus a small supplement from the bonus fund. It was an arrangement similar to the royal grant of reduced pay (entretenimiento) to an officer on leave, to keep him in the reserves. In most parts of the Indies reformados did guard duty; in Florida they were generally exempt. [Note 14: Council proposals for governor 3/1632] (Bushnell KC)

Governor and treasury officials were supposed to act jointly on purchases for the garrison. The agent could be an outside merchant bringing a cargo of wine from the Canaries, one of the presidio’s own shipmasters picking up a load of flour in Havana, or a procurador going to Spain at his own expense to execute commissions for the officers. The preponderance of supplies reaching Florida in any given year, however, came in care of the situador, who was, more often than not, one of the treasury proprietors. The hazards of his journey and the payroll preparations for his return made by the other officials have been described in Chapter 5. (Bushnell KC)

Once a month the royal officials and the governor were supposed to make a joint inspection of the warehouses and arsenal, then observe the rationing. The company captains and corporals also stood by while the steward doled out each man’s monthly rations and the notary recorded them. Since the soldiers had once complained of receiving 14-ounce pounds, the weights and measures were kept in evidence: the pint-capacity covered copper container for liquid measurements, and the balance or steelyard with weights for dry ones. [Note 21: Nicolas de Aguirre report 11/30/1578] AN442 Not all of those supplied from the warehouse stood in line at St. Augustine. Certainly not the treasury officials, who drew rations on the grounds that they too served as soldiers. [Note 22: Royal officials 9/23/1611] Exact records were kept of the whereabouts of the garrison. When the chief pilot came in to fit out a launch for coastal patrol, he was given the rations for his seamen. Detachments of soldiers at the watchtowers along the coast carried a month’s supply of provisions as they left. For the garrisons stationed in Timucua and Apalache the steward arranged a canoe pick-up point or sent out a supply train. …Sometimes the officials found it more practical to issue trade goods to the soldiers and let them buy their own food from the Indians—or maybe this was the way to get rid of an overstock. [Note 23: Nicolas de Aguirre report 11/30/1578; Gov. Marques Cabrera 11/4/1686; friars in chapter 9/10/1657] Items of every kind were carried, not only for the soldiers but for their women and children. The overseer of slaves and the master of construction used the buildings to store blankets, coarse clothing, and baskets full of maize and beans for the royal slaves, convicts, and repartimiento Indians. The Franciscan custodian kept the friars’ provisions and the church supplies there until time to deliver them to the missions. According to Accountant Nicolas Ponce de Leon, everyone in town lived off the royal storehouses. [Note 24: Fr. Juan Gomez de Palma 1640; Juan Menendez Marquez 9/20/1602; Bartolome de Arguelles, instructions to the steward 5/12/1591; Nicolas Ponce de Leon 9/12/1638] (Bushnell KC)

The role of the royal officials in Capitania was functional, in Justicia it was mostly honorary, in Gobierno it was both. As regidores of the cabildo they held the only true political offices in Florida. They were interpreters of local rights and the king’s law as the clergy were of the law of God. They advised the governor in all matters concerning the town and the provinces. AN443 Until mid-century they were his regular substitutes. Officially or unofficially, the proprietors of the treasury were the underlying government of Florida. (Bushnell KC)

Founding a town automatically meant creating a municipal government and governing body. There was an active city council in St. Augustine from the first day, and corresponding ones in San Mateo and Santa Elena, with regidores and justices (alcaldes) named by the adelantado. When these first officials had served their terms they were replaced by election; their offices had been elective in the Indies since 1523. [Note 29: general cabildo, Santa Elena 2/27/1576] It has often been written that there was no cabildo in Florida after the departure of Pedro Menendez. [Not 30: Chatelain says that the form of cabildo continued, but without vitality.] AN444 It is true that there was no municipal government house, no complement of municipal bailiffs and justices after the first 20 years or so, and perhaps no separate chest for municipal revenues, but a cabildo did exist, serving as both the council for the “noble and loyal city of St. Augustine,” and the “assembly of the republic” (ayuntamiento de la republica). [Note 31: Acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702; Gov. Marques Cabrera 6/14/1681] Before council memberships were made venal in the Indies, the officials of the exchequer in a capital city automatically sat as regidores on its cabildo. In Florida this privilege was never revoked; cabildo memberships were awarded concurrently with titles to treasury office and did not become separately salable. [Note 32: Bartolome de Arguelles 11/2/1598 and titulos of regidor to Juan de Posada 4/17/1592 and to the treasury officials accompanying Narvaez and De Soto (2/15/1527, 5/4/1537, and 10/5/1537). Parry says that council memberships in the Indies became generally venal in 1591, but Council re Baltasar del Castillo y Ahedo 4/26/1580 shows that those in Havana had been given a money value earlier.] The most exceptional thing about the 17th century cabildo in Florida is that except for the royal officials there were no regidores, none elected by the cabildo and none appointed by the governor. This is why the council had no need of separate headquarters, separate meetings, or even a separate chest or book of resolutions. Cabildo membership was exactly the same as that of a general treasury council, down to the ex-officio notary, and the busy royal officials saw no point in distinguishing between the two except on formal occasions. (Bushnell KC)

The regidores [treasury officals as cabildo], also called deputies and even governors, were representatives of the king as certainly as was the governor. To them he presented his commission and evidence of bond on arrival. At civil ceremonies they walked at his sides carrying the staves of office and—St. Augustine not having a royal standard bearer—one of them bore the standard of the city. One served as minister of protocol. [Note 33: Acclamation of Philip V 1/7/1702; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697] The regidores were responsible with the governor for the welfare of the land. In concert with him they must endeavor to make the earth fruitful and the idle productive. With him they were charged with the pacification, conversion, and right treatment of the natives, the construction of churches, and decent provision for divine worship. [Note 34: Cedula to the royal officials 6/18/1595; friars in chapter 12/5/1693, with comments by the fiscal of the Council 11/27/1695] They were, in short, his advisory council. If as reformados the royal officials felt entitled to give their military opinions, as sole members of the municipal council and provincial assembly they spoke even more assuredly on behalf of local interests. They regarded themselves and were called by others “the fathers of the country.” [Note 35: Ignacio de Leturiondo 10/29/1694] A cabildo considered all matters of public concern within its termino. There were three senses in which the geographical term was understood. In its largest meaning, the termino stood for the whole territory claimed by the crown, the entire space not incorporated in another Spanish municipality. The termino was also the area of pacified settlement and communication network, the hinterland known to historical geographers as “ecumene” and to Spanish Floridians as “the provinces.” [Note 36: For an exposition of the term “ecumene” and its application to Spanish Florida, see Boniface…] In its third and most limited meaning, the termino was the city and its immediate environs (market, lots, gardens, and the common woods and pastures)—the region also known as the jurisdiccion or concejo. When it came to total area claimed, St. Augustine had one of the largest terminos in the New World during the 17th century, when the nearest incorporated Spanish town by sea was Havana, and the nearest by land, Santa Fe, New Mexico. In a captaincy general like Florida, known for active war, governors were not disposed to take civilian advice about how to deal with invasions and rebellions, explorations or conquests. [Note 37: Gov. Marques Cabrera to the royal officials 2/20/1687, in report on Espiritu Santo Bay 2/28/1687] In these cases the junta de guerra superseded the civil cabildo, and the royal officials’ right to participate might be questioned. Sergeant Major Aranda y Avellaneda refused to give his opinion on a Guale border problem in 1684, saying that with the accountant and treasurer present it was no council of war. [Note 38: Act on moving the Guale villages 8/26/1684. The governor was later criticized because the junta had not included any Guale friars (act against Ex-Gov. Marques Cabrera, Havana, 8/4/1688).] AN445 …Auditor Redondo Villegas believed that the worst evil in Florida was the trouble between the royal officials and the governor. Such a view would be easy to exaggerate. There was after all no point in repeating, letter after letter, that things were going well, especially when governmental business in Florida did not operate smoothly within the law. At such times the creole royal officials and the peninsular governor were in agreement about matters of the treasury, the military, justice, and municipal and provincial government, they formed an impenetrable power block to forward their joint interests and made no report on these to the crown. From St. Augustine, official silence was tantamount to collusion. (Bushnell KC)

The crown was equally reluctant to trust creole regidores with military authority, which is why it did not want them serving as interim governors. They did so nonetheless. Until 1650 the governors all had cedulas permitting them to appoint an interim substitute for eventualities of absence, in capacity, or death, yet after the sudden death of Governor Martinez de Avendano no one could find such a provision in his papers, and the regidores allowed a junta to acclaim them interim co-governors. Sometimes they succeeded to power by [governor's] selection. (Bushnell KC)

The concerns of the cabildo within the provinces were mainly with Indian governance, labor, and production. There was some initial difficulty determining who was to govern the Indians: their chiefs, the friars, or the governor and his advisory council. During the governorship of Mendez de Canzo the friars complained that the chiefs had abdicated their order-keeping powers and the governor refused to assume them, forcing the Franciscans to move into the vacuum. A few short years later Father Geronimo de Celaya was preaching that Governor Ybarra had no jurisdiction over the natives whatever. Spells of cooperation alternated with bitter disputes, but eventually the tribes were organized into administrative provinces. Each province was supplied with ecclesiastical and military authorities who were not supposed to interfere in civil government. The republic of Spaniards had its parallel in the republic of Indians, living in polity under their own municipal governments, with chiefs for magistrates and elected elders (principales) for regidores. [Note 47: Gov. Marques Cabrera 1/25/1682; Fr. Juan de Paiva, pelota manuscript, 9/23/1676, in Leturiondo visita of 1677-78] The chiefs and their advisors, whether from one town or a council of towns, answered to the governor and the regidores alone. The regidores kept records of the repartimiento Indians whom the chiefs sent, at first to clear land and work in the soldiers’ maize fields, then to do more and more of the unskilled work in St. Augustine. The labor draft was not meant to be onerous. It was part of no one’s plan for the Indians to die off leaving an increasingly heavier burden on those who remained. The regidores also kept track of the frontier missions that did not yet supply tribute or labor, advising the governor where friars should be sent or withdrawn. When it was necessary to discipline chiefs, the regidores gave the governor their moral support or, to his chagrin, withheld it. When he went on his once-a-term visita to check on Indian defenses, morality, and grievances, he sometimes asked the regidores to accompany him. AN446 Between times they could be sent to the provinces themselves to solve disputes between Indian towns and Spanish settlers, problems of native succession, and questions of debts owed by Spaniards. [Note 48: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 12/20/1687; Alonso de las Alas 12/11/1595] When chiefs came to visit the capital, the regidores advised the governor on the proper gifts to be made them from the Indian allowance, did the disbursing of the goods, and made the report to the crown. [Note 49: Cedula to the royal officials 9/29/1593; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/30/1627; investigation of the trade goods 12/12/1680 to 6/28/1683; Joseph de Prado 12/30/1654] (Bushnell KC)

Within the local jurisdiction the cabildo carried out most of the activities of a modern city or county council: zoning, licensing, quality and standards control, utilities, recording of deeds (but not vital statistics, which were recorded by the parish priest) property appraisal, probate, street cleaning, nightwatch, mapping and surveying, maintaining public order, leasing public lands, attracting government installations and funds, highway and waterway maintenance, public recreation, and even, to a degree, health, education, recreation, and welfare. The cabildo had other duties no longer assigned to local authorities, such as enforcing curfews, fixing prices, punishing concubinage, managing public auctions and markets, reducing specie drain, raising a militia, registering and naturalizing aliens, sending a district representative to the metropolis, and worrying about an adequate food supply. (Bushnell KC)

The Spaniards founded municipalities as a means not only of government but of distributing land. They marked out a tract several leagues square and in the center, or some other logical spot, laid out the main plaza, with spaces for public buildings and the church. A grid pattern of streets was imposed and the blocks divided into house lots (solares) for the first settlers, with the choice lots near the plaza. On the outskirts of town were the commons (ejidos), consisting of arable fields (suertes), pastures (dehesas), and woods (montes). For his yearly planting each vecino received an allocation of the fields that after the 6-month growing season would revert to commons, onto which the cattle were turned to feed on the dry stalks. (Bushnell KC)

AN447 (Bushnell KC)

While no mention has been found of a separate coffer for municipal funds in general, there was a chest for the property of the deceased. Men of all social classes died in Florida, far from their legal kin. A soldier seldom left anything except the wages owed him, which went almost automatically to the church. [Note 66: Cedula to the governor 3/6/1598; cedula to the royal officials 11/5/1598; Santos de las Heras 2/10/1658] Other people’s property was forwarded to the House of Trade to be held for the appearance of heirs. The king would make use of the funds in the meantime. For the Archiniega expedition of 1566, Philip II borrowed 26,000 ducats from the goods of the deceased, to be replaced from the first shipment of treasure from the Indies. [Note 67: Joseph de Prado and Domingo de Leturiondo 1/19/1664; cedula to the House of Trade 2/14/1566] If no heirs could establish a claim, the property escheated to the crown and was used for alms. The same king ordered the House of Trade in 1585 to support the parish church in Florida out of the goods of the deceased. [Note 68: Repeat cedula to the House of Trade 2/14/1566] In general, when someone of means died interstate or at a distance from his heirs, the regidores of St. Augustine inventoried his belongings, converted them into something storable in a chest, such as money, plate, or jewels, and delivered them into the keeping of the senior regidor, who was known for this purpose as the keeper of the goods of the deceased (tenedor de bienes de difuntos). [Note 69: Cedula to Gov. Menendez Marquez 4/19/1583] In a place short on specie it was not easy to accomplish the conversion of houses, slaves, and personal property into liquid capital. Also, if the deceased had been a person with responsibilities toward the treasury his accounts would have to be settled before his belongings could leave the provinces. All this delayed the forwarding of estates and led to the complaints of heirs. [Note 70: See Lazaro Martinez de Avendano 9/29/1596] When the royal coffer was empty and the presidio in need, it was as tempting for the governor as for the king to borrow from the goods of the deceased. AN448 (Bushnell KC)

It was typical of the intermeshing of authority in colonial government that while the regidores could be the governor’s political rivals, there was no way for them to be independent of him. He had a vote in the cabildo, and although the majority was supposed to carry, membership was so tiny that a single vote had unusual weight. It was to counteract the autocracy of Governor Menendez Marquez that the officials of the treasury asked permission in 1580 to name additional regidores. [Note 74: Royal officials 10/12/1580] It was denied, and half a century later the royal officials, and also the regidores, were reduced from three to two. A crafty executive could split the unity of two regidores by favoring one. And when there was an unexpected vacancy in the treasury offices it was the governor’s privilege to supply an interim appointee to sit in the cabildo and vote as directed. (Bushnell KC)

The crown may have relied too heavily on the institution of the residencia, considering the way it was conducted. The officials of the Florida treasury urged that a regular judge be sent from the Royal Audiencia of Mexico City to take a residencia, for “with the incoming governor justifying the outgoing, no one dares demand his rights.” [Note 81: Christoval de Viso to Secretary of the Council, Madrid, 6/27/1682; Francisco Menendez Marquez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Ramirez 1/30/1627] The bribes involved were practically institutionalized. Governor Rebolledo boasted that 4,000 or 6,000 pesos would clear him of any charge. AN449 Ex-Governor Hita Salazar said that Marques Cabrera purposely delayed his proceeding because Hita Salazar had not given him 3,000 pesos as the other ex-governor and an ex-governor’s widow had. [Note 82: Anon. 11/120/1655; Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar 7/2/1683] A bad residencia in St. Augustine was proof of nothing but poverty and a lack of friends. (Bushnell KC)

In this last decade of the Habsburg era the four levels of treasury accountability stood theoretically as follows: Accounts were rendered to the governor or a lieutenant auditor, who also did local audits. Financial summaries of various kinds were sent to the Council, the viceroy of New Spain, and the tribunal of accounts in Havana. Audit reviews were the responsibility of that same tribunal, which was also the court of appeals. In practice, accounts were taken and local audits were done by persons with local ties. Reviews and appeals, like the situado, were firmly in the hands of a powerful Cuban-Floridian creole clique. [Note 65: Gov. Quiroga y Losada 6/8/1690; Alonso de Leturiondo 4/29/1697] It had been the crown’s desire ever since St. Augustine was founded to bring its treasury there into line with minimal royal policy, ordinary honesty being considered an unrealistic goal. But the obstacles to sound financial accounting and accountability were self-perpetuating and perhaps insuperable. Most officials charged with correcting the situation preferred to profit by it; those who tried to do otherwise were destroyed by the local power structure. Given the royal officials’ chronic absenteeism, lackadaisical performances, and misappropriations, if not outright fraud, the crown treated them with a lenience that approached indifference.

Ch.1 The Florida Provinces and Their Treasury The Spanish Habsburgs liked their treasure tangible, in bars of gold, heavy silver coins, precious stones, chunks of jewel amber, and strings of pearls. By their command, each regional branch of the royal treasury of the Indies (hacienda real de Indias), a part of their patrimony, had a heavily guarded room containing a coffer of solid wood, reinforced at the edges, bottom, and corners with iron, strongly barred, and bearing three or four locks the keys to which were held by different persons. The keepers of the keys, who had to meet to open the coffer, were the king’s personal servants, with antecedents in the customs houses of Aragon and the conquests of Castile. They were called the royal officials of the treasury. (Bushnell KC)

Pious disclaimers aside, Florida’s colonists and governors did not agree with His Majesty’s restrictions on Indian trade. The natives had many things that Spaniards wanted: sassafras, amber, deer and buffalo skins, nut oil, bear grease, tobacco, canoes, storage containers, and, most of all, food. And the Indians soon wanted what the Spanish had: weapons, construction and cultivation tools, nails, cloth, blankets, bells, glass beads, church ornaments, and rum. The problem was not to create a market but to supply it. ...The 1,500-ducat fund that the king intended for gifts to allied chiefs, the governors sometimes diverted to buy trade goods. Soldiers, having little else, exchanged their firearms; the Cherokees living on the Upper Tennessee River in 1673 owned 60 Spanish flintlocks. (Bushnell KC)

Protected Indians, limited exports, and a shortage of trade goods were only three of the factors hampering normal economic growth in Florida. Another was the continuing silver rush to New Spain and Peru. St. Augustine was not the place of choice for a Spanish immigrant. Soldiers and even friars assigned to Florida had to be guarded in the ports en route to keep them from jumping ship. In this sense the other North Atlantic colonies were again more fortunate. There were no better places for Englishmen, Scots, and Germans to go. (Bushnell KC)

Ideally the presidio of St. Augustine should have been supplied through the free competition of merchants bringing their shiploads of goods to exchange for the money to be found in the king’s coffer and the soldiers’ wallets. [Note 38: Ex-Gov. Hita Salazar (seen in Council 2/8/1684); Gov. Zuniga y Cerda 10/15/1701.] It did not work out this way for several reasons. Under the Habsburgs the situado for Florida soldiers and friars never rose above 51,000 ducats or 70,000 pesos a year, payable from 1592 to 1702 from the Mexico City treasury. But supporting a presidio in Florida was not one of that treasury’s priorities. The Mexico City officials paid the situado, irregularly and piecemeal. For a merchant, selling to the Florida presidio was equivalent to making a badly secured, long-term loan. The king, whose private interests might conflict with the national or general interest, once had all the Caribbean situados sequestered and carried to him in exchange for promissory notes. [Note 40: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/28/1645.] Sometimes an entire situado would be mortgaged before it arrived, with creditors waiting on the Havana docks. In order to be supplied at all, St. Augustine was forced to take whatever its creditors would release: shoddy, unsuitable fabrics and moldy flour. The presidio was chronically in debt, and so was everyone dependent on it. Soldiers seldom saw money; Indians almost never used it. [Note 41: Cedula to the governor 10/11/1681, in investigation of the trade goods 12/7/1680 to 6/28/1683.] (Bushnell KC)

St. Augustine was a poor and isolated market with little to export. Its seaways were beset by corsairs in summer and storms in winter. No merchant could risk one of his ships on that dangerous journey without an advance contract guaranteeing the sale of his cargo at a profit of 100% to 200%. [Note 42: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 2/6/1647.] Citizens sometimes tried to circumvent the high cost of imports by going in together to order a quantity of goods, making sure that anyone they entrusted with money had local ties to guarantee his return. But the price of bringing goods to Florida was still prohibitive. A single frigate trip to the San Juan de Ulua harbor and back cost 400 ducats. [Note 43: Cargo manifest on the Nuestra Senora del Rosario out of Seville 1607; Alonso de Caceres report (Havana) after 12/12/1574; Juan de Cueva, Juan Menendez Marquez, and Francisco Ramirez 1/27/1617.] (Bushnell KC)

It was of little help to be located along the return route of the Fleet of the Indies. Once a year the heavily laden galleons sailed northward in convoy just out of sight of land, riding the Gulf Stream up the Bahama Channel to Cape Hatteras to catch the trade winds back to Spain, but the St. Augustine harbor, with its shallow bar which would pass only flat-bottomed or medium portage vessels, was not a place where these great 500- to 1,500-ton ships could anchor, nor would they have interrupted their progress to stop there. AN408 When the Floridians wished to make contact with a vessel in the fleet they had to send a boat to await it at Cape Canaveral, a haunt of pirates. [Note 44: Bartolome de Arguelles 1601; Gov. Rojas y Borja 2/13/1627.] (Bushnell KC)

By Spanish mercantilist rules nothing could be brought into a Spanish port except in a licensed ship with prior registration. At times the presidio was so short on military and naval supplies that the governor and officials waived the regulations and purchased artillery and ammunition, cables and canvas off a ship hailed on the open seas; or a foreign merchantman entered the harbor flying a signal of distress, news bearing, or prisoner exchange, and sold goods either openly or under cover. [Note 45: Juan Menendez Marquez, Juan Lopez de Aviles, and Bartolome de Arguelles 9/13/1600.] (Bushnell KC)

Except for trade goods, metals, and military accoutrements, which always had to be imported, St. Augustine with its hinterland was surprisingly self-sufficient. The timber, stone, and mortar for construction were available in the vicinity; nails, hinges, and other hardware were forged in the town. Boats were built in the rivers and inlets. There was a gristmill, a tannery, and a slaughterhouse. Fruits, vegetables, and flowers grew in the gardens; pigs and chickens ran in the streets. Although it was a while before cattle ranching got started, by the late 17th century beef was cheap and plentiful. The swamps and savannahs provided edible roots, wild fruit, and game; lakes and rivers were full of fish; oysters grew huge in the arms of the sea. Indians paddling canoes or carrying baskets brought their produce to the market on the plaza: twists of tobacco, pelts, painted wooden trays, packages of dried cassina leaves, rope and fishnets, earthenware and baskets, dried turkey meat, lard and salt pork, saddles and shoe leather, charcoal, and fresh fish and game; but especially they brought maize. Maize, not wheat, was the staff of life in Florida. The poor, the slaves, the convicts and Indians all got their calories from it. When the maize crops were hurt, St. Augustine was hungry. But the problem was not so much supply as distribution. After the Indians were reduced to missions the friars had them plant an extra crop yearly as insurance against famine and for the support of the poor and beautification of the sanctuaries. The missionaries were highly incensed to have this surplus claimed for the use of the presidio, yet to guarantee an adequate supply the governor was ready to take desperate measures: raid the church granaries, even plant maize within musket range of the fort, providing cover to potential enemies. AN409 Each province presented its problems. The grain from Guale was brought down in presidio vessels. That from Timucua was carried 15 to 30 leagues on men’s backs for lack of mules or packhorses, and it was easier to bring in relays of repartimiento (labor service) Indians and raise it near the city. The inhabitants of Apalache had a ready market for maize in Havana, and the governor had to station a deputy in San Luis, their capital, to collect and transmit it 2,000 miles around the peninsula to St. Augustine. To read the hundreds of letters bemoaning the tardiness or inadequacy of the situado, one would suppose that the presidio was always about to starve. This was largely rhetoric, an understandable effort by the governors and royal officials to persuade His Majesty to take the support of his soldiers seriously. Florida was not so much dependent upon the subsidy as independent because the subsidy was unreliable. Supply ships were sometimes years apart, and not even a hardened Spaniard could go for years without eating. [Note 48: Gov. Salazar Vallecilla 4/16/1645.] He might miss his olive oil, wheat flour, wine, sugar, and chocolate, but there was some sort of food to be had unless the town was suffering famine or siege and had exhausted its reserves. Such exigencies happened. (Bushnell KC)

To aggravate the economic problems, the colony was almost never at peace. The peninsula could not be properly explored; as late as 1599 there was uncertainty over whether or not it was an island. Throughout the Habsburg era there were two fluctuating frontiers with enemies on the other sides, for, converted or not, Florida Indians saw no reason to halt their seasonal warfare. From the south, Ais, Jeaga, Tocobaga, Pocoy, and Carlos warriors raided the Hispanicized Indians; Chisca Chichimeco, Chacato, Tasquique, and Apalachicolo peoples were some of the enemies to the north and northwest. The coasts were no safer. In 1563, trading and raiding corsairs conducting an undeclared war were driven by Spanish patrols from the Antilles to the periphery of the Caribbean: the Main, the Isthmus, and Florida. The French crisis of 1565-68 was followed by the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1603 and the Dutch War of 1621-48. Meanwhile, Floridians watched with foreboding the rival settlements of Virginia, Barbados, and after 1655, Jamaica. When Charles Town was founded in 1670 they pleaded for help to drive off the colonies before there were too many, but the crown’s hands were tied by a peace treaty, and its reaction—the building of a fort, the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine—was essentially defensive. (Bushnell KC)

In the face of the many hindrances to the settlement and effective use of Florida—the crown’s protective attitude toward natives, the obstacles to trade, the shortage of currency, the problems of food distribution, the slow Spanish increase in population and the rapid native decrease, and the exhausting wars—it was a remarkable achievement for the Spanish to have remained there at all. The way they did so, and the share of the royal officials of the treasury in the story, is a demonstration of human ingenuity and idealism, tenacity, and sheer greed. (Bushnell KC)

While the governor could attend an ordinary treasury council and exercise a vote equal to a royal official’s, he could also summon a general treasury council (acuerdo general de hacienda) with an agenda of his own. The crown insisted at length that there be no expense to the exchequer without prior approval, yet it was grudgingly conceded that in wartime, at a distance of 3,000 miles, emergencies could arise. At a general treasury council the governor authorized extraordinary expenditures personally and had the royal officials explain later. On the pretext that the counting house needed repairs, Governor Marques Cabrera had all treasury councils meet at his house and, using the excuse of seasonal piracy and Indian raids, spent as he pleased. [Note 51: Thomas Menendez Marquez 10/3/1686] (Bushnell KC)

Another source of treasure and valuable trade goods was rescate (ransom), the Spanish term for more-or-less compulsory trade with Indians not subject to the crown. The natives of Florida’s lower coast AN468 gathered amber AN469 along the beaches. They also did most of the salvaging that was done, and were rich in bullion, costly commercial goods, and castaways used for sacrifice or slaves. All of these possessions were available through rescate. The natives to the north traded in peltry and medicinal herbs. The quinto on rescates was the same as that on hallazgos: one-half. (Bushnell KC)

But when relations with foreign neighbors called for diplomatic contacts, the governor sent as his representative a royal official, which meant a regidor. [Note 44: Cedula to the governor of Havana 9/23/1698] (Bushnell KC)

It was possible for a governor to force his will on the cabildo by controlling the public and governmental notary who was their recording agent. He would say that the regidores were troublemakers trying to provoke lawsuits and would order the notary to stop proliferating their papers under pain of a heavy fine. It was a crude but effective method of getting on with government business. [Note 78: Gov. Trevino Guillamas to the royal officials 1/27/1617] When a governor wanted to ride roughshod over the rights of the citizens or the cabildo he had every means to do so, for his adjutants were the only police power in town. A genuinely political governor, however, simply placed the notary with his own attaché, after which he did not need to attend either treasury or cabildo councils to know everything that happened. AN470 When all else failed, a governor who found the existence of a cabildo inimical to his intentions announced that it was invalid in a town of soldiers and dissolved it. [Note 79: Juan Nunez de los Rios 1/19/1600; Bartolome de Arguelles 2/20/1600] In such a case the royal officials simply waited him out. His term was limited and his residencia was coming, whereas they had been appointed for life. The governor understood that if he dissolved the cabildo the treasury officials would report his mismanagements in detail throughout his stay. A common letter of complaint began: “The governors pay little heed to the royal officials and we have no preeminences nor rights of intervention, nor are we allowed our authority as regidores.” At this point the officials filled in their specific grievance “The governor is consenting to trade in this city with Portuguese and Frenchmen,” or “The governor is forcing us to sign prepared libranzas.” Then they attached the standard conclusion: “In all the cases that arise, whether in matters of the exchequer, the city or conversions, he takes action apart from us, and if we present the objects that occur to us he says that we have no intervention whatsoever, and if we ask for this in writing he refuses it, abusing us and speaking disrespectfully to us and threatening us if we do not go along with his opinions.” [Note 80: Juan Menendez Marquez 4/13/1601; Bartolome de Arguelles, Francisco Ramirez, Francisco Menendez Marquez, and Juan de Cueva, 6/2/1627, with reply to the fiscal of the Council 1/12/1628] AN471 Perfunctorily the Council would warn the governor to treat the royal officials well and not to place hindrances in the way of their work, then would file the regidores’ letter with the other complaints awaiting his residencia. (Bushnell KC)

There were three, sometimes four levels of accountability for an official to surmount on his way to formal quittance (finiquito): rendering his accounts, the local audit, the review audit, and in some cases, an appeal to a higher court. As one might expect for a treasury both isolated and poor, the Florida arrangements for accountability were irregular, often unclear, and complicated by continuous changes and combinations of levels. Perhaps this is why Hoffman found that among the treasuries of the Antilles and the circum-Caribbean, the Florida treasury was outstanding for its unreliable accounts and infrequent audits. Provision had been made for appeals, or fiscal litigation, long before there was a permanent settlement on the peninsula. Only a few days after Panfilo de Narvaez landed at Tampa Bay in 1528, a royal ordinance listed the Florida treasury officials among those whose appeals were to go to the audiencia of Mexico. This disposition was repeated in 1533, when Florida was regarded as one with the western Gulf Coast province of Panuco. In more general legislation, the New Laws of 1542 specified that treasury officials in the Indies should send an annual financial summary to the accountants of the Council. The Ordinances of 1554 called for audits every three years and gave detailed procedural instructions, which were largely ignored while the crown made a short-lived experiment in Peru with a special board of accountants. In 1563 the Ordinance of the Audiencias amended audit intervals to be yearly, and the following year the procedural orders were reissued. By 1570 most Caribbean treasuries were being audited on a regular basis. [Note 12: Cedula to the governors of Florida 6/19/1586; Diego Sans de San Martin for Juan de Cevadilla 1585] The Florida treasury was an immediate exception. For the first 11 years it was hardly a treasury at all. Its books were tied in first with the personal accounts of Menendez, then with the subsidy to the Indies Fleet. When Florida received a subsidy of its own, the adelantado and his numerous nephews treated it as part of their personal funds. Auditing was done at the convenience of crown-appointed investigators, usually officials from the Fleet. One of these, Treasurer Andres de Eguino, discovered in 1569 that Steward Juan de Junco, Menendez’s earliest treasury appointee, had false scales with which he systematically cheated the king’s soldiers. Junco’s confederates at once initiated a cover-up.

The bookkeeping system at the royal treasury was both thorough and cumbersome. Perhaps because a copyist was paid by the number of folios, no value was placed upon brevity. Each number was written twice, in words and in numerals. At the beginning, accounts were kept in a variant of Roman numerals in which an “e” might stand for a ten, and the numbers from two to four began with one to three undotted “i’s” and ended with a dotted “j” whose elongated tail curved under the adjoining letters. [Note 1: Bartolome de Arguelles and Juan Menendez Marquez 1/23/1602] In that age before commas, a bookkeeper inserted other symbols for clarity. The number 1,000 was represented by a “U,” as in Accountant Arguelles’ statement that the English armada coming upon Cartagena had 20 ships and VIU men, meaning 6,000, or Auditor Redondo Villegas’ reference to the year 1600 as 1U600. The symbol for a million was “Q” or “qos,” standing for quentos. The number 17,913,725, for example, could be written 17qos913U725. A quento escaso was 100,000. [Note 2: Bartolome de Arguelles 1/22/1596 and 4/20/1600; Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574] Roman numerals began going out of use in 1580, but for another 50 years or more a numeral could be written either way. [Note 3: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, enclosed with Gov. Rojas y Borja 5/30/1627]

The number of slaves belonging to any particular family is not easy to determine. The problem with counting them from the Parish Register is that they never appear all at once, and about all that can be known is that from one date to another a certain slave owner had at least x number of different slaves at one time or another. By this rather uncertain way of numbering them, Juan Menendez Marquez owned seven slaves; his son Francisco, eleven (of whom three were infants buried nameless); Juan II had ten; and his brother Thomas, four besides those out at La Chua. When Francisco II died in penury AN501 he was still the owner of seven. Only three were of an age to be useful, the rest being either small children or pensioners rather like himself. [Note 43: Parish Register Marriages and Baptisms; Francisco Menendez Marquez II probate papers 7/3/1743.] A conservative estimate of the number of adult slaves at one time in a gentleman’s house might be about four. (Bushnell KC)

For a typical estate inventory see the Francisco Menendez II probate papers of 7/3/1743.] (Bushnell KC)