ments on
charges of drunkenness, disorder, and encouraging disloyalty to the
government. His brother-in-law, Byndloss, was dismissed for similar
reasons, and Roger Elletson, who belonged to the same faction, was
removed from his office as attorney-general of the island. Lynch had had
the support of both the assembly and the council, and his actions were
at once confirmed in England.[459] The governor, however, although he
had enjoyed the confidence of most of the inhabitants, who looked upon
him as the saviour of the island, left behind in the persons of Morgan,
Elletson and their roystering companions, a group of implacable enemies,
who did all in their power to vilify his memory to the authorities in
England. Several of these men, with Elletson at their head, accused the
dead governor of embezzling piratical goods which had been confiscated
to the use of the king; but when inquiry was made by Lieutenant-Governor
Molesworth, the charges fell to the ground. Elletson's information was
found to be second-hand and defective, and Lynch's name was more than
vindicated. Indeed, the governor at his death had so little ready means
that his widow was compelled to borrow L500 to pay for his funeral.[460]

The last years of Sir Thomas Lynch's life had been troublous ones. Not
only had the peace of the island been disturbed by "La Trompeuse" and
other French corsairs which hovered about Hispaniola; not only had his
days been embittered by strife with a small, drunken, insolent faction
which tried to belittle his attempts to introduce order and sobriety
into the colony; but the hostility of the Spanish governors in the West
Indies still continued to neutralize his efforts to root out
buccaneering. Lynch had in reality been the best friend of the Spaniards
in America. He had strictly forbidden the cutting of logwood in
Campeache and Honduras, when the Spaniards were outraging and enslaving
every Englishman they found upon those coasts;[461] he had sent word to
the Spanish governors of the intended sack of Vera Cruz;[462] he had
protected Spanish merchant ships with his own men-of-war and hospitably
received them in Jamaican ports. Yet Spanish corsairs continued to rob
English vessels, and Spanish governors refused to surrender English
ships and goods which were carried into their ports.[463] On the plea of
punishing interlopers they armed small galleys and ordered them to take
all ships which had on board any products of the Indies.[4