Second election of the father provincial, Fray Alonso Coronel,
and of the events concerning the pirate Kuesing (Pompoán).
(1662)
Under the mild and pacific government of our father provincial Fray
Diego de Ordás, this afflicted province was able to lift the burden
of so many troubles as the adversity of the times and the great lack
of religious occasioned. That lack increased to the pass that many
were giving out under the heavy burden that necessity forced them
to assume; for those most privileged by their age and by sickness
carried burdens that were enough for two, and most of them the burden
of three, so that many succumbed and made the lack greater. With
these disasters came the time for the celebration of a new chapter,
to the great sorrow of all the province at taking farewell of the mild
and prudent government of our father Fray Diego de Ordás. They also
grieved because there were few experienced persons to substitute in
his place; for a time so full of dangers needed a pilot experienced
in the government of a province so assailed by its adversaries.
The capitular members assembled in the Manila convent, and all were
unanimous in [their purpose to] elect as provincial father Fray José
de la Cuesta, prior of Bulacán, an able religious. He was very learned
and experienced in the Greek language, which chair he had filled by
substitution in the university of Salamanca, because of the death of
his father, Master Andrés de la Cuesta Olmedo, the regularly-appointed
professor of that subject. But that hope was frustrated, for God
had taken him to himself two days before the chapter, to the general
sorrow of all the province--especially of our father Fray Diego de
Ordás, who had brought him from his province of Castilla in the fine
mission that entered this province in the year 1635. Accordingly, the
chapter was convened under the presidency of father Fray Juan de Borja,
the third definitor, because of the deaths of the [two] others, Fray
Pedro Mejía and Fray Pablo Maldonado. Our father, Fray Alonso Coronel,
[104] a religious of great virtue and prudence, and such an one as
the times needed--also of the said mission conducted by our father
Fray Diego de Ordás--was elected, April 29, 1662. The definitors
elected in the chapter were fathers Fray Gonzalo de la Palma, [105]
Fray Luis de Medina, [106] Fray Isidro Rodríguez, and the lecturer Fray
Antonio Carrión, and the visitors, father Fray Juan de Vergara [107]
and Fray Juan de Isla. [108] They passed the acts necessary for the
efficient government of the province and for the administration of the
doctrinas where were missions of new reductions of people, especially
on the outskirts of the province of Ilocos--which is also the farthest
[from Manila] in this great island called Luzón. There father Fray
Benito de Mena [109] was progressing finely with the conversion of
the Indians of Aclán and Vera in the mountains contiguous to Cagayán,
of which we shall treat more fully hereafter.
[All the past dangers and difficulties are now overshadowed by the
attempts of the Chinese pirate Kuesing, the recital of which takes up
the rest of this chapter and the following one. Chapter xxvii deals
principally with the rising by the Chinese of the Manila Parián, and
their punishment (1662-63); and chapter xxviii, with raids of the
Joloans and Mindanaos among the Visayas (1662-63), in which father
Fray Francisco de Mesa, O.S.A., [110] loses his life. These various
topics will be sufficiently treated hereafter.]