If I rightly understand your order of the 29th of December, it is founded upon an Opinion of the King's Attorney-General, viz.: 'That it is legal for Governors or their representatives to admit foreigners into the ports of their government, if they think fit.' How the King's Attorney-General conceives he has a right to give an illegal opinion, which I assert the above is, he must answer for.

I know the Navigation Laws." As he summed up the matter in a letter to his friend Locker: "Sir Richard Hughes was a delicate business.

I must either disobey my orders, or disobey Acts of Parliament, which the admiral was disobeying.

I determined upon the former, trusting to the uprightness of my intention.

In short, I wrote the Admiral that I should decline obeying his orders, till I had an opportunity of seeing and talking to him, at the same time making him an apology." Hughes's first impulse was to supersede his recalcitrant subordinate, and bring him to trial.