"'He died the 18th of February, 1694, and his lady, to perpetuate his memory, hath caused this monument to be erected.'"
It is far better to know the man as he was, rough-hewn, hasty, unlettered, but simple and honest as daylight, than to accept the false and silly epitaph of Cotton Mather, that "he was a person of so sweet a temper that they who were most intimately acquainted with him would commonly pronounce him the Best Conditioned Gentleman in the World." After he had wrested his fortune from the bottom of the sea in circumstances splendidly romantic, he used the power which his wealth gained for him wholly in the service of the people of his own country.
During his last visit to London, when he had grown tired of being a royal governor, he harked back to his old love, and was planning another treasure voyage. "The Spanish wreck was not the only nor the richest wreck which he knew to be lying under the water. He knew particularly that when the ship which had Governor Bobadilla aboard was cast away, there was, as Peter Martyr says, an entire table of Gold of Three Thousand Three Hundred and Ten Pounds Weight. And supposing himself to have gained sufficient information of the right way to such a wreck, it was his purpose upon his dismission from his Government, once more to have gone upon his old Fishing-Trade, upon a mighty shelf of rocks and bank of sands that lie where he had informed himself."
The oldest existing print of Boston harbor as it appeared in the time of Sir William Phips, showing the kind of ships in which he sailed to find his treasure.
Never was there so haunting a reference to lost treasure as this mention of that gold table that went down with Governor Bobadilla. The words ring like a peal of magic bells. Alas, the pity of it, that Sir William Phips did not live to fit out a brave ship and go in quest of this wondrous treasure, for of all men, then or since, he was the man to find it.
Bobadilla was that governor of Hispaniola who was sent from Spain in 1500 by Ferdinand and Isabella to investigate the affairs of the colony as administered by Christopher Columbus. He put Columbus in chains and shipped him home, but the great discoverer found a friendly welcome there, and was sent back for his fourth voyage. He reached Hispaniola on the day that Bobadilla was sailing for Spain, in his turn to give place to a new Governor, Ovando by name. Bobadilla embarked at San Domingo in the largest ship of the fleet on board of which was put an immense amount of gold, the revenue collected for the Crown during his government, which he hoped might ease the disgrace of his recall.