CHAPTER I

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THE BUCCANEERS IN THE

WEST INDIES IN THE

XVII CENTURY

BY

C.H. HARING

WITH TEN MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

_First Published in 1910_

PREFACE

The principal facts about the exploits of the English and French

buccaneers of the seventeenth century in the West Indies are

sufficiently well known to modern readers. The French Jesuit historians

of the Antilles have left us many interesting details of their mode of

life, and Exquemelin's history of the freebooters has been reprinted

numerous times both in France and in England. Based upon these old,

contemporary narratives, modern accounts are issued from the press with

astonishing regularity, some of them purporting to be serious history,

others appearing in the more popular and entertaining guise of romances.

All, however, are alike in confining themselves for their information to

what may almost be called the traditional sources--Exquemelin, the

Jesuits, and perhaps a few narratives like those of Dampier and Wafer.

To write another history of these privateers or pirates, for they have,

unfortunately, more than once deserved that name, may seem a rather

fruitless undertaking. It is justified only by the fact that there exist

numerous other documents bearing upon the subject, documents which till

now have been entirely neglected. Exquemelin has been reprinted, the

story of the buccaneers has been re-told, yet no writer, whether editor

or historian, has attempted to estimate the trustworthiness of the old

tales by comparing them with these other sources, or to show the

connection between the buccaneers and the history of the English

colonies in the West Indies. The object of this volume, therefore, is

not only to give a narrative, according to the most authentic, available

sources, of the more brilliant exploits of these sea-rovers, but, what

is of greater interest and importance, to trace the policy pursued

toward them by the English and French Governments.

The "Buccaneers in the West Indies" was presented as a thesis to the

Board of Modern History of Oxford University in May 1909 to fulfil the

requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Letters. It was written under

the supervision of C.H. Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History in

Oxford, and to him the writer owes a lasting debt of gratitude for his

unfailing aid and sympathy during the course of preparation.

C.H.H.

Oxford, 1910

CONTENTS

Preface

CHAP. PAGE

I. Introductory--

Part I.--The Spanish Colonial System 1

Part II.--The Freebooters of the Sixteenth Century 28

II. The Beginnings of the Buccaneers 57

III. The Conquest of Jamaica 85

IV. Tortuga, 1655-1664 113

V. Porto Bello and Panama 120

VI. The Government Suppresses the Buccaneers 200

VII. The Buccaneers Turn Pirate 232

Appendices 273-74

Bibliography 275

Index 289

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of the West Indies _Frontispiece_

From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_.

FACING PAGE

Spanish Periagua 1

From Exquemelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers Trevoux_,

1744.

Buccaneer Vessels 76

From Exquemelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers Trevoux_,

1744.

A Correct Map of Jamaica 85

From the _Royal Magazine_, 1760.

Map of San Domingo 86

From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_.

Plan of the Bay and Town of Portobelo 154

From Prevost d'Exiles' _Voyages_.

The Isthmus of Darien 164

From Exquelmelin's _Bucaniers_, 1684-5.

'The Battel between the Spaniards and the

pyrats or Buccaniers before the Citty of

Panama' 166

From Exquemelin's _Bucaniers of America_, 1684-5.

Plan of Vera-Cruz 242

From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_, 1730.

Plan of the Town and Roadstead of Cartegena

and of the Forts 264

From Baron de Pontis' _Relation de ce qui c'est fait la

prise de Carthagene_, Bruxelles, 1698.

THE BUCCANEERS IN THE

WEST INDIES IN THE

XVII CENTURY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

I.--THE SPANISH COLONIAL SYSTEM

At the time of the discovery of America the Spaniards, as M.

Leroy-Beaulieu has remarked, were perhaps less fitted than any other

nation of western Europe for the task of American colonization. Whatever

may have been the political _rôle_ thrust upon them in the sixteenth

century by the Hapsburg marriages, whatever certain historians may say

of the grandeur and nobility of the Spanish national character, Spain

was then neither rich nor populous, nor industrious. For centuries she

had been called upon to wage a continuous warfare with the Moors, and

during this time had not only found little leisure to cultivate the arts

of peace, but had acquired a disdain for manual work which helped to

mould her colonial administration and influenced all her subsequent

history. And when the termination of the last of these wars left her

mistress of a united Spain, and the exploitation of her own resources

seemed to require all the energies she could muster, an entire new

hemisphere was suddenly thrown open to her, and given into her hands by

a papal decree to possess and populate. Already weakened by the exile of

the most sober and industrious of her population, the Jews; drawn into a

foreign policy for which she had neither the means nor the inclination;

instituting at home an economic policy which was almost epileptic in its

consequences, she found her strength dissipated, and gradually sank into

a condition of economic and political impotence.

Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor in the service of the Castilian

Crown, wishing to find a western route by sea to India and especially to

Zipangu (Japan), the magic land described by the Venetian traveller,

Marco Polo, landed on 12th October 1492, on "Guanahani," one of the

Bahama Islands. From "Guanahani" he passed on to other islands of the

same group, and thence to Hispaniola, Tortuga and Cuba. Returning to

Spain in March 1493, he sailed again in September of the same year with

seventeen vessels and 1500 persons, and this time keeping farther to the

south, sighted Porto Rico and some of the Lesser Antilles, founded a

colony on Hispaniola, and discovered Jamaica in 1494. On a third voyage

in 1498 he discovered Trinidad, and coasted along the shores of South

America from the Orinoco River to the island of Margarita. After a

fourth and last voyage in 1502-04, Columbus died at Valladolid in 1506,

in the firm belief that he had discovered a part of the Continent of

Asia.

The entire circle of the Antilles having thus been revealed before the

end of the fifteenth century, the Spaniards pushed forward to the

continent. While Hojida, Vespucci, Pinzon and de Solis were exploring

the eastern coast from La Plata to Yucatan, Ponce de Leon in 1512

discovered Florida, and in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa descried the

Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time

the existence of a new continent. In 1520 Magellan entered the Pacific

through the strait which bears his name, and a year later was killed in

one of the Philippine Islands. Within the next twenty years Cortez had

conquered the realm of Montezuma, and Pizarro the empire of Peru; and

thus within the space of two generations all of the West Indies, North

America to California and the Carolinas, all of South America except

Brazil, which the error of Cabral gave to the Portuguese, and in the

east the Philippine Islands and New Guinea passed under the sway of the

Crown of Castile.

Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493 had consulted with several persons of

eminent learning to find out whether it was necessary to obtain the

investiture of the Pope for their newly-discovered possessions, and all

were of opinion that this formality was unnecessary.[1] Nevertheless, on

3rd May 1493, a bull was granted by Pope Alexander VI., which divided

the sovereignty of those parts of the world not possessed by any

Christian prince between Spain and Portugal by a meridian line 100

leagues west of the Azores or of Cape Verde. Later Spanish writers made

much of this papal gift; yet, as Georges Scelle points out,[2] it is

possible that this bull was not so much a deed of conveyance, investing

the Spaniards with the proprietorship of America, as it was an act of

ecclesiastical jurisdiction according them, on the strength of their

acquired right and proven Catholicism, a monopoly as it were in the

propagation of the faith. At that time, even Catholic princes were no

longer accustomed to seek the Pope's sanction when making a new

conquest, and certainly in the domain of public law the Pope was not

considered to have temporal jurisdiction over the entire world. He did,

however, intervene in temporal matters when they directly influenced

spiritual affairs, and of this the propagation of the faith was an

instance. As the compromise between Spain and Portugal was very

indecisive, owing to the difference in longitude of the Azores and Cape

Verde, a second Act was signed on 7th June 1494, which placed the line

of demarcation 270 leagues farther to the west.

The colonization of the Spanish Indies, on its social and administrative

side, presents a curious contrast. On the one hand we see the Spanish

Crown, with high ideals of order and justice, of religious and political

unity, extending to its ultramarine possessions its faith, its language,

its laws and its administration; providing for the welfare of the

aborigines with paternal solicitude; endeavouring to restrain and temper

the passions of the conquerors; building churches and founding schools

and monasteries; in a word, trying to make its colonies an integral part

of the Spanish monarchy, "une société vieille dans une contrée neuve."

Some Spanish writers, it is true, have exaggerated the virtues of their

old colonial system; yet that system had excellences which we cannot

afford to despise. If the Spanish kings had not choked their government

with procrastination and routine; if they had only taken their task a

bit less seriously and had not tried to apply too strictly to an empty

continent the paternal administration of an older country; we might have

been privileged to witness the development and operation of as complete

and benign a system of colonial government as has been devised in modern

times. The public initiative of the Spanish government, and the care

with which it selected its colonists, compare very favourably with the

opportunism of the English and the French, who colonized by chance

private activity and sent the worst elements of their population,

criminals and vagabonds, to people their new settlements across the sea.

However much we may deprecate the treatment of the Indians by the

_conquistadores_, we must not forget that the greater part of the

population of Spanish America to-day is still Indian, and that no other

colonizing people have succeeded like the Spaniards in assimilating and

civilizing the natives. The code of laws which the Spaniards gradually

evolved for the rule of their transmarine provinces, was, in spite of

defects which are visible only to the larger experience of the present

day, one of the wisest, most humane and best co-ordinated of any to this

day published for any colony. Although the Spaniards had to deal with a

large population of barbarous natives, the word "conquest" was

suppressed in legislation as ill-sounding, "because the peace is to be

sealed," they said, "not with the sound of arms, but with charity and

good-will."[3]

The actual results, however, of the social policy of the Spanish kings

fell far below the ideals they had set for themselves. The monarchic

spirit of the crown was so strong that it crushed every healthy,

expansive tendency in the new countries. It burdened the colonies with a

numerous, privileged nobility, who congregated mostly in the larger

towns and set to the rest of the colonists a pernicious example of

idleness and luxury. In its zeal for the propagation of the Faith, the

Crown constituted a powerfully endowed Church, which, while it did

splendid service in converting and civilizing the natives, engrossed

much of the land in the form of mainmort, and filled the new world with

thousands of idle, unproductive, and often licentious friars. With an

innate distrust and fear of individual initiative, it gave virtual

omnipotence to royal officials and excluded all creoles from public

employment. In this fashion was transferred to America the crushing

political and ecclesiastical absolutism of the mother country.

Self-reliance and independence of thought or action on the part of the

creoles was discouraged, divisions and factions among them were

encouraged and educational opportunities restricted, and the

American-born Spaniards gradually sank into idleness and lethargy,

indifferent to all but childish honours and distinctions and petty local

jealousies. To make matters worse, many of the Spaniards who crossed the

seas to the American colonies came not to colonize, not to trade or

cultivate the soil, so much as to extract from the natives a tribute of

gold and silver. The Indians, instead of being protected and civilized,

were only too often reduced to serfdom and confined to a laborious

routine for which they had neither the aptitude nor the strength; while

the government at home was too distant to interfere effectively in their

behalf. Driven by cruel taskmasters they died by thousands from

exhaustion and despair, and in some places entirely disappeared.

The Crown of Castile, moreover, in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries sought to extend Spanish commerce and monopolize all the

treasure of the Indies by means of a rigid and complicated commercial

system. Yet in the end it saw the trade of the New World pass into the

hands of its rivals, its own marine reduced to a shadow of its former

strength, its crews and its vessels supplied by merchants from foreign

lands, and its riches diverted at their very source.

This Spanish commercial system was based upon two distinct principles.

One was the principle of colonial exclusivism, according to which all

the trade of the colonies was to be reserved to the mother country.

Spain on her side undertook to furnish the colonies with all they

required, shipped upon Spanish vessels; the colonies in return were to

produce nothing but raw materials and articles which did not compete

with the home products with which they were to be exchanged. The second

principle was the mercantile doctrine which, considering as wealth

itself the precious metals which are but its symbol, laid down that

money ought, by every means possible, to be imported and hoarded, never

exported.[4] This latter theory, the fallacy of which has long been

established, resulted in the endeavour of the Spanish Hapsburgs to

conserve the wealth of the country, not by the encouragement of

industry, but by the increase and complexity of imposts. The former

doctrine, adopted by a non-producing country which was in no position to

fulfil its part in the colonial compact, led to the most disastrous

consequences.

While the Spanish Crown was aiming to concentrate and monopolize its

colonial commerce, the prosperity of Spain itself was slowly sapped by

reason of these mistaken economic theories. Owing to the lack of

workmen, the increase of imposts, and the prejudice against the mechanic

arts, industry was being ruined; while the increased depopulation of the

realm, the mainmort of ecclesiastical lands, the majorats of the

nobility and the privileges of the Mesta, brought agriculture rapidly

into decay. The Spaniards, consequently, could not export the products

of their manufacture to the colonies, when they did not have enough to

supply their own needs. To make up for this deficiency their merchants

were driven to have recourse to foreigners, to whom they lent their

names in order to elude a law which forbade commerce between the

colonies and traders of other nations. In return for the manufactured

articles of the English, Dutch and French, and of the great commercial

cities like Genoa and Hamburg, they were obliged to give their own raw

materials and the products of the Indies--wool, silks, wines and dried

fruits, cochineal, dye-woods, indigo and leather, and finally, indeed,

ingots of gold and silver. The trade in Spain thus in time became a mere

passive machine. Already in 1545 it had been found impossible to furnish

in less than six years the goods demanded by the merchants of Spanish

America. At the end of the seventeenth century, foreigners were

supplying five-sixths of the manufactures consumed in Spain itself, and

engrossed nine-tenths of that American trade which the Spaniards had

sought so carefully to monopolize.[5]

In the colonies the most striking feature of Spanish economic policy was

its wastefulness. After the conquest of the New World, it was to the

interest of the Spaniards to gradually wean the native Indians from

barbarism by teaching them the arts and sciences of Europe, to encourage

such industries as were favoured by the soil, and to furnish the growing

colonies with those articles which they could not produce themselves,

and of which they stood in need. Only thus could they justify their

monopoly of the markets of Spanish America. The same test, indeed, may

be applied to every other nation which adopted the exclusivist system.

Queen Isabella wished to carry out this policy, introduced into the

newly-discovered islands wheat, the olive and the vine, and acclimatized

many of the European domestic animals.[6] Her efforts, unfortunately,

were not seconded by her successors, nor by the Spaniards who went to

the Indies. In time the government itself, as well as the colonist, came

to be concerned, not so much with the agricultural products of the

Indies, but with the return of the precious metals. Natives were made to

work the mines, while many regions adapted to agriculture, Guiana,

Caracas and Buenos Ayres, were neglected, and the peopling of the

colonies by Europeans was slow. The emperor, Charles V., did little to

stem this tendency, but drifted along with the tide. Immigration was

restricted to keep the colonies free from the contamination of heresy

and of foreigners. The Spanish population was concentrated in cities,

and the country divided into great estates granted by the crown to the

families of the _conquistadores_ or to favourites at court. The immense

areas of Peru, Buenos Ayres and Mexico were submitted to the most unjust

and arbitrary regulations, with no object but to stifle growing industry

and put them in absolute dependence upon the metropolis. It was

forbidden to exercise the trades of dyer, fuller, weaver, shoemaker or

hatter, and the natives were compelled to buy of the Spaniards even the

stuffs they wore on their backs. Another ordinance prohibited the

cultivation of the vine and the olive except in Peru and Chili, and even

these provinces might not send their oil and wine to Panama, Gautemala

or any other place which could be supplied from Spain.[7] To maintain

the commercial monopoly, legitimate ports of entry in Spanish America

were made few and far apart--for Mexico, Vera Cruz, for New Granada, the

town of Cartagena. The islands and most of the other provinces were

supplied by uncertain "vaisseaux de registre," while Peru and Chili,

finding all direct commerce by the Pacific or South Sea interdicted,

were obliged to resort to the fever-ridden town of Porto Bello, where

the mortality was enormous and the prices increased tenfold.

In Spain, likewise, the colonial commerce was restricted to one

port--Seville. For in the estimation of the crown it was much more

important to avoid being defrauded of its dues on import and export,

than to permit the natural development of trade by those towns best

fitted to acquire it. Another reason, prior in point of time perhaps,

why Seville was chosen as the port for American trade, was that the

Indies were regarded as the exclusive appanage of the crown of Castile,

and of that realm Seville was then the chief mercantile city. It was not

a suitable port, however, to be distinguished by so high a privilege.

Only ships of less than 200 tons were able to cross the bar of San

Lucar, and goods therefore had to be transhipped--a disability which was

soon felt when traffic and vessels became heavier.[8] The fact,

nevertheless, that the official organization called the _Casa dé

Contratacion_ was seated in Seville, together with the influence of the

vested interests of the merchants whose prosperity depended upon the

retention of that city as the one port for Indian commerce, were

sufficient to bear down all opposition. The maritime towns of Galicia

and Asturia, inhabited by better seamen and stronger races, often

protested, and sometimes succeeded in obtaining a small share of the

lucrative trade.[9] But Seville retained its primacy until 1717, in

which year the _Contratacion_ was transferred to Cadiz.

The administration of the complex rules governing the commerce between

Spain and her colonies was entrusted to two institutions located at

Seville,--the _Casa de Contratacion_, mentioned above, and the

_Consulado_. The _Casa de Contratacion_, founded by royal decree as

early as 1503, was both a judicial tribunal and a house of commerce.

Nothing might be sent to the Indies without its consent; nothing might

be brought back and landed, either on the account of merchants or of the

King himself, without its authorization. It received all the revenues

accruing from the Indies, not only the imposts on commerce, but also all

the taxes remitted by colonial officers. As a consultative body it had

the right to propose directly to the King anything which it deemed

necessary to the development and organization of American commerce; and

as a tribunal it possessed an absolute competence over all crimes under

the common law, and over all infractions of the ordinances governing the

trade of the Indies, to the exclusion of every ordinary court. Its

jurisdiction began at the moment the passengers and crews embarked and

the goods were put on board, and ended only when the return voyage and

disembarkation had been completed.[10] The civil jurisdiction of the

_Casa_ was much more restricted and disputes purely commercial in

character between the merchants were reserved to the _Consulado_, which

was a tribunal of commerce chosen entirely by the merchants themselves.

Appeals in certain cases might be carried to the Council of the

Indies.[11]

The first means adopted by the northern maritime nations to appropriate

to themselves a share of the riches of the New World was open,

semi-piratical attack upon the Spanish argosies returning from those

distant El Dorados. The success of the Norman and Breton corsairs, for

it was the French, not the English, who started the game, gradually

forced upon the Spaniards, as a means of protection, the establishment

of great merchant fleets sailing periodically at long intervals and

accompanied by powerful convoys. During the first half of the sixteenth

century any ship which had fulfilled the conditions required for

engaging in American commerce was allowed to depart alone and at any

time of the year. From about 1526, however, merchant vessels were

ordered to sail together, and by a _cedula_ of July 1561, the system of

fleets was made permanent and obligatory. This decree prohibited any

ship from sailing alone to America from Cadiz or San Lucar on pain of

forfeiture of ship and cargo.[12] Two fleets were organized each year,

one for Terra Firma going to Cartagena and Porto Bello, the other

designed for the port of San Juan d'Ulloa (Vera Cruz) in New Spain. The

latter, called the Flota, was commanded by an "almirante," and sailed

for Mexico in the early summer so as to avoid the hurricane season and

the "northers" of the Mexican Gulf. The former was usually called the

galeones (_anglice_ "galleons"), was commanded by a "general," and

sailed from Spain earlier in the year, between January and March. If it

departed in March, it usually wintered at Havana and returned with the

Flota in the following spring. Sometimes the two fleets sailed together

and separated at Guadaloupe, Deseada or another of the Leeward

Islands.[13]

The galleons generally consisted of from five to eight war-vessels

carrying from forty to fifty guns, together with several smaller, faster

boats called "pataches," and a fleet of merchantmen varying in number in

different years. In the time of Philip II. often as many as forty ships

supplied Cartagena and Porto Bello, but in succeeding reigns, although

the population of the Indies was rapidly increasing, American commerce

fell off so sadly that eight or ten were sufficient for all the trade of

South and Central America. The general of the galleons, on his

departure, received from the Council of the Indies three sealed packets.

The first, opened at the Canaries, contained the name of the island in

the West Indies at which the fleet was first to call. The second was

unsealed after the galleons arrived at Cartagena, and contained

instructions for the fleet to return in the same year or to winter in

America. In the third, left unopened until the fleet had emerged from

the Bahama Channel on the homeward voyage, were orders for the route to

the Azores and the islands they should touch in passing, usually Corvo

and Flores or Santa Maria.[14]

The course of the galleons from San Lucar was south-west to Teneriffe on

the African coast, and thence to the Grand Canary to call for

provisions--considered in all a run of eight days. From the Canaries one

of the pataches sailed on alone to Cartagena and Porto Bello, carrying

letters and packets from the Court and announcing the coming of the

fleet. If the two fleets sailed together, they steered south-west from

the Canaries to about the latitude of Deseada, 15' 30", and then

catching the Trade winds continued due west, rarely changing a sail

until Deseada or one of the other West Indian islands was sighted. From

Deseada the galleons steered an easy course to Cape de la Vela, and

thence to Cartagena. When the galleons sailed from Spain alone, however,

they entered the Caribbean Sea by the channel between Tobago and

Trinidad, afterwards named the Galleons' Passage. Opposite Margarita a

second patache left the fleet to visit the island and collect the royal

revenues, although after the exhaustion of the pearl fisheries the

island lost most of its importance. As the fleet advanced into regions

where more security was felt, merchant ships too, which were intended to

unload and trade on the coasts they were passing, detached themselves

during the night and made for Caracas, Santa Marta or Maracaibo to get

silver, cochineal, leather and cocoa. The Margarita patache, meanwhile,

had sailed on to Cumana and Caracas to receive there the king's

treasure, mostly paid in cocoa, the real currency of the country, and

thence proceeded to Cartagena to rejoin the galleons.[15]

The fleet reached Cartagena ordinarily about two months after its

departure from Cadiz. On its arrival, the general forwarded the news to

Porto Bello, together with the packets destined for the viceroy at Lima.

From Porto Bello a courier hastened across the isthmus to the President

of Panama, who spread the advice amongst the merchants in his

jurisdiction, and, at the same time, sent a dispatch boat to Payta, in

Peru. The general of the galleons, meanwhile, was also sending a courier

overland to Lima, and another to Santa Fe, the capital of the interior

province of New Granada, whence runners carried to Popagan, Antioquia,

Mariguita, and adjacent provinces, the news of his arrival.[16] The

galleons were instructed to remain at Cartagena only a month, but bribes

from the merchants generally made it their interest to linger for fifty

or sixty days. To Cartagena came the gold and emeralds of New Granada,

the pearls of Margarita and Rancherias, and the indigo, tobacco, cocoa

and other products of the Venezuelan coast. The merchants of Gautemala,

likewise, shipped their commodities to Cartagena by way of Lake

Nicaragua and the San Juan river, for they feared to send goods across

the Gulf of Honduras to Havana, because of the French and English

buccaneers hanging about Cape San Antonio.[17]

Meanwhile the viceroy at Lima, on receipt of his letters, ordered the

Armada of the South Sea to prepare to sail, and sent word south to Chili

and throughout the province of Peru from Las Charcas to Quito, to

forward the King's revenues for shipment to Panama. Within less than a

fortnight all was in readiness. The Armada, carrying a considerable

treasure, sailed from Callao and, touching at Payta, was joined by the

Navio del Oro (golden ship), which carried the gold from the province of

Quito and adjacent districts. While the galleons were approaching Porto

Bello the South Sea fleet arrived before Panama, and the merchants of

Chili and Peru began to transfer their merchandise on mules across the

high back of the isthmus.[18]

Then began the famous fair of Porto Bello.[19] The town, whose permanent

population was very small and composed mostly of negroes and mulattos,

was suddenly called upon to accommodate an enormous crowd of merchants,

soldiers and seamen. Food and shelter were to be had only at

extraordinary prices. When Thomas Gage was in Porto Bello in 1637 he was

compelled to pay 120 crowns for a very small, meanly-furnished room for

a fortnight. Merchants gave as much as 1000 crowns for a moderate-sized

shop in which to sell their commodities. Owing to overcrowding, bad

sanitation, and an extremely unhealthy climate, the place became an open

grave, ready to swallow all who resorted there. In 1637, during the

fifteen days that the galleons remained at Porto Bello, 500 men died of

sickness. Meanwhile, day by day, the mule-trains from Panama were

winding their way into the town. Gage in one day counted 200 mules laden

with wedges of silver, which were unloaded in the market-place and

permitted to lie about like heaps of stones in the streets, without

causing any fear or suspicion of being lost.[20] While the treasure of

the King of Spain was being transferred to the galleons in the harbour,

the merchants were making their trade. There was little liberty,

however, in commercial transactions, for the prices were fixed and

published beforehand, and when negotiations began exchange was purely

mechanical. The fair, which was supposed to be open for forty days, was,

in later times, generally completed in ten or twelve. At the beginning

of the eighteenth century the volume of business transacted was

estimated to amount to thirty or forty million pounds sterling.[21]

In view of the prevailing east wind in these regions, and the maze of

reefs, cays and shoals extending far out to sea from the Mosquito Coast,

the galleons, in making their course from Porto Bello to Havana, first

sailed back to Cartagena upon the eastward coast eddy, so as to get well

to windward of Nicaragua before attempting the passage through the

Yucatan Channel.[22] The fleet anchored at Cartagena a second time for

ten or twelve days, where it was rejoined by the patache of

Margarita[23] and by the merchant ships which had been sent to trade in

Terra-Firma. From Cartagena, too, the general sent dispatches to Spain

and to Havana, giving the condition of the vessels, the state of trade,

the day when he expected to sail, and the probable time of arrival.[24]

For when the galleons were in the Indies all ports were closed by the

Spaniards, for fear that precious information of the whereabouts of the

fleet and of the value of its cargo might inconveniently leak out to

their rivals. From Cartagena the course was north-west past Jamaica and

the Caymans to the Isle of Pines, and thence round Capes Corrientes and

San Antonio to Havana. The fleet generally required about eight days for

the journey, and arrived at Havana late in the summer. Here the galleons

refitted and revictualled, received tobacco, sugar, and other Cuban

exports, and if not ordered to return with the Flota, sailed for Spain

no later than the middle of September. The course for Spain was from

Cuba through the Bahama Channel, north-east between the Virginian Capes

and the Bermudas to about 38°, in order to recover the strong northerly

winds, and then east to the Azores. In winter the galleons sometimes ran

south of the Bermudas, and then slowly worked up to the higher latitude;

but in this case they often either lost some ships on the Bermuda

shoals, or to avoid these slipped too far south, were forced back into

the West Indies and missed their voyage altogether.[25] At the Azores

the general, falling in with his first intelligence from Spain, learned

where on the coast of Europe or Africa he was to sight land; and

finally, in the latter part of October or the beginning of November, he

dropped anchor at San Lucar or in Cadiz harbour.

The Flota or Mexican fleet, consisting in the seventeenth century of two

galleons of 800 or 900 tons and from fifteen to twenty merchantmen,

usually left Cadiz between June and July and wintered in America; but if

it was to return with the galleons from Havana in September it sailed

for the Indies as early as April. The course from Spain to the Indies

was the same as for the fleet of Terra-Firma. From Deseada or

Guadeloupe, however, the Flota steered north-west, passing Santa Cruz

and Porto Rico on the north, and sighting the little isles of Mona and

Saona, as far as the Bay of Neyba in Hispaniola, where the ships took on

fresh wood and water.[26] Putting to sea again, and circling round Beata

and Alta Vela, the fleet sighted in turn Cape Tiburon, Cape de Cruz, the

Isle of Pines, and Capes Corrientes and San Antonio at the west end of

Cuba. Meanwhile merchant ships had dropped away one by one, sailing to

San Juan de Porto Rico, San Domingo, St. Jago de Cuba and even to

Truxillo and Cavallos in Honduras, to carry orders from Spain to the

governors, receive cargoes of leather, cocoa, etc., and rejoin the Flota

at Havana. From Cape San Antonio to Vera Cruz there was an outside or

winter route and an inside or summer route. The former lay north-west

between the Alacranes and the Negrillos to the Mexican coast about

sixteen leagues north of Vera Cruz, and then down before the wind into

the desired haven. The summer track was much closer to the shore of

Campeache, the fleet threading its way among the cays and shoals, and

approaching Vera Cruz by a channel on the south-east.

If the Flota sailed from Spain in July it generally arrived at Vera Cruz

in the first fifteen days of September, and the ships were at once laid

up until March, when the crews reassembled to careen and refit them. If

the fleet was to return in the same year, however, the exports of New

Spain and adjacent provinces, the goods from China and the Philippines

carried across Mexico from the Pacific port of Acapulco, and the ten or

twelve millions of treasure for the king, were at once put on board and

the ships departed to join the galleons at Havana. Otherwise the fleet

sailed from Vera Cruz in April, and as it lay dead to the leeward of

Cuba, used the northerly winds to about 25°, then steered south-east and

reached Havana in eighteen or twenty days. By the beginning of June it

was ready to sail for Spain, where it arrived at the end of July, by the

same course as that followed by the galleons.[27]

We are accustomed to think of Spanish commerce with the Indies as being

made solely by great fleets which sailed yearly from Seville or Cadiz to

Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien. There were, however, always exceptions

to this rule. When, as sometimes happened, the Flota did not sail, two

ships of 600 or 700 tons were sent by the King of Spain to Vera Cruz to

carry the quicksilver necessary for the mines. The metal was divided

between New Spain and Peru by the viceroy at Mexico, who sent _via_

Gautemala the portion intended for the south. These ships, called

"azogues," carried from 2000 to 2500 quintals[28] of silver, and

sometimes convoyed six or seven merchant vessels. From time to time an

isolated ship was also allowed to sail from Spain to Caracas with

licence from the Council of the Indies and the _Contratacion_, paying

the king a duty of five ducats on the ton. It was called the "register

of Caracas," took the same route as the galleons, and returned with one

of the fleets from Havana. Similar vessels traded at Maracaibo, in Porto

Rico and at San Domingo, at Havana and Matanzas in Cuba and at Truxillo

and Campeache.[29] There was always, moreover, a special traffic with

Buenos Ayres. This port was opened to a limited trade in negroes in

1595. In 1602 permission was given to the inhabitants of La Plata to

export for six years the products of their lands to other Spanish

possessions, in exchange for goods of which they had need; and when in

1616 the colonists demanded an indefinite renewal of this privilege, the

sop thrown to them was the bare right of trade to the amount of 100 tons

every three years. Later in the century the Council of the Indies

extended the period to five years, so as not to prejudice the trade of

the galleons.[30]

It was this commerce, which we have noticed at such length, that the

buccaneers of the West Indies in the seventeenth century came to regard

as their legitimate prey. These "corsarios Luteranos," as the Spaniards

sometimes called them, scouring the coast of the Main from Venezuela to

Cartagena, hovering about the broad channel between Cuba and Yucatan, or

prowling in the Florida Straits, became the nightmare of Spanish seamen.

Like a pack of terriers they hung upon the skirts of the great unwieldy

fleets, ready to snap up any unfortunate vessel which a tempest or other

accident had separated from its fellows. When Thomas Gage was sailing in

the galleons from Porto Bello to Cartagena in 1637, four buccaneers

hovering near them carried away two merchant-ships under cover of

darkness. As the same fleet was departing from Havana, just outside the

harbour two strange vessels appeared in their midst, and getting to the

windward of them singled out a Spanish ship which had strayed a short

distance from the rest, suddenly gave her a broadside and made her

yield. The vessel was laden with sugar and other goods to the value of

80,000 crowns. The Spanish vice-admiral and two other galleons gave

chase, but without success, for the wind was against them. The whole

action lasted only half an hour.[31]

The Spanish ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were

notoriously clumsy and unseaworthy. With short keel and towering poop

and forecastle they were an easy prey for the long, low, close-sailing

sloops and barques of the buccaneers. But this was not their only

weakness. Although the king expressly prohibited the loading of

merchandise on the galleons except on the king's account, this rule was

often broken for the private profit of the captain, the sailors, and

even of the general. The men-of-war, indeed, were sometimes so

embarrassed with goods and passengers that it was scarcely possible to

defend them when attacked. The galleon which bore the general's flag had

often as many as 700 souls, crew, marines and passengers, on board, and

the same number were crowded upon those carrying the vice-admiral and

the pilot. Ship-masters frequently hired guns, anchors, cables, and

stores to make up the required equipment, and men to fill up the

muster-rolls, against the time when the "visitadors" came on board to

make their official inspection, getting rid of the stores and men

immediately afterward. Merchant ships were armed with such feeble crews,

owing to the excessive crowding, that it was all they could do to

withstand the least spell of bad weather, let alone outman[oe]uvre a

swift-sailing buccaneer.[32]

By Spanish law strangers were forbidden to resort to, or reside in, the

Indies without express permission of the king. By law, moreover, they

might not trade with the Indies from Spain, either on their own account

or through the intermediary of a Spaniard, and they were forbidden even

to associate with those engaged in such a trade. Colonists were

stringently enjoined from having anything to do with them. In 1569 an

order was issued for the seizure of all goods sent to the colonies on

the account of foreigners, and a royal _cedula_ of 1614 decreed the

penalty of death and confiscation upon any who connived at the

participation of foreigners in Spanish colonial commerce.[33] It was

impossible, however, to maintain so complete an exclusion when the

products of Spain fell far short of supplying the needs of the

colonists. Foreign merchants were bound to have a hand in this traffic,

and the Spanish government tried to recompense itself by imposing on the

out-going cargoes tyrannical exactions called "indults." The results

were fatal. Foreigners often eluded these impositions by interloping in

the West Indies and in the South Sea.[34] And as the _Contratacion_, by

fixing each year the nature and quantity of the goods to be shipped to

the colonies, raised the price of merchandise at will and reaped

enormous profits, the colonists welcomed this contraband trade as an

opportunity of enriching themselves and adding to the comforts and

luxuries of living.

From the beginning of the seventeenth century as many as 200 ships

sailed each year from Portugal with rich cargoes of silks, cloths and

woollens intended for Spanish America.[35] The Portuguese bought these

articles of the Flemish, English, and French, loaded them at Lisbon and

Oporto, ran their vessels to Brazil and up the La Plata as far as

navigation permitted, and then transported the goods overland through

Paraguay and Tucuman to Potosi and even to Lima. The Spanish merchants

of Peru kept factors in Brazil as well as in Spain, and as Portuguese

imposts were not so excessive as those levied at Cadiz and Seville, the

Portuguese could undersell their Spanish rivals. The frequent possession

of Assientos by the Portuguese and Dutch in the first half of the

seventeenth century also facilitated this contraband, for when carrying

negroes from Africa to Hispaniola, Cuba and the towns on the Main, they

profited by their opportunities to sell merchandise also, and generally

without the least obstacle.

Other nations in the seventeenth century were not slow to follow the

same course; and two circumstances contributed to make that course easy.

One was the great length of coast line on both the Atlantic and Pacific

slopes over which a surveillance had to be exercised, making it

difficult to catch the interlopers. The other was the venal connivance

of the governors of the ports, who often tolerated and even encouraged

the traffic on the plea that the colonists demanded it.[36] The

subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When a vessel

wished to enter a Spanish port to trade, the captain, pretending that

provisions had run low, or that the ship suffered from a leak or a

broken mast, sent a polite note to the governor accompanied by a

considerable gift. He generally obtained permission to enter, unload,

and put the ship into a seaworthy condition. All the formalities were

minutely observed. The unloaded goods were shut up in a storehouse, and

the doors sealed. But there was always found another door unsealed, and

by this they abstracted the goods during the night, and substituted coin

or bars of gold and silver. When the vessel was repaired to the

captain's satisfaction, it was reloaded and sailed away.

There was also, especially on the shores of the Caribbean Sea, a less

elaborate commerce called "sloop-trade," for it was usually managed by

sloops which hovered near some secluded spot on the coast, often at the

mouth of a river, and informed the inhabitants of their presence in the

neighbourhood by firing a shot from a cannon. Sometimes a large ship

filled with merchandise was stationed in a bay close at hand, and by

means of these smaller craft made its trade with the colonists. The

latter, generally in disguise, came off in canoes by night. The

interlopers, however, were always on guard against such dangerous

visitors, and never admitted more than a few at a time; for when the

Spaniards found themselves stronger than the crew, and a favourable

opportunity presented itself, they rarely failed to attempt the vessel.

Thus the Spaniards of the seventeenth century, by persisting, both at

home and in their colonies, in an economic policy which was fatally

inconsistent with their powers and resources, saw their commerce

gradually extinguished by the ships of the foreign interloper, and their

tropical possessions fall a prey to marauding bands of half-piratical

buccaneers. Although struggling under tremendous initial disabilities in

Europe, they had attempted, upon the slender pleas of prior discovery

and papal investiture, to reserve half the world to themselves. Without

a marine, without maritime traditions, they sought to hold a colonial

empire greater than any the world had yet seen, and comparable only with

the empire of Great Britain three centuries later. By discouraging

industry in Spain, and yet enforcing in the colonies an absolute

commercial dependence on the home-country, by combining in their rule of

distant America a solicitous paternalism with a restriction of

initiative altogether disastrous in its consequences, the Spaniards

succeeded in reducing their colonies to political impotence. And when,

to make their grip the more firm, they evolved, as a method of

outwitting the foreigner of his spoils, the system of great fleets and

single ports of call, they found the very means they had contrived for

their own safety to be the instrument of commercial disaster.

II.--THE FREEBOOTERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

It was the French chronologist, Scaliger, who in the sixteenth century

asserted, "nulli melius piraticam exercent quam Angli"; and although he

had no need to cross the Channel to find men proficient in this

primitive calling, the remark applies to the England of his time with a

force which we to-day scarcely realise. Certainly the inveterate

hostility with which the Englishman learned to regard the Spaniard in

the latter half of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth

centuries found its most remarkable expression in the exploits of the

Elizabethan "sea-dogs" and of the buccaneers of a later period. The

religious differences and political jealousies which grew out of the

turmoil of the Reformation, and the moral anarchy incident to the

dissolution of ancient religious institutions, were the motive causes

for an outburst of piratical activity comparable only with the

professional piracy of the Barbary States.

Even as far back as the thirteenth century, indeed, lawless sea-rovers,

mostly Bretons and Flemings, had infested the English Channel and the

seas about Great Britain. In the sixteenth this mode of livelihood

became the refuge for numerous young Englishmen, Catholic and

Protestant, who, fleeing from the persecutions of Edward VI. and of

Mary, sought refuge in French ports or in the recesses of the Irish

coast, and became the leaders of wild roving bands living chiefly upon

plunder. Among them during these persecutions were found many men

belonging to the best families in England, and although with the

accession of Elizabeth most of the leaders returned to the service of

the State, the pirate crews remained at their old trade. The contagion

spread, especially in the western counties, and great numbers of

fishermen who found their old employment profitless were recruited into

this new calling.[37] At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign we find

these Anglo-Irish pirates venturing farther south, plundering treasure

galleons off the coast of Spain, and cutting vessels out of the very

ports of the Spanish king. Such outrages of course provoked reprisals,

and the pirates, if caught, were sent to the galleys, rotted in the

dungeons of the Inquisition, or, least of all, were burnt in the plaza

at Valladolid. These cruelties only added fuel to a deadly hatred which

was kindling between the two nations, a hatred which it took one hundred

and fifty years to quench.

The most venturesome of these sea-rovers, however, were soon attracted

to a larger and more distant sphere of activity. Spain, as we have seen,

was then endeavouring to reserve to herself in the western hemisphere an

entire new world; and this at a time when the great northern maritime

powers, France, England and Holland, were in the full tide of economic

development, restless with new thoughts, hopes and ambitions, and keenly

jealous of new commercial and industrial outlets. The famous Bull of

Alexander VI. had provoked Francis I. to express a desire "to see the

clause in Adam's will which entitled his brothers of Castile and

Portugal to divide the New World between them," and very early the

French corsairs had been encouraged to test the pretensions of the

Spaniards by the time-honoured proofs of fire and steel. The English

nation, however, in the first half of the sixteenth century, had not

disputed with Spain her exclusive trade and dominion in those regions.

The hardy mariners of the north were still indifferent to the wonders of

a new continent awaiting their exploitation, and it was left to the

Spaniards to unfold before the eyes of Europe the vast riches of

America, and to found empires on the plateaus of Mexico and beyond the

Andes. During the reign of Philip II. all this was changed. English

privateers began to extend their operations westward, and to sap the

very sources of Spanish wealth and power, while the wars which absorbed

the attention of the Spaniards in Europe, from the revolt of the Low

Countries to the Treaty of Westphalia, left the field clear for these

ubiquitous sea-rovers. The maritime powers, although obliged by the

theory of colonial exclusion to pretend to acquiesce in the Spaniard's

claim to tropical America, secretly protected and supported their

mariners who coursed those western seas. France and England were now

jealous and fearful of Spanish predominance in Europe, and kept eyes

obstinately fixed on the inexhaustible streams of gold and silver by

means of which Spain was enabled to pay her armies and man her fleets.

Queen Elizabeth, while she publicly excused or disavowed to Philip II.

the outrages committed by Hawkins and Drake, blaming the turbulence of

the times and promising to do her utmost to suppress the disorders, was

secretly one of the principal shareholders in their enterprises.

The policy of the marauders was simple. The treasure which oiled the

machinery of Spanish policy came from the Indies where it was

accumulated; hence there were only two means of obtaining possession of

it:--bold raids on the ill-protected American continent, and the capture

of vessels _en route_.[38] The counter policy of the Spaniards was also

two-fold:--on the one hand, the establishment of commerce by means of

annual fleets protected by a powerful convoy; on the other, the removal

of the centres of population from the coasts to the interior of the

country far from danger of attack.[39] The Spaniards in America,

however, proved to be no match for the bold, intrepid mariners who

disputed their supremacy. The descendants of the _Conquistadores_ had

deteriorated sadly from the type of their forbears. Softened by tropical

heats and a crude, uncultured luxury, they seem to have lost initiative

and power of resistance. The disastrous commercial system of monopoly

and centralization forced them to vegetate; while the policy of

confining political office to native-born Spaniards denied any outlet to

creole talent and energy. Moreover, the productive power and

administrative abilities of the native-born Spaniards themselves were

gradually being paralyzed and reduced to impotence under the crushing

obligation of preserving and defending so unwieldy an empire and of

managing such disproportionate riches, a task for which they had neither

the aptitude nor the means.[40] Privateering in the West Indies may

indeed be regarded as a challenge to the Spaniards of America, sunk in

lethargy and living upon the credit of past glory and achievement, a

challenge to prove their right to retain their dominion and extend their

civilization and culture over half the world.[41]

There were other motives which lay behind these piratical aggressions of

the French and English in Spanish America. The Spaniards, ever since the

days of the Dominican monk and bishop, Las Casas, had been reprobated as

the heartless oppressors and murderers of the native Indians. The

original owners of the soil had been dispossessed and reduced to

slavery. In the West Indies, the great islands, Cuba and Hispaniola,

were rendered desolate for want of inhabitants. Two great empires,

Mexico and Peru, had been subdued by treachery, their kings murdered,

and their people made to suffer a living death in the mines of Potosi

and New Spain. Such was the Protestant Englishman's conception, in the

sixteenth century, of the results of Spanish colonial policy. To avenge

the blood of these innocent victims, and teach the true religion to the

survivors, was to glorify the Church militant and strike a blow at

Antichrist. Spain, moreover, in the eyes of the Puritans, was the

lieutenant of Rome, the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse, who harried and

burnt their Protestant brethren whenever she could lay hands upon them.

That she was eager to repeat her ill-starred attempt of 1588 and

introduce into the British Isles the accursed Inquisition was patent to

everyone. Protestant England, therefore, filled with the enthusiasm and

intolerance of a new faith, made no bones of despoiling the Spaniards,

especially as the service of God was likely to be repaid with plunder.

A pamphlet written by Dalby Thomas in 1690 expresses with tolerable

accuracy the attitude of the average Englishman toward Spain during the

previous century. He says:--"We will make a short reflection on the

unaccountable negligence, or rather stupidity, of this nation, during

the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Queen Mary, who

could contentedly sit still and see the Spanish rifle, plunder and bring

home undisturbed, all the wealth of that golden world; and to suffer

them with forts and castles to shut up the doors and entrances unto all

the rich provinces of America, having not the least title or pretence of

right beyond any other nation; except that of being by accident the

first discoverer of some parts of it; where the unprecedented cruelties,

exorbitances and barbarities, their own histories witness, they

practised on a poor, naked and innocent people, which inhabited the

islands, as well as upon those truly civilized and mighty empires of

Peru and Mexico, called to all mankind for succour and relief against

their outrageous avarice and horrid massacres.... (We) slept on until

the ambitious Spaniard, by that inexhaustible spring of treasure, had

corrupted most of the courts and senates of Europe, and had set on fire,

by civil broils and discords, all our neighbour nations, or had subdued

them to his yoke; contriving too to make us wear his chains and bear a

share in the triumph of universal monarchy, not only projected but near

accomplished, when Queen Elizabeth came to the crown ... and to the

divided interests of Philip II. and Queen Elizabeth, in personal more

than National concerns, we do owe that start of hers in letting loose

upon him, and encouraging those daring adventurers, Drake, Hawkins,

Rawleigh, the Lord Clifford and many other braves that age produced,

who, by their privateering and bold undertaking (like those the

buccaneers practise) now opened the way to our discoveries, and

succeeding settlements in America."[42]

On the 19th of November 1527, some Spaniards in a caravel loading

cassava at the Isle of Mona, between Hispaniola and Porto Rico, sighted

a strange vessel of about 250 tons well-armed with cannon, and believing

it to be a ship from Spain sent a boat to make inquiries. The new-comers

at the same time were seen to launch a pinnace carrying some twenty-five

men, all armed with corselets and bows. As the two boats approached the

Spaniards inquired the nationality of the strangers and were told that

they were English. The story given by the English master was that his

ship and another had been fitted out by the King of England and had

sailed from London to discover the land of the Great Khan; that they had

been separated in a great storm; that this ship afterwards ran into a

sea of ice, and unable to get through, turned south, touched at

Bacallaos (Newfoundland), where the pilot was killed by Indians, and

sailing 400 leagues along the coast of "terra nueva" had found her way

to this island of Porto Rico. The Englishmen offered to show their

commission written in Latin and Romance, which the Spanish captain could

not read; and after sojourning at the island for two days, they inquired

for the route to Hispaniola and sailed away. On the evening of 25th

November this same vessel appeared before the port of San Domingo, the

capital of Hispaniola, where the master with ten or twelve sailors went

ashore in a boat to ask leave to enter and trade. This they obtained,

for the _alguazil mayor_ and two pilots were sent back with them to

bring the ship into port. But early next morning, when they approached

the shore, the Spanish _alcaide_, Francisco de Tapia, commanded a gun to

be fired at the ship from the castle; whereupon the English, seeing the

reception accorded them, sailed back to Porto Rico, there obtained some

provisions in exchange for pewter and cloth, and departed for Europe,

"where it is believed that they never arrived, for nothing is known of

them." The _alcaide_, says Herrera, was imprisoned by the _oidores_,

because he did not, instead of driving the ship away, allow her to enter

the port, whence she could not have departed without the permission of

the city and the fort.[43]

This is the earliest record we possess of the appearance of an English

ship in the waters of Spanish America. Others, however, soon followed.

In 1530 William Hawkins, father of the famous John Hawkins, ventured in

"a tall and goodly ship ... called the 'Polo of Plymouth,'" down to the

coast of Guinea, trafficked with the natives for gold-dust and ivory,

and then crossed the ocean to Brazil, "where he behaved himself so

wisely with those savage people" that one of the kings of the country

took ship with him to England and was presented to Henry VIII. at

Whitehall.[44] The real occasion, however, for the appearance of foreign

ships in Spanish-American waters was the new occupation of carrying

negroes from the African coast to the Spanish colonies to be sold as

slaves. The rapid depopulation of the Indies, and the really serious

concern of the Spanish crown for the preservation of the indigenes, had

compelled the Spanish government to permit the introduction of negro

slaves from an early period. At first restricted to Christian slaves

carried from Spain, after 1510 licences to take over a certain number,

subject of course to governmental imposts, were given to private

individuals; and in August 1518, owing to the incessant clamour of the

colonists for more negroes, Laurent de Gouvenot, Governor of Bresa and

one of the foreign favourites of Charles V., obtained the first regular

contract to carry 4000 slaves directly from Africa to the West

Indies.[45] With slight modifications the contract system became

permanent, and with it, as a natural consequence, came contraband trade.

Cargoes of negroes were frequently "run" from Africa by Spaniards and

Portuguese, and as early as 1506 an order was issued to expel all

contraband slaves from Hispaniola.[46] The supply never equalled the

demand, however, and this explains why John Hawkins found it so

profitable to carry ship-loads of blacks across from the Guinea coast,

and why Spanish colonists could not resist the temptation to buy them,

notwithstanding the stringent laws against trading with foreigners.

The first voyage of John Hawkins was made in 1562-63. In conjunction

with Thomas Hampton he fitted out three vessels and sailed for Sierra

Leone. There he collected, "partly by the sword and partly by other

means," some 300 negroes, and with this valuable human freight crossed

the Atlantic to San Domingo in Hispaniola. Uncertain as to his

reception, Hawkins on his arrival pretended that he had been driven in

by foul weather, and was in need of provisions, but without ready money

to pay for them. He therefore requested permission to sell "certain

slaves he had with him." The opportunity was eagerly welcomed by the

planters, and the governor, not thinking it necessary to construe his

orders from home too stringently, allowed two-thirds of the cargo to be

sold. As neither Hawkins nor the Spanish colonists anticipated any

serious displeasure on the part of Philip II., the remaining 100 slaves

were left as a deposit with the Council of the island. Hawkins invested

the proceeds in a return cargo of hides, half of which he sent in

Spanish vessels to Spain under the care of his partner, while he

returned with the rest to England. The Spanish Government, however, was

not going to sanction for a moment the intrusion of the English into the

Indies. On Hampton's arrival at Cadiz his cargo was confiscated and he

himself narrowly escaped the Inquisition. The slaves left in San Domingo

were forfeited, and Hawkins, although he "cursed, threatened and

implored," could not obtain a farthing for his lost hides and negroes.

The only result of his demands was the dispatch of a peremptory order to

the West Indies that no English vessel should be allowed under any

pretext to trade there.[47]

The second of the great Elizabethan sea-captains to beard the Spanish

lion was Hawkins' friend and pupil, Francis Drake. In 1567 he

accompanied Hawkins on his third expedition. With six ships, one of

which was lent by the Queen herself, they sailed from Plymouth in

October, picked up about 450 slaves on the Guinea coast, sighted

Dominica in the West Indies in March, and coasted along the mainland of

South America past Margarita and Cape de la Vela, carrying on a

"tolerable good trade." Rio de la Hacha they stormed with 200 men,

losing only two in the encounter; but they were scattered by a tempest

near Cartagena and driven into the Gulf of Mexico, where, on 16th

September, they entered the narrow port of S. Juan d'Ulloa or Vera Cruz.

The next day the fleet of New Spain, consisting of thirteen large ships,

appeared outside, and after an exchange of pledges of peace and amity

with the English intruders, entered on the 20th. On the morning of the

24th, however, a fierce encounter was begun, and Hawkins and Drake,

stubbornly defending themselves against tremendous odds, were glad to

escape with two shattered vessels and the loss of £100,000 treasure.

After a voyage of terrible suffering, Drake, in the "Judith," succeeded

in reaching England on 20th January 1569, and Hawkins followed five days

later.[48] Within a few years, however, Drake was away again, this time

alone and with the sole, unblushing purpose of robbing the Dons. With

only two ships and seventy-three men he prowled about the waters of the

West Indies for almost a year, capturing and rifling Spanish vessels,

plundering towns on the Main and intercepting convoys of treasure across

the Isthmus of Darien. In 1577 he sailed on the voyage which carried him

round the world, a feat for which he was knighted, promoted to the rank

of admiral, and visited by the Queen on board his ship, the "Golden

Hind." While Drake was being feted in London as the hero of the hour,

Philip of Spain from his cell in the Escorial must have execrated these

English sea-rovers whose visits brought ruin to his colonies and menaced

the safety of his treasure galleons.

In the autumn of 1585 Drake was again in command of a formidable

armament intended against the West Indies. Supported by 2000 troops

under General Carleill, and by Martin Frobisher and Francis Knollys in

the fleet, he took and plundered San Domingo, and after occupying

Cartagena for six weeks ransomed the city for 110,000 ducats. This

fearless old Elizabethan sailed from Plymouth on his last voyage in

August 1595. Though under the joint command of Drake and Hawkins, the

expedition seemed doomed to disaster throughout its course. One vessel,

the "Francis," fell into the hands of the Spaniards. While the fleet was

passing through the Virgin Isles, Hawkins fell ill and died. A desperate

attack was made on S. Juan de Porto Rico, but the English, after losing

forty or fifty men, were compelled to retire. Drake then proceeded to

the Main, where in turn he captured and plundered Rancherias, Rio de la

Hacha, Santa Marta and Nombre de Dios. With 750 soldiers he made a bold

attempt to cross the isthmus to the city of Panama, but turned back

after the loss of eighty or ninety of his followers. A few days later,

on 15th January 1596, he too fell ill, died on the 28th, and was buried

in a leaden coffin off the coast of Darien.[49]

Hawkins and Drake, however, were by no means the only English privateers

of that century in American waters. Names like Oxenham, Grenville,

Raleigh and Clifford, and others of lesser fame, such as Winter, Knollys

and Barker, helped to swell the roll of these Elizabethan sea-rovers. To

many a gallant sailor the Caribbean Sea was a happy hunting-ground where

he might indulge at his pleasure any propensities to lawless adventure.

If in 1588 he had helped to scatter the Invincible Armada, he now

pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had

been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed

with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he

lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed

Philip's power of invading England. Nor must we think these mariners the

same as the lawless buccaneers of a later period. The men of this

generation were of a sterner and more fanatical mould, men who for their

wildest acts often claimed the sanction of religious convictions.

Whether they carried off the heathen from Africa, or plundered the

fleets of Romish Spain, they were but entering upon "the heritage of the

saints." Judged by the standards of our own century they were pirates

and freebooters, but in the eyes of their fellow-countrymen their

attacks upon the Spaniards seemed fair and honourable.

The last of the great privateering voyages for which Drake had set the

example was the armament which Lord George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland,

sent against Porto Rico in 1598. The ill-starred expeditions of Raleigh

to Guiana in 1595 and again in 1617 belong rather to the history of

exploration and colonization. Clifford, "courtier, gambler and

buccaneer," having run through a great part of his very considerable

fortune, had seized the opportunity offered him by the plunder of the

Spanish colonies to re-coup himself; and during a period of twelve

years, from 1586 to 1598, almost every year fitted out, and often

himself commanded, an expedition against the Spaniards. In his last and

most ambitious effort, in 1598, he equipped twenty vessels entirely at

his own cost, sailed from Plymouth in March, and on 6th June laid siege

to the city of San Juan, which he proposed to clear of Spaniards and

establish as an English stronghold. Although the place was captured, the

expedition proved a fiasco. A violent sickness broke out among the

troops, and as Clifford had already sailed away with some of the ships

to Flores to lie in wait for the treasure fleet, Sir Thomas Berkeley,

who was left in command in Porto Rico, abandoned the island and returned

to rejoin the Earl.[50]

The English in the sixteenth century, however, had no monopoly of this

piratical game. The French did something in their own way, and the Dutch

were not far behind. Indeed, the French may claim to have set the

example for the Elizabethan freebooters, for in the first half of the

sixteenth century privateers flocked to the Spanish Indies from Dieppe,

Brest and the towns of the Basque coast. The gleam of the golden lingots

of Peru, and the pale lights of the emeralds from the mountains of New

Granada, exercised a hypnotic influence not only on ordinary seamen but

on merchants and on seigneurs with depleted fortunes. Names like Jean

Terrier, Jacques Sore and François le Clerc, the latter popularly called

"Pie de Palo," or "wooden-leg," by the Spaniards, were as detestable in

Spanish ears as those of the great English captains. Even before 1500

French corsairs hovered about Cape St Vincent and among the Azores and

the Canaries; and their prowess and audacity were so feared that

Columbus, on returning from his third voyage in 1498, declared that he

had sailed for the island of Madeira by a new route to avoid meeting a

French fleet which was awaiting him near St Vincent.[51] With the

establishment of the system of armed convoys, however, and the presence

of Spanish fleets on the coast of Europe, the corsairs suffered some

painful reverses which impelled them to transfer their operations to

American waters. Thereafter Spanish records are full of references to

attacks by Frenchmen on Havana, St. Jago de Cuba, San Domingo and towns

on the mainland of South and Central America; full of appeals, too, from

the colonies to the neglectful authorities in Spain, urging them to send

artillery, cruisers and munitions of war for their defence.[52]

A letter dated 8th April 1537, written by Gonzalo de Guzman to the

Empress, furnishes us with some interesting details of the exploits of

an anonymous French corsair in that year. In November 1536 this

Frenchman had seized in the port of Chagre, on the Isthmus of Darien, a

Spanish vessel laden with horses from San Domingo, had cast the cargo

into the sea, put the crew on shore and sailed away with his prize. A

month or two later he appeared off the coast of Havana and dropped

anchor in a small bay a few leagues from the city. As there were then

five Spanish ships lying in the harbour, the inhabitants compelled the

captains to attempt the seizure of the pirate, promising to pay for the

ships if they were lost. Three vessels of 200 tons each sailed out to

the attack, and for several days they fired at the French corsair,

which, being a patache of light draught, had run up the bay beyond their

reach. Finally one morning the Frenchmen were seen pressing with both

sail and oar to escape from the port. A Spanish vessel cut her cables to

follow in pursuit, but encountering a heavy sea and contrary winds was

abandoned by her crew, who made for shore in boats. The other two

Spanish ships were deserted in similar fashion, whereupon the French,

observing this new turn of affairs, re-entered the bay and easily

recovered the three drifting vessels. Two of the prizes they burnt, and

arming the third sailed away to cruise in the Florida straits, in the

route of ships returning from the West Indies to Spain.[53]

The corsairs, however, were not always so uniformly successful. A band

of eighty, who attempted to plunder the town of St. Jago de Cuba, were

repulsed with some loss by a certain Diego Perez of Seville, captain of

an armed merchant ship then in the harbour, who later petitioned for the

grant of a coat-of-arms in recognition of his services.[54] In October

1544 six French vessels attacked the town of Santa Maria de los

Remedios, near Cape de la Vela, but failed to take it in face of the

stubborn resistance of the inhabitants. Yet the latter a few months

earlier had been unable to preserve their homes from pillage, and had

been obliged to flee to La Granjeria de las Perlas on the Rio de la

Hacha.[55] There is small wonder, indeed, that the defenders were so

rarely victorious. The Spanish towns were ill-provided with forts and

guns, and often entirely without ammunition or any regular soldiers. The

distance between the settlements as a rule was great, and the

inhabitants, as soon as informed of the presence of the enemy, knowing

that they had no means of resistance and little hope of succour, left

their homes to the mercy of the freebooters and fled to the hills and

woods with their families and most precious belongings. Thus when, in

October 1554, another band of three hundred French privateers swooped

down upon the unfortunate town of St. Jago de Cuba, they were able to

hold it for thirty days, and plundered it to the value of 80,000 pieces

of eight.[56] The following year, however, witnessed an even more

remarkable action. In July 1555 the celebrated captain, Jacques Sore,

landed two hundred men from a caravel a half-league from the city of

Havana, and before daybreak marched on the town and forced the surrender

of the castle. The Spanish governor had time to retire to the country,

where he gathered a small force of Spaniards and negroes, and returned

to surprise the French by night. Fifteen or sixteen of the latter were

killed, and Sore, who himself was wounded, in a rage gave orders for the

massacre of all the prisoners. He burned the cathedral and the hospital,

pillaged the houses and razed most of the city to the ground. After

transferring all the artillery to his vessel, he made several forays

into the country, burned a few plantations, and finally sailed away in

the beginning of August. No record remains of the amount of the booty,

but it must have been enormous. To fill the cup of bitterness for the

poor inhabitants, on 4th October there appeared on the coast another

French ship, which had learned of Sore's visit and of the helpless state

of the Spaniards. Several hundred men disembarked, sacked a few

plantations neglected by their predecessors, tore down or burned the

houses which the Spaniards had begun to rebuild, and seized a caravel

loaded with leather which had recently entered the harbour.[57] It is

true that during these years there was almost constant war in Europe

between the Emperor and France; yet this does not entirely explain the

activity of the French privateers in Spanish America, for we find them

busy there in the years when peace reigned at home. Once unleash the

sea-dogs and it was extremely difficult to bring them again under

restraint.

With the seventeenth century began a new era in the history of the West

Indies. If in the sixteenth the English, French and Dutch came to

tropical America as piratical intruders into seas and countries which

belonged to others, in the following century they came as permanent

colonisers and settlers. The Spaniards, who had explored the whole ring

of the West Indian islands before 1500, from the beginning neglected the

lesser for the larger Antilles--Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico and

Jamaica--and for those islands like Trinidad, which lie close to the

mainland. And when in 1519 Cortez sailed from Cuba for the conquest of

Mexico, and twelve years later Pizarro entered Peru, the emigrants who

left Spain to seek their fortunes in the New World flocked to the vast

territories which the _Conquistadores_ and their lieutenants had subdued

on the Continent. It was consequently to the smaller islands which

compose the Leeward and Windward groups that the English, French and

Dutch first resorted as colonists. Small, and therefore "easy to settle,

easy to depopulate and to re-people, attractive not only on account of

their own wealth, but also as a starting-point for the vast and rich

continent off which they lie," these islands became the pawns in a game

of diplomacy and colonization which continued for 150 years.

In the seventeenth century, moreover, the Spanish monarchy was declining

rapidly both in power and prestige, and its empire, though still

formidable, no longer overshadowed the other nations of Europe as in the

days of Charles V. and Philip II. France, with the Bourbons on the

throne, was entering upon an era of rapid expansion at home and abroad,

while the Dutch, by the truce of 1609, virtually obtained the freedom

for which they had struggled so long. In England Queen Elizabeth had

died in 1603, and her Stuart successor exchanged her policy of

dalliance, of balance between France and Spain, for one of peace and

conciliation. The aristocratic free-booters who had enriched themselves

by harassing the Spanish Indies were succeeded by a less romantic but

more business-like generation, which devoted itself to trade and

planting. Abortive attempts at colonization had been made in the

sixteenth century. The Dutch, who were trading in the West Indies as

early as 1542, by 1580 seem to have gained some foothold in Guiana;[58]

and the French Huguenots, under the patronage of the Admiral de Coligny,

made three unsuccessful efforts to form settlements on the American

continent, one in Brazil in 1555, another near Port Royal in South

Carolina in 1562, and two years later a third on the St. John's River in

Florida. The only English effort in the sixteenth century was the vain

attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh between 1585 and 1590 to plant a colony on

Roanoke Island, on the coast of what is now North Carolina. It was not

till 1607 that the first permanent English settlement in America was

made at Jamestown in Virginia. Between 1609 and 1619 numerous stations

were established by English, Dutch and French in Guiana between the

mouth of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon. In 1621 the Dutch West

India Company was incorporated, and a few years later proposals for a

similar company were broached in England. Among the West Indian Islands,

St. Kitts received its first English settlers in 1623; and two years

later the island was formally divided with the French, thus becoming the

earliest nucleus of English and French colonization in those regions.

Barbadoes was colonized in 1624-25. In 1628 English settlers from St.

Kitts spread to Nevis and Barbuda, and within another four years to

Antigua and Montserrat; while as early as 1625 English and Dutch took

joint possession of Santa Cruz. The founders of the French settlement on

St. Kitts induced Richelieu to incorporate a French West India Company

with the title, "The Company of the Isles of America," and under its

auspices Guadeloupe, Martinique and other islands of the Windward group

were colonized in 1635 and succeeding years. Meanwhile between 1632 and

1634 the Dutch had established trading stations on St. Eustatius in the

north, and on Tobago and Curaçao in the south near the Spanish mainland.

While these centres of trade and population were being formed in the

very heart of the Spanish seas, the privateers were not altogether idle.

To the treaty of Vervins between France and Spain in 1598 had been added

a secret restrictive article whereby it was agreed that the peace should

not hold good south of the Tropic of Cancer and west of the meridian of

the Azores. Beyond these two lines (called "les lignes de l'enclos des

Amitiés") French and Spanish ships might attack each other and take fair

prize as in open war. The ministers of Henry IV. communicated this

restriction verbally to the merchants of the ports, and soon private

men-of-war from Dieppe, Havre and St. Malo flocked to the western

seas.[59] Ships loaded with contraband goods no longer sailed for the

Indies unless armed ready to engage all comers, and many ship-captains

renounced trade altogether for the more profitable and exciting

occupation of privateering. In the early years of the seventeenth

century, moreover, Dutch fleets harassed the coasts of Chile and

Peru,[60] while in Brazil[61] and the West Indies a second "Pie de

Palo," this time the Dutch admiral, Piet Heyn, was proving a scourge to

the Spaniards. Heyn was employed by the Dutch West India Company, which

from the year 1623 onwards, carried the Spanish war into the transmarine

possessions of Spain and Portugal. With a fleet composed of twenty-six

ships and 3300 men, of which he was vice-admiral, he greatly

distinguished himself at the capture of Bahia, the seat of Portuguese

power in Brazil. Similar expeditions were sent out annually, and brought

back the rich spoils of the South American colonies. Within two years

the extraordinary number of eighty ships, with 1500 cannon and over 9000

sailors and soldiers, were despatched to American seas, and although

Bahia was soon retaken, the Dutch for a time occupied Pernambuco, as

well as San Juan de Porto Rico in the West Indies.[62] In 1628 Piet Heyn

was in command of a squadron designed to intercept the plate fleet which

sailed every year from Vera Cruz to Spain. With thirty-one ships, 700

cannon and nearly 3000 men he cruised along the northern coast of Cuba,

and on 8th September fell in with his quarry near Cape San Antonio. The

Spaniards made a running fight along the coast until they reached the

Matanzas River near Havana, into which they turned with the object of

running the great-bellied galleons aground and escaping with what

treasure they could. The Dutch followed, however, and most of the rich

cargo was diverted into the coffers of the Dutch West India Company. The

gold, silver, indigo, sugar and logwood were sold in the Netherlands for

fifteen million guilders, and the company was enabled to distribute to

its shareholders the unprecedented dividend of 50 per cent. It was an

exploit which two generations of English mariners had attempted in vain,

and the unfortunate Spanish general, Don Juan de Benavides, on his

return to Spain was imprisoned for his defeat and later beheaded.[63]

In 1639 we find the Spanish Council of War for the Indies conferring

with the King on measures to be taken against English piratical ships in

the Caribbean;[64] and in 1642 Captain William Jackson, provided with an

ample commission from the Earl of Warwick[65] and duplicates under the

Great Seal, made a raid in which he emulated the exploits of Sir Francis

Drake and his contemporaries. Starting out with three ships and about

1100 men, mostly picked up in St. Kitts and Barbadoes, he cruised along

the Main from Caracas to Honduras and plundered the towns of Maracaibo

and Truxillo. On 25th March 1643 he dropped anchor in what is now

Kingston Harbour in Jamaica, landed about 500 men, and after some sharp

fighting and the loss of forty of his followers, entered the town of St.

Jago de la Vega, which he ransomed for 200 beeves, 10,000 lbs. of

cassava bread and 7000 pieces of eight. Many of the English were so

captivated by the beauty and fertility of the island that twenty-three

deserted in one night to the Spaniards.[66]

The first two Stuart Kings, like the great Queen who preceded them, and

in spite of the presence of a powerful Spanish faction at the English

Court, looked upon the Indies with envious eyes, as a source of

perennial wealth to whichever nation could secure them. James I., to be

sure, was a man of peace, and soon after his accession patched up a

treaty with the Spaniards; but he had no intention of giving up any

English claims, however shadowy they might be, to America. Cornwallis,

the new ambassador at Madrid, from a vantage ground where he could

easily see the financial and administrative confusion into which Spain,

in spite of her colonial wealth, had fallen, was most dissatisfied with

the treaty. In a letter to Cranborne, dated 2nd July 1605, he suggested

that England never lost so great an opportunity of winning honour and

wealth as by relinquishing the war with Spain, and that Philip and his

kingdom "were reduced to such a state as they could not in all

likelihood have endured for the space of two years more."[67] This

opinion we find repeated in his letters in the following years, with

covert hints that an attack upon the Indies might after all be the most

profitable and politic thing to do. When, in October 1607, Zuniga, the

Spanish ambassador in London, complained to James of the establishment

of the new colony in Virginia, James replied that Virginia was land

discovered by the English and therefore not within the jurisdiction of

Philip; and a week later Salisbury, while confiding to Zuniga that he

thought the English might not justly go to Virginia, still refused to

prohibit their going or command their return, for it would be an

acknowledgment, he said, that the King of Spain was lord of all the

Indies.[68] In 1609, in the truce concluded between Spain and the

Netherlands, one of the stipulations provided that for nine years the

Dutch were to be free to trade in all places in the East and West Indies

except those in actual possession of the Spaniards on the date of

cessation of hostilities; and thereafter the English and French

governments endeavoured with all the more persistence to obtain a

similar privilege. Attorney-General Heath, in 1625, presented a memorial

to the Crown on the advantages derived by the Spaniards and Dutch in the

West Indies, maintaining that it was neither safe nor profitable for

them to be absolute lords of those regions; and he suggested that his

Majesty openly interpose or permit it to be done underhand.[69] In

September 1637 proposals were renewed in England for a West India

Company as the only method of obtaining a share in the wealth of

America. It was suggested that some convenient port be seized as a safe

retreat from which to plunder Spanish trade on land and sea, and that

the officers of the company be empowered to conquer and occupy any part

of the West Indies, build ships, levy soldiers and munitions of war, and

make reprisals.[70] The temper of Englishmen at this time was again

illustrated in 1640 when the Spanish ambassador, Alonzo de Cardenas,

protested to Charles I. against certain ships which the Earls of Warwick

and Marlborough were sending to the West Indies with the intention,

Cardenas declared, of committing hostilities against the Spaniards. The

Earl of Warwick, it seems, pretended to have received great injuries

from the latter and threatened to recoup his losses at their expense. He

procured from the king a broad commission which gave him the right to

trade in the West Indies, and to "offend" such as opposed him. Under

shelter of this commission the Earl of Marlborough was now going to sea

with three or four armed ships, and Cardenas prayed the king to restrain

him until he gave security not to commit any acts of violence against

the Spanish nation. The petition was referred to a committee of the

Lords, who concluded that as the peace had never been strictly observed

by either nation in the Indies they would not demand any security of the

Earl. "Whether the Spaniards will think this reasonable or not,"

concludes Secretary Windebank in his letter to Sir Arthur Hopton, "is no

great matter."[71]

During this century and a half between 1500 and 1650, the Spaniards were

by no means passive or indifferent to the attacks made upon their

authority and prestige in the New World. The hostility of the mariners

from the north they repaid with interest, and woe to the foreign

interloper or privateer who fell into their clutches. When Henry II. of

France in 1557 issued an order that Spanish prisoners be condemned to

the galleys, the Spanish government retaliated by commanding its

sea-captains to mete out the same treatment to their French captives,

except that captains, masters and officers taken in the navigation of

the Indies were to be hung or cast into the sea.[72] In December 1600

the governor of Cumana had suggested to the King, as a means of keeping

Dutch and English ships from the salt mines of Araya, the ingenious

scheme of poisoning the salt. This advice, it seems, was not followed,

but a few years later, in 1605, a Spanish fleet of fourteen galleons

sent from Lisbon surprised and burnt nineteen Dutch vessels found

loading salt at Araya, and murdered most of the prisoners.[73] In

December 1604 the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of "news that the

Spanish in the West Indies captured two English vessels, cut off the

hands, feet, noses and ears of the crews and smeared them with honey and

tied them to trees to be tortured by flies and other insects. The

Spanish here plead," he continued, "that they were pirates, not

merchants, and that they did not know of the peace. But the barbarity

makes people here cry out."[74] On 22nd June 1606, Edmondes, the English

Ambassador at Brussels, in a letter to Cornwallis, speaks of a London

ship which was sent to trade in Virginia, and putting into a river in

Florida to obtain water, was surprised there by Spanish vessels from

Havana, the men ill-treated and the cargo confiscated.[75] And it was

but shortly after that Captain Chaloner's ship on its way to Virginia

was seized by the Spaniards in the West Indies, and the crew sent to

languish in the dungeons of Seville or condemned to the galleys.

By attacks upon some of the English settlements, too, the Spaniards gave

their threats a more effective form. Frequent raids were made upon the

English and Dutch plantations in Guiana;[76] and on 8th-18th September

1629 a Spanish fleet of over thirty sail, commanded by Don Federico de

Toledo, nearly annihilated the joint French and English colony on St.

Kitts. Nine English ships were captured and the settlements burnt. The

French inhabitants temporarily evacuated the island and sailed for

Antigua; but of the English some 550 were carried to Cartagena and

Havana, whence they were shipped to England, and all the rest fled to

the mountains and woods.[77] Within three months' time, however, after

the departure of the Spaniards, the scattered settlers had returned and

re-established the colony. Providence Island and its neighbour,

Henrietta, being situated near the Mosquito Coast, were peculiarly

exposed to Spanish attack;[78] while near the north shore of Hispaniola

the island of Tortuga, which was colonized by the same English company,

suffered repeatedly from the assaults of its hostile neighbours. In July

1635 a Spanish fleet from the Main assailed the island of Providence,

but unable to land among the rocks, was after five days beaten off

"considerably torn" by the shot from the fort.[79] On the strength of

these injuries received and of others anticipated, the Providence

Company obtained from the king the liberty "to right themselves" by

making reprisals, and during the next six years kept numerous vessels

preying upon Spanish commerce in those waters. King Philip was therefore

all the more intent upon destroying the plantation.[80] He bided his

time, however, until the early summer of 1641, when the general of the

galleons, Don Francisco Diaz Pimienta, with twelve sail and 2000 men,

fell upon the colony, razed the forts and carried off all the English,

about 770 in number, together with forty cannon and half a million of

plunder.[81] It was just ten years later that a force of 800 men from

Porto Rico invaded Santa Cruz, whence the Dutch had been expelled by the

English in 1646, killed the English governor and more than 100 settlers,

seized two ships in the harbour and burnt and pillaged most of the

plantations. The rest of the inhabitants escaped to the woods, and after

the departure of the Spaniards deserted the colony for St. Kitts and

other islands.[82]

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: Herrera: Decades II. 1, p. 4, cited in Scelle: la Traite

Négrière, I. p. 6. Note 2.]

[Footnote 2: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. pp. 6-9.]

[Footnote 3: "Por cuanto los pacificaciones no se han de hacer con ruido

de armas, sino con caridad y buen modo."--Recop. de leyes ... de las

Indias, lib. vii. tit. 1.]

[Footnote 4: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 35.]

[Footnote 5: Weiss: L'Espagne depuis Philippe II. jusqu'aux Bourbons.,

II. pp. 204 and 215. Not till 1722 was legislative sanction given to

this practice.

M. Lemonnet wrote to Colbert in 1670 concerning this commerce:--"Quelque

perquisition qu'on ait faite dans ce dernier temps aux Indes pour

découvrir les biens des François, ils ont plustost souffert la prison

que de rien déclarer ... toute les merchandises qu'on leur donne à

porter aux Indes sont chargées sous le nom d'Espagnols, que bien souvent

n'en ont pas connaissance, ne jugeant pas à propos de leur en parler,

afin de tenir les affaires plus secrètes et qu'il n'y ait que le

commissionaire à le savoir, lequel en rend compte à son retour des

Indes, directement à celui qui en a donne la cargaison en confiance sans

avoir nul egard pour ceux au nom desquels le chargement à été fait, et

lorsque ces commissionaires reviennent des Indes soit sur le flottes

galions ou navires particuliers, ils apportent leur argent dans leurs

coffres, la pluspart entre pont et sans connoissement." (Margry:

Relations et mémoires inédits pour servir à l'histoire de la France dans

les pays d'outremer, p. 185.)

The importance to the maritime powers of preserving and protecting this

clandestine trade is evident, especially as the Spanish government

frequently found it a convenient instrument for retaliating upon those

nations against which it harboured some grudge. All that was necessary

was to sequester the vessels and goods of merchants belonging to the

nation at which it wished to strike. This happened frequently in the

course of the seventeenth century. Thus Lerma in 1601 arrested the

French merchants in Spain to revenge himself on Henry IV. In 1624

Olivares seized 160 Dutch vessels. The goods of Genoese merchants were

sequestered by Philip IV. in 1644; and in 1684 French merchandize was

again seized, and Mexican traders whose storehouses contained such goods

were fined 500,000 ecus, although the same storehouses contained English

and Dutch goods which were left unnoticed. The fine was later restored

upon Admiral d'Estrées' threat to bombard Cadiz. The solicitude of the

French government for this trade is expressed in a letter of Colbert to

the Marquis de Villars, ambassador at Madrid, dated 5th February

1672:--"Il est tellement necessaire d'avoir soin d'assister les

particuliers qui font leur trafic en Espagne, pour maintenir le plus

important commerce que nous ayons, que je suis persuadé que vous ferez

toutes les instances qui pourront dépendre de vous ... en sorte que

cette protection produira des avantages considérables au commerce des

sujets de Sa Majesté" (_ibid._, p. 188).

_Cf._ also the instructions of Louis XIV. to the Comte d'Estrées, 1st

April 1680. The French admiral was to visit all the ports of the

Spaniards in the West Indies, especially Cartagena and San Domingo; and

to be always informed of the situation and advantages of these ports,

and of the facilities and difficulties to be met with in case of an

attack upon them; so that the Spaniards might realise that if they

failed to do justice to the French merchants on the return of the

galleons, his Majesty was always ready to force them to do so, either by

attacking these galleons, or by capturing one of their West Indian ports

(_ibid._).]

[Footnote 6: Weiss, _op. cit._, II. p. 205.]

[Footnote 7: Ibid., II. p. 206.]

[Footnote 8: Oppenheim: The Naval Tracts of Sir Wm. Monson. Vol. II.

Appendix B., p. 316.]

[Footnote 9: In 1509, owing to the difficulties experienced by merchants

in ascending the Guadalquivir, ships were given permission to load and

register at Cadiz under the supervision of an inspector or "visitador,"

and thereafter commerce and navigation tended more and more to gravitate

to that port. After 1529, in order to facilitate emigration to America,

vessels were allowed to sail from certain other ports, notably San

Sebastian, Bilboa, Coruna, Cartagena and Malaga. The ships might

register in these ports, but were obliged always to make their return

voyage to Seville. But either the _cedula_ was revoked, or was never

made use of, for, according to Scelle, there are no known instances of

vessels sailing to America from those towns. The only other exceptions

were in favour of the Company of Guipuzcoa in 1728, to send ships from

San Sebastian to Caracas, and of the Company of Galicia in 1734, to send

two vessels annually to Campeache and Vera Cruz. (Scelle, _op. cit._, i.

pp. 48-49 and notes.)]

[Footnote 10: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 36 _ff._]

[Footnote 11: In Nov. 1530 Charles V., against the opposition of the

_Contratacion_, ordered the Council of the Indies to appoint a resident

judge at Cadiz to replace the officers of the _Casa_ there. This

institution, called the "Juzgado de Indias," was, until the removal of

the _Casa_ to Cadiz in 1717, the source of constant disputes and

irritation.]

[Footnote 12: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 52 and note; Duro: Armada

Espanola, I. p. 204.]

[Footnote 13: The distinction between the Flota or fleet for New Spain

and the galleons intended for Terra Firma only began with the opening of

the great silver mines of Potosi, the rich yields of which after 1557

made advisable an especial fleet for Cartagena and Nombre de Dios.

(Oppenheim, II. Appendix B., p. 322.)]

[Footnote 14: Memoir of MM. Duhalde and de Rochefort to the French king,

1680 (Margry, _op. cit._, p. 192 _ff._).]

[Footnote 15: Memoir of MM. Duhalde and de Rochefort to the French king,

1680 (Margry, _op. cit._, p. 192 _ff._)]

[Footnote 16: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 64; Dampier: Voyages, _ed._

1906, i. p. 200.]

[Footnote 17: Gage: A New Survey of the West Indies, _ed._ 1655, pp.

185-6. When Gage was at Granada, in February 1637, strict orders were

received from Gautemala that the ships were not to sail that year,

because the President and Audiencia were informed of some Dutch and

English ships lying in wait at the mouth of the river.]

[Footnote 18: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. pp. 64-5; Duhalde and de Rochefort.

There were two ways of sending goods from Panama to Porto Bello. One was

an overland route of 18 leagues, and was used only during the summer.

The other was by land as far as Venta Cruz, 7 leagues from Panama, and

thence by water on the river Chagre to its mouth, a distance of 26

leagues. When the river was high the transit might be accomplished in

two or three days, but at other times from six to twelve days were

required. To transfer goods from Chagre to Porto Bello was a matter of

only eight or nine hours. This route was used in winter when the roads

were rendered impassable by the great rains and floods. The overland

journey, though shorter, was also more difficult and expensive. The

goods were carried on long mule-trains, and the "roads, so-called, were

merely bridle paths ... running through swamps and jungles, over hills

and rocks, broken by unbridged rivers, and situated in one of the

deadliest climates in the world." The project of a canal to be cut

through the isthmus was often proposed to the Councils in Spain, but was

never acted upon. (Descript. ... of Cartagena; Oppenheim, i. p. 333.)]

[Footnote 19: Nombre de Dios, a few leagues to the east of Porto Bello,

had formerly been the port where the galleons received the treasure

brought from Panama, but in 1584 the King of Spain ordered the

settlement to be abandoned on account of its unhealthiness, and because

the harbour, being open to the sea, afforded little shelter to shipping.

Gage says that in his time Nombre de Dios was almost forsaken because of

its climate. Dampier, writing thirty years later, describes the site as

a waste. "Nombre de Dios," he says, "is now nothing but a name. For I

have lain ashore in the place where that City stood, but it is all

overgrown with Wood, so as to have no sign that any Town hath been

there." (Voyages, _ed._ 1906, i. p. 81.)]

[Footnote 20: Gage, _ed._ 1655, pp. 196-8.]

[Footnote 21: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 65.]

[Footnote 22: Oppenheim, ii. p. 338.]

[Footnote 23: When the Margarita patache failed to meet the galleons at

Cartagena, it was given its clearance and allowed to sail alone to

Havana--a tempting prey to buccaneers hovering in those seas.]

[Footnote 24: Duhalde and de Rochefort.]

[Footnote 25: Rawl. MSS., A. 175, 313 b; Oppenheim, ii. p. 338.]

[Footnote 26: Here I am following the MSS. quoted by Oppenheim (ii. pp.

335 _ff._). Instead of watering in Hispaniola, the fleet sometimes

stopped at Dominica, or at Aguada in Porto Rico.]

[Footnote 27: Duhalde and de Rochefort.]

[Footnote 28: Quintal=about 100 pounds.]

[Footnote 29: These "vaisseaux de registre" were supposed not to exceed

300 tons, but through fraud were often double that burden.]

[Footnote 30: Duhalde and de Rochefort; Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 54.]

[Footnote 31: Gage, _ed._ 1655, pp. 199-200.]

[Footnote 32: Duhalde and de Rochefort; Oppenheim, ii. p. 318.]

[Footnote 33: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 45; Recop., t. i. lib. iii. tit.

viii.]

[Footnote 34: There seems to have been a contraband trade carried on at

Cadiz itself. Foreign merchants embarked their goods upon the galleons

directly from their own vessels in the harbour, without registering them

with the _Contratacion_; and on the return of the fleets received the

price of their goods in ingots of gold and silver by the same fraud. It

is scarcely possible that this was done without the tacit authorization

of the Council of the Indies at Madrid, for if the Council had insisted

upon a rigid execution of the laws regarding registration, detection

would have been inevitable.]

[Footnote 35: Weiss, _op. cit._, ii. p. 226.]

[Footnote 36: Most of the offices in the Spanish Indies were venal. No

one obtained a post without paying dearly for it, except the viceroys of

Mexico and Peru, who were grandees, and received their places through

favour at court. The governors of the ports, and the presidents of the

Audiencias established at Panama, San Domingo, and Gautemala, bought

their posts in Spain. The offices in the interior were in the gift of

the viceroys and sold to the highest bidder. Although each port had

three corregidors who audited the finances, as they also paid for their

places, they connived with the governors. The consequence was

inevitable. Each official during his tenure of office expected to

recover his initial outlay, and amass a small fortune besides. So not

only were the bribes of interlopers acceptable, but the officials often

themselves bought and sold the contraband articles.]

[Footnote 37: Froude: History of England, viii. p. 436 _ff._]

[Footnote 38: 1585, August 12th. Ralph Lane to Sir Philip Sidney. Port

Ferdinando, Virginia.--He has discovered the infinite riches of St. John

(Porto Rico?) and Hispaniola by dwelling on the islands five weeks. He

thinks that if the Queen finds herself burdened with the King of Spain,

to attempt them would be most honourable, feasible and profitable. He

exhorts him not to refuse this good opportunity of rendering so great a

service to the Church of Christ. The strength of the Spaniards doth

altogether grow from the mines of her treasure. Extract, C.S.P. Colon.,

1574-1660.]

[Footnote 39: Scelle, _op. cit._, ii. p. xiii.]

[Footnote 40: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. ix.]

[Footnote 41: 1611, February 28. Sir Thos. Roe to Salisbury. Port

d'Espaigne, Trinidad.--He has seen more of the coast from the River

Amazon to the Orinoco than any other Englishman alive. The Spaniards

here are proud and insolent, yet needy and weak, their force is

reputation, their safety is opinion. The Spaniards treat the English

worse than Moors. The government is lazy and has more skill in planting

and selling tobacco than in erecting colonies and marching armies.

Extract, C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660. (Roe was sent by Prince Henry upon a

voyage of discovery to the Indies.)]

[Footnote 42: "An historical account of the rise and growth of the West

India Colonies." By Dalby Thomas, Lond., 1690. (Harl. Miscell., 1808,

ii. 357.)]

[Footnote 43: Oviedo: Historia general de las Indias, lib. xix. cap.

xiii.; Coleccion de documentos ... de ultramar, tom. iv. p. 57

(deposition of the Spanish captain at the Isle of Mona); Pacheco, etc.:

Coleccion de documentos ... de las posesiones espanoles en America y

Oceania, tom. xl. p. 305 (cross-examination of witnesses by officers of

the Royal Audiencia in San Domingo just after the visit of the English

ship to that place); English Historical Review, XX. p. 115.

The ship is identified with the "Samson" dispatched by Henry VIII. in

1527 "with divers cunning men to seek strange regions," which sailed

from the Thames on 20th May in company with the "Mary of Guildford," was

lost by her consort in a storm on the night of 1st July, and was

believed to have foundered with all on board. (Ibid.)]

[Footnote 44: Hakluyt, _ed._ 1600, iii. p. 700; Froude, _op. cit._,

viii. p. 427.]

[Footnote 45: Scelle., _op. cit._, i. pp. 123-25, 139-61.]

[Footnote 46: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar. tom. vi. p. 15.]

[Footnote 47: Froude, _op. cit._, viii. pp. 470-72.]

[Footnote 48: Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy, i. ch. 3.]

[Footnote 49: Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy, ii. chs. 1, 2, 11.]

[Footnote 50: Corbett: The Successors of Drake, ch. x.]

[Footnote 51: Marcel: Les corsaires français au XVIe siècle, p. 7. As

early as 1501 a royal ordinance in Spain prescribed the construction of

carracks to pursue the privateers, and in 1513 royal _cedulas_ were sent

to the officials of the _Casa de Contratacion_ ordering them to send two

caravels to guard the coasts of Cuba and protect Spanish navigation from

the assaults of French corsairs. (Ibid., p. 8).]

[Footnote 52: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tomos i., iv., vi.;

Ducéré: Les corsaires sous l'ancien régime. Append. II.; Duro., _op.

cit._, i. Append. XIV.]

[Footnote 53: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 22.]

[Footnote 54: Ibid., p. 23.]

[Footnote 55: Marcel, _op. cit._, p. 16.]

[Footnote 56: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.]

[Footnote 57: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.]

[Footnote 58: Lucas: A Historical Geography of the British Colonies,

vol. ii. pp. 37, 50.]

[Footnote 59: Weiss, _op. cit._, ii. p. 292.]

[Footnote 60: Duro, _op. cit._, iii. ch. xvi.; iv. chs. iii., viii.]

[Footnote 61: Portugal between 1581 and 1640 was subject to the Crown of

Spain, and Brazil, a Portuguese colony, was consequently within the pale

of Spanish influence and administration.]

[Footnote 62: Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p.

36.]

[Footnote 63: Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p. 37;

Duro, _op. cit._, iv. p. 99; Gage, _ed._ 1655, p. 80.]

[Footnote 64: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,325, No. 10.]

[Footnote 65: Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, was created admiral of the

fleet by order of Parliament in March 1642, and although removed by

Charles I. was reinstated by Parliament on 1st July.]

[Footnote 66: Brit. Mus., Sloane MSS., 793 or 894; Add. MSS., 36,327,

No. 9.]

[Footnote 67: Winwood Papers, ii. pp. 75-77.]

[Footnote 68: Brown: Genesis of the United States, i. pp. 120-25, 172.]

[Footnote 69: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.]

[Footnote 70: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.]

[Footnote 71: Clarendon State Papers, ii. p. 87; Rymer: F[oe]dera, xx.

p. 416.]

[Footnote 72: Duro, _op. cit._, ii. p. 462.]

[Footnote 73: Duro, _op. cit._, iii. pp. 236-37.]

[Footnote 74: C.S.P. Venet., 1603-07, p. 199.]

[Footnote 75: Winwood Papers, ii. p. 233.]

[Footnote 76: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,319, No. 7; 36,320, No. 8;

36,321, No. 24; 36,322, No. 23.]

[Footnote 77: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1629, 5th and 30th Nov.; 1630,

29th July.]

[Footnote 78: Gage saw at Cartagena about a dozen English prisoners

captured by the Spaniards at sea, and belonging to the settlement on

Providence Island.]

[Footnote 79: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1635, 19th March; 1636, 26th

March.]

[Footnote 80: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,323, No. 10.]

[Footnote 81: Duro, Tomo., iv. p. 339; _cf._ also in Bodleian

Library:--"A letter written upon occasion in the Low Countries, etc.

Whereunto is added avisos from several places, of the taking of the

Island of Providence, by the Spaniards from the English. London. Printed

for Nath. Butter, Mar. 22, 1641.

"I have letter by an aviso from Cartagena, dated the 14th of September,

wherein they advise that the galleons were ready laden with the silver,

and would depart thence the 6th of October. The general of the galleons,

named Francisco Dias Pimienta, had beene formerly in the moneth of July

with above 3000 men, and the least of his ships, in the island of S.

Catalina, where he had taken and carried away with all the English, and

razed the forts, wherein they found 600 negroes, much gold and indigo,

so that the prize is esteemed worth above halfe a million."]

[Footnote 82: Rawl. MSS., A. 32,297; 31, 121.]