The new Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, Sir Thomas
Lynch, brought with him instructions to publish
and carefully observe the articles of 1670 with
Spain, and at the same time to revoke all commissions
issued by his predecessor "to the prejudice of the King of
Spain or any of his subjects." When he proclaimed the
peace he was likewise to publish a general pardon to
privateers who came in and submitted within a reasonable
time, of all offences committed since June 1660, assuring
to them the possession of their prize-goods (except the
tenths and the fifteenths which were always reserved to
the crown as a condition of granting commissions), and
offering them inducements to take up planting, trade, or
service in the royal navy. But he was not to insist positively
on the payment of the tenths and fifteenths if it discouraged
their submission; and if this course failed to
bring in the rovers, he was to use every means in his
power "by force or persuasion" to make them submit.
332
Lynch immediately set about to secure the good-will of
his Spanish neighbours and to win back the privateers to
more peaceful pursuits. Major Beeston was sent to Cartagena
with the articles of peace, where he was given every
satisfaction and secured the release of thirty-two English
prisoners.
333
On the 15th August the proclamation of
pardon to privateers was issued at Port Royal;
334
and those
{201}
who had railed against their commanders for cheating
them at Panama, were given an opportunity of resorting
to the law-courts.
335
Similar proclamations were sent by
the governor "to all their haunts," intimating that he had
written to Bermuda, the Caribbees, New England, New
York and Virginia for their apprehension, had sent notices
to all Spanish ports declaring them pirates, and intended
to send to Tortuga to prevent their reception there.
336
However,
although the governor wrote home in the latter part
of the month that the privateers were entirely suppressed,
he soon found that the task was by no means a simple
one. Two buccaneers with a commission from Modyford,
an Englishman named Thurston and a mulatto named
Diego, flouted his offer of pardon, continued to prey upon
Spanish shipping, and carried their prizes to Tortuga.
337
A
Dutchman named Captain Yallahs (or Yellowes) fled to
Campeache, sold his frigate for 7000 pieces of eight to the
Spanish governor, and entered into Spanish service to
cruise against the English logwood-cutters. The Governor
of Jamaica sent Captain Wilgress in pursuit, but Wilgress
devoted his time to chasing a Spanish vessel ashore, stealing
logwood and burning Spanish houses on the coast.
338
A party of buccaneers, English and French, landed upon
the north side of Cuba and burnt two towns, carrying
away women and inflicting many cruelties on the inhabitants;
and when the governors of Havana and St. Jago
complained to Lynch, the latter could only disavow the
English in the marauding party as rebels and pirates, and
{202}
bid the Spanish governors hang all who fell into their
power.
339
The governor, in fact, was having his hands full,
and wrote in January 1672 that "this cursed trade has
been so long followed, and there is so many of it, that like
weeds or hydras, they spring up as fast as we can cut them
down."
340
Some of the recalcitrant freebooters, however, were
captured and brought to justice. Major Beeston, sent by
the governor in January 1672, with a frigate and four
smaller vessels, to seize and burn some pirate ships careening
on the south cays of Cuba, fell in instead with two
other vessels, one English and one French, which had
taken part in the raids upon Cuba, and carried them to
Jamaica. The French captain was offered to the Governor
of St. Jago, but the latter refused to punish him for fear of
his comrades in Tortuga and Hispaniola. Both captains
were therefore tried and condemned to death at Port
Royal. As the Spaniards, however, had refused to punish
them, and as there was no reason why the Jamaicans
should be the executioners, the captains of the port and
some of the council begged for a reprieve, and the English
prisoner, Francis Witherborn, was sent to England.
341
Captain Johnson, one of the pirates after whom Beeston
had originally been sent, was later in the year shipwrecked
by a hurricane upon the coast of Jamaica. Johnson, immediately
after the publication of the peace by Sir
Thomas Lynch, had fled from Port Royal with about ten
followers, and falling in with a Spanish ship of eighteen
guns, had seized it and killed the captain and twelve or
fourteen of the crew. Then gathering about him a party
of a hundred or more, English and French, he had robbed
Spanish vessels round Havana and the Cuban coast.
{203}
Finally, however, he grew weary of his French companions,
and sailed for Jamaica to make terms with the governor,
when on coming to anchor in Morant Bay he was blown
ashore by the hurricane. The governor had him arrested,
and gave a commission to Colonel Modyford, the son of
Sir Thomas, to assemble the justices and proceed to trial
and immediate execution. He adjured him, moreover, to
see to it that the pirate was not acquitted. Colonel Modyford,
nevertheless, sharing perhaps his father's sympathy
with the sea-rovers, deferred the trial, acquainted none of
the justices with his orders, and although Johnson and
two of his men "confessed enough to hang a hundred
honester persons," told the jury they could not find against
the prisoner. Half an hour after the dismissal of the
court, Johnson "came to drink with his judges." The
baffled governor thereupon placed Johnson a second time
under arrest, called a meeting of the council, from which
he dismissed Colonel Modyford, and "finding material
errors," reversed the judgment. The pirate was again
tried—Lynch himself this time presiding over the court—and
upon making a full confession, was condemned and
executed, though "as much regretted," writes Lynch, "as
if he had been as pious and as innocent as one of the
primitive martyrs." The second trial was contrary to the
fundamental principles of English law, howsoever guilty
the culprit may have been, and the king sent a letter to
Lynch reproving him for his rashness. He commanded
the governor to try all pirates thereafter by maritime law,
and if a disagreement arose to remit the case to the king
for re-judgment. Nevertheless he ordered Lynch to suspend
from all public employments in the island, whether
civil or military, both Colonel Modyford and all others
guilty with him of designedly acquitting Johnson.
342
The Spaniards in the West Indies, notwithstanding the
{204}
endeavours of Sir Thomas Lynch to clear their coasts of
pirates, made little effort to co-operate with him. The
governors of Cartagena and St. Jago de Cuba, pretending
that they feared being punished for allowing trade, had
forbidden English frigates to come into their ports, and
refused them provisions and water; and the Governor of
Campeache had detained money, plate and negroes taken
out of an English trading-vessel, to the value of 12,000
pieces of eight. When Lynch sent to demand satisfaction,
the governor referred him to Madrid for justice, "which to
me that have been there," writes Lynch, "seems worse
than the taking it away."
343
The news also of the imposing
armament, which the Spanish grandees made signs of preparing
to send to the Indies on learning of the capture of
Panama, was in November 1671 just beginning to filter
into Jamaica; and the governor and council, fearing that
the fleet was directed against them, made vigorous efforts,
by repairing the forts, collecting stores and marshalling
the militia, to put the island in a state of defence. The
Spanish fleet never appeared, however, and life on the
island soon subsided into its customary channels.
344
Sir
Thomas Lynch, meanwhile, was all the more careful to
observe the peace with Spain and yet refrain from alienating
the more troublesome elements of the population. It
had been decided in England that Morgan, too, like Modyford,
was to be sacrificed, formally at least, to the remonstrances
of the Spanish Government; yet Lynch, because
Morgan himself was ill, and fearing perhaps that two such
{205}
arrests might create a disturbance among the friends of
the culprits, or at least deter the buccaneers from coming
in under the declaration of amnesty, did not send the
admiral to England until the following spring. On 6th
April 1672 Morgan sailed from Jamaica a prisoner in the
frigate "Welcome."
345
He sailed, however, with the
universal respect and sympathy of all parties in the
colony. Lynch himself calls him "an honest, brave
fellow," and Major James Banister in a letter to the
Secretary of State recommends him to the esteem of
Arlington as "a very well deserving person, and one of
great courage and conduct, who may, with his Majesty's
pleasure, perform good service at home, and be very
advantageous to the island if war should break forth with
the Spaniard."
346
Indeed Morgan, the buccaneer, was soon in high favour
at the dissolute court of Charles II., and when in January
1674 the Earl of Carlisle was chosen Governor of Jamaica,
Morgan was selected as his deputy
347—an
act which must
have entirely neutralized in Spanish Councils the effect of
his arrest a year and a half earlier. Lord Carlisle, however,
did not go out to Jamaica until 1678, and meanwhile
in April a commission to be governor was issued to Lord
Vaughan,
348
and several months later another to Morgan as
lieutenant-governor.
349
Vaughan arrived in Jamaica in the
middle of March 1675; but Morgan, whom the king in
the meantime had knighted, sailed ahead of Vaughan,
apparently in defiance of the governor's orders, and although
shipwrecked on the Isle la Vache, reached Jamaica a week
before his superior.
350
It seems that Sir Thomas Modyford
{206}
sailed for Jamaica with Morgan, and the return of these
two arch-offenders to the West Indies filled the Spanish
Court with new alarms. The Spanish ambassador in
London presented a memorial of protest to the English
king,
351
and in Spain the Council of War blossomed into
fresh activity to secure the defence of the West Indies and
the coasts of the South Sea.
352
Ever since 1672, indeed, the
Spaniards moved by some strange infatuation, had persisted
in a course of active hostility to the English in the
West Indies. Could the Spanish Government have realized
the inherent weakness of its American possessions, could
it have been informed of the scantiness of the population
in proportion to the large extent of territory and coast-line
to be defended, could it have known how in the midst of
such rich, unpeopled countries abounding with cattle, hogs
and other provisions, the buccaneers could be extirpated
only by co-operation with its English and French neighbours,
it would have soon fallen back upon a policy of
peace and good understanding with England. But the
news of the sack of Panama, following so close upon the
conclusion of the treaty of 1670, and the continued depredations
of the buccaneers of Tortuga and the declared
pirates of Jamaica, had shattered irrevocably the reliance
of the Spaniards upon the good faith of the English
Government. And when Morgan was knighted and sent
back to Jamaica as lieutenant-governor, their suspicions
seemed to be confirmed. A ketch, sent to Cartagena in
1672 by Sir Thomas Lynch to trade in negroes, was seized
by the general of the galleons, the goods burnt in the
market-place, and the negroes sold for the Spanish King's
account.
353
An Irish papist, named Philip Fitzgerald, commanding
{207}
a Spanish man-of-war of twelve guns belonging
to Havana, and a Spaniard called Don Francisco with a
commission from the Governor of Campeache, roamed the
West Indian seas and captured English vessels sailing
from Jamaica to London, Virginia and the Windward
Islands, barbarously ill-treating and sometimes massacring
the English mariners who fell into their hands.
354
The
Spanish governors, in spite of the treaty and doubtless in
conformity with orders from home,
355
did nothing to restrain
the cruelties of these privateers. At one time eight English
sailors who had been captured in a barque off Port Royal
and carried to Havana, on attempting to escape from the
city were pursued by a party of soldiers, and all of them
murdered, the head of the master being set on a pole
before the governor's door.
356
At another time Fitzgerald
sailed into the harbour of Havana with five Englishmen
tied ready to hang, two at the main-yard arms, two at the
fore-yard arms, and one at the mizzen peak, and as he
approached the castle he had the wretches swung off,
while he and his men shot at the dangling corpses from
the decks of the vessel.
357
The repeated complaints and
demands for reparation made to the Spanish ambassador
in London, and by Sir William Godolphin to the Spanish
Court, were answered by counter-complaints of outrages
committed by buccaneers who, though long ago disavowed
and declared pirates by the Governor of Jamaica, were
still charged by the Spaniards to the account of the English.
358
Each return of the fleet from Porto Bello or Vera Cruz
brought with it English prisoners from Cartagena and
other Spanish fortresses, who were lodged in the dungeons
of Seville and often condemned to the galleys or to the
{208}
quicksilver mines. The English ambassador sometimes
secured their release, but his efforts to obtain redress for
the loss of ships and goods received no satisfaction. The
Spanish Government, believing that Parliament was solicitous
of Spanish trade and would not supply Charles II.
with the necessary funds for a war,
359
would disburse nothing
in damages. It merely granted to the injured parties
despatches directed to the Governor of Havana, which
ordered him to restore the property in dispute unless it
was contraband goods. Godolphin realized that these
delays and excuses were only the prelude to an ultimate
denial of any reparation whatever, and wrote home to the
Secretary of State that "England ought rather to provide
against future injuries than to depend on satisfaction
here, till they have taught the Spaniards their own interest
in the West Indies by more efficient means than friendship."
360
The aggrieved merchants and shipowners, often only
too well acquainted with the dilatory Spanish forms of procedure,
saw that redress at Havana was hopeless, and
petitioned Charles II. for letters of reprisal.
361
Sir Leoline
Jenkins, Judge of the Admiralty, however, in a report to
the king gave his opinion that although he saw little hope
of real reparation, the granting of reprisals was not justified
by law until the cases had been prosecuted at Havana
according to the queen-regent's orders.
362
This apparently
was never done, and some of the cases dragged on for
years without the petitioners ever receiving satisfaction.
The excuse of the Spaniards for most of these seizures
was that the vessels contained logwood, a dyewood found
upon the coasts of Campeache, Honduras and Yucatan,
the cutting and removal of which was forbidden to any
but Spanish subjects. The occupation of cutting logwood
had sprung up among the English about ten years after
{209}
the seizure of Jamaica. In 1670 Modyford writes that a
dozen vessels belonging to Port Royal were concerned in
this trade alone, and six months later he furnished a list
of thirty-two ships employed in logwood cutting, equipped
with seventy-four guns and 424 men.
363
The men engaged
in the business had most of them been privateers, and as
the regions in which they sought the precious wood were
entirely uninhabited by Spaniards, Modyford suggested
that the trade be encouraged as an outlet for the energies
of the buccaneers. By such means, he thought, these
"soldiery men" might be kept within peaceable bounds,
and yet be always ready to serve His Majesty in event of
any new rupture. When Sir Thomas Lynch replaced
Modyford, he realized that this logwood-cutting would
be resented by the Spaniards and might neutralize all
his efforts to effect a peace. He begged repeatedly for
directions from the council in England. "For God's sake,"
he writes, "give your commands about the logwood."
364
In
the meantime, after consulting with Modyford, he decided
to connive at the business, but he compelled all who
brought the wood into Port Royal to swear that they
had not stolen it or done any violence to the Spaniards.
365
Secretary Arlington wrote to the governor, in November
1671, to hold the matter over until he obtained the opinion
of the English ambassador at Madrid, especially as some
colour was lent to the pretensions of the logwood cutters
by the article of the peace of 1670 which confirmed the
English King in the possession and sovereignty of all
territory in America occupied by his subjects at that
date.
366
In May 1672 Ambassador Godolphin returned
his answer. "The wood," he writes, "is brought from
{210}
Yucatan, a large province of New Spain, about 100 leagues
in length, sufficiently peopled, having several great towns,
as Merida, Valladolid, San Francisco de Campeache, etc.,
and the government one of the most considerable next to
Peru and Mexico.... So that Spain has as well too
much right as advantage not to assert the propriety of
these woods, for though not all inhabited, these people
may as justly pretend to make use of our rivers, mountains
and commons, as we can to enjoy any benefit to those
woods." So much for the strict justice of the matter.
But when the ambassador came to give his own opinion
on the trade, he advised that if the English confined
themselves to cutting wood alone, and in places remote
from Spanish settlements, the king might connive at,
although not authorize, their so doing.
367
Here was the
kernel of the whole matter. Spain was too weak and
impotent to take any serious revenge. So let us rob her
quietly but decently, keeping the theft out of her sight
and so sparing her feelings as much as possible. It was
the same piratical motive which animated Drake and
Hawkins, which impelled Morgan to sack Maracaibo and
Panama, and which, transferred to the dignified council
chambers of England, took on a more humane but less
romantic guise. On 8th October 1672, the Council for
the Plantations dispatched to Governor Lynch their
approval of his connivance at the business, but they
urged him to observe every care and prudence, to
countenance the cutting only in desolate and uninhabited
places, and to use every endeavour to prevent any just
complaints by the Spaniards of violence and depredation.
368
The Spaniards nevertheless did, as we have seen,
engage in active reprisal, especially as they knew the
cutting of logwood to be but the preliminary step to the
{211}
growth of English settlements upon the coasts of Yucatan
and Honduras, settlements, indeed, which later crystallized
into a British colony. The Queen-Regent of Spain sent
orders and instructions to her governors in the West Indies
to encourage privateers to take and punish as pirates all
English and French who robbed and carried away wood
within their jurisdictions; and three small frigates from
Biscay were sent to clear out the intruders.
369
The
buccaneer Yallahs, we have seen, was employed by the
Governor of Campeache to seize the logwood-cutters; and
although he surprised twelve or more vessels, the Governor
of Jamaica, not daring openly to avow the business, could
enter no complaint. On 3rd November 1672, however,
he was compelled to issue a proclamation ordering all
vessels sailing from Port Royal for the purpose of cutting
dye-wood to go in fleets of at least four as security against
surprise and capture. Under the governorship of Lord
Vaughan, and after him of Lord Carlisle, matters continued
in this same uncertain course, the English settlements
in Honduras gradually increasing in numbers and
vitality, and the Spaniards maintaining their right to take
all ships they found at sea laden with logwood, and
indeed, all English and French ships found upon their
coasts. Each of the English governors in turn had urged
that some equitable adjustment of the trade be made with
the Spanish Crown, if peace was to be preserved in the
Indies and the buccaneers finally suppressed; but the
Spaniards would agree to no accommodation, and in
{212}
March 1679 the king wrote to Lord Carlisle bidding him
discourage, as far as possible, the logwood-cutting in
Campeache or any other of the Spanish dominions, and
to try and induce the buccaneers to apply themselves to
planting instead.
370
The reprisals of the Spaniards on the score of logwood-cutting
were not the only difficulties with which Lord
Vaughan as governor had to contend. From the day
of his landing in Jamaica he seems to have conceived a
violent dislike of his lieutenant, Sir Henry Morgan, and
this antagonism was embittered by Morgan's open or
secret sympathy with the privateers, a race with whom
Vaughan had nothing in common. The ship on which
Morgan had sailed from England, and which was cast
away upon the Isle la Vache, had contained the military
stores for Jamaica, most of which were lost in the wreck.
Morgan, contrary to Lord Vaughan's positive and written
orders, had sailed before him, and assumed the authority
in Jamaica a week before the arrival of the governor at
Port Royal. This the governor seems to have been unable
to forgive. He openly blamed Morgan for the
wreck and the loss of the stores; and only two months
after his coming to Jamaica, in May 1675, he wrote to
England that for the good of His Majesty's service he
thought Morgan ought to be removed, and the charge of
so useless an officer saved.
371
In September he wrote that
he was "every day more convinced of (Morgan's) imprudence
and unfitness to have anything to do in the Civil
Government, and of what hazards the island may run by
so dangerous a succession." Sir Henry, he continued,
had made himself and his authority so cheap at the Port,
drinking and gaming in the taverns, that the governor
intended to remove thither speedily himself for the reputation
{213}
of the island and the security of the place.
372
He recommended
that his predecessor, Sir Thomas Lynch,
whom he praises for "his prudent government and
conduct of affairs," be appointed his deputy instead of
Morgan in the event of the governor's death or absence.
373
Lord Vaughan's chief grievance, however, was the
lieutenant-governor's secret encouragement of the
buccaneers. "What I most resent," he writes again,
"is ... that I find Sir Henry, contrary to his duty
and trust, endeavours to set up privateering, and has
obstructed all my designs and purposes for the reducing
of those that do use this course of life."
374
When he had
issued proclamations, the governor continued, declaring
as pirates all the buccaneers who refused to submit, Sir
Henry had encouraged the English freebooters to take
French commissions, had himself fitted them out for sea,
and had received authority from the French Governor of
Tortuga to collect the tenths on prize goods brought into
Jamaica under cover of these commissions. The quarrel
came to a head over the arrest and trial of a buccaneer
named John Deane, commander of the ship "St. David."
Deane was accused of having stopped a ship called the
"John Adventure," taken out several pipes of wine and
a cable worth £100, and forcibly carried the vessel to
Jamaica. He was also reported to be wearing Dutch,
French and Spanish colours without commission.
375
When
the "John Adventure" entered Port Royal it was seized
by the governor for landing goods without entry, contrary
{214}
to the Acts of Navigation, and on complaint of the
master of the vessel that he had been robbed by
Deane and other privateers, Sir Henry Morgan was
ordered to imprison the offenders. The lieutenant-governor,
however, seems rather to have encouraged them
to escape,
376
until Deane made so bold as to accuse the
governor of illegal seizure. Deane was in consequence
arrested by the governor, and on 27th April 1676, in a
Court of Admiralty presided over by Lord Vaughan as
vice-admiral, was tried and condemned to suffer death
as a pirate.
377
The proceedings, however, were not warranted
by legal practice, for according to statutes of the twenty-seventh
and twenty-eighth years of Henry VIII., pirates
might not be tried in an Admiralty Court, but only under
the Common Law of England by a Commission of Oyer
and Terminer under the great seal.
378
After obtaining an
opinion to this effect from the Judge of the Admiralty,
the English Council wrote to Lord Vaughan staying the
execution of Deane, and ordering a new trial to be held
under a proper commission about to be forwarded to him.
379
The Governor of Jamaica, however, upon receiving a confession
from Deane and frequent petitions for pardon,
had reprieved the pirate a month before the letter from
the council reached him.
380
The incident had good effect
in persuading the freebooters to come in, and that result
assured, the governor could afford to bend to popular
clamour in favour of the culprit. In the latter part of
1677 a standing commission of Oyer and Terminer for the
{215}
trial of pirates in Jamaica was prepared by the attorney-general
and sent to the colony.
381
After the trial of Deane, the lieutenant-governor,
according to Lord Vaughan, had openly expressed himself,
both in the taverns and in his own house, in vindication of
the condemned man and in disparagement of Vaughan
himself.
382
The quarrel hung fire, however, until on 24th
July when the governor, in obedience to orders from
England,
383
cited Morgan and his brother-in-law, Colonel
Byndloss, to appear before the council. Against Morgan
he brought formal charges of using the governor's name
and authority without his orders in letters written to the
captains of the privateers, and Byndloss he accused of
unlawfully holding a commission from a foreign governor
to collect the tenths on condemned prize goods.
384
Morgan
in his defence to Secretary Coventry flatly denied the
charges, and denounced the letters written to the privateers
as forgeries; and Byndloss declared his readiness "to go in
this frigate with a tender of six or eight guns and so to
deal with the privateers at sea, and in their holes (
sic)
bring in the chief of them to His Majesty's obedience or
bring in their heads and destroy their ships."
385
There
seems to be little doubt that letters were written by
Morgan to certain privateers soon after his arrival in
Jamaica, offering them, in the name of the governor, favour
and protection in Port Royal. Copies of these letters,
indeed, still exist;
386
but whether they were actually used
is not so certain. Charles Barre, secretary to Sir Henry
Morgan, confessed that such letters had been written, but
with the understanding that the governor lent them his
approval, and that when this was denied Sir Henry
{216}
refused to send them.
387
It is natural to suppose that
Morgan should feel a bond of sympathy with his old companions
in the buccaneer trade, and it is probable that in
1675, in the first enthusiasm of his return to Jamaica,
having behind him the openly-expressed approbation of
the English Court for what he had done in the past, and
feeling uncertain, perhaps, as to Lord Vaughan's real
attitude toward the sea-rovers, Morgan should have done
some things inconsistent with the policy of stern suppression
pursued by the government. It is even likely that he
was indiscreet in some of his expressions regarding the
governor and his actions. His bluff, unconventional, easygoing
manners, natural to men brought up in new countries
and intensified by his early association with the buccaneers,
may have been distasteful to a courtier accustomed to the
urbanities of Whitehall. It is also clear, however, that
Lord Vaughan from the first conceived a violent prejudice
against his lieutenant, and allowed this prejudice to colour
the interpretation he put upon all of Sir Henry's actions.
And it is rather significant that although the particulars of
the dispute and of the examination before the Council of
Jamaica were sent to the Privy Council in England, the
latter body did not see fit to remove Morgan from his post
until six years later.
As in the case of Modyford and Lynch, so with Lord
Vaughan, the thorn in his side was the French colony on
Hispaniola and Tortuga. The English buccaneers who
would not come in under the proclamation of pardon
published at Port Royal, still continued to range the seas
with French commissions, and carried their prizes into
French ports. The governor protested to M. d'Ogeron
and to his successor, M. de Pouançay, declaring that any
English vessels or subjects caught with commissions
against the Spaniards would be treated as pirates and
{217}
rebels; and in December 1675, in compliance with the
king's orders of the previous August, he issued a public
proclamation to that effect.
388
In April 1677 an act was
passed by the assembly, declaring it felony for any
English subject belonging to the island to serve under a
foreign prince or state without licence under the hand and
seal of the governor;
389
and in the following July the
council ordered another proclamation to be issued, offering
ample pardon to all men in foreign service who should
come in within twelve months to claim the benefit of the
act.
390
These measures seem to have been fairly successful,
for on 1st August Peter Beckford, Clerk of the Council in
Jamaica, wrote to Secretary Williamson that since the
passing of the law at least 300 privateers had come in and
submitted, and that few men would now venture their
lives to serve the French.
391
Even with the success of this act, however, the path of
the governor was not all roses. Buccaneering had always
been so much a part of the life of the colony that it was
difficult to stamp it out entirely. Runaway servants and
others from the island frequently recruited the ranks of the
freebooters; members of the assembly, and even of the
council, were interested in privateering ventures; and as
the governor was without a sufficient naval force to deal
with the offenders independently of the council and
assembly, he often found his efforts fruitless. In the
early part of 1677 a Scotchman, named James Browne,
with a commission from M. d'Ogeron and a mixed crew of
English, Dutch and French, seized a Dutch ship trading in
negroes off the coast of Cartagena, killed the Dutch
captain and several of his men, and landed the negroes,
{218}
about 150 in number, in a remote bay of Jamaica. Lord
Vaughan sent a frigate which seized about 100 of the
negroes, and when Browne and his crew fell into the
governor's hands he had them all tried and condemned for
piracy. Browne was ordered to be executed, but his men,
eight in number, were pardoned. The captain petitioned
the assembly to have the benefit of the Act of Privateers,
and the House twice sent a committee to the governor to
endeavour to obtain a reprieve. Lord Vaughan, however,
refused to listen and gave orders for immediate execution.
Half an hour after the hanging, the provost-marshal
appeared with an order signed by the speaker to observe
the Chief-Justice's writ of Habeas Corpus, whereupon
Vaughan, resenting the action, immediately dissolved the
Assembly.
392
The French colony on Hispaniola was an object of
concern to the Jamaicans, not only because it served as a
refuge for privateers from Port Royal, but also because it
threatened soon to overwhelm the old Spanish colony and
absorb the whole island. Under the conciliatory, opportunist
regime of M. d'Ogeron, the French settlements in
the west of the island had grown steadily in number and
size;
393
while the old Spanish towns seemed every year to
become weaker and more open to attack. D'Ogeron, who
died in France in 1675, had kept always before him the
project of capturing the Spanish capital, San Domingo;
but he was too weak to accomplish so great a design
without aid from home, and this was never vouchsafed
him. His policy, however, was continued by his nephew
{219}
and successor, M. de Pouançay, and every defection from
Jamaica seemed so much assistance to the French to
accomplish their ambition. Yet it was manifestly to the
English interest in the West Indies not to permit the
French to obtain a pre-eminence there. The Spanish
colonies were large in area, thinly populated, and ill-supported
by the home government, so that they were not
likely to be a serious menace to the English islands.
With their great wealth and resources, moreover, they had
few manufactures and offered a tempting field for exploitation
by English merchants. The French colonies, on the
other hand, were easily supplied with merchandise from
France, and in event of a war would prove more dangerous
as neighbours than the Spaniards. To allow the French to
become lords of San Domingo would have been to give
them an undisputed predominance in the West Indies and
make them masters of the neighbouring seas.
In the second war of conquest waged by Louis XIV.
against Holland, the French in the West Indies found the
buccaneers to be useful allies, but as usually happened at
such times, the Spaniards paid the bill. In the spring of
1677 five or six English privateers surprised the town of
Santa Marta on the Spanish Main. According to the
reports brought to Jamaica, the governor and the bishop,
in order to save the town from being burnt, agreed with
the marauders for a ransom; but the Governor of
Cartagena, instead of contributing with pieces of eight,
despatched a force of 500 men by land and three vessels by
sea to drive out the invaders. The Spanish troops, however,
were easily defeated, and the ships, seeing the French
colours waving over the fort and the town, sailed back to
Cartagena. The privateers carried away the governor and
the bishop and came to Jamaica in July. The plunder
amounted to only £20 per man. The English in the
party, about 100 in number and led by Captains Barnes
{220}
and Coxon, submitted at Port Royal under the terms of
the Act against Privateers, and delivered up the Bishop of
Santa Marta to Lord Vaughan. Vaughan took care to
lodge the bishop well, and hired a vessel to send him to
Cartagena, at which "the good old man was exceedingly
pleased." He also endeavoured to obtain the custody of
the Spanish governor and other prisoners, but without
success, "the French being obstinate and damnably
enraged the English had left them" and submitted to
Lord Vaughan.
394
In the beginning of the following year, 1678, Count
d'Estrées, Vice-Admiral of the French fleet in the West
Indies, was preparing a powerful armament to go against
the Dutch on Curaçao, and sent two frigates to Hispaniola
with an order from the king to M. de Pouançay to join him
with 1200 buccaneers. De Pouançay assembled the men at
Cap François, and embarking on the frigates and on some
filibustering ships in the road, sailed for St. Kitts. There
he was joined by a squadron of fifteen or more men-of-war
from Martinique under command of Count d'Estrées. The
united fleet of over thirty vessels sailed for Curaçao on 7th
May, but on the fourth day following, at about eight
o'clock in the evening, was wrecked upon some coral reefs
near the Isle d'Aves.
395
As the French pilots had been at
odds among themselves as to the exact position of the
fleet, the admiral had taken the precaution to send a
fire-ship and three buccaneering vessels several miles in
advance of the rest of the squadron. Unfortunately these
scouts drew too little water and passed over the reefs
without touching them. A buccaneer was the first to
strike and fired three shots to warn the admiral, who at
{221}
once lighted fires and discharged cannon to keep off the
rest of the ships. The latter, however, mistaking the
signals, crowded on sail, and soon most of the fleet were on
the reefs. Those of the left wing, warned in time by a
shallop from the flag-ship, succeeded in veering off. The
rescue of the crews was slow, for the seas were heavy and
the boats approached the doomed ships with difficulty.
Many sailors and marines were drowned, and seven men-of-war,
besides several buccaneering ships, were lost on the
rocks. Count d'Estrées himself escaped, and sailed with
the remnant of his squadron to Petit Goave and Cap
François in Hispaniola, whence on 18th June he departed
for France.
396
The buccaneers were accused in the reports which
reached Barbadoes of deserting the admiral after the
accident, and thus preventing the reduction of Curaçao,
which d'Estrées would have undertaken in spite of the
shipwreck.
397
However this may be, one of the principal
buccaneer leaders, named de Grammont, was left by de
Pouançay at the Isle d'Aves to recover what he could from
the wreck, and to repair some of the privateering vessels.
398
{222}
When he had accomplished this, finding himself short of
provisions, he sailed with about 700 men to make a descent
on Maracaibo; and after spending six months in the lake,
seizing the shipping and plundering all the settlements in
that region, he re-embarked in the middle of December.
The booty is said to have been very small.
399
Early in the
same year the Marquis de Maintenon, commanding the
frigate "La Sorcière," and aided by some French
filibusters from Tortuga, was on the coast of Caracas,
where he ravaged the islands of Margarita and Trinidad.
He had arrived in the West Indies from France in the
latter part of 1676, and when he sailed from Tortuga
was at the head of 700 or 800 men. His squadron met
with little success, however, and soon scattered.
400
Other
bands of filibusters pillaged Campeache, Puerto Principe in
Cuba, Santo Tomas on the Orinoco, and Truxillo in the
province of Honduras; and de Pouançay, to console the
buccaneers for their losses at the Isle d'Aves, sent 800 men
under the Sieur de Franquesnay to make a descent upon
St. Jago de Cuba, but the expedition seems to have been a
failure.
401
On 1st March 1678 a commission was again issued to
the Earl of Carlisle, appointing him governor of Jamaica.
402
Carlisle arrived in his new government on 18th July,
403
but
Lord Vaughan, apparently because of ill-health, had
already sailed for England at the end of March, leaving
Sir Henry Morgan, who retained his place under the new
governor, deputy in his absence.
404
Lord Carlisle, immediately
upon his arrival, invited the privateers to come in
and encouraged them to stay, hoping, according to his own
{223}
account, to be able to wean them from their familiar
courses, and perhaps to use them in the threatened war
with France, for the island then had "not above 4000
whites able to bear arms, a secret not fit to be made
public."
405
If the governor was sincere in his intentions,
the results must have been a bitter disappointment.
Some of the buccaneers came in, others
persevered in the old trade, and even those who returned
abused the pardon they had received. In the autumn
of 1679, several privateering vessels under command of
Captains Coxon, Sharp and others who had come back
to Jamaica, made a raid in the Gulf of Honduras,
plundered the royal storehouses there, carried off 500
chests of indigo,
406
besides cocoa, cochineal, tortoiseshell,
money and plate, and returned with their plunder to
Jamaica. Not knowing what their reception might be, one
of the vessels landed her cargo of indigo in an unfrequented
spot on the coast, and the rest sent word that unless they
were allowed to bring their booty to Port Royal and pay
the customs duty, they would sail to Rhode Island or to
one of the Dutch plantations. The governor had taken
security for good behaviour from some of the captains
before they sailed from Jamaica; yet in spite of this they
were permitted to enter the indigo at the custom house
and divide it in broad daylight; and the frigate "Success"
was ordered to coast round Jamaica in search of other
privateers who failed to come in and pay duty on their
plunder at Port Royal. The glut of indigo in Jamaica disturbed
trade considerably, and for a time the imported
product took the place of native sugar and indigo as a
medium of exchange. Manufacture on the island was
{224}
hindered, prices were lowered, and only the king's
customs received any actual benefit.
407
These same privateers, however, were soon out upon a
much larger design. Six captains, Sharp, Coxon, Essex,
Allison, Row, and Maggott, in four barques and two
sloops, met at Point Morant in December 1679, and on
7th January set sail for Porto Bello. They were scattered
by a terrible storm, but all eventually reached their
rendezvous in safety. There they picked up another
barque commanded by Captain Cooke, who had sailed
from Jamaica on the same design, and likewise a French
privateering vessel commanded by Captain Lessone. They
set out for Porto Bello in canoes with over 300 men, and
landing twenty leagues from the town, marched for four days
along the seaside toward the city. Coming to an Indian
village about three miles from Porto Bello, they were discovered
by the natives, and one of the Indians ran to the
city, crying, "Ladrones! ladrones!" The buccaneers,
although "many of them were weak, being three days
without any food, and their feet cut with the rocks for
want of shoes," made all speed for the town, which they
entered without difficulty on 17th February 1680. Most
of the inhabitants sought refuge in the castle, whence they
made a counter-attack without success upon the invaders.
On the evening of the following day, the buccaneers retreated
with their prisoners and booty down to a cay or
small island about three and a half leagues from Porto
Bello, where they were joined by their ships. They had
just left in time to avoid a force of some 700 Spanish
troops who were sent from Panama and arrived the day
after the buccaneers departed. After capturing two
{225}
Spanish vessels bound for Porto Bello with provisions from
Cartagena, they divided the plunder, of which each man
received 100 pieces of eight, and departed for Boca del
Toro some fifty leagues to the north. There they careened
and provisioned, and being joined by two other Jamaican
privateers commanded by Sawkins and Harris, sailed for
Golden Island, whence on 5th April 1680, with 334 men,
they began their march across the Isthmus of Darien to the
coasts of Panama and the South Seas.
408
Lord Carlisle cannot escape the charge of culpable
negligence for having permitted these vessels in the first
place to leave Jamaica. All the leaders in the expedition
were notorious privateers, men who had repeatedly been
{226}
concerned in piratical outrages against the Dutch and
Spaniards. Coxon and Harris had both come in after
taking part in the expedition against Santa Marta;
Sawkins had been caught with his vessel by the frigate
"Success" and sent to Port Royal, where on 1st December
1679 he seems to have been in prison awaiting trial;
410
while Essex had been brought in by another frigate, the
"Hunter," in November, and tried with twenty of his crew
for plundering on the Jamaican coast, two of his men
being sentenced to death.
411
The buccaneers themselves
declared that they had sailed with permission from Lord
Carlisle to cut logwood.
412
This was very likely true; yet
after the exactly similar ruse of these men when they
went to Honduras, the governor could not have failed to
suspect their real intentions.
At the end of May 1680 Lord Carlisle suddenly
departed for England in the frigate "Hunter," leaving
Morgan again in charge as lieutenant-governor.
413
On his
passage home the governor met with Captain Coxon, who,
having quarrelled with his companions in the Pacific, had
returned across Darien to the West Indies and was again
hanging about the shores of Jamaica. The "Hunter"
gave chase for twenty-four hours, but being outsailed was
content to take two small vessels in the company of Coxon
which had been deserted by their crews.
414
In England
Samuel Long, whom the governor had suspended from
the council and dismissed from his post as chief justice
of the colony for his opposition to the new Constitution,
accused the governor before the Privy Council of collusion
with pirates and encouraging them to bring their plunder
to Jamaica. The charges were doubtless conceived in a
spirit of revenge; nevertheless the two years during
{227}
which Carlisle was in Jamaica were marked by an increased
activity among the freebooters, and by a lukewarmness
and negligence on the part of the government, for
which Carlisle alone must be held responsible. To accuse
him of deliberately supporting and encouraging the
buccaneers, however, may be going too far. Sir Henry
Morgan, during his tenure of the chief command of the
island, showed himself very zealous in the pursuit of the
pirates, and sincerely anxious to bring them to justice;
and as Carlisle and Morgan always worked together in
perfect harmony, we may be justified in believing that
Carlisle's mistakes were those of negligence rather than
of connivance. The freebooters who brought goods into
Jamaica increased the revenues of the island, and a
governor whose income was small and tastes extravagant,
was not apt to be too inquisitive about the source of the
articles which entered through the customs. There is
evidence, moreover, that French privateers, being unable to
obtain from the merchants on the coast of San Domingo
the cables, anchors, tar and other naval stores necessary for
their armaments, were compelled to resort to other islands
to buy them, and that Jamaica came in for a share of this
trade. Provisions, too, were more plentiful at Port Royal
than in the
cul-de-sac of Hispaniola, and the French governors
complained to the king that the filibusters carried
most of their money to foreign plantations to exchange for
these commodities. Such French vessels if they came to
Jamaica were not strictly within the scope of the laws
against piracy which had been passed by the assembly,
and their visits were the more welcome as they paid
for their goods promptly and liberally in good Spanish
doubloons.
415
A general warrant for the apprehension of Coxon,
{228}
Sharp and the other men who had plundered Porto Bello
had been issued by Lord Carlisle in May 1680, just before
his departure for England. On 1st July a similar warrant
was issued by Morgan, and five days later a proclamation
was published against all persons who should hold any
correspondence whatever with the outlawed crews.
416
Three
men who had taken part in the expedition were captured
and clapped into prison until the next meeting of the
court. The friends of Coxon, however, including, it seems,
almost all the members of the council, offered to give
£2000 security, if he was allowed to come to Port Royal,
that he would never take another commission except from
the King of England; and Morgan wrote to Carlisle seeking
his approbation.
417
At the end of the following January
Morgan received word that a notorious Dutch privateer,
named Jacob Everson, commanding an armed sloop, was
anchored on the coast with a brigantine which he had
lately captured. The lieutenant-governor manned a small
vessel with fifty picked men and sent it secretly at midnight
to seize the pirate. Everson's sloop was boarded and
captured with twenty-six prisoners, but Everson himself
and several others escaped by jumping overboard and
swimming to the shore. The prisoners, most of whom
were English, were tried six weeks later, convicted of
piracy and sentenced to death; but the lieutenant-governor
suspended the execution and wrote to the king for instructions.
On 16th June 1681, the king in council ordered
the execution of the condemned men.
418
{229}
The buccaneers who, after plundering Porto Bello,
crossed the Isthmus of Darien to the South Seas, had a
remarkable history. For eighteen months they cruised up
and down the Pacific coast of South America, burning and
plundering Spanish towns, giving and taking hard blows
with equal courage, keeping the Spanish provinces of
Equador, Peru and Chili in a fever of apprehension, finally
sailing the difficult passage round Cape Horn, and returning
to the Windward Islands in January of 1682. Touching
at the island of Barbadoes, they learned that the English
frigate "Richmond" was lying in the road, and fearing
seizure they sailed on to Antigua. There the governor,
Colonel Codrington, refused to give them leave to enter
the harbour. So the party, impatient of their dangerous
situation, determined to separate, some landing on Antigua,
and Sharp and sixteen others going to Nevis where they
obtained passage to England. On their arrival in England
several, including Sharp, were arrested at the instance of
the Spanish ambassador, and tried for committing piracy
in the South Seas; but from the defectiveness of the
evidence produced they escaped conviction.
419
Four of the
party came to Jamaica, where they were apprehended,
tried and condemned. One of the four, who had given
himself up voluntarily, turned State's evidence; two were
represented by the judges as fit objects of the king's
mercy; and the other, "a bloody and notorious villein,"
was recommended to be executed as an example to the
rest.
420
The recrudescence of piratical activity between the
years 1679 and 1682 had, through its evil effects, been
strongly felt in Jamaica; and public opinion was now
{230}
gradually changing from one of encouragement and
welcome to the privateers and of secret or open opposition
to the efforts of the governors who tried to suppress them,
to one of distinct hostility to the old freebooters. The
inhabitants were beginning to realize that in the encouragement
of planting, and not of buccaneering, lay the permanent
welfare of the island. Planting and buccaneering, side by
side, were inconsistent and incompatible, and the colonists
chose the better course of the two. In spite of the frequent
trials and executions at Port Royal, the marauders seemed
to be as numerous as ever, and even more troublesome.
Private trade with the Spaniards was hindered; runaway
servants, debtors and other men of unfortunate or desperate
condition were still, by every new success of the buccaneers,
drawn from the island to swell their ranks; and most of
all, men who were now outlawed in Jamaica, driven to
desperation turned pirate altogether, and began to wage
war indiscriminately on the ships of all nationalities,
including those of the English. Morgan repeatedly wrote
home urging the dispatch of small frigates of light draught
to coast round the island and surprise the freebooters, and
he begged for orders for himself to go on board and command
them, for "then I shall not much question," he
concludes, "to reduce them or in some time to leave them
shipless."
421
"The governor," wrote the Council of Jamaica
to the Lords of Trade and Plantations in May 1680, "can
do little from want of ships to reduce the privateers, and of
plain laws to punish them"; and they urged the ratification
of the Act passed by the assembly two years before,
making it felony for any British subject in the West
Indies to serve under a foreign prince without leave from
the governor.
422
This Act, and another for the more effectual
punishment of pirates, had been under consideration in the
{231}
Privy Council in February 1678, and both were returned
to Jamaica with certain slight amendments. They were
again passed by the assembly as one Act in 1681, and
were finally incorporated into the Jamaica Act of 1683
"for the restraining and punishing of privateers and
pirates."
423
