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terrible pestilence which, carried oft' hundreds of victims
before it was stayed. The surviving Englishmen, recalling
Thomson’s dying words, saw in these visitations signs of the
Divine wrath at the doing to death of their innocent
fellow-countrymen. Even the superstitious natives traced
a connexion between the misfortunes which over-
whelmed them and the ruthless act which had practically
extirpated the English. Their sense of justice, dulled
though it was by ages of oppression, was sufficiently strong
to see in the procedure which had encompassed the deaths
of Towerson and his associates a degree of turpitude which
called aloud to heaven for vengeance. Hence it was that
the days following the execution were a period of gloom
in Amboina for the islanders, and maybe for Van Speult
and his associates a time of dark communings and remorse.
When in due course the news of the tragedy reached
Batavia the little English colony there were fired with
righteous indignation. The president of the factory
immediately drew up a protest against Van Speult’s
“ presumptuous proceedings ” in “ imprisoning, tortur­
ing, condemning and bloodily executing his Majesty’s
subjects,” and “ in confiscating their goods in direct viola­
tion of the Treaty, whereby the King was disgraced and
dishonoured and the English nation scandalized.”
Carpentier, the Dutch Governor-General, treated the
protest somewhat coolly, but in his despatches home he
showed a full appreciation of the gravity of the issue that
had been raised. While he expressed belief in the exist­
ence of a conspiracy, he condemned strongly the methods
of the trial. De Bruyne was selected for special censure.
He “ called himself a lawyer and had been taken into the
Company’s service as such,” but he “ should have shown

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