# The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898/Volume 6/Foundation

FOUNDATION OF THE AUDIENCIA OF MANILA (concluded)
Commissioners
251. [Examinations not to be repeated.]
252. Item: We command that the said commissioners of examination [receptores] and special clerks who go on inquiries, shall not play games of chance, except for articles of food ready to be eaten, on pain of removal from office.
253-259. [Form of entry of witness's oath; fees charged must be endorsed; cases must be accepted promptly, in due order; absence and accounting for writs; fees received must be recorded; commissions may not be begged for; reports of investigations made out in public form must be given to the parties.]
260-264. [Taxing of charges; discharge of commissioners on completion of commission; commissioners may not be employed if they are relatives of clerks, attorneys, or advocates, or if they have boarded or lodged with them within a year; procedure on second trial.]
265-272. [Procedure in the assignment of commissions; cases accepted must not be thrown up; requests of parties for summoning of witnesses are not to be entered on the record; testimony is to be ​taken before local magistrates, if so desired; rights of commissioners-in-ordinary and of supernumerary commissioners to assignments.]
273. Item: A commissioner of inquiry may be appointed as soon as there shall be two court clerks appointed, or even one, that possible frauds may be avoided.
274–277. [Procedure in the event of challenge of commissioner; procedure for appointment of commissioners within and without the five leagues; oath of commissioner for outside cases; commissioners and clerks to take down testimony themselves, with no other person present]
278. Item: No supernumerary commissioner shall be appointed without being examined, and giving bonds for the administration of his office. No dependent or member of a household of our said president and auditors may be appointed to such commissionership, under penalty that the clerk appointed contrary to this ordinance shall lose all fees and salary for the time during which he shall occupy himself with the commissionership.
279–280. [The number of lines on a page in a record of inquiry; the number of words in a line; the excellence of handwriting required; the dating of reports of examinations.]
Bailiffs
281–284. [The bailifif's [portero] duties; his fees those of the bailiffs of the royal council; a lodging to be given him in the building of the Audiencia; tardiness fined one peso; excessive fees to be repaid sevenfold to the exchequer; presents for good news not to be accepted—penalty, fourfold repayment to the ​exchequer; the bailiff to enforce rules of precedence.]
Jail Wardens
285–286. [The warden [carcelero] shall accept no gifts from prisoners or others for them; shall not oppress them, or relax their imprisonment, or dismiss or arrest them without warrant; his oath.]
287. [His fees are those assigned to alguazils in the official table of fees.]
288. [A separate ward must be provided for women.]
289. [Nightly inspection is required. If prisoners escape through the warden's fault or negligence, he must suffer their penalty, or pay their debt.]
290. [A full record of the prisoner's name and the circumstances of his imprisonment must be kept.]
291. Item: He shall not entrust the keys of the prison to any Indian or black, on pain of being compelled to pay in his own person and estate the damage and injury which shall follow from his having so entrusted the keys.
292. [Warden and jailers are to have no business dealings or familiarity with the prisoners, or eat or gamble with them.]
293. [The jailers must live in the prisons.]
294. Item: There shall be a chaplain in the prison, to say mass before the prisoners daily; and the ornaments and other things necessary therefor shall be provided and paid for from the exchequer fines. The jailer shall take care that the chapel or place where mass is said shall be clean.
295. Item: He shall cause the prison and the cells thereof to be swept twice a week, and to be provided with clean water, so that the prisoners may ​drink without paying any fee. No jail-fee shall be charged to boys arrested for gambling, or to officials of our Audiencia arrested by order of our president and auditors—under a penalty of a fine of four times the amount, paid to our exchequer.
296. Item: No permission or opportunity for gambling shall be given in the jail, for money or other things except food. Wine shall not be sold to the poor; or, if sold, shall be sold at the price it is worth, and no more. No jail-fees shall be received from the poor under penalty of a fourfold fine for our exchequer.
Interpreters of the Audiencia
297. Item: We ordain and command that there shall be a body of interpreters for our said Audiencia; and that before they are admitted to exercise that office they shall swear in due form to perform their duties well and faithfully, in declaring and interpreting the case or matter committed to them, clearly and openly, without concealment or addition—declaring simply the fact of the crime, business, or testimony under examination. They shall likewise swear not to be partial to either side, or to favor one more than the other, and not to accept any reward for their service beyond the fee assessed and fixed for them, under the penalty decreed for forswearers, and the damages and interests of the parties, and a sevenfold return of the amount received, and removal from office.
298. Item: They shall receive no gifts or promises from Spaniards, or from the Indians, or from other persons who shall have or shall expect to have businesses or suits with them. They shall not accept ​such gifts or promises, of great or small amount, even for articles of food or drink; and even if these are voluntarily offered, without any request for them being made by the said interpreters or by others. In case of violation of this ordinance, they shall pay sevenfold what they have taken, for our exchequer; and charges thereof shall follow the procedure prescribed for charges against the judges and officials of our Audiencia.
299. Item: We ordain that the said interpreters shall not listen, in their own houses or out of them, to Indians who shall come to plead or do business in our Audiencia; but shall take them, without listening to them, to the said Audiencia, that there the case may be heard and determined in conformity with justice. In case of violation of this ordinance, they shall suffer for the first offense a penalty of three pesos for the court-room; for the second, double the penalty applied as aforesaid; and for the third, in addition to the said double penalty, they shall be dismissed from office.
300. Item: They shall not arrange the pleadings of Indians, nor be attorneys or solicitors in their cases and affairs, under the penalty prescribed in the preceding ordinance, applied as aforesaid.
301. Item: They shall be present at the meetings of court, at hearings, and at inspections of prisons, on every day that is not a holiday. At least in the afternoons they shall be present in the house of the president and auditors. All the above-mentioned duties, and each and every part and matter thereof, they shall take care to distribute among themselves in such a way that there shall not, by the default of them or of any of them, be any failure or delay in ​determining cases or other matters—under a penalty of two pesos for the poor for each day when the interpreters, men or women, or any of them, shall fail to do their duty in any of the aforesaid matters; and that, in addition, they shall pay the damages, interests, and costs to the party or parties detained for this cause.
302. Item: They shall not absent themselves without license from our president, under penalty of losing salary for the time while they were absent, and a fine of twelve pesos for the said court-room, for every instance of violation of this ordinance.
303. Item: We command that when they shall be occupied with suits or matters outside of the place where our said Audiencia shall sit, they shall accept nothing from the parties, directly or indirectly, beyond the fee assigned them. They shall make no bargains or agreements with the Indians, or partnerships, in any manner—under penalty of repaying sevenfold that which they thus accept and bargain for, and of perpetual discharge from office.
304. Item: For each day when any one of the said interpreters shall go out on commission and by order of our said Audiencia, from the place where it shall sit, they shall take as fee in addition to their salary two pesos, and no more; and shall accept no food or anything else from the parties, directly or indirectly, under the penalty of being obliged to repay it sevenfold to our exchequer.
305. Item: For each witness examined, if the interrogatory is of more than twelve questions, they shall receive two tomins; if the interrogatory is of less than twelve questions, one tomin, and no more, under penalty of paying fourfold to our exchequer. ​But if the interrogatory shall be long and the case laborious, the auditor before whom the examination is conducted may assess, in addition to the other fees, a moderate sum proportionate to the labor and time consumed.
306. Item: We command that the interpreters, each in turn, shall be in attendance at nine in the morning on every day when cases are heard, in the offices of the court clerks, to receive the memorandum which will be given him by the fiscal for summoning witnesses whom it shall be desirable to examine for the dues of the treasury—under a penalty of half a peso, for the poor of the prison, for every day of failure to be present.
307. And since, in regard to the fees to be taken by the officials of the said Audiencia, an official tariff [arancel] has been made, we command that what is contained therein shall be observed and fulfilled until other provisions are made and decreed by us.
308. Item: We ordain and command that, in the rest of the cases and matters coming before the said Audiencia not here determined upon, Shall be followed the ordinances made by us, and to be made by our said president and auditors.
Tariff of fees
309. [A list on which shall be entered the official tariff of fees must be posted in the court-room, and copies must be kept in the clerks' offices.]
310. Item: We ordain and command that our said president and auditors shall make a tariff of fees, in accordance with which our chief clerk of mines and the other officials who have no official tariff shall take their fees; and that they shall do the same in all ​the governments of their district, paying consideration to the nature of the offices, the region where they are situated, the expenses there, and the lack of supplies that may exist therein. These tariffs of fees are to be sent when made, with the signatures of the president and auditors, to our said council, to be examined and confirmed; and in the interim the tariffs which shall be made shall be observed.
Archives
311. Item: We command that in the house of our Audiencia there shall be a room in which there shall be a cabinet wherein shall be deposited the records of cases determined by the said Audiencia, after the decrees of execution [executorias] have been transcribed, the records of each single year being placed one above another. The court clerk shall place on each record of a case a strip of parchment stating the persons and the subject of the case. This shall be done within five days after the decree of execution has been transcribed. And in another part of the said room another cabinet shall be placed, in which shall be deposited the grants, decrees, and documents pertaining to the state, preëminence, and jurisdiction of the said Audiencia and provincial court [provincia] of its district. All shall be locked and the key be kept by the chancellor [chanciller]. All records shall be covered with parchment.
312. Item: We ordain and command that whenever an event occurs for which no provision or decree is made in these ordinances, and in the other decrees, provisions, and ordinances enacted for the said provinces, and in the laws of Madrid made in the year [one thousand] five hundred and two, and the ​provisions therein, and command that our president and auditors, clerks and advocates, and other officials of our said Audiencia shall each, within thirty days, take the copy of this ordinance.
313. Item: We command that in the said Audiencia there shall be a record in which shall be entered all royal orders [cedulas] which we shall send or shall have sent to them; and they shall take care to observe and obey the same. And since it is our will that the said articles and ordinances above written shall be observed, and since it is likewise fitting for our service and the administration of our justice, we give commandment to our said president and auditors of the said Audiencia, which is accordingly to be established in the said city of Manila of the said island of Luçon, and to our fiscal, alguazil-mayor, and the officials and servants thereof whom the content of the said ordinances affects—both to those whom we now send and to those who shall be appointed henceforth—to each and every one of them, that they shall regard, observe, and perform them, and cause them to be observed and performed, in everything and for everything, as is contained and decreed in the said ordinances; and that they shall not proceed or act, or permit any to proceed to act, in any manner contrary to the tenor and form of these and of their contents.
Given at Aranjuez, May fifth, one thousand five hundred and eighty-three.
I the King
The licentiate Diego Gasca de Salazar The licentiate Alonso Martynez Espadero The licentiate Don Gonsalvo de Çuñiga The licentiate Don Lope de Vaillo The licentiate Emojosa The licentiate Francisco de Villafañe
Ordinances to be observed by the Audiencia established by your Majesty's command in the city of Manila, of the island of Luzon, of the Philipinas.
[Endorsed: "Establishment of the Audiencia of Manila, and the ordinances which must be observed. In the year 1583."]
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