The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century Part 13

[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, a.s.suring 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e by the hurricane. The governor had him arrested, and gave a commission to Colonel Modyford, the son of Sir Thomas, to a.s.semble 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 amba.s.sador 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 ma.s.sacring 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 amba.s.sador in London, and by Sir William G.o.dolphin 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 amba.s.sador 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. G.o.dolphin 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 pet.i.tioned 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 pet.i.tioners 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 G.o.d'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 amba.s.sador 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 Amba.s.sador G.o.dolphin 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 a.s.sert 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 amba.s.sador 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 a.s.sumed 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 pet.i.tions 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 a.s.sured, 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sociation 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 Pouancay, 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 pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly, 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.sembly, 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 pet.i.tioned the a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly.[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 Pouancay, and every defection from Jamaica seemed so much a.s.sistance 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 c.o.xon, 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 d.a.m.nably enraged the English had left them" and submitted to Lord Vaughan.[394]

In the beginning of the following year, 1678, Count d'Estrees, Vice-Admiral of the French fleet in the West Indies, was preparing a powerful armament to go against the Dutch on Curacao, and sent two frigates to Hispaniola with an order from the king to M. de Pouancay to join him with 1200 buccaneers. De Pouancay a.s.sembled the men at Cap Francois, 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'Estrees. The united fleet of over thirty vessels sailed for Curacao 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 pa.s.sed 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'Estrees himself escaped, and sailed with the remnant of his squadron to Pet.i.t Goave and Cap Francois 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 Curacao, which d'Estrees would have undertaken in spite of the shipwreck.[397] However this may be, one of the princ.i.p.al buccaneer leaders, named de Grammont, was left by de Pouancay 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 Sorciere," 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 Pouancay, 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 c.o.xon, 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, tortoisesh.e.l.l, 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, c.o.xon, Ess.e.x, 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. c.o.xon 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 Ess.e.x 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 pa.s.sage home the governor met with Captain c.o.xon, who, having quarrelled with his companions in the Pacific, had returned across Darien to the West Indies and was again hanging about the sh.o.r.es of Jamaica. The "Hunter" gave chase for twenty-four hours, but being outsailed was content to take two small vessels in the company of c.o.xon 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 Const.i.tution, 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 pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly, 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 c.o.xon, 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 c.o.xon, 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage to England. On their arrival in England several, including Sharp, were arrested at the instance of the Spanish amba.s.sador, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y and notorious villein," was recommended to be executed as an example to the rest.[420]