The settlement of the Windward and Leeward Islands and the conquest of Jamaica had given a new impetus to contraband trade. The commercial nations were setting up shop, as it were, at the very doors of the Spanish Indies. The French and English Antilles, condemned by the Navigation Laws to confine themselves to agriculture and a passive trade with the home country, had no recourse but to traffic with their Spanish neighbours. Factors of the Assiento established at Cartagena, Porto Bello and Vera Cruz every year supplied European merchants with detailed news of the nature and quantity of the goods which might be imported with advantage; while the buccaneers, by dominating the whole Caribbean Sea, hindered frequent communication between Spain and her colonies. It is not surprising, therefore, that the commerce of Seville, which had hitherto held its own, decreased with surprising rapidity, that the sailings of the galleons and the Flota were separated by several years, and that the fairs of Porto Bello and Vera Cruz were almost deserted. To put an effective restraint, moreover, upon this contraband trade was impossible on either side. The West Indian dependencies were situated far from the centre of authority, while the home governments generally had their hands too full of other matters to adequately control their subjects in America. The Spanish viceroys, meanwhile, and the governors in the West Indian Islands, connived at a practice which lined their own pockets with the gold of bribery, and at the same time contributed to the public interest and prosperity of their respective colonies. It was this illicit commerce with Spanish America which Charles II., by negotiation at Madrid and by instructions to his governors in the West Indies, tried to get within his own control. At the Spanish court, Fanshaw, Sandwich and Godolphin in turn were instructed to sue for a free trade with the Colonies. The Assiento of negroes was at this time held by two Genoese named Grillo and Lomelin, and with them the English ambassadors several times entered into negotiation for the privilege of supplying blacks from the English islands. By the treaty of 1670 the English colonies in America were for the first time formally recognised by the Spanish Crown. Freedom of commerce, however, was as far as ever from realisation, and after this date Charles seems to have given up hope of ever obtaining it through diplomatic channels.

The peace of 1660 between England and Spain was supposed to extend to both sides of the "Line." The Council in Jamaica, however, were of the opinion that it applied only to Europe,[159] and from the tenor of Lord Windsor's instructions it may be inferred that the English Court at that time meant to interpret it with the same limitations. Windsor, indeed, was not only instructed to force the Spanish colonies to a free trade, but was empowered to call upon the governor of Barbadoes for aid "in case of any considerable attempt by the Spaniards against Jamaica."[160] The efforts of the Governor, however, to come to a good correspondence with the Spanish colonies were fruitless. In the minutes of the Council of Jamaica of 20th August 1662, we read: "Resolved that the letters from the Governors of Porto Rico and San Domingo are an absolute denial of trade, and that according to His Majesty's instructions to Lord Windsor a trade by force or otherwise be endeavoured;"[161] and under 12th September we find another resolution "that men be enlisted for a design by sea with the 'Centurion' and other vessels."[162] This "design" was an expedition to capture and destroy St. Jago de Cuba, the Spanish port nearest to Jamaican shores. An attack upon St. Jago had been projected by Goodson as far back as 1655. "The Admiral," wrote Major Sedgwick to Thurloe just after his arrival in Jamaica, "was intended before our coming in to have taken some few soldiers and gone over to St. Jago de Cuba, a town upon Cuba, but our coming hindered him without whom we could not well tell how to do anything."[163] In January 1656 the plan was definitely abandoned, because the colony could not spare a sufficient number of soldiers for the enterprise.[164] It was to St. Jago that the Spaniards, driven from Jamaica, mostly betook themselves, and from St. Jago as a starting-point had come the expedition of 1658 to reconquer the island. The instructions of Lord Windsor afforded a convenient opportunity to avenge past attacks and secure Jamaica from molestation in that quarter for the future. The command of the expedition was entrusted to Myngs, who in 1662 was again in the Indies on the frigate "Centurion." Myngs sailed from Port Royal on 21st September with eleven ships and 1300 men,[165] but, kept back by unfavourable winds, did not sight the castle of St. Jago until 5th October. Although he had intended to force the entrance of the harbour, he was prevented by the prevailing land breeze; so he disembarked his men to windward, on a rocky coast, where the path up the bluffs was so narrow that but one man could march at a time. Night had fallen before all were landed, and "the way (was) soe difficult and the night soe dark that they were forced to make stands and fires, and their guides with brands in their hands, to beat the path."[166] At daybreak they reached a plantation by a river's side, some six miles from the place of landing and three from St. Jago. There they refreshed themselves, and advancing upon the town surprised the enemy, who knew of the late landing and the badness of the way and did not expect them so soon. They found 200 Spaniards at the entrance to the town, drawn up under their governor, Don Pedro de Moralis, and supported by Don Christopher de Sasi Arnoldo, the former Spanish governor of Jamaica, with a reserve of 500 more. The Spaniards fled before the first charge of the Jamaicans, and the place was easily mastered.

The next day parties were despatched into the country to pursue the enemy, and orders sent to the fleet to attack the forts at the mouth of the harbour. This was successfully done, the Spaniards deserting the great castle after firing but two muskets. Between scouring the country for hidden riches, most of which had been carried far inland beyond their reach, and dismantling and demolishing the forts, the English forces occupied their time until October 19th. Thirty-four guns were found in the fortifications and 1000 barrels of powder. Some of the guns were carried to the ships and the rest flung over the precipice into the sea; while the powder was used to blow up the castle and the neighbouring country houses.[167] The expedition returned to Jamaica on 22nd October.[168] Only six men had been killed by the Spaniards, twenty more being lost by other "accidents." Of these twenty some must have been captured by the enemy, for when Sir Richard Fanshaw was appointed ambassador to Spain in January 1664, he was instructed among other things to negotiate for an exchange of prisoners taken in the Indies. In July we find him treating for the release of Captain Myngs' men from the prisons of Seville and Cadiz,[169] and on 7th November an order to this effect was obtained from the King of Spain.[170]

The instructions of Lord Windsor gave him leave, as soon as he had settled the government in Jamaica, to appoint a deputy and return to England to confer with the King on colonial affairs. Windsor sailed for England on 28th October, and on the same day Sir Charles Lyttleton's commission as deputy-governor was read in the Jamaican Council.[171] During his short sojourn of three months the Governor had made considerable progress toward establishing an ordered constitution in the island. He disbanded the old army, and reorganised the military under a stricter discipline and better officers. He systematised legal procedure and the rules for the conveyance of property. He erected an Admiralty Court at Port Royal, and above all, probably in pursuance of the recommendation of Colonel Doyley,[172] had called in all the privateering commissions issued by previous governors, and tried to submit the captains to orderly rules by giving them new commissions, with instructions to bring their Spanish prizes to Jamaica for judicature.[173]

The departure of Windsor did not put a stop to the efforts of the Jamaicans to "force a trade" with the Spanish plantations, and we find the Council, on 11th December 1662, passing a motion that to this end an attempt should be made to leeward on the coasts of Cuba, Honduras and the Gulf of Campeache. On 9th and 10th January between 1500 and 1600 soldiers, many of them doubtless buccaneers, were embarked on a fleet of twelve ships and sailed two days later under command of the redoubtable Myngs. About ninety leagues this side of Campeache the fleet ran into a great storm, in which one of the vessels foundered and three others were separated from their fellows. The English reached the coast of Campeache, however, in the early morning of Friday, 9th February, and landing a league and a half from the town, marched without being seen along an Indian path with "such speed and good fortune" that by ten o'clock in the morning they were already masters of the city and of all the forts save one, the Castle of Santa Cruz. At the second fort Myngs was wounded by a gun in three places. The town itself, Myngs reported, might have been defended like a fortress, for the houses were contiguous and strongly built of stone with flat roofs.[174] The forts were partly demolished, a portion of the town was destroyed by fire, and the fourteen sail lying in the harbour were seized by the invaders. Altogether the booty must have been considerable. The Spanish licentiate, Maldonado de Aldana, placed it at 150,000 pieces of eight,[175] and the general damage to the city in the destruction of houses and munitions by the enemy, and in the expenditure of treasure for purposes of defence, at half a million more. Myngs and his fleet sailed away on 23rd February, but the "Centurion" did not reach Port Royal until 13th April, and the rest of the fleet followed a few days later. The number of casualties on each side was surprisingly small. The invaders lost only thirty men killed, and the Spaniards between fifty and sixty, but among the latter were the two alcaldes and many other officers and prominent citizens of the town.[176]

To satisfactorily explain at Madrid these two presumptuous assaults upon Spanish territory in America was an embarrassing problem for the English Government, especially as Myngs' men imprisoned at Seville and Cadiz were said to have produced commissions to justify their actions.[177] The Spanish king instructed his resident in London to demand whether Charles accepted responsibility for the attack upon St. Jago, and the proceedings of English cases in the Spanish courts arising from the depredations of Galician corsairs were indefinitely suspended.[178] When, however, there followed upon this, in May 1663, the news of the sack and burning of Campeache, it stirred up the greatest excitement in Madrid.[179] Orders and, what was rarer in Spain, money were immediately sent to Cadiz to the Duke of Albuquerque to hasten the work on the royal Armada for despatch to the Indies; and efforts were made to resuscitate the defunct Armada de Barlovento, a small fleet which had formerly been used to catch interlopers and protect the coasts of Terra-Firma. In one way the capture of Campeache had touched Spain in her most vulnerable spot. The Mexican Flota, which was scheduled to sail from Havana in June 1663, refused to stir from its retreat at Vera Cruz until the galleons from Porto Bello came to convoy it. The arrival of the American treasure in Spain was thus delayed for two months, and the bankrupt government put to sore straits for money.

The activity of the Spaniards, however, was merely a blind to hide their own impotence, and their clamours were eventually satisfied by the King of England's writing to Deputy-Governor Lyttleton a letter forbidding all such undertakings for the future. The text of the letter is as follows: "Understanding with what jealousy and offence the Spaniards look upon our island of Jamaica, and how disposed they are to make some attempt upon it, and knowing how disabled it will remain in its own defence if encouragement be given to such undertakings as have lately been set on foot, and are yet pursued, and which divert the inhabitants from that industry which alone can render the island considerable, the king signifies his dislike of all such undertakings, and commands that no such be pursued for the future, but that they unitedly apply themselves to the improvement of the plantation and keeping the force in proper condition."[180] The original draft of the letter was much milder in tone, and betrays the real attitude of Charles II. toward these half-piratical enterprises: "His Majesty has heard of the success of the undertaking upon Cuba, in which he cannot choose but please himself in the vigour and resolution wherein it was performed ... but because His Majesty cannot foresee any utility likely to arise thereby ... he has thought fit hereby to command him to give no encouragement to such undertakings unless they may be performed by the frigates or men-of-war attending that place without any addition from the soldiers or inhabitants."[181] Other letters were subsequently sent to Jamaica, which made it clear that the war of the privateers was not intended to be called off by the king's instructions; and Sir Charles Lyttleton, therefore, did not recall their commissions. Nevertheless, in the early part of 1664, the assembly in Jamaica passed an act prohibiting public levies of men upon foreign designs, and forbidding any person to leave the island on any such design without first obtaining leave from the governor, council and assembly.[182]

When the instructions of the authorities at home were so ambiguous, and the incentives to corsairing so alluring, it was natural that this game of baiting the Spaniards should suffer little interruption. English freebooters who had formerly made Hispaniola and Tortuga their headquarters now resorted to Jamaica, where they found a cordial welcome and a better market for their plunder. Thus in June 1663 a certain Captain Barnard sailed from Port Royal to the Orinoco, took and plundered the town of Santo Tomas and returned in the following March.[183] On 19th October another privateer named Captain Cooper brought into Port Royal two Spanish prizes, the larger of which, the "Maria" of Seville, was a royal azogue and carried 1000 quintals of quicksilver for the King of Spain's mines in Mexico, besides oil, wine and olives.[184] Cooper in his fight with the smaller vessel so disabled his own ship that he was forced to abandon it and enter the prize; and it was while cruising off Hispaniola in this prize that he fell in with the "Maria," and captured her after a four hours' combat. There were seventy prisoners, among them a number of friars going to Campeache and Vera Cruz. Some of the prize goods were carried to England, and Don Patricio Moledi, the Spanish resident in London, importuned the English government for its restoration.[185] Sir Charles Lyttleton had sailed for England on 2nd May 1664, leaving the government of Jamaica in the hands of the Council with Colonel Thomas Lynch as president;[186] and on his arrival in England he made formal answer to the complaints of Moledi. His excuse was that Captain Cooper's commission had been derived not from the deputy-governor himself but from Lord Windsor; and that the deputy-governor had never received any order from the king for recalling commissions, or for the cessation of hostilities against the Spaniards.[187] Lyttleton and the English government were evidently attempting the rather difficult circus feat of riding two mounts at the same time. The instructions from England, as Lyttleton himself acknowledged in his letter of 15th October 1663, distinctly forbade further hostilities against the Spanish plantations; on the other hand, there were no specific orders that privateers should be recalled. Lyttleton was from first to last in sympathy with the freebooters, and probably believed with many others of his time that "the Spaniard is most pliable when best beaten." In August 1664 he presented to the Lord Chancellor his reasons for advocating a continuance of the privateers in Jamaica. They are sufficiently interesting to merit a resume of the principal points advanced. 1st. Privateering maintained a great number of seamen by whom the island was protected without the immediate necessity of a naval force. 2nd. If privateering were forbidden, the king would lose many men who, in case of a war in the West Indies, would be of incalculable service, being acquainted, as they were, with the coasts, shoals, currents, winds, etc., of the Spanish dominions. 3rd. Without the privateers, the Jamaicans would have no intelligence of Spanish designs against them, or of the size or neighbourhood of their fleets, or of the strength of their resources. 4th. If prize-goods were no longer brought into Port Royal, few merchants would resort to Jamaica and prices would become excessively high. 5th. To reduce the privateers would require a large number of frigates at considerable trouble and expense; English seamen, moreover, generally had the privateering spirit and would be more ready to join with them than oppose them, as previous experience had shown. Finally, the privateers, if denied the freedom of Jamaican ports, would not take to planting, but would resort to the islands of other nations, and perhaps prey upon English commerce.[188]

Footnotes:

[Footnote 119: Venables was not bound by his instructions to any definite plan. It had been proposed, he was told, to seize Hispaniola or Porto Rico or both, after which either Cartagena or Havana might be taken, and the Spanish revenue-fleets obstructed. An alternative scheme was to make the first attempt on the mainland at some point between the mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, with the ultimate object of securing Cartagena. It was left to Venables, however, to consult with Admiral Penn and three commissioners, Edward Winslow (former governor of Plymouth colony in New England), Daniel Searle (governor of Barbadoes), and Gregory Butler, as to which, if any, of these schemes should be carried out. Not until some time after the arrival of the fleet at Barbadoes was it resolved to attack Hispaniola. (Narrative of Gen. Venables, edition 1900, pp. x, 112-3.)]

[Footnote 120: Gardiner: Hist. of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, vol. iii. ch. xlv.; Narrative of Gen. Venables.]

[Footnote 121: Gardiner: op. cit., iii. p. 368.]

[Footnote 122: Cf. the "Commission of the Commissioners for the West Indian Expedition." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 109.)]

[Footnote 123: Cf. American Hist. Review, vol. iv. p. 228; "Instructions unto Gen. Robt. Venables." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 111.)]

[Footnote 124: Cf. Narrative of Gen. Venables, pp. 3, 90; "Instructions unto Generall Penn," etc., ibid., p. 107.

After the outbreak of the Spanish war, Cromwell was anxious to clear his government of the charges of treachery and violation of international duties. The task was entrusted to the Latin Secretary, John Milton, who on 26th October 1655 published a manifesto defending the actions of the Commonwealth. He gave two principal reasons for the attempt upon the West Indies:—(1) the cruelties of the Spaniards toward the English in America and their depredations on English colonies and trade; (2) the outrageous treatment and extermination of the Indians. He denied the Spanish claims to all of America, either as a papal gift, or by right of discovery alone, or even by right of settlement, and insisted upon both the natural and treaty rights of Englishmen to trade in Spanish seas.]

[Footnote 125: The memory of the exploits of Drake and his contemporaries was not allowed to die in the first half of the seventeenth century. Books like "Sir Francis Drake Revived," and "The World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake," were printed time and time again. The former was published in 1626 and again two years later; "The World Encompassed" first appeared in 1628 and was reprinted in 1635 and 1653. A quotation from the title-page of the latter may serve to illustrate the temper of the times:—

Drake, Sir Francis. The world encompassed. Being his next voyage to that to Nombre de Dios, formerly imprinted ... offered ... especially for the stirring up of heroick spirits, to benefit their country and eternize their names by like bold attempts. Lon. 1628.

Cf. also Gardiner, op. cit., iii. pp. 343-44.]

[Footnote 126: Gardiner, op. cit., iii. p. 346; cf. also "Present State of Jamaica, 1683."]

[Footnote 127: Long: "History of Jamaica," i. p. 260; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 274.]

[Footnote 128: Long, op. cit., i. p. 272 ff.]

[Footnote 129: Ibid.; Thurloe Papers, VI. p. 540; vii. p. 260; "Present State of Jamaica, 1683"; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 303-308.]

[Footnote 130: Long, op. cit., i. p. 245; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 236, 261, 276, etc.

The conditions in Jamaica directly after its capture are in remarkable contrast to what might have been expected after reading the enthusiastic descriptions of the island, its climate, soil and products, left us by Englishmen who visited it. Jackson in 1643 compared it with the Arcadian plains and Thessalien Tempe, and many of his men wanted to remain and live with the Spaniards. See also the description of Jamaica contained in the Rawlinson MSS. and written just after the arrival of the English army:—"As for the country ... more than this." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, pp. 138-9.)]

[Footnote 131: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 229, 232; Lucas: Historical Geography of the British Colonies, ii. p. 101, and note.]

[Footnote 132: Lucas, op. cit., ii. p. 109.]

[Footnote 133: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 230, 231. Fortescue was Gen. Venables' successor in Jamaica.]

[Footnote 134: Ibid., No. 218; Long, op. cit., i. p. 262.]

[Footnote 135: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 218, 252; Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 451, 457.]

[Footnote 136: Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 152, 493.]

[Footnote 137: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 236.]

[Footnote 138: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 604.]

[Footnote 139: Ibid., pp. 454-5, 604.]

[Footnote 140: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 452.]

[Footnote 141: Ibid., v. pp. 96, 151.]

[Footnote 142: This was the treasure fleet which Captain Stayner's ship and two other frigates captured off Cadiz on 9th September. Six galleons were captured, sunk or burnt, with no less than L600,000 of gold and silver. The galleons which Blake burnt in the harbour of Santa Cruz, on 20th April 1657, were doubtless the Mexican fleet for which Admiral Goodson vainly waited before Havana in the previous summer.]

[Footnote 143: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 260, 263, 266, 270, 275; Thurloe Papers, V. p. 340.]

[Footnote 144: Cf. Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 12,430: Journal of Col. Beeston. Col. Beeston seems to have harboured a peculiar spite against Doyley. For the contrary view of Doyley, cf. Long, op. cit., i. p. 284.]

[Footnote 145: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda., Nos. 309, 310. In these letters the towns are called "Tralo" and "St. Mark." Cf. also Thurloe Papers, VII. p. 340.]

[Footnote 146: Captain Christopher Myngs had been appointed to the "Marston Moor," a frigate of fifty-four guns, in October 1654, and had seen two years' service in the West Indies under Goodson in 1656 and 1657. In May 1656 he took part in the sack of Rio de la Hacha. In July 1657 the "Marston Moor" returned to England and was ordered to be refitted, but by 20th February 1658 Myngs and his frigate were again at Port Royal (C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 295, 297). After Admiral Goodson's return to England (Ibid., No. 1202) Myngs seems to have been the chief naval officer in the West Indies, and greatly distinguished himself in his naval actions against the Spaniards.]

[Footnote 147: Tanner MSS., LI. 82.]

[Footnote 148: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 316. Some figures put it as high as L500,000.]

[Footnote 149: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 318. Captain Wm. Dalyson wrote home, on 23rd January 1659/60, that he verily believed if the General (Doyley) were at home to answer for himself, Captain Myngs would be found no better than he is, a proud-speaking vain fool, and a knave in cheating the State and robbing merchants. Ibid., No. 328.]

[Footnote 150: Ibid., Nos. 327, 331.]

[Footnote 151: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, No. 326.]

[Footnote 152: S.P. Spain, vol. 44, f. 318.]

[Footnote 153: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 17, 61.]

[Footnote 154: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 20.]

[Footnote 155: Ibid., No. 145.]

[Footnote 156: Ibid., Nos. 259, 278. In Lord Windsor's original instructions of 21st March 1662 he was empowered to search ships suspected of trading with the Spaniards and to adjudicate the same in the Admiralty Court. A fortnight later, however, the King and Council seem to have completely changed their point of view, and this too in spite of the Navigation Laws which prohibited the colonies from trading with any but the mother-country.]

[Footnote 157: Art. ix. of the treaty. Cf. Dumont: Corps diplomatique, T.V., pt. ii. p. 625. Cf. also C.S.P. Venetian, 1604, p. 189:—"I wished to hear from His Majesty's own lips" (wrote the Venetian ambassador in November 1604), "how he read the clause about the India navigation, and I said, 'Sire, your subjects may trade with Spain and Flanders but not with the Indies.' 'Why not?' said the King. 'Because,' I replied, 'the clause is read in that sense.' 'They are making a great error, whoever they are that hold this view,' said His Majesty; 'the meaning is quite clear.'"]

[Footnote 158: S.P. Spain, vol. 35.]

[Footnote 159: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 61.]

[Footnote 160: Ibid., No. 259.]

[Footnote 161: Ibid., No. 355.]

[Footnote 162: Ibid., No. 364.]

[Footnote 163: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 154.]

[Footnote 164: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 457.]

[Footnote 165: Beeston's Journal.]

[Footnote 166: Calendar of the Heathcote MSS. (pr. by Hist. MSS. Commiss.), p. 34.]

[Footnote 167: Calendar of the Heathcote MSS., p. 34. Cf. also C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 384:—"An act for the sale of five copper guns taken at St. Jago de Cuba."]

[Footnote 168: Beeston's Journal.]

[Footnote 169: S.P. Spain, vol. 46.]

[Footnote 170: Ibid., vol. 47.]

[Footnote 171: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 294, 375.]

[Footnote 172: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 11,410, f. 16.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid., f. 6.]

[Footnote 174: Dampier also says of Campeache that "it makes a fine show, being built all with good stone ... the roofs flattish after the Spanish fashion, and covered with pantile."—Ed. 1906, ii. p. 147.]

[Footnote 175: However, the writer of the "Present State of Jamaica" says (p. 39) that Myngs got no great plunder, neither at Campeache nor at St. Jago.]

[Footnote 176: Beeston's Journal; Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,964, f. 16:—"Original letter from the Licentiate Maldonado de Aldana to Don Francisco Calderon y Romero, giving him an account of the taking of Campeache in 1663"; dated Campeache, March 1663.

According to the Spanish relation there were fourteen vessels in the English fleet, one large ship of forty-four guns (the "Centurion"?) and thirteen smaller ones. The discrepancy in the numbers of the fleet may be explained by the probability that other Jamaican privateering vessels joined it after its departure from Port Royal. Beeston writes in his Journal that the privateer "Blessing," Captain Mitchell, commander, brought news on 28th February that the Spaniards in Campeache had notice from St. Jago of the English design and made elaborate preparations for the defence of the town. This is contradicted by the Spanish report, in which it appears that the authorities in Campeache had been culpably negligent in not maintaining the defences with men, powder or provisions.]

[Footnote 177: S.P. Spain, vol. 46. Fanshaw to Sec. Bennet, 13th-23rd July 1664.]

[Footnote 178: Ibid., vol. 45. Letter of Consul Rumbold, 31st March 1663.]

[Footnote 179: Ibid., 4th May 1663.]

[Footnote 180: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 443. Dated 28th April 1663.]

[Footnote 181: Ibid., Nos. 441, 442.]

[Footnote 182: Rawlinson MSS., A. 347, f. 62.]

[Footnote 183: Beeston's Journal.]

[Footnote 184: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 571; Beeston's Journal.]

[Footnote 185: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, ff. 94, 96, 108, 121, 123, 127, 309 (April-August 1664).]

[Footnote 186: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 697, 744, 812.]

[Footnote 187: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 280.]

[Footnote 188: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 311.]



CHAPTER IV

TORTUGA—1655-1664

When the Chevalier de Fontenay was driven from Tortuga in January 1654, the Spaniards left a small garrison to occupy the fort and prevent further settlements of French and English buccaneers. These troops possessed the island for about eighteen months, but on the approach of the expedition under Penn and Venables were ordered by the Conde de Penalva, President of S. Domingo, to demolish the fort, bury the artillery and other arms, and retire to his aid in Hispaniola.[189] Some six months later an Englishman, Elias Watts,[190] with his family and ten or twelve others, came from Jamaica in a shallop, re-settled the island, and raised a battery of four guns upon the ruins of the larger fort previously erected by the French. Watts received a commission for the island from General Brayne, who was then governor of Jamaica, and in a short time gathered about him a colony of about 150, both English and French. Among these new-comers was a "poor distressed gentleman" by the name of James Arundell, formerly a colonel in the Royalist army and now banished from England, who eventually married Watts' daughter and became the head of the colony.

It was while Watts was governor of Tortuga, if we are to believe the Jesuit, Dutertre, that the buccaneers determined to avenge the treachery of the Spaniards to a French vessel in that neighbourhood by plundering the city of St. Jago in Hispaniola. According to this historian, who from the style of the narrative seems to be reporting the words of an eye-witness, the buccaneers, including doubtless both hunters and corsairs, formed a party of 400 men under the leadership of four captains and obtained a commission for the enterprise from the English governor, who was very likely looking forward to a share of the booty. Compelling the captain of a frigate which had just arrived from Nantes to lend his ship, they embarked in it and in two or three other boats found on the coast for Puerta de Plata, where they landed on Palm Sunday of 1659.[191] St. Jago, which lay in a pleasant, fertile plain some fifteen or twenty leagues in the interior of Hispaniola, they approached through the woods on the night of Holy Wednesday, entered before daybreak, and surprised the governor in his bed. The buccaneers told him to prepare to die, whereupon he fell on his knees and prayed to such effect that they finally offered him his life for a ransom of 60,000 pieces of eight. They pillaged for twenty-four hours, taking even the bells, ornaments and sacred vessels of the churches, and after refreshing themselves with food and drink, retreated with their plunder and prisoners, including the governor and chief inhabitants. Meanwhile the alarm had been given for ten or twelve leagues round about. Men came in from all directions, and rallying with the inhabitants of the town till they amounted to about 1000 men, marched through the woods by a by-route, got ahead of the buccaneers and attacked them from ambush. The English and French stood their ground in spite of inferior numbers, for they were all good marksmen and every shot told. As the Spaniards persisted, however, they finally threatened to stab the governor and all the other prisoners, whereupon the Spaniards took counsel and retired to their homes. The invaders lost only ten killed and five or six wounded. They tarried on the coast several days waiting for the rest of the promised ransom, but as it failed to arrive they liberated the prisoners and returned to Tortuga, each adventurer receiving 300 crowns as his share of the pillage.[192]

In the latter part of 1659 a French gentleman, Jeremie Deschamps, seigneur du Rausset, who had been one of the first inhabitants of Tortuga under Levasseur and de Fontenay, repaired to England and had sufficient influence there to obtain an order from the Council of State to Colonel Doyley to give him a commission as governor of Tortuga, with such instructions as Doyley might think requisite.[193] This same du Rausset, it seems, had received a French commission from Louis XIV. as early as November 1656.[194] At any rate, he came to Jamaica in 1660 and obtained his commission from Doyley on condition that he held Tortuga in the English interest.[195] Watts, it seems, had meanwhile learnt that he was to be superseded by a Frenchman, whereupon he embarked with his family and all his goods and sought refuge in New England. About two months later, according to one story, Doyley heard that Deschamps had given a commission to a privateer and committed insolences for which Doyley feared to be called to account. He sent to remonstrate with him, but Deschamps answered that he possessed a French commission and that he had better interest with the powers in England than had the governor of Jamaica. As there were more French than English on the island, Deschamps then proclaimed the King of France and set up the French colours.[196] Doyley as yet had received no authority from the newly-restored king, Charles II., and hesitated to use any force; but he did give permission to Arundell, Watts' son-in-law, to surprise Deschamps and carry him to Jamaica for trial. Deschamps was absent at the time at Santa Cruz, but Arundell, relying upon the friendship and esteem which the inhabitants had felt for his father-in-law, surprised the governor's nephew and deputy, the Sieur de la Place, and possessed himself of the island. By some mischance or neglect, however, he was disarmed by the French and sent back to Jamaica.[197] This was not the end of his misfortunes. On the way to Jamaica he and his company were surprised by Spaniards in the bay of Matanzas in Cuba, and carried to Puerto Principe. There, after a month's imprisonment, Arundell and Barth. Cock, his shipmaster, were taken out by negroes into the bush and murdered, and their heads brought into the town.[198] Deschamps later returned to France because of ill-health, leaving la Place to govern the island in his stead, and when the property of the French Antilles was vested in the new French West India Company in 1664 he was arrested and sent to the Bastille. The cause of his arrest is obscure, but it seems that he had been in correspondence with the English government, to whom he had offered to restore Tortuga on condition of being reimbursed with L6000 sterling. A few days in the Bastille made him think better of his resolution. He ceded his rights to the company for 15,000 livres, and was released from confinement in November.[199]

The fiasco of Arundell's attempt was not the only effort of the English to recover the island. In answer to a memorial presented by Lord Windsor before his departure for Jamaica, an Order in Council was delivered to him in February 1662, empowering him to use his utmost endeavours to reduce Tortuga and its governor to obedience.[200] The matter was taken up by the Jamaican Council in September, shortly after Windsor's arrival;[201] and on 16th December an order was issued by deputy-governor Lyttleton to Captain Robert Munden of the "Charles" frigate for the transportation of Colonel Samuel Barry and Captain Langford to Tortuga, where Munden was to receive orders for reducing the island.[202] The design miscarried again, however, probably because of ill-blood between Barry and Munden. Clement de Plenneville, who accompanied Barry, writes that "the expedition failed through treachery";[203] and Beeston says in his Journal that Barry, approaching Tortuga on 30th January, found the French armed and ready to oppose him, whereupon he ordered Captain Munden to fire. Munden however refused, sailed away to Corydon in Hispaniola, where he put Barry and his men on shore, and then "went away about his merchandize."[204] Barry made his way in a sloop to Jamaica where he arrived on 1st March. Langford, however, was sent to Petit-Goave, an island about the size of Tortuga in the cul-de-sac at the western end of Hispaniola, where he was chosen governor by the inhabitants and raised the first English standard. Petit-Goave had been frequented by buccaneers since 1659, and after d'Ogeron succeeded du Rausset as governor for the French in those regions, it became with Tortuga one of their chief resorts. In the latter part of 1664 we find Langford in England petitioning the king for a commission as governor of Tortuga and the coast of Hispaniola, and for two ships to go and seize the smaller island.[205] Such a design, however, with the direct sanction and aid of the English government, might have endangered a rupture with France. Charles preferred to leave such irregular warfare to his governor in Jamaica, whom he could support or disown as best suited the exigencies of the moment. Langford, moreover, seems not to have made a brilliant success of his short stay at Petit-Goave, and was probably distrusted by the authorities both in England and in the West Indies. When Modyford came as governor to Jamaica, the possibility of recovering Tortuga was still discussed, but no effort to effect it was ever made again.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 189: Dutertre, t. iii. p. 126; Add. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.

On 26th February 1656 there arrived at Jamaica a small vessel the master of which, touching at Tortuga, had found upon the deserted island two papers, one in Spanish, the other in "sorrie English" (Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 601). These papers were copies of a proclamation forbidding settlement on the island, and the English paper (Rawl. MSS., A. 29, f. 500) is printed in Firth's "Venables" as follows:—

"The Captane and Sarginge Mager Don Baltearsor Calderon and Spenoso, Nopte to the President that is now in the sity of Santo-domingo, and Captane of the gones of the sitye, and Governor and Lord Mare of this Island, and stranch of this Lland of Tortogo, and Chefe Comander of all for the Khinge of Spaine.

"Yoo moust understand that all pepell what soever that shall com to this Iland of the Khinge of Spaine Catholok wich is name is Don Pilep the Ostere the forth of this name, that with his harmes he hath put of Feleminge and French men and Englesh with lefee heare from the yeare of 1630 tell the yeare of thurty fouer and tell the yeare of fifte fouer in wich the Kinge of Spane uesenge all curtyse and given good quartell to all that was upon this Iland, after that came and with oute Recepet upon this Iland knowinge that the Kinge of Spane had planted upon it and fortified in the name of the Kinge came the forth time the 15th of Augost the last yeare French and Fleminges to govern this Iland the same Governeore that was heare befor his name was Themeleon hot man De founttana gentleman of the ourder of Guresalem for to take this Iland put if fources by se and land and forsed us to beate him oute of this place with a greate dale of shame, and be caues yoo shall take notes that wee have puelld doune the Casill and carid all the gonenes and have puelld doune all the houes and have lefte no thinge, the same Captane and Sargint-mager in the name of the Kinge wich God blesh hath given yoo notis that what souer nason souer that shall com to live upon this Iland that thare shall not a man mother or children cape of the sorde, thare fore I give notiss to all pepell that they shall have a care with out anye more notis for this is the order of the Kinge and with out fall you will not want yooer Pamente and this is the furst and second and thorde time, and this whe leave heare for them that comes hear to take notis, that when wee com upon you, you shall not pleate that you dod not know is riten the 25 of August 1656."

Baltesar Calderon y Espinosa Por Mandado de Senor Gou^{or}. Pedro Fran^{co} de riva deney xasuss.

]

[Footnote 190: In Dutertre's account the name is Eliazouard (Elias Ward).]

[Footnote 191: According to a Spanish account of the expedition the date was 1661. Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.]

[Footnote 192: Dutertre, tom. iii. pp. 130-34.]

[Footnote 193: Rawl. MSS., A. 347, ff. 31 and 36; S.P. Spain, vol. 47:—Deposition of Sir Charles Lyttleton; Margry, op. cit., p. 281.]

[Footnote 194: Charlevoix, op. cit., liv. vii. p. 36; Vaissiere, op. cit., p. 10.]

[Footnote 195: According to Dutertre, Deschamps' commission extended only to the French inhabitants upon Tortuga, the French and English living thereafter under separate governments as at St. Kitts. Dutertre, t. iii. p. 135.]

[Footnote 196: Rawl. MSS., A. 347, f. 36.

According to Dutertre's version, Watts had scarcely forsaken the island when Deschamps arrived in the Road, and found that the French inhabitants had already made themselves masters of the colony and had substituted the French for the English standard. Dutertre, t. iii. p. 136.]

[Footnote 197: Rawl. MSS., A. 347, f. 36.]

[Footnote 198: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 648.]

[Footnote 199: Dutertre, t. iii. p. 138; Vaissiere, op. cit., p. 11, note 2.]

[Footnote 200: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 233.]

[Footnote 201: Ibid., No. 364.]

[Footnote 202: Ibid., No. 390; cf. also No. 474 (1).]

[Footnote 203: Ibid., No. 475.]

[Footnote 204: Beeston's Journal, 1st March 1663.

According to Dutertre, some inhabitants of Tortuga ran away to Jamaica and persuaded the governor that they could no longer endure French domination, and that if an armed force was sent, it would find no obstacle in restoring the English king's authority. Accordingly Col. Barry was despatched to receive their allegiance, with orders to use no violence but only to accept their voluntary submission. When Barry landed on Tortuga, however, with no other support than a proclamation and a harangue, the French inhabitants laughed in his face, and he returned to Jamaica in shame and confusion. Dutertre, t. iii. pp. 137-38.]

[Footnote 205: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 817-21.]



CHAPTER V

PORTO BELLO AND PANAMA

On 4th January 1664, the king wrote to Sir Thomas Modyford in Barbadoes that he had chosen him governor of Jamaica.[206] Modyford, who had lived as a planter in Barbadoes since 1650, had taken a prominent share in the struggles between Parliamentarians and Royalists in the little island. He was a member of the Council, and had been governor for a short time in 1660. His commission and instructions for Jamaica[207] were carried to the West Indies by Colonel Edward Morgan, who went as Modyford's deputy-governor and landed in Barbadoes on 21st April.[208] Modyford was instructed, among other things, to prohibit the granting of letters of marque, and particularly to encourage trade and maintain friendly relations with the Spanish dominions. Sir Richard Fanshaw had just been appointed to go to Spain and negotiate a treaty for wider commercial privileges in the Indies, and Charles saw that the daily complaints of violence and depredation done by Jamaican ships on the King of Spain's subjects were scarcely calculated to increase the good-will and compliance of the Spanish Court. Nor had the attempt in the Indies to force a trade upon the Spaniards been brilliantly successful. It was soon evident that another course of action was demanded. Sir Thomas Modyford seems at first to have been sincerely anxious to suppress privateering and conciliate his Spanish neighbours. On receiving his commission and instructions he immediately prepared letters to the President of San Domingo, expressing his fair intentions and requesting the co-operation of the Spaniards.[209] Modyford himself arrived in Jamaica on 1st June,[210] proclaimed an entire cessation of hostilities,[211] and on the 16th sent the "Swallow" ketch to Cartagena to acquaint the governor with what he had done. On almost the same day letters were forwarded from England and from Ambassador Fanshaw in Madrid, strictly forbidding all violences in the future against the Spanish nation, and ordering Modyford to inflict condign punishment on every offender, and make entire restitution and satisfaction to the sufferers.[212]

The letters for San Domingo, which had been forwarded to Jamaica with Colonel Morgan and thence dispatched to Hispaniola before Modyford's arrival, received a favourable answer, but that was about as far as the matter ever got. The buccaneers, moreover, the principal grievance of the Spaniards, still remained at large. As Thomas Lynch wrote on 25th May, "It is not in the power of the governor to have or suffer a commerce, nor will any necessity or advantage bring private Spaniards to Jamaica, for we and they have used too many mutual barbarisms to have a sudden correspondence. When the king was restored, the Spaniards thought the manners of the English nation changed too, and adventured twenty or thirty vessels to Jamaica for blacks, but the surprises and irruptions by C. Myngs, for whom the governor of San Domingo has upbraided the commissioners, made the Spaniards redouble their malice, and nothing but an order from Spain can give us admittance or trade."[213] For a short time, however, a serious effort was made to recall the privateers. Several prizes which were brought into Port Royal were seized and returned to their owners, while the captors had their commissions taken from them. Such was the experience of one Captain Searles, who in August brought in two Spanish vessels, both of which were restored to the Spaniards, and Searles deprived of his rudder and sails as security against his making further depredations upon the Dons.[214] In November Captain Morris Williams sent a note to Governor Modyford, offering to come in with a rich prize of logwood, indigo and silver, if security were given that it should be condemned to him for the payment of his debts in Jamaica; and although the governor refused to give any promises the prize was brought in eight days later. The goods were seized and sold in the interest of the Spanish owner.[215] Nevertheless, the effects of the proclamation were not at all encouraging. In the first month only three privateers came in with their commissions, and Modyford wrote to Secretary Bennet on 30th June that he feared the only effect of the proclamation would be to drive them to the French in Tortuga. He therefore thought it prudent, he continued, to dispense somewhat with the strictness of his instructions, "doing by degrees and moderation what he had at first resolved to execute suddenly and severely."[216]

Tortuga was really the crux of the whole difficulty. Back in 1662 Colonel Doyley, in his report to the Lord Chancellor after his return to England, had suggested the reduction of Tortuga to English obedience as the only effective way of dealing with the buccaneers;[217] and Modyford in 1664 also realized the necessity of this preliminary step.[218] The conquest of Tortuga, however, was no longer the simple task it might have been four or five years earlier. The inhabitants of the island were now almost entirely French, and with their companions on the coast of Hispaniola had no intention of submitting to English dictation. The buccaneers, who had become numerous and independent and made Tortuga one of their principal retreats, would throw all their strength in the balance against an expedition the avowed object of whose coming was to make their profession impossible. The colony, moreover, received an incalculable accession of strength in the arrival of Bertrand d'Ogeron, the governor sent out in 1665 by the new French West India Company. D'Ogeron was one of the most remarkable figures in the West Indies in the second half of the seventeenth century. Of broad imagination and singular kindness of heart, with an indomitable will and a mind full of resource, he seems to have been an ideal man for the task, not only of reducing to some semblance of law and order a people who had never given obedience to any authority, but also of making palatable the regime and exclusive privileges of a private trading company. D'Ogeron first established himself at Port Margot on the coast of Hispaniola opposite Tortuga in the early part of 1665; and here the adventurers at once gave him to understand that they would never submit to any mere company, much less suffer an interruption of their trade with the Dutch, who had supplied them with necessities at a time when it was not even known in France that there were Frenchmen in that region. D'Ogeron pretended to subscribe to these conditions, passed over to Tortuga where he received the submission of la Place, and then to Petit-Goave and Leogane, in the cul-de-sac of Hispaniola. There he made his headquarters, adopted every means to attract planters and engages, and firmly established his authority. He made advances from his own purse without interest to adventurers who wished to settle down to planting, bought two ships to facilitate trade between the colony and France, and even contrived to have several lots of fifty women each brought over from France to be sold and distributed as wives amongst the colonists. The settlements soon put on a new air of prosperity, and really owed their existence as a permanent French colony to the efforts of this new governor.[219] It was under the administration of d'Ogeron that l'Olonnais,[220] Michel le Basque, and most of the French buccaneers flourished, whose exploits are celebrated in Exquemelin's history.

The conquest of Tortuga was not the only measure necessary for the effectual suppression of the buccaneers. Five or six swift cruisers were also required to pursue and bring to bay those corsairs who refused to come in with their commissions.[221] Since the Restoration the West Indies had been entirely denuded of English men-of-war; while the buccaneers, with the tacit consent or encouragement of Doyley, had at the same time increased both in numbers and boldness. Letters written from Jamaica in 1664 placed the number scattered abroad in privateering at from 1500 to 2000, sailing in fourteen or fifteen ships.[222] They were desperate men, accustomed to living at sea, with no trade but burning and plundering, and unlikely to take orders from any but stronger and faster frigates. Nor was this condition of affairs surprising when we consider that, in the seventeenth century, there flowed from Europe to the West Indies adventurers from every class of society; men doubtless often endowed with strong personalities, enterprising and intrepid; but often, too, of mediocre intelligence or little education, and usually without either money or scruples. They included many who had revolted from the narrow social laws of European countries, and were disinclined to live peaceably within the bounds of any organized society. Many, too, had belonged to rebellious political factions at home, men of the better classes who were banished or who emigrated in order to keep their heads upon their shoulders. In France the total exhaustion of public and private fortune at the end of the religious wars disposed many to seek to recoup themselves out of the immense colonial riches of the Spaniards; while the disorders of the Rebellion and the Commonwealth in England caused successive emigrations of Puritans and Loyalists to the newer England beyond the seas. At the close of the Thirty Years' War, too, a host of French and English adventurers, who had fattened upon Germany and her misfortunes, were left without a livelihood, and doubtless many resorted to emigration as the sole means of continuing their life of freedom and even of licence. Coming to the West Indies these men, so various in origin and character, hoped soon to acquire there the riches which they lost or coveted at home; and their expectations deceived, they often broke in a formal and absolute manner the bonds which attached them to their fellow humanity. Jamaica especially suffered in this respect, for it had been colonized in the first instance by a discontented, refractory soldiery, and it was being recruited largely by transported criminals and vagabonds. In contrast with the policy of Spain, who placed the most careful restrictions upon the class of emigrants sent to her American possessions, England from the very beginning used her colonies, and especially the West Indian islands, as a dumping-ground for her refuse population. Within a short time a regular trade sprang up for furnishing the colonies with servile labour from the prisons of the mother country. Scots captured at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester,[223] English, French, Irish and Dutch pirates lying in the gaols of Dorchester and Plymouth,[224] if "not thought fit to be tried for their lives," were shipped to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other Antilles. In August 1656 the Council of State issued an order for the apprehension of all lewd and dangerous persons, rogues, vagrants and other idlers who had no way of livelihood and refused to work, to be transported by contractors to the English plantations in America;[225] and in June 1661 the Council for Foreign Plantations appointed a committee to consider the same matter.[226] Complaints were often made that children and apprentices were "seduced or spirited away" from their parents and masters and concealed upon ships sailing for the colonies; and an office of registry was established to prevent this abuse.[227] In 1664 Charles granted a licence for five years to Sir James Modyford, brother of Sir Thomas, to take all felons convicted in the circuits and at the Old Bailey who were afterwards reprieved for transportation to foreign plantations, and to transmit them to the governor of Jamaica;[228] and this practice was continued throughout the whole of the buccaneering period.

Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits, impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken part in them fell to robbing on their private account. Sir Charles Lyttleton, we have seen, zealously defended and encouraged the freebooters; and Long, the historian of Jamaica, justified their existence on the ground that many traders were attracted to the island by the plunder with which Port Royal was so abundantly stocked, and that the prosperity of the colony was founded upon the great demand for provisions for the outfit of the privateers. These effects, however, were but temporary and superficial, and did not counterbalance the manifest evils of the practice, especially the discouragement to planting, and the element of turbulence and unrest ever present in the island. Under such conditions Governor Modyford found it necessary to temporise with the marauders, and perhaps he did so the more readily because he felt that they were still needed for the security of the colony. A war between England and the States-General then seemed imminent, and the governor considered that unless he allowed the buccaneers to dispose of their booty when they came in to Port Royal, they might, in event of hostilities breaking out, go to the Dutch at Curacao and other islands, and prey upon Jamaican commerce. On the other hand, if, by adopting a conciliatory attitude, he retained their allegiance, they would offer the handiest and most effective instrument for driving the Dutch themselves out of the Indies.[229] He privately told one captain, who brought in a Spanish prize, that he only stopped the Admiralty proceedings to "give a good relish to the Spaniard"; and that although the captor should have satisfaction, the governor could not guarantee him his ship. So Sir Thomas persuaded some merchants to buy the prize-goods and contributed one quarter of the money himself, with the understanding that he should receive nothing if the Spaniards came to claim their property.[230] A letter from Secretary Bennet, on 12th November 1664, confirmed the governor in this course;[231] and on 2nd February 1665, three weeks before the declaration of war against Holland, a warrant was issued to the Duke of York, High Admiral of England, to grant, through the colonial governors and vice-admirals, commissions of reprisal upon the ships and goods of the Dutch.[232] Modyford at once took advantage of this liberty. Some fourteen pirates, who in the beginning of February had been tried and condemned to death, were pardoned; and public declaration was made that commissions would be granted against the Hollanders. Before nightfall two commissions had been taken out, and all the rovers were making applications and planning how to seize Curacao.[233] Modyford drew up an elaborate design[234] for rooting out at one and the same time the Dutch settlements and the French buccaneers, and on 20th April he wrote that Lieutenant-Colonel Morgan had sailed with ten ships and some 500 men, chiefly "reformed prisoners," resolute fellows, and well armed with fusees and pistols.[235] Their plan was to fall upon the Dutch fleet trading at St. Kitts, capture St. Eustatius, Saba, and perhaps Curacao, and on the homeward voyage visit the French settlements on Hispaniola and Tortuga. "All this is prepared," he wrote, "by the honest privateer, at the old rate of no purchase no pay, and it will cost the king nothing considerable, some powder and mortar-pieces." On the same day, 20th April, Admiral de Ruyter, who had arrived in the Indies with a fleet of fourteen sail, attacked the forts and shipping at Barbadoes, but suffered considerable damage and retired after a few hours. At Montserrat and Nevis, however, he was more successful and captured sixteen merchant ships, after which he sailed for Virginia and New York.[236]

The buccaneers enrolled in Colonel Morgan's expedition proved to be troublesome allies. Before their departure from Jamaica most of them mutinied, and refused to sail until promised by Morgan that the plunder should be equally divided.[237] On 17th July, however, the expedition made its rendezvous at Montserrat, and on the 23rd arrived before St. Eustatius. Two vessels had been lost sight of, a third, with the ironical name of the "Olive Branch," had sailed for Virginia, and many stragglers had been left behind at Montserrat, so that Morgan could muster only 326 men for the assault. There was only one landing-place on the island, with a narrow path accommodating but two men at a time leading to an eminence which was crowned with a fort and 450 Dutchmen. Morgan landed his division first, and Colonel Carey followed. The enemy, it seems, gave them but one small volley and then retreated to the fort. The governor sent forward three men to parley, and on receiving a summons to surrender, delivered up the fort with eleven large guns and considerable ammunition. "It is supposed they were drunk or mad," was the comment made upon the rather disgraceful defence.[238] During the action Colonel Morgan, who was an old man and very corpulent, was overcome by the hard marching and extraordinary heat, and died. Colonel Carey, who succeeded him in command, was anxious to proceed at once to the capture of the Dutch forts on Saba, St. Martins and Tortola; but the buccaneers refused to stir until the booty got at St. Eustatius was divided—nor were the officers and men able to agree on the manner of sharing. The plunder, besides guns and ammunition, included about 900 slaves, negro and Indian, with a large quantity of live stock and cotton. Meanwhile a party of seventy had crossed over to the island of Saba, only four leagues distant, and secured its surrender on the same terms as St. Eustatius. As the men had now become very mutinous, and on a muster numbered scarcely 250, the officers decided that they could not reasonably proceed any further and sailed for Jamaica, leaving a small garrison on each of the islands. Most of the Dutch, about 250 in number, were sent to St. Martins, but a few others, with some threescore English, Irish and Scotch, took the oath of allegiance and remained.[239]

Encouraged by a letter from the king,[240] Governor Modyford continued his exertions against the Dutch. In January (?) 1666 two buccaneer captains, Searles and Stedman, with two small ships and only eighty men took the island of Tobago, near Trinidad, and destroyed everything they could not carry away. Lord Willoughby, governor of Barbadoes, had also fitted out an expedition to take the island, but the Jamaicans were three or four days before him. The latter were busy with their work of pillage, when Willoughby arrived and demanded the island in the name of the king; and the buccaneers condescended to leave the fort and the governor's house standing only on condition that Willoughby gave them liberty to sell their plunder in Barbadoes.[241] Modyford, meanwhile, greatly disappointed by the miscarriage of the design against Curacao, called in the aid of the "old privateer," Captain Edward Mansfield, and in the autumn of 1665, with the hope of sending another armament against the island, appointed a rendezvous for the buccaneers in Bluefields Bay.[242]

In January 1666 war against England was openly declared by France in support of her Dutch allies, and in the following month Charles II. sent letters to his governors in the West Indies and the North American colonies, apprising them of the war and urging them to attack their French neighbours.[243] The news of the outbreak of hostilities did not reach Jamaica until 2nd July, but already in December of the previous year warning had been sent out to the West Indies of the coming rupture.[244] Governor Modyford, therefore, seeing the French very much increased in Hispaniola, concluded that it was high time to entice the buccaneers from French service and bind them to himself by issuing commissions against the Spaniards. The French still permitted the freebooters to dispose of Spanish prizes in their ports, but the better market afforded by Jamaica was always a sufficient consideration to attract not only the English buccaneers, but the Dutch and French as well. Moreover, the difficulties of the situation, which Modyford had repeatedly enlarged upon in his letters, seem to have been appreciated by the authorities in England, for in the spring of 1665, following upon Secretary Bennet's letter of 12th November and shortly after the outbreak of the Dutch war, the Duke of Albemarle had written to Modyford in the name of the king, giving him permission to use his own discretion in granting commissions against the Dons.[245] Modyford was convinced that all the circumstances were favourable to such a course of action, and on 22nd February assembled the Council. A resolution was passed that it was to the interest of the island to grant letters of marque against the Spaniards,[246] and a proclamation to this effect was published by the governor at Port Royal and Tortuga. In the following August Modyford sent home to Bennet, now become Lord Arlington, an elaborate defence of his actions. "Your Lordship very well knows," wrote Modyford, "how great an aversion I had for the privateers while at Barbadoes, but after I had put His Majesty's orders for restitution in strict execution, I found my error in the decay of the forts and wealth of this place, and also the affections of this people to His Majesty's service; yet I continued discountenancing and punishing those kind of people till your Lordship's of the 12th November 1664 arrived, commanding a gentle usage of them; still we went to decay, which I represented to the Lord General faithfully the 6th of March following, who upon serious consideration with His Majesty and the Lord Chancellor, by letter of 1st June 1665, gave me latitude to grant or not commissions against the Spaniard, as I found it for the advantage of His Majesty's service and the good of this island. I was glad of this power, yet resolved not to use it unless necessity drove me to it; and that too when I saw how poor the fleets returning from Statia were, so that vessels were broken up and the men disposed of for the coast of Cuba to get a livelihood and so be wholly alienated from us. Many stayed at the Windward Isles, having not enough to pay their engagements, and at Tortuga and among the French buccaneers; still I forebore to make use of my power, hoping their hardships and great hazards would in time reclaim them from that course of life. But about the beginning of March last I found that the guards of Port Royal, which under Colonel Morgan were 600, had fallen to 138, so I assembled the Council to advise how to strengthen that most important place with some of the inland forces; but they all agreed that the only way to fill Port Royal with men was to grant commissions against the Spaniards, which they were very pressing in ... and looking on our weak condition, the chief merchants gone from Port Royal, no credit given to privateers for victualling, etc., and rumours of war with the French often repeated, I issued a declaration of my intentions to grant commissions against the Spaniards. Your Lordship cannot imagine what an universal change there was on the faces of men and things, ships repairing, great resort of workmen and labourers to Port Royal, many returning, many debtors released out of prison, and the ships from the Curacao voyage, not daring to come in for fear of creditors, brought in and fitted out again, so that the regimental forces at Port Royal are near 400. Had it not been for that seasonable action, I could not have kept my place against the French buccaneers, who would have ruined all the seaside plantations at least, whereas I now draw from them mainly, and lately David Marteen, the best man of Tortuga, that has two frigates at sea, has promised to bring in both."[247]

In so far as the buccaneers affected the mutual relations of England and Spain, it after all could make little difference whether commissions were issued in Jamaica or not, for the plundering and burning continued, and the harassed Spanish-Americans, only too prone to call the rogues English of whatever origin they might really be, continued to curse and hate the English nation and make cruel reprisals whenever possible. Moreover, every expedition into Spanish territory, finding the Spaniards very weak and very rich, gave new incentive to such endeavour. While Modyford had been standing now on one foot, now on the other, uncertain whether to repulse the buccaneers or not, secretly anxious to welcome them, but fearing the authorities at home, the corsairs themselves had entirely ignored him. The privateers whom Modyford had invited to rendezvous in Bluefield's Bay in November 1665 had chosen Captain Mansfield as their admiral, and in the middle of January sailed from the south cays of Cuba for Curacao. In the meantime, however, because they had been refused provisions which, according to Modyford's account, they sought to buy from the Spaniards in Cuba, they had marched forty-two miles into the island, and on the strength of Portuguese commissions which they held against the Spaniards, had plundered and burnt the town of Sancti Spiritus, routed a body of 200 horse, carried some prisoners to the coast, and for their ransom extorted 300 head of cattle.[248] The rich and easy profits to be got by plundering the Spaniards were almost too much for the loyalty of the men, and Modyford, hearing of many defections from their ranks, had despatched Captain Beeston on 10th November to divert them, if possible, from Sancti Spiritus, and confirm them in their designs against Curacao.[249] The officers of the expedition, indeed, sent to the governor a letter expressing their zeal for the enterprise; but the men still held off, and the fleet, in consequence, eventually broke up. Two vessels departed for Tortuga, and four others, joined by two French rovers, sailed under Mansfield to attempt the recapture of Providence Island, which, since 1641, had been garrisoned by the Spaniards and used as a penal settlement.[250] Being resolved, as Mansfield afterwards told the governor of Jamaica, never to see Modyford's face until he had done some service to the king, he sailed for Providence with about 200 men,[251] and approaching the island in the night by an unusual passage among the reefs, landed early in the morning, and surprised and captured the Spanish commander. The garrison of about 200 yielded up the fort on the promise that they would be carried to the mainland. Twenty-seven pieces of ordnance were taken, many of which, it is said, bore the arms of Queen Elizabeth engraved upon them. Mansfield left thirty-five men under command of a Captain Hattsell to hold the island, and sailed with his prisoners for Central America. After cruising along the shores of the mainland, he ascended the San Juan River and entered and sacked Granada, the capital of Nicaragua. From Granada the buccaneers turned south into Costa Rica, burning plantations, breaking the images in the churches, ham-stringing cows and mules, cutting down the fruit trees, and in general destroying everything they found. The Spanish governor had only thirty-six soldiers at his disposal and scarcely any firearms; but he gathered the inhabitants and some Indians, blocked the roads, laid ambuscades, and did all that his pitiful means permitted to hinder the progress of the invaders. The freebooters had designed to visit Cartago, the chief city of the province, and plunder it as they had plundered Granada. They penetrated only as far as Turrialva, however, whence weary and footsore from their struggle through the Cordillera, and harassed by the Spaniards, they retired through the province of Veragua in military order to their ships.[252] On 12th June the buccaneers, laden with booty, sailed into Port Royal. There was at that moment no declared war between England and Spain. Yet the governor, probably because he believed Mansfield to be justified, ex post facto, by the issue of commissions against the Spaniards in the previous February, did no more than mildly reprove him for acting without his orders; and "considering its good situation for favouring any design on the rich main," he accepted the tender of the island in behalf of the king. He despatched Major Samuel Smith, who had been one of Mansfield's party, with a few soldiers to reinforce the English garrison;[253] and on 10th November the Council in England set the stamp of their approval upon his actions by issuing a commission to his brother, Sir James Modyford, to be lieutenant-governor of the new acquisition.[254]

In August 1665, only two months before the departure of Mansfield from Jamaica, there had returned to Port Royal from a raid in the same region three privateer captains named Morris, Jackman and Morgan.[255] These men, with their followers, doubtless helped to swell the ranks of Mansfield's buccaneers, and it was probably their report of the wealth of Central America which induced Mansfield to emulate their performance. In the previous January these three captains, still pretending to sail under commissions from Lord Windsor, had ascended the river Tabasco, in the province of Campeache, with 107 men, and guided by Indians made a detour of 300 miles, according to their account, to Villa de Mosa,[256] which they took and plundered. When they returned to the mouth of the river, they found that their ships had been seized by Spaniards, who, on their approach, attacked them 300 strong. The Spaniards, softened by the heat and indolent life of the tropics, were no match for one-third their number of desperadoes, and the buccaneers beat them off without the loss of a man. The freebooters then fitted up two barques and four canoes, sailed to Rio Garta and stormed the place with only thirty men; crossed the Gulf of Honduras to the Island of Roatan to rest and obtain fresh water, and then captured and plundered the port of Truxillo. Down the Mosquito Coast they passed like a devouring flame, consuming all in their path. Anchoring in Monkey Bay, they ascended the San Juan River in canoes for a distance of 100 miles to Lake Nicaragua. The basin into which they entered they described as a veritable paradise, the air cool and wholesome, the shores of the lake full of green pastures and broad savannahs dotted with horses and cattle, and round about all a coronal of azure mountains. Hiding by day among the numerous islands and rowing all night, on the fifth night they landed near the city of Granada, just a year before Mansfield's visit to the place. The buccaneers marched unobserved to the central square of the city, overturned eighteen cannon mounted there, seized the magazine, and took and imprisoned in the cathedral 300 of the citizens. They plundered for sixteen hours, then released their prisoners, and taking the precaution to scuttle all the boats, made their way back to the sea coast. The town was large and pleasant, containing seven churches besides several colleges and monasteries, and most of the buildings were constructed of stone. About 1000 Indians, driven to rebellion by the cruelty and oppression of the Spaniards, accompanied the marauders and would have massacred the prisoners, especially the religious, had they not been told that the English had no intentions of retaining their conquest. The news of the exploit produced a lively impression in Jamaica, and the governor suggested Central America as the "properest place" for an attack from England on the Spanish Indies.[257]

Providence Island was now in the hands of an English garrison, and the Spaniards were not slow to realise that the possession of this outpost by the buccaneers might be but the first step to larger conquests on the mainland. The President of Panama, Don Juan Perez de Guzman, immediately took steps to recover the island. He transferred himself to Porto Bello, embargoed an English ship of thirty guns, the "Concord," lying at anchor there with licence to trade in negroes, manned it with 350 Spaniards under command of Jose Sanchez Jimenez, and sent it to Cartagena. The governor of Cartagena contributed several small vessels and a hundred or more men to the enterprise, and on 10th August 1666 the united Spanish fleet appeared off the shores of Providence. On the refusal of Major Smith to surrender, the Spaniards landed, and on 15th August, after a three days' siege, forced the handful of buccaneers, only sixty or seventy in number, to capitulate. Some of the English defenders later deposed before Governor Modyford that the Spaniards had agreed to let them depart in a barque for Jamaica. However this may be, when the English came to lay down their arms they were made prisoners by the Spaniards, carried to Porto Bello, and all except Sir Thomas Whetstone, Major Smith and Captain Stanley, the three English captains, submitted to the most inhuman cruelties. Thirty-three were chained to the ground in a dungeon 12 feet by 10. They were forced to work in the water from five in the morning till seven at night, and at such a rate that the Spaniards themselves confessed they made one of them do more work than any three negroes; yet when weak for want of victuals and sleep, they were knocked down and beaten with cudgels so that four or five died. "Having no clothes, their backs were blistered with the sun, their heads scorched, their necks, shoulders and hands raw with carrying stones and mortar, their feet chopped and their legs bruised and battered with the irons, and their corpses were noisome to one another." The three English captains were carried to Panama, and there cast into a dungeon and bound in irons for seventeen months.[258]

On 8th January 1664 Sir Richard Fanshaw, formerly ambassador to Portugal, had arrived in Madrid from England to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Spain, and if possible to patch up a peace between the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. He had renewed the old demand for a free commerce in the Indies; and the negotiations had dragged through the years of 1664 and 1665, hampered and crossed by the factions in the Spanish court, the hostile machinations of the Dutch resident in Madrid, and the constant rumours of cruelties and desolations by the freebooters in America.[259] The Spanish Government insisted that by sole virtue of the articles of 1630 there was peace on both sides of the "Line," and that the violences of the buccaneers in the West Indies, and even the presence of English colonists there, was a breach of the articles. In this fashion they endeavoured to reduce Fanshaw to the position of a suppliant for favours which they might only out of their grace and generosity concede. It was a favourite trick of Spanish diplomacy, which had been worked many times before. The English ambassador was, in consequence, compelled strenuously to deny the existence of any peace in America, although he realised how ambiguous his position had been rendered by the original orders of Charles II. to Modyford in 1664.[260] After the death of Philip IV. in 1665, negotiations were renewed with the encouragement of the Queen Regent, and on 17th December provisional articles were signed by Fanshaw and the Duke de Medina de los Torres and sent to England for ratification.[261] Fanshaw died shortly after, and Lord Sandwich, his successor, finally succeeded in concluding a treaty on 23rd May 1667.[262] The provisions of the treaty extended to places "where hitherto trade and commerce hath been accustomed," and the only privileges obtained in America were those which had been granted to the Low Countries by the Treaty of Munster. On 21st July of the same year a general peace was concluded at Breda between England, Holland and France.

It was in the very midst of Lord Sandwich's negotiations that Modyford had, as Beeston expresses it in his Journal, declared war against the Spaniards by the re-issue of privateering commissions. He had done it all in his own name, however, so that the king might disavow him should the exigencies of diplomacy demand it.[263] Moreover, at this same time, in the middle of 1666, Albemarle was writing to Modyford that notwithstanding the negotiations, in which, as he said, the West Indies were not at all concerned, the governor might still employ the privateers as formerly, if it be for the benefit of English interests in the Indies.[264] The news of the general peace reached Jamaica late in 1667; yet Modyford did not change his policy. It is true that in February Secretary Lord Arlington had sent directions to restrain the buccaneers from further acts of violence against the Spaniards;[265] but Modyford drew his own conclusions from the contradictory orders received from England, and was conscious, perhaps, that he was only reflecting the general policy of the home government when he wrote to Arlington:—"Truly it must be very imprudent to run the hazard of this place, for obtaining a correspondence which could not but by orders from Madrid be had.... The Spaniards look on us as intruders and trespassers, wheresoever they find us in the Indies, and use us accordingly; and were it in their power, as it is fixed in their wills, would soon turn us out of all our plantations; and is it reasonable that we should quietly let them grow upon us until they are able to do it? It must be force alone that can cut in sunder that unneighbourly maxim of their government to deny all access to strangers."[266]

These words were very soon translated into action, for in June 1668 Henry Morgan, with a fleet of nine or ten ships and between 400 and 500 men, took and sacked Porto Bello, one of the strongest cities of Spanish America, and the emporium for most of the European trade of the South American continent. Henry Morgan was a nephew of the Colonel Edward Morgan who died in the assault of St. Eustatius. He is said to have been kidnapped at Bristol while he was a mere lad and sold as a servant in Barbadoes, whence, on the expiration of his time, he found his way to Jamaica. There he joined the buccaneers and soon rose to be captain of a ship. It was probably he who took part in the expedition with Morris and Jackman to Campeache and Central America. He afterwards joined the Curacao armament of Mansfield and was with the latter when he seized the island of Providence. After Mansfield's disappearance Morgan seems to have taken his place as the foremost buccaneer leader in Jamaica, and during the next twenty years he was one of the most considerable men in the colony. He was but thirty-three years old when he led the expedition against Porto Bello.[267]

In the beginning of 1668 Sir Thomas Modyford, having had "frequent and strong advice" that the Spaniards were planning an invasion of Jamaica, had commissioned Henry Morgan to draw together the English privateers and take some Spanish prisoners in order to find out if these rumours were true. The buccaneers, according to Morgan's own report to the governor, were driven to the south cays of Cuba, where being in want of victuals and "like to starve," and meeting some Frenchmen in a similar plight, they put their men ashore to forage. They found all the cattle driven up into the country, however, and the inhabitants fled. So the freebooters marched twenty leagues to Puerto Principe on the north side of the island, and after a short encounter, in which the Spanish governor was killed, possessed themselves of the place. Nothing of value escaped the rapacity of the invaders, who resorted to the extremes of torture to draw from their prisoners confessions of hidden wealth. On the entreaty of the Spaniards they forebore to fire the town, and for a ransom of 1000 head of cattle released all the prisoners; but they compelled the Spaniards to salt the beef and carry it to the ships.[268] Morgan reported, with what degree of truth we have no means of judging, that seventy men had been impressed in Puerto Principe to go against Jamaica, and that a similar levy had been made throughout the island. Considerable forces, moreover, were expected from the mainland to rendezvous at Havana and St. Jago, with the final object of invading the English colony.

On returning to the ships from the sack of Puerto Principe, Morgan unfolded to his men his scheme of striking at the very heart of Spanish power in the Indies by capturing Porto Bello. The Frenchmen among his followers, it seems, wholly refused to join him in this larger design, full of danger as it was; so Morgan sailed away with only the English freebooters, some 400 in number, for the coasts of Darien. Exquemelin has left us a narrative of this exploit which is more circumstantial than any other we possess, and agrees so closely with what we know from other sources that we must accept the author's statement that he was an eye-witness. He relates the whole story, moreover, in so entertaining and picturesque a manner that he deserves quotation.

"Captain Morgan," he says, "who knew very well all the avenues of this city, as also all the neighbouring coasts, arrived in the dusk of the evening at the place called Puerto de Naos, distant ten leagues towards the west of Porto Bello.[269] Being come unto this place, they mounted the river in their ships, as far as another harbour called Puerto Pontin, where they came to anchor. Here they put themselves immediately into boats and canoes, leaving in the ships only a few men to keep them and conduct them the next day unto the port. About midnight they came to a certain place called Estera longa Lemos, where they all went on shore, and marched by land to the first posts of the city. They had in their company a certain Englishman, who had been formerly a prisoner in those parts, and who now served them for a guide. Unto him, and three or four more, they gave commission to take the sentry, if possible, or to kill him upon the place. But they laid hands on him and apprehended him with such cunning as he had no time to give warning with his musket, or make any other noise. Thus they brought him, with his hands bound, unto Captain Morgan, who asked him: 'How things went in the city, and what forces they had'; with many other circumstances, which he was desirous to know. After every question they made him a thousand menaces to kill him, in case he declared not the truth. Thus they began to advance towards the city, carrying always the said sentry bound before them. Having marched about one quarter of a league, they came to the castle that is nigh unto the city, which presently they closely surrounded, so that no person could get either in or out of the said fortress.