So De Avila departed for Spain, with his advocates and his accusers on the same ship. Most fortunately for him, his wife also went, carrying with her an ample store of gold and gems which had escaped the search and confiscation of Chaves. Her conduct in this emergency indicates that she had a sincere devotion to her young husband, in addition, of course, to a desire to protect her own material fortune. Certain it is that she constituted herself his chief and most effective champion, freely expending in his behalf the gold which she had taken to Spain. She testified that all the property which he was accused of having unlawfully acquired was in fact hers and not his, possessed by her before she was married to him, and that if he had in any sense acquired it, it was solely through having married her; and there was no law against a governor's marrying a rich wife.
Her argument prevailed. The litigation in Spain lasted for several years, during part of which time De Avila was in prison. But in the end he was released; the heavy fines which had been levied against him were remitted; and the sentence of perpetual banishment from Cuba was revoked. Thereupon the devoted couple returned in triumph to Cuba, with a great retinue of servants, and reestablished themselves at Santiago. They held aloof from political affairs, and gave their attention to an exceedingly profitable commerce between Cuba and other West India Islands and Spain; which happy state of affairs lasted until De Avila's death, a dozen years later. He left behind him the reputation of being one of the worst of Cuban governors, not so much because of any inherent viciousness as because of his weakness of character and his complete subservience to the often sordid and sometimes unscrupulous doings of his wife.
That there was any gain for Cuba in the substitution of Antonio Chaves for Juan de Avila is scarcely, however, to be maintained. On the contrary, there was probably some loss. It was a substitution of King Stork for King Log. De Avila had been weak and passive. Chaves was strong and aggressive; as his campaign against his predecessor demonstrated. In point of morals there was probably little to choose between them. So far as enforcement of the laws concerning the natives was concerned, Chaves was worse than De Avila. For De Avila personally wished to enforce them, but was dissuaded from so doing by the influence of his wife and the almost unanimous demands of the officials and people. Chaves, on the other hand, appears to have been personally opposed to all emancipation laws, and inclined to subject the natives to ruthless slavery. Although he had savagely attacked De Avila for acquiescing in the suspension or postponement of the royal decrees, Chaves himself went even further in the same direction. He declined to enforce the laws, protested against them, and petitioned for their repeal on the ground that they would be ruinous to the material welfare of the island. The rule against employment of natives in the mines was especially obnoxious to him, and he advised the crown that unless it were repealed, together with all other such measures, the island would soon be "possessed of the devil."
Seeing that Chaves was now doing the very thing that he had condemned his predecessor for doing, the King was disgusted with him, and sent him the sharpest kind of a reprimand, reminding him of his gross inconsistency and bidding him to enforce the law without further ado. Chaves pretended to obey. In fact, he promptly replied that he was obeying. But he obeyed only in pretence. He did not scruple to declare—in Cuba—that he was opposed to giving the natives their freedom. He did not consider them fit for it. Why? Because they were not Christians, and if set free they would not become Christians, and therefore would infallibly be damned eternally. Therefore to save their souls from hell fire, their bodies must be enslaved, so that they could find salvation through being physically compelled to conform with the external practices of Christianity. Particularly necessary was it, he argued, for this system of spiritual salvation through corporeal bondage to prevail in the provinces of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus and Puerto del Principe, because they had no agricultural interests but were dependent upon mining, and if they could not compel the Indians to work in the mines, they would be ruined.
This logic, more ingenious than ingenuous, did not favorably impress the King, 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 at once make into his predecessor's administration.
Gonzalo de Angulo had been appointed at the beginning of September, 1548, but did not at once come to the West Indies. He reached Hispaniola in the summer of 1549, shortly after Aguayo had made his report, and he remained there for some time, considering the report and conferring with the members of the supreme court. Finally, at the beginning of November, he proceeded to Santiago and assumed the governorship. He entered upon the investigation, using Aguayo's three hundred charges as the basis of it, despite the protest of Chaves that Aguayo had been a prejudiced investigator, moved by political and even pecuniary considerations and intent not upon discovering the truth but merely upon defaming him (Chaves) to the fullest possible extent.
The result of the new governor's inquest was that at the beginning of July, 1550, Chaves was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Spain, for trial there upon a multitude of accusations. These were partly grave and partly—mostly—frivolous. In the former category was the charge that Chaves had refused or at least failed to enforce royal decrees for the enfranchisement of the natives. That was a very serious matter, apparently, and there was no question that it was true. Indeed, Chaves admitted it. But, he said, some of these decrees had been suspended, there had been pleas for the suspension of others, officials had failed to proclaim some, and the Hispaniola court had interfered with others; so that the whole business was in a hopeless tangle and he really could not determine what he ought to do. This argument impressed the Spanish authorities, and they consequently dismissed that and other like charges against him.