ng, nor was he better pleased with Chaves's proposal that the Indians
should be made free in name only, and that while traffic in them as
chattels should be forbidden, they should in fact remain in involuntary
domestic servitude. Another sharp reprimand was accordingly sent to
Chaves, with an intimation that something worse might follow; to which
warning the governor was blind and deaf. Accordingly, the blow soon
fell.

We have hitherto heard much of Lopez Hurtado, the crabbed, surly and
cantankerous old royal treasurer, with his impregnable honesty. It was
quite impossible that he should countenance even passively such conduct
as that of Chaves. So at the end of 1548 he sent to the King an
appalling indictment of the governor, charging him with all manner of
public crimes and private vices. He declared that Chaves was enriching
himself at the expense of the people, and that he was neglecting public
business for private enterprises, that he was permitting his
subordinates to practice extortion and oppression, that he was
ill-treating and persecuting honest men, and that he was corrupting the
women of the island; all of which was probably true.

The King acted promptly. Chaves had been appointed governor in October,
1545, for a term of four years, at a salary of a thousand ducats a year.
He had now, at the end of 1548, been in office three years and more;
though he claimed that his term ran for four years from June, 1546, when
he actually took office. However, there was no tenure of office law to
keep him in his place beyond the royal pleasure; certainly not to
protect him from removal for cause. So the supreme court of Hispaniola
was directed to investigate him, and Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was
appointed governor in his stead. The court of Hispaniola sent Geronimo
de Aguayo to Cuba to make a private investigation of the governor's
doings; Hurtado agreeing to pay the expenses out of his own pocket.
Aguayo came to Santiago in April, 1549, while Chaves was absent at
Havana, planning to remove the seat of government to that city. Three
months were spent in the investigation, and then Aguayo reported to the
court a docket of about three hundred charges against Chaves, some of
which were serious enough but many of which were altogether trifling.
The court decided to take no action upon them, but to hold them for the
new governor, Angulo, to use as the basis of the investigation which
he, according to law and precedent, would