The Councillors then appeared before Wingfield's tent with a warrant, "subscribed under their handes, to depose the President; sayeing they thought him very unworthy to be eyther President or of the Councell, and therefore discharged him of both".[19] They accused him of misappropriating funds, of improper division of the public stores, of being an atheist, of plotting to desert Virginia in the pinnace left at Jamestown by Captain Newport, of combining with the Spaniards for the destruction of the colony. Wingfield, when he returned to England, made a vigorous defense of his conduct, but it is now impossible to determine whether or not he was justly accused. After his expulsion from office, he was summoned before the court by the remnant of the Council to answer these numerous charges. It might have gone hard with him, had he not demanded a hearing before the King. As his enemies feared to deny him this privilege, they closed the court, and committed him to prison on board the pinnace, where he was kept until means were at hand to send him to England.[20] The removal of the President did not bring peace to the colony. If we may believe the testimony of Wingfield, the triumvirate that now held sway ruled the settlers with a harsh and odious tyranny. "Wear," he says, "this whipping, lawing, beating, and hanging, in Virginia, known in England, I fear it would drive many well affected myndes from this honourable action."[21] One day Ratcliffe, who had been chosen to succeed Wingfield, became embroiled with James Read, the smith. Read forgot the respect due his superior, and struck the new President. So heinous a crime was this affront to the dignity of the chief officer of the infant colony, that the smith was brought to trial, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. But he saved his life, upon the very eve of his execution, by revealing to Ratcliffe a plot against the government, headed, he declared, by Captain Kendall.[22] Immediately Kendall, who had long been an object of suspicion, was tried for mutiny, found guilty and executed.[23]