So instead of keeping the colony with him
he created dissension. People took sides, some eagerly supporting
the young Governor, but a far larger party as eagerly opposing him.
So after nine months of office Harry Vane saw that where he had
meant to create fair order his hand created only disorder. And
utterly disheartened he begged the Council to relieve him of the
governorship and allow him to go home to England.
But when one of his friends stood up and spoke in moving terms of
the great loss he would be, Harry Vane burst into tears and declared
he would stay, only he could not bear all the squabbling that had
been going on, nor to hear it constantly said that he was the cause
of it.
Then, when the Council declared that if that was the only reason
he had for going they could not give him leave, he repented of
what he had said, and declared he must go for reasons of private
business, and that anything else he had said was only said in
temper. Whereupon the court consented in silence to his going.
All this was not very dignified for the Governor of a state, but
hardly surprising from a passionate youth who had undertaken a task
too difficult for him, and felt himself a failure. However Vane
did not go. He stayed on to the end of his time, and even sought
to be re-elected.
But feeling against him was by this time far too keen.
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