.... in 1830 he retires and sails back home to Spain, upon his arrival he is promptly Arrested for having over $100,000.00 in Gold in his possession...Of course he doesn't explain it very well to the authorities and is jailed....That is a matter of Historical Record......
I would have to see this "historical record". Do you have any link ? Or if you have it only in printed form: What is the title of the material or book or source ?
This hits VERY CLOSE TO HOME for me. I'm 1.5 hrs. north of you, in Salinas, CA. I can assure you Happy-trails, IF this clergy showed up somewhere on earth with $100,000 in gold
: He did NOT get it from the CA missions.
I have hunted many of the places you talk about. I am a mission docent. I have over 100 reales and over 100 phoenix buttons.
Some of them found quite close to you. I've pulled 100+ silver from your downtown park years back. I've found 15 gold coins so far in my 43-ish year career. Although my gold coins are all American (1830s and onward), yet I've hunted side-by-side of those who've found earlier Mexican and Spanish Escudos here in CA. So I feel quite qualified to speak to the subject. And I've found some of the gold coins in the context of sites where, at the same time, we had reales dating back to LOSS/CIRCULATION times of late 1700's onwards. Yet the gold coins were not the earlier mission times losses/dates you speak of.
Let's cut to the chase: People are fumble fingers. Right ? They can loose their prized diamond ring, right ? (as evidenced by beach hunters show & tell forums). They can loose gold coins, right ? (as evidenced by coin/relic hunters show & tell forums). And if they purposefully hide/stash something, it/they sometimes get found, right ? (as evidenced by the show & tell cache story finds). Ok, with that all that in mind:
Tell me of how many escudos (of the pre 1830 date that you speak of) that have been found in CA ? I bet you can't cite a single one. Yet I can cite HUNDREDS of
silver reales that have been found between me and my cohorts. And we're talking of places that would make your toes curl and archies roll over in their graves. Dates on coins going back to the mid 1750s. Hence touching on the earliest mission toe-holds in our part of CA all the way through the Mexican period and on to state-hood.
Where's all the gold ? 
I can cite thousands of yards of soil sifted by archaeologists in the most "holy of holy" sacred ground zero mission archie digs. Yet.... at best ... they come up with some silver reales. And jewelry (medallions, crucifixes, etc... ) are copper and brass. Not gold . So where's all this gold you're talking about ?
All refined metals in this part of the world had to reach here by ship or overland. They were NOT minting coins here. And any natural gold or silver (ie. mining/refining) in Alta CA ended up not being profitable. It was very meager. We were on the remotest ends of the earth. In fact, Spain even wanted , for a time, to discontinue the colonial mission effort here. Why ? BECAUSE OF [supposed] LACK OF RESOURCES [minerals, gold, etc...]. Of course, little did they know what laid in the Sierra Nevada's to be discovered later. BUT IN THE MISSION TIMES, these missions that you speak of were NOT bathing in gold. You've been watching one-too-many Hollywood spaghetti western movie. Sorry.
You can go mission to mission to mission here in CA (all 21 of them) . And view their "dug artifacts" sections of their museum wings . And you will see little to no gold. Yet you'll see all sorts of silver reales, copper trinkets, etc... All of which had to come north for the mission founding effort (trade items, soldier pay, etc...). NO GOLD. Carmel mission, for example, was extensively dug in the 1920s to 1940s . Thanx to the efforts of Harry Downie during the restoration of the quadrangle wings. All the soil that was moved prior to the patio and walls and such, was meticulously sifted/screened. Resulting in dozens of coins, medallions, beads, buttons, blah blah blah.
Where's the gold ? Bear in mind Carmel was the capitol of the other 21 missions during Serra's time and afterwards. And Monterey, at the time, was one of the main ocean ports.
You might say: " Well ... they just didn't happen to loose the gold coins. " Ok, then ask yourself: Why the other type coins found ? It's only human nature that there will be a REPRESENTATIVE sampling of the types-goods people carry, in the "midden" of their habitations. You simply can not say it's random coincidence that ...... the missions were bedazzled with gold. Yet.... durnit ... they never lost any of those. Only the copper/silver. In the same way you can't say that if you go beach hunting long enough: You'll only find silver rings. Not gold rings . Because, by golly ... people take better care of their gold rings. HOGWASH: People loose gold rings all the time.
So again I ask you: What is the source of the $100,000 story you cite ? I'll bet you dollars to donuts there's some other "more plausible explanation" at play.
