containing a full account of our transactions in the new world, the bishop refused to give our agents an audience, and abused them in a most shameful manner, calling them traitors and the agents of a traitor, and took away from them the present we had destined for his majesty. He suppressed our despatches to the emperor, and sent his majesty an account which was the very opposite of ours, and had represented matters in such a way as though everything came from his creature Diego Velasquez. But he did not stop here; for he retained the greater part of the valuable present himself, and when Puertocarrero begged permission of the bishop to repair in person to his majesty in Flanders, he cast him into prison, where he died.
Fifthly. The bishop had forbidden the two chief harbour-masters of Seville to allow any vessels having on board troops, ammunition, or other matters for Cortes, to leave that harbour.
Sixthly. The bishop, without authority from his majesty, had wished to give the most important appointments to men who neither possessed the requisite talents nor merited to fill such offices: for instance, the government of New Spain he had conferred upon Christobal de Tapia, who could not even have been intrusted with an inferior command, and whose only claim to that office was his marriage with Doña Petronella de Fonseca, a niece of the bishop, and a near relative of Velasquez.
And lastly. The bishop lent a favorable ear to all the false statements of Velasquez's agents, while he suppressed, distorted, and garbled the true and faithful accounts which Cortes and the rest of us despatched to his majesty.
These and other complaints against the bishop, which were accompanied by undeniable proofs were properly drawn up by our agents, and with these they repaired to Saragossa, where his holiness was staying, to whom they handed over this document and challenged the bishop as an unfit person to be judge in these matters.