was the lieutenant treasurer,[1] royal accountant and co-interim governor of La Florida (1595–1597) with Alonso de las Alas and Juan Menéndez Márquez.
[Note 1] At the time of Avendaño's death, Argüelles was in Mexico City to retrieve the situado, the annual subsidy from the treasury of New Spain to support the presidio at St. Augustine.
The King turned down Argüelles's request, and appointed Gonzalo Méndez de Cancio y Donlebún, who had never been to Florida, as governor.
[4][5][6] Soon after Méndez reached St. Augustine, he encountered resistance over a payment from the royal treasury to the new garrison priest, Father Ricardo.
[8] Alarmed at repeated incursions into the province of Guale by French sassafras traders, who were coming and going unmolested in the harbors of the coast, Argüelles implored Governor Menéndez Márquez to send Timucuan allies with Spanish troops to seize their canoes and burn their food crops, as well as to seize some of the young men and enslave them.