THE GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSES THE
BUCCANEERS
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 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 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. 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 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 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 deputy347—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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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
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 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 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 |
