afforded a good anchorage and shelter for the annual treasure galleons.
The narrow entrance was secured by the two forts mentioned in the
narrative, the St. Jago on the left entering the harbour, and the San
Felipe on the right; and within the port was a third called the San
Miguel. The town lay at the bottom of the harbour bending round the
shore like a half-moon. It was built on low swampy ground and had no
walls or defences on the land side. (_Cf._ the descriptions of Wafer and
Gage.) The garrison at this time probably did not exceed 300 men.]
[Footnote 270: This statement is confirmed by one of the captains
serving under Morgan, who in his account of the expedition says: "After
remaining some days ... sickness broke out among the troops, of which we
lost half by sickness and fighting." (C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 1.)
And in "The Present State of Jamaica, 1683," we read that Morgan brought
to the island the plague "that killed my Lady Modyford and others."]
[Footnote 271: Morgan reported, however, that the ransom was offered and
paid by the President of Panama. (C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1838.)]
[Footnote 272: Exquemelin, _ed._ 1684, Part II. pp. 89-103.
The cruelties of the buccaneers at Porto Bello are confirmed by a letter
from John Style to the Secretary of State, complaining of the disorder
and injustice reigning in Jamaica. He writes: "It is a common thing
among the privateers, besides burning with matches and such like slight
torments, to cut a man in pieces, first some flesh, then a hand, an arm,
a leg, sometimes tying a cord about his head and with a stick twisting
it till the eyes shot out, which is called 'woolding.' Before taking
Puerto Bello, thus some were used, because they refused to discover a
way into the town which was not, and many in the town because they would
not discover wealth they knew not of. A woman there was by some set bare
upon a baking stone and roasted because she did not confess of money
which she had only in their conceit; this he heard some declare with
boasting, and one that was sick confess with sorrow." (C.S.P. Colon.,
1669-74, No. 138.)
Modyford writes concerning the booty got at Porto Bello, that the
business cleared each privateer £60, and "to himself they gave only £20
for their commission, which never exceeded £300." (C.S.P. Colon.,
1669-74, No. 103.) But it is very probable that the buccaneers did not
return a full account of the booty to the governor, for it was a common
complaint that they plundered their prizes and hid the spoil in holes
and creeks along the coast so as to cheat the government of its tenths
and fifteenths levied on all condemned prize-goods.]
[Footnote 273: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1838.]
[Footnote 274: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1863, 1867, 1892.]
[Footnote 275: Ibid., No. 1867; Beeston's Journal, 15th October 1668.]
[Footnote 276: Ibid., C.S.P. Colon., 1674-76, Addenda, No. 1207.]
[Footnote 277: Exquemelin gives a French version of the episode,
according to which the commander of the "Cour Volant" had given bills of
exchange upon Jamaica and Tortuga for the provisions he had taken out of
the English ship; but Morgan, because he could not prevail on the French
captain to join his proposed expedition, used this merely as a pretext
to seize the ship for piracy. The "Cour Volant," turned into a privateer
and called the "Satisfaction," was used by Morgan as his flagship in the
expedition against Panama.]
[Footnote 278: According to Exquemelin the booty amounted to 250,000
crowns in money and jewels, besides merchandise and slaves. Modyford,
however, wrote that the buccaneers received only £30 per man.]
[Footnote 279: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 1; S.P. Spain, vol. 54, f.
118; vol. 55, f. 177.]
[Footnote 280: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 227, 578.]
[Footnote 281: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 129.]
[Footnote 282: Ibid., No. 149.
In 1666 the Consejo de Almirantazgo of Flanders had offered the
government to send its frigates to the Indies to pursue and punish the
buccaneers, and protect the coasts of Spanish America; and in 1669
similar proposals were made by the "armadores" or owners of corsairing
vessels in the seaport towns of Biscay. Both offers were refused,
however, because the government feared that such privileges would lead
to commercial abuses infringing on the monopoly of the Seville
merchants. Duro, _op. cit._, V. p. 169.]
[Footnote 283: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 113, 161, 162, 172, 182,
264, 280.]
[Footnote 284: Ibid., Nos. 207, 211, 227, 240.]
[Footnote 285: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 207, 209-212, 226.]
[Footnote 286: Ibid., No. 194.]
[Footnote 287: Ibid., No. 237.]
[Footnote 288: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74; Nos. 310, 359, 504; Exquemelin,
_ed._ 1684, Pt. III. pp. 3-7; Add. MSS., 13,964, f. 24.]
[Footnote 289: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 293, 310.]
[Footnote 290: S.P. Spain, vol. 57, ff. 48, 53.]
[Footnote 291: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 293, 310; Add. MSS., 13,964,
f. 26. The Spaniards estimated their loss at 100,000 pieces of eight.
(Add. MSS. 11,268, f. 51.)]
[Footnote 292: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 310, 359, 504. In a report
sent by Governor Modyford to England (_ibid._, No. 704, I.) we find a
list of the vessels under command of Henry Morgan, with the name,
captain, tonnage, guns and crew of each ship. There were twenty-eight
English vessels of from 10 to 140 tons and from zero to 20 guns,
carrying from 16 to 140 men; the French vessels were eight in number, of
from 25 to 100 tons, with from 2 to 14 guns, and carrying from 30 to 110
men.]
[Footnote 293: Ibid., No. 504. According to Exquemelin, before the fleet
sailed all the officers signed articles regulating the disposal of the
booty. It was stipulated that Admiral Morgan should have the hundredth
part of all the plunder, "that every captain should draw the shares of
eight men, for the expenses of his ship, besides his own; that the
surgeon besides his ordinary pay should have two hundred pieces of
eight, for his chest of medicaments; and every carpenter above his
ordinary salary, should draw one hundred pieces of eight. As to
recompenses and rewards they were regulated in this voyage much higher
than was expressed in the first part of this book. For the loss of both
legs they assigned one thousand five hundred pieces of eight or fifteen
slaves, the choice being left to the election of the party; for the loss
of both hands, one thousand eight hundred pieces of eight or eighteen
slaves; for one leg, whether the right or left, six hundred pieces of
eight or six slaves; for a hand as much as for a leg, and for the loss
of an eye, one hundred pieces of eight or one slave. Lastly, unto him
that in any battle should signalize himself, either by entering the
first any castle, or taking down the Spanish colours and setting up the
English, they constituted fifty pieces of eight for a reward. In the
head of these articles it was stipulated that all these extraordinary
salaries, recompenses and rewards should be paid out of the first spoil
or purchase they should take, according as every one should then occur
to be either rewarded or paid."]
[Footnote 294: Sir James Modyford, who, after the capture of Providence
by Mansfield in 1666, had been commissioned by the king as
lieutenant-governor of the island, now bestirred himself, and in May
1671 appointed Colonel Blodre Morgan (who commanded the rear-guard at
the battle of Panama) to go as deputy-governor and take possession.
Modyford himself intended to follow with some settlers shortly after,
but the attempt at colonization seems to have failed. (C.S.P. Colon.,
1669-74, Nos. 494, 534, 613.)]
[Footnote 295: Add. MSS., 11,268, f. 51 _ff._; _ibid._, 13,964, f.
24-25.]
[Footnote 296: Ibid., 11,268, f. 51 _ff._; S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 156.]
[Footnote 297: Exquemelin, _ed._ 1684, Part III. pp. 23-27.]
[Footnote 298: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 504. Exquemelin says that
there were 1200 men, five boats with artillery and thirty-two canoes.]
[Footnote 299: Morgan's report makes it 200 men. (C.S.P. Colon.,
1669-74, No. 504.)]
[Footnote 300: Morgan says: "The enemy had basely quitted the first
entrenchment and set all on fire, as they did all the rest, without
striking a stroke." The President of Panama also writes that the
garrisons up the river, on receiving news of the fall of Chagre, were in
a panic, the commanders forsaking their posts and retiring in all haste
to Venta Cruz. (C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 547.)]
[Footnote 301: Exquemelin makes the buccaneers arrive at Venta Cruz on
the seventh day. According to Morgan they reached the village on the
sixth day, and according to Frogge on the fifth. Morgan reports that two
miles from Venta Cruz there was "a very narrow and dangerous passage
where the enemy thought to put a stop to our further proceeding but were
presently routed by the Forlorn commanded by Capt. Thomas Rogers."]
[Footnote 302: Frogge says that after leaving Venta Cruz they came upon
an ambuscade of 1000 Indians, but put them to flight with the loss of
only one killed and two wounded, the Indians losing their chief and
about thirty men. (S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 118.) Morgan reports three
killed and six or seven wounded.]
[Footnote 303: "Next morning drew up his men in the form of a tertia,
the vanguard led by Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence Prince and Major John
Morris, in number 300, the main body 600, the right wing led by himself,
the left by Colonel Edw. Collyer, the rearguard of 300 commanded by
Colonel Bledry Morgan."--Morgan's Report. (C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No.
504.)]
[Footnote 304: The close agreement between the accounts of the battle
given by Morgan and Exquemelin is remarkable, and leads us to give much
greater credence to those details in Exquemelin's narrative of the
expedition which were omitted from the official report. Morgan says of
the battle that as the Spaniards had the advantage of position and
refused to move, the buccaneers made a flanking movement to the left and
secured a hill protected on one side by a bog. Thereupon "One Francesco
de Harro charged with the horse upon the vanguard so furiously that he
could not be stopped till he lost his life; upon which the horse wheeled
off, and the foot advanced, but met with such a warm welcome and were
pursued so close that the enemies' retreat came to plain running, though
they did work such a stratagem as has been seldom heard of,
viz.:--attempting to drive two droves of 1500 cattle into their rear."
(C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 504.)]
[Footnote 305: Morgan gives the number of Spaniards at 2100 foot and 600
horse, and Frogge reports substantially the same figures. The President
of Panama, however, in his letter to the Queen, writes that he had but
1200 men, mostly negroes, mulattos and Indians, besides 200 slaves of
the Assiento. His followers, he continues, were armed only with
arquebuses and fowling-pieces, and his artillery consisted of three
wooden guns bound with hide.]
[Footnote 306: According to Frogge the Spaniards lost 500 men in the
battle, the buccaneers but one Frenchman. Morgan says that the whole
day's work only cost him five men killed and ten wounded, and that the
loss of the enemy was about 400.]
[Footnote 307: "In the city they had 200 fresh men, two forts, all the
streets barricaded and great guns in every street, which in all amounted
to thirty-two brass guns, but instead of fighting commanded it to be
fired, and blew up the chief fort, which was done in such haste that
forty of their own soldiers were blown up. In the market-place some
resistance was made, but at three o'clock they had quiet possession of
the city...."--Morgan's Report.]
[Footnote 308: S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 156.]
[Footnote 309: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 547.]
[Footnote 310: After the destruction of Panama in 1671, the old city was
deserted by the Spaniards, and the present town raised on a site several
miles to the westward, where there was a better anchorage and landing
facilities.]
[Footnote 311: The incident of Morgan and the Spanish lady I have
omitted because it is so contrary to the testimony of Richard Browne
(who if anything was prejudiced against Morgan) that "as to their women,
I know or ever heard of anything offered beyond their wills; something I
know was cruelly executed by Captain Collier in killing a friar in the
field after quarter given; but for the Admiral he was noble enough to
the vanquished enemy." (C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 608.)]
[Footnote 312: The President had retired north to Nata de los Santos,
and thence sent couriers with an account of what had happened over
Darien to Cartagena, whence the news was forwarded by express boat to
Spain. (S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 156). That the president made efforts to
raise men to oppose the retreat of the buccaneers, but received no
support from the inhabitants, is proved by Spanish documents in Add.
MSS., 11,268, ff. 33, 37, etc.]
[Footnote 313: The President of Panama in his account contained in Add.
MSS. 11,268, gives the date as 25th February. Morgan, however, says that
they began the march for Venta Cruz on 14th February; but this
discrepancy may be due to a confusion of the old and new style of
dating.]
[Footnote 314: The buccaneers arrived at Chagre on 26th
February.--Morgan's account.]
[Footnote 315: Exquemelin, _ed._ 1684, Part III. pp. 31-76.]
[Footnote 316: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 608. Wm. Frogge, too, says
that the share of each man was only £10.]
[Footnote 317: Add. MSS., 11,268.]
[Footnote 318: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 542, I.]
[Footnote 319: Ibid., No. 542, II.]
[Footnote 320: S.P. Spain, vol. 57, f. 76; vol. 58, f. 27.]
[Footnote 321: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 513, 531, 532, 544;
Beeston's journal.]
[Footnote 322: S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 30.]
[Footnote 323: _Cf._ Memorial of the Conde de Molina complaining that a
new governor had not been sent to Jamaica, as promised, nor the old
governor recalled, 26th Feb. 1671 (S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 62).]
[Footnote 324: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 272.]
[Footnote 325: Ibid., No. 331.]
[Footnote 326: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 377, 424.]
[Footnote 327: Ibid., Nos. 405, 441, 452, 453, 552, 587.]
[Footnote 328: Ibid., Nos. 600, 604, 608, 655.]
[Footnote 329: Ibid., Nos. 653, 654.]
[Footnote 330: S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 156.]
[Footnote 331: S.P. Spain, vol. 58, f. 156.]
CHAPTER VI
THE GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSES THE BUCCANEERS
The new Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, Sir Thomas Lynch, brought with
him instructions to publish and carefully observe the articles of 1670
with Spain, and at the same time to revoke all commissions issued by his
predecessor "to the prejudice of the King of Spain or any of his
subjects." When he proclaimed the peace he was likewise to publish a
general pardon to privateers who came in and submitted within a
reasonable time, of all offences committed since June 1660, assuring to
them the possession of their prize-goods (except the tenths and the
fifteenths which were always reserved to the crown as a condition of
granting commissions), and offering them inducements to take up
planting, trade, or service in the royal navy. But he was not to insist
positively on the payment of the tenths and fifteenths if it discouraged
their submission; and if this course failed to bring in the rovers, he
was to use every means in his power "by force or persuasion" to make
them submit.[332] Lynch immediately set about to secure the good-will of
his Spanish neighbours and to win back the privateers to more peaceful
pursuits. Major Beeston was sent to Cartagena with the articles of
peace, where he was given every satisfaction and secured the release of
thirty-two English prisoners.[333] On the 15th August the proclamation
of pardon to privateers was issued at Port Royal;[334] and those who had
railed against their commanders for cheating them at Panama, were given
an opportunity of resorting to the law-courts.[335] Similar
proclamations were sent by the governor "to all their haunts,"
intimating that he had written to Bermuda, the Caribbees, New England,
New York and Virginia for their apprehension, had sent notices to all
Spanish ports declaring them pirates, and intended to send to Tortuga to
prevent their reception there.[336] However, although the governor wrote
home in the latter part of the month that the privateers were entirely
suppressed, he soon found that the task was by no means a simple one.
Two buccaneers with a commission from Modyford, an Englishman named
Thurston and a mulatto named Diego, flouted his offer of pardon,
continued to prey upon Spanish shipping, and carried their prizes to
Tortuga.[337] A Dutchman named Captain Yallahs (or Yellowes) fled to
Campeache, sold his frigate for 7000 pieces of eight to the Spanish
governor, and entered into Spanish service to cruise against the English
logwood-cutters. The Governor of Jamaica sent Captain Wilgress in
pursuit, but Wilgress devoted his time to chasing a Spanish vessel
ashore, stealing logwood and burning Spanish houses on the coast.[338] A
party of buccaneers, English and French, landed upon the north side of
Cuba and burnt two towns, carrying away women and inflicting many
cruelties on the inhabitants; and when the governors of Havana and St.
Jago complained to Lynch, the latter could only disavow the English in
the marauding party as rebels and pirates, and bid the Spanish governors
hang all who fell into their power.[339] The governor, in fact, was
having his hands full, and wrote in January 1672 that "this cursed trade
has been so long followed, and there is so many of it, that like weeds
or hydras, they spring up as fast as we can cut them down."[340]
Some of the recalcitrant freebooters, however, were captured and brought
to justice. Major Beeston, sent by the governor in January 1672, with a
frigate and four smaller vessels, to seize and burn some pirate ships
careening on the south cays of Cuba, fell in instead with two other
vessels, one English and one French, which had taken part in the raids
upon Cuba, and carried them to Jamaica. The French captain was offered
to the Governor of St. Jago, but the latter refused to punish him for
fear of his comrades in Tortuga and Hispaniola. Both captains were
therefore tried and condemned to death at Port Royal. As the Spaniards,
however, had refused to punish them, and as there was no reason why the
Jamaicans should be the executioners, the captains of the port and some
of the council begged for a reprieve, and the English prisoner, Francis
Witherborn, was sent to England.[341] Captain Johnson, one of the
pirates after whom Beeston had originally been sent, was later in the
year shipwrecked by a hurricane upon the coast of Jamaica. Johnson,
immediately after the publication of the peace by Sir Thomas Lynch, had
fled from Port Royal with about ten followers, and falling in with a
Spanish ship of eighteen guns, had seized it and killed the captain and
twelve or fourteen of the crew. Then gathering about him a party of a
hundred or more, English and French, he had robbed Spanish vessels round
Havana and the Cuban coast. Finally, however, he grew weary of his
French companions, and sailed for Jamaica to make terms with the
governor, when on coming to anchor in Morant Bay he was blown ashore by
the hurricane. The governor had him arrested, and gave a commission to
Colonel Modyford, the son of Sir Thomas, to assemble the justices and
proceed to trial and immediate execution. He adjured him, moreover, to
see to it that the pirate was not acquitted. Colonel Modyford,
nevertheless, sharing perhaps his father's sympathy with the sea-rovers,
deferred the trial, acquainted none of the justices with his orders, and
although Johnson and two of his men "confessed enough to hang a hundred
honester persons," told the jury they could not find against the
prisoner. Half an hour after the dismissal of the court, Johnson "came
to drink with his judges." The baffled governor thereupon placed Johnson
a second time under arrest, called a meeting of the council, from which
he dismissed Colonel Modyford, and "finding material errors," reversed
the judgment. The pirate was again tried--Lynch himself this time
presiding over the court--and upon making a full confession, was
condemned and executed, though "as much regretted," writes Lynch, "as if
he had been as pious and as innocent as one of the primitive martyrs."
The second trial was contrary to the fundamental principles of English
law, howsoever guilty the culprit may have been, and the king sent a
letter to Lynch reproving him for his rashness. He commanded the
governor to try all pirates thereafter by maritime law, and if a
disagreement arose to remit the case to the king for re-judgment.
Nevertheless he ordered Lynch to suspend from all public employments in
the island, whether civil or military, both Colonel Modyford and all
others guilty with him of designedly acquitting Johnson.[342]
The Spaniards in the West Indies, notwithstanding the endeavours of Sir
Thomas Lynch to clear their coasts of pirates, made little effort to
co-operate with him. The governors of Cartagena and St. Jago de Cuba,
pretending that they feared being punished for allowing trade, had
forbidden English frigates to come into their ports, and refused them
provisions and water; and the Governor of Campeache had detained money,
plate and negroes taken out of an English trading-vessel, to the value
of 12,000 pieces of eight. When Lynch sent to demand satisfaction, the
governor referred him to Madrid for justice, "which to me that have been
there," writes Lynch, "seems worse than the taking it away."[343] The
news also of the imposing armament, which the Spanish grandees made
signs of preparing to send to the Indies on learning of the capture of
Panama, was in November 1671 just beginning to filter into Jamaica; and
the governor and council, fearing that the fleet was directed against
them, made vigorous efforts, by repairing the forts, collecting stores
and marshalling the militia, to put the island in a state of defence.
The Spanish fleet never appeared, however, and life on the island soon
subsided into its customary channels.[344] Sir Thomas Lynch, meanwhile,
was all the more careful to observe the peace with Spain and yet refrain
from alienating the more troublesome elements of the population. It had
been decided in England that Morgan, too, like Modyford, was to be
sacrificed, formally at least, to the remonstrances of the Spanish
Government; yet Lynch, because Morgan himself was ill, and fearing
perhaps that two such arrests might create a disturbance among the
friends of the culprits, or at least deter the buccaneers from coming in
under the declaration of amnesty, did not send the admiral to England
until the following spring. On 6th April 1672 Morgan sailed from Jamaica
a prisoner in the frigate "Welcome."[345] He sailed, however, with the
universal respect and sympathy of all parties in the colony. Lynch
himself calls him "an honest, brave fellow," and Major James Banister in
a letter to the Secretary of State recommends him to the esteem of
Arlington as "a very well deserving person, and one of great courage and
conduct, who may, with his Majesty's pleasure, perform good service at
home, and be very advantageous to the island if war should break forth
with the Spaniard."[346]
Indeed Morgan, the buccaneer, was soon in high favour at the dissolute
court of Charles II., and when in January 1674 the Earl of Carlisle was
chosen Governor of Jamaica, Morgan was selected as his deputy[347]--an
act which must have entirely neutralized in Spanish Councils the effect
of his arrest a year and a half earlier. Lord Carlisle, however, did not
go out to Jamaica until 1678, and meanwhile in April a commission to be
governor was issued to Lord Vaughan,[348] and several months later
another to Morgan as lieutenant-governor.[349] Vaughan arrived in
Jamaica in the middle of March 1675; but Morgan, whom the king in the
meantime had knighted, sailed ahead of Vaughan, apparently in defiance
of the governor's orders, and although shipwrecked on the Isle la Vache,
reached Jamaica a week before his superior.[350] It seems that Sir
Thomas Modyford sailed for Jamaica with Morgan, and the return of these
two arch-offenders to the West Indies filled the Spanish Court with new
alarms. The Spanish ambassador in London presented a memorial of protest
to the English king,[351] and in Spain the Council of War blossomed into
fresh activity to secure the defence of the West Indies and the coasts
of the South Sea.[352] Ever since 1672, indeed, the Spaniards moved by
some strange infatuation, had persisted in a course of active hostility
to the English in the West Indies. Could the Spanish Government have
realized the inherent weakness of its American possessions, could it
have been informed of the scantiness of the population in proportion to
the large extent of territory and coast-line to be defended, could it
have known how in the midst of such rich, unpeopled countries abounding
with cattle, hogs and other provisions, the buccaneers could be
extirpated only by co-operation with its English and French neighbours,
it would have soon fallen back upon a policy of peace and good
understanding with England. But the news of the sack of Panama,
following so close upon the conclusion of the treaty of 1670, and the
continued depredations of the buccaneers of Tortuga and the declared
pirates of Jamaica, had shattered irrevocably the reliance of the
Spaniards upon the good faith of the English Government. And when Morgan
was knighted and sent back to Jamaica as lieutenant-governor, their
suspicions seemed to be confirmed. A ketch, sent to Cartagena in 1672 by
Sir Thomas Lynch to trade in negroes, was seized by the general of the
galleons, the goods burnt in the market-place, and the negroes sold for
the Spanish King's account.[353] An Irish papist, named Philip
Fitzgerald, commanding a Spanish man-of-war of twelve guns belonging to
Havana, and a Spaniard called Don Francisco with a commission from the
Governor of Campeache, roamed the West Indian seas and captured English
vessels sailing from Jamaica to London, Virginia and the Windward
Islands, barbarously ill-treating and sometimes massacring the English
mariners who fell into their hands.[354] The Spanish governors, in spite
of the treaty and doubtless in conformity with orders from home,[355]
did nothing to restrain the cruelties of these privateers. At one time
eight English sailors who had been captured in a barque off Port Royal
and carried to Havana, on attempting to escape from the city were
pursued by a party of soldiers, and all of them murdered, the head of
the master being set on a pole before the governor's door.[356] At
another time Fitzgerald sailed into the harbour of Havana with five
Englishmen tied ready to hang, two at the main-yard arms, two at the
fore-yard arms, and one at the mizzen peak, and as he approached the
castle he had the wretches swung off, while he and his men shot at the
dangling corpses from the decks of the vessel.[357] The repeated
complaints and demands for reparation made to the Spanish ambassador in
London, and by Sir William Godolphin to the Spanish Court, were answered
by counter-complaints of outrages committed by buccaneers who, though
long ago disavowed and declared pirates by the Governor of Jamaica, were
still charged by the Spaniards to the account of the English.[358] Each
return of the fleet from Porto Bello or Vera Cruz brought with it
English prisoners from Cartagena and other Spanish fortresses, who were
lodged in the dungeons of Seville and often condemned to the galleys or
to the quicksilver mines. The English ambassador sometimes secured their
release, but his efforts to obtain redress for the loss of ships and
goods received no satisfaction. The Spanish Government, believing that
Parliament was solicitous of Spanish trade and would not supply Charles
II. with the necessary funds for a war,[359] would disburse nothing in
damages. It merely granted to the injured parties despatches directed to
the Governor of Havana, which ordered him to restore the property in
dispute unless it was contraband goods. Godolphin realized that these
delays and excuses were only the prelude to an ultimate denial of any
reparation whatever, and wrote home to the Secretary of State that
"England ought rather to provide against future injuries than to depend
on satisfaction here, till they have taught the Spaniards their own
interest in the West Indies by more efficient means than
friendship."[360] The aggrieved merchants and shipowners, often only too
well acquainted with the dilatory Spanish forms of procedure, saw that
redress at Havana was hopeless, and petitioned Charles II. for letters
of reprisal.[361] Sir Leoline Jenkins, Judge of the Admiralty, however,
in a report to the king gave his opinion that although he saw little
hope of real reparation, the granting of reprisals was not justified by
law until the cases had been prosecuted at Havana according to the
queen-regent's orders.[362] This apparently was never done, and some of
the cases dragged on for years without the petitioners ever receiving
satisfaction.
The excuse of the Spaniards for most of these seizures was that the
vessels contained logwood, a dyewood found upon the coasts of Campeache,
Honduras and Yucatan, the cutting and removal of which was forbidden to
any but Spanish subjects. The occupation of cutting logwood had sprung
up among the English about ten years after the seizure of Jamaica. In
1670 Modyford writes that a dozen vessels belonging to Port Royal were
concerned in this trade alone, and six months later he furnished a list
of thirty-two ships employed in logwood cutting, equipped with
seventy-four guns and 424 men.[363] The men engaged in the business had
most of them been privateers, and as the regions in which they sought
the precious wood were entirely uninhabited by Spaniards, Modyford
suggested that the trade be encouraged as an outlet for the energies of
the buccaneers. By such means, he thought, these "soldiery men" might be
kept within peaceable bounds, and yet be always ready to serve His
Majesty in event of any new rupture. When Sir Thomas Lynch replaced
Modyford, he realized that this logwood-cutting would be resented by the
Spaniards and might neutralize all his efforts to effect a peace. He
begged repeatedly for directions from the council in England. "For God's
sake," he writes, "give your commands about the logwood."[364] In the
meantime, after consulting with Modyford, he decided to connive at the
business, but he compelled all who brought the wood into Port Royal to
swear that they had not stolen it or done any violence to the
Spaniards.[365] Secretary Arlington wrote to the governor, in November
1671, to hold the matter over until he obtained the opinion of the
English ambassador at Madrid, especially as some colour was lent to the
pretensions of the logwood cutters by the article of the peace of 1670
which confirmed the English King in the possession and sovereignty of
all territory in America occupied by his subjects at that date.[366] In
May 1672 Ambassador Godolphin returned his answer. "The wood," he
writes, "is brought from Yucatan, a large province of New Spain, about
100 leagues in length, sufficiently peopled, having several great towns,
as Merida, Valladolid, San Francisco de Campeache, etc., and the
government one of the most considerable next to Peru and Mexico.... So
that Spain has as well too much right as advantage not to assert the
propriety of these woods, for though not all inhabited, these people may
as justly pretend to make use of our rivers, mountains and commons, as
we can to enjoy any benefit to those woods." So much for the strict
justice of the matter. But when the ambassador came to give his own
opinion on the trade, he advised that if the English confined themselves
to cutting wood alone, and in places remote from Spanish settlements,
the king might connive at, although not authorize, their so doing.[367]
Here was the kernel of the whole matter. Spain was too weak and impotent
to take any serious revenge. So let us rob her quietly but decently,
keeping the theft out of her sight and so sparing her feelings as much
as possible. It was the same piratical motive which animated Drake and
Hawkins, which impelled Morgan to sack Maracaibo and Panama, and which,
transferred to the dignified council chambers of England, took on a more
humane but less romantic guise. On 8th October 1672, the Council for the
Plantations dispatched to Governor Lynch their approval of his
connivance at the business, but they urged him to observe every care and
prudence, to countenance the cutting only in desolate and uninhabited
places, and to use every endeavour to prevent any just complaints by the
Spaniards of violence and depredation.[368]
The Spaniards nevertheless did, as we have seen, engage in active
reprisal, especially as they knew the cutting of logwood to be but the
preliminary step to the growth of English settlements upon the coasts of
Yucatan and Honduras, settlements, indeed, which later crystallized into
a British colony. The Queen-Regent of Spain sent orders and instructions
to her governors in the West Indies to encourage privateers to take and
punish as pirates all English and French who robbed and carried away
wood within their jurisdictions; and three small frigates from Biscay
were sent to clear out the intruders.[369] The buccaneer Yallahs, we
have seen, was employed by the Governor of Campeache to seize the
logwood-cutters; and although he surprised twelve or more vessels, the
Governor of Jamaica, not daring openly to avow the business, could enter
no complaint. On 3rd November 1672, however, he was compelled to issue a
proclamation ordering all vessels sailing from Port Royal for the
purpose of cutting dye-wood to go in fleets of at least four as security
against surprise and capture. Under the governorship of Lord Vaughan,
and after him of Lord Carlisle, matters continued in this same uncertain
course, the English settlements in Honduras gradually increasing in
numbers and vitality, and the Spaniards maintaining their right to take
all ships they found at sea laden with logwood, and indeed, all English
and French ships found upon their coasts. Each of the English governors
in turn had urged that some equitable adjustment of the trade be made
with the Spanish Crown, if peace was to be preserved in the Indies and
the buccaneers finally suppressed; but the Spaniards would agree to no
accommodation, and in March 1679 the king wrote to Lord Carlisle bidding
him discourage, as far as possible, the logwood-cutting in Campeache or
any other of the Spanish dominions, and to try and induce the buccaneers
to apply themselves to planting instead.[370]
The reprisals of the Spaniards on the score of logwood-cutting were not
the only difficulties with which Lord Vaughan as governor had to
contend. From the day of his landing in Jamaica he seems to have
conceived a violent dislike of his lieutenant, Sir Henry Morgan, and
this antagonism was embittered by Morgan's open or secret sympathy with
the privateers, a race with whom Vaughan had nothing in common. The ship
on which Morgan had sailed from England, and which was cast away upon
the Isle la Vache, had contained the military stores for Jamaica, most
of which were lost in the wreck. Morgan, contrary to Lord Vaughan's
positive and written orders, had sailed before him, and assumed the
authority in Jamaica a week before the arrival of the governor at Port
Royal. This the governor seems to have been unable to forgive. He openly
blamed Morgan for the wreck and the loss of the stores; and only two
months after his coming to Jamaica, in May 1675, he wrote to England
that for the good of His Majesty's service he thought Morgan ought to be
removed, and the charge of so useless an officer saved.[371] In
September he wrote that he was "every day more convinced of (Morgan's)
imprudence and unfitness to have anything to do in the Civil Government,
and of what hazards the island may run by so dangerous a succession."
Sir Henry, he continued, had made himself and his authority so cheap at
the Port, drinking and gaming in the taverns, that the governor intended
to remove thither speedily himself for the reputation of the island and
the security of the place.[372] He recommended that his predecessor, Sir
Thomas Lynch, whom he praises for "his prudent government and conduct of
affairs," be appointed his deputy instead of Morgan in the event of the
governor's death or absence.[373] Lord Vaughan's chief grievance,
however, was the lieutenant-governor's secret encouragement of the
buccaneers. "What I most resent," he writes again, "is ... that I find
Sir Henry, contrary to his duty and trust, endeavours to set up
privateering, and has obstructed all my designs and purposes for the
reducing of those that do use this course of life."[374] When he had
issued proclamations, the governor continued, declaring as pirates all
the buccaneers who refused to submit, Sir Henry had encouraged the
English freebooters to take French commissions, had himself fitted them
out for sea, and had received authority from the French Governor of
Tortuga to collect the tenths on prize goods brought into Jamaica under
cover of these commissions. The quarrel came to a head over the arrest
and trial of a buccaneer named John Deane, commander of the ship "St.
David." Deane was accused of having stopped a ship called the "John
Adventure," taken out several pipes of wine and a cable worth £100, and
forcibly carried the vessel to Jamaica. He was also reported to be
wearing Dutch, French and Spanish colours without commission.[375] When
the "John Adventure" entered Port Royal it was seized by the governor
for landing goods without entry, contrary to the Acts of Navigation, and
on complaint of the master of the vessel that he had been robbed by
Deane and other privateers, Sir Henry Morgan was ordered to imprison the
offenders. The lieutenant-governor, however, seems rather to have
encouraged them to escape,[376] until Deane made so bold as to accuse
the governor of illegal seizure. Deane was in consequence arrested by
the governor, and on 27th April 1676, in a Court of Admiralty presided
over by Lord Vaughan as vice-admiral, was tried and condemned to suffer
death as a pirate.[377] The proceedings, however, were not warranted by
legal practice, for according to statutes of the twenty-seventh and
twenty-eighth years of Henry VIII., pirates might not be tried in an
Admiralty Court, but only under the Common Law of England by a
Commission of Oyer and Terminer under the great seal.[378] After
obtaining an opinion to this effect from the Judge of the Admiralty, the
English Council wrote to Lord Vaughan staying the execution of Deane,
and ordering a new trial to be held under a proper commission about to
be forwarded to him.[379] The Governor of Jamaica, however, upon
receiving a confession from Deane and frequent petitions for pardon, had
reprieved the pirate a month before the letter from the council reached
him.[380] The incident had good effect in persuading the freebooters to
come in, and that result assured, the governor could afford to bend to
popular clamour in favour of the culprit. In the latter part of 1677 a
standing commission of Oyer and Terminer for the trial of pirates in
Jamaica was prepared by the attorney-general and sent to the
colony.[381]
After the trial of Deane, the lieutenant-governor, according to Lord
Vaughan, had openly expressed himself, both in the taverns and in his
own house, in vindication of the condemned man and in disparagement of
Vaughan himself.[382] The quarrel hung fire, however, until on 24th July
when the governor, in obedience to orders from England,[383] cited
Morgan and his brother-in-law, Colonel Byndloss, to appear before the
council. Against Morgan he brought formal charges of using the
governor's name and authority without his orders in letters written to
the captains of the privateers, and Byndloss he accused of unlawfully
holding a commission from a foreign governor to collect the tenths on
condemned prize goods.[384] Morgan in his defence to Secretary Coventry
flatly denied the charges, and denounced the letters written to the
privateers as forgeries; and Byndloss declared his readiness "to go in
this frigate with a tender of six or eight guns and so to deal with the
privateers at sea, and in their holes (_sic_) bring in the chief of them
to His Majesty's obedience or bring in their heads and destroy their
ships."[385] There seems to be little doubt that letters were written by
Morgan to certain privateers soon after his arrival in Jamaica, offering
them, in the name of the governor, favour and protection in Port Royal.
Copies of these letters, indeed, still exist;[386] but whether they were
actually used is not so certain. Charles Barre, secretary to Sir Henry
Morgan, confessed that such letters had been written, but with the
understanding that the governor lent them his approval, and that when
this was denied Sir Henry refused to send them.[387] It is natural to
suppose that Morgan should feel a bond of sympathy with his old
companions in the buccaneer trade, and it is probable that in 1675, in
the first enthusiasm of his return to Jamaica, having behind him the
openly-expressed approbation of the English Court for what he had done
in the past, and feeling uncertain, perhaps, as to Lord Vaughan's real
attitude toward the sea-rovers, Morgan should have done some things
inconsistent with the policy of stern suppression pursued by the
government. It is even likely that he was indiscreet in some of his
expressions regarding the governor and his actions. His bluff,
unconventional, easygoing manners, natural to men brought up in new
countries and intensified by his early association with the buccaneers,
may have been distasteful to a courtier accustomed to the urbanities of
Whitehall. It is also clear, however, that Lord Vaughan from the first
conceived a violent prejudice against his lieutenant, and allowed this
prejudice to colour the interpretation he put upon all of Sir Henry's
actions. And it is rather significant that although the particulars of
the dispute and of the examination before the Council of Jamaica were
sent to the Privy Council in England, the latter body did not see fit to
remove Morgan from his post until six years later.
As in the case of Modyford and Lynch, so with Lord Vaughan, the thorn in
his side was the French colony on Hispaniola and Tortuga. The English
buccaneers who would not come in under the proclamation of pardon
published at Port Royal, still continued to range the seas with French
commissions, and carried their prizes into French ports. The governor
protested to M. d'Ogeron and to his successor, M. de Pouançay, declaring
that any English vessels or subjects caught with commissions against the
Spaniards would be treated as pirates and rebels; and in December 1675,
in compliance with the king's orders of the previous August, he issued a
public proclamation to that effect.[388] In April 1677 an act was passed
by the assembly, declaring it felony for any English subject belonging
to the island to serve under a foreign prince or state without licence
under the hand and seal of the governor;[389] and in the following July
the council ordered another proclamation to be issued, offering ample
pardon to all men in foreign service who should come in within twelve
months to claim the benefit of the act.[390] These measures seem to have
been fairly successful, for on 1st August Peter Beckford, Clerk of the
Council in Jamaica, wrote to Secretary Williamson that since the passing
of the law at least 300 privateers had come in and submitted, and that
few men would now venture their lives to serve the French.[391]
Even with the success of this act, however, the path of the governor was
not all roses. Buccaneering had always been so much a part of the life
of the colony that it was difficult to stamp it out entirely. Runaway
servants and others from the island frequently recruited the ranks of
the freebooters; members of the assembly, and even of the council, were
interested in privateering ventures; and as the governor was without a
sufficient naval force to deal with the offenders independently of the
council and assembly, he often found his efforts fruitless. In the early
part of 1677 a Scotchman, named James Browne, with a commission from M.
d'Ogeron and a mixed crew of English, Dutch and French, seized a Dutch
ship trading in negroes off the coast of Cartagena, killed the Dutch
captain and several of his men, and landed the negroes, about 150 in
number, in a remote bay of Jamaica. Lord Vaughan sent a frigate which
seized about 100 of the negroes, and when Browne and his crew fell into
the governor's hands he had them all tried and condemned for piracy.
Browne was ordered to be executed, but his men, eight in number, were
pardoned. The captain petitioned the assembly to have the benefit of the
Act of Privateers, and the House twice sent a committee to the governor
to endeavour to obtain a reprieve. Lord Vaughan, however, refused to
listen and gave orders for immediate execution. Half an hour after the
hanging, the provost-marshal appeared with an order signed by the
speaker to observe the Chief-Justice's writ of Habeas Corpus, whereupon
Vaughan, resenting the action, immediately dissolved the Assembly.[392]
The French colony on Hispaniola was an object of concern to the
Jamaicans, not only because it served as a refuge for privateers from
Port Royal, but also because it threatened soon to overwhelm the old
Spanish colony and absorb the whole island. Under the conciliatory,
opportunist regime of M. d'Ogeron, the French settlements in the west of
the island had grown steadily in number and size;[393] while the old
Spanish towns seemed every year to become weaker and more open to
attack. D'Ogeron, who died in France in 1675, had kept always before him
the project of capturing the Spanish capital, San Domingo; but he was
too weak to accomplish so great a design without aid from home, and this
was never vouchsafed him. His policy, however, was continued by his
nephew and successor, M. de Pouançay, and every defection from Jamaica
seemed so much assistance to the French to accomplish their ambition.
Yet it was manifestly to the English interest in the West Indies not to
permit the French to obtain a pre-eminence there. The Spanish colonies
were large in area, thinly populated, and ill-supported by the home
government, so that they were not likely to be a serious menace to the
English islands. With their great wealth and resources, moreover, they
had few manufactures and offered a tempting field for exploitation by
English merchants. The French colonies, on the other hand, were easily
supplied with merchandise from France, and in event of a war would prove
more dangerous as neighbours than the Spaniards. To allow the French to
become lords of San Domingo would have been to give them an undisputed
predominance in the West Indies and make them masters of the
neighbouring seas.
In the second war of conquest waged by Louis XIV. against Holland, the
French in the West Indies found the buccaneers to be useful allies, but
as usually happened at such times, the Spaniards paid the bill. In the
spring of 1677 five or six English privateers surprised the town of
Santa Marta on the Spanish Main. According to the reports brought to
Jamaica, the governor and the bishop, in order to save the town from
being burnt, agreed with the marauders for a ransom; but the Governor of
Cartagena, instead of contributing with pieces of eight, despatched a
force of 500 men by land and three vessels by sea to drive out the
invaders. The Spanish troops, however, were easily defeated, and the
ships, seeing the French colours waving over the fort and the town,
sailed back to Cartagena. The privateers carried away the governor and
the bishop and came to Jamaica in July. The plunder amounted to only £20
per man. The English in the party, about 100 in number and led by
Captains Barnes and Coxon, submitted at Port Royal under the terms of
the Act against Privateers, and delivered up the Bishop of Santa Marta
to Lord Vaughan. Vaughan took care to lodge the bishop well, and hired a
vessel to send him to Cartagena, at which "the good old man was
exceedingly pleased." He also endeavoured to obtain the custody of the
Spanish governor and other prisoners, but without success, "the French
being obstinate and damnably enraged the English had left them" and
submitted to Lord Vaughan.[394]
In the beginning of the following year, 1678, Count d'Estrées,
Vice-Admiral of the French fleet in the West Indies, was preparing a
powerful armament to go against the Dutch on Curaçao, and sent two
frigates to Hispaniola with an order from the king to M. de Pouançay to
join him with 1200 buccaneers. De Pouançay assembled the men at Cap
François, and embarking on the frigates and on some filibustering ships
in the road, sailed for St. Kitts. There he was joined by a squadron of
fifteen or more men-of-war from Martinique under command of Count
d'Estrées. The united fleet of over thirty vessels sailed for Curaçao on
7th May, but on the fourth day following, at about eight o'clock in the
evening, was wrecked upon some coral reefs near the Isle d'Aves.[395] As
the French pilots had been at odds among themselves as to the exact
position of the fleet, the admiral had taken the precaution to send a
fire-ship and three buccaneering vessels several miles in advance of the
rest of the squadron. Unfortunately these scouts drew too little water
and passed over the reefs without touching them. A buccaneer was the
first to strike and fired three shots to warn the admiral, who at once
lighted fires and discharged cannon to keep off the rest of the ships.
The latter, however, mistaking the signals, crowded on sail, and soon
most of the fleet were on the reefs. Those of the left wing, warned in
time by a shallop from the flag-ship, succeeded in veering off. The
rescue of the crews was slow, for the seas were heavy and the boats
approached the doomed ships with difficulty. Many sailors and marines
were drowned, and seven men-of-war, besides several buccaneering ships,
were lost on the rocks. Count d'Estrées himself escaped, and sailed with
the remnant of his squadron to Petit Goave and Cap François in
Hispaniola, whence on 18th June he departed for France.[396]
The buccaneers were accused in the reports which reached Barbadoes of
deserting the admiral after the accident, and thus preventing the
reduction of Curaçao, which d'Estrées would have undertaken in spite of
the shipwreck.[397] However this may be, one of the principal buccaneer
leaders, named de Grammont, was left by de Pouançay at the Isle d'Aves
to recover what he could from the wreck, and to repair some of the
privateering vessels.[398] When he had accomplished this, finding
himself short of provisions, he sailed with about 700 men to make a
descent on Maracaibo; and after spending six months in the lake, seizing
the shipping and plundering all the settlements in that region, he
re-embarked in the middle of December. The booty is said to have been
very small.[399] Early in the same year the Marquis de Maintenon,
commanding the frigate "La Sorcière," and aided by some French
filibusters from Tortuga, was on the coast of Caracas, where he ravaged
the islands of Margarita and Trinidad. He had arrived in the West Indies
from France in the latter part of 1676, and when he sailed from Tortuga
was at the head of 700 or 800 men. His squadron met with little success,
however, and soon scattered.[400] Other bands of filibusters pillaged
Campeache, Puerto Principe in Cuba, Santo Tomas on the Orinoco, and
Truxillo in the province of Honduras; and de Pouançay, to console the
buccaneers for their losses at the Isle d'Aves, sent 800 men under the
Sieur de Franquesnay to make a descent upon St. Jago de Cuba, but the
expedition seems to have been a failure.[401]
On 1st March 1678 a commission was again issued to the Earl of Carlisle,
appointing him governor of Jamaica.[402] Carlisle arrived in his new
government on 18th July,[403] but Lord Vaughan, apparently because of
ill-health, had already sailed for England at the end of March, leaving
Sir Henry Morgan, who retained his place under the new governor, deputy
in his absence.[404] Lord Carlisle, immediately upon his arrival,
invited the privateers to come in and encouraged them to stay, hoping,
according to his own account, to be able to wean them from their
familiar courses, and perhaps to use them in the threatened war with
France, for the island then had "not above 4000 whites able to bear
arms, a secret not fit to be made public."[405] If the governor was
sincere in his intentions, the results must have been a bitter
disappointment. Some of the buccaneers came in, others persevered in the
old trade, and even those who returned abused the pardon they had
received. In the autumn of 1679, several privateering vessels under
command of Captains Coxon, Sharp and others who had come back to
Jamaica, made a raid in the Gulf of Honduras, plundered the royal
storehouses there, carried off 500 chests of indigo,[406] besides cocoa,
cochineal, tortoiseshell, money and plate, and returned with their
plunder to Jamaica. Not knowing what their reception might be, one of
the vessels landed her cargo of indigo in an unfrequented spot on the
coast, and the rest sent word that unless they were allowed to bring
their booty to Port Royal and pay the customs duty, they would sail to
Rhode Island or to one of the Dutch plantations. The governor had taken
security for good behaviour from some of the captains before they sailed
from Jamaica; yet in spite of this they were permitted to enter the
indigo at the custom house and divide it in broad daylight; and the
frigate "Success" was ordered to coast round Jamaica in search of other
privateers who failed to come in and pay duty on their plunder at Port
Royal. The glut of indigo in Jamaica disturbed trade considerably, and
for a time the imported product took the place of native sugar and
indigo as a medium of exchange. Manufacture on the island was hindered,
prices were lowered, and only the king's customs received any actual
benefit.[407]
These same privateers, however, were soon out upon a much larger design.
Six captains, Sharp, Coxon, Essex, Allison, Row, and Maggott, in four
barques and two sloops, met at Point Morant in December 1679, and on 7th
January set sail for Porto Bello. They were scattered by a terrible
storm, but all eventually reached their rendezvous in safety. There they
picked up another barque commanded by Captain Cooke, who had sailed from
Jamaica on the same design, and likewise a French privateering vessel
commanded by Captain Lessone. They set out for Porto Bello in canoes
with over 300 men, and landing twenty leagues from the town, marched for
four days along the seaside toward the city. Coming to an Indian village
about three miles from Porto Bello, they were discovered by the natives,
and one of the Indians ran to the city, crying, "Ladrones! ladrones!"
The buccaneers, although "many of them were weak, being three days
without any food, and their feet cut with the rocks for want of shoes,"
made all speed for the town, which they entered without difficulty on
17th February 1680. Most of the inhabitants sought refuge in the castle,
whence they made a counter-attack without success upon the invaders. On
the evening of the following day, the buccaneers retreated with their
prisoners and booty down to a cay or small island about three and a half
leagues from Porto Bello, where they were joined by their ships. They
had just left in time to avoid a force of some 700 Spanish troops who
were sent from Panama and arrived the day after the buccaneers departed.
After capturing two Spanish vessels bound for Porto Bello with
provisions from Cartagena, they divided the plunder, of which each man
received 100 pieces of eight, and departed for Boca del Toro some fifty
leagues to the north. There they careened and provisioned, and being
joined by two other Jamaican privateers commanded by Sawkins and Harris,
sailed for Golden Island, whence on 5th April 1680, with 334 men, they
began their march across the Isthmus of Darien to the coasts of Panama
and the South Seas.[408]
Lord Carlisle cannot escape the charge of culpable negligence for having
permitted these vessels in the first place to leave Jamaica. All the
leaders in the expedition were notorious privateers, men who had
repeatedly been concerned in piratical outrages against the Dutch and
Spaniards. Coxon and Harris had both come in after taking part in the
expedition against Santa Marta; Sawkins had been caught with his vessel
by the frigate "Success" and sent to Port Royal, where on 1st December
1679 he seems to have been in prison awaiting trial;[410] while Essex
had been brought in by another frigate, the "Hunter," in November, and
tried with twenty of his crew for plundering on the Jamaican coast, two
of his men being sentenced to death.[411] The buccaneers themselves
declared that they had sailed with permission from Lord Carlisle to cut
logwood.[412] This was very likely true; yet after the exactly similar
ruse of these men when they went to Honduras, the governor could not
have failed to suspect their real intentions.
At the end of May 1680 Lord Carlisle suddenly departed for England in
the frigate "Hunter," leaving Morgan again in charge as
lieutenant-governor.[413] On his passage home the governor met with
Captain Coxon, who, having quarrelled with his companions in the
Pacific, had returned across Darien to the West Indies and was again
hanging about the shores of Jamaica. The "Hunter" gave chase for
twenty-four hours, but being outsailed was content to take two small
vessels in the company of Coxon which had been deserted by their
crews.[414] In England Samuel Long, whom the governor had suspended from
the council and dismissed from his post as chief justice of the colony
for his opposition to the new Constitution, accused the governor before
the Privy Council of collusion with pirates and encouraging them to
bring their plunder to Jamaica. The charges were doubtless conceived in
a spirit of revenge; nevertheless the two years during which Carlisle
was in Jamaica were marked by an increased activity among the
freebooters, and by a lukewarmness and negligence on the part of the
government, for which Carlisle alone must be held responsible. To accuse
him of deliberately supporting and encouraging the buccaneers, however,
may be going too far. Sir Henry Morgan, during his tenure of the chief
command of the island, showed himself very zealous in the pursuit of the
pirates, and sincerely anxious to bring them to justice; and as Carlisle
and Morgan always worked together in perfect harmony, we may be
justified in believing that Carlisle's mistakes were those of negligence
rather than of connivance. The freebooters who brought goods into
Jamaica increased the revenues of the island, and a governor whose
income was small and tastes extravagant, was not apt to be too
inquisitive about the source of the articles which entered through the
customs. There is evidence, moreover, that French privateers, being
unable to obtain from the merchants on the coast of San Domingo the
cables, anchors, tar and other naval stores necessary for their
armaments, were compelled to resort to other islands to buy them, and
that Jamaica came in for a share of this trade. Provisions, too, were
more plentiful at Port Royal than in the _cul-de-sac_ of Hispaniola, and
the French governors complained to the king that the filibusters carried
most of their money to foreign plantations to exchange for these
commodities. Such French vessels if they came to Jamaica were not
strictly within the scope of the laws against piracy which had been
passed by the assembly, and their visits were the more welcome as they
paid for their goods promptly and liberally in good Spanish
doubloons.[415]
A general warrant for the apprehension of Coxon, Sharp and the other men
who had plundered Porto Bello had been issued by Lord Carlisle in May
1680, just before his departure for England. On 1st July a similar
warrant was issued by Morgan, and five days later a proclamation was
published against all persons who should hold any correspondence
whatever with the outlawed crews.[416] Three men who had taken part in
the expedition were captured and clapped into prison until the next
meeting of the court. The friends of Coxon, however, including, it
seems, almost all the members of the council, offered to give £2000
security, if he was allowed to come to Port Royal, that he would never
take another commission except from the King of England; and Morgan
wrote to Carlisle seeking his approbation.[417] At the end of the
following January Morgan received word that a notorious Dutch privateer,
named Jacob Everson, commanding an armed sloop, was anchored on the
coast with a brigantine which he had lately captured. The
lieutenant-governor manned a small vessel with fifty picked men and sent
it secretly at midnight to seize the pirate. Everson's sloop was boarded
and captured with twenty-six prisoners, but Everson himself and several
others escaped by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore. The
prisoners, most of whom were English, were tried six weeks later,
convicted of piracy and sentenced to death; but the lieutenant-governor
suspended the execution and wrote to the king for instructions. On 16th
June 1681, the king in council ordered the execution of the condemned
men.[418]
The buccaneers who, after plundering Porto Bello, crossed the Isthmus of
Darien to the South Seas, had a remarkable history. For eighteen months
they cruised up and down the Pacific coast of South America, burning and
plundering Spanish towns, giving and taking hard blows with equal
courage, keeping the Spanish provinces of Equador, Peru and Chili in a
fever of apprehension, finally sailing the difficult passage round Cape
Horn, and returning to the Windward Islands in January of 1682. Touching
at the island of Barbadoes, they learned that the English frigate
"Richmond" was lying in the road, and fearing seizure they sailed on to
Antigua. There the governor, Colonel Codrington, refused to give them
leave to enter the harbour. So the party, impatient of their dangerous
situation, determined to separate, some landing on Antigua, and Sharp
and sixteen others going to Nevis where they obtained passage to
England. On their arrival in England several, including Sharp, were
arrested at the instance of the Spanish ambassador, and tried for
committing piracy in the South Seas; but from the defectiveness of the
evidence produced they escaped conviction.[419] Four of the party came
to Jamaica, where they were apprehended, tried and condemned. One of the
four, who had given himself up voluntarily, turned State's evidence; two
were represented by the judges as fit objects of the king's mercy; and
the other, "a bloody and notorious villein," was recommended to be
executed as an example to the rest.[420]
The recrudescence of piratical activity between the years 1679 and 1682
had, through its evil effects, been strongly felt in Jamaica; and public
opinion was now gradually changing from one of encouragement and welcome
to the privateers and of secret or open opposition to the efforts of the
governors who tried to suppress them, to one of distinct hostility to
the old freebooters. The inhabitants were beginning to realize that in
the encouragement of planting, and not of buccaneering, lay the
permanent welfare of the island. Planting and buccaneering, side by
side, were inconsistent and incompatible, and the colonists chose the
better course of the two. In spite of the frequent trials and executions
at Port Royal, the marauders seemed to be as numerous as ever, and even
more troublesome. Private trade with the Spaniards was hindered; runaway
servants, debtors and other men of unfortunate or desperate condition
were still, by every new success of the buccaneers, drawn from the
island to swell their ranks; and most of all, men who were now outlawed
in Jamaica, driven to desperation turned pirate altogether, and began to
wage war indiscriminately on the ships of all nationalities, including
those of the English. Morgan repeatedly wrote home urging the dispatch
of small frigates of light draught to coast round the island and
surprise the freebooters, and he begged for orders for himself to go on
board and command them, for "then I shall not much question," he
concludes, "to reduce them or in some time to leave them shipless."[421]
"The governor," wrote the Council of Jamaica to the Lords of Trade and
Plantations in May 1680, "can do little from want of ships to reduce the
privateers, and of plain laws to punish them"; and they urged the
ratification of the Act passed by the assembly two years before, making
it felony for any British subject in the West Indies to serve under a
foreign prince without leave from the governor.[422] This Act, and
another for the more effectual punishment of pirates, had been under
consideration in the Privy Council in February 1678, and both were
returned to Jamaica with certain slight amendments. They were again
passed by the assembly as one Act in 1681, and were finally incorporated
into the Jamaica Act of 1683 "for the restraining and punishing of
privateers and pirates."[423]
Footnotes:
[Footnote 332: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 367.]
[Footnote 333: Ibid., Nos. 604, 608, 729; Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 334: Ibid., Nos. 552, 602.]
[Footnote 335: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 608, 633.]
[Footnote 336: Ibid., No. 604.]
[Footnote 337: Ibid., Nos. 638, 640, 663, 697. This may be the Diego
Grillo to whom Duro (_op. cit._, V. p. 180) refers--a native of Havana
commanding a vessel of fifteen guns. He defeated successively in the
Bahama Channel three armed ships sent out to take him, and in all of
them he massacred without exception the Spaniards of European birth. He
was captured in 1673 and suffered the fate he had meted out to his
victims.]
[Footnote 338: Ibid., Nos. 697, 709, 742, 883, 944.]
[Footnote 339: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 733, 742, 796.]
[Footnote 340: Ibid., No. 729.]
[Footnote 341: Ibid., Nos. 742, 777, 785, 789, 794, 796.]
[Footnote 342: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 742, 945, 1042.]
[Footnote 343: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 733, 742, 779, 796, 820,
1022.]
[Footnote 344: Ibid., Nos. 650, 663, 697. Seventeen months later, after
the outbreak of the Dutch war, the Jamaicans had a similar scare over an
expected invasion of the Dutch and Spaniards, but this, too, was
dissolved by time into thin air. (C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 887,
1047, 1055, 1062). In this connection, _cf._ Egerton MSS., 2375, f.
491:--Letter written by the Governor of Cumana to the Duke of Veragua,
1673, seeking his influence with the Council of the Indies to have the
Governor of Margarita send against Jamaica 1500 or 2000 Indians, "guay
quies," as they are valient bowmen, seamen and divers.]
[Footnote 345: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 697, 789, 794, 900, 911;
Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 346: Ibid., Nos. 697, 789.]
[Footnote 347: Ibid., Nos. 1212, 1251-5.]
[Footnote 348: Ibid., No. 1259, _cf._ also 1374, 1385, 1394.]
[Footnote 349: Ibid., No. 1379.]
[Footnote 350: Ibid., 1675-76, Nos. 458, 467, 484, 521, 525, 566.]
[Footnote 351: S.P. Spain, vol. 63, f. 56.]
[Footnote 352: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 1389; _ibid._ 1675-76, No.
564; Add. MSS., 36,330, No. 28.]
[Footnote 353: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 888, 940.]
[Footnote 354: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 1178, 1180, 1226; _ibid._,
1675-76, No. 579.]
[Footnote 355: Ibid., 1669-74, No. 1423; _ibid._, 1675-76, No. 707.]
[Footnote 356: Ibid., 1675-76, No. 520.]
[Footnote 357: Ibid.]
[Footnote 358: Ibid., 1669-74, Nos. 1335, 1351, 1424; S.P. Spain, vols.
60, 62, 63.]
[Footnote 359: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, No. 643.]
[Footnote 360: Ibid., Nos. 639-643.]
[Footnote 361: Ibid., Nos. 633-635, 729.]
[Footnote 362: Ibid., Nos. 693, 719, 720.]
[Footnote 363: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 310, 704, iv. It was a very
profitable business for the wood then sold at £25 or £30 a ton. For a
description of the life of the logwood-cutters _cf._ Dampier, Voyages,
_ed._ 1906, ii. pp. 155-56. 178-79, 181 _ff._]
[Footnote 364: Ibid., No. 580.]
[Footnote 365: Ibid., Nos. 587, 638.]
[Footnote 366: Ibid., Nos. 777, 786.]
[Footnote 367: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74. No. 825.]
[Footnote 368: Ibid., Nos. 819, 943.]
[Footnote 369: Ibid., Nos. 954, 1389. Fernandez Duro (t.v., p. 181)
mentions a Spanish ordinance of 22nd February 1674, which authorized
Spanish corsairs to go out in the pursuit and punishment of pirates.
Periaguas, or large flat-bottomed canoes, were to be constructed for use
in shoal waters. They were to be 90 feet long and from 16 to 18 feet
wide, with a draught of only 4 or 5 feet, and were to be provided with a
long gun in the bow and four smaller pieces in the stern. They were to
be propelled by both oars and sails, and were to carry 120 men.]
[Footnote 370: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, Nos. 950, 1094; Beeston's
Journal, Aug. 1679.]
[Footnote 371: Ibid., 1675-76, No. 566.]
[Footnote 372: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, No. 673.]
[Footnote 373: Ibid., No. 526. In significant contrast to Lord Vaughan's
praise of Lynch, Sir Henry Morgan, who could have little love for the
man who had shipped him and Modyford as prisoners to England, filled the
ears of Secretary Williamson with veiled accusations against Lynch of
having tampered with the revenues and neglected the defences of the
island. (Ibid., No. 521.)]
[Footnote 374: Ibid., No. 912. In testimony of Lord Vaughan's
straightforward policy toward buccaneering, _cf._ Beeston's Journal,
June 1676.]
[Footnote 375: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, No. 988.]
[Footnote 376: Leeds MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm., XI. pt. 7, p.
13)--Depositions in which Sir Henry Morgan is represented as
endeavouring to hush up the matter, saying "the privateers were poore,
honest fellows," to which the plundered captain replied "that he had not
found them soe."]
[Footnote 377: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76; Nos. 860, 913.]
[Footnote 378: Statutes at Large, vol. ii. (Lond. 1786), pp. 210, 247.]
[Footnote 379: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76; Nos. 993-995, 1001.]
[Footnote 380: Ibid., No. 1093.]
[Footnote 381: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 500, 508.]
[Footnote 382: Ibid., 1675-76, No. 916.]
[Footnote 383: Ibid., No. 1126.]
[Footnote 384: Ibid., Nos. 998, 1006.]
[Footnote 385: Ibid., No. 1129.]
[Footnote 386: Ibid., No. 1129 (vii., viii.); _cf._ also No. 657.]
[Footnote 387: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, No. 1129 (xiv., xvii.).]
[Footnote 388: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Nos. 656, 741.]
[Footnote 389: Ibid., 1677-80, No. 313; _cf._ also Nos. 478, 486.]
[Footnote 390: Ibid., No. 368. A similar proclamation was issued in May
1681; _cf._ Ibid., 1681-85, No. 102.]
[Footnote 391: Ibid., No. 375.]
[Footnote 392: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 243, 365, 383; Egerton MSS.,
2395, f. 591.]
[Footnote 393: In a memoir to Mme. de Montespan, dated 8th July 1677,
the population of French San Domingo is given as between four and five
thousand, white and black. The colony embraced a strip of coast 80
leagues in length and 9 or 10 miles wide, and it produced 2,000,000 lbs.
of tobacco annually. (Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9325, f. 258).]
[Footnote 394: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 347, 375, 383, 1497; S.P.
Spain, vol. 65, f. 102.]
[Footnote 395: A small island east of Curaçao, in latitude 12° north,
longitude 67° 41' west.]
[Footnote 396: Saint Yves, G. Les campagnes de Jean d'Estrées dans la
mer des Antilles, 1676-78; _cf._ also C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 604,
642, 665, 687-90, 718, 741 (xiv., xv.), 1646-47.
According to one story, the Dutch governor of Curaçao sent out three
privateers with orders to attend the French fleet, but to run no risk of
capture. The French, discovering them, gave chase, but being
unacquainted with those waters were decoyed among the reefs.]
[Footnote 397: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1646-47.]
[Footnote 398: Dampier says of this occasion: "The privateers ... told
me that if they had gone to Jamaica with £30 a man in their Pockets,
they could not have enjoyed themselves more. For they kept in a Gang by
themselves, and watched when the Ships broke, to get the Goods that came
from them; and though much was staved against the Rocks, yet abundance
of Wine and Brandy floated over the Riff, where the Privateers waited to
take it up. They lived here about three Weeks, waiting an Opportunity to
transport themselves back again to Hispaniola; in all which Time they
were never without two or three Hogsheads of Wine and Brandy in their
Tents, and Barrels of Beef and Pork."--Dampier, _ed._ 1906, i. p. 81.]
[Footnote 399: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. viii. p. 120.]
[Footnote 400: Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9325, f. 260; Charlevoix, _op.
cit._, liv. viii. p. 122.]
[Footnote 401: Ibid., p. 119; C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 815, 869;
Beeston's Journal, 18th October 1678.]
[Footnote 402: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 569, 575, 618.]
[Footnote 403: Ibid., No. 770.]
[Footnote 404: Ibid., Nos. 622, 646.]
[Footnote 405: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 770, 815, 1516: Beeston's
Journal, 18th October 1678.]
[Footnote 406: The Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro Ronquillo, in his
complaint to Charles II. in September 1680, placed the number at 1000.
(C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, No. 1498.)]
[Footnote 407: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1150, 1188, 1199, 1516;
Beeston's Journal, 29th September and 6th October 1678. Lord Carlisle,
in answer to the complaints of the Spanish ambassador, pretended
ignorance of the source of the indigo thus admitted through the customs,
and maintained that it was brought into Port Royal "in lawful ships by
lawful men."]
[Footnote 408: Sloane MSS., 2752, f. 29; S.P. Spain, vol. 65, f. 121.
According to the latter account, which seems to be derived from a
Spanish source, the loss suffered by the city amounted to about 100,000
pieces of eight, over half of which was plunder carried away by the
freebooters. Thirteen of the inhabitants were killed and four wounded,
and of the buccaneers thirty were killed.
Dampier writes concerning this first irruption of the buccaneers into
the Pacific:--"Before my first going over into the South Seas with
Captain Sharp ... I being then on Board Captain Coxon, in company with 3
or 4 more Privateers, about 4 leagues to the East of Portobel, we took
the Pacquets bound thither from Cartagena. We open'd a great quantity of
the Merchants Letters, and found ... the Merchants of several parts of
Old Spain thereby informing their Correspondents of Panama and elsewhere
of a certain Prophecy that went about Spain that year, the Tenour of
which was, That there would be English Privateers that Year in the West
Indies, who would ... open a Door into the South Seas; which they
supposed was fastest shut: and the Letters were accordingly full of
Cautions to their Friends to be very watchful and careful of their
Coasts.
"This Door they spake of we all concluded must be the Passage over Land
through the Country of the Indians of Darien, who were a little before
this become our Friends, and had lately fallen out with the Spaniards,
... and upon calling to mind the frequent Invitations we had from these
Indians a little before this time, to pass through their Country, and
fall upon the Spaniards in the South Seas, we from henceforward began to
entertain such thoughts in earnest, and soon came to a Resolution to
make those Attempts which we afterwards did, ... so that the taking
these Letters gave the first life to those bold undertakings: and we
took the advantage of the fears the Spaniards were in from that Prophecy
... for we sealed up most of the Letters again, and sent them ashore to
Portobel."--_Ed._ 1906, I. pp. 200-201.]
[Footnote 410: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, No. 1199.]
[Footnote 411: Ibid., No. 1188.]
[Footnote 412: Sloane MSS., 2572, f. 29.]
[Footnote 413: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1344, 1370.]
[Footnote 414: Ibid., No. 1516.]
[Footnote 415: _Cf._ Archives Coloniales--Correspondance générale de St
Domingue, vol. i.; Martinique, vol. iv.]
[Footnote 416: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1420, 1425; Sloane MSS.,
2724, f. 3.]
[Footnote 417: Sloane MSS., 2724, f. 198.
Coxon probably did not submit, for Dampier tells us that at the end of
May 1681, Coxon was lying with seven or eight other privateers at the
Samballas, islands on the coast of Darien, with a ship of ten guns and
100 men.--_Ed._ 1906, i. p. 57.]
[Footnote 418: Ibid., f. 200; C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 16, 51, 144,
431. Everson was not shot and killed in the water, as Morgan's account
implies, for he flourished for many years afterwards as one of the most
notorious of the buccaneer captains.]
[Footnote 419: Ringrose's Journal. _Cf._ also S.P. Spain, vol. 67, f.
169; C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 872.]
[Footnote 420: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 431, 632, 713; Hist. MSS.
Commiss., VII., 405 b.]
[Footnote 421: C.S.P Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 1425, 1462.]
[Footnote 422: Ibid., No. 1361.]
[Footnote 423: C.S.P. Colon., 1677-80, Nos. 601, 606, 607, 611; _ibid._,
1681-85, No. 160; Add. MSS., 22, 676; Acts of Privy Council, Colonial
Series I. No. 1203.]
CHAPTER VII
THE BUCCANEERS TURN PIRATE
On 25th May 1682, Sir Thomas Lynch returned to Jamaica as governor of
the colony.[424] Of the four acting governors since 1671, Lynch stood
apart as the one who had endeavoured with singleness and tenacity of
purpose to clear away the evils of buccaneering. Lord Vaughan had
displayed little sympathy for the corsairs, but he was hampered by an
irascible temper, and according to some reports by an avarice which
dimmed the lustre of his name. The Earl of Carlisle, if he did not
directly encourage the freebooters, had been grossly negligent in the
performance of his duty of suppressing them; while Morgan, although in
the years 1680 and 1681 he showed himself very zealous in punishing his
old associates, cannot escape the suspicion of having secretly aided
them under the governorship of Lord Vaughan. The task of Sir Thomas
Lynch in 1671 had been a very difficult one. Buccaneering was then at
flood-tide; three wealthy Spanish cities on the mainland had in turn
been plundered, and the stolen riches carried to Jamaica; the air was
alive with the exploits of these irregular warriors, and the pockets of
the merchants and tavern-keepers of Port Royal were filled with Spanish
doubloons, with emeralds and pearls from New Granada and the coasts of
Rio de la Hacha, and with gold and silver plate from the Spanish
churches and cathedrals of Porto Bello and Panama. The old governor, Sir
Thomas Modyford, had been popular in his person, and his policy had been
more popular still. Yet Lynch, by a combination of tact and firmness,
and by an untiring activity with the small means at his disposal, had
inaugurated a new and revolutionary policy in the island, which it was
the duty of his successors merely to continue. In 1682 the problem
before him, although difficult, was much simpler. Buccaneering was now
rapidly being transformed into pure piracy. By laws and repeated
proclamations, the freebooters had been offered an opportunity of
returning to civilized pursuits, or of remaining ever thereafter
outlawed. Many had come in, some to remain, others to take the first
opportunity of escaping again. But many entirely refused to obey the
summons, trusting to the protection of the French in Hispaniola, or so
hardened to their cruel, remorseless mode of livelihood that they
preferred the dangerous risks of outlawry. The temper of the inhabitants
of the island, too, had changed. The planters saw more clearly the
social and economic evils which the buccaneers had brought upon the
island. The presence of these freebooters, they now began to realize,
had discouraged planting, frightened away capital, reduced the number of
labourers, and increased drunkenness, debauchery and every sort of moral
disorder. The assembly and council were now at one with the governor as
to the necessity of curing this running sore, and Lynch could act with
the assurance which came of the knowledge that he was backed by the
conscience of his people.
One of the earliest and most remarkable cases of buccaneer turning
pirate was that of "La Trompeuse." In June 1682, before Governor Lynch's
arrival in Jamaica, a French captain named Peter Paine (or Le Pain),
commander of a merchant ship called "La Trompeuse" belonging to the
French King, came to Port Royal from Cayenne in Guiana. He told Sir
Henry Morgan and the council that, having heard of the inhuman treatment
of his fellow Protestants in France, he had resolved to send back his
ship and pay what was due under his contract; and he petitioned for
leave to reside with the English and have English protection. The
Council, without much inquiry as to the petitioner's antecedents,
allowed him to take the oath of allegiance and settle at St. Jago, while
his cargo was unloaded and entered customs-free. The ship was then hired
by two Jamaican merchants and sent to Honduras to load logwood, with
orders to sail eventually for Hamburg and be delivered to the French
agent.[425] The action of the Council had been very hasty and
ill-considered, and as it turned out, led to endless trouble. It soon
transpired that Paine did not own the cargo, but had run away with it
from Cayenne, and had disposed of both ship and goods in his own
interest. The French ambassador in London made complaints to the English
King, and letters were sent out to Sir Thomas Lynch and to Governor
Stapleton of the Leeward Isles to arrest Paine and endeavour to have the
vessel lade only for her right owners.[426] Meanwhile a French pirate
named Jean Hamlin, with 120 desperadoes at his back, set out in a sloop
in pursuit of "La Trompeuse," and coming up with her invited the master
and mate aboard his own vessel, and then seized the ship. Carrying the
prize to some creek or bay to careen her and fit her up as a man-of-war,
he then started out on a mad piratical cruise, took sixteen or eighteen
Jamaican vessels, barbarously ill-treated the crews, and demoralized the
whole trade of the island.[427] Captain Johnson was dispatched by Lynch
in a frigate in October 1682 to find and destroy the pirate; but after a
fruitless search of two months round Porto Rico and Hispaniola, he
returned to Port Royal. In December Lynch learned that "La Trompeuse"
was careening in the neighbourhood of the Isle la Vache, and sent out
another frigate, the "Guernsey," to seize her; but the wary pirate had
in the meantime sailed away. On 15th February the "Guernsey" was again
dispatched with positive orders not to stir from the coast of Hispaniola
until the pirate was gone or destroyed; and Coxon, who seems to have
been in good odour at Port Royal, was sent to offer to a privateer named
"Yankey," men, victuals, pardon and naturalization, besides £200 in
money for himself and Coxon, if he would go after "La Trompeuse."[428]
The next news of Hamlin was from the Virgin Islands, where he was
received and entertained by the Governor of St. Thomas, a small island
belonging to the King of Denmark.[429] Making St. Thomas his
headquarters, he robbed several English vessels that came into his way,
and after first obtaining from the Danish governor a promise that he
would find shelter at St. Thomas on his return, stood across for the
Gulf of Guinea. In May 1683 Hamlin arrived on the west side of Africa
disguised as an English man-of-war, and sailing up and down the coast of
Sierra Leone captured or destroyed within several weeks seventeen ships,
Dutch and English, robbing them of gold-dust and negroes.[430] The
pirates then quarrelled over the division of their plunder and separated
into two companies, most of the English following a Captain Morgan in
one of the prizes, and the rest returning in "La Trompeuse" to the West
Indies. The latter arrived at Dominica in July, where forty of the crew
deserted the ship, leaving but sixteen white men and twenty-two negroes
on board. Finally on the 27th the pirates dropped anchor at St. Thomas.
They were admitted and kindly received by the governor, and allowed to
bring their plunder ashore.[431] Three days later Captain Carlile of
H.M.S. "Francis," who had been sent out by Governor Stapleton to hunt
for pirates, sailed into the harbour, and on being assured by the pilot
and by an English sloop lying at anchor there that the ship before him
was the pirate "La Trompeuse," in the night of the following day he set
her on fire and blew her up. Hamlin and some of the crew were on board,
but after firing a few shots, escaped to the shore. The pirate ship
carried thirty-two guns, and if she had not been under-manned Carlile
might have encountered a formidable resistance. The Governor of St.
Thomas sent a note of protest to Carlile for having, as he said,
secretly set fire to a frigate which had been confiscated to the King of
Denmark.[432] Nevertheless he sent Hamlin and his men for safety in a
boat to another part of the island, and later selling him a sloop, let
him sail away to join the French buccaneers in Hispaniola.[433]
The Danish governor of St. Thomas, whose name was Adolf Esmit, had
formerly been himself a privateer, and had used his popularity on the
island to eject from authority his brother Nicholas Esmit, the lawful
governor. By protecting and encouraging pirates--for a consideration, of
course--he proved a bad neighbour to the surrounding English islands.
Although he had but 300 or 350 people on St. Thomas, and most of these
British subjects, he laid claim to all the Virgin Islands, harboured
runaway servants, seamen and debtors, fitted out pirate vessels with
arms and provisions, and refused to restore captured ships and crews
which the pirates brought into his port.[434] The King of Denmark had
sent out a new governor, named Everson, to dispossess Esmit, but he did
not arrive in the West Indies until October 1684, when with the
assistance of an armed sloop which Sir William Stapleton had been
ordered by the English Council to lend him, he took possession of St.
Thomas and its pirate governor.[435]
A second difficulty encountered by Sir Thomas Lynch, in the first year
of his return, was the privateering activity of Robert Clarke, Governor
of New Providence, one of the Bahama Islands. Governor Clarke, on the
plea of retaliating Spanish outrages, gave letters of marque to several
privateers, including Coxon, the same famous chief who in 1680 had led
the buccaneers into the South Seas. Coxon carried his commission to
Jamaica and showed it to Governor Lynch, who was greatly incensed and
wrote to Clarke a vigorous note of reproof.[436] To grant such letters
of marque was, of course, contrary to the Treaty of Madrid, and by
giving the pirates only another excuse for their actions, greatly
complicated the task of the Governor of Jamaica. Lynch forwarded Coxon's
commission to England, where in August 1682 the proprietors of the
Bahama Islands were ordered to attend the council and answer for the
misdeeds of their governor.[437] The proprietors, however, had already
acted on their own initiative, for on 29th July they issued instructions
to a new governor, Robert Lilburne, to arrest Clarke and keep him in
custody till he should give security to answer accusations in England,
and to recall all commissions against the Spaniards.[438] The whole
trouble, it seems, had arisen over the wreck of a Spanish galleon in the
Bahamas, to which Spaniards from St. Augustine and Havana were
accustomed to resort to fish for ingots of silver, and from which they
had been driven away by the governor and inhabitants of New Providence.
The Spaniards had retaliated by robbing vessels sailing to and from the
Bahamas, whereupon Clarke, without considering the illegality of his
action, had issued commissions of war to privateers.
The Bahamas, however, were a favourite resort for pirates and other men
of desperate character, and Lilburne soon discovered that his place was
no sinecure. He found it difficult moreover to refrain from hostilities
against a neighbour who used every opportunity to harm and plunder his
colony. In March 1683, a former privateer named Thomas Pain[439] had
entered into a conspiracy with four other captains, who were then
fishing for silver at the wreck, to seize St. Augustine in Florida. They
landed before the city under French colours, but finding the Spaniards
prepared for them, gave up the project and looted some small
neighbouring settlements. On the return of Pain and two others to New
Providence, Governor Lilburne tried to apprehend them, but he failed for
lack of means to enforce his authority. The Spaniards, however, were not
slow to take their revenge. In the following January they sent 250 men
from Havana, who in the early morning surprised and plundered the town
and shipping at New Providence, killed three men, and carried away money
and provisions to the value of £14,000.[440] When Lilburne in February
sent to ask the Governor of Havana whether the plunderers had acted
under his orders, the Spaniard not only acknowledged it but threatened
further hostilities against the English settlement. Indeed, later in the
same year the Spaniards returned, this time, it seems, without a
commission, and according to report burnt all the houses, murdered the
governor in cold blood, and carried many of the women, children and
negroes to Havana.[441] About 200 of the inhabitants made their way to
Jamaica, and a number of the men, thirsting for vengeance, joined the
English pirates in the Carolinas.[442]
In French Hispaniola corsairing had been forbidden for several years,
yet the French governor found the problem of suppressing the evil even
more difficult than it was in Jamaica. M. de Pouançay, the successor of
d'Ogeron, died toward the end of 1682 or the beginning of 1683, and in
spite of his efforts to establish order in the colony he left it in a
deplorable condition. The old fraternity of hunters or cow-killers had
almost disappeared; but the corsairs and the planters were strongly
united, and galled by the oppression of the West India Company,
displayed their strength in a spirit of indocility which caused great
embarrassment to the governor. Although in time of peace the freebooters
kept the French settlements in continual danger of ruin by reprisal, in
time of war they were the mainstay of the colony. As the governor,
therefore, was dependent upon them for protection against the English,
Spanish and Dutch, although he withdrew their commissions he dared not
punish them for their crimes. The French buccaneers, indeed, occupied a
curious and anomalous position. They were not ordinary privateers, for
they waged war without authority; and they were still less pirates, for
they had never been declared outlaws, and they confined their attentions
to the Spaniards. They served under conditions which they themselves
imposed, or which they deigned to accept, and were always ready to turn
against the representatives of authority if they believed they had aught
of which to complain.[443]
The buccaneers almost invariably carried commissions from the governors
of French Hispaniola, but they did not scruple to alter the wording of
their papers, so that a permission to privateer for three months was
easily transformed into a licence to plunder for three years. These
papers, moreover, were passed about from one corsair to another, until
long after the occasion for their issue had ceased to exist. Thus in May
or June of 1680, de Grammont, on the strength of an old commission
granted him by de Pouançay before the treaty of Nimuegen, had made a
brilliant night assault upon La Guayra, the seaport of Caracas. Of his
180 followers only forty-seven took part in the actual seizure of the
town, which was amply protected by two forts and by cannon upon the
walls. On the following day, however, he received word that 2000 men
were approaching from Caracas, and as the enemy were also rallying in
force in the vicinity of the town he was compelled to retire to the
ships. This movement was executed with difficulty, and for two hours de
Grammont with a handful of his bravest companions covered the
embarkation from the assaults of the Spaniards. Although he himself was
dangerously wounded in the throat, he lost only eight or nine men in the
whole action. He carried away with him the Governor of La Guayra and
many other prisoners, but the booty was small. De Grammont retired to
the Isle d'Aves to nurse his wound, and after a long convalescence
returned to Petit Goave.[444]
In 1683, however, these filibusters of Hispaniola carried out a much
larger design upon the coasts of New Spain. In April of that year eight
buccaneer captains made a rendezvous in the Gulf of Honduras for the
purpose of attacking Vera Cruz. The leaders of the party were two
Dutchmen named Vanhorn and Laurens de Graff. Of the other six captains,
three were Dutch, one was French, and two were English. Vanhorn himself
had sailed from England in the autumn of 1681 in command of a merchant
ship called the "Mary and Martha," _alias_ the "St. Nicholas." He soon,
however, revealed the rogue he was by turning two of his merchants
ashore at Cadiz and stealing four Spanish guns. He then sailed to the
Canaries and to the coast of Guinea, plundering ships and stealing
negroes, and finally, in November 1682, arrived at the city of San
Domingo, where he tried to dispose of his black cargo. From San Domingo
he made for Petit Goave picked up 300 men, and sailed to join Laurens in
the Gulf of Honduras.[445] Laurens, too, had distinguished himself but a
short time before by capturing a Spanish ship bound from Havana for San
Domingo and Porto Rico with about 120,000 pieces of eight to pay off the
soldiers. The freebooters had shared 700 pieces of eight per man, and
carrying their prize to Petit Goave had compounded with the French
governor for a part of the booty.[446]
The buccaneers assembled near Cape Catoche to the number of about 1000
men, and sailed in the middle of May for Vera Cruz. Learning from some
prisoners that the Spaniards on shore were expecting two ships from
Caracas, they crowded the landing party of about 800 upon two of their
vessels, displayed the Spanish colours, and stood in for the city. The
unfortunate inhabitants mistook them for their own people, and even
lighted fires to pilot them in. The pirates landed at midnight on 17th
May about two miles from the town, and by daybreak had possession of the
city and its forts. They found the soldiers and sentinels asleep, and
"all the people in the houses as quiet and still as if in their graves."
For four days they held the place, plundering the churches, houses and
convents; and not finding enough plate and jewels to meet their
expectations, they threatened to burn the cathedral and all the
prisoners within it, unless a ransom was brought in from the surrounding
country. The governor, Don Luis de Cordova, was on the third day
discovered by an Englishman hidden in the hay in a stable, and was
ransomed for 70,000 pieces of eight. Meanwhile the Spanish Flota of
twelve or fourteen ships from Cadiz had for two days been lying outside
the harbour and within sight of the city; yet it did not venture to land
or to attack the empty buccaneer vessels. The proximity of such an
armament, however, made the freebooters uneasy, especially as the
Spanish viceroy was approaching with an army from the direction of
Mexico. On the fourth day, therefore, they sailed away in the very face
of the Flota to a neighbouring cay, where they divided the pillage into
a thousand or more shares of 800 pieces of eight each. Vanhorn alone is
said to have received thirty shares for himself and his two ships. He
and Laurens, who had never been on good terms, quarrelled and fought
over the division, and Vanhorn was wounded in the wrist. The wound
seemed very slight, however, and he proposed to return and attack the
Spanish fleet, offering to board the "Admiral" himself; but Laurens
refused, and the buccaneers sailed away, carrying with them over 1000
slaves. The invaders, according to report, had lost but four men in the
action. About a fortnight later Vanhorn died of gangrene in his wound,
and de Grammont, who was then acting as his lieutenant, carried his ship
back to Petit Goave, where Laurens and most of the other captains had
already arrived.[447]
The Mexican fleet, which returned to Cadiz on 18th December, was only
half its usual size because of the lack of a market after the visit of
the corsairs; and the Governor of Vera Cruz was sentenced to lose his
head for his remissness in defending the city.[448] The Spanish
ambassador in London, Ronquillo, requested Charles II. to command Sir
Thomas Lynch to co-operate with a commissioner whom the Spanish
Government was sending to the West Indies to inquire into this latest
outrage of the buccaneers, and such orders were dispatched to Lynch in
April 1684.[449]
M. de Cussy, who had been appointed by the French King to succeed his
former colleague, de Pouançay, arrived at Petit Goave in April 1684, and
found the buccaneers on the point of open revolt because of the efforts
of de Franquesnay, the temporary governor, to enforce the strict orders
from France for their suppression.[450] De Cussy visited all parts of
the colony, and by tact, patience and politic concessions succeeded in
restoring order. He knew that in spite of the instructions from France,
so long as he was surrounded by jealous neighbours, and so long as the
peace in Europe remained precarious, the safety of French Hispaniola
depended on his retaining the presence and good-will of the sea-rovers;
and when de Grammont and several other captains demanded commissions
against the Spaniards, the governor finally consented on condition that
they persuade all the freebooters driven away by de Franquesnay to
return to the colony. Two commissioners, named Begon and St. Laurent,
arrived in August 1684 to aid him in reforming this dissolute society,
but they soon came to the same conclusions as the governor, and sent a
memoir to the French King advising less severe measures. The king did
not agree with their suggestion of compromise, and de Cussy, compelled
to deal harshly with the buccaneers, found his task by no means an easy
one.[451] Meanwhile, however, many of the freebooters, seeing the
determined attitude of the established authorities, decided to transfer
their activities to the Pacific coasts of America, where they would be
safe from interference on the part of the English or French Governments.
The expedition of Harris, Coxon, Sharp and their associates across the
isthmus in 1680 had kindled the imaginations of the buccaneers with the
possibilities of greater plunder and adventure in these more distant
regions. Other parties, both English and French, speedily followed in
their tracks, and after 1683 it became the prevailing practice for
buccaneers to make an excursion into the South Seas. The Darien Indians
and their fiercer neighbours, the natives of the Mosquito Coast, who
were usually at enmity with the Spaniards, allied themselves with the
freebooters, and the latter, in their painful marches through the dense
tropical wilderness of these regions, often owed it to the timely aid
and friendly offices of the natives that they finally succeeded in
reaching their goal.
In the summer of 1685, a year after the arrival of de Cussy in
Hispaniola, de Grammont and Laurens de Graff united their forces again
at the Isle la Vache, and in spite of the efforts of the governor to
persuade them to renounce their project, sailed with 1100 men for the
coasts of Campeache. An attempt on Merida was frustrated by the
Spaniards, but Campeache itself was occupied after a feeble resistance,
and remained in possession of the French for six weeks. After reducing
the city to ashes and blowing up the fortress, the invaders retired to
Hispaniola.[452] According to Charlevoix, before the buccaneers sailed
away they celebrated the festival of St. Louis by a huge bonfire in
honour of the king, in which they burnt logwood to the value of 200,000
crowns, representing the greater part of their booty. The Spaniards of
Hispaniola, who kept up a constant desultory warfare with their French
neighbours, were incited by the ravages of the buccaneers in the South
Seas, and by the sack of Vera Cruz and Campeache, to renewed
hostilities; and de Cussy, anxious to attach to himself so enterprising
and daring a leader as de Grammont, obtained for him, in September 1686,
the commission of "Lieutenant de Roi" of the coast of San Domingo.
Grammont, however, on learning of his new honour, wished to have a last
fling at the Spaniards before he settled down to respectability. He
armed a ship, sailed away with 180 men, and was never heard of
again.[453] At the same time Laurens de Graff was given the title of
"Major," and he lived to take an active part in the war against the
English between 1689 and 1697.[454]
These semi-pirates, whom the French governor dared not openly support
yet feared to disavow, were a constant source of trouble to the Governor
of Jamaica. They did not scruple to attack English traders and fishing
sloops, and when pursued took refuge in Petit Goave, the port in the
_cul-de-sac_ at the west end of Hispaniola which had long been a
sanctuary of the freebooters, and which paid little respect to the
authority of the royal governor.[455] In Jamaica they believed that the
corsairs acted under regular commissions from the French authorities,
and Sir Thomas Lynch sent repeated complaints to de Pouançay and to his
successor. He also wrote to England begging the Council to ascertain
from the French ambassador whether these governors had authority to
issue commissions of war, so that his frigates might be able to
distinguish between the pirate and the lawful privateer.[456] Except at
Petit Goave, however, the French were really desirous of preserving
peace with Jamaica, and did what they could to satisfy the demands of
the English without unduly irritating the buccaneers. They were in the
same position as Lynch in 1671, who, while anxious to do justice to the
Spaniards, dared not immediately alienate the freebooters who plundered
them, and who might, if driven away, turn their arms against Jamaica.
Vanhorn himself, it seems, when he left Hispaniola to join Laurens in
the Gulf of Honduras, had been sent out by de Pouançay really to pursue
"La Trompeuse" and other pirates, and his lieutenant, de Grammont,
delivered letters to Governor Lynch to that effect; but once out of
sight he steered directly for Central America, where he anticipated a
more profitable game than pirate-hunting.[457]
On the 24th of August 1684 Sir Thomas Lynch died in Jamaica, and Colonel
Hender Molesworth, by virtue of his commission as lieutenant-governor,
assumed the authority.[458] Sir Henry Morgan, who had remained
lieutenant-governor when Lynch returned to Jamaica, had afterwards been
suspended from the council and from all other public employments on
charges of drunkenness, disorder, and encouraging disloyalty to the
government. His brother-in-law, Byndloss, was dismissed for similar
reasons, and Roger Elletson, who belonged to the same faction, was
removed from his office as attorney-general of the island. Lynch had had
the support of both the assembly and the council, and his actions were
at once confirmed in England.[459] The governor, however, although he
had enjoyed the confidence of most of the inhabitants, who looked upon
him as the saviour of the island, left behind in the persons of Morgan,
Elletson and their roystering companions, a group of implacable enemies,
who did all in their power to vilify his memory to the authorities in
England. Several of these men, with Elletson at their head, accused the
dead governor of embezzling piratical goods which had been confiscated
to the use of the king; but when inquiry was made by Lieutenant-Governor
Molesworth, the charges fell to the ground. Elletson's information was
found to be second-hand and defective, and Lynch's name was more than
vindicated. Indeed, the governor at his death had so little ready means
that his widow was compelled to borrow £500 to pay for his funeral.[460]
The last years of Sir Thomas Lynch's life had been troublous ones. Not
only had the peace of the island been disturbed by "La Trompeuse" and
other French corsairs which hovered about Hispaniola; not only had his
days been embittered by strife with a small, drunken, insolent faction
which tried to belittle his attempts to introduce order and sobriety
into the colony; but the hostility of the Spanish governors in the West
Indies still continued to neutralize his efforts to root out
buccaneering. Lynch had in reality been the best friend of the Spaniards
in America. He had strictly forbidden the cutting of logwood in
Campeache and Honduras, when the Spaniards were outraging and enslaving
every Englishman they found upon those coasts;[461] he had sent word to
the Spanish governors of the intended sack of Vera Cruz;[462] he had
protected Spanish merchant ships with his own men-of-war and hospitably
received them in Jamaican ports. Yet Spanish corsairs continued to rob
English vessels, and Spanish governors refused to surrender English
ships and goods which were carried into their ports.[463] On the plea of
punishing interlopers they armed small galleys and ordered them to take
all ships which had on board any products of the Indies.[464] Letters to
the governors at Havana and St. Jago de Cuba were of no avail. English
trade routes were interrupted and dangerous, the turtling, trading and
fishing sloops, which supplied a great part of the food of Jamaica, were
robbed and seized, and Lynch was compelled to construct a galley of
fifty oars for their protection.[465] Pirates, it is true, were
frequently brought into Port Royal by the small frigates employed by the
governor, and there were numerous executions;[466] yet the outlaws
seemed to increase daily. Some black vessel was generally found hovering
about the island ready to pick up any who wished to join it, and when
the runaways were prevented from returning by the statute against
piracy, they retired to the Carolinas or to New England to dispose of
their loot and refit their ships.[467] When such retreats were available
the laws against piracy did not reduce buccaneering so much as they
depopulated Jamaica of its white inhabitants.
After 1680, indeed, the North American colonies became more and more the
resort of the pirates who were being driven from West Indian waters by
the stern measures of the English governors. Michel Landresson, _alias_
Breha, who had accompanied Pain in his expedition against St. Augustine
in 1683, and who had been a constant source of worriment to the
Jamaicans because of his attacks on the fishing sloops, sailed to Boston
and disposed of his booty of gold, silver, jewels and cocoa to the godly
New England merchants, who were only too ready to take advantage of so
profitable a trade and gladly fitted him out for another cruise.[468]
Pain himself appeared in Rhode Island, displayed the old commission to
hunt for pirates given him by Sir Thomas Lynch, and was protected by the
governor against the deputy-collector of customs, who endeavoured to
seize him and his ship.[469] The chief resort of the pirates, however,
was the colony of Carolina. Indented by numerous harbours and inlets,
the shores of Carolina had always afforded a safe refuge for refitting
and repairing after a cruise, and from 1670 onwards, when the region
began to be settled by colonists from England, the pirates found in the
new communities a second Jamaica, where they could sell their cargoes
and often recruit their forces. In the latter part of 1683 Sir Thomas
Lynch complained to the Lords of the Committee for Trade and
Plantations;[470] and in February of the following year the king, at the
suggestion of the committee, ordered that a draft of the Jamaican law
against pirates be sent to all the plantations in America, to be passed
and enforced in each as a statute of the province.[471] On 12th March
1684 a general proclamation was issued by the king against pirates in
America, and a copy forwarded to all the colonial governors for
publication and execution.[472] Nevertheless in Massachusetts, in spite
of these measures and of a letter from the king warning the governors to
give no succour or aid to any of the outlaws, Michel had been received
with open arms, the proclamation of 12th March was torn down in the
streets, and the Jamaica Act, though passed, was never enforced.[473] In
the Carolinas, although the Lords Proprietors wrote urging the governors
to take every care that no pirates were entertained in the colony, the
Act was not passed until November 1685.[474] There were few, if any,
convictions, and the freebooters plied their trade with the same
security as before. Toward the end of 1686 three galleys from St.
Augustine landed about 150 men, Spaniards, Indians and mulattos, a few
leagues below Charleston, and laid waste several plantations, including
that of Governor Moreton. The enemy pushed on to Port Royal, completely
destroyed the Scotch colony there, and retired before a force could be
raised to oppose them. To avenge this inroad the inhabitants immediately
began preparations for a descent upon St. Augustine; and an expedition
consisting of two French privateering vessels and about 500 men was
organized and about to sail, when a new governor, James Colleton,
arrived and ordered it to disband.[475] Colleton was instructed to
arrest Governor Moreton on the charge of encouraging piracy, and to
punish those who entertained and abetted the freebooters;[476] and on
12th February 1687 he had a new and more explicit law to suppress the
evil enacted by the assembly.[477] On 22nd May of the same year James
II. renewed the proclamation for the suppression of pirates, and offered
pardon to all who surrendered within a limited time and gave security
for future good behaviour.[478] The situation was so serious, however,
that in August the king commissioned Sir Robert Holmes to proceed with a
squadron to the West Indies and make short work of the outlaws;[479] and
in October he issued a circular to all the governors in the colonies,
directing the most stringent enforcement of the laws, "a practice having
grown up of bringing pirates to trial before the evidence was ready, and
of using other evasions to insure their acquittal."[480] On the
following 20th January another proclamation was issued by James to
insure the co-operation of the governors with Sir Robert Holmes and his
agents.[481] The problem, however, was more difficult than the king had
anticipated. The presence of the fleet upon the coast stopped the evil
for a time, but a few years later, especially in the Carolinas under the
administration of Governor Ludwell (1691-1693), the pirates again
increased in numbers and in boldness, and Charleston was completely
overrun with the freebooters, who, with the connivance of the merchants
and a free display of gold, set the law at defiance.
In Jamaica Lieutenant-Governor Molesworth continued in the policy and
spirit of his predecessor. He sent a frigate to the Bay of Darien to
visit Golden Isle and the Isle of Pines (where the buccaneers were
accustomed to make their rendezvous when they crossed over to the South
Seas), with orders to destroy any piratical craft in that vicinity, and
he made every exertion to prevent recruits from leaving Jamaica.[482]
The stragglers who returned from the South Seas he arrested and
executed, and he dealt severely with those who received and entertained
them.[483] By virtue of the king's proclamation of 1684, he had the
property in Port Royal belonging to men then in the South Seas forfeited
to the crown.[484] A Captain Bannister, who in June 1684 had run away
from Port Royal on a privateering venture with a ship of thirty guns,
had been caught and brought back by the frigate "Ruby," but when put on
trial for piracy was released by the grand jury on a technicality. Six
months later Bannister managed to elude the forts a second time, and for
two years kept dodging the frigates which Molesworth sent in pursuit of
him. Finally, in January 1687, Captain Spragge sailed into Port Royal
with the buccaneer and three of his companions hanging at the yard-arms,
"a spectacle of great satisfaction to all good people, and of terror to
the favourers of pirates."[485] It was during the government of
Molesworth that the "Biscayners" began to appear in American waters.
These privateers from the Bay of Biscay seem to have been taken into the
King of Spain's service to hunt pirates, but they interrupted English
trade more than the pirates did. They captured and plundered English
merchantmen right and left, and carried them to Cartagena, Vera Cruz,
San Domingo and other Spanish ports, where the governors took charge of
their prisoners and allowed them to dispose of their captured goods.
They held their commissions, it seems, directly from the Crown, and so
pretended to be outside the pale of the authority of the Spanish
governors. The latter, at any rate, declared that they could give no
redress, and themselves complained to the authorities in Jamaica of the
independence of these marauders.[486] In December 1688 the king issued a
warrant to the Governor of Jamaica authorizing him to suppress the
Biscayans with the royal frigates.[487]
On 28th October 1685 the governorship of the island was assigned to Sir
Philip Howard,[488] but Howard died shortly after, and the Duke of
Albemarle was appointed in his stead.[489] Albemarle, who arrived at
Port Royal in December 1687,[490] completely reversed the policy of his
predecessors, Lynch and Molesworth. Even before he left England he had
undermined his health by his intemperate habits, and when he came to
Jamaica he leagued himself with the most unruly and debauched men in the
colony. He seems to have had no object but to increase his fortune at
the expense of the island. Before he sailed he had boldly petitioned for
powers to dispose of money without the advice and consent of his
council, and, if he saw fit, to reinstate into office Sir Henry Morgan
and Robert Byndloss. The king, however, decided that the suspension of
Morgan and Byndloss should remain until Albemarle had reported on their
case from Jamaica.[491] When the Duke entered upon his new government,
he immediately appointed Roger Elletson to be Chief Justice of the
island in the place of Samuel Bernard. Three assistant-judges of the
Supreme Court thereupon resigned their positions on the bench, and one
was, in revenge, dismissed by the governor from the council. Several
other councillors were also suspended, contrary to the governor's
instructions against arbitrary dismissal of such officers, and on 18th
January 1688 Sir Henry Morgan, upon the king's approval of the Duke's
recommendation, was re-admitted to the council-chamber.[492] The old
buccaneer, however, did not long enjoy his restored dignity. About a
month later he succumbed to a sharp illness, and on 26th August was
buried in St. Catherine's Church in Port Royal.[493]
In November 1688 a petition was presented to the king by the planters
and merchants trading to Jamaica protesting against the new régime
introduced by Lord Albemarle:--"The once flourishing island of Jamaica
is likely to be utterly undone by the irregularities of some needy
persons lately set in power. Many of the most considerable inhabitants
are deserting it, others are under severe fines and imprisonments from
little or no cause.... The provost-marshal has been dismissed and an
indebted person put in his place; and all the most substantial officers,
civil and military, have been turned out and necessitous persons set up
in their room. The like has been done in the judicial offices, whereby
the benefit of appeals and prohibitions is rendered useless. Councillors
are suspended without royal order and without a hearing. Several persons
have been forced to give security not to leave the island lest they
should seek redress; others have been brought before the council for
trifling offences and innumerable fees taken from them; money has been
raised twenty per cent. over its value to defend creditors. Lastly, the
elections have been tampered with by the indebted provost-marshal, and
since the Duke of Albemarle's death are continued without your royal
authority."[494] The death of Albemarle, indeed, at this opportune time
was the greatest service he rendered to the colony. Molesworth was
immediately commanded to return to Jamaica and resume authority. The
duke's system was entirely reversed, and the government restored as it
had been under the administration of Sir Thomas Lynch. Elletson was
removed from the council and from his position as chief justice, and
Bernard returned in his former place. All of the rest of Albemarle's
creatures were dismissed from their posts, and the supporters of Lynch's
régime again put in control of a majority in the council.[495] This
measure of plain justice was one of the last acts of James II. as King
of England. On 5th November 1688 William of Orange landed in England at
Torbay, and on 22nd December James escaped to France to live as a
pensioner of Louis XIV. The new king almost immediately wrote to Jamaica
confirming the reappointment of Molesworth, and a commission to the
latter was issued on 25th July 1689.[496] Molesworth, unfortunately for
the colony, died within a few days,[497] and the Earl of Inchiquin was
appointed on 19th September to succeed him.[498] Sir Francis Watson,
President of the Council in Jamaica, obeyed the instructions of William
III., although he was a partizan of Albemarle; yet so high was the
feeling between the two factions that the greatest confusion reigned in
the government of the island until the arrival of Inchiquin in May
1690.[499]
The Revolution of 1688, by placing William of Orange on the English
throne, added a powerful kingdom to the European coalition which in 1689
attacked Louis XIV. over the question of the succession of the
Palatinate. That James II. should accept the hospitality of the French
monarch and use France as a basis for attack on England and Ireland was,
quite apart from William's sympathy with the Protestants on the
Continent, sufficient cause for hostilities against France. War broke
out in May 1689, and was soon reflected in the English and French
colonies in the West Indies. De Cussy, in Hispaniola, led an expedition
of 1000 men, many of them filibusters, against St. Jago de los
Cavalleros in the interior of the island, and took and burnt the town.
In revenge the Spaniards, supported by an English fleet which had just
driven the French from St. Kitts, appeared in January 1691 before Cap
François, defeated and killed de Cussy in an engagement near the town,
and burned and sacked the settlement. Three hundred French filibusters
were killed in the battle. The English fleet visited Leogane and Petit
Goave in the _cul-de-sac_ of Hispaniola, and then sailed to Jamaica. De
Cussy before his death had seized the opportunity to provide the
freebooters with new commissions for privateering, and English shipping
suffered severely.[500] Laurens with 200 men touched at Montego Bay on
the north coast in October, and threatened to return and plunder the
whole north side of the island. The people were so frightened that they
sent their wives and children to Port Royal; and the council armed
several vessels to go in pursuit of the Frenchmen.[501] It was a new
experience to feel the danger of invasion by a foreign foe. The
Jamaicans had an insight into the terror which their Spanish neighbours
felt for the buccaneers, whom the English islanders had always been so
ready to fit out, or to shield from the arm of the law. Laurens in the
meantime was as good as his word. He returned to Jamaica in the
beginning of December with several vessels, seized eight or ten English
trading sloops, landed on the north shore and plundered a
plantation.[502] War with France was formally proclaimed in Jamaica on
the 13th of January 1690.[503]
Two years later, in January 1692, Lord Inchiquin also succumbed to
disease in Jamaica, and in the following June Colonel William Beeston
was chosen by the queen to act as lieutenant-governor.[504] Inchiquin
before he left England had solicited for the power to call in and pardon
pirates, so as to strengthen the island during the war by adding to its
forces men who would make good fighters on both land and sea. The
Committee on Trade and Plantations reported favourably on the proposal,
but the power seems never to have been granted.[505] In January 1692,
however, the President of the Council of Jamaica began to issue
commissions to privateers, and in a few months the surrounding seas were
full of armed Jamaican sloops.[506] On 7th June of the same year the
colony suffered a disaster which almost proved its destruction. A
terrible earthquake overwhelmed Port Royal and "in ten minutes threw
down all the churches, dwelling-houses and sugar-works in the island.
Two-thirds of Port Royal were swallowed up by the sea, all the forts and
fortifications demolished and great part of its inhabitants miserably
knocked on the head or drowned."[507] The French in Hispaniola took
advantage of the distress caused by the earthquake to invade the island,
and nearly every week hostile bands landed and plundered the coast of
negroes and other property.[508] In December 1693 a party of 170 swooped
down in the night upon St. Davids, only seven leagues from Port Royal,
plundered the whole parish, and got away again with 370 slaves.[509] In
the following April Ducasse, the new French governor of Hispaniola, sent
400 buccaneers in six small vessels to repeat the exploit, but the
marauders met an English man-of-war guarding the coast, and concluding
"that they would only get broken bones and spoil their men for any other
design," they retired whence they had come.[510] Two months later,
however, a much more serious incursion was made. An expedition of
twenty-two vessels and 1500 men, recruited in France and instigated, it
is said, by Irish and Jacobite refugees, set sail under Ducasse on 8th
June with the intention of conquering the whole of Jamaica. The French
landed at Point Morant and Cow Bay, and for a month cruelly desolated
the whole south-eastern portion of the island. Then coasting along the
southern shore they made a feint on Port Royal, and landed in Carlisle
Bay to the west of the capital. After driving from their breastworks the
English force of 250 men, they again fell to ravaging and burning, but
finding they could make no headway against the Jamaican militia, who
were now increased to 700 men, in the latter part of July they set sail
with their plunder for Hispaniola.[511] Jamaica had been denuded of men
by the earthquake and by sickness, and Lieutenant-Governor Beeston had
wisely abandoned the forts in the east of the island and concentrated
all his strength at Port Royal.[512] It was this expedient which
doubtless saved the island from capture, for Ducasse feared to attack
the united Jamaican forces behind strong intrenchments. The harm done to
Jamaica by the invasion, however, was very great. The French wholly
destroyed fifty sugar works and many plantations, burnt and plundered
about 200 houses, and killed every living thing they found. Thirteen
hundred negroes were carried off besides other spoil. In fighting the
Jamaicans lost about 100 killed and wounded, but the loss of the French
seems to have been several times that number. After the French returned
home Ducasse reserved all the negroes for himself, and many of the
freebooters who had taken part in the expedition, exasperated by such a
division of the spoil, deserted the governor and resorted to
buccaneering on their own account.[513]
Colonel, now become Sir William, Beeston, from his first arrival in
Jamaica as lieutenant-governor, had fixed his hopes upon a joint
expedition with the Spaniards against the French at Petit Goave; but the
inertia of the Spaniards, and the loss of men and money caused by the
earthquake, had prevented his plans from being realized.[514] In the
early part of 1695, however, an army of 1700 soldiers on a fleet of
twenty-three ships sailed from England under command of Commodore Wilmot
for the West Indies. Uniting with 1500 Spaniards from San Domingo and
the Barlovento fleet of three sail, they captured and sacked Cap
François and Port de Paix in the French end of the island. It had been
the intention of the allies to proceed to the _cul-de-sac_ and destroy
Petit Goave and Leogane, but they had lost many men by sickness and bad
management, and the Spaniards, satisfied with the booty already
obtained, were anxious to return home. So the English fleet sailed away
to Port Royal.[515] These hostilities so exhausted both the French in
Hispaniola and the English in Jamaica that for a time the combatants lay
back to recover their strength.
The last great expedition of this war in the West Indies serves as a
fitting close to the history of the buccaneers. On 26th September 1696
Ducasse received from the French Minister of Marine, Pontchartrain, a
letter informing him that the king had agreed to the project of a large
armament which the Sieur de Pointis, aided by private capital, was
preparing for an enterprise in the Mexican Gulf.[516] Ducasse, although
six years earlier he had written home urging just such an enterprise
against Vera Cruz or Cartagena, now expressed his strong disapproval of
the project, and dwelt rather on the advantages to be gained by the
capture of Spanish Hispaniola, a conquest which would give the French
the key to the Indies. A second letter from Pontchartrain in January
1697, however, ordered him to aid de Pointis by uniting all the
freebooters and keeping them in the colony till 15th February. It was a
difficult task to maintain the buccaneers in idleness for two months and
prohibit all cruising, especially as de Pointis, who sailed from Brest
in the beginning of January, did not reach Petit Goave till about 1st
March.[517] The buccaneers murmured and threatened to disband, and it
required all the personal ascendancy of Ducasse to hold them together.
The Sieur de Pointis, although a man of experience and resource, capable
of forming a large design and sparing nothing to its success, suffered
from two very common faults--vanity and avarice. He sometimes allowed
the sense of his own merits to blind him to the merits of others, and
considerations of self-interest to dim the brilliance of his
achievements. Of Ducasse he was insanely jealous, and during the whole
expedition he tried in every way to humiliate him. Unable to bring
himself to conciliate the unruly spirit of the buccaneers, he told them
plainly that he would lead them not as a companion in fortune but as a
military superior, and that they must submit themselves to the same
rules as the men on the king's ships. The freebooters rebelled under the
haughtiness of their commander, and only Ducasse's influence was able to
bring them to obedience.[518] On 18th March the ships were all gathered
at the rendezvous at Cape Tiburon, and on the 13th of the following
month anchored two leagues to the east of Cartagena.[519] De Pointis had
under his command about 4000 men, half of them seamen, the rest
soldiers. The reinforcements he had received from Ducasse numbered 1100,
and of these 650 were buccaneers commanded by Ducasse himself. He had
nine frigates, besides seven vessels belonging to the buccaneers, and
numerous smaller boats.[520] The appearance of so formidable an armament
in the West Indies caused a great deal of concern both in England and in
Jamaica. Martial law was proclaimed in the colony and every means taken
to put Port Royal in a state of defence.[521] Governor Beeston, at the
first news of de Pointis' fleet, sent advice to the governors of Porto
Bello and Havana, against whom he suspected that the expedition was
intended.[522] A squadron of thirteen vessels was sent out from England
under command of Admiral Nevill to protect the British islands and the
Spanish treasure fleets, for both the galleons and the Flota were then
in the Indies.[523] Nevill touched at Barbadoes on 17th April,[524] and
then sailed up through the Leeward Islands towards Hispaniola in search
of de Pointis. The Frenchman, however, had eluded him and was already
before Cartagena.
Cartagena, situated at the eastward end of a large double lagoon, was
perhaps the strongest fortress in the Indies, and the Spaniards within
opposed a courageous defence.[525] After a fortnight of fighting and
bombardment, however, on the last day of April the outworks were carried
by a brilliant assault, and on 6th May the small Spanish garrison,
followed by the _Cabildo_ or municipal corporation, and by many of the
citizens of the town, in all about 2800 persons, marched out with the
honours of war. Although the Spaniards had been warned of the coming of
the French, and before their arrival had succeeded in withdrawing the
women and some of their riches to Mompos in the interior, the treasure
which fell into the hands of the invaders was enormous, and has been
variously estimated at from six million crowns to twenty millions
sterling. Trouble soon broke out between de Pointis and the buccaneers,
for the latter wanted the whole of the plunder to be divided equally
among the men, as had always been their custom, and they expected,
according to this arrangement, says de Pointis in his narrative, about a
quarter of all the booty. De Pointis, however, insisted upon the order
which he had published before the expedition sailed from Petit Goave,
that the buccaneers should be subject to the same rule in the division
of the spoil as the sailors in the fleet, i.e., they should receive
one-tenth of the first million and one-thirtieth of the rest. Moreover,
fearing that the buccaneers would take matters into their own hands, he
had excluded them from the city while his officers gathered the plunder
and carried it to the ships. On the repeated remonstrances of Ducasse,
de Pointis finally announced that the share allotted to the men from
Hispaniola was 40,000 crowns. The buccaneers, finding themselves so
miserably cheated, broke out into open mutiny, but were restrained by
the influence of their leader and the presence of the king's frigates.
De Pointis, meanwhile, seeing his own men decimated by sickness, put all
the captured guns on board the fleet and made haste to get under sail
for France. South of Jamaica he fell in with the squadron of Admiral
Nevill, to which in the meantime had been joined some eight Dutch
men-of-war; but de Pointis, although inferior in numbers, outsailed the
English ships and lost but one or two of his smaller vessels. He then
man[oe]uvred past Cape S. Antonio, round the north of Cuba and through
the Bahama Channel to Newfoundland, where he stopped for fresh wood and
water, and after a brush with a small English squadron under Commodore
Norris, sailed into the harbour of Brest on 19th August 1697.[526]
The buccaneers, even before de Pointis sailed for France, had turned
their ships back toward Cartagena to reimburse themselves by again
plundering the city. De Pointis, indeed, was then very ill, and his
officers were in no condition to oppose them. After the fleet had
departed the freebooters re-entered Cartagena, and for four days put it
to the sack, extorting from the unfortunate citizens, and from the
churches and monasteries, several million more in gold and silver.
Embarking for the Isle la Vache, they had covered but thirty leagues
when they met with the same allied fleet which had pursued de Pointis.
Of the nine buccaneer vessels, the two which carried most of the booty
were captured, two more were driven ashore, and the rest succeeded in
escaping to Hispaniola. Ducasse, who had returned to Petit Goave when de
Pointis sailed for France, sent one of his lieutenants on a mission to
the French Court to complain of the ill-treatment he had received from
de Pointis, and to demand his own recall; but the king pacified him by
making him a Chevalier of St. Louis, and allotting 1,400,000 francs to
the French colonists who had aided in the expedition. The money,
however, was slow in reaching the hands of those to whom it was due, and
much was lost through the malversations of the men charged with its
distribution.[527]
* * * * *
With the capture of Cartagena in 1697 the history of the buccaneers may
be said to end. More and more during the previous twenty years they had
degenerated into mere pirates, or had left their libertine life for more
civilised pursuits. Since 1671 the English government had been
consistent in its policy of suppressing the freebooters, and with few
exceptions the governors sent to Jamaica had done their best to uphold
and enforce the will of the councils at home. Ten years or more had to
elapse before the French Court saw the situation in a similar light, and
even then the exigencies of war and defence in French Hispaniola
prevented the governors from taking any effective measures toward
suppression. The problem, indeed, had not been an easy one. The
buccaneers, whatever their origin, were intrepid men, not without a
sense of honour among themselves, wedded to a life of constant danger
which they met and overcame with surprising hardiness. When an
expedition was projected against their traditional foes, the Spaniards,
they calculated the chances of profit, and taking little account of the
perils to be run, or indeed of the flag under which they sailed,
English, French and Dutch alike became brothers under a chief whose
courage they perfectly recognised and whom they servilely obeyed. They
lived at a time when they were in no danger of being overhauled by
ubiquitous cruisers with rifled guns, and so long as they confined
themselves to His Catholic Majesty's ships and settlements, they had
trusted in the immunity arising from the traditional hostility existing
between the English and the Spaniards of that era. And for the Spaniards
the record of the buccaneers had been a terrible one. Between the years
1655 and 1671 alone, the corsairs had sacked eighteen cities, four towns
and more than thirty-five villages--Cumana once, Cumanagote twice,
Maracaibo and Gibraltar twice, Rio de la Hacha five times, Santa Marta
three times, Tolu eight times, Porto Bello once, Chagre twice, Panama
once, Santa Catalina twice, Granada in Nicaragua twice, Campeache three
times, St. Jago de Cuba once, and other towns and villages in Cuba and
Hispaniola for thirty leagues inland innumerable times. And this fearful
tale of robbery and outrage does not embrace the various expeditions
against Porto Bello, Campeache, Cartagena and other Spanish ports made
after 1670. The Marquis de Barinas in 1685 estimated the losses of the
Spaniards at the hands of the buccaneers since the accession of Charles
II. to be sixty million crowns; and these figures covered merely the
destruction of towns and treasure, without including the loss of more
than 250 merchant ships and frigates.[528] If the losses and suffering
of the Spaniards had been terrible, the advantages accruing to the
invaders, or to the colonies which received and supported them, scarcely
compensated for the effort it cost them. Buccaneering had denuded
Jamaica of its bravest men, lowered the moral tone of the island, and
retarded the development of its natural resources. It was estimated that
there were lost to the island between 1668 and 1671, in the designs
against Tobago, Curaçao, Porto Bello, Granada and Panama, about 2600
men,[529] which was a large number for a new and very weak colony
surrounded by powerful foes. Says the same writer later on: "People have
not married, built or settled as they would in time of peace--some for
fear of being destroyed, others have got much suddenly by privateers
bargains and are gone. War carries away all freemen, labourers and
planters of provisions, which makes work and victuals dear and scarce.
Privateering encourages all manner of disorder and dissoluteness; and if
it succeed, does but enrich the worst sort of people and provoke and
alarm the Spaniards."[530]
The privateers, moreover, really injured English trade as much as they
injured Spanish navigation; and if the English in the second half of the
seventeenth century had given the Spaniards as little cause for enmity
in the West Indies as the Dutch had done, they perhaps rather than the
Dutch would have been the convoys and sharers in the rich Flotas. The
Spaniards, moreover, if not in the court at home, at least in the
colonies, would have readily lent themselves to a trade, illicit though
it be, with the English islands, a trade, moreover, which it was the
constant aim of English diplomacy to encourage and maintain, had they
been able to assure themselves that their English neighbours were their
friends. But when outrage succeeded upon outrage, and the English
Governors seemed, in spite of their protestations of innocence, to make
no progress toward stopping them, the Spaniards naturally concluded that
the English government was the best of liars and the worst of friends.
From another point of view, too, the activity of the buccaneers was
directly opposed to the commercial interests of Great Britain. Of all
the nations of Europe the Spaniards were those who profited least from
their American possessions. It was the English, the French and the Dutch
who carried their merchandize to Cadiz and freighted the
Spanish-American fleets, and who at the return of these fleets from
Porto Bello and Vera Cruz appropriated the greater part of the gold,
silver and precious stuffs which composed their cargoes. And when the
buccaneers cut off a Spanish galleon, or wrecked the Spanish cities on
the Main, it was not so much the Spaniards who suffered as the foreign
merchants interested in the trade between Spain and her colonies. If the
policy of the English and French Governments toward the buccaneers
gradually changed from one of connivance or encouragement to one of
hostility and suppression, it was because they came to realise that it
was easier and more profitable to absorb the trade and riches of Spanish
America through the peaceful agencies of treaty and concession, than by
endeavouring to enforce a trade in the old-fashioned way inaugurated by
Drake and his Elizabethan contemporaries.