551 A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 139 
ous crimes, and at times to disgraceful orgies, even on the part of 
the principal officers, in 1615-1616, and many misfortunes ensued. 
Governor Moore, instead of receiving praise and encouragement 
from the Company, was criticised, blamed, and censured by them, so 
that he gave up his position, shortly before his term of three years 
expired, in 1615, and turned the government over to six deputy gov- 
ernors, most of whom proved worthless fellows and drunkards, 
though they were the “best that were there.” He returned to 
London, deeply in debt and in disgrace, and never had much justice 
done him. He had to live in hiding, in an obscure street of London, 
for some time, to avoid arrest for debts.* 
The next year (1615-1616) was a year of strange misrule, revelry, 
debauchery, and idleness on the part of the deputy-governors, their 
officers, and the people generally. It was also, at this time, that the 
plague of Wood Rats developed with remarkable rapidity. No 
tobacco of any consequence was made and little of other crops. 
Governor Daniel Tucker, who was sent over in 1616, found every- 
thing in the greatest confusion and the people utterly demoralized 
by a year of disgraceful revelry and misrule. 
It needed a man of energy and stern will to put the colony into 
any sort of order. Governor Tucker, though a man of not much 
education, with a very irascible temper, and not always with good 
judgment, was, perhaps, a very suitable man for the time and place. 
His arbitrary acts, and to us apparently arbitrary executions of crim- 
inals for minor crimes, may have been based on personal knowledge 
of their character and deeds that is not apparent from the records. 
Some of Governor Daniel Tucker’st fortification work and trials 
have been described in a previous chapter (p. 447). He came with 
an elaborate commission from the Bermuda Company, which confer- 
red on him far greater legal power than Governor Moore had held. 
At the time of his arrival the Wood Rats had become exceedingly 
abundant, so that they destroyed all the crops, and they continued 
to increase during the next two years, in spite of all his efforts to 
suppress them. (See Introduced Mammals, ch. 33, 0.) 
* Although Governor Butler intimated that there was some great fraud or 
secret scandal, known to Carter, in connection with the ambergris, it is evi- 
dent that Governor Moore, himself, had no benefit from it, for he lived in 
poverty after his return to London. The Company finally gave him six shares 
of land for his services. But I find no evidence that he went back there to live. 
+ Governor Tucker returned to Bermuda and lived several years on the land 
conveyed to him by the Company. He died there in 1625. 
