"This passes!" exclaimed the Governor, giving rein to his fury and striking his hand against the table. "It doth concern me much, Major Carrington, both as a true man, and as the Governor of this Colony, the representative of his blessed Majesty, King Charles the Second, may all whose enemies, private and open, be confounded! that a gentleman who holds a high office in this Colony should have in his possession—ay! and read, too, for ’t is a well-thumbed copy—that foul emanation from a fouler mind, that malicious, outrageous, damnable, proscribed book, called ’Eikonoklastes!’" "If Sir William Berkeley doubts my loyalty—" began Carrington fiercely. "Major Carrington, you are too popular a man!" broke in the Governor as fiercely. "When, upon that black day, ten years ago, the usurper’s frigates entered the Chesapeake, and taking us unprepared, compelled (God forgive me!) my submission, who but Miles Carrington welcomed and entertained the four commissioners (commissioners from a Roundhead Parliament to a King’s Governor!)? Who but Miles Carrington was hand in glove with the shopkeeper Bennett and the renegade Matthews? Oh! they used their power mildly, I deny it not! They were gracious and long-suffering; they left to the loyal gentlemen, their sometime friends, life and lands; they contented themselves with banishing a loyal Governor to his own manor-house, and not, as they might have done, to the wilderness, to perish amongst the savages. O, they were exemplary despots! What, when a turn of Fortune’s wheel brought them up, could grateful, loyal gentlemen, could a grateful King’s Governor do, but follow the example set them and be civil to the officers of the late Commonwealth, and something more than civil to the gentleman who so gracefully avowed that he had but bowed to the times, and that the restored sovereign had no more faithful subject than he? When his Majesty was graciously pleased to continue that gentleman (at the solicitation of his loyal kindred at home) in the office of Surveyor-General to this colony, sure, we all rejoiced. It is not with the past of Major Carrington that I quarrel; it is with the present. In his case, that which should speak loudest for his recovered loyalty is wanting. Others there are who have that witness. Let Mr. Digges ride abroad, and from his cabin-door some prick-eared cur cried out, ’Renegade!’ (Pardon me, the word is not mine.) The Oliverian and schismatic servants spit at him. Is it so with Major Carrington? By G—d, no! These people uncover to him as though he were the arch rebel himself. Speak of his Majesty’s Surveyor-General before an Oliverian, and the fellow pricks up his ears like a charger that scents the battle. Nay, I am told that in their conventicles the schismatics pray for him, that he may be brought back into the fold, and may become a second Moses, and lead them out of Egypt! Even the Quakers have a good word for him. Major Carrington asks me if I question his loyalty.