The last two years of his government in New York were vexed with difficulties with some of the English merchants of the province, who were probably pinched by Andros’s strict and methodical, and possibly also narrow and literal, administration of the revenue laws. He was openly accused by them, and by other discontented parties, to the Duke of York as dishonest in his management of the revenue, and was summoned home to answer to the charges. A special commissioner, who was absurdly incompetent for the position, was sent to investigate the accounts, and he took the side of the merchants in his report.[124] Andros, however, was able to answer satisfactorily every charge against him, and boldly demanded a thorough examination of all his acts as governor. He was examined before Churchill and Jeffreys, neither of whom would have been likely at that time to have let any one go free who had defrauded the Duke, and they reported that Andros “had not misbehaved himself, or broken the trust reposed in him by his royal highness in the administration of his government, nor doth it appear that he hath anyway defrauded or mismanaged his revenue.”[125] Though completely exonerated, he was not at this time reinstated in the governorship, and the next five years of his life were passed in England at court, where he obtained an honorable position in the household, and in his estates in Guernsey, to which in 1684 the island of Alderney was added by royal grant at a rent of thirteen shillings.[126] In 1685 he received a military command once more, and served in the campaign in the west of England against Monmouth; and the silence of the enemies in regard to any acts of cruelty at this time is a high tribute, for, if they had known of any, they would undoubtedly have held him up for abhorrence as a persecutor.[127] Later in the year he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Princess Anne of Denmark’s regiment of horse, under the command of the Earl of Scarsdale. The accession of James, under whom he had acted previously, made it likely that Andros would again receive employment. In spite of the fact that he was a devoted adherent of the Church of England, the king, who was attempting to restore the Roman worship, gave him his full confidence, and entrusted him with the work of carrying out a project which had been for some time before the minds of the colonial authorities in England--the consolidation of New England into a single province. This was no new idea of James II., but had been discussed for several years; and it was a plan that had much to recommend it.