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Military Service Records 281 His Majesty remitted a memorial of the aforesaid don Baltasar in order that his petition for the governorship of New Mexico or the alcaldía mayor of Sonora might be considered. It was found to be against orders to grant future rights to offices before they become vacant, and His Majesty accepted the report. The corregimiento for which he now asks is vacant; and the first time it was conferred it brought two thousand pesos escudos, which have been ordered returned to the party because he is unable to serve. Let the report made by don Baltasar be brought. Cámara. November 29, 1694. Being resolved that the appointment to the offices shall be for pecuniary consideration, the favor or remuneration to which he pretends cannot be allowed. Notes 1. AGI, Guadalajara, leg. 40, Cartas y expedientes de personas seculars, 1675–1698. Document 63 Petition of Baltasar Domínguez de Mendoza Asking for Admission to One of the Military Orders [Madrid], March 16951 Sir: Captain don Baltasar Domínguez y Mendoza, son of Maestre de Campo don Juan Domínguez y Mendoza, says that his aforesaid father served Your Majesty for more than forty-four years in the conquest of the aforesaid New Mexico and reduction of other provinces. His aforesaid father, as well as his grandfather, the supplicant himself, and a brother of his, brought different families there, and always at the expense of their private means, [undergoing] the very great hardships and dangers which can be believed of such costly and dangerous enterprises, as is all on record in authentic papers which have been presented in the secretariat, and in the report of services which has been drawn up from them. 282 Part One And when he and his aforesaid father were coming to place themselves at Your Majesty’s feet in order to give you the information they had acquired by their experience in those regions, the ship on which they were coming was wrecked and they lost the residue of their fortune. And after they had reached land and come to this capital, his aforesaid father died immediately in its general hospital, where he had been obliged to take shelter for lack of means. And the supplicant, in virtue of his own services and those of his father and grandfather, petitioned Your Majesty to grant him the governorship of New Mexico or the corregimiento of Tlajomulco. He has not obtained either one because of the interdict against granting rights of future vacancies and also because Your Majesty has ordered that all [such appointments] be made for a pecuniary consideration. Therefore, their aforesaid services have never been rewarded because they were performed in the farthest limits of the world of New Spain and because they have never before been able to come to place themselves at Your Majesty’s feet as the supplicant has done. Nevertheless, at the end of a year of pressing his claims, he has not even obtained a grant of aid with which to support himself, although his aforesaid father spent all his patrimony in the royal service of Your Majesty. Therefore, since at the present time he has no money to offer for the appointment to the aforesaid governorship, nor any means of receiving the reward for his services, he begs Your Majesty, in remuneration of the services which have been described and out of compassion for his need and family responsibilities, because he has been left destitute of resources and without any way of being able to maintain himself or to return to his household as a result of the loss of his father and the slender means they had with them, which were all lost in the sea, that Your Majesty be pleased to incline your royal clemency to all the aforesaid, granting him one of the three military habits for himself or his son, and for a brother of his who has also served Your Majesty in the aforesaid provinces at the expense of the aforesaid maestre de campo, his father. By this means the supplicant and he will find themselves rewarded by the royal hand of Your Majesty and others will be inspired with great zeal and fervor in the hope of the reward, as his father was confident of an even greater one, if he had died before placing himself at Your Majesty’s feet. He also begs you to be pleased to order that the patent and privilege of nobility [ejucutoria y...

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