Surinam was faction-ridden, though it is difficult from the surviving records to reconstruct the nature of the power struggles. In 1663, the Baptist Henry Adis wrote to Lord Willoughby, complaining of “drunkenness and so much debauchery” in the “rude rabble,” and of “many bitter Oaths, horrid Execrations, and lascivious Abominations.” Byam appears as an honorable and trustworthy figure in the accounts of Biet and Warren, and as the voice of Christian morality in the following document. Yet he was the villain of the piece in an account by Lt. Col. Robert Sanford, a member of the colony's council, who accused Byam of bypassing democratic process in the aftermath of the Restoration and seeking absolute authority. Each side accused the other of drunkenness. It is clear that there was considerable unrest, and Sanford prides himself on not misusing a force that he was to lead against the Indians. Confusingly, George Marten – Byam's exemplary antagonist in Oroonoko – is in Sanford's account his unscrupulous accomplice, of “violent counsels,” and “offering himself the Hangman of any at the Governours single command.” The present document, written by William Byam, documents an assault on Lord Willoughby.

There are some details in Byam's account of Allin's crime that may have impressed Behn: the protagonist's self-destructiveness, his taste for romance and biographies of the Romans, and the treatment of his body.