It is necessary to go back a little, so that what I say now may be clearly understood.

I have already told in former chapters about the many complaints which were made against Cortés before His Majesty when the Court was at Toledo, and how those who laid the complaints were the partizans of Diego Velásquez and all the others I have often mentioned, and the letters of Albornoz gave support to them. As His Majesty thought they [the complaints] were true, he had ordered the Admiral of Santo Domingo to come with a great company of soldiers and arrest cortés, and all of us who went with him when he defeated Narvaez. I have also related how when the Duque de Béjar, Don Alvaro de Zuñiga, heard of it, he went to beg His Majesty not to believe the letters of a man who was very hostile to cortés until he could ascertain the truth. As the Admiral did not come, nor the evidence in support of the suit, His Majesty ordered a nobleman who was at that time in Toledo, named the Licentiate Ponce de Leon (a cousin of the Count of Alcandete), to come and take his Residencia [of cortés], and, if he should find him incriminated by the accusations which were brought against him, to punish him in such a way that the sentence which he should deliver should resound throughout the land.