accustomed to domineer, ill brooked opposition to his views or interests, and pressed matters with a haughtiness that offended the king's judges.
Thus it was that almost immediately an antagonism appeared, regarding questions of minor importance at first, as those of etiquette and precedence,[1] but later affecting weightier matters both public and private.
Unfriendly relations being thus established, the breach grew wider day by day, and their letters were full of bitterness, marked by complaints of grievances on the one side and of obnoxious interference on the other. Such being their respective attitudes, it was with difficulty and delay that even the royal orders were carried out in matters concerning Cortés. Whether the question at issue related to the counting of his vassals, the assignment of towns and lands granted him, or expeditions of discovery, it was in every case attended by many loud and angry words.
The first business in connection with the marquis to which it was necessary the audiencia should give attention was the counting of the twenty-three thousand vassals assigned him by royal grant. Difficulties at once arose which rendered the counting slow,[2] and there were also disagreements between the oidores and Cortés with respect to the method. Moreover as public interests were involved by the establishment of a remarkable precedent, the action of the oidores was closely watched and criticised.[3]
- ↑ Salmeron complainingly reports to the king the prominent position in which Cortés caused his chair to be placed in the church, and the fact that he took precedence in church ceremonies: 'y al ofrecer, nos porfiamos todos, y él ofrece el primero; y la paz saca un sacristan, y vá primero á nosotros, y tómala el primero.' Id.
- ↑ The oidores reported to his Majesty that the Indians, at the instigation of their chiefs, evaded the count. This they could readily do owing to the facility with which they removed from place to place. The duties of the commission appointed to take the count were thus made irksome in the extreme, and the result inaccurate. They were employed during the whole of lent in determining the population of a single town in the district of Cuernavaca without satisfactory result, and there were not less than 20 others in that district. Relacion, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xiv. 330; Audience, Lettre, in Ternaux-Compans, Voy., série ii. tom. v. 151, 197-8.
- ↑ Cortés maintained that the heads of families only should be counted, while the oidores claimed that the individual members ought to be included.
