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Title: The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century
Author: Clarence Henry Haring
Release Date: August 29, 2006 [EBook #19139]
Language: English
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THE BUCCANEERS IN THE
WEST INDIES IN THE
XVII CENTURY
BY
C.H. HARING
WITH TEN MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1910_
PREFACE
The principal facts about the exploits of the English and French
buccaneers of the seventeenth century in the West Indies are
sufficiently well known to modern readers. The French Jesuit historians
of the Antilles have left us many interesting details of their mode of
life, and Exquemelin's history of the freebooters has been reprinted
numerous times both in France and in England. Based upon these old,
contemporary narratives, modern accounts are issued from the press with
astonishing regularity, some of them purporting to be serious history,
others appearing in the more popular and entertaining guise of romances.
All, however, are alike in confining themselves for their information to
what may almost be called the traditional sources--Exquemelin, the
Jesuits, and perhaps a few narratives like those of Dampier and Wafer.
To write another history of these privateers or pirates, for they have,
unfortunately, more than once deserved that name, may seem a rather
fruitless undertaking. It is justified only by the fact that there exist
numerous other documents bearing upon the subject, documents which till
now have been entirely neglected. Exquemelin has been reprinted, the
story of the buccaneers has been re-told, yet no writer, whether editor
or historian, has attempted to estimate the trustworthiness of the old
tales by comparing them with these other sources, or to show the
connection between the buccaneers and the history of the English
colonies in the West Indies. The object of this volume, therefore, is
not only to give a narrative, according to the most authentic, available
sources, of the more brilliant exploits of these sea-rovers, but, what
is of greater interest and importance, to trace the policy pursued
toward them by the English and French Governments.
The "Buccaneers in the West Indies" was presented as a thesis to the
Board of Modern History of Oxford University in May 1909 to fulfil the
requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Letters. It was written under
the supervision of C.H. Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History in
Oxford, and to him the writer owes a lasting debt of gratitude for his
unfailing aid and sympathy during the course of preparation.
C.H.H.
Oxford, 1910
CONTENTS
Preface
CHAP. PAGE
I. Introductory--
Part I.--The Spanish Colonial System 1
Part II.--The Freebooters of the Sixteenth Century 28
II. The Beginnings of the Buccaneers 57
III. The Conquest of Jamaica 85
IV. Tortuga, 1655-1664 113
V. Porto Bello and Panama 120
VI. The Government Suppresses the Buccaneers 200
VII. The Buccaneers Turn Pirate 232
Appendices 273-74
Bibliography 275
Index 289
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of the West Indies _Frontispiece_
From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_.
FACING PAGE
Spanish Periagua 1
From Exquemelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers Trevoux_,
1744.
Buccaneer Vessels 76
From Exquemelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers Trevoux_,
1744.
A Correct Map of Jamaica 85
From the _Royal Magazine_, 1760.
Map of San Domingo 86
From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_.
Plan of the Bay and Town of Portobelo 154
From Prevost d'Exiles' _Voyages_.
The Isthmus of Darien 164
From Exquelmelin's _Bucaniers_, 1684-5.
'The Battel between the Spaniards and the
pyrats or Buccaniers before the Citty of
Panama' 166
From Exquemelin's _Bucaniers of America_, 1684-5.
Plan of Vera-Cruz 242
From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_, 1730.
Plan of the Town and Roadstead of Cartegena
and of the Forts 264
From Baron de Pontis' _Relation de ce qui c'est fait la
prise de Carthagene_, Bruxelles, 1698.
THE BUCCANEERS IN THE
WEST INDIES IN THE
XVII CENTURY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
I.--THE SPANISH COLONIAL SYSTEM
At the time of the discovery of America the Spaniards, as M.
Leroy-Beaulieu has remarked, were perhaps less fitted than any other
nation of western Europe for the task of American colonization. Whatever
may have been the political _rôle_ thrust upon them in the sixteenth
century by the Hapsburg marriages, whatever certain historians may say
of the grandeur and nobility of the Spanish national character, Spain
was then neither rich nor populous, nor industrious. For centuries she
had been called upon to wage a continuous warfare with the Moors, and
during this time had not only found little leisure to cultivate the arts
of peace, but had acquired a disdain for manual work which helped to
mould her colonial administration and influenced all her subsequent
history. And when the termination of the last of these wars left her
mistress of a united Spain, and the exploitation of her own resources
seemed to require all the energies she could muster, an entire new
hemisphere was suddenly thrown open to her, and given into her hands by
a papal decree to possess and populate. Already weakened by the exile of
the most sober and industrious of her population, the Jews; drawn into a
foreign policy for which she had neither the means nor the inclination;
instituting at home an economic policy which was almost epileptic in its
consequences, she found her strength dissipated, and gradually sank into
a condition of economic and political impotence.
Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor in the service of the Castilian
Crown, wishing to find a western route by sea to India and especially to
Zipangu (Japan), the magic land described by the Venetian traveller,
Marco Polo, landed on 12th October 1492, on "Guanahani," one of the
Bahama Islands. From "Guanahani" he passed on to other islands of the
same group, and thence to Hispaniola, Tortuga and Cuba. Returning to
Spain in March 1493, he sailed again in September of the same year with
seventeen vessels and 1500 persons, and this time keeping farther to the
south, sighted Porto Rico and some of the Lesser Antilles, founded a
colony on Hispaniola, and discovered Jamaica in 1494. On a third voyage
in 1498 he discovered Trinidad, and coasted along the shores of South
America from the Orinoco River to the island of Margarita. After a
fourth and last voyage in 1502-04, Columbus died at Valladolid in 1506,
in the firm belief that he had discovered a part of the Continent of
Asia.
The entire circle of the Antilles having thus been revealed before the
end of the fifteenth century, the Spaniards pushed forward to the
continent. While Hojida, Vespucci, Pinzon and de Solis were exploring
the eastern coast from La Plata to Yucatan, Ponce de Leon in 1512
discovered Florida, and in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa descried the
Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time
the existence of a new continent. In 1520 Magellan entered the Pacific
through the strait which bears his name, and a year later was killed in
one of the Philippine Islands. Within the next twenty years Cortez had
conquered the realm of Montezuma, and Pizarro the empire of Peru; and
thus within the space of two generations all of the West Indies, North
America to California and the Carolinas, all of South America except
Brazil, which the error of Cabral gave to the Portuguese, and in the
east the Philippine Islands and New Guinea passed under the sway of the
Crown of Castile.
Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493 had consulted with several persons of
eminent learning to find out whether it was necessary to obtain the
investiture of the Pope for their newly-discovered possessions, and all
were of opinion that this formality was unnecessary.[1] Nevertheless, on
3rd May 1493, a bull was granted by Pope Alexander VI., which divided
the sovereignty of those parts of the world not possessed by any
Christian prince between Spain and Portugal by a meridian line 100
leagues west of the Azores or of Cape Verde. Later Spanish writers made
much of this papal gift; yet, as Georges Scelle points out,[2] it is
possible that this bull was not so much a deed of conveyance, investing
the Spaniards with the proprietorship of America, as it was an act of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction according them, on the strength of their
acquired right and proven Catholicism, a monopoly as it were in the
propagation of the faith. At that time, even Catholic princes were no
longer accustomed to seek the Pope's sanction when making a new
conquest, and certainly in the domain of public law the Pope was not
considered to have temporal jurisdiction over the entire world. He did,
however, intervene in temporal matters when they directly influenced
spiritual affairs, and of this the propagation of the faith was an
instance. As the compromise between Spain and Portugal was very
indecisive, owing to the difference in longitude of the Azores and Cape
Verde, a second Act was signed on 7th June 1494, which placed the line
of demarcation 270 leagues farther to the west.
The colonization of the Spanish Indies, on its social and administrative
side, presents a curious contrast. On the one hand we see the Spanish
Crown, with high ideals of order and justice, of religious and political
unity, extending to its ultramarine possessions its faith, its language,
its laws and its administration; providing for the welfare of the
aborigines with paternal solicitude; endeavouring to restrain and temper
the passions of the conquerors; building churches and founding schools
and monasteries; in a word, trying to make its colonies an integral part
of the Spanish monarchy, "une société vieille dans une contrée neuve."
Some Spanish writers, it is true, have exaggerated the virtues of their
old colonial system; yet that system had excellences which we cannot
afford to despise. If the Spanish kings had not choked their government
with procrastination and routine; if they had only taken their task a
bit less seriously and had not tried to apply too strictly to an empty
continent the paternal administration of an older country; we might have
been privileged to witness the development and operation of as complete
and benign a system of colonial government as has been devised in modern
times. The public initiative of the Spanish government, and the care
with which it selected its colonists, compare very favourably with the
opportunism of the English and the French, who colonized by chance
private activity and sent the worst elements of their population,
criminals and vagabonds, to people their new settlements across the sea.
However much we may deprecate the treatment of the Indians by the
_conquistadores_, we must not forget that the greater part of the
population of Spanish America to-day is still Indian, and that no other
colonizing people have succeeded like the Spaniards in assimilating and
civilizing the natives. The code of laws which the Spaniards gradually
evolved for the rule of their transmarine provinces, was, in spite of
defects which are visible only to the larger experience of the present
day, one of the wisest, most humane and best co-ordinated of any to this
day published for any colony. Although the Spaniards had to deal with a
large population of barbarous natives, the word "conquest" was
suppressed in legislation as ill-sounding, "because the peace is to be
sealed," they said, "not with the sound of arms, but with charity and
good-will."[3]
The actual results, however, of the social policy of the Spanish kings
fell far below the ideals they had set for themselves. The monarchic
spirit of the crown was so strong that it crushed every healthy,
expansive tendency in the new countries. It burdened the colonies with a
numerous, privileged nobility, who congregated mostly in the larger
towns and set to the rest of the colonists a pernicious example of
idleness and luxury. In its zeal for the propagation of the Faith, the
Crown constituted a powerfully endowed Church, which, while it did
splendid service in converting and civilizing the natives, engrossed
much of the land in the form of mainmort, and filled the new world with
thousands of idle, unproductive, and often licentious friars. With an
innate distrust and fear of individual initiative, it gave virtual
omnipotence to royal officials and excluded all creoles from public
employment. In this fashion was transferred to America the crushing
political and ecclesiastical absolutism of the mother country.
Self-reliance and independence of thought or action on the part of the
creoles was discouraged, divisions and factions among them were
encouraged and educational opportunities restricted, and the
American-born Spaniards gradually sank into idleness and lethargy,
indifferent to all but childish honours and distinctions and petty local
jealousies. To make matters worse, many of the Spaniards who crossed the
seas to the American colonies came not to colonize, not to trade or
cultivate the soil, so much as to extract from the natives a tribute of
gold and silver. The Indians, instead of being protected and civilized,
were only too often reduced to serfdom and confined to a laborious
routine for which they had neither the aptitude nor the strength; while
the government at home was too distant to interfere effectively in their
behalf. Driven by cruel taskmasters they died by thousands from
exhaustion and despair, and in some places entirely disappeared.
The Crown of Castile, moreover, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries sought to extend Spanish commerce and monopolize all the
treasure of the Indies by means of a rigid and complicated commercial
system. Yet in the end it saw the trade of the New World pass into the
hands of its rivals, its own marine reduced to a shadow of its former
strength, its crews and its vessels supplied by merchants from foreign
lands, and its riches diverted at their very source.
This Spanish commercial system was based upon two distinct principles.
One was the principle of colonial exclusivism, according to which all
the trade of the colonies was to be reserved to the mother country.
Spain on her side undertook to furnish the colonies with all they
required, shipped upon Spanish vessels; the colonies in return were to
produce nothing but raw materials and articles which did not compete
with the home products with which they were to be exchanged. The second
principle was the mercantile doctrine which, considering as wealth
itself the precious metals which are but its symbol, laid down that
money ought, by every means possible, to be imported and hoarded, never
exported.[4] This latter theory, the fallacy of which has long been
established, resulted in the endeavour of the Spanish Hapsburgs to
conserve the wealth of the country, not by the encouragement of
industry, but by the increase and complexity of imposts. The former
doctrine, adopted by a non-producing country which was in no position to
fulfil its part in the colonial compact, led to the most disastrous
consequences.
While the Spanish Crown was aiming to concentrate and monopolize its
colonial commerce, the prosperity of Spain itself was slowly sapped by
reason of these mistaken economic theories. Owing to the lack of
workmen, the increase of imposts, and the prejudice against the mechanic
arts, industry was being ruined; while the increased depopulation of the
realm, the mainmort of ecclesiastical lands, the majorats of the
nobility and the privileges of the Mesta, brought agriculture rapidly
into decay. The Spaniards, consequently, could not export the products
of their manufacture to the colonies, when they did not have enough to
supply their own needs. To make up for this deficiency their merchants
were driven to have recourse to foreigners, to whom they lent their
names in order to elude a law which forbade commerce between the
colonies and traders of other nations. In return for the manufactured
articles of the English, Dutch and French, and of the great commercial
cities like Genoa and Hamburg, they were obliged to give their own raw
materials and the products of the Indies--wool, silks, wines and dried
fruits, cochineal, dye-woods, indigo and leather, and finally, indeed,
ingots of gold and silver. The trade in Spain thus in time became a mere
passive machine. Already in 1545 it had been found impossible to furnish
in less than six years the goods demanded by the merchants of Spanish
America. At the end of the seventeenth century, foreigners were
supplying five-sixths of the manufactures consumed in Spain itself, and
engrossed nine-tenths of that American trade which the Spaniards had
sought so carefully to monopolize.[5]
In the colonies the most striking feature of Spanish economic policy was
its wastefulness. After the conquest of the New World, it was to the
interest of the Spaniards to gradually wean the native Indians from
barbarism by teaching them the arts and sciences of Europe, to encourage
such industries as were favoured by the soil, and to furnish the growing
colonies with those articles which they could not produce themselves,
and of which they stood in need. Only thus could they justify their
monopoly of the markets of Spanish America. The same test, indeed, may
be applied to every other nation which adopted the exclusivist system.
Queen Isabella wished to carry out this policy, introduced into the
newly-discovered islands wheat, the olive and the vine, and acclimatized
many of the European domestic animals.[6] Her efforts, unfortunately,
were not seconded by her successors, nor by the Spaniards who went to
the Indies. In time the government itself, as well as the colonist, came
to be concerned, not so much with the agricultural products of the
Indies, but with the return of the precious metals. Natives were made to
work the mines, while many regions adapted to agriculture, Guiana,
Caracas and Buenos Ayres, were neglected, and the peopling of the
colonies by Europeans was slow. The emperor, Charles V., did little to
stem this tendency, but drifted along with the tide. Immigration was
restricted to keep the colonies free from the contamination of heresy
and of foreigners. The Spanish population was concentrated in cities,
and the country divided into great estates granted by the crown to the
families of the _conquistadores_ or to favourites at court. The immense
areas of Peru, Buenos Ayres and Mexico were submitted to the most unjust
and arbitrary regulations, with no object but to stifle growing industry
and put them in absolute dependence upon the metropolis. It was
forbidden to exercise the trades of dyer, fuller, weaver, shoemaker or
hatter, and the natives were compelled to buy of the Spaniards even the
stuffs they wore on their backs. Another ordinance prohibited the
cultivation of the vine and the olive except in Peru and Chili, and even
these provinces might not send their oil and wine to Panama, Gautemala
or any other place which could be supplied from Spain.[7] To maintain
the commercial monopoly, legitimate ports of entry in Spanish America
were made few and far apart--for Mexico, Vera Cruz, for New Granada, the
town of Cartagena. The islands and most of the other provinces were
supplied by uncertain "vaisseaux de registre," while Peru and Chili,
finding all direct commerce by the Pacific or South Sea interdicted,
were obliged to resort to the fever-ridden town of Porto Bello, where
the mortality was enormous and the prices increased tenfold.
In Spain, likewise, the colonial commerce was restricted to one
port--Seville. For in the estimation of the crown it was much more
important to avoid being defrauded of its dues on import and export,
than to permit the natural development of trade by those towns best
fitted to acquire it. Another reason, prior in point of time perhaps,
why Seville was chosen as the port for American trade, was that the
Indies were regarded as the exclusive appanage of the crown of Castile,
and of that realm Seville was then the chief mercantile city. It was not
a suitable port, however, to be distinguished by so high a privilege.
Only ships of less than 200 tons were able to cross the bar of San
Lucar, and goods therefore had to be transhipped--a disability which was
soon felt when traffic and vessels became heavier.[8] The fact,
nevertheless, that the official organization called the _Casa dé
Contratacion_ was seated in Seville, together with the influence of the
vested interests of the merchants whose prosperity depended upon the
retention of that city as the one port for Indian commerce, were
sufficient to bear down all opposition. The maritime towns of Galicia
and Asturia, inhabited by better seamen and stronger races, often
protested, and sometimes succeeded in obtaining a small share of the
lucrative trade.[9] But Seville retained its primacy until 1717, in
which year the _Contratacion_ was transferred to Cadiz.
The administration of the complex rules governing the commerce between
Spain and her colonies was entrusted to two institutions located at
Seville,--the _Casa de Contratacion_, mentioned above, and the
_Consulado_. The _Casa de Contratacion_, founded by royal decree as
early as 1503, was both a judicial tribunal and a house of commerce.
Nothing might be sent to the Indies without its consent; nothing might
be brought back and landed, either on the account of merchants or of the
King himself, without its authorization. It received all the revenues
accruing from the Indies, not only the imposts on commerce, but also all
the taxes remitted by colonial officers. As a consultative body it had
the right to propose directly to the King anything which it deemed
necessary to the development and organization of American commerce; and
as a tribunal it possessed an absolute competence over all crimes under
the common law, and over all infractions of the ordinances governing the
trade of the Indies, to the exclusion of every ordinary court. Its
jurisdiction began at the moment the passengers and crews embarked and
the goods were put on board, and ended only when the return voyage and
disembarkation had been completed.[10] The civil jurisdiction of the
_Casa_ was much more restricted and disputes purely commercial in
character between the merchants were reserved to the _Consulado_, which
was a tribunal of commerce chosen entirely by the merchants themselves.
Appeals in certain cases might be carried to the Council of the
Indies.[11]
The first means adopted by the northern maritime nations to appropriate
to themselves a share of the riches of the New World was open,
semi-piratical attack upon the Spanish argosies returning from those
distant El Dorados. The success of the Norman and Breton corsairs, for
it was the French, not the English, who started the game, gradually
forced upon the Spaniards, as a means of protection, the establishment
of great merchant fleets sailing periodically at long intervals and
accompanied by powerful convoys. During the first half of the sixteenth
century any ship which had fulfilled the conditions required for
engaging in American commerce was allowed to depart alone and at any
time of the year. From about 1526, however, merchant vessels were
ordered to sail together, and by a _cedula_ of July 1561, the system of
fleets was made permanent and obligatory. This decree prohibited any
ship from sailing alone to America from Cadiz or San Lucar on pain of
forfeiture of ship and cargo.[12] Two fleets were organized each year,
one for Terra Firma going to Cartagena and Porto Bello, the other
designed for the port of San Juan d'Ulloa (Vera Cruz) in New Spain. The
latter, called the Flota, was commanded by an "almirante," and sailed
for Mexico in the early summer so as to avoid the hurricane season and
the "northers" of the Mexican Gulf. The former was usually called the
galeones (_anglice_ "galleons"), was commanded by a "general," and
sailed from Spain earlier in the year, between January and March. If it
departed in March, it usually wintered at Havana and returned with the
Flota in the following spring. Sometimes the two fleets sailed together
and separated at Guadaloupe, Deseada or another of the Leeward
Islands.[13]
The galleons generally consisted of from five to eight war-vessels
carrying from forty to fifty guns, together with several smaller, faster
boats called "pataches," and a fleet of merchantmen varying in number in
different years. In the time of Philip II. often as many as forty ships
supplied Cartagena and Porto Bello, but in succeeding reigns, although
the population of the Indies was rapidly increasing, American commerce
fell off so sadly that eight or ten were sufficient for all the trade of
South and Central America. The general of the galleons, on his
departure, received from the Council of the Indies three sealed packets.
The first, opened at the Canaries, contained the name of the island in
the West Indies at which the fleet was first to call. The second was
unsealed after the galleons arrived at Cartagena, and contained
instructions for the fleet to return in the same year or to winter in
America. In the third, left unopened until the fleet had emerged from
the Bahama Channel on the homeward voyage, were orders for the route to
the Azores and the islands they should touch in passing, usually Corvo
and Flores or Santa Maria.[14]
The course of the galleons from San Lucar was south-west to Teneriffe on
the African coast, and thence to the Grand Canary to call for
provisions--considered in all a run of eight days. From the Canaries one
of the pataches sailed on alone to Cartagena and Porto Bello, carrying
letters and packets from the Court and announcing the coming of the
fleet. If the two fleets sailed together, they steered south-west from
the Canaries to about the latitude of Deseada, 15' 30", and then
catching the Trade winds continued due west, rarely changing a sail
until Deseada or one of the other West Indian islands was sighted. From
Deseada the galleons steered an easy course to Cape de la Vela, and
thence to Cartagena. When the galleons sailed from Spain alone, however,
they entered the Caribbean Sea by the channel between Tobago and
Trinidad, afterwards named the Galleons' Passage. Opposite Margarita a
second patache left the fleet to visit the island and collect the royal
revenues, although after the exhaustion of the pearl fisheries the
island lost most of its importance. As the fleet advanced into regions
where more security was felt, merchant ships too, which were intended to
unload and trade on the coasts they were passing, detached themselves
during the night and made for Caracas, Santa Marta or Maracaibo to get
silver, cochineal, leather and cocoa. The Margarita patache, meanwhile,
had sailed on to Cumana and Caracas to receive there the king's
treasure, mostly paid in cocoa, the real currency of the country, and
thence proceeded to Cartagena to rejoin the galleons.[15]
The fleet reached Cartagena ordinarily about two months after its
departure from Cadiz. On its arrival, the general forwarded the news to
Porto Bello, together with the packets destined for the viceroy at Lima.
From Porto Bello a courier hastened across the isthmus to the President
of Panama, who spread the advice amongst the merchants in his
jurisdiction, and, at the same time, sent a dispatch boat to Payta, in
Peru. The general of the galleons, meanwhile, was also sending a courier
overland to Lima, and another to Santa Fe, the capital of the interior
province of New Granada, whence runners carried to Popagan, Antioquia,
Mariguita, and adjacent provinces, the news of his arrival.[16] The
galleons were instructed to remain at Cartagena only a month, but bribes
from the merchants generally made it their interest to linger for fifty
or sixty days. To Cartagena came the gold and emeralds of New Granada,
the pearls of Margarita and Rancherias, and the indigo, tobacco, cocoa
and other products of the Venezuelan coast. The merchants of Gautemala,
likewise, shipped their commodities to Cartagena by way of Lake
Nicaragua and the San Juan river, for they feared to send goods across
the Gulf of Honduras to Havana, because of the French and English
buccaneers hanging about Cape San Antonio.[17]
Meanwhile the viceroy at Lima, on receipt of his letters, ordered the
Armada of the South Sea to prepare to sail, and sent word south to Chili
and throughout the province of Peru from Las Charcas to Quito, to
forward the King's revenues for shipment to Panama. Within less than a
fortnight all was in readiness. The Armada, carrying a considerable
treasure, sailed from Callao and, touching at Payta, was joined by the
Navio del Oro (golden ship), which carried the gold from the province of
Quito and adjacent districts. While the galleons were approaching Porto
Bello the South Sea fleet arrived before Panama, and the merchants of
Chili and Peru began to transfer their merchandise on mules across the
high back of the isthmus.[18]
Then began the famous fair of Porto Bello.[19] The town, whose permanent
population was very small and composed mostly of negroes and mulattos,
was suddenly called upon to accommodate an enormous crowd of merchants,
soldiers and seamen. Food and shelter were to be had only at
extraordinary prices. When Thomas Gage was in Porto Bello in 1637 he was
compelled to pay 120 crowns for a very small, meanly-furnished room for
a fortnight. Merchants gave as much as 1000 crowns for a moderate-sized
shop in which to sell their commodities. Owing to overcrowding, bad
sanitation, and an extremely unhealthy climate, the place became an open
grave, ready to swallow all who resorted there. In 1637, during the
fifteen days that the galleons remained at Porto Bello, 500 men died of
sickness. Meanwhile, day by day, the mule-trains from Panama were
winding their way into the town. Gage in one day counted 200 mules laden
with wedges of silver, which were unloaded in the market-place and
permitted to lie about like heaps of stones in the streets, without
causing any fear or suspicion of being lost.[20] While the treasure of
the King of Spain was being transferred to the galleons in the harbour,
the merchants were making their trade. There was little liberty,
however, in commercial transactions, for the prices were fixed and
published beforehand, and when negotiations began exchange was purely
mechanical. The fair, which was supposed to be open for forty days, was,
in later times, generally completed in ten or twelve. At the beginning
of the eighteenth century the volume of business transacted was
estimated to amount to thirty or forty million pounds sterling.[21]
In view of the prevailing east wind in these regions, and the maze of
reefs, cays and shoals extending far out to sea from the Mosquito Coast,
the galleons, in making their course from Porto Bello to Havana, first
sailed back to Cartagena upon the eastward coast eddy, so as to get well
to windward of Nicaragua before attempting the passage through the
Yucatan Channel.[22] The fleet anchored at Cartagena a second time for
ten or twelve days, where it was rejoined by the patache of
Margarita[23] and by the merchant ships which had been sent to trade in
Terra-Firma. From Cartagena, too, the general sent dispatches to Spain
and to Havana, giving the condition of the vessels, the state of trade,
the day when he expected to sail, and the probable time of arrival.[24]
For when the galleons were in the Indies all ports were closed by the
Spaniards, for fear that precious information of the whereabouts of the
fleet and of the value of its cargo might inconveniently leak out to
their rivals. From Cartagena the course was north-west past Jamaica and
the Caymans to the Isle of Pines, and thence round Capes Corrientes and
San Antonio to Havana. The fleet generally required about eight days for
the journey, and arrived at Havana late in the summer. Here the galleons
refitted and revictualled, received tobacco, sugar, and other Cuban
exports, and if not ordered to return with the Flota, sailed for Spain
no later than the middle of September. The course for Spain was from
Cuba through the Bahama Channel, north-east between the Virginian Capes
and the Bermudas to about 38°, in order to recover the strong northerly
winds, and then east to the Azores. In winter the galleons sometimes ran
south of the Bermudas, and then slowly worked up to the higher latitude;
but in this case they often either lost some ships on the Bermuda
shoals, or to avoid these slipped too far south, were forced back into
the West Indies and missed their voyage altogether.[25] At the Azores
the general, falling in with his first intelligence from Spain, learned
where on the coast of Europe or Africa he was to sight land; and
finally, in the latter part of October or the beginning of November, he
dropped anchor at San Lucar or in Cadiz harbour.
The Flota or Mexican fleet, consisting in the seventeenth century of two
galleons of 800 or 900 tons and from fifteen to twenty merchantmen,
usually left Cadiz between June and July and wintered in America; but if
it was to return with the galleons from Havana in September it sailed
for the Indies as early as April. The course from Spain to the Indies
was the same as for the fleet of Terra-Firma. From Deseada or
Guadeloupe, however, the Flota steered north-west, passing Santa Cruz
and Porto Rico on the north, and sighting the little isles of Mona and
Saona, as far as the Bay of Neyba in Hispaniola, where the ships took on
fresh wood and water.[26] Putting to sea again, and circling round Beata
and Alta Vela, the fleet sighted in turn Cape Tiburon, Cape de Cruz, the
Isle of Pines, and Capes Corrientes and San Antonio at the west end of
Cuba. Meanwhile merchant ships had dropped away one by one, sailing to
San Juan de Porto Rico, San Domingo, St. Jago de Cuba and even to
Truxillo and Cavallos in Honduras, to carry orders from Spain to the
governors, receive cargoes of leather, cocoa, etc., and rejoin the Flota
at Havana. From Cape San Antonio to Vera Cruz there was an outside or
winter route and an inside or summer route. The former lay north-west
between the Alacranes and the Negrillos to the Mexican coast about
sixteen leagues north of Vera Cruz, and then down before the wind into
the desired haven. The summer track was much closer to the shore of
Campeache, the fleet threading its way among the cays and shoals, and
approaching Vera Cruz by a channel on the south-east.
If the Flota sailed from Spain in July it generally arrived at Vera Cruz
in the first fifteen days of September, and the ships were at once laid
up until March, when the crews reassembled to careen and refit them. If
the fleet was to return in the same year, however, the exports of New
Spain and adjacent provinces, the goods from China and the Philippines
carried across Mexico from the Pacific port of Acapulco, and the ten or
twelve millions of treasure for the king, were at once put on board and
the ships departed to join the galleons at Havana. Otherwise the fleet
sailed from Vera Cruz in April, and as it lay dead to the leeward of
Cuba, used the northerly winds to about 25°, then steered south-east and
reached Havana in eighteen or twenty days. By the beginning of June it
was ready to sail for Spain, where it arrived at the end of July, by the
same course as that followed by the galleons.[27]
We are accustomed to think of Spanish commerce with the Indies as being
made solely by great fleets which sailed yearly from Seville or Cadiz to
Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien. There were, however, always exceptions
to this rule. When, as sometimes happened, the Flota did not sail, two
ships of 600 or 700 tons were sent by the King of Spain to Vera Cruz to
carry the quicksilver necessary for the mines. The metal was divided
between New Spain and Peru by the viceroy at Mexico, who sent _via_
Gautemala the portion intended for the south. These ships, called
"azogues," carried from 2000 to 2500 quintals[28] of silver, and
sometimes convoyed six or seven merchant vessels. From time to time an
isolated ship was also allowed to sail from Spain to Caracas with
licence from the Council of the Indies and the _Contratacion_, paying
the king a duty of five ducats on the ton. It was called the "register
of Caracas," took the same route as the galleons, and returned with one
of the fleets from Havana. Similar vessels traded at Maracaibo, in Porto
Rico and at San Domingo, at Havana and Matanzas in Cuba and at Truxillo
and Campeache.[29] There was always, moreover, a special traffic with
Buenos Ayres. This port was opened to a limited trade in negroes in
1595. In 1602 permission was given to the inhabitants of La Plata to
export for six years the products of their lands to other Spanish
possessions, in exchange for goods of which they had need; and when in
1616 the colonists demanded an indefinite renewal of this privilege, the
sop thrown to them was the bare right of trade to the amount of 100 tons
every three years. Later in the century the Council of the Indies
extended the period to five years, so as not to prejudice the trade of
the galleons.[30]
It was this commerce, which we have noticed at such length, that the
buccaneers of the West Indies in the seventeenth century came to regard
as their legitimate prey. These "corsarios Luteranos," as the Spaniards
sometimes called them, scouring the coast of the Main from Venezuela to
Cartagena, hovering about the broad channel between Cuba and Yucatan, or
prowling in the Florida Straits, became the nightmare of Spanish seamen.
Like a pack of terriers they hung upon the skirts of the great unwieldy
fleets, ready to snap up any unfortunate vessel which a tempest or other
accident had separated from its fellows. When Thomas Gage was sailing in
the galleons from Porto Bello to Cartagena in 1637, four buccaneers
hovering near them carried away two merchant-ships under cover of
darkness. As the same fleet was departing from Havana, just outside the
harbour two strange vessels appeared in their midst, and getting to the
windward of them singled out a Spanish ship which had strayed a short
distance from the rest, suddenly gave her a broadside and made her
yield. The vessel was laden with sugar and other goods to the value of
80,000 crowns. The Spanish vice-admiral and two other galleons gave
chase, but without success, for the wind was against them. The whole
action lasted only half an hour.[31]
The Spanish ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were
notoriously clumsy and unseaworthy. With short keel and towering poop
and forecastle they were an easy prey for the long, low, close-sailing
sloops and barques of the buccaneers. But this was not their only
weakness. Although the king expressly prohibited the loading of
merchandise on the galleons except on the king's account, this rule was
often broken for the private profit of the captain, the sailors, and
even of the general. The men-of-war, indeed, were sometimes so
embarrassed with goods and passengers that it was scarcely possible to
defend them when attacked. The galleon which bore the general's flag had
often as many as 700 souls, crew, marines and passengers, on board, and
the same number were crowded upon those carrying the vice-admiral and
the pilot. Ship-masters frequently hired guns, anchors, cables, and
stores to make up the required equipment, and men to fill up the
muster-rolls, against the time when the "visitadors" came on board to
make their official inspection, getting rid of the stores and men
immediately afterward. Merchant ships were armed with such feeble crews,
owing to the excessive crowding, that it was all they could do to
withstand the least spell of bad weather, let alone outman[oe]uvre a
swift-sailing buccaneer.[32]
By Spanish law strangers were forbidden to resort to, or reside in, the
Indies without express permission of the king. By law, moreover, they
might not trade with the Indies from Spain, either on their own account
or through the intermediary of a Spaniard, and they were forbidden even
to associate with those engaged in such a trade. Colonists were
stringently enjoined from having anything to do with them. In 1569 an
order was issued for the seizure of all goods sent to the colonies on
the account of foreigners, and a royal _cedula_ of 1614 decreed the
penalty of death and confiscation upon any who connived at the
participation of foreigners in Spanish colonial commerce.[33] It was
impossible, however, to maintain so complete an exclusion when the
products of Spain fell far short of supplying the needs of the
colonists. Foreign merchants were bound to have a hand in this traffic,
and the Spanish government tried to recompense itself by imposing on the
out-going cargoes tyrannical exactions called "indults." The results
were fatal. Foreigners often eluded these impositions by interloping in
the West Indies and in the South Sea.[34] And as the _Contratacion_, by
fixing each year the nature and quantity of the goods to be shipped to
the colonies, raised the price of merchandise at will and reaped
enormous profits, the colonists welcomed this contraband trade as an
opportunity of enriching themselves and adding to the comforts and
luxuries of living.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century as many as 200 ships
sailed each year from Portugal with rich cargoes of silks, cloths and
woollens intended for Spanish America.[35] The Portuguese bought these
articles of the Flemish, English, and French, loaded them at Lisbon and
Oporto, ran their vessels to Brazil and up the La Plata as far as
navigation permitted, and then transported the goods overland through
Paraguay and Tucuman to Potosi and even to Lima. The Spanish merchants
of Peru kept factors in Brazil as well as in Spain, and as Portuguese
imposts were not so excessive as those levied at Cadiz and Seville, the
Portuguese could undersell their Spanish rivals. The frequent possession
of Assientos by the Portuguese and Dutch in the first half of the
seventeenth century also facilitated this contraband, for when carrying
negroes from Africa to Hispaniola, Cuba and the towns on the Main, they
profited by their opportunities to sell merchandise also, and generally
without the least obstacle.
Other nations in the seventeenth century were not slow to follow the
same course; and two circumstances contributed to make that course easy.
One was the great length of coast line on both the Atlantic and Pacific
slopes over which a surveillance had to be exercised, making it
difficult to catch the interlopers. The other was the venal connivance
of the governors of the ports, who often tolerated and even encouraged
the traffic on the plea that the colonists demanded it.[36] The
subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When a vessel
wished to enter a Spanish port to trade, the captain, pretending that
provisions had run low, or that the ship suffered from a leak or a
broken mast, sent a polite note to the governor accompanied by a
considerable gift. He generally obtained permission to enter, unload,
and put the ship into a seaworthy condition. All the formalities were
minutely observed. The unloaded goods were shut up in a storehouse, and
the doors sealed. But there was always found another door unsealed, and
by this they abstracted the goods during the night, and substituted coin
or bars of gold and silver. When the vessel was repaired to the
captain's satisfaction, it was reloaded and sailed away.
There was also, especially on the shores of the Caribbean Sea, a less
elaborate commerce called "sloop-trade," for it was usually managed by
sloops which hovered near some secluded spot on the coast, often at the
mouth of a river, and informed the inhabitants of their presence in the
neighbourhood by firing a shot from a cannon. Sometimes a large ship
filled with merchandise was stationed in a bay close at hand, and by
means of these smaller craft made its trade with the colonists. The
latter, generally in disguise, came off in canoes by night. The
interlopers, however, were always on guard against such dangerous
visitors, and never admitted more than a few at a time; for when the
Spaniards found themselves stronger than the crew, and a favourable
opportunity presented itself, they rarely failed to attempt the vessel.
Thus the Spaniards of the seventeenth century, by persisting, both at
home and in their colonies, in an economic policy which was fatally
inconsistent with their powers and resources, saw their commerce
gradually extinguished by the ships of the foreign interloper, and their
tropical possessions fall a prey to marauding bands of half-piratical
buccaneers. Although struggling under tremendous initial disabilities in
Europe, they had attempted, upon the slender pleas of prior discovery
and papal investiture, to reserve half the world to themselves. Without
a marine, without maritime traditions, they sought to hold a colonial
empire greater than any the world had yet seen, and comparable only with
the empire of Great Britain three centuries later. By discouraging
industry in Spain, and yet enforcing in the colonies an absolute
commercial dependence on the home-country, by combining in their rule of
distant America a solicitous paternalism with a restriction of
initiative altogether disastrous in its consequences, the Spaniards
succeeded in reducing their colonies to political impotence. And when,
to make their grip the more firm, they evolved, as a method of
outwitting the foreigner of his spoils, the system of great fleets and
single ports of call, they found the very means they had contrived for
their own safety to be the instrument of commercial disaster.
II.--THE FREEBOOTERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
It was the French chronologist, Scaliger, who in the sixteenth century
asserted, "nulli melius piraticam exercent quam Angli"; and although he
had no need to cross the Channel to find men proficient in this
primitive calling, the remark applies to the England of his time with a
force which we to-day scarcely realise. Certainly the inveterate
hostility with which the Englishman learned to regard the Spaniard in
the latter half of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth
centuries found its most remarkable expression in the exploits of the
Elizabethan "sea-dogs" and of the buccaneers of a later period. The
religious differences and political jealousies which grew out of the
turmoil of the Reformation, and the moral anarchy incident to the
dissolution of ancient religious institutions, were the motive causes
for an outburst of piratical activity comparable only with the
professional piracy of the Barbary States.
Even as far back as the thirteenth century, indeed, lawless sea-rovers,
mostly Bretons and Flemings, had infested the English Channel and the
seas about Great Britain. In the sixteenth this mode of livelihood
became the refuge for numerous young Englishmen, Catholic and
Protestant, who, fleeing from the persecutions of Edward VI. and of
Mary, sought refuge in French ports or in the recesses of the Irish
coast, and became the leaders of wild roving bands living chiefly upon
plunder. Among them during these persecutions were found many men
belonging to the best families in England, and although with the
accession of Elizabeth most of the leaders returned to the service of
the State, the pirate crews remained at their old trade. The contagion
spread, especially in the western counties, and great numbers of
fishermen who found their old employment profitless were recruited into
this new calling.[37] At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign we find
these Anglo-Irish pirates venturing farther south, plundering treasure
galleons off the coast of Spain, and cutting vessels out of the very
ports of the Spanish king. Such outrages of course provoked reprisals,
and the pirates, if caught, were sent to the galleys, rotted in the
dungeons of the Inquisition, or, least of all, were burnt in the plaza
at Valladolid. These cruelties only added fuel to a deadly hatred which
was kindling between the two nations, a hatred which it took one hundred
and fifty years to quench.
The most venturesome of these sea-rovers, however, were soon attracted
to a larger and more distant sphere of activity. Spain, as we have seen,
was then endeavouring to reserve to herself in the western hemisphere an
entire new world; and this at a time when the great northern maritime
powers, France, England and Holland, were in the full tide of economic
development, restless with new thoughts, hopes and ambitions, and keenly
jealous of new commercial and industrial outlets. The famous Bull of
Alexander VI. had provoked Francis I. to express a desire "to see the
clause in Adam's will which entitled his brothers of Castile and
Portugal to divide the New World between them," and very early the
French corsairs had been encouraged to test the pretensions of the
Spaniards by the time-honoured proofs of fire and steel. The English
nation, however, in the first half of the sixteenth century, had not
disputed with Spain her exclusive trade and dominion in those regions.
The hardy mariners of the north were still indifferent to the wonders of
a new continent awaiting their exploitation, and it was left to the
Spaniards to unfold before the eyes of Europe the vast riches of
America, and to found empires on the plateaus of Mexico and beyond the
Andes. During the reign of Philip II. all this was changed. English
privateers began to extend their operations westward, and to sap the
very sources of Spanish wealth and power, while the wars which absorbed
the attention of the Spaniards in Europe, from the revolt of the Low
Countries to the Treaty of Westphalia, left the field clear for these
ubiquitous sea-rovers. The maritime powers, although obliged by the
theory of colonial exclusion to pretend to acquiesce in the Spaniard's
claim to tropical America, secretly protected and supported their
mariners who coursed those western seas. France and England were now
jealous and fearful of Spanish predominance in Europe, and kept eyes
obstinately fixed on the inexhaustible streams of gold and silver by
means of which Spain was enabled to pay her armies and man her fleets.
Queen Elizabeth, while she publicly excused or disavowed to Philip II.
the outrages committed by Hawkins and Drake, blaming the turbulence of
the times and promising to do her utmost to suppress the disorders, was
secretly one of the principal shareholders in their enterprises.
The policy of the marauders was simple. The treasure which oiled the
machinery of Spanish policy came from the Indies where it was
accumulated; hence there were only two means of obtaining possession of
it:--bold raids on the ill-protected American continent, and the capture
of vessels _en route_.[38] The counter policy of the Spaniards was also
two-fold:--on the one hand, the establishment of commerce by means of
annual fleets protected by a powerful convoy; on the other, the removal
of the centres of population from the coasts to the interior of the
country far from danger of attack.[39] The Spaniards in America,
however, proved to be no match for the bold, intrepid mariners who
disputed their supremacy. The descendants of the _Conquistadores_ had
deteriorated sadly from the type of their forbears. Softened by tropical
heats and a crude, uncultured luxury, they seem to have lost initiative
and power of resistance. The disastrous commercial system of monopoly
and centralization forced them to vegetate; while the policy of
confining political office to native-born Spaniards denied any outlet to
creole talent and energy. Moreover, the productive power and
administrative abilities of the native-born Spaniards themselves were
gradually being paralyzed and reduced to impotence under the crushing
obligation of preserving and defending so unwieldy an empire and of
managing such disproportionate riches, a task for which they had neither
the aptitude nor the means.[40] Privateering in the West Indies may
indeed be regarded as a challenge to the Spaniards of America, sunk in
lethargy and living upon the credit of past glory and achievement, a
challenge to prove their right to retain their dominion and extend their
civilization and culture over half the world.[41]
There were other motives which lay behind these piratical aggressions of
the French and English in Spanish America. The Spaniards, ever since the
days of the Dominican monk and bishop, Las Casas, had been reprobated as
the heartless oppressors and murderers of the native Indians. The
original owners of the soil had been dispossessed and reduced to
slavery. In the West Indies, the great islands, Cuba and Hispaniola,
were rendered desolate for want of inhabitants. Two great empires,
Mexico and Peru, had been subdued by treachery, their kings murdered,
and their people made to suffer a living death in the mines of Potosi
and New Spain. Such was the Protestant Englishman's conception, in the
sixteenth century, of the results of Spanish colonial policy. To avenge
the blood of these innocent victims, and teach the true religion to the
survivors, was to glorify the Church militant and strike a blow at
Antichrist. Spain, moreover, in the eyes of the Puritans, was the
lieutenant of Rome, the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse, who harried and
burnt their Protestant brethren whenever she could lay hands upon them.
That she was eager to repeat her ill-starred attempt of 1588 and
introduce into the British Isles the accursed Inquisition was patent to
everyone. Protestant England, therefore, filled with the enthusiasm and
intolerance of a new faith, made no bones of despoiling the Spaniards,
especially as the service of God was likely to be repaid with plunder.
A pamphlet written by Dalby Thomas in 1690 expresses with tolerable
accuracy the attitude of the average Englishman toward Spain during the
previous century. He says:--"We will make a short reflection on the
unaccountable negligence, or rather stupidity, of this nation, during
the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Queen Mary, who
could contentedly sit still and see the Spanish rifle, plunder and bring
home undisturbed, all the wealth of that golden world; and to suffer
them with forts and castles to shut up the doors and entrances unto all
the rich provinces of America, having not the least title or pretence of
right beyond any other nation; except that of being by accident the
first discoverer of some parts of it; where the unprecedented cruelties,
exorbitances and barbarities, their own histories witness, they
practised on a poor, naked and innocent people, which inhabited the
islands, as well as upon those truly civilized and mighty empires of
Peru and Mexico, called to all mankind for succour and relief against
their outrageous avarice and horrid massacres.... (We) slept on until
the ambitious Spaniard, by that inexhaustible spring of treasure, had
corrupted most of the courts and senates of Europe, and had set on fire,
by civil broils and discords, all our neighbour nations, or had subdued
them to his yoke; contriving too to make us wear his chains and bear a
share in the triumph of universal monarchy, not only projected but near
accomplished, when Queen Elizabeth came to the crown ... and to the
divided interests of Philip II. and Queen Elizabeth, in personal more
than National concerns, we do owe that start of hers in letting loose
upon him, and encouraging those daring adventurers, Drake, Hawkins,
Rawleigh, the Lord Clifford and many other braves that age produced,
who, by their privateering and bold undertaking (like those the
buccaneers practise) now opened the way to our discoveries, and
succeeding settlements in America."[42]
On the 19th of November 1527, some Spaniards in a caravel loading
cassava at the Isle of Mona, between Hispaniola and Porto Rico, sighted
a strange vessel of about 250 tons well-armed with cannon, and believing
it to be a ship from Spain sent a boat to make inquiries. The new-comers
at the same time were seen to launch a pinnace carrying some twenty-five
men, all armed with corselets and bows. As the two boats approached the
Spaniards inquired the nationality of the strangers and were told that
they were English. The story given by the English master was that his
ship and another had been fitted out by the King of England and had
sailed from London to discover the land of the Great Khan; that they had
been separated in a great storm; that this ship afterwards ran into a
sea of ice, and unable to get through, turned south, touched at
Bacallaos (Newfoundland), where the pilot was killed by Indians, and
sailing 400 leagues along the coast of "terra nueva" had found her way
to this island of Porto Rico. The Englishmen offered to show their
commission written in Latin and Romance, which the Spanish captain could
not read; and after sojourning at the island for two days, they inquired
for the route to Hispaniola and sailed away. On the evening of 25th
November this same vessel appeared before the port of San Domingo, the
capital of Hispaniola, where the master with ten or twelve sailors went
ashore in a boat to ask leave to enter and trade. This they obtained,
for the _alguazil mayor_ and two pilots were sent back with them to
bring the ship into port. But early next morning, when they approached
the shore, the Spanish _alcaide_, Francisco de Tapia, commanded a gun to
be fired at the ship from the castle; whereupon the English, seeing the
reception accorded them, sailed back to Porto Rico, there obtained some
provisions in exchange for pewter and cloth, and departed for Europe,
"where it is believed that they never arrived, for nothing is known of
them." The _alcaide_, says Herrera, was imprisoned by the _oidores_,
because he did not, instead of driving the ship away, allow her to enter
the port, whence she could not have departed without the permission of
the city and the fort.[43]
This is the earliest record we possess of the appearance of an English
ship in the waters of Spanish America. Others, however, soon followed.
In 1530 William Hawkins, father of the famous John Hawkins, ventured in
"a tall and goodly ship ... called the 'Polo of Plymouth,'" down to the
coast of Guinea, trafficked with the natives for gold-dust and ivory,
and then crossed the ocean to Brazil, "where he behaved himself so
wisely with those savage people" that one of the kings of the country
took ship with him to England and was presented to Henry VIII. at
Whitehall.[44] The real occasion, however, for the appearance of foreign
ships in Spanish-American waters was the new occupation of carrying
negroes from the African coast to the Spanish colonies to be sold as
slaves. The rapid depopulation of the Indies, and the really serious
concern of the Spanish crown for the preservation of the indigenes, had
compelled the Spanish government to permit the introduction of negro
slaves from an early period. At first restricted to Christian slaves
carried from Spain, after 1510 licences to take over a certain number,
subject of course to governmental imposts, were given to private
individuals; and in August 1518, owing to the incessant clamour of the
colonists for more negroes, Laurent de Gouvenot, Governor of Bresa and
one of the foreign favourites of Charles V., obtained the first regular
contract to carry 4000 slaves directly from Africa to the West
Indies.[45] With slight modifications the contract system became
permanent, and with it, as a natural consequence, came contraband trade.
Cargoes of negroes were frequently "run" from Africa by Spaniards and
Portuguese, and as early as 1506 an order was issued to expel all
contraband slaves from Hispaniola.[46] The supply never equalled the
demand, however, and this explains why John Hawkins found it so
profitable to carry ship-loads of blacks across from the Guinea coast,
and why Spanish colonists could not resist the temptation to buy them,
notwithstanding the stringent laws against trading with foreigners.
The first voyage of John Hawkins was made in 1562-63. In conjunction
with Thomas Hampton he fitted out three vessels and sailed for Sierra
Leone. There he collected, "partly by the sword and partly by other
means," some 300 negroes, and with this valuable human freight crossed
the Atlantic to San Domingo in Hispaniola. Uncertain as to his
reception, Hawkins on his arrival pretended that he had been driven in
by foul weather, and was in need of provisions, but without ready money
to pay for them. He therefore requested permission to sell "certain
slaves he had with him." The opportunity was eagerly welcomed by the
planters, and the governor, not thinking it necessary to construe his
orders from home too stringently, allowed two-thirds of the cargo to be
sold. As neither Hawkins nor the Spanish colonists anticipated any
serious displeasure on the part of Philip II., the remaining 100 slaves
were left as a deposit with the Council of the island. Hawkins invested
the proceeds in a return cargo of hides, half of which he sent in
Spanish vessels to Spain under the care of his partner, while he
returned with the rest to England. The Spanish Government, however, was
not going to sanction for a moment the intrusion of the English into the
Indies. On Hampton's arrival at Cadiz his cargo was confiscated and he
himself narrowly escaped the Inquisition. The slaves left in San Domingo
were forfeited, and Hawkins, although he "cursed, threatened and
implored," could not obtain a farthing for his lost hides and negroes.
The only result of his demands was the dispatch of a peremptory order to
the West Indies that no English vessel should be allowed under any
pretext to trade there.[47]
The second of the great Elizabethan sea-captains to beard the Spanish
lion was Hawkins' friend and pupil, Francis Drake. In 1567 he
accompanied Hawkins on his third expedition. With six ships, one of
which was lent by the Queen herself, they sailed from Plymouth in
October, picked up about 450 slaves on the Guinea coast, sighted
Dominica in the West Indies in March, and coasted along the mainland of
South America past Margarita and Cape de la Vela, carrying on a
"tolerable good trade." Rio de la Hacha they stormed with 200 men,
losing only two in the encounter; but they were scattered by a tempest
near Cartagena and driven into the Gulf of Mexico, where, on 16th
September, they entered the narrow port of S. Juan d'Ulloa or Vera Cruz.
The next day the fleet of New Spain, consisting of thirteen large ships,
appeared outside, and after an exchange of pledges of peace and amity
with the English intruders, entered on the 20th. On the morning of the
24th, however, a fierce encounter was begun, and Hawkins and Drake,
stubbornly defending themselves against tremendous odds, were glad to
escape with two shattered vessels and the loss of £100,000 treasure.
After a voyage of terrible suffering, Drake, in the "Judith," succeeded
in reaching England on 20th January 1569, and Hawkins followed five days
later.[48] Within a few years, however, Drake was away again, this time
alone and with the sole, unblushing purpose of robbing the Dons. With
only two ships and seventy-three men he prowled about the waters of the
West Indies for almost a year, capturing and rifling Spanish vessels,
plundering towns on the Main and intercepting convoys of treasure across
the Isthmus of Darien. In 1577 he sailed on the voyage which carried him
round the world, a feat for which he was knighted, promoted to the rank
of admiral, and visited by the Queen on board his ship, the "Golden
Hind." While Drake was being feted in London as the hero of the hour,
Philip of Spain from his cell in the Escorial must have execrated these
English sea-rovers whose visits brought ruin to his colonies and menaced
the safety of his treasure galleons.
In the autumn of 1585 Drake was again in command of a formidable
armament intended against the West Indies. Supported by 2000 troops
under General Carleill, and by Martin Frobisher and Francis Knollys in
the fleet, he took and plundered San Domingo, and after occupying
Cartagena for six weeks ransomed the city for 110,000 ducats. This
fearless old Elizabethan sailed from Plymouth on his last voyage in
August 1595. Though under the joint command of Drake and Hawkins, the
expedition seemed doomed to disaster throughout its course. One vessel,
the "Francis," fell into the hands of the Spaniards. While the fleet was
passing through the Virgin Isles, Hawkins fell ill and died. A desperate
attack was made on S. Juan de Porto Rico, but the English, after losing
forty or fifty men, were compelled to retire. Drake then proceeded to
the Main, where in turn he captured and plundered Rancherias, Rio de la
Hacha, Santa Marta and Nombre de Dios. With 750 soldiers he made a bold
attempt to cross the isthmus to the city of Panama, but turned back
after the loss of eighty or ninety of his followers. A few days later,
on 15th January 1596, he too fell ill, died on the 28th, and was buried
in a leaden coffin off the coast of Darien.[49]
Hawkins and Drake, however, were by no means the only English privateers
of that century in American waters. Names like Oxenham, Grenville,
Raleigh and Clifford, and others of lesser fame, such as Winter, Knollys
and Barker, helped to swell the roll of these Elizabethan sea-rovers. To
many a gallant sailor the Caribbean Sea was a happy hunting-ground where
he might indulge at his pleasure any propensities to lawless adventure.
If in 1588 he had helped to scatter the Invincible Armada, he now
pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had
been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed
with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he
lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed
Philip's power of invading England. Nor must we think these mariners the
same as the lawless buccaneers of a later period. The men of this
generation were of a sterner and more fanatical mould, men who for their
wildest acts often claimed the sanction of religious convictions.
Whether they carried off the heathen from Africa, or plundered the
fleets of Romish Spain, they were but entering upon "the heritage of the
saints." Judged by the standards of our own century they were pirates
and freebooters, but in the eyes of their fellow-countrymen their
attacks upon the Spaniards seemed fair and honourable.
The last of the great privateering voyages for which Drake had set the
example was the armament which Lord George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland,
sent against Porto Rico in 1598. The ill-starred expeditions of Raleigh
to Guiana in 1595 and again in 1617 belong rather to the history of
exploration and colonization. Clifford, "courtier, gambler and
buccaneer," having run through a great part of his very considerable
fortune, had seized the opportunity offered him by the plunder of the
Spanish colonies to re-coup himself; and during a period of twelve
years, from 1586 to 1598, almost every year fitted out, and often
himself commanded, an expedition against the Spaniards. In his last and
most ambitious effort, in 1598, he equipped twenty vessels entirely at
his own cost, sailed from Plymouth in March, and on 6th June laid siege
to the city of San Juan, which he proposed to clear of Spaniards and
establish as an English stronghold. Although the place was captured, the
expedition proved a fiasco. A violent sickness broke out among the
troops, and as Clifford had already sailed away with some of the ships
to Flores to lie in wait for the treasure fleet, Sir Thomas Berkeley,
who was left in command in Porto Rico, abandoned the island and returned
to rejoin the Earl.[50]
The English in the sixteenth century, however, had no monopoly of this
piratical game. The French did something in their own way, and the Dutch
were not far behind. Indeed, the French may claim to have set the
example for the Elizabethan freebooters, for in the first half of the
sixteenth century privateers flocked to the Spanish Indies from Dieppe,
Brest and the towns of the Basque coast. The gleam of the golden lingots
of Peru, and the pale lights of the emeralds from the mountains of New
Granada, exercised a hypnotic influence not only on ordinary seamen but
on merchants and on seigneurs with depleted fortunes. Names like Jean
Terrier, Jacques Sore and François le Clerc, the latter popularly called
"Pie de Palo," or "wooden-leg," by the Spaniards, were as detestable in
Spanish ears as those of the great English captains. Even before 1500
French corsairs hovered about Cape St Vincent and among the Azores and
the Canaries; and their prowess and audacity were so feared that
Columbus, on returning from his third voyage in 1498, declared that he
had sailed for the island of Madeira by a new route to avoid meeting a
French fleet which was awaiting him near St Vincent.[51] With the
establishment of the system of armed convoys, however, and the presence
of Spanish fleets on the coast of Europe, the corsairs suffered some
painful reverses which impelled them to transfer their operations to
American waters. Thereafter Spanish records are full of references to
attacks by Frenchmen on Havana, St. Jago de Cuba, San Domingo and towns
on the mainland of South and Central America; full of appeals, too, from
the colonies to the neglectful authorities in Spain, urging them to send
artillery, cruisers and munitions of war for their defence.[52]
A letter dated 8th April 1537, written by Gonzalo de Guzman to the
Empress, furnishes us with some interesting details of the exploits of
an anonymous French corsair in that year. In November 1536 this
Frenchman had seized in the port of Chagre, on the Isthmus of Darien, a
Spanish vessel laden with horses from San Domingo, had cast the cargo
into the sea, put the crew on shore and sailed away with his prize. A
month or two later he appeared off the coast of Havana and dropped
anchor in a small bay a few leagues from the city. As there were then
five Spanish ships lying in the harbour, the inhabitants compelled the
captains to attempt the seizure of the pirate, promising to pay for the
ships if they were lost. Three vessels of 200 tons each sailed out to
the attack, and for several days they fired at the French corsair,
which, being a patache of light draught, had run up the bay beyond their
reach. Finally one morning the Frenchmen were seen pressing with both
sail and oar to escape from the port. A Spanish vessel cut her cables to
follow in pursuit, but encountering a heavy sea and contrary winds was
abandoned by her crew, who made for shore in boats. The other two
Spanish ships were deserted in similar fashion, whereupon the French,
observing this new turn of affairs, re-entered the bay and easily
recovered the three drifting vessels. Two of the prizes they burnt, and
arming the third sailed away to cruise in the Florida straits, in the
route of ships returning from the West Indies to Spain.[53]
The corsairs, however, were not always so uniformly successful. A band
of eighty, who attempted to plunder the town of St. Jago de Cuba, were
repulsed with some loss by a certain Diego Perez of Seville, captain of
an armed merchant ship then in the harbour, who later petitioned for the
grant of a coat-of-arms in recognition of his services.[54] In October
1544 six French vessels attacked the town of Santa Maria de los
Remedios, near Cape de la Vela, but failed to take it in face of the
stubborn resistance of the inhabitants. Yet the latter a few months
earlier had been unable to preserve their homes from pillage, and had
been obliged to flee to La Granjeria de las Perlas on the Rio de la
Hacha.[55] There is small wonder, indeed, that the defenders were so
rarely victorious. The Spanish towns were ill-provided with forts and
guns, and often entirely without ammunition or any regular soldiers. The
distance between the settlements as a rule was great, and the
inhabitants, as soon as informed of the presence of the enemy, knowing
that they had no means of resistance and little hope of succour, left
their homes to the mercy of the freebooters and fled to the hills and
woods with their families and most precious belongings. Thus when, in
October 1554, another band of three hundred French privateers swooped
down upon the unfortunate town of St. Jago de Cuba, they were able to
hold it for thirty days, and plundered it to the value of 80,000 pieces
of eight.[56] The following year, however, witnessed an even more
remarkable action. In July 1555 the celebrated captain, Jacques Sore,
landed two hundred men from a caravel a half-league from the city of
Havana, and before daybreak marched on the town and forced the surrender
of the castle. The Spanish governor had time to retire to the country,
where he gathered a small force of Spaniards and negroes, and returned
to surprise the French by night. Fifteen or sixteen of the latter were
killed, and Sore, who himself was wounded, in a rage gave orders for the
massacre of all the prisoners. He burned the cathedral and the hospital,
pillaged the houses and razed most of the city to the ground. After
transferring all the artillery to his vessel, he made several forays
into the country, burned a few plantations, and finally sailed away in
the beginning of August. No record remains of the amount of the booty,
but it must have been enormous. To fill the cup of bitterness for the
poor inhabitants, on 4th October there appeared on the coast another
French ship, which had learned of Sore's visit and of the helpless state
of the Spaniards. Several hundred men disembarked, sacked a few
plantations neglected by their predecessors, tore down or burned the
houses which the Spaniards had begun to rebuild, and seized a caravel
loaded with leather which had recently entered the harbour.[57] It is
true that during these years there was almost constant war in Europe
between the Emperor and France; yet this does not entirely explain the
activity of the French privateers in Spanish America, for we find them
busy there in the years when peace reigned at home. Once unleash the
sea-dogs and it was extremely difficult to bring them again under
restraint.
With the seventeenth century began a new era in the history of the West
Indies. If in the sixteenth the English, French and Dutch came to
tropical America as piratical intruders into seas and countries which
belonged to others, in the following century they came as permanent
colonisers and settlers. The Spaniards, who had explored the whole ring
of the West Indian islands before 1500, from the beginning neglected the
lesser for the larger Antilles--Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico and
Jamaica--and for those islands like Trinidad, which lie close to the
mainland. And when in 1519 Cortez sailed from Cuba for the conquest of
Mexico, and twelve years later Pizarro entered Peru, the emigrants who
left Spain to seek their fortunes in the New World flocked to the vast
territories which the _Conquistadores_ and their lieutenants had subdued
on the Continent. It was consequently to the smaller islands which
compose the Leeward and Windward groups that the English, French and
Dutch first resorted as colonists. Small, and therefore "easy to settle,
easy to depopulate and to re-people, attractive not only on account of
their own wealth, but also as a starting-point for the vast and rich
continent off which they lie," these islands became the pawns in a game
of diplomacy and colonization which continued for 150 years.
In the seventeenth century, moreover, the Spanish monarchy was declining
rapidly both in power and prestige, and its empire, though still
formidable, no longer overshadowed the other nations of Europe as in the
days of Charles V. and Philip II. France, with the Bourbons on the
throne, was entering upon an era of rapid expansion at home and abroad,
while the Dutch, by the truce of 1609, virtually obtained the freedom
for which they had struggled so long. In England Queen Elizabeth had
died in 1603, and her Stuart successor exchanged her policy of
dalliance, of balance between France and Spain, for one of peace and
conciliation. The aristocratic free-booters who had enriched themselves
by harassing the Spanish Indies were succeeded by a less romantic but
more business-like generation, which devoted itself to trade and
planting. Abortive attempts at colonization had been made in the
sixteenth century. The Dutch, who were trading in the West Indies as
early as 1542, by 1580 seem to have gained some foothold in Guiana;[58]
and the French Huguenots, under the patronage of the Admiral de Coligny,
made three unsuccessful efforts to form settlements on the American
continent, one in Brazil in 1555, another near Port Royal in South
Carolina in 1562, and two years later a third on the St. John's River in
Florida. The only English effort in the sixteenth century was the vain
attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh between 1585 and 1590 to plant a colony on
Roanoke Island, on the coast of what is now North Carolina. It was not
till 1607 that the first permanent English settlement in America was
made at Jamestown in Virginia. Between 1609 and 1619 numerous stations
were established by English, Dutch and French in Guiana between the
mouth of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon. In 1621 the Dutch West
India Company was incorporated, and a few years later proposals for a
similar company were broached in England. Among the West Indian Islands,
St. Kitts received its first English settlers in 1623; and two years
later the island was formally divided with the French, thus becoming the
earliest nucleus of English and French colonization in those regions.
Barbadoes was colonized in 1624-25. In 1628 English settlers from St.
Kitts spread to Nevis and Barbuda, and within another four years to
Antigua and Montserrat; while as early as 1625 English and Dutch took
joint possession of Santa Cruz. The founders of the French settlement on
St. Kitts induced Richelieu to incorporate a French West India Company
with the title, "The Company of the Isles of America," and under its
auspices Guadeloupe, Martinique and other islands of the Windward group
were colonized in 1635 and succeeding years. Meanwhile between 1632 and
1634 the Dutch had established trading stations on St. Eustatius in the
north, and on Tobago and Curaçao in the south near the Spanish mainland.
While these centres of trade and population were being formed in the
very heart of the Spanish seas, the privateers were not altogether idle.
To the treaty of Vervins between France and Spain in 1598 had been added
a secret restrictive article whereby it was agreed that the peace should
not hold good south of the Tropic of Cancer and west of the meridian of
the Azores. Beyond these two lines (called "les lignes de l'enclos des
Amitiés") French and Spanish ships might attack each other and take fair
prize as in open war. The ministers of Henry IV. communicated this
restriction verbally to the merchants of the ports, and soon private
men-of-war from Dieppe, Havre and St. Malo flocked to the western
seas.[59] Ships loaded with contraband goods no longer sailed for the
Indies unless armed ready to engage all comers, and many ship-captains
renounced trade altogether for the more profitable and exciting
occupation of privateering. In the early years of the seventeenth
century, moreover, Dutch fleets harassed the coasts of Chile and
Peru,[60] while in Brazil[61] and the West Indies a second "Pie de
Palo," this time the Dutch admiral, Piet Heyn, was proving a scourge to
the Spaniards. Heyn was employed by the Dutch West India Company, which
from the year 1623 onwards, carried the Spanish war into the transmarine
possessions of Spain and Portugal. With a fleet composed of twenty-six
ships and 3300 men, of which he was vice-admiral, he greatly
distinguished himself at the capture of Bahia, the seat of Portuguese
power in Brazil. Similar expeditions were sent out annually, and brought
back the rich spoils of the South American colonies. Within two years
the extraordinary number of eighty ships, with 1500 cannon and over 9000
sailors and soldiers, were despatched to American seas, and although
Bahia was soon retaken, the Dutch for a time occupied Pernambuco, as
well as San Juan de Porto Rico in the West Indies.[62] In 1628 Piet Heyn
was in command of a squadron designed to intercept the plate fleet which
sailed every year from Vera Cruz to Spain. With thirty-one ships, 700
cannon and nearly 3000 men he cruised along the northern coast of Cuba,
and on 8th September fell in with his quarry near Cape San Antonio. The
Spaniards made a running fight along the coast until they reached the
Matanzas River near Havana, into which they turned with the object of
running the great-bellied galleons aground and escaping with what
treasure they could. The Dutch followed, however, and most of the rich
cargo was diverted into the coffers of the Dutch West India Company. The
gold, silver, indigo, sugar and logwood were sold in the Netherlands for
fifteen million guilders, and the company was enabled to distribute to
its shareholders the unprecedented dividend of 50 per cent. It was an
exploit which two generations of English mariners had attempted in vain,
and the unfortunate Spanish general, Don Juan de Benavides, on his
return to Spain was imprisoned for his defeat and later beheaded.[63]
In 1639 we find the Spanish Council of War for the Indies conferring
with the King on measures to be taken against English piratical ships in
the Caribbean;[64] and in 1642 Captain William Jackson, provided with an
ample commission from the Earl of Warwick[65] and duplicates under the
Great Seal, made a raid in which he emulated the exploits of Sir Francis
Drake and his contemporaries. Starting out with three ships and about
1100 men, mostly picked up in St. Kitts and Barbadoes, he cruised along
the Main from Caracas to Honduras and plundered the towns of Maracaibo
and Truxillo. On 25th March 1643 he dropped anchor in what is now
Kingston Harbour in Jamaica, landed about 500 men, and after some sharp
fighting and the loss of forty of his followers, entered the town of St.
Jago de la Vega, which he ransomed for 200 beeves, 10,000 lbs. of
cassava bread and 7000 pieces of eight. Many of the English were so
captivated by the beauty and fertility of the island that twenty-three
deserted in one night to the Spaniards.[66]
The first two Stuart Kings, like the great Queen who preceded them, and
in spite of the presence of a powerful Spanish faction at the English
Court, looked upon the Indies with envious eyes, as a source of
perennial wealth to whichever nation could secure them. James I., to be
sure, was a man of peace, and soon after his accession patched up a
treaty with the Spaniards; but he had no intention of giving up any
English claims, however shadowy they might be, to America. Cornwallis,
the new ambassador at Madrid, from a vantage ground where he could
easily see the financial and administrative confusion into which Spain,
in spite of her colonial wealth, had fallen, was most dissatisfied with
the treaty. In a letter to Cranborne, dated 2nd July 1605, he suggested
that England never lost so great an opportunity of winning honour and
wealth as by relinquishing the war with Spain, and that Philip and his
kingdom "were reduced to such a state as they could not in all
likelihood have endured for the space of two years more."[67] This
opinion we find repeated in his letters in the following years, with
covert hints that an attack upon the Indies might after all be the most
profitable and politic thing to do. When, in October 1607, Zuniga, the
Spanish ambassador in London, complained to James of the establishment
of the new colony in Virginia, James replied that Virginia was land
discovered by the English and therefore not within the jurisdiction of
Philip; and a week later Salisbury, while confiding to Zuniga that he
thought the English might not justly go to Virginia, still refused to
prohibit their going or command their return, for it would be an
acknowledgment, he said, that the King of Spain was lord of all the
Indies.[68] In 1609, in the truce concluded between Spain and the
Netherlands, one of the stipulations provided that for nine years the
Dutch were to be free to trade in all places in the East and West Indies
except those in actual possession of the Spaniards on the date of
cessation of hostilities; and thereafter the English and French
governments endeavoured with all the more persistence to obtain a
similar privilege. Attorney-General Heath, in 1625, presented a memorial
to the Crown on the advantages derived by the Spaniards and Dutch in the
West Indies, maintaining that it was neither safe nor profitable for
them to be absolute lords of those regions; and he suggested that his
Majesty openly interpose or permit it to be done underhand.[69] In
September 1637 proposals were renewed in England for a West India
Company as the only method of obtaining a share in the wealth of
America. It was suggested that some convenient port be seized as a safe
retreat from which to plunder Spanish trade on land and sea, and that
the officers of the company be empowered to conquer and occupy any part
of the West Indies, build ships, levy soldiers and munitions of war, and
make reprisals.[70] The temper of Englishmen at this time was again
illustrated in 1640 when the Spanish ambassador, Alonzo de Cardenas,
protested to Charles I. against certain ships which the Earls of Warwick
and Marlborough were sending to the West Indies with the intention,
Cardenas declared, of committing hostilities against the Spaniards. The
Earl of Warwick, it seems, pretended to have received great injuries
from the latter and threatened to recoup his losses at their expense. He
procured from the king a broad commission which gave him the right to
trade in the West Indies, and to "offend" such as opposed him. Under
shelter of this commission the Earl of Marlborough was now going to sea
with three or four armed ships, and Cardenas prayed the king to restrain
him until he gave security not to commit any acts of violence against
the Spanish nation. The petition was referred to a committee of the
Lords, who concluded that as the peace had never been strictly observed
by either nation in the Indies they would not demand any security of the
Earl. "Whether the Spaniards will think this reasonable or not,"
concludes Secretary Windebank in his letter to Sir Arthur Hopton, "is no
great matter."[71]
During this century and a half between 1500 and 1650, the Spaniards were
by no means passive or indifferent to the attacks made upon their
authority and prestige in the New World. The hostility of the mariners
from the north they repaid with interest, and woe to the foreign
interloper or privateer who fell into their clutches. When Henry II. of
France in 1557 issued an order that Spanish prisoners be condemned to
the galleys, the Spanish government retaliated by commanding its
sea-captains to mete out the same treatment to their French captives,
except that captains, masters and officers taken in the navigation of
the Indies were to be hung or cast into the sea.[72] In December 1600
the governor of Cumana had suggested to the King, as a means of keeping
Dutch and English ships from the salt mines of Araya, the ingenious
scheme of poisoning the salt. This advice, it seems, was not followed,
but a few years later, in 1605, a Spanish fleet of fourteen galleons
sent from Lisbon surprised and burnt nineteen Dutch vessels found
loading salt at Araya, and murdered most of the prisoners.[73] In
December 1604 the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of "news that the
Spanish in the West Indies captured two English vessels, cut off the
hands, feet, noses and ears of the crews and smeared them with honey and
tied them to trees to be tortured by flies and other insects. The
Spanish here plead," he continued, "that they were pirates, not
merchants, and that they did not know of the peace. But the barbarity
makes people here cry out."[74] On 22nd June 1606, Edmondes, the English
Ambassador at Brussels, in a letter to Cornwallis, speaks of a London
ship which was sent to trade in Virginia, and putting into a river in
Florida to obtain water, was surprised there by Spanish vessels from
Havana, the men ill-treated and the cargo confiscated.[75] And it was
but shortly after that Captain Chaloner's ship on its way to Virginia
was seized by the Spaniards in the West Indies, and the crew sent to
languish in the dungeons of Seville or condemned to the galleys.
By attacks upon some of the English settlements, too, the Spaniards gave
their threats a more effective form. Frequent raids were made upon the
English and Dutch plantations in Guiana;[76] and on 8th-18th September
1629 a Spanish fleet of over thirty sail, commanded by Don Federico de
Toledo, nearly annihilated the joint French and English colony on St.
Kitts. Nine English ships were captured and the settlements burnt. The
French inhabitants temporarily evacuated the island and sailed for
Antigua; but of the English some 550 were carried to Cartagena and
Havana, whence they were shipped to England, and all the rest fled to
the mountains and woods.[77] Within three months' time, however, after
the departure of the Spaniards, the scattered settlers had returned and
re-established the colony. Providence Island and its neighbour,
Henrietta, being situated near the Mosquito Coast, were peculiarly
exposed to Spanish attack;[78] while near the north shore of Hispaniola
the island of Tortuga, which was colonized by the same English company,
suffered repeatedly from the assaults of its hostile neighbours. In July
1635 a Spanish fleet from the Main assailed the island of Providence,
but unable to land among the rocks, was after five days beaten off
"considerably torn" by the shot from the fort.[79] On the strength of
these injuries received and of others anticipated, the Providence
Company obtained from the king the liberty "to right themselves" by
making reprisals, and during the next six years kept numerous vessels
preying upon Spanish commerce in those waters. King Philip was therefore
all the more intent upon destroying the plantation.[80] He bided his
time, however, until the early summer of 1641, when the general of the
galleons, Don Francisco Diaz Pimienta, with twelve sail and 2000 men,
fell upon the colony, razed the forts and carried off all the English,
about 770 in number, together with forty cannon and half a million of
plunder.[81] It was just ten years later that a force of 800 men from
Porto Rico invaded Santa Cruz, whence the Dutch had been expelled by the
English in 1646, killed the English governor and more than 100 settlers,
seized two ships in the harbour and burnt and pillaged most of the
plantations. The rest of the inhabitants escaped to the woods, and after
the departure of the Spaniards deserted the colony for St. Kitts and
other islands.[82]
Footnotes:
[Footnote 1: Herrera: Decades II. 1, p. 4, cited in Scelle: la Traite
Négrière, I. p. 6. Note 2.]
[Footnote 2: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. pp. 6-9.]
[Footnote 3: "Por cuanto los pacificaciones no se han de hacer con ruido
de armas, sino con caridad y buen modo."--Recop. de leyes ... de las
Indias, lib. vii. tit. 1.]
[Footnote 4: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 35.]
[Footnote 5: Weiss: L'Espagne depuis Philippe II. jusqu'aux Bourbons.,
II. pp. 204 and 215. Not till 1722 was legislative sanction given to
this practice.
M. Lemonnet wrote to Colbert in 1670 concerning this commerce:--"Quelque
perquisition qu'on ait faite dans ce dernier temps aux Indes pour
découvrir les biens des François, ils ont plustost souffert la prison
que de rien déclarer ... toute les merchandises qu'on leur donne à
porter aux Indes sont chargées sous le nom d'Espagnols, que bien souvent
n'en ont pas connaissance, ne jugeant pas à propos de leur en parler,
afin de tenir les affaires plus secrètes et qu'il n'y ait que le
commissionaire à le savoir, lequel en rend compte à son retour des
Indes, directement à celui qui en a donne la cargaison en confiance sans
avoir nul egard pour ceux au nom desquels le chargement à été fait, et
lorsque ces commissionaires reviennent des Indes soit sur le flottes
galions ou navires particuliers, ils apportent leur argent dans leurs
coffres, la pluspart entre pont et sans connoissement." (Margry:
Relations et mémoires inédits pour servir à l'histoire de la France dans
les pays d'outremer, p. 185.)
The importance to the maritime powers of preserving and protecting this
clandestine trade is evident, especially as the Spanish government
frequently found it a convenient instrument for retaliating upon those
nations against which it harboured some grudge. All that was necessary
was to sequester the vessels and goods of merchants belonging to the
nation at which it wished to strike. This happened frequently in the
course of the seventeenth century. Thus Lerma in 1601 arrested the
French merchants in Spain to revenge himself on Henry IV. In 1624
Olivares seized 160 Dutch vessels. The goods of Genoese merchants were
sequestered by Philip IV. in 1644; and in 1684 French merchandize was
again seized, and Mexican traders whose storehouses contained such goods
were fined 500,000 ecus, although the same storehouses contained English
and Dutch goods which were left unnoticed. The fine was later restored
upon Admiral d'Estrées' threat to bombard Cadiz. The solicitude of the
French government for this trade is expressed in a letter of Colbert to
the Marquis de Villars, ambassador at Madrid, dated 5th February
1672:--"Il est tellement necessaire d'avoir soin d'assister les
particuliers qui font leur trafic en Espagne, pour maintenir le plus
important commerce que nous ayons, que je suis persuadé que vous ferez
toutes les instances qui pourront dépendre de vous ... en sorte que
cette protection produira des avantages considérables au commerce des
sujets de Sa Majesté" (_ibid._, p. 188).
_Cf._ also the instructions of Louis XIV. to the Comte d'Estrées, 1st
April 1680. The French admiral was to visit all the ports of the
Spaniards in the West Indies, especially Cartagena and San Domingo; and
to be always informed of the situation and advantages of these ports,
and of the facilities and difficulties to be met with in case of an
attack upon them; so that the Spaniards might realise that if they
failed to do justice to the French merchants on the return of the
galleons, his Majesty was always ready to force them to do so, either by
attacking these galleons, or by capturing one of their West Indian ports
(_ibid._).]
[Footnote 6: Weiss, _op. cit._, II. p. 205.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., II. p. 206.]
[Footnote 8: Oppenheim: The Naval Tracts of Sir Wm. Monson. Vol. II.
Appendix B., p. 316.]
[Footnote 9: In 1509, owing to the difficulties experienced by merchants
in ascending the Guadalquivir, ships were given permission to load and
register at Cadiz under the supervision of an inspector or "visitador,"
and thereafter commerce and navigation tended more and more to gravitate
to that port. After 1529, in order to facilitate emigration to America,
vessels were allowed to sail from certain other ports, notably San
Sebastian, Bilboa, Coruna, Cartagena and Malaga. The ships might
register in these ports, but were obliged always to make their return
voyage to Seville. But either the _cedula_ was revoked, or was never
made use of, for, according to Scelle, there are no known instances of
vessels sailing to America from those towns. The only other exceptions
were in favour of the Company of Guipuzcoa in 1728, to send ships from
San Sebastian to Caracas, and of the Company of Galicia in 1734, to send
two vessels annually to Campeache and Vera Cruz. (Scelle, _op. cit._, i.
pp. 48-49 and notes.)]
[Footnote 10: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 36 _ff._]
[Footnote 11: In Nov. 1530 Charles V., against the opposition of the
_Contratacion_, ordered the Council of the Indies to appoint a resident
judge at Cadiz to replace the officers of the _Casa_ there. This
institution, called the "Juzgado de Indias," was, until the removal of
the _Casa_ to Cadiz in 1717, the source of constant disputes and
irritation.]
[Footnote 12: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 52 and note; Duro: Armada
Espanola, I. p. 204.]
[Footnote 13: The distinction between the Flota or fleet for New Spain
and the galleons intended for Terra Firma only began with the opening of
the great silver mines of Potosi, the rich yields of which after 1557
made advisable an especial fleet for Cartagena and Nombre de Dios.
(Oppenheim, II. Appendix B., p. 322.)]
[Footnote 14: Memoir of MM. Duhalde and de Rochefort to the French king,
1680 (Margry, _op. cit._, p. 192 _ff._).]
[Footnote 15: Memoir of MM. Duhalde and de Rochefort to the French king,
1680 (Margry, _op. cit._, p. 192 _ff._)]
[Footnote 16: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 64; Dampier: Voyages, _ed._
1906, i. p. 200.]
[Footnote 17: Gage: A New Survey of the West Indies, _ed._ 1655, pp.
185-6. When Gage was at Granada, in February 1637, strict orders were
received from Gautemala that the ships were not to sail that year,
because the President and Audiencia were informed of some Dutch and
English ships lying in wait at the mouth of the river.]
[Footnote 18: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. pp. 64-5; Duhalde and de Rochefort.
There were two ways of sending goods from Panama to Porto Bello. One was
an overland route of 18 leagues, and was used only during the summer.
The other was by land as far as Venta Cruz, 7 leagues from Panama, and
thence by water on the river Chagre to its mouth, a distance of 26
leagues. When the river was high the transit might be accomplished in
two or three days, but at other times from six to twelve days were
required. To transfer goods from Chagre to Porto Bello was a matter of
only eight or nine hours. This route was used in winter when the roads
were rendered impassable by the great rains and floods. The overland
journey, though shorter, was also more difficult and expensive. The
goods were carried on long mule-trains, and the "roads, so-called, were
merely bridle paths ... running through swamps and jungles, over hills
and rocks, broken by unbridged rivers, and situated in one of the
deadliest climates in the world." The project of a canal to be cut
through the isthmus was often proposed to the Councils in Spain, but was
never acted upon. (Descript. ... of Cartagena; Oppenheim, i. p. 333.)]
[Footnote 19: Nombre de Dios, a few leagues to the east of Porto Bello,
had formerly been the port where the galleons received the treasure
brought from Panama, but in 1584 the King of Spain ordered the
settlement to be abandoned on account of its unhealthiness, and because
the harbour, being open to the sea, afforded little shelter to shipping.
Gage says that in his time Nombre de Dios was almost forsaken because of
its climate. Dampier, writing thirty years later, describes the site as
a waste. "Nombre de Dios," he says, "is now nothing but a name. For I
have lain ashore in the place where that City stood, but it is all
overgrown with Wood, so as to have no sign that any Town hath been
there." (Voyages, _ed._ 1906, i. p. 81.)]
[Footnote 20: Gage, _ed._ 1655, pp. 196-8.]
[Footnote 21: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 65.]
[Footnote 22: Oppenheim, ii. p. 338.]
[Footnote 23: When the Margarita patache failed to meet the galleons at
Cartagena, it was given its clearance and allowed to sail alone to
Havana--a tempting prey to buccaneers hovering in those seas.]
[Footnote 24: Duhalde and de Rochefort.]
[Footnote 25: Rawl. MSS., A. 175, 313 b; Oppenheim, ii. p. 338.]
[Footnote 26: Here I am following the MSS. quoted by Oppenheim (ii. pp.
335 _ff._). Instead of watering in Hispaniola, the fleet sometimes
stopped at Dominica, or at Aguada in Porto Rico.]
[Footnote 27: Duhalde and de Rochefort.]
[Footnote 28: Quintal=about 100 pounds.]
[Footnote 29: These "vaisseaux de registre" were supposed not to exceed
300 tons, but through fraud were often double that burden.]
[Footnote 30: Duhalde and de Rochefort; Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 54.]
[Footnote 31: Gage, _ed._ 1655, pp. 199-200.]
[Footnote 32: Duhalde and de Rochefort; Oppenheim, ii. p. 318.]
[Footnote 33: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. 45; Recop., t. i. lib. iii. tit.
viii.]
[Footnote 34: There seems to have been a contraband trade carried on at
Cadiz itself. Foreign merchants embarked their goods upon the galleons
directly from their own vessels in the harbour, without registering them
with the _Contratacion_; and on the return of the fleets received the
price of their goods in ingots of gold and silver by the same fraud. It
is scarcely possible that this was done without the tacit authorization
of the Council of the Indies at Madrid, for if the Council had insisted
upon a rigid execution of the laws regarding registration, detection
would have been inevitable.]
[Footnote 35: Weiss, _op. cit._, ii. p. 226.]
[Footnote 36: Most of the offices in the Spanish Indies were venal. No
one obtained a post without paying dearly for it, except the viceroys of
Mexico and Peru, who were grandees, and received their places through
favour at court. The governors of the ports, and the presidents of the
Audiencias established at Panama, San Domingo, and Gautemala, bought
their posts in Spain. The offices in the interior were in the gift of
the viceroys and sold to the highest bidder. Although each port had
three corregidors who audited the finances, as they also paid for their
places, they connived with the governors. The consequence was
inevitable. Each official during his tenure of office expected to
recover his initial outlay, and amass a small fortune besides. So not
only were the bribes of interlopers acceptable, but the officials often
themselves bought and sold the contraband articles.]
[Footnote 37: Froude: History of England, viii. p. 436 _ff._]
[Footnote 38: 1585, August 12th. Ralph Lane to Sir Philip Sidney. Port
Ferdinando, Virginia.--He has discovered the infinite riches of St. John
(Porto Rico?) and Hispaniola by dwelling on the islands five weeks. He
thinks that if the Queen finds herself burdened with the King of Spain,
to attempt them would be most honourable, feasible and profitable. He
exhorts him not to refuse this good opportunity of rendering so great a
service to the Church of Christ. The strength of the Spaniards doth
altogether grow from the mines of her treasure. Extract, C.S.P. Colon.,
1574-1660.]
[Footnote 39: Scelle, _op. cit._, ii. p. xiii.]
[Footnote 40: Scelle, _op. cit._, i. p. ix.]
[Footnote 41: 1611, February 28. Sir Thos. Roe to Salisbury. Port
d'Espaigne, Trinidad.--He has seen more of the coast from the River
Amazon to the Orinoco than any other Englishman alive. The Spaniards
here are proud and insolent, yet needy and weak, their force is
reputation, their safety is opinion. The Spaniards treat the English
worse than Moors. The government is lazy and has more skill in planting
and selling tobacco than in erecting colonies and marching armies.
Extract, C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660. (Roe was sent by Prince Henry upon a
voyage of discovery to the Indies.)]
[Footnote 42: "An historical account of the rise and growth of the West
India Colonies." By Dalby Thomas, Lond., 1690. (Harl. Miscell., 1808,
ii. 357.)]
[Footnote 43: Oviedo: Historia general de las Indias, lib. xix. cap.
xiii.; Coleccion de documentos ... de ultramar, tom. iv. p. 57
(deposition of the Spanish captain at the Isle of Mona); Pacheco, etc.:
Coleccion de documentos ... de las posesiones espanoles en America y
Oceania, tom. xl. p. 305 (cross-examination of witnesses by officers of
the Royal Audiencia in San Domingo just after the visit of the English
ship to that place); English Historical Review, XX. p. 115.
The ship is identified with the "Samson" dispatched by Henry VIII. in
1527 "with divers cunning men to seek strange regions," which sailed
from the Thames on 20th May in company with the "Mary of Guildford," was
lost by her consort in a storm on the night of 1st July, and was
believed to have foundered with all on board. (Ibid.)]
[Footnote 44: Hakluyt, _ed._ 1600, iii. p. 700; Froude, _op. cit._,
viii. p. 427.]
[Footnote 45: Scelle., _op. cit._, i. pp. 123-25, 139-61.]
[Footnote 46: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar. tom. vi. p. 15.]
[Footnote 47: Froude, _op. cit._, viii. pp. 470-72.]
[Footnote 48: Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy, i. ch. 3.]
[Footnote 49: Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy, ii. chs. 1, 2, 11.]
[Footnote 50: Corbett: The Successors of Drake, ch. x.]
[Footnote 51: Marcel: Les corsaires français au XVIe siècle, p. 7. As
early as 1501 a royal ordinance in Spain prescribed the construction of
carracks to pursue the privateers, and in 1513 royal _cedulas_ were sent
to the officials of the _Casa de Contratacion_ ordering them to send two
caravels to guard the coasts of Cuba and protect Spanish navigation from
the assaults of French corsairs. (Ibid., p. 8).]
[Footnote 52: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tomos i., iv., vi.;
Ducéré: Les corsaires sous l'ancien régime. Append. II.; Duro., _op.
cit._, i. Append. XIV.]
[Footnote 53: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 22.]
[Footnote 54: Ibid., p. 23.]
[Footnote 55: Marcel, _op. cit._, p. 16.]
[Footnote 56: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.]
[Footnote 57: Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.]
[Footnote 58: Lucas: A Historical Geography of the British Colonies,
vol. ii. pp. 37, 50.]
[Footnote 59: Weiss, _op. cit._, ii. p. 292.]
[Footnote 60: Duro, _op. cit._, iii. ch. xvi.; iv. chs. iii., viii.]
[Footnote 61: Portugal between 1581 and 1640 was subject to the Crown of
Spain, and Brazil, a Portuguese colony, was consequently within the pale
of Spanish influence and administration.]
[Footnote 62: Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p.
36.]
[Footnote 63: Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p. 37;
Duro, _op. cit._, iv. p. 99; Gage, _ed._ 1655, p. 80.]
[Footnote 64: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,325, No. 10.]
[Footnote 65: Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, was created admiral of the
fleet by order of Parliament in March 1642, and although removed by
Charles I. was reinstated by Parliament on 1st July.]
[Footnote 66: Brit. Mus., Sloane MSS., 793 or 894; Add. MSS., 36,327,
No. 9.]
[Footnote 67: Winwood Papers, ii. pp. 75-77.]
[Footnote 68: Brown: Genesis of the United States, i. pp. 120-25, 172.]
[Footnote 69: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.]
[Footnote 70: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.]
[Footnote 71: Clarendon State Papers, ii. p. 87; Rymer: F[oe]dera, xx.
p. 416.]
[Footnote 72: Duro, _op. cit._, ii. p. 462.]
[Footnote 73: Duro, _op. cit._, iii. pp. 236-37.]
[Footnote 74: C.S.P. Venet., 1603-07, p. 199.]
[Footnote 75: Winwood Papers, ii. p. 233.]
[Footnote 76: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,319, No. 7; 36,320, No. 8;
36,321, No. 24; 36,322, No. 23.]
[Footnote 77: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1629, 5th and 30th Nov.; 1630,
29th July.]
[Footnote 78: Gage saw at Cartagena about a dozen English prisoners
captured by the Spaniards at sea, and belonging to the settlement on
Providence Island.]
[Footnote 79: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:--1635, 19th March; 1636, 26th
March.]
[Footnote 80: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,323, No. 10.]
[Footnote 81: Duro, Tomo., iv. p. 339; _cf._ also in Bodleian
Library:--"A letter written upon occasion in the Low Countries, etc.
Whereunto is added avisos from several places, of the taking of the
Island of Providence, by the Spaniards from the English. London. Printed
for Nath. Butter, Mar. 22, 1641.
"I have letter by an aviso from Cartagena, dated the 14th of September,
wherein they advise that the galleons were ready laden with the silver,
and would depart thence the 6th of October. The general of the galleons,
named Francisco Dias Pimienta, had beene formerly in the moneth of July
with above 3000 men, and the least of his ships, in the island of S.
Catalina, where he had taken and carried away with all the English, and
razed the forts, wherein they found 600 negroes, much gold and indigo,
so that the prize is esteemed worth above halfe a million."]
[Footnote 82: Rawl. MSS., A. 32,297; 31, 121.]
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BUCCANEERS
In the second half of the sixteenth and the early part of the
seventeenth centuries, strangers who visited the great Spanish islands
of Hispaniola, Jamaica or Porto Rico, usually remarked the extraordinary
number of wild cattle and boars found roaming upon them. These herds
were in every case sprung from domestic animals originally brought from
Spain. For as the aborigines in the Greater Antilles decreased in
numbers under the heavy yoke of their conquerors, and as the Spaniards
themselves turned their backs upon the Antilles for the richer
allurements of the continent, less and less land was left under
cultivation; and cattle, hogs, horses and even dogs ran wild, increased
at a rapid rate, and soon filled the broad savannas and deep woods which
covered the greater part of these islands. The northern shore of
Hispaniola the Spaniards had never settled, and thither, probably from
an early period, interloping ships were accustomed to resort when in
want of victuals. With a long range of uninhabited coast, good anchorage
and abundance of provisions, this northern shore could not fail to
induce some to remain. In time we find there scattered groups of
hunters, mostly French and English, who gained a rude livelihood by
killing wild cattle for their skins, and curing the flesh to supply the
needs of passing vessels. The origin of these men we do not know. They
may have been deserters from ships, crews of wrecked vessels, or even
chance marooners. In any case the charm of their half-savage,
independent mode of life must soon have attracted others, and a fairly
regular traffic sprang up between them and the ubiquitous Dutch traders,
whom they supplied with hides, tallow and cured meat in return for the
few crude necessities and luxuries they required. Their numbers were
recruited in 1629 by colonists from St. Kitts who had fled before Don
Federico de Toledo. Making common lot with the hunters, the refugees
found sustenance so easy and the natural bounty of the island so rich
and varied, that many remained and settled.
To the north-west of Hispaniola lies a small, rocky island about eight
leagues in length and two in breadth, separated by a narrow channel from
its larger neighbour. From the shore of Hispaniola the island appears in
form like a monster sea-turtle floating upon the waves, and hence was
named by the Spaniards "Tortuga." So mountainous and inaccessible on the
northern side as to be called the Côte-de-Fer, and with only one harbour
upon the south, it offered a convenient refuge to the French and English
hunters should the Spaniards become troublesome. These hunters probably
ventured across to Tortuga before 1630, for there are indications that a
Spanish expedition was sent against the island from Hispaniola in 1630
or 1631, and a division of the spoil made in the city of San Domingo
after its return.[83] It was then, apparently, that the Spaniards left
upon Tortuga an officer and twenty-eight men, the small garrison which,
says Charlevoix, was found there when the hunters returned. The Spanish
soldiers were already tired of their exile upon this lonely,
inhospitable rock, and evacuated with the same satisfaction with which
the French and English resumed their occupancy. From the testimony of
some documents in the English colonial archives we may gather that the
English from the first were in predominance in the new colony, and
exercised almost sole authority. In the minutes of the Providence
Company, under date of 19th May 1631, we find that a committee was
"appointed to treat with the agents for a colony of about 150 persons,
settled upon Tortuga";[84] and a few weeks later that "the planters upon
the island of Tortuga desired the company to take them under their
protection, and to be at the charge of their fortification, in
consideration of a twentieth part of the commodities raised there
yearly."[85] At the same time the Earl of Holland, governor of the
company, and his associates petitioned the king for an enlargement of
their grant "only of 3 or 4 degrees of northerly latitude, to avoid all
doubts as to whether one of the islands (Tortuga) was contained in their
former grant."[86] Although there were several islands named Tortuga in
the region of the West Indies, all the evidence points to the identity
of the island concerned in this petition with the Tortuga near the north
coast of Hispaniola.[87]
The Providence Company accepted the offer of the settlers upon Tortuga,
and sent a ship to reinforce the little colony with six pieces of
ordnance, a supply of ammunition and provisions, and a number of
apprentices or _engagés_. A Captain Hilton was appointed governor, with
Captain Christopher Wormeley to succeed him in case of the governor's
death or absence, and the name of the island was changed from Tortuga to
Association.[88] Although consisting for the most part of high land
covered with tall cedar woods, the island contained in the south and
west broad savannas which soon attracted planters as well as
cattle-hunters. Some of the inhabitants of St. Kitts, wearied of the
dissensions between the French and English there, and allured by reports
of quiet and plenty in Tortuga, deserted St. Kitts for the new colony.
The settlement, however, was probably always very poor and struggling,
for in January 1634 the Providence Company received advice that Captain
Hilton intended to desert the island and draw most of the inhabitants
after him; and a declaration was sent out from England to the planters,
assuring them special privileges of trade and domicile, and dissuading
them from "changing certain ways of profit already discovered for
uncertain hopes suggested by fancy or persuasion."[89] The question of
remaining or departing, indeed, was soon decided for the colonists
without their volition, for in December 1634 a Spanish force from
Hispaniola invaded the island and drove out all the English and French
they found there. It seems that an Irishman named "Don Juan Morf" (John
Murphy?),[90] who had been "sargento-mayor" in Tortuga, became
discontented with the _régime_ there and fled to Cartagena. The Spanish
governor of Cartagena sent him to Don Gabriel de Gaves, President of the
Audiencia in San Domingo, thinking that with the information the
renegade was able to supply the Spaniards of Hispaniola might drive out
the foreigners. The President of San Domingo, however, died three months
later without bestirring himself, and it was left to his successor to
carry out the project. With the information given by Murphy, added to
that obtained from prisoners, he sent a force of 250 foot under command
of Rui Fernandez de Fuemayor to take the island.[91] At this time,
according to the Spaniards' account, there were in Tortuga 600 men
bearing arms, besides slaves, women and children. The harbour was
commanded by a platform of six cannon. The Spaniards approached the
island just before dawn, but through the ignorance of the pilot the
whole armadilla was cast upon some reefs near the shore. Rui Fernandez
with about thirty of his men succeeded in reaching land in canoes,
seized the fort without any difficulty, and although his followers were
so few managed to disperse a body of the enemy who were approaching,
with the English governor at their head, to recover it. In the mêlée the
governor was one of the first to be killed--stabbed, say the Spaniards,
by the Irishman, who took active part in the expedition and fought by
the side of Rui Fernandez. Meanwhile some of the inhabitants, thinking
that they could not hold the island, had regained the fort, spiked the
guns and transferred the stores to several ships in the harbour, which
sailed away leaving only two dismantled boats and a patache to fall into
the hands of the Spaniards. Rui Fernandez, reinforced by some 200 of his
men who had succeeded in escaping from the stranded armadilla, now
turned his attention to the settlement. He found his way barred by
another body of several hundred English, but dispersed them too, and
took seventy prisoners. The houses were then sacked and the tobacco
plantations burned by the soldiers, and the Spaniards returned to San
Domingo with four captured banners, the six pieces of artillery and 180
muskets.[92]
The Spanish occupation apparently did not last very long, for in the
following April the Providence Company appointed Captain Nicholas
Riskinner to be governor of Tortuga in place of Wormeley, and in
February 1636 it learned that Riskinner was in possession of the
island.[93] Two planters just returned from the colony, moreover,
informed the company that there were then some 80 English in the
settlement, besides 150 negroes. It is evident that the colonists were
mostly cattle-hunters, for they assured the company that they could
supply Tortuga with 200 beasts a month from Hispaniola, and would
deliver calves there at twenty shillings apiece.[94] Yet at a later
meeting of the Adventurers on 20th January 1637, a project for sending
more men and ammunition to the island was suddenly dropped "upon
intelligence that the inhabitants had quitted it and removed to
Hispaniola."[95] For three years thereafter the Providence records are
silent concerning Tortuga. A few Frenchmen must have remained on the
island, however, for Charlevoix informs us that in 1638 the general of
the galleons swooped down upon the colony, put to the sword all who
failed to escape to the hills and woods, and again destroyed all the
habitations.[96] Persuaded that the hunters would not expose themselves
to a repetition of such treatment, the Spaniards neglected to leave a
garrison, and a few scattered Frenchmen gradually filtered back to their
ruined homes. It was about this time, it seems, that the President of
San Domingo formed a body of 500 armed lancers in an effort to drive the
intruders from the larger island of Hispaniola. These lancers, half of
whom were always kept in the field, were divided into companies of fifty
each, whence they were called by the French, "cinquantaines." Ranging
the woods and savannas this Spanish constabulary attacked isolated
hunters wherever they found them, and they formed an important element
in the constant warfare between the French and Spanish colonists
throughout the rest of the century.[97]
Meanwhile an English adventurer, some time after the Spanish descent of
1638, gathered a body of 300 of his compatriots in the island of Nevis
near St. Kitts, and sailing for Tortuga dispossessed the few Frenchmen
living there of the island. According to French accounts he was received
amicably by the inhabitants and lived with them for four months, when he
turned upon his hosts, disarmed them and marooned them upon the opposite
shore of Hispaniola. A few made their way to St. Kitts and complained to
M. de Poincy, the governor-general of the French islands, who seized the
opportunity to establish a French governor in Tortuga. Living at that
time in St. Kitts was a Huguenot gentleman named Levasseur, who had been
a companion-in-arms of d'Esnambuc when the latter settled St. Kitts in
1625, and after a short visit to France had returned and made his
fortune in trade. He was a man of courage and command as well as a
skilful engineer, and soon rose high in the councils of de Poincy. Being
a Calvinist, however, he had drawn upon the governor the reproaches of
the authorities at home; and de Poincy proposed to get rid of his
presence, now become inconvenient, by sending him to subdue Tortuga.
Levasseur received his commission from de Poincy in May 1640, assembled
forty or fifty followers, all Calvinists, and sailed in a barque to
Hispaniola. He established himself at Port Margot, about five leagues
from Tortuga, and entered into friendly relations with his English
neighbours. He was but biding his time, however, and on the last day of
August 1640, on the plea that the English had ill-used some of his
followers and had seized a vessel sent by de Poincy to obtain
provisions, he made a sudden descent upon the island with only 49 men
and captured the governor. The inhabitants retired to Hispaniola, but a
few days later returned and besieged Levasseur for ten days. Finding
that they could not dislodge him, they sailed away with all their people
to the island of Providence.[98]
Levasseur, fearing perhaps another descent of the Spaniards, lost no
time in putting the settlement in a state of defence. Although the port
of Tortuga was little more than a roadstead, it offered a good anchorage
on a bottom of fine sand, the approaches to which were easily defended
by a hill or promontory overlooking the harbour. The top of this hill,
situated 500 or 600 paces from the shore, was a level platform, and upon
it rose a steep rock some 30 feet high. Nine or ten paces from the base
of the rock gushed forth a perennial fountain of fresh water. The new
governor quickly made the most of these natural advantages. The platform
he shaped into terraces, with means for accommodating several hundred
men. On the top of the rock he built a house for himself, as well as a
magazine, and mounted a battery of two guns. The only access to the rock
was by a narrow approach, up half of which steps were cut in the stone,
the rest of the ascent being by means of an iron ladder which could
easily be raised and lowered.[99] This little fortress, in which the
governor could repose with a feeling of entire security, he
euphuistically called his "dove-cote." The dove-cote was not finished
any too soon, for the Spaniards of San Domingo in 1643 determined to
destroy this rising power in their neighbourhood, and sent against
Levasseur a force of 500 or 600 men. When they tried to land within a
half gunshot of the shore, however, they were greeted with a discharge
of artillery from the fort, which sank one of the vessels and forced the
rest to retire. The Spaniards withdrew to a place two leagues to
leeward, where they succeeded in disembarking, but fell into an ambush
laid by Levasseur, lost, according to the French accounts, between 100
and 200 men, and fled to their ships and back to Hispaniola. With this
victory the reputation of Levasseur spread far and wide throughout the
islands, and for ten years the Spaniards made no further attempt to
dislodge the French settlement.[100]
Planters, hunters and corsairs now came in greater numbers to Tortuga.
The hunters, using the smaller island merely as a headquarters for
supplies and a retreat in time of danger, penetrated more boldly than
ever into the interior of Hispaniola, plundering the Spanish plantations
in their path, and establishing settlements on the north shore at Port
Margot and Port de Paix. Corsairs, after cruising and robbing along the
Spanish coasts, retired to Tortuga to refit and find a market for their
spoils. Plantations of tobacco and sugar were cultivated, and although
the soil never yielded such rich returns as upon the other islands,
Dutch and French trading ships frequently resorted there for these
commodities, and especially for the skins prepared by the hunters,
bringing in exchange brandy, guns, powder and cloth. Indeed, under the
active, positive administration of Levasseur, Tortuga enjoyed a degree
of prosperity which almost rivalled that of the French settlements in
the Leeward Islands.
The term "buccaneer," though usually applied to the corsairs who in the
seventeenth century ravaged the Spanish possessions in the West Indies
and the South Seas, should really be restricted to these cattle-hunters
of west and north-west Hispaniola. The flesh of the wild-cattle was
cured by the hunters after a fashion learnt from the Caribbee Indians.
The meat was cut into long strips, laid upon a grate or hurdle
constructed of green sticks, and dried over a slow wood fire fed with
bones and the trimmings of the hide of the animal. By this means an
excellent flavour was imparted to the meat and a fine red colour. The
place where the flesh was smoked was called by the Indians a "boucan,"
and the same term, from the poverty of an undeveloped language, was
applied to the frame or grating on which the flesh was dried. In course
of time the dried meat became known as "viande boucannée," and the
hunters themselves as "boucaniers" or "buccaneers." When later
circumstances led the hunters to combine their trade in flesh and hides
with that of piracy, the name gradually lost its original significance
and acquired, in the English language at least, its modern and
better-known meaning of corsair or freebooter. The French adventurers,
however, seem always to have restricted the word "boucanier" to its
proper signification, that of a hunter and curer of meat; and when they
developed into corsairs, by a curious contrast they adopted an English
name and called themselves "filibustiers," which is merely the French
sailor's way of pronouncing the English word "freebooter."[101]
The buccaneers or West Indian corsairs owed their origin as well as
their name to the cattle and hog-hunters of Hispaniola and Tortuga.
Doubtless many of the wilder, more restless spirits in the smaller
islands of the Windward and Leeward groups found their way into the
ranks of this piratical fraternity, or were willing at least to lend a
hand in an occasional foray against their Spanish neighbours. We know
that Jackson, in 1642, had no difficulty in gathering 700 or 800 men
from Barbadoes and St. Kitts for his ill-starred dash upon the Spanish
Main. And when the French in later years made their periodical descents
upon the Dutch stations on Tobago, Curaçao and St. Eustatius, they
always found in their island colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe
buccaneers enough and more, eager to fill their ships. It seems to be
generally agreed, however, among the Jesuit historians of the West
Indies--and upon these writers we are almost entirely dependent for our
knowledge of the origins of buccaneering--that the corsairs had their
source and nucleus in the hunters who infested the coasts of Hispaniola.
Between the hunter and the pirate at first no impassable line was drawn.
The same person combined in himself the occupations of cow-killing and
cruising, varying the monotony of the one by occasionally trying his
hand at the other. In either case he lived at constant enmity with the
Spaniards. With the passing of time the sea attracted more and more away
from their former pursuits. Even the planters who were beginning to
filter into the new settlements found the attractions of coursing
against the Spaniards to be irresistible. Great extremes of fortune,
such as those to which the buccaneers were subject, have always
exercised an attraction over minds of an adventurous stamp. It was the
same allurement which drew the "forty-niners" to California, and in 1897
the gold-seekers to the Canadian Klondyke. If the suffering endured was
often great, the prize to be gained was worth it. Fortune, if fickle one
day, might the next bring incredible bounty, and the buccaneers who
sweltered in a tropical sea, with starvation staring them in the face,
dreamed of rolling in the oriental wealth of a Spanish argosy.
Especially to the cattle-hunter must this temptation have been great,
for his mode of life was the very rudest. He roamed the woods by day
with his dog and apprentices, and at night slept in the open air or in a
rude shed hastily constructed of leaves and skins, which served as a
house, and which he called after the Indian name, "ajoupa" or
"barbacoa." His dress was of the simplest--coarse cloth trousers, and a
shirt which hung loosely over them, both pieces so black and saturated
with the blood and grease of slain animals that they looked as if they
had been tarred ("de toile gaudronnée").[102] A belt of undressed bull's
hide bound the shirt, and supported on one side three or four large
knives, on the other a pouch for powder and shot. A cap with a short
pointed brim extending over the eyes, rude shoes of cowhide or pigskin
made all of one piece bound over the foot, and a short, large-bore
musket, completed the hunter's grotesque outfit. Often he carried wound
about his waist a sack of netting into which he crawled at night to keep
off the pestiferous mosquitoes. With creditable regularity he and his
apprentices arose early in the morning and started on foot for the hunt,
eating no food until they had killed and skinned as many wild cattle or
swine as there were persons in the company. After having skinned the
last animal, the master-hunter broke its softest bones and made a meal
for himself and his followers on the marrow. Then each took up a hide
and returned to the boucan, where they dined on the flesh they had
killed.[103] In this fashion the hunter lived for the space of six
months or a year. Then he made a division of the skins and dried meat,
and repaired to Tortuga or one of the French settlements on the coast of
Hispaniola to recoup his stock of ammunition and spend the rest of his
gains in a wild carouse of drunkenness and debauchery. His money gone,
he returned again to the hunt. The cow-killers, as they had neither wife
nor children, commonly associated in pairs with the right of inheriting
from each other, a custom which was called "matelotage." These private
associations, however, did not prevent the property of all from being in
a measure common. Their mode of settling quarrels was the most
primitive--the duel. In other things they governed themselves by a
certain "coutumier," a medley of bizarre laws which they had originated
among themselves. At any attempt to bring them under civilised rules,
the reply always was, "telle étoit la coutume de la côte"; and that
definitely closed the matter. They based their rights thus to live upon
the fact, they said, of having passed the Tropic, where, borrowing from
the sailor's well-known superstition, they pretended to have drowned all
their former obligations.[104] Even their family names they discarded,
and the saying was in those days that one knew a man in the Isles only
when he was married. From a life of this sort, cruising against Spanish
ships, if not an unmixed good, was at least always a desirable
recreation. Every Spanish prize brought into Tortuga, moreover, was an
incitement to fresh adventure against the common foe. The "gens de la
côte," as they called themselves, ordinarily associated a score or more
together, and having taken or built themselves a canoe, put to sea with
intent to seize a Spanish barque or some other coasting vessel. With
silent paddles, under cover of darkness, they approached the
unsuspecting prey, killed the frightened sailors or drove them
overboard, and carried the prize to Tortuga. There the raiders either
dispersed to their former occupations, or gathered a larger crew of
congenial spirits and sailed away for bigger game.
All the Jesuit historians of the West Indies, Dutertre, Labat and
Charlevoix, have left us accounts of the manners and customs of the
buccaneers. The Dutch physician, Exquemelin, who lived with the
buccaneers for several years, from 1668 to 1674, and wrote a picturesque
narrative from materials at his disposal, has also been a source for the
ideas of most later writers on the subject. It may not be out of place
to quote his description of the men whose deeds he recorded.
"Before the Pirates go out to sea," he writes, "they give notice to
every one who goes upon the voyage of the day on which they ought
precisely to embark, intimating also to them their obligation of
bringing each man in particular so many pounds of powder and bullets as
they think necessary for that expedition. Being all come on board, they
join together in council, concerning what place they ought first to go
wherein to get provisions--especially of flesh, seeing they scarce eat
anything else. And of this the most common sort among them is pork. The
next food is tortoises, which they are accustomed to salt a little.
Sometimes they resolve to rob such or such hog-yards, wherein the
Spaniards often have a thousand heads of swine together. They come to
these places in the dark of night, and having beset the keeper's lodge,
they force him to rise, and give them as many heads as they desire,
threatening withal to kill him in case he disobeys their command or
makes any noise. Yea, these menaces are oftentimes put in execution,
without giving any quarter to the miserable swine-keepers, or any other
person that endeavours to hinder their robberies.
"Having got provisions of flesh sufficient for their voyage, they return
to their ship. Here their allowance, twice a day to every one, is as
much as he can eat, without either weight or measure. Neither does the
steward of the vessel give any greater proportion of flesh or anything
else to the captain than to the meanest mariner. The ship being well
victualled, they call another council, to deliberate towards what place
they shall go, to seek their desperate fortunes. In this council,
likewise, they agree upon certain Articles, which are put in writing, by
way of bond or obligation, which everyone is bound to observe, and all
of them, or the chief, set their hands to it. Herein they specify, and
set down very distinctly, what sums of money each particular person
ought to have for that voyage, the fund of all the payments being the
common stock of what is gotten by the whole expedition; for otherwise it
is the same law, among these people, as with other Pirates, 'No prey, no
pay.' In the first place, therefore, they mention how much the Captain
ought to have for his ship. Next the salary of the carpenter, or
shipwright, who careened, mended and rigged the vessel. This commonly
amounts to 100 or 150 pieces of eight, being, according to the
agreement, more or less. Afterwards for provisions and victualling they
draw out of the same common stock about 200 pieces of eight. Also a
competent salary for the surgeon and his chest of medicaments, which is
usually rated at 200 or 250 pieces of eight. Lastly they stipulate in
writing what recompense or reward each one ought to have, that is either
wounded or maimed in his body, suffering the loss of any limb, by that
voyage. Thus they order for the loss of a right arm 600 pieces of eight,
or six slaves; for the loss of a left arm 500 pieces of eight, or five
slaves; for a right leg 500 pieces of eight, or five slaves; for the
left leg 400 pieces of eight, or four slaves; for an eye 100 pieces of
eight or one slave; for a finger of the hand the same reward as for the
eye. All which sums of money, as I have said before, are taken out of
the capital sum or common stock of what is got by their piracy. For a
very exact and equal dividend is made of the remainder among them all.
Yet herein they have also regard to qualities and places. Thus the
Captain, or chief Commander, is allotted five or six portions to what
the ordinary seamen have; the Master's Mate only two; and other Officers
proportionate to their employment. After whom they draw equal parts from
the highest even to the lowest mariner, the boys not being omitted. For
even these draw half a share, by reason that, when they happen to take a
better vessel than their own, it is the duty of the boys to set fire to
the ship or boat wherein they are, and then retire to the prize which
they have taken.
"They observe among themselves very good orders. For in the prizes they
take it is severely prohibited to everyone to usurp anything in
particular to themselves. Hence all they take is equally divided,
according to what has been said before. Yea, they make a solemn oath to
each other not to abscond or conceal the least thing they find amongst
the prey. If afterwards anyone is found unfaithful, who has contravened
the said oath, immediately he is separated and turned out of the
society. Among themselves they are very civil and charitable to each
other. Insomuch that if any wants what another has, with great
liberality they give it one to another. As soon as these pirates have
taken any prize of ship or boat, the first thing they endeavour is to
set on shore the prisoners, detaining only some few for their own help
and service, to whom also they give their liberty after the space of two
or three years. They put in very frequently for refreshment at one
island or another; but more especially into those which lie on the
southern side of the Isle of Cuba. Here they careen their vessels, and
in the meanwhile some of them go to hunt, others to cruise upon the seas
in canoes, seeking their fortune. Many times they take the poor
fishermen of tortoises, and carrying them to their habitations they make
them work so long as the pirates are pleased."
The articles which fixed the conditions under which the buccaneers
sailed were commonly called the "chasse-partie."[105] In the earlier
days of buccaneering, before the period of great leaders like Mansfield,
Morgan and Grammont, the captain was usually chosen from among their own
number. Although faithfully obeyed he was removable at will, and had
scarcely more prerogative than the ordinary sailor. After 1655 the
buccaneers generally sailed under commissions from the governors of
Jamaica or Tortuga, and then they always set aside one tenth of the
profits for the governor. But when their prizes were unauthorised they
often withdrew to some secluded coast to make a partition of the booty,
and on their return to port eased the governor's conscience with politic
gifts; and as the governor generally had little control over these
difficult people he found himself all the more obliged to dissimulate.
Although the buccaneers were called by the Spaniards "ladrones" and
"demonios," names which they richly deserved, they often gave part of
their spoil to churches in the ports which they frequented, especially
if among the booty they found any ecclesiastical ornaments or the stuffs
for making them--articles which not infrequently formed an important
part of the cargo of Spanish treasure ships. In March 1694 the Jesuit
writer, Labat, took part in a Mass at Martinique which was performed for
some French buccaneers in pursuance of a vow made when they were taking
two English vessels near Barbadoes. The French vessel and its two prizes
were anchored near the church, and fired salutes of all their cannon at
the beginning of the Mass, at the Elevation of the Host, at the
Benediction, and again at the end of the Te Deum sung after the
Mass.[106] Labat, who, although a priest, is particularly lenient
towards the crimes of the buccaneers, and who we suspect must have been
the recipient of numerous "favours" from them out of their store of
booty, relates a curious tale of the buccaneer, Captain Daniel, a tale
which has often been used by other writers, but which may bear
repetition. Daniel, in need of provisions, anchored one night off one of
the "Saintes," small islands near Dominica, and landing without
opposition, took possession of the house of the curé and of some other
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. He carried the curé and his people on
board his ship without offering them the least violence, and told them
that he merely wished to buy some wine, brandy and fowls. While these
were being gathered, Daniel requested the curé to celebrate Mass, which
the poor priest dared not refuse. So the necessary sacred vessels were
sent for and an altar improvised on the deck for the service, which they
chanted to the best of their ability. As at Martinique, the Mass was
begun by a discharge of artillery, and after the Exaudiat and prayer for
the King was closed by a loud "Vive le Roi!" from the throats of the
buccaneers. A single incident, however, somewhat disturbed the
devotions. One of the buccaneers, remaining in an indecent attitude
during the Elevation, was rebuked by the captain, and instead of heeding
the correction, replied with an impertinence and a fearful oath. Quick
as a flash Daniel whipped out his pistol and shot the buccaneer through
the head, adjuring God that he would do as much to the first who failed
in his respect to the Holy Sacrifice. The shot was fired close by the
priest, who, as we can readily imagine, was considerably agitated. "Do
not be troubled, my father," said Daniel; "he is a rascal lacking in his
duty and I have punished him to teach him better." A very efficacious
means, remarks Labat, of preventing his falling into another like
mistake. After the Mass the body of the dead man was thrown into the
sea, and the curé was recompensed for his pains by some goods out of
their stock and the present of a negro slave.[107]
The buccaneers preferred to sail in barques, vessels of one mast and
rigged with triangular sails. This type of boat, they found, could be
more easily man[oe]uvred, was faster and sailed closer to the wind. The
boats were built of cedar, and the best were reputed to come from
Bermuda. They carried very few guns, generally from six to twelve or
fourteen, the corsairs believing that four muskets did more execution
than one cannon.[108] The buccaneers sometimes used brigantines, vessels
with two masts, the fore or mizzenmast being square-rigged with two
sails and the mainmast rigged like that of a barque. The corsair at
Martinique of whom Labat speaks was captain of a corvette, a boat like a
brigantine, except that all the sails were square-rigged. At the
beginning of a voyage the freebooters were generally so crowded in their
small vessels that they suffered much from lack of room. Moreover, they
had little protection from sun and rain, and with but a small stock of
provisions often faced starvation. It was this as much as anything which
frequently inspired them to attack without reflection any possible
prize, great or small, and to make themselves masters of it or perish in
the attempt. Their first object was to come to close quarters; and
although a single broadside would have sunk their small craft, they
man[oe]uvred so skilfully as to keep their bow always presented to the
enemy, while their musketeers cleared the enemy's decks until the time
when the captain judged it proper to board. The buccaneers rarely
attacked Spanish ships on the outward voyage from Europe to America, for
such ships were loaded with wines, cloths, grains and other commodities
for which they had little use, and which they could less readily turn
into available wealth. Outgoing vessels also carried large crews and a
considerable number of passengers. It was the homeward-bound ships,
rather, which attracted their avarice, for in such vessels the crews
were smaller and the cargo consisted of precious metals, dye-woods and
jewels, articles which the freebooters could easily dispose of to the
merchants and tavern-keepers of the ports they frequented.
The Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Coast, dotted with numerous small
islands and protecting reefs, was a favourite retreat for the
buccaneers. As the clumsy Spanish war-vessels of the period found it
ticklish work threading these tortuous channels, where a sudden adverse
wind usually meant disaster, the buccaneers there felt secure from
interference; and in the creeks, lagoons and river-mouths densely
shrouded by tropical foliage, they were able to careen and refit their
vessels, divide their booty, and enjoy a respite from their sea-forays.
Thence, too, they preyed upon the Spanish ships which sailed from the
coast of Cartagena to Porto Bello, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the larger
Antilles, and were a constant menace to the great treasure galleons of
the Terra-Firma fleet. The English settlement on the island of
Providence, lying as it did off the Nicaragua coast and in the very
track of Spanish commerce in those regions, was, until captured in 1641,
a source of great fear to Spanish mariners; and when in 1642 some
English occupied the island of Roatan, near Truxillo, the governor of
Cuba and the Presidents of the Audiencias at Gautemala and San Domingo
jointly equipped an expedition of four vessels under D. Francisco de
Villalba y Toledo, which drove out the intruders.[109] Closer to the
buccaneering headquarters in Tortuga (and later in Jamaica) were the
straits separating the great West Indian islands:--the Yucatan Channel
at the western end of Cuba, the passage between Cuba and Hispaniola in
the east, and the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Porto Rico. In
these regions the corsairs waited to pick up stray Spanish merchantmen,
and watched for the coming of the galleons or the Flota.[110] When the
buccaneers returned from their cruises they generally squandered in a
few days, in the taverns of the towns which they frequented, the wealth
which had cost them such peril and labour. Some of these outlaws, says
Exquemelin, would spend 2000 or 3000 pieces of eight[111] in one night,
not leaving themselves a good shirt to wear on their backs in the
morning. "My own master," he continues, "would buy, on like occasions, a
whole pipe of wine, and placing it in the street would force every one
that passed by to drink with him; threatening also to pistol them in
case they would not do it. At other times he would do the same with
barrels of ale or beer. And, very often, with both in his hands, he
would throw these liquors about the streets, and wet the clothes of such
as walked by, without regarding whether he spoiled their apparel or not,
were they men or women." The taverns and ale-houses always welcomed the
arrival of these dissolute corsairs; and although they extended long
credits, they also at times sold as indentured servants those who had
run too deeply into debt, as happened in Jamaica to this same patron or
master of whom Exquemelin wrote.
Until 1640 buccaneering in the West Indies was more or less accidental,
occasional, in character. In the second half of the century, however,
the numbers of the freebooters greatly increased, and men entirely
deserted their former occupations for the excitement and big profits of
the "course." There were several reasons for this increase in the
popularity of buccaneering. The English adventurers in Hispaniola had
lost their profession of hunting very early, for with the coming of
Levasseur the French had gradually elbowed them out of the island, and
compelled them either to retire to the Lesser Antilles or to prey upon
their Spanish neighbours. But the French themselves were within the next
twenty years driven to the same expedient. The Spanish colonists on
Hispaniola, unable to keep the French from the island, at last foolishly
resolved, according to Charlevoix's account, to remove the principal
attraction by destroying all the wild cattle. If the trade with French
vessels and the barter of hides for brandy could be arrested, the
hunters would be driven from the woods by starvation. This policy,
together with the wasteful methods pursued by the hunters, caused a
rapid decrease in the number of cattle. The Spaniards, however, did not
dream of the consequences of their action. Many of the French, forced to
seek another occupation, naturally fell into the way of buccaneering.
The hunters of cattle became hunters of Spaniards, and the sea became
the savanna on which they sought their game. Exquemelin tells us that
when he arrived at the island there were scarcely three hundred engaged
in hunting, and even these found their livelihood precarious. It was
from this time forward to the end of the century that the buccaneers
played so important a _rôle_ on the stage of West Indian history.
Another source of recruits for the freebooters were the indentured
servants or _engagés_. We hear a great deal of the barbarity with which
West Indian planters and hunters in the seventeenth century treated
their servants, and we may well believe that many of the latter, finding
their situation unendurable, ran away from their plantations or ajoupas
to join the crew of a chance corsair hovering in the neighbourhood. The
hunters' life, as we have seen, was not one of revelry and ease. On the
one side were all the insidious dangers lurking in a wild, tropical
forest; on the other, the relentless hostility of the Spaniards. The
environment of the hunters made them rough and cruel, and for many an
_engagé_ his three years of servitude must have been a veritable
purgatory. The servants of the planters were in no better position.
Decoyed from Norman and Breton towns and villages by the loud-sounding
promises of sea-captains and West Indian agents, they came to seek an El
Dorado, and often found only despair and death. The want of sufficient
negroes led men to resort to any artifice in order to obtain assistance
in cultivating the sugar-cane and tobacco. The apprentices sent from
Europe were generally bound out in the French Antilles for eighteen
months or three years, among the English for seven years. They were
often resold in the interim, and sometimes served ten or twelve years
before they regained their freedom. They were veritable convicts, often
more ill-treated than the slaves with whom they worked side by side, for
their lives, after the expiration of their term of service, were of no
consequence to their masters. Many of these apprentices, of good birth
and tender education, were unable to endure the debilitating climate and
hard labour, let alone the cruelty of their employers. Exquemelin,
himself originally an _engagé_, gives a most piteous description of
their sufferings. He was sold to the Lieutenant-Governor of Tortuga, who
treated him with great severity and refused to take less than 300 pieces
of eight for his freedom. Falling ill through vexation and despair, he
passed into the hands of a surgeon, who proved kind to him and finally
gave him his liberty for 100 pieces of eight, to be paid after his first
buccaneering voyage.[112]
We left Levasseur governor in Tortuga after the abortive Spanish attack
of 1643. Finding his personal ascendancy so complete over the rude
natures about him, Levasseur, like many a greater man in similar
circumstances, lost his sense of the rights of others. His character
changed, he became suspicious and intolerant, and the settlers
complained bitterly of his cruelty and overbearing temper. Having come
as the leader of a band of Huguenots, he forbade the Roman Catholics to
hold services on the island, burnt their chapel and turned out their
priest. He placed heavy imposts on trade, and soon amassed a
considerable fortune.[113] In his eyrie upon the rock fortress, he is
said to have kept for his enemies a cage of iron, in which the prisoner
could neither stand nor lie down, and which Levasseur, with grim humour,
called his "little hell." A dungeon in his castle he termed in like
fashion his "purgatory." All these stories, however, are reported by the
Jesuits, his natural foes, and must be taken with a grain of salt. De
Poincy, who himself ruled with despotic authority and was guilty of
similar cruelties, would have turned a deaf ear to the denunciations
against his lieutenant, had not his jealousy been aroused by the
suspicion that Levasseur intended to declare himself an independent
prince.[114] So the governor-general, already in bad odour at court for
having given Levasseur means of establishing a little Geneva in Tortuga,
began to disavow him to the authorities at home. He also sent his
nephew, M. de Lonvilliers, to Tortuga, on the pretext of complimenting
Levasseur on his victory over the Spaniards, but really to endeavour to
entice him back to St. Kitts. Levasseur, subtle and penetrating,
skilfully avoided the trap, and Lonvilliers returned to St. Kitts alone.
Charlevoix relates an amusing instance of the governor's stubborn
resistance to de Poincy's authority. A silver statue of the Virgin,
captured by some buccaneer from a Spanish ship, had been appropriated by
Levasseur, and de Poincy, desiring to decorate his chapel with it, wrote
to him demanding the statue, and observing that a Protestant had no use
for such an object. Levasseur, however, replied that the Protestants had
a great adoration for silver virgins, and that Catholics being "trop
spirituels pour tenir à la matière," he was sending him, instead, a
madonna of painted wood.
After a tenure of power for twelve years, Levasseur came to the end of
his tether. While de Poincy was resolving upon an expedition to oust him
from authority, two adventurers named Martin and Thibault, whom
Levasseur had adopted as his heirs, and with whom, it is said, he had
quarrelled over a mistress, shot him as he was descending from the fort
to the shore, and completed the murder by a poniard's thrust. They then
seized the government without any opposition from the inhabitants.[115]
Meanwhile there had arrived at St. Kitts the Chevalier de Fontenay, a
soldier of fortune who had distinguished himself against the Turks and
was attracted by the gleam of Spanish gold. He it was whom de Poincy
chose as the man to succeed Levasseur. The opportunity for action was
eagerly accepted by de Fontenay, but the project was kept secret, for if
Levasseur had got wind of it all the forces in St. Kitts could not have
dislodged him. Volunteers were raised on the pretext of a privateering
expedition to the coasts of Cartagena, and to complete the deception de
Fontenay actually sailed for the Main and captured several prizes. The
rendezvous was on the coast of Hispaniola, where de Fontenay was
eventually joined by de Poincy's nephew, M. de Treval, with another
frigate and materials for a siege. Learning of the murder of Levasseur,
the invaders at once sailed for Tortuga and landed several hundred men
at the spot where the Spaniards had formerly been repulsed. The two
assassins, finding the inhabitants indisposed to support them,
capitulated to de Fontenay on receiving pardon for their crime and the
peaceful possession of their property. Catholicism was restored,
commerce was patronized and buccaneers encouraged to use the port. Two
stone bastions were raised on the platform and more guns were
mounted.[116] De Fontenay himself was the first to bear the official
title of "Governor for the King of Tortuga and the Coast of S. Domingo."
The new governor was not fated to enjoy his success for any length of
time. The President of S. Domingo, Don Juan Francisco de Montemayor,
with orders from the King of Spain, was preparing for another effort to
get rid of his troublesome neighbour, and in November 1653 sent an
expedition of five vessels and 400 infantry against the French, under
command of Don Gabriel Roxas de Valle-Figueroa. The ships were separated
by a storm, two ran aground and a third was lost, so that only the
"Capitana" and "Almirante" reached Tortuga on 10th January. Being
greeted with a rough fire from the platform and fort as they approached
the harbour, they dropped anchor a league to leeward and landed with
little opposition. After nine days of fighting and siege of the fort, de
Fontenay capitulated with the honours of war.[117] According to the
French account, the Spaniards, lashing their cannon to rough frames of
wood, dragged a battery of eight or ten guns to the top of some hills
commanding the fort, and began a furious bombardment. Several sorties of
the besieged to capture the battery were unsuccessful. The inhabitants
began to tire of fighting, and de Fontenay, discovering some secret
negotiations with the enemy, was compelled to sue for terms. With
incredible exertions, two half-scuttled ships in the harbour were fitted
up and provisioned within three days, and upon them the French sailed
for Port Margot.[118] The Spaniards claimed that the booty would have
been considerable but for some Dutch trading-ships in the harbour which
conveyed all the valuables from the island. They burned the settlements,
however, carried away with them some guns, munitions of war and slaves,
and this time taking the precaution to leave behind a garrison of 150
men, sailed for Hispaniola. Fearing that the French might join forces
with the buccaneers and attack their small squadron on the way back,
they retained de Fontenay's brother as a hostage until they reached the
city of San Domingo. De Fontenay, indeed, after his brother's release,
did determine to try and recover the island. Only 130 of his men stood
by him, the rest deserting to join the buccaneers in western Hispaniola.
While he was careening his ship at Port Margot, however, a Dutch trader
arrived with commodities for Tortuga, and learning of the disaster,
offered him aid with men and supplies. A descent was made upon the
smaller island, and the Spaniards were besieged for twenty days, but
after several encounters they compelled the French to withdraw. De
Fontenay, with only thirty companions, sailed for Europe, was wrecked
among the Azores, and eventually reached France, only to die a short
time afterwards.
Footnotes:
[Footnote 83: Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9334, f. 48.]
[Footnote 84: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660, p. 130. This company had been
organised under the name of "The Governor and Company of Adventurers for
the Plantations of the Islands of Providence, Henrietta and the adjacent
islands, between 10 and 20 degrees of north latitude and 290 and 310
degrees of longitude." The patent of incorporation is dated 4th December
1630 (_ibid._, p. 123).]
[Footnote 85: Ibid., p. 131.]
[Footnote 86: Ibid.]
[Footnote 87: This identity was first pointed out by Pierre de Vaissière
in his recent book: "Saint Domingue (1629-1789). La societé et la vie
créoles sous l'ancien régime," Paris, 1909, p. 7.]
[Footnote 88: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660, pp. 131-33.]
[Footnote 89: Ibid., pp. 174, 175.]
[Footnote 90: This was probably the same man as the "Don Juan de Morfa
Geraldino" who was admiral of the fleet which attacked Tortuga in 1654.
_Cf._ Duro, _op. cit._, v. p. 35.]
[Footnote 91: In 1642 Rui Fernandez de Fuemayor was governor and
captain-general of the province of Venezuela. _Cf._ Doro, _op. cit._,
iv. p. 341; note 2.]
[Footnote 92: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,977, f. 505. According to the
minutes of the Providence Company, a certain Mr. Perry, newly arrived
from Association, gave information on 19th March 1635 that the island
had been surprised by the Spaniards (C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660, p. 200).
This news was confirmed by a Mrs. Filby at another meeting of the
company on 10th April, when Capt. Wormeley, "by reason of his cowardice
and negligence in losing the island," was formally deprived of his
office as governor and banished from the colony (_ibid._, p. 201).]
[Footnote 93: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,977, pp. 222-23.]
[Footnote 94: Ibid., pp. 226-27, 235.]
[Footnote 95: Ibid., pp. 226, 233, 235-37, 244.]
[Footnote 96: Charlevoix: Histoire de. ... Saint Domingue, liv. vii. pp.
9-10. The story is repeated by Duro (_op. cit._, v. p. 34), who says
that the Spaniards were led by "el general D. Carlos Ibarra."]
[Footnote 97: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. vii. p. 10; Bibl. Nat. Nouv.
Acq., 9334, p. 48 _ff._]
[Footnote 98: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. vii. pp. 10-12; Vaissière.,
_op. cit._, Appendix I ("Mémoire envoyé aux seigneurs de la Compagnie
des Isles de l'Amérique par M. de Poincy, le 15 Novembre 1640").
According to the records of the Providence Company, Tortuga in 1640 had
300 inhabitants. A Captain Fload, who had been governor, was then in
London to clear himself of charges preferred against him by the
planters, while a Captain James was exercising authority as "President"
in the island. (C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660. pp. 313, 314.) Fload was
probably the "English captain" referred to in de Poincy's memoir. His
oppressive rule seems to have been felt as well by the English as by the
French.]
[Footnote 99: Dutertre: Histoire générale des Antilles, tom. i. p. 171.]
[Footnote 100: Charlevoix: _op. cit._, liv. vii. pp. 12-13.]
[Footnote 101: In this monograph, by "buccaneers" are always meant the
corsairs and filibusters, and not the cattle and hog killers of
Hispaniola and Tortuga.]
[Footnote 102: Labat: Nouveau voyage aux isles de l'Amerique, _ed._
1742, tom. vii. p. 233.]
[Footnote 103: Le Pers, printed in Margry, _op. cit._]
[Footnote 104: Le Pers, printed in Margry, _op. cit._]
[Footnote 105: Dampier writes that "Privateers are not obliged to any
ship, but free to go ashore where they please, or to go into any other
ship that will entertain them, only paying for their provision."
(Edition 1906, i. p. 61).]
[Footnote 106: Labat, _op. cit._, tom. i. ch. 9.]
[Footnote 107: Labat, _op. cit._, tom. vii. ch. 17.]
[Footnote 108: Ibid., tom. ii. ch. 17.]
[Footnote 109: Gibbs: British Honduras, p. 25.]
[Footnote 110: A Spaniard, writing from S. Domingo in 1635, complains of
an English buccaneer settlement at Samana (on the north coast of
Hispaniola, near the Mona Passage), where they grew tobacco, and preyed
on the ships sailing from Cartagena and S. Domingo for Spain. (Add.
MSS., 13,977, f. 508.)]
[Footnote 111: A piece of eight was worth in Jamaica from 4s. 6d. to
5s.]
[Footnote 112: Exquemelin, _ed._ 1684, Part I. pp. 21-22.]
[Footnote 113: Dutertre, _op. cit._, tom. i. ch. vi.]
[Footnote 114: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. vii. p. 16.]
[Footnote 115: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. vii. pp. 17-18.]
[Footnote 116: According to a Spanish MS., there were in Tortuga in 1653
700 French inhabitants, more than 200 negroes, and 250 Indians with
their wives and children. The negroes and Indians were all slaves; the
former seized on the coasts of Havana and Cartagena, the latter brought
over from Yucatan. In the harbour the platform had fourteen cannon, and
in the fort above were forty-six cannon, many of them of bronze (Add.
MSS., 13,992, f. 499 _ff._). The report of the amount of ordnance is
doubtless an exaggeration.]
[Footnote 117: Add. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.]
[Footnote 118: According to Dutertre, one vessel was commanded by the
assassins, Martin and Thibault, and contained the women and children.
The latter, when provisions ran low, were marooned on one of the
Caymans, north-west of Jamaica, where they would have perished had not a
Dutch ship found and rescued them. Martin and Thibault were never heard
of again.]
CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF JAMAICA
The capture of Jamaica by the expedition sent out by Cromwell in 1655
was the blundering beginning of a new era in West Indian history. It was
the first permanent annexation by another European power of an integral
part of Spanish America. Before 1655 the island had already been twice
visited by English forces. The first occasion was in January 1597, when
Sir Anthony Shirley, with little opposition, took and plundered St. Jago
de la Vega. The second was in 1643, when William Jackson repeated the
same exploit with 500 men from the Windward Islands. Cromwell's
expedition, consisting of 2500 men and a considerable fleet, set sail
from England in December 1654, with the secret object of "gaining an
interest" in that part of the West Indies in possession of the
Spaniards. Admiral Penn commanded the fleet, and General Venables the
land forces.[119] The expedition reached Barbadoes at the end of
January, where some 4000 additional troops were raised, besides about
1200 from Nevis, St. Kitts, and neighbouring islands. The commanders
having resolved to direct their first attempt against Hispaniola, on
13th April a landing was effected at a point to the west of San Domingo,
and the army, suffering terribly from a tropical sun and lack of water,
marched thirty miles through woods and savannahs to attack the city. The
English received two shameful defeats from a handful of Spaniards on
17th and 25th April, and General Venables, complaining loudly of the
cowardice of his men and of Admiral Penn's failure to co-operate with
him, finally gave up the attempt and sailed for Jamaica. On 11th May, in
the splendid harbour on which Kingston now stands, the English fleet
dropped anchor. Three small forts on the western side were battered by
the guns from the ships, and as soon as the troops began to land the
garrisons evacuated their posts. St. Jago, six miles inland, was
occupied next day. The terms offered by Venables to the Spaniards (the
same as those exacted from the English settlers on Providence Island in
1641--emigration within ten days on pain of death, and forfeiture of all
their property) were accepted on the 17th; but the Spaniards were soon
discovered to have entered into negotiations merely to gain time and
retire with their families and goods to the woods and mountains, whence
they continued their resistance. Meanwhile the army, wretchedly equipped
with provisions and other necessities, was decimated by sickness. On the
19th two long-expected store-ships arrived, but the supplies brought by
them were limited, and an appeal for assistance was sent to New England.
Admiral Penn, disgusted with the fiasco in Hispaniola and on bad terms
with Venables, sailed for England with part of his fleet on 25th June;
and Venables, so ill that his life was despaired of, and also anxious to
clear himself of the responsibility for the initial failure of the
expedition, followed in the "Marston Moor" nine days later. On 20th
September both commanders appeared before the Council of State to answer
the charge of having deserted their posts, and together they shared the
disgrace of a month in the Tower.[120]
The army of General Venables was composed of very inferior and
undisciplined troops, mostly the rejected of English regiments or the
offscourings of the West Indian colonies; yet the chief reasons for the
miscarriage before San Domingo were the failure of Venables to command
the confidence of his officers and men, his inexcusable errors in the
management of the attack, and the lack of cordial co-operation between
him and the Admiral. The difficulties with which he had to struggle
were, of course, very great. On the other hand, he seems to have been
deficient both in strength of character and in military capacity; and
his ill-health made still more difficult a task for which he was
fundamentally incompetent. The comparative failure of this, Cromwell's
pet enterprise, was a bitter blow to the Protector. For a whole day he
shut himself up in his room, brooding over the disaster for which he,
more than any other, was responsible. He had aimed not merely to plant
one more colony in America, but to make himself master of such parts of
the West Indian islands and Spanish Main as would enable him to dominate
the route of the Spanish-American treasure fleets. To this end Jamaica
contributed few advantages beyond those possessed by Barbadoes and St.
Kitts, and it was too early for him to realize that island for island
Jamaica was much more suitable than Hispaniola as the seat of an English
colony.[121]
Religious and economic motives form the key to Cromwell's foreign
policy, and it is difficult to discover which, the religious or the
economic, was uppermost in his mind when he planned this expedition. He
inherited from the Puritans of Elizabeth's time the traditional
religious hatred of Spain as the bulwark of Rome, and in his mind as in
theirs the overthrow of the Spaniards in the West Indies was a blow at
antichrist and an extension of the true religion. The religious ends of
the expedition were fully impressed upon Venables and his successors in
Jamaica.[122] Second only, however, to Oliver's desire to protect "the
people of God," was his ambition to extend England's empire beyond the
seas. He desired the unquestioned supremacy of England over the other
nations of Europe, and that supremacy, as he probably foresaw, was to be
commercial and colonial. Since the discovery of America the world's
commerce had enormously increased, and its control brought with it
national power. America had become the treasure-house of Europe. If
England was to be set at the head of the world's commerce and
navigation, she must break through Spain's monopoly of the Indies and
gain a control in Spanish America. San Domingo was to be but a
preliminary step, after which the rest of the Spanish dominions in the
New World would be gradually absorbed.[123]
The immediate excuse for the attack on Hispaniola and Jamaica was the
Spaniards' practice of seizing English ships and ill-treating English
crews merely because they were found in some part of the Caribbean Sea,
and even though bound for a plantation actually in possession of English
colonists. It was the old question of effective occupation _versus_
papal donation, and both Cromwell and Venables convinced themselves that
Spanish assaults in the past on English ships and colonies supplied a
sufficient _casus belli_.[124] There was no justification, however, for
a secret attack upon Spain. She had been the first to recognize the
young republic, and was willing and even anxious to league herself with
England. There had been actual negotiations for an alliance, and
Cromwell's offers, though rejected, had never been really withdrawn.
Without a declaration of war or formal notice of any sort, a fleet was
fitted out and sent in utmost secrecy to fall unawares upon the colonies
of a friendly nation. The whole aspect of the exploit was Elizabethan.
It was inspired by Drake and Raleigh, a reversion to the Elizabethan
gold-hunt. It was the first of the great buccaneering expeditions.[125]
Cromwell was doubtless influenced, too, by the representations of Thomas
Gage. Gage was an Englishman who had joined the Dominicans and had been
sent by his Order out to Spanish America. In 1641 he returned to
England, announced his conversion to Protestantism, took the side of
Parliament and became a minister. His experiences in the West Indies and
Mexico he published in 1648 under the name of "The English-American, or
a New Survey of the West Indies," a most entertaining book, which aimed
to arouse Englishmen against Romish "idolatries," to show how valuable
the Spanish-American provinces might be to England in trade and bullion
and how easily they might be seized. In the summer of 1654, moreover,
Gage had laid before the Protector a memorial in which he recapitulated
the conclusions of his book, assuring Cromwell that the Spanish colonies
were sparsely peopled and that the few whites were unwarlike and
scantily provided with arms and ammunition. He asserted that the
conquest of Hispaniola and Cuba would be a matter of no difficulty, and
that even Central America was too weak to oppose a long resistance.[126]
All this was true, and had Cromwell but sent a respectable force under
an efficient leader the result would have been different. The exploits
of the buccaneers a few years later proved it.
It was fortunate, considering the distracted state of affairs in Jamaica
in 1655-56, that the Spaniards were in no condition to attempt to regain
the island. Cuba, the nearest Spanish territory to Jamaica, was being
ravaged by the most terrible pestilence known there in years, and the
inhabitants, alarmed for their own safety, instead of trying to
dispossess the English, were busy providing for the defence of their own
coasts.[127] In 1657, however, some troops under command of the old
Spanish governor of Jamaica, D. Christopher Sasi Arnoldo, crossed from
St. Jago de Cuba and entrenched themselves on the northern shore as the
advance post of a greater force expected from the mainland. Papers of
instructions relating to the enterprise were intercepted by Colonel
Doyley, then acting-governor of Jamaica; and he with 500 picked men
embarked for the north side, attacked the Spaniards in their
entrenchments and utterly routed them.[128] The next year about 1000
men, the long-expected corps of regular Spanish infantry, landed and
erected a fort at Rio Nuevo. Doyley, displaying the same energy, set out
again on 11th June with 750 men, landed under fire on the 22nd, and next
day captured the fort in a brilliant attack in which about 300 Spaniards
were killed and 100 more, with many officers and flags, captured. The
English lost about sixty in killed and wounded.[129] After the failure
of a similar, though weaker, attempt in 1660, the Spaniards despaired of
regaining Jamaica, and most of those still upon the island embraced the
first opportunity to retire to Cuba and other Spanish settlements.
As colonists the troops in Jamaica proved to be very discouraging
material, and the army was soon in a wretched state. The officers and
soldiers plundered and mutinied instead of working and planting. Their
wastefulness led to scarcity of food, and scarcity of food brought
disease and death.[139] They wished to force the Protector to recall
them, or to employ them in assaulting the opulent Spanish towns on the
Main, an occupation far more lucrative than that of planting corn and
provisions for sustenance. Cromwell, however, set himself to develop and
strengthen his new colony. He issued a proclamation encouraging trade
and settlement in the island by exempting the inhabitants from taxes,
and the Council voted that 1000 young men and an equal number of girls
be shipped over from Ireland. The Scotch government was instructed to
apprehend and transport idlers and vagabonds, and commissioners were
sent into New England and to the Windward and Leeward Islands to try and
attract settlers.[131] Bermudians, Jews, Quakers from Barbadoes and
criminals from Newgate, helped to swell the population of the new
colony, and in 1658 the island is said to have contained 4500 whites,
besides 1500 or more negro slaves.[132]
To dominate the Spanish trade routes was one of the principal objects of
English policy in the West Indies. This purpose is reflected in all of
Cromwell's instructions to the leaders of the Jamaican design, and it
appears again in his instructions of 10th October 1655 to Major-General
Fortescue and Vice-Admiral Goodson. Fortescue was given power and
authority to land men upon territory claimed by the Spaniards, to take
their forts, castles and places of strength, and to pursue, kill and
destroy all who opposed him. The Vice-Admiral was to assist him with his
sea-forces, and to use his best endeavours to seize all ships belonging
to the King of Spain or his subjects in America.[133] The soldiers, as
has been said, were more eager to fight the Spaniards than to plant, and
opportunities were soon given them to try their hand. Admiral Penn had
left twelve ships under Goodson's charge, and of these, six were at sea
picking up a few scattered Spanish prizes which helped to pay for the
victuals supplied out of New England.[134] Goodson, however, was after
larger prey, no less than the galleons or a Spanish town upon the
mainland. He did not know where the galleons were, but at the end of
July he seems to have been lying with eight vessels before Cartagena and
Porto Bello, and on 22nd November he sent Captain Blake with nine ships
to the same coast to intercept all vessels going thither from Spain or
elsewhere. The fleet was broken up by foul weather, however, and part
returned on 14th December to refit, leaving a few small frigates to lie
in wait for some merchantmen reported to be in that region.[135] The
first town on the Main to feel the presence of this new power in the
Indies was Santa Marta, close to Cartagena on the shores of what is now
the U.S. of Columbia. In the latter part of October, just a month before
the departure of Blake, Goodson sailed with a fleet of eight vessels to
ravage the Spanish coasts. According to one account his original design
had been against Rio de la Hacha near the pearl fisheries, "but having
missed his aim" he sailed for Santa Marta. He landed 400 sailors and
soldiers under the protection of his guns, took and demolished the two
forts which barred his way, and entered the town. Finding that the
inhabitants had already fled with as much of their belongings as they
could carry, he pursued them some twelve miles up into the country; and
on his return plundered and burnt their houses, embarked with thirty
pieces of cannon and other booty, and sailed for Jamaica.[136] It was a
gallant performance with a handful of men, but the profits were much
less than had been expected. It had been agreed that the seamen and
soldiers should receive half the spoil, but on counting the proceeds it
was found that their share amounted to no more than £400, to balance
which the State took the thirty pieces of ordnance and some powder,
shot, hides, salt and Indian corn.[137] Sedgwick wrote to Thurloe that
"reckoning all got there on the State's share, it did not pay for the
powder and shot spent in that service."[138] Sedgwick was one of the
civil commissioners appointed for the government of Jamaica. A brave,
pious soldier with a long experience and honourable military record in
the Massachusetts colony, he did not approve of this type of warfare
against the Spaniards. "This kind of marooning cruising West India trade
of plundering and burning towns," he writes, "though it hath been long
practised in these parts, yet is not honourable for a princely navy,
neither was it, I think, the work designed, though perhaps it may be
tolerated at present." If Cromwell was to accomplish his original
purpose of blocking up the Spanish treasure route, he wrote again,
permanent foothold must be gained in some important Spanish fortress,
either Cartagena or Havana, places strongly garrisoned, however, and
requiring for their reduction a considerable army and fleet, such as
Jamaica did not then possess. But to waste and burn towns of inferior
rank without retaining them merely dragged on the war indefinitely and
effected little advantage or profit to anybody.[139] Captain Nuberry
visited Santa Marta several weeks after Goodson's descent, and, going on
shore, found that about a hundred people had made bold to return and
rebuild their devastated homes. Upon sight of the English the poor
people again fled incontinently to the woods, and Nuberry and his men
destroyed their houses a second time.[140]
On 5th April 1656 Goodson, with ten of his best ships, set sail again
and steered eastward along the coast of Hispaniola as far as Alta Vela,
hoping to meet with some Spanish ships reported in that region.
Encountering none, he stood for the Main, and landed on 4th May with
about 450 men at Rio de la Hacha. The story of the exploit is merely a
repetition of what happened at Santa Marta. The people had sight of the
English fleet six hours before it could drop anchor, and fled from the
town to the hills and surrounding woods. Only twelve men were left
behind to hold the fort, which the English stormed and took within half
an hour. Four large brass cannon were carried to the ships and the fort
partly demolished. The Spaniards pretended to parley for the ransom of
their town, but when after a day's delay they gave no sign of complying
with the admiral's demands, he burned the place on 8th May and sailed
away.[141] Goodson called again at Santa Marta on the 11th to get water,
and on the 14th stood before Cartagena to view the harbour. Leaving
three vessels to ply there, he returned to Jamaica, bringing back with
him only two small prizes, one laden with wine, the other with cocoa.
The seamen of the fleet, however, were restless and eager for further
enterprises of this nature, and Goodson by the middle of June had
fourteen of his vessels lying off the Cuban coast near Cape S. Antonio
in wait for the galleons or the Flota, both of which fleets were then
expected at Havana. His ambition to repeat the achievement of Piet Heyn
was fated never to be realised. The fleet of Terra-Firma, he soon
learned, had sailed into Havana on 15th May, and on 13th June, three
days before his arrival on that coast, had departed for Spain.[142]
Meanwhile, one of his own vessels, the "Arms of Holland," was blown up,
with the loss of all on board but three men and the captain, and two
other ships were disabled. Five of the fleet returned to England on 23rd
August, and with the rest Goodson remained on the Cuban coast until the
end of the month, watching in vain for the fleet from Vera Cruz which
never sailed.[143]
Colonel Edward Doyley, the officer who so promptly defeated the attempts
of the Spaniards in 1657-58 to re-conquer Jamaica, was now governor of
the island. He had sailed with the expedition to the West Indies as
lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of General Venables, and on the death
of Major-General Fortescue in November 1655 had been chosen by
Cromwell's commissioners in Jamaica as commander-in-chief of the land
forces. In May 1656 he was superseded by Robert Sedgwick, but the latter
died within a few days, and Doyley petitioned the Protector to appoint
him to the post. William Brayne, however, arrived from England in
December 1656 to take chief command; and when he, like his two
predecessors, was stricken down by disease nine months later, the place
devolved permanently upon Doyley. Doyley was a very efficient governor,
and although he has been accused of showing little regard or respect for
planting and trade, the charge appears to be unjust.[144] He firmly
maintained order among men disheartened and averse to settlement, and at
the end of his service delivered up the colony a comparatively
well-ordered and thriving community. He was confirmed in his post by
Charles II. at the Restoration, but superseded by Lord Windsor in August
1661. Doyley's claim to distinction rests mainly upon his vigorous
policy against the Spaniards, not only in defending Jamaica, but by
encouraging privateers and carrying the war into the enemies' quarters.
In July 1658, on learning from some prisoners that the galleons were in
Porto Bello awaiting the plate from Panama, Doyley embarked 300 men on a
fleet of five vessels and sent it to lie in an obscure bay between that
port and Cartagena to intercept the Spanish ships. On 20th October the
galleons were espied, twenty-nine vessels in all, fifteen galleons and
fourteen stout merchantmen. Unfortunately, all the English vessels
except the "Hector" and the "Marston Moor" were at that moment absent to
obtain fresh water. Those two alone could do nothing, but passing
helplessly through the Spaniards, hung on their rear and tried without
success to scatter them. The English fleet later attacked and burnt the
town of Tolu on the Main, capturing two Spanish ships in the road; and
afterwards paid another visit to the unfortunate Santa Marta, where they
remained three days, marching several miles into the country and burning
and destroying everything in their path.[145]
On 23rd April 1659, however, there returned to Port Royal another
expedition whose success realised the wildest dreams of avarice. Three
frigates under command of Captain Christopher Myngs,[146] with 300
soldiers on board, had been sent by Doyley to harry the South American
coast. They first entered and destroyed Cumana, and then ranging along
the coast westward, landed again at Puerto Cabello and at Coro. At the
latter town they followed the inhabitants into the woods, where besides
other plunder they came upon twenty-two chests of royal treasure
intended for the King of Spain, each chest containing 400 pounds of
silver.[147] Embarking this money and other spoil in the shape of plate,
jewels and cocoa, they returned to Port Royal with the richest prize
that ever entered Jamaica. The whole pillage was estimated at between
£200,000 and £300,000.[148] The abundance of new wealth introduced into
Jamaica did much to raise the spirits of the colonists, and set the
island well upon the road to more prosperous times. The sequel to this
brilliant exploit, however, was in some ways unfortunate. Disputes were
engendered between the officers of the expedition and the governor and
other authorities on shore over the disposal of the booty, and in the
early part of June 1659 Captain Myngs was sent home in the "Marston
Moor," suspended for disobeying orders and plundering the hold of one of
the prizes to the value of 12,000 pieces of eight. Myngs was an active,
intrepid commander, but apparently avaricious and impatient of control.
He seems to have endeavoured to divert most of the prize money into the
pockets of his officers and men, by disposing of the booty on his own
initiative before giving a strict account of it to the governor or
steward-general of the island. Doyley writes that there was a constant
market aboard the "Marston Moor," and that Myngs and his officers,
alleging it to be customary to break and plunder the holds, permitted
the twenty-two chests of the King of Spain's silver to be divided among
the men without any provision whatever for the claims of the State.[149]
There was also some friction over the disposal of six Dutch prizes which
Doyley had picked up for illegal trading at Barbadoes on his way out
from England. These, too, had been plundered before they reached
Jamaica, and when Myngs found that there was no power in the colony to
try and condemn ships taken by virtue of the Navigation Laws, it only
added fuel to his dissatisfaction. When Myngs reached England he lodged
counter-complaints against Governor Doyley, Burough, the
steward-general, and Vice-Admiral Goodson, alleging that they received
more than their share of the prize money; and a war of mutual
recrimination followed.[150] Amid the distractions of the Restoration,
however, little seems ever to have been made of the matter in England.
The insubordination of officers in 1659-60 was a constant source of
difficulty and impediment to the governor in his efforts to establish
peace and order in the colony. In England nobody was sure where the
powers of government actually resided. As Burough wrote from Jamaica on
19th January 1660, "We are here just like you at home; when we heard of
the Lord-Protector's death we proclaimed his son, and when we heard of
his being turned out we proclaimed a Parliament and now own a Committee
of safety."[151] The effect of this uncertainty was bound to be
prejudicial in Jamaica, a new colony filled with adventurers, for it
loosened the reins of authority and encouraged lawless spirits to set
the governor at defiance.
On 8th May 1660 Charles II. was proclaimed King of England, and entered
London on 29th May. The war which Cromwell had begun with Spain was
essentially a war of the Commonwealth. The Spanish court was therefore
on friendly terms with the exiled prince, and when he returned into
possession of his kingdom a cessation of hostilities with Spain
naturally followed. Charles wrote a note to Don Luis de Haro on 2nd June
1660, proposing an armistice in Europe and America which was to lead to
a permanent peace and a re-establishment of commercial relations between
the two kingdoms.[152] At the same time Sir Henry Bennett, the English
resident in Madrid, made similar proposals to the Spanish king. A
favourable answer was received in July, and the cessation of arms,
including a revival of the treaty of 1630 was proclaimed on 10th-20th
September 1660. Preliminary negotiations for a new treaty were entered
upon at Madrid, but the marriage of Charles to Catherine of Braganza in
1662, and the consequent alliance with Portugal, with whom Spain was
then at war, put a damper upon all such designs. The armistice with
Spain was not published in Jamaica until 5th February of the following
year. On 4th February Colonel Doyley received from the governor of St.
Jago de Cuba a letter enclosing an order from Sir Henry Bennett for the
cessation of arms, and this order Doyley immediately made public.[153]
About thirty English prisoners were also returned by the Spaniards with
the letter. Doyley was confirmed in his command of Jamaica by Charles
II., but his commission was not issued till 8th February 1661.[154] He
was very desirous, however, of returning to England to look after his
private affairs, and on 2nd August another commission was issued to Lord
Windsor, appointing him as Doyley's successor.[155] Just a year later,
in August 1662, Windsor arrived at Port Royal, fortified with
instructions "to endeavour to obtain and preserve a good correspondence
and free commerce with the plantations belonging to the King of Spain,"
even resorting to force if necessary.[156]
The question of English trade with the Spanish colonies in the Indies
had first come to the surface in the negotiations for the treaty of
1604, after the long wars between Elizabeth and Philip II. The endeavour
of the Spaniards to obtain an explicit prohibition of commerce was met
by the English demand for entire freedom. The Spaniards protested that
it had never been granted in former treaties or to other nations, or
even without restriction to Spanish subjects, and clamoured for at least
a private article on the subject; but the English commissioners
steadfastly refused, and offered to forbid trade only with ports
actually under Spanish authority. Finally a compromise was reached in
the words "in quibus ante bellum fuit commercium, juxta et secundum usum
et observantiam."[157] This article was renewed in Cottington's Treaty
of 1630. The Spaniards themselves, indeed, in 1630, were willing to
concede a free navigation in the American seas, and even offered to
recognise the English colony of Virginia if Charles I. would admit
articles prohibiting trade and navigation in certain harbours and bays.
Cottington, however, was too far-sighted, and wrote to Lord Dorchester:
"For my own part, I shall ever be far from advising His Majesty to think
of such restrictions, for certainly a little more time will open the
navigation to those parts so long as there are no negative capitulations
or articles to hinder it."[158] The monopolistic pretensions of the
Spanish government were evidently relaxing, for in 1634 the Conde de
Humanes confided to the English agent, Taylor, that there had been talk
in the Council of the Indies of admitting the English to a share in the
freight of ships sent to the West Indies, and even of granting them a
limited permission to go to those regions on their own account. And in
1637 the Conde de Linhares, recently appointed governor of Brazil, told
the English ambassador, Lord Aston, that he was very anxious that
English ships should do the carrying between Lisbon and Brazilian ports.
The settlement of the Windward and Leeward Islands and the conquest of
Jamaica had given a new impetus to contraband trade. The commercial
nations were setting up shop, as it were, at the very doors of the
Spanish Indies. The French and English Antilles, condemned by the
Navigation Laws to confine themselves to agriculture and a passive trade
with the home country, had no recourse but to traffic with their Spanish
neighbours. Factors of the Assiento established at Cartagena, Porto
Bello and Vera Cruz every year supplied European merchants with detailed
news of the nature and quantity of the goods which might be imported
with advantage; while the buccaneers, by dominating the whole Caribbean
Sea, hindered frequent communication between Spain and her colonies. It
is not surprising, therefore, that the commerce of Seville, which had
hitherto held its own, decreased with surprising rapidity, that the
sailings of the galleons and the Flota were separated by several years,
and that the fairs of Porto Bello and Vera Cruz were almost deserted. To
put an effective restraint, moreover, upon this contraband trade was
impossible on either side. The West Indian dependencies were situated
far from the centre of authority, while the home governments generally
had their hands too full of other matters to adequately control their
subjects in America. The Spanish viceroys, meanwhile, and the governors
in the West Indian Islands, connived at a practice which lined their own
pockets with the gold of bribery, and at the same time contributed to
the public interest and prosperity of their respective colonies. It was
this illicit commerce with Spanish America which Charles II., by
negotiation at Madrid and by instructions to his governors in the West
Indies, tried to get within his own control. At the Spanish court,
Fanshaw, Sandwich and Godolphin in turn were instructed to sue for a
free trade with the Colonies. The Assiento of negroes was at this time
held by two Genoese named Grillo and Lomelin, and with them the English
ambassadors several times entered into negotiation for the privilege of
supplying blacks from the English islands. By the treaty of 1670 the
English colonies in America were for the first time formally recognised
by the Spanish Crown. Freedom of commerce, however, was as far as ever
from realisation, and after this date Charles seems to have given up
hope of ever obtaining it through diplomatic channels.
The peace of 1660 between England and Spain was supposed to extend to
both sides of the "Line." The Council in Jamaica, however, were of the
opinion that it applied only to Europe,[159] and from the tenor of Lord
Windsor's instructions it may be inferred that the English Court at that
time meant to interpret it with the same limitations. Windsor, indeed,
was not only instructed to force the Spanish colonies to a free trade,
but was empowered to call upon the governor of Barbadoes for aid "in
case of any considerable attempt by the Spaniards against Jamaica."[160]
The efforts of the Governor, however, to come to a good correspondence
with the Spanish colonies were fruitless. In the minutes of the Council
of Jamaica of 20th August 1662, we read: "Resolved that the letters from
the Governors of Porto Rico and San Domingo are an absolute denial of
trade, and that according to His Majesty's instructions to Lord Windsor
a trade by force or otherwise be endeavoured;"[161] and under 12th
September we find another resolution "that men be enlisted for a design
by sea with the 'Centurion' and other vessels."[162] This "design" was
an expedition to capture and destroy St. Jago de Cuba, the Spanish port
nearest to Jamaican shores. An attack upon St. Jago had been projected
by Goodson as far back as 1655. "The Admiral," wrote Major Sedgwick to
Thurloe just after his arrival in Jamaica, "was intended before our
coming in to have taken some few soldiers and gone over to St. Jago de
Cuba, a town upon Cuba, but our coming hindered him without whom we
could not well tell how to do anything."[163] In January 1656 the plan
was definitely abandoned, because the colony could not spare a
sufficient number of soldiers for the enterprise.[164] It was to St.
Jago that the Spaniards, driven from Jamaica, mostly betook themselves,
and from St. Jago as a starting-point had come the expedition of 1658 to
reconquer the island. The instructions of Lord Windsor afforded a
convenient opportunity to avenge past attacks and secure Jamaica from
molestation in that quarter for the future. The command of the
expedition was entrusted to Myngs, who in 1662 was again in the Indies
on the frigate "Centurion." Myngs sailed from Port Royal on 21st
September with eleven ships and 1300 men,[165] but, kept back by
unfavourable winds, did not sight the castle of St. Jago until 5th
October. Although he had intended to force the entrance of the harbour,
he was prevented by the prevailing land breeze; so he disembarked his
men to windward, on a rocky coast, where the path up the bluffs was so
narrow that but one man could march at a time. Night had fallen before
all were landed, and "the way (was) soe difficult and the night soe dark
that they were forced to make stands and fires, and their guides with
brands in their hands, to beat the path."[166] At daybreak they reached
a plantation by a river's side, some six miles from the place of landing
and three from St. Jago. There they refreshed themselves, and advancing
upon the town surprised the enemy, who knew of the late landing and the
badness of the way and did not expect them so soon. They found 200
Spaniards at the entrance to the town, drawn up under their governor,
Don Pedro de Moralis, and supported by Don Christopher de Sasi Arnoldo,
the former Spanish governor of Jamaica, with a reserve of 500 more. The
Spaniards fled before the first charge of the Jamaicans, and the place
was easily mastered.
The next day parties were despatched into the country to pursue the
enemy, and orders sent to the fleet to attack the forts at the mouth of
the harbour. This was successfully done, the Spaniards deserting the
great castle after firing but two muskets. Between scouring the country
for hidden riches, most of which had been carried far inland beyond
their reach, and dismantling and demolishing the forts, the English
forces occupied their time until October 19th. Thirty-four guns were
found in the fortifications and 1000 barrels of powder. Some of the guns
were carried to the ships and the rest flung over the precipice into the
sea; while the powder was used to blow up the castle and the
neighbouring country houses.[167] The expedition returned to Jamaica on
22nd October.[168] Only six men had been killed by the Spaniards, twenty
more being lost by other "accidents." Of these twenty some must have
been captured by the enemy, for when Sir Richard Fanshaw was appointed
ambassador to Spain in January 1664, he was instructed among other
things to negotiate for an exchange of prisoners taken in the Indies. In
July we find him treating for the release of Captain Myngs' men from the
prisons of Seville and Cadiz,[169] and on 7th November an order to this
effect was obtained from the King of Spain.[170]
The instructions of Lord Windsor gave him leave, as soon as he had
settled the government in Jamaica, to appoint a deputy and return to
England to confer with the King on colonial affairs. Windsor sailed for
England on 28th October, and on the same day Sir Charles Lyttleton's
commission as deputy-governor was read in the Jamaican Council.[171]
During his short sojourn of three months the Governor had made
considerable progress toward establishing an ordered constitution in the
island. He disbanded the old army, and reorganised the military under a
stricter discipline and better officers. He systematised legal procedure
and the rules for the conveyance of property. He erected an Admiralty
Court at Port Royal, and above all, probably in pursuance of the
recommendation of Colonel Doyley,[172] had called in all the
privateering commissions issued by previous governors, and tried to
submit the captains to orderly rules by giving them new commissions,
with instructions to bring their Spanish prizes to Jamaica for
judicature.[173]
The departure of Windsor did not put a stop to the efforts of the
Jamaicans to "force a trade" with the Spanish plantations, and we find
the Council, on 11th December 1662, passing a motion that to this end an
attempt should be made to leeward on the coasts of Cuba, Honduras and
the Gulf of Campeache. On 9th and 10th January between 1500 and 1600
soldiers, many of them doubtless buccaneers, were embarked on a fleet of
twelve ships and sailed two days later under command of the redoubtable
Myngs. About ninety leagues this side of Campeache the fleet ran into a
great storm, in which one of the vessels foundered and three others were
separated from their fellows. The English reached the coast of
Campeache, however, in the early morning of Friday, 9th February, and
landing a league and a half from the town, marched without being seen
along an Indian path with "such speed and good fortune" that by ten
o'clock in the morning they were already masters of the city and of all
the forts save one, the Castle of Santa Cruz. At the second fort Myngs
was wounded by a gun in three places. The town itself, Myngs reported,
might have been defended like a fortress, for the houses were contiguous
and strongly built of stone with flat roofs.[174] The forts were partly
demolished, a portion of the town was destroyed by fire, and the
fourteen sail lying in the harbour were seized by the invaders.
Altogether the booty must have been considerable. The Spanish
licentiate, Maldonado de Aldana, placed it at 150,000 pieces of
eight,[175] and the general damage to the city in the destruction of
houses and munitions by the enemy, and in the expenditure of treasure
for purposes of defence, at half a million more. Myngs and his fleet
sailed away on 23rd February, but the "Centurion" did not reach Port
Royal until 13th April, and the rest of the fleet followed a few days
later. The number of casualties on each side was surprisingly small. The
invaders lost only thirty men killed, and the Spaniards between fifty
and sixty, but among the latter were the two alcaldes and many other
officers and prominent citizens of the town.[176]
To satisfactorily explain at Madrid these two presumptuous assaults upon
Spanish territory in America was an embarrassing problem for the English
Government, especially as Myngs' men imprisoned at Seville and Cadiz
were said to have produced commissions to justify their actions.[177]
The Spanish king instructed his resident in London to demand whether
Charles accepted responsibility for the attack upon St. Jago, and the
proceedings of English cases in the Spanish courts arising from the
depredations of Galician corsairs were indefinitely suspended.[178]
When, however, there followed upon this, in May 1663, the news of the
sack and burning of Campeache, it stirred up the greatest excitement in
Madrid.[179] Orders and, what was rarer in Spain, money were immediately
sent to Cadiz to the Duke of Albuquerque to hasten the work on the royal
Armada for despatch to the Indies; and efforts were made to resuscitate
the defunct Armada de Barlovento, a small fleet which had formerly been
used to catch interlopers and protect the coasts of Terra-Firma. In one
way the capture of Campeache had touched Spain in her most vulnerable
spot. The Mexican Flota, which was scheduled to sail from Havana in June
1663, refused to stir from its retreat at Vera Cruz until the galleons
from Porto Bello came to convoy it. The arrival of the American treasure
in Spain was thus delayed for two months, and the bankrupt government
put to sore straits for money.
The activity of the Spaniards, however, was merely a blind to hide their
own impotence, and their clamours were eventually satisfied by the King
of England's writing to Deputy-Governor Lyttleton a letter forbidding
all such undertakings for the future. The text of the letter is as
follows: "Understanding with what jealousy and offence the Spaniards
look upon our island of Jamaica, and how disposed they are to make some
attempt upon it, and knowing how disabled it will remain in its own
defence if encouragement be given to such undertakings as have lately
been set on foot, and are yet pursued, and which divert the inhabitants
from that industry which alone can render the island considerable, the
king signifies his dislike of all such undertakings, and commands that
no such be pursued for the future, but that they unitedly apply
themselves to the improvement of the plantation and keeping the force in
proper condition."[180] The original draft of the letter was much milder
in tone, and betrays the real attitude of Charles II. toward these
half-piratical enterprises: "His Majesty has heard of the success of the
undertaking upon Cuba, in which he cannot choose but please himself in
the vigour and resolution wherein it was performed ... but because His
Majesty cannot foresee any utility likely to arise thereby ... he has
thought fit hereby to command him to give no encouragement to such
undertakings unless they may be performed by the frigates or men-of-war
attending that place without any addition from the soldiers or
inhabitants."[181] Other letters were subsequently sent to Jamaica,
which made it clear that the war of the privateers was not intended to
be called off by the king's instructions; and Sir Charles Lyttleton,
therefore, did not recall their commissions. Nevertheless, in the early
part of 1664, the assembly in Jamaica passed an act prohibiting public
levies of men upon foreign designs, and forbidding any person to leave
the island on any such design without first obtaining leave from the
governor, council and assembly.[182]
When the instructions of the authorities at home were so ambiguous, and
the incentives to corsairing so alluring, it was natural that this game
of baiting the Spaniards should suffer little interruption. English
freebooters who had formerly made Hispaniola and Tortuga their
headquarters now resorted to Jamaica, where they found a cordial welcome
and a better market for their plunder. Thus in June 1663 a certain
Captain Barnard sailed from Port Royal to the Orinoco, took and
plundered the town of Santo Tomas and returned in the following
March.[183] On 19th October another privateer named Captain Cooper
brought into Port Royal two Spanish prizes, the larger of which, the
"Maria" of Seville, was a royal azogue and carried 1000 quintals of
quicksilver for the King of Spain's mines in Mexico, besides oil, wine
and olives.[184] Cooper in his fight with the smaller vessel so disabled
his own ship that he was forced to abandon it and enter the prize; and
it was while cruising off Hispaniola in this prize that he fell in with
the "Maria," and captured her after a four hours' combat. There were
seventy prisoners, among them a number of friars going to Campeache and
Vera Cruz. Some of the prize goods were carried to England, and Don
Patricio Moledi, the Spanish resident in London, importuned the English
government for its restoration.[185] Sir Charles Lyttleton had sailed
for England on 2nd May 1664, leaving the government of Jamaica in the
hands of the Council with Colonel Thomas Lynch as president;[186] and on
his arrival in England he made formal answer to the complaints of
Moledi. His excuse was that Captain Cooper's commission had been derived
not from the deputy-governor himself but from Lord Windsor; and that the
deputy-governor had never received any order from the king for recalling
commissions, or for the cessation of hostilities against the
Spaniards.[187] Lyttleton and the English government were evidently
attempting the rather difficult circus feat of riding two mounts at the
same time. The instructions from England, as Lyttleton himself
acknowledged in his letter of 15th October 1663, distinctly forbade
further hostilities against the Spanish plantations; on the other hand,
there were no specific orders that privateers should be recalled.
Lyttleton was from first to last in sympathy with the freebooters, and
probably believed with many others of his time that "the Spaniard is
most pliable when best beaten." In August 1664 he presented to the Lord
Chancellor his reasons for advocating a continuance of the privateers in
Jamaica. They are sufficiently interesting to merit a _résumé_ of the
principal points advanced. 1st. Privateering maintained a great number
of seamen by whom the island was protected without the immediate
necessity of a naval force. 2nd. If privateering were forbidden, the
king would lose many men who, in case of a war in the West Indies, would
be of incalculable service, being acquainted, as they were, with the
coasts, shoals, currents, winds, etc., of the Spanish dominions. 3rd.
Without the privateers, the Jamaicans would have no intelligence of
Spanish designs against them, or of the size or neighbourhood of their
fleets, or of the strength of their resources. 4th. If prize-goods were
no longer brought into Port Royal, few merchants would resort to Jamaica
and prices would become excessively high. 5th. To reduce the privateers
would require a large number of frigates at considerable trouble and
expense; English seamen, moreover, generally had the privateering spirit
and would be more ready to join with them than oppose them, as previous
experience had shown. Finally, the privateers, if denied the freedom of
Jamaican ports, would not take to planting, but would resort to the
islands of other nations, and perhaps prey upon English commerce.[188]
Footnotes:
[Footnote 119: Venables was not bound by his instructions to any
definite plan. It had been proposed, he was told, to seize Hispaniola or
Porto Rico or both, after which either Cartagena or Havana might be
taken, and the Spanish revenue-fleets obstructed. An alternative scheme
was to make the first attempt on the mainland at some point between the
mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, with the ultimate object of
securing Cartagena. It was left to Venables, however, to consult with
Admiral Penn and three commissioners, Edward Winslow (former governor of
Plymouth colony in New England), Daniel Searle (governor of Barbadoes),
and Gregory Butler, as to which, if any, of these schemes should be
carried out. Not until some time after the arrival of the fleet at
Barbadoes was it resolved to attack Hispaniola. (Narrative of Gen.
Venables, edition 1900, pp. x, 112-3.)]
[Footnote 120: Gardiner: Hist. of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,
vol. iii. ch. xlv.; Narrative of Gen. Venables.]
[Footnote 121: Gardiner: _op. cit._, iii. p. 368.]
[Footnote 122: _Cf._ the "Commission of the Commissioners for the West
Indian Expedition." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 109.)]
[Footnote 123: _Cf._ American Hist. Review, vol. iv. p. 228;
"Instructions unto Gen. Robt. Venables." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p.
111.)]
[Footnote 124: _Cf._ Narrative of Gen. Venables, pp. 3, 90;
"Instructions unto Generall Penn," etc., _ibid._, p. 107.
After the outbreak of the Spanish war, Cromwell was anxious to clear his
government of the charges of treachery and violation of international
duties. The task was entrusted to the Latin Secretary, John Milton, who
on 26th October 1655 published a manifesto defending the actions of the
Commonwealth. He gave two principal reasons for the attempt upon the
West Indies:--(1) the cruelties of the Spaniards toward the English in
America and their depredations on English colonies and trade; (2) the
outrageous treatment and extermination of the Indians. He denied the
Spanish claims to all of America, either as a papal gift, or by right of
discovery alone, or even by right of settlement, and insisted upon both
the natural and treaty rights of Englishmen to trade in Spanish seas.]
[Footnote 125: The memory of the exploits of Drake and his
contemporaries was not allowed to die in the first half of the
seventeenth century. Books like "Sir Francis Drake Revived," and "The
World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake," were printed time and time
again. The former was published in 1626 and again two years later; "The
World Encompassed" first appeared in 1628 and was reprinted in 1635 and
1653. A quotation from the title-page of the latter may serve to
illustrate the temper of the times:--
Drake, Sir Francis. The world encompassed. Being his
next voyage to that to Nombre de Dios, formerly
imprinted ... offered ... especially for the stirring up
of heroick spirits, to benefit their country and
eternize their names by like bold attempts. Lon. 1628.
_Cf._ also Gardiner, _op. cit._, iii. pp. 343-44.]
[Footnote 126: Gardiner, _op. cit._, iii. p. 346; _cf._ also "Present
State of Jamaica, 1683."]
[Footnote 127: Long: "History of Jamaica," i. p. 260; C.S.P. Colon.,
1675-76. Addenda, No. 274.]
[Footnote 128: Long, _op. cit._, i. p. 272 _ff._]
[Footnote 129: Ibid.; Thurloe Papers, VI. p. 540; vii. p. 260; "Present
State of Jamaica, 1683"; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 303-308.]
[Footnote 130: Long, _op. cit._, i. p. 245; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76.
Addenda, Nos. 236, 261, 276, etc.
The conditions in Jamaica directly after its capture are in remarkable
contrast to what might have been expected after reading the enthusiastic
descriptions of the island, its climate, soil and products, left us by
Englishmen who visited it. Jackson in 1643 compared it with the Arcadian
plains and Thessalien Tempe, and many of his men wanted to remain and
live with the Spaniards. See also the description of Jamaica contained
in the Rawlinson MSS. and written just after the arrival of the English
army:--"As for the country ... more than this." (Narrative of Gen.
Venables, pp. 138-9.)]
[Footnote 131: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 229, 232; Lucas:
Historical Geography of the British Colonies, ii. p. 101, and note.]
[Footnote 132: Lucas, _op. cit._, ii. p. 109.]
[Footnote 133: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 230, 231. Fortescue
was Gen. Venables' successor in Jamaica.]
[Footnote 134: Ibid., No. 218; Long, _op. cit._, i. p. 262.]
[Footnote 135: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 218, 252; Thurloe
Papers, IV. pp. 451, 457.]
[Footnote 136: Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 152, 493.]
[Footnote 137: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 236.]
[Footnote 138: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 604.]
[Footnote 139: Ibid., pp. 454-5, 604.]
[Footnote 140: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 452.]
[Footnote 141: Ibid., v. pp. 96, 151.]
[Footnote 142: This was the treasure fleet which Captain Stayner's ship
and two other frigates captured off Cadiz on 9th September. Six galleons
were captured, sunk or burnt, with no less than £600,000 of gold and
silver. The galleons which Blake burnt in the harbour of Santa Cruz, on
20th April 1657, were doubtless the Mexican fleet for which Admiral
Goodson vainly waited before Havana in the previous summer.]
[Footnote 143: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 260, 263, 266, 270,
275; Thurloe Papers, V. p. 340.]
[Footnote 144: _Cf._ Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 12,430: Journal of Col.
Beeston. Col. Beeston seems to have harboured a peculiar spite against
Doyley. For the contrary view of Doyley, _cf._ Long, _op. cit._, i. p.
284.]
[Footnote 145: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda., Nos. 309, 310. In these
letters the towns are called "Tralo" and "St. Mark." _Cf._ also Thurloe
Papers, VII. p. 340.]
[Footnote 146: Captain Christopher Myngs had been appointed to the
"Marston Moor," a frigate of fifty-four guns, in October 1654, and had
seen two years' service in the West Indies under Goodson in 1656 and
1657. In May 1656 he took part in the sack of Rio de la Hacha. In July
1657 the "Marston Moor" returned to England and was ordered to be
refitted, but by 20th February 1658 Myngs and his frigate were again at
Port Royal (C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 295, 297). After
Admiral Goodson's return to England (Ibid., No. 1202) Myngs seems to
have been the chief naval officer in the West Indies, and greatly
distinguished himself in his naval actions against the Spaniards.]
[Footnote 147: Tanner MSS., LI. 82.]
[Footnote 148: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 316. Some
figures put it as high as £500,000.]
[Footnote 149: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 318. Captain
Wm. Dalyson wrote home, on 23rd January 1659/60, that he verily believed
if the General (Doyley) were at home to answer for himself, Captain
Myngs would be found no better than he is, a proud-speaking vain fool,
and a knave in cheating the State and robbing merchants. Ibid., No.
328.]
[Footnote 150: Ibid., Nos. 327, 331.]
[Footnote 151: C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, No. 326.]
[Footnote 152: S.P. Spain, vol. 44, f. 318.]
[Footnote 153: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 17, 61.]
[Footnote 154: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 20.]
[Footnote 155: Ibid., No. 145.]
[Footnote 156: Ibid., Nos. 259, 278. In Lord Windsor's original
instructions of 21st March 1662 he was empowered to search ships
suspected of trading with the Spaniards and to adjudicate the same in
the Admiralty Court. A fortnight later, however, the King and Council
seem to have completely changed their point of view, and this too in
spite of the Navigation Laws which prohibited the colonies from trading
with any but the mother-country.]
[Footnote 157: Art. ix. of the treaty. _Cf._ Dumont: Corps diplomatique,
T.V., pt. ii. p. 625. _Cf._ also C.S.P. Venetian, 1604, p. 189:--"I
wished to hear from His Majesty's own lips" (wrote the Venetian
ambassador in November 1604), "how he read the clause about the India
navigation, and I said, 'Sire, your subjects may trade with Spain and
Flanders but not with the Indies.' 'Why not?' said the King. 'Because,'
I replied, 'the clause is read in that sense.' 'They are making a great
error, whoever they are that hold this view,' said His Majesty; 'the
meaning is quite clear.'"]
[Footnote 158: S.P. Spain, vol. 35.]
[Footnote 159: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 61.]
[Footnote 160: Ibid., No. 259.]
[Footnote 161: Ibid., No. 355.]
[Footnote 162: Ibid., No. 364.]
[Footnote 163: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 154.]
[Footnote 164: Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 457.]
[Footnote 165: Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 166: Calendar of the Heathcote MSS. (pr. by Hist. MSS.
Commiss.), p. 34.]
[Footnote 167: Calendar of the Heathcote MSS., p. 34. _Cf._ also C.S.P.
Colon., 1661-68, No. 384:--"An act for the sale of five copper guns
taken at St. Jago de Cuba."]
[Footnote 168: Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 169: S.P. Spain, vol. 46.]
[Footnote 170: Ibid., vol. 47.]
[Footnote 171: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 294, 375.]
[Footnote 172: Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 11,410, f. 16.]
[Footnote 173: Ibid., f. 6.]
[Footnote 174: Dampier also says of Campeache that "it makes a fine
show, being built all with good stone ... the roofs flattish after the
Spanish fashion, and covered with pantile."--_Ed._ 1906, ii. p. 147.]
[Footnote 175: However, the writer of the "Present State of Jamaica"
says (p. 39) that Myngs got no great plunder, neither at Campeache nor
at St. Jago.]
[Footnote 176: Beeston's Journal; Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,964, f.
16:--"Original letter from the Licentiate Maldonado de Aldana to Don
Francisco Calderon y Romero, giving him an account of the taking of
Campeache in 1663"; dated Campeache, March 1663.
According to the Spanish relation there were fourteen vessels in the
English fleet, one large ship of forty-four guns (the "Centurion"?) and
thirteen smaller ones. The discrepancy in the numbers of the fleet may
be explained by the probability that other Jamaican privateering vessels
joined it after its departure from Port Royal. Beeston writes in his
Journal that the privateer "Blessing," Captain Mitchell, commander,
brought news on 28th February that the Spaniards in Campeache had notice
from St. Jago of the English design and made elaborate preparations for
the defence of the town. This is contradicted by the Spanish report, in
which it appears that the authorities in Campeache had been culpably
negligent in not maintaining the defences with men, powder or
provisions.]
[Footnote 177: S.P. Spain, vol. 46. Fanshaw to Sec. Bennet, 13th-23rd
July 1664.]
[Footnote 178: Ibid., vol. 45. Letter of Consul Rumbold, 31st March
1663.]
[Footnote 179: Ibid., 4th May 1663.]
[Footnote 180: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 443. Dated 28th April 1663.]
[Footnote 181: Ibid., Nos. 441, 442.]
[Footnote 182: Rawlinson MSS., A. 347, f. 62.]
[Footnote 183: Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 184: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 571; Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 185: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, ff. 94, 96, 108, 121, 123, 127, 309
(April-August 1664).]
[Footnote 186: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 697, 744, 812.]
[Footnote 187: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 280.]
[Footnote 188: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 311.]
CHAPTER IV
TORTUGA--1655-1664
When the Chevalier de Fontenay was driven from Tortuga in January 1654,
the Spaniards left a small garrison to occupy the fort and prevent
further settlements of French and English buccaneers. These troops
possessed the island for about eighteen months, but on the approach of
the expedition under Penn and Venables were ordered by the Conde de
Penalva, President of S. Domingo, to demolish the fort, bury the
artillery and other arms, and retire to his aid in Hispaniola.[189] Some
six months later an Englishman, Elias Watts,[190] with his family and
ten or twelve others, came from Jamaica in a shallop, re-settled the
island, and raised a battery of four guns upon the ruins of the larger
fort previously erected by the French. Watts received a commission for
the island from General Brayne, who was then governor of Jamaica, and in
a short time gathered about him a colony of about 150, both English and
French. Among these new-comers was a "poor distressed gentleman" by the
name of James Arundell, formerly a colonel in the Royalist army and now
banished from England, who eventually married Watts' daughter and became
the head of the colony.
It was while Watts was governor of Tortuga, if we are to believe the
Jesuit, Dutertre, that the buccaneers determined to avenge the treachery
of the Spaniards to a French vessel in that neighbourhood by plundering
the city of St. Jago in Hispaniola. According to this historian, who
from the style of the narrative seems to be reporting the words of an
eye-witness, the buccaneers, including doubtless both hunters and
corsairs, formed a party of 400 men under the leadership of four
captains and obtained a commission for the enterprise from the English
governor, who was very likely looking forward to a share of the booty.
Compelling the captain of a frigate which had just arrived from Nantes
to lend his ship, they embarked in it and in two or three other boats
found on the coast for Puerta de Plata, where they landed on Palm Sunday
of 1659.[191] St. Jago, which lay in a pleasant, fertile plain some
fifteen or twenty leagues in the interior of Hispaniola, they approached
through the woods on the night of Holy Wednesday, entered before
daybreak, and surprised the governor in his bed. The buccaneers told him
to prepare to die, whereupon he fell on his knees and prayed to such
effect that they finally offered him his life for a ransom of 60,000
pieces of eight. They pillaged for twenty-four hours, taking even the
bells, ornaments and sacred vessels of the churches, and after
refreshing themselves with food and drink, retreated with their plunder
and prisoners, including the governor and chief inhabitants. Meanwhile
the alarm had been given for ten or twelve leagues round about. Men came
in from all directions, and rallying with the inhabitants of the town
till they amounted to about 1000 men, marched through the woods by a
by-route, got ahead of the buccaneers and attacked them from ambush. The
English and French stood their ground in spite of inferior numbers, for
they were all good marksmen and every shot told. As the Spaniards
persisted, however, they finally threatened to stab the governor and all
the other prisoners, whereupon the Spaniards took counsel and retired to
their homes. The invaders lost only ten killed and five or six wounded.
They tarried on the coast several days waiting for the rest of the
promised ransom, but as it failed to arrive they liberated the prisoners
and returned to Tortuga, each adventurer receiving 300 crowns as his
share of the pillage.[192]
In the latter part of 1659 a French gentleman, Jérémie Deschamps,
seigneur du Rausset, who had been one of the first inhabitants of
Tortuga under Levasseur and de Fontenay, repaired to England and had
sufficient influence there to obtain an order from the Council of State
to Colonel Doyley to give him a commission as governor of Tortuga, with
such instructions as Doyley might think requisite.[193] This same du
Rausset, it seems, had received a French commission from Louis XIV. as
early as November 1656.[194] At any rate, he came to Jamaica in 1660 and
obtained his commission from Doyley on condition that he held Tortuga in
the English interest.[195] Watts, it seems, had meanwhile learnt that he
was to be superseded by a Frenchman, whereupon he embarked with his
family and all his goods and sought refuge in New England. About two
months later, according to one story, Doyley heard that Deschamps had
given a commission to a privateer and committed insolences for which
Doyley feared to be called to account. He sent to remonstrate with him,
but Deschamps answered that he possessed a French commission and that he
had better interest with the powers in England than had the governor of
Jamaica. As there were more French than English on the island, Deschamps
then proclaimed the King of France and set up the French colours.[196]
Doyley as yet had received no authority from the newly-restored king,
Charles II., and hesitated to use any force; but he did give permission
to Arundell, Watts' son-in-law, to surprise Deschamps and carry him to
Jamaica for trial. Deschamps was absent at the time at Santa Cruz, but
Arundell, relying upon the friendship and esteem which the inhabitants
had felt for his father-in-law, surprised the governor's nephew and
deputy, the Sieur de la Place, and possessed himself of the island. By
some mischance or neglect, however, he was disarmed by the French and
sent back to Jamaica.[197] This was not the end of his misfortunes. On
the way to Jamaica he and his company were surprised by Spaniards in the
bay of Matanzas in Cuba, and carried to Puerto Principe. There, after a
month's imprisonment, Arundell and Barth. Cock, his shipmaster, were
taken out by negroes into the bush and murdered, and their heads brought
into the town.[198] Deschamps later returned to France because of
ill-health, leaving la Place to govern the island in his stead, and when
the property of the French Antilles was vested in the new French West
India Company in 1664 he was arrested and sent to the Bastille. The
cause of his arrest is obscure, but it seems that he had been in
correspondence with the English government, to whom he had offered to
restore Tortuga on condition of being reimbursed with £6000 sterling. A
few days in the Bastille made him think better of his resolution. He
ceded his rights to the company for 15,000 livres, and was released from
confinement in November.[199]
The fiasco of Arundell's attempt was not the only effort of the English
to recover the island. In answer to a memorial presented by Lord Windsor
before his departure for Jamaica, an Order in Council was delivered to
him in February 1662, empowering him to use his utmost endeavours to
reduce Tortuga and its governor to obedience.[200] The matter was taken
up by the Jamaican Council in September, shortly after Windsor's
arrival;[201] and on 16th December an order was issued by
deputy-governor Lyttleton to Captain Robert Munden of the "Charles"
frigate for the transportation of Colonel Samuel Barry and Captain
Langford to Tortuga, where Munden was to receive orders for reducing the
island.[202] The design miscarried again, however, probably because of
ill-blood between Barry and Munden. Clement de Plenneville, who
accompanied Barry, writes that "the expedition failed through
treachery";[203] and Beeston says in his Journal that Barry, approaching
Tortuga on 30th January, found the French armed and ready to oppose him,
whereupon he ordered Captain Munden to fire. Munden however refused,
sailed away to Corydon in Hispaniola, where he put Barry and his men on
shore, and then "went away about his merchandize."[204] Barry made his
way in a sloop to Jamaica where he arrived on 1st March. Langford,
however, was sent to Petit-Goave, an island about the size of Tortuga in
the _cul-de-sac_ at the western end of Hispaniola, where he was chosen
governor by the inhabitants and raised the first English standard.
Petit-Goave had been frequented by buccaneers since 1659, and after
d'Ogeron succeeded du Rausset as governor for the French in those
regions, it became with Tortuga one of their chief resorts. In the
latter part of 1664 we find Langford in England petitioning the king for
a commission as governor of Tortuga and the coast of Hispaniola, and for
two ships to go and seize the smaller island.[205] Such a design,
however, with the direct sanction and aid of the English government,
might have endangered a rupture with France. Charles preferred to leave
such irregular warfare to his governor in Jamaica, whom he could support
or disown as best suited the exigencies of the moment. Langford,
moreover, seems not to have made a brilliant success of his short stay
at Petit-Goave, and was probably distrusted by the authorities both in
England and in the West Indies. When Modyford came as governor to
Jamaica, the possibility of recovering Tortuga was still discussed, but
no effort to effect it was ever made again.
Footnotes:
[Footnote 189: Dutertre, t. iii. p. 126; Add. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.
On 26th February 1656 there arrived at Jamaica a small vessel the master
of which, touching at Tortuga, had found upon the deserted island two
papers, one in Spanish, the other in "sorrie English" (Thurloe Papers,
IV. p. 601). These papers were copies of a proclamation forbidding
settlement on the island, and the English paper (Rawl. MSS., A. 29, f.
500) is printed in Firth's "Venables" as follows:--
"The Captane and Sarginge Mager Don Baltearsor Calderon and Spenoso,
Nopte to the President that is now in the sity of Santo-domingo, and
Captane of the gones of the sitye, and Governor and Lord Mare of this
Island, and stranch of this Lland of Tortogo, and Chefe Comander of all
for the Khinge of Spaine.
"Yoo moust understand that all pepell what soever that shall com to this
Iland of the Khinge of Spaine Catholok wich is name is Don Pilep the
Ostere the forth of this name, that with his harmes he hath put of
Feleminge and French men and Englesh with lefee heare from the yeare of
1630 tell the yeare of thurty fouer and tell the yeare of fifte fouer in
wich the Kinge of Spane uesenge all curtyse and given good quartell to
all that was upon this Iland, after that came and with oute Recepet upon
this Iland knowinge that the Kinge of Spane had planted upon it and
fortified in the name of the Kinge came the forth time the 15th of
Augost the last yeare French and Fleminges to govern this Iland the same
Governeore that was heare befor his name was Themeleon hot man De
founttana gentleman of the ourder of Guresalem for to take this Iland
put if fources by se and land and forsed us to beate him oute of this
place with a greate dale of shame, and be caues yoo shall take notes
that wee have puelld doune the Casill and carid all the gonenes and have
puelld doune all the houes and have lefte no thinge, the same Captane
and Sargint-mager in the name of the Kinge wich God blesh hath given yoo
notis that what souer nason souer that shall com to live upon this Iland
that thare shall not a man mother or children cape of the sorde, thare
fore I give notiss to all pepell that they shall have a care with out
anye more notis for this is the order of the Kinge and with out fall you
will not want yooer Pamente and this is the furst and second and thorde
time, and this whe leave heare for them that comes hear to take notis,
that when wee com upon you, you shall not pleate that you dod not know
is riten the 25 of August 1656."
Baltesar Calderon y Espinosa
Por Mandado de Senor Gou^{or}.
Pedro Fran^{co} de riva deney xasuss.
]
[Footnote 190: In Dutertre's account the name is Eliazouard (Elias
Ward).]
[Footnote 191: According to a Spanish account of the expedition the date
was 1661. Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.]
[Footnote 192: Dutertre, tom. iii. pp. 130-34.]
[Footnote 193: Rawl. MSS., A. 347, ff. 31 and 36; S.P. Spain, vol.
47:--Deposition of Sir Charles Lyttleton; Margry, _op. cit._, p. 281.]
[Footnote 194: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. vii. p. 36; Vaissière, _op.
cit._, p. 10.]
[Footnote 195: According to Dutertre, Deschamps' commission extended
only to the French inhabitants upon Tortuga, the French and English
living thereafter under separate governments as at St. Kitts. Dutertre,
t. iii. p. 135.]
[Footnote 196: Rawl. MSS., A. 347, f. 36.
According to Dutertre's version, Watts had scarcely forsaken the island
when Deschamps arrived in the Road, and found that the French
inhabitants had already made themselves masters of the colony and had
substituted the French for the English standard. Dutertre, t. iii. p.
136.]
[Footnote 197: Rawl. MSS., A. 347, f. 36.]
[Footnote 198: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 648.]
[Footnote 199: Dutertre, t. iii. p. 138; Vaissière, _op. cit._, p. 11,
note 2.]
[Footnote 200: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 233.]
[Footnote 201: Ibid., No. 364.]
[Footnote 202: Ibid., No. 390; _cf._ also No. 474 (1).]
[Footnote 203: Ibid., No. 475.]
[Footnote 204: Beeston's Journal, 1st March 1663.
According to Dutertre, some inhabitants of Tortuga ran away to Jamaica
and persuaded the governor that they could no longer endure French
domination, and that if an armed force was sent, it would find no
obstacle in restoring the English king's authority. Accordingly Col.
Barry was despatched to receive their allegiance, with orders to use no
violence but only to accept their voluntary submission. When Barry
landed on Tortuga, however, with no other support than a proclamation
and a harangue, the French inhabitants laughed in his face, and he
returned to Jamaica in shame and confusion. Dutertre, t. iii. pp.
137-38.]
[Footnote 205: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 817-21.]
CHAPTER V
PORTO BELLO AND PANAMA
On 4th January 1664, the king wrote to Sir Thomas Modyford in Barbadoes
that he had chosen him governor of Jamaica.[206] Modyford, who had lived
as a planter in Barbadoes since 1650, had taken a prominent share in the
struggles between Parliamentarians and Royalists in the little island.
He was a member of the Council, and had been governor for a short time
in 1660. His commission and instructions for Jamaica[207] were carried
to the West Indies by Colonel Edward Morgan, who went as Modyford's
deputy-governor and landed in Barbadoes on 21st April.[208] Modyford was
instructed, among other things, to prohibit the granting of letters of
marque, and particularly to encourage trade and maintain friendly
relations with the Spanish dominions. Sir Richard Fanshaw had just been
appointed to go to Spain and negotiate a treaty for wider commercial
privileges in the Indies, and Charles saw that the daily complaints of
violence and depredation done by Jamaican ships on the King of Spain's
subjects were scarcely calculated to increase the good-will and
compliance of the Spanish Court. Nor had the attempt in the Indies to
force a trade upon the Spaniards been brilliantly successful. It was
soon evident that another course of action was demanded. Sir Thomas
Modyford seems at first to have been sincerely anxious to suppress
privateering and conciliate his Spanish neighbours. On receiving his
commission and instructions he immediately prepared letters to the
President of San Domingo, expressing his fair intentions and requesting
the co-operation of the Spaniards.[209] Modyford himself arrived in
Jamaica on 1st June,[210] proclaimed an entire cessation of
hostilities,[211] and on the 16th sent the "Swallow" ketch to Cartagena
to acquaint the governor with what he had done. On almost the same day
letters were forwarded from England and from Ambassador Fanshaw in
Madrid, strictly forbidding all violences in the future against the
Spanish nation, and ordering Modyford to inflict condign punishment on
every offender, and make entire restitution and satisfaction to the
sufferers.[212]
The letters for San Domingo, which had been forwarded to Jamaica with
Colonel Morgan and thence dispatched to Hispaniola before Modyford's
arrival, received a favourable answer, but that was about as far as the
matter ever got. The buccaneers, moreover, the principal grievance of
the Spaniards, still remained at large. As Thomas Lynch wrote on 25th
May, "It is not in the power of the governor to have or suffer a
commerce, nor will any necessity or advantage bring private Spaniards to
Jamaica, for we and they have used too many mutual barbarisms to have a
sudden correspondence. When the king was restored, the Spaniards thought
the manners of the English nation changed too, and adventured twenty or
thirty vessels to Jamaica for blacks, but the surprises and irruptions
by C. Myngs, for whom the governor of San Domingo has upbraided the
commissioners, made the Spaniards redouble their malice, and nothing but
an order from Spain can give us admittance or trade."[213] For a short
time, however, a serious effort was made to recall the privateers.
Several prizes which were brought into Port Royal were seized and
returned to their owners, while the captors had their commissions taken
from them. Such was the experience of one Captain Searles, who in August
brought in two Spanish vessels, both of which were restored to the
Spaniards, and Searles deprived of his rudder and sails as security
against his making further depredations upon the Dons.[214] In November
Captain Morris Williams sent a note to Governor Modyford, offering to
come in with a rich prize of logwood, indigo and silver, if security
were given that it should be condemned to him for the payment of his
debts in Jamaica; and although the governor refused to give any promises
the prize was brought in eight days later. The goods were seized and
sold in the interest of the Spanish owner.[215] Nevertheless, the
effects of the proclamation were not at all encouraging. In the first
month only three privateers came in with their commissions, and Modyford
wrote to Secretary Bennet on 30th June that he feared the only effect of
the proclamation would be to drive them to the French in Tortuga. He
therefore thought it prudent, he continued, to dispense somewhat with
the strictness of his instructions, "doing by degrees and moderation
what he had at first resolved to execute suddenly and severely."[216]
Tortuga was really the crux of the whole difficulty. Back in 1662
Colonel Doyley, in his report to the Lord Chancellor after his return to
England, had suggested the reduction of Tortuga to English obedience as
the only effective way of dealing with the buccaneers;[217] and Modyford
in 1664 also realized the necessity of this preliminary step.[218] The
conquest of Tortuga, however, was no longer the simple task it might
have been four or five years earlier. The inhabitants of the island were
now almost entirely French, and with their companions on the coast of
Hispaniola had no intention of submitting to English dictation. The
buccaneers, who had become numerous and independent and made Tortuga one
of their principal retreats, would throw all their strength in the
balance against an expedition the avowed object of whose coming was to
make their profession impossible. The colony, moreover, received an
incalculable accession of strength in the arrival of Bertrand d'Ogeron,
the governor sent out in 1665 by the new French West India Company.
D'Ogeron was one of the most remarkable figures in the West Indies in
the second half of the seventeenth century. Of broad imagination and
singular kindness of heart, with an indomitable will and a mind full of
resource, he seems to have been an ideal man for the task, not only of
reducing to some semblance of law and order a people who had never given
obedience to any authority, but also of making palatable the _régime_
and exclusive privileges of a private trading company. D'Ogeron first
established himself at Port Margot on the coast of Hispaniola opposite
Tortuga in the early part of 1665; and here the adventurers at once gave
him to understand that they would never submit to any mere company, much
less suffer an interruption of their trade with the Dutch, who had
supplied them with necessities at a time when it was not even known in
France that there were Frenchmen in that region. D'Ogeron pretended to
subscribe to these conditions, passed over to Tortuga where he received
the submission of la Place, and then to Petit-Goave and Leogane, in the
_cul-de-sac_ of Hispaniola. There he made his headquarters, adopted
every means to attract planters and _engagés_, and firmly established
his authority. He made advances from his own purse without interest to
adventurers who wished to settle down to planting, bought two ships to
facilitate trade between the colony and France, and even contrived to
have several lots of fifty women each brought over from France to be
sold and distributed as wives amongst the colonists. The settlements
soon put on a new air of prosperity, and really owed their existence as
a permanent French colony to the efforts of this new governor.[219] It
was under the administration of d'Ogeron that l'Olonnais,[220] Michel le
Basque, and most of the French buccaneers flourished, whose exploits are
celebrated in Exquemelin's history.
The conquest of Tortuga was not the only measure necessary for the
effectual suppression of the buccaneers. Five or six swift cruisers were
also required to pursue and bring to bay those corsairs who refused to
come in with their commissions.[221] Since the Restoration the West
Indies had been entirely denuded of English men-of-war; while the
buccaneers, with the tacit consent or encouragement of Doyley, had at
the same time increased both in numbers and boldness. Letters written
from Jamaica in 1664 placed the number scattered abroad in privateering
at from 1500 to 2000, sailing in fourteen or fifteen ships.[222] They
were desperate men, accustomed to living at sea, with no trade but
burning and plundering, and unlikely to take orders from any but
stronger and faster frigates. Nor was this condition of affairs
surprising when we consider that, in the seventeenth century, there
flowed from Europe to the West Indies adventurers from every class of
society; men doubtless often endowed with strong personalities,
enterprising and intrepid; but often, too, of mediocre intelligence or
little education, and usually without either money or scruples. They
included many who had revolted from the narrow social laws of European
countries, and were disinclined to live peaceably within the bounds of
any organized society. Many, too, had belonged to rebellious political
factions at home, men of the better classes who were banished or who
emigrated in order to keep their heads upon their shoulders. In France
the total exhaustion of public and private fortune at the end of the
religious wars disposed many to seek to recoup themselves out of the
immense colonial riches of the Spaniards; while the disorders of the
Rebellion and the Commonwealth in England caused successive emigrations
of Puritans and Loyalists to the newer England beyond the seas. At the
close of the Thirty Years' War, too, a host of French and English
adventurers, who had fattened upon Germany and her misfortunes, were
left without a livelihood, and doubtless many resorted to emigration as
the sole means of continuing their life of freedom and even of licence.
Coming to the West Indies these men, so various in origin and character,
hoped soon to acquire there the riches which they lost or coveted at
home; and their expectations deceived, they often broke in a formal and
absolute manner the bonds which attached them to their fellow humanity.
Jamaica especially suffered in this respect, for it had been colonized
in the first instance by a discontented, refractory soldiery, and it was
being recruited largely by transported criminals and vagabonds. In
contrast with the policy of Spain, who placed the most careful
restrictions upon the class of emigrants sent to her American
possessions, England from the very beginning used her colonies, and
especially the West Indian islands, as a dumping-ground for her refuse
population. Within a short time a regular trade sprang up for furnishing
the colonies with servile labour from the prisons of the mother country.
Scots captured at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester,[223] English,
French, Irish and Dutch pirates lying in the gaols of Dorchester and
Plymouth,[224] if "not thought fit to be tried for their lives," were
shipped to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other Antilles. In August 1656
the Council of State issued an order for the apprehension of all lewd
and dangerous persons, rogues, vagrants and other idlers who had no way
of livelihood and refused to work, to be transported by contractors to
the English plantations in America;[225] and in June 1661 the Council
for Foreign Plantations appointed a committee to consider the same
matter.[226] Complaints were often made that children and apprentices
were "seduced or spirited away" from their parents and masters and
concealed upon ships sailing for the colonies; and an office of registry
was established to prevent this abuse.[227] In 1664 Charles granted a
licence for five years to Sir James Modyford, brother of Sir Thomas, to
take all felons convicted in the circuits and at the Old Bailey who were
afterwards reprieved for transportation to foreign plantations, and to
transmit them to the governor of Jamaica;[228] and this practice was
continued throughout the whole of the buccaneering period.
Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits,
impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an
employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the
plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and
when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken
part in them fell to robbing on their private account. Sir Charles
Lyttleton, we have seen, zealously defended and encouraged the
freebooters; and Long, the historian of Jamaica, justified their
existence on the ground that many traders were attracted to the island
by the plunder with which Port Royal was so abundantly stocked, and that
the prosperity of the colony was founded upon the great demand for
provisions for the outfit of the privateers. These effects, however,
were but temporary and superficial, and did not counterbalance the
manifest evils of the practice, especially the discouragement to
planting, and the element of turbulence and unrest ever present in the
island. Under such conditions Governor Modyford found it necessary to
temporise with the marauders, and perhaps he did so the more readily
because he felt that they were still needed for the security of the
colony. A war between England and the States-General then seemed
imminent, and the governor considered that unless he allowed the
buccaneers to dispose of their booty when they came in to Port Royal,
they might, in event of hostilities breaking out, go to the Dutch at
Curaçao and other islands, and prey upon Jamaican commerce. On the other
hand, if, by adopting a conciliatory attitude, he retained their
allegiance, they would offer the handiest and most effective instrument
for driving the Dutch themselves out of the Indies.[229] He privately
told one captain, who brought in a Spanish prize, that he only stopped
the Admiralty proceedings to "give a good relish to the Spaniard"; and
that although the captor should have satisfaction, the governor could
not guarantee him his ship. So Sir Thomas persuaded some merchants to
buy the prize-goods and contributed one quarter of the money himself,
with the understanding that he should receive nothing if the Spaniards
came to claim their property.[230] A letter from Secretary Bennet, on
12th November 1664, confirmed the governor in this course;[231] and on
2nd February 1665, three weeks before the declaration of war against
Holland, a warrant was issued to the Duke of York, High Admiral of
England, to grant, through the colonial governors and vice-admirals,
commissions of reprisal upon the ships and goods of the Dutch.[232]
Modyford at once took advantage of this liberty. Some fourteen pirates,
who in the beginning of February had been tried and condemned to death,
were pardoned; and public declaration was made that commissions would be
granted against the Hollanders. Before nightfall two commissions had
been taken out, and all the rovers were making applications and planning
how to seize Curaçao.[233] Modyford drew up an elaborate design[234] for
rooting out at one and the same time the Dutch settlements and the
French buccaneers, and on 20th April he wrote that Lieutenant-Colonel
Morgan had sailed with ten ships and some 500 men, chiefly "reformed
prisoners," resolute fellows, and well armed with fusees and
pistols.[235] Their plan was to fall upon the Dutch fleet trading at St.
Kitts, capture St. Eustatius, Saba, and perhaps Curaçao, and on the
homeward voyage visit the French settlements on Hispaniola and Tortuga.
"All this is prepared," he wrote, "by the honest privateer, at the old
rate of no purchase no pay, and it will cost the king nothing
considerable, some powder and mortar-pieces." On the same day, 20th
April, Admiral de Ruyter, who had arrived in the Indies with a fleet of
fourteen sail, attacked the forts and shipping at Barbadoes, but
suffered considerable damage and retired after a few hours. At
Montserrat and Nevis, however, he was more successful and captured
sixteen merchant ships, after which he sailed for Virginia and New
York.[236]
The buccaneers enrolled in Colonel Morgan's expedition proved to be
troublesome allies. Before their departure from Jamaica most of them
mutinied, and refused to sail until promised by Morgan that the plunder
should be equally divided.[237] On 17th July, however, the expedition
made its rendezvous at Montserrat, and on the 23rd arrived before St.
Eustatius. Two vessels had been lost sight of, a third, with the
ironical name of the "Olive Branch," had sailed for Virginia, and many
stragglers had been left behind at Montserrat, so that Morgan could
muster only 326 men for the assault. There was only one landing-place on
the island, with a narrow path accommodating but two men at a time
leading to an eminence which was crowned with a fort and 450 Dutchmen.
Morgan landed his division first, and Colonel Carey followed. The enemy,
it seems, gave them but one small volley and then retreated to the fort.
The governor sent forward three men to parley, and on receiving a
summons to surrender, delivered up the fort with eleven large guns and
considerable ammunition. "It is supposed they were drunk or mad," was
the comment made upon the rather disgraceful defence.[238] During the
action Colonel Morgan, who was an old man and very corpulent, was
overcome by the hard marching and extraordinary heat, and died. Colonel
Carey, who succeeded him in command, was anxious to proceed at once to
the capture of the Dutch forts on Saba, St. Martins and Tortola; but the
buccaneers refused to stir until the booty got at St. Eustatius was
divided--nor were the officers and men able to agree on the manner of
sharing. The plunder, besides guns and ammunition, included about 900
slaves, negro and Indian, with a large quantity of live stock and
cotton. Meanwhile a party of seventy had crossed over to the island of
Saba, only four leagues distant, and secured its surrender on the same
terms as St. Eustatius. As the men had now become very mutinous, and on
a muster numbered scarcely 250, the officers decided that they could not
reasonably proceed any further and sailed for Jamaica, leaving a small
garrison on each of the islands. Most of the Dutch, about 250 in number,
were sent to St. Martins, but a few others, with some threescore
English, Irish and Scotch, took the oath of allegiance and
remained.[239]
Encouraged by a letter from the king,[240] Governor Modyford continued
his exertions against the Dutch. In January (?) 1666 two buccaneer
captains, Searles and Stedman, with two small ships and only eighty men
took the island of Tobago, near Trinidad, and destroyed everything they
could not carry away. Lord Willoughby, governor of Barbadoes, had also
fitted out an expedition to take the island, but the Jamaicans were
three or four days before him. The latter were busy with their work of
pillage, when Willoughby arrived and demanded the island in the name of
the king; and the buccaneers condescended to leave the fort and the
governor's house standing only on condition that Willoughby gave them
liberty to sell their plunder in Barbadoes.[241] Modyford, meanwhile,
greatly disappointed by the miscarriage of the design against Curaçao,
called in the aid of the "old privateer," Captain Edward Mansfield, and
in the autumn of 1665, with the hope of sending another armament against
the island, appointed a rendezvous for the buccaneers in Bluefields
Bay.[242]
In January 1666 war against England was openly declared by France in
support of her Dutch allies, and in the following month Charles II. sent
letters to his governors in the West Indies and the North American
colonies, apprising them of the war and urging them to attack their
French neighbours.[243] The news of the outbreak of hostilities did not
reach Jamaica until 2nd July, but already in December of the previous
year warning had been sent out to the West Indies of the coming
rupture.[244] Governor Modyford, therefore, seeing the French very much
increased in Hispaniola, concluded that it was high time to entice the
buccaneers from French service and bind them to himself by issuing
commissions against the Spaniards. The French still permitted the
freebooters to dispose of Spanish prizes in their ports, but the better
market afforded by Jamaica was always a sufficient consideration to
attract not only the English buccaneers, but the Dutch and French as
well. Moreover, the difficulties of the situation, which Modyford had
repeatedly enlarged upon in his letters, seem to have been appreciated
by the authorities in England, for in the spring of 1665, following upon
Secretary Bennet's letter of 12th November and shortly after the
outbreak of the Dutch war, the Duke of Albemarle had written to Modyford
in the name of the king, giving him permission to use his own discretion
in granting commissions against the Dons.[245] Modyford was convinced
that all the circumstances were favourable to such a course of action,
and on 22nd February assembled the Council. A resolution was passed that
it was to the interest of the island to grant letters of marque against
the Spaniards,[246] and a proclamation to this effect was published by
the governor at Port Royal and Tortuga. In the following August Modyford
sent home to Bennet, now become Lord Arlington, an elaborate defence of
his actions. "Your Lordship very well knows," wrote Modyford, "how great
an aversion I had for the privateers while at Barbadoes, but after I had
put His Majesty's orders for restitution in strict execution, I found my
error in the decay of the forts and wealth of this place, and also the
affections of this people to His Majesty's service; yet I continued
discountenancing and punishing those kind of people till your Lordship's
of the 12th November 1664 arrived, commanding a gentle usage of them;
still we went to decay, which I represented to the Lord General
faithfully the 6th of March following, who upon serious consideration
with His Majesty and the Lord Chancellor, by letter of 1st June 1665,
gave me latitude to grant or not commissions against the Spaniard, as I
found it for the advantage of His Majesty's service and the good of this
island. I was glad of this power, yet resolved not to use it unless
necessity drove me to it; and that too when I saw how poor the fleets
returning from Statia were, so that vessels were broken up and the men
disposed of for the coast of Cuba to get a livelihood and so be wholly
alienated from us. Many stayed at the Windward Isles, having not enough
to pay their engagements, and at Tortuga and among the French
buccaneers; still I forebore to make use of my power, hoping their
hardships and great hazards would in time reclaim them from that course
of life. But about the beginning of March last I found that the guards
of Port Royal, which under Colonel Morgan were 600, had fallen to 138,
so I assembled the Council to advise how to strengthen that most
important place with some of the inland forces; but they all agreed that
the only way to fill Port Royal with men was to grant commissions
against the Spaniards, which they were very pressing in ... and looking
on our weak condition, the chief merchants gone from Port Royal, no
credit given to privateers for victualling, etc., and rumours of war
with the French often repeated, I issued a declaration of my intentions
to grant commissions against the Spaniards. Your Lordship cannot imagine
what an universal change there was on the faces of men and things, ships
repairing, great resort of workmen and labourers to Port Royal, many
returning, many debtors released out of prison, and the ships from the
Curaçao voyage, not daring to come in for fear of creditors, brought in
and fitted out again, so that the regimental forces at Port Royal are
near 400. Had it not been for that seasonable action, I could not have
kept my place against the French buccaneers, who would have ruined all
the seaside plantations at least, whereas I now draw from them mainly,
and lately David Marteen, the best man of Tortuga, that has two frigates
at sea, has promised to bring in both."[247]
In so far as the buccaneers affected the mutual relations of England and
Spain, it after all could make little difference whether commissions
were issued in Jamaica or not, for the plundering and burning continued,
and the harassed Spanish-Americans, only too prone to call the rogues
English of whatever origin they might really be, continued to curse and
hate the English nation and make cruel reprisals whenever possible.
Moreover, every expedition into Spanish territory, finding the Spaniards
very weak and very rich, gave new incentive to such endeavour. While
Modyford had been standing now on one foot, now on the other, uncertain
whether to repulse the buccaneers or not, secretly anxious to welcome
them, but fearing the authorities at home, the corsairs themselves had
entirely ignored him. The privateers whom Modyford had invited to
rendezvous in Bluefield's Bay in November 1665 had chosen Captain
Mansfield as their admiral, and in the middle of January sailed from the
south cays of Cuba for Curaçao. In the meantime, however, because they
had been refused provisions which, according to Modyford's account, they
sought to buy from the Spaniards in Cuba, they had marched forty-two
miles into the island, and on the strength of Portuguese commissions
which they held against the Spaniards, had plundered and burnt the town
of Sancti Spiritus, routed a body of 200 horse, carried some prisoners
to the coast, and for their ransom extorted 300 head of cattle.[248] The
rich and easy profits to be got by plundering the Spaniards were almost
too much for the loyalty of the men, and Modyford, hearing of many
defections from their ranks, had despatched Captain Beeston on 10th
November to divert them, if possible, from Sancti Spiritus, and confirm
them in their designs against Curaçao.[249] The officers of the
expedition, indeed, sent to the governor a letter expressing their zeal
for the enterprise; but the men still held off, and the fleet, in
consequence, eventually broke up. Two vessels departed for Tortuga, and
four others, joined by two French rovers, sailed under Mansfield to
attempt the recapture of Providence Island, which, since 1641, had been
garrisoned by the Spaniards and used as a penal settlement.[250] Being
resolved, as Mansfield afterwards told the governor of Jamaica, never to
see Modyford's face until he had done some service to the king, he
sailed for Providence with about 200 men,[251] and approaching the
island in the night by an unusual passage among the reefs, landed early
in the morning, and surprised and captured the Spanish commander. The
garrison of about 200 yielded up the fort on the promise that they would
be carried to the mainland. Twenty-seven pieces of ordnance were taken,
many of which, it is said, bore the arms of Queen Elizabeth engraved
upon them. Mansfield left thirty-five men under command of a Captain
Hattsell to hold the island, and sailed with his prisoners for Central
America. After cruising along the shores of the mainland, he ascended
the San Juan River and entered and sacked Granada, the capital of
Nicaragua. From Granada the buccaneers turned south into Costa Rica,
burning plantations, breaking the images in the churches, ham-stringing
cows and mules, cutting down the fruit trees, and in general destroying
everything they found. The Spanish governor had only thirty-six soldiers
at his disposal and scarcely any firearms; but he gathered the
inhabitants and some Indians, blocked the roads, laid ambuscades, and
did all that his pitiful means permitted to hinder the progress of the
invaders. The freebooters had designed to visit Cartago, the chief city
of the province, and plunder it as they had plundered Granada. They
penetrated only as far as Turrialva, however, whence weary and footsore
from their struggle through the Cordillera, and harassed by the
Spaniards, they retired through the province of Veragua in military
order to their ships.[252] On 12th June the buccaneers, laden with
booty, sailed into Port Royal. There was at that moment no declared war
between England and Spain. Yet the governor, probably because he
believed Mansfield to be justified, _ex post facto_, by the issue of
commissions against the Spaniards in the previous February, did no more
than mildly reprove him for acting without his orders; and "considering
its good situation for favouring any design on the rich main," he
accepted the tender of the island in behalf of the king. He despatched
Major Samuel Smith, who had been one of Mansfield's party, with a few
soldiers to reinforce the English garrison;[253] and on 10th November
the Council in England set the stamp of their approval upon his actions
by issuing a commission to his brother, Sir James Modyford, to be
lieutenant-governor of the new acquisition.[254]
In August 1665, only two months before the departure of Mansfield from
Jamaica, there had returned to Port Royal from a raid in the same region
three privateer captains named Morris, Jackman and Morgan.[255] These
men, with their followers, doubtless helped to swell the ranks of
Mansfield's buccaneers, and it was probably their report of the wealth
of Central America which induced Mansfield to emulate their performance.
In the previous January these three captains, still pretending to sail
under commissions from Lord Windsor, had ascended the river Tabasco, in
the province of Campeache, with 107 men, and guided by Indians made a
detour of 300 miles, according to their account, to Villa de Mosa,[256]
which they took and plundered. When they returned to the mouth of the
river, they found that their ships had been seized by Spaniards, who, on
their approach, attacked them 300 strong. The Spaniards, softened by the
heat and indolent life of the tropics, were no match for one-third their
number of desperadoes, and the buccaneers beat them off without the loss
of a man. The freebooters then fitted up two barques and four canoes,
sailed to Rio Garta and stormed the place with only thirty men; crossed
the Gulf of Honduras to the Island of Roatan to rest and obtain fresh
water, and then captured and plundered the port of Truxillo. Down the
Mosquito Coast they passed like a devouring flame, consuming all in
their path. Anchoring in Monkey Bay, they ascended the San Juan River in
canoes for a distance of 100 miles to Lake Nicaragua. The basin into
which they entered they described as a veritable paradise, the air cool
and wholesome, the shores of the lake full of green pastures and broad
savannahs dotted with horses and cattle, and round about all a coronal
of azure mountains. Hiding by day among the numerous islands and rowing
all night, on the fifth night they landed near the city of Granada, just
a year before Mansfield's visit to the place. The buccaneers marched
unobserved to the central square of the city, overturned eighteen cannon
mounted there, seized the magazine, and took and imprisoned in the
cathedral 300 of the citizens. They plundered for sixteen hours, then
released their prisoners, and taking the precaution to scuttle all the
boats, made their way back to the sea coast. The town was large and
pleasant, containing seven churches besides several colleges and
monasteries, and most of the buildings were constructed of stone. About
1000 Indians, driven to rebellion by the cruelty and oppression of the
Spaniards, accompanied the marauders and would have massacred the
prisoners, especially the religious, had they not been told that the
English had no intentions of retaining their conquest. The news of the
exploit produced a lively impression in Jamaica, and the governor
suggested Central America as the "properest place" for an attack from
England on the Spanish Indies.[257]
Providence Island was now in the hands of an English garrison, and the
Spaniards were not slow to realise that the possession of this outpost
by the buccaneers might be but the first step to larger conquests on the
mainland. The President of Panama, Don Juan Perez de Guzman, immediately
took steps to recover the island. He transferred himself to Porto Bello,
embargoed an English ship of thirty guns, the "Concord," lying at anchor
there with licence to trade in negroes, manned it with 350 Spaniards
under command of José Sánchez Jiménez, and sent it to Cartagena. The
governor of Cartagena contributed several small vessels and a hundred or
more men to the enterprise, and on 10th August 1666 the united Spanish
fleet appeared off the shores of Providence. On the refusal of Major
Smith to surrender, the Spaniards landed, and on 15th August, after a
three days' siege, forced the handful of buccaneers, only sixty or
seventy in number, to capitulate. Some of the English defenders later
deposed before Governor Modyford that the Spaniards had agreed to let
them depart in a barque for Jamaica. However this may be, when the
English came to lay down their arms they were made prisoners by the
Spaniards, carried to Porto Bello, and all except Sir Thomas Whetstone,
Major Smith and Captain Stanley, the three English captains, submitted
to the most inhuman cruelties. Thirty-three were chained to the ground
in a dungeon 12 feet by 10. They were forced to work in the water from
five in the morning till seven at night, and at such a rate that the
Spaniards themselves confessed they made one of them do more work than
any three negroes; yet when weak for want of victuals and sleep, they
were knocked down and beaten with cudgels so that four or five died.
"Having no clothes, their backs were blistered with the sun, their heads
scorched, their necks, shoulders and hands raw with carrying stones and
mortar, their feet chopped and their legs bruised and battered with the
irons, and their corpses were noisome to one another." The three English
captains were carried to Panama, and there cast into a dungeon and bound
in irons for seventeen months.[258]
On 8th January 1664 Sir Richard Fanshaw, formerly ambassador to
Portugal, had arrived in Madrid from England to negotiate a treaty of
commerce with Spain, and if possible to patch up a peace between the
Spanish and Portuguese crowns. He had renewed the old demand for a free
commerce in the Indies; and the negotiations had dragged through the
years of 1664 and 1665, hampered and crossed by the factions in the
Spanish court, the hostile machinations of the Dutch resident in Madrid,
and the constant rumours of cruelties and desolations by the freebooters
in America.[259] The Spanish Government insisted that by sole virtue of
the articles of 1630 there was peace on both sides of the "Line," and
that the violences of the buccaneers in the West Indies, and even the
presence of English colonists there, was a breach of the articles. In
this fashion they endeavoured to reduce Fanshaw to the position of a
suppliant for favours which they might only out of their grace and
generosity concede. It was a favourite trick of Spanish diplomacy, which
had been worked many times before. The English ambassador was, in
consequence, compelled strenuously to deny the existence of any peace in
America, although he realised how ambiguous his position had been
rendered by the original orders of Charles II. to Modyford in 1664.[260]
After the death of Philip IV. in 1665, negotiations were renewed with
the encouragement of the Queen Regent, and on 17th December provisional
articles were signed by Fanshaw and the Duke de Medina de los Torres and
sent to England for ratification.[261] Fanshaw died shortly after, and
Lord Sandwich, his successor, finally succeeded in concluding a treaty
on 23rd May 1667.[262] The provisions of the treaty extended to places
"where hitherto trade and commerce hath been accustomed," and the only
privileges obtained in America were those which had been granted to the
Low Countries by the Treaty of Munster. On 21st July of the same year a
general peace was concluded at Breda between England, Holland and
France.
It was in the very midst of Lord Sandwich's negotiations that Modyford
had, as Beeston expresses it in his Journal, declared war against the
Spaniards by the re-issue of privateering commissions. He had done it
all in his own name, however, so that the king might disavow him should
the exigencies of diplomacy demand it.[263] Moreover, at this same time,
in the middle of 1666, Albemarle was writing to Modyford that
notwithstanding the negotiations, in which, as he said, the West Indies
were not at all concerned, the governor might still employ the
privateers as formerly, if it be for the benefit of English interests in
the Indies.[264] The news of the general peace reached Jamaica late in
1667; yet Modyford did not change his policy. It is true that in
February Secretary Lord Arlington had sent directions to restrain the
buccaneers from further acts of violence against the Spaniards;[265] but
Modyford drew his own conclusions from the contradictory orders received
from England, and was conscious, perhaps, that he was only reflecting
the general policy of the home government when he wrote to
Arlington:--"Truly it must be very imprudent to run the hazard of this
place, for obtaining a correspondence which could not but by orders from
Madrid be had.... The Spaniards look on us as intruders and trespassers,
wheresoever they find us in the Indies, and use us accordingly; and were
it in their power, as it is fixed in their wills, would soon turn us out
of all our plantations; and is it reasonable that we should quietly let
them grow upon us until they are able to do it? It must be force alone
that can cut in sunder that unneighbourly maxim of their government to
deny all access to strangers."[266]
These words were very soon translated into action, for in June 1668
Henry Morgan, with a fleet of nine or ten ships and between 400 and 500
men, took and sacked Porto Bello, one of the strongest cities of Spanish
America, and the emporium for most of the European trade of the South
American continent. Henry Morgan was a nephew of the Colonel Edward
Morgan who died in the assault of St. Eustatius. He is said to have been
kidnapped at Bristol while he was a mere lad and sold as a servant in
Barbadoes, whence, on the expiration of his time, he found his way to
Jamaica. There he joined the buccaneers and soon rose to be captain of a
ship. It was probably he who took part in the expedition with Morris and
Jackman to Campeache and Central America. He afterwards joined the
Curaçao armament of Mansfield and was with the latter when he seized the
island of Providence. After Mansfield's disappearance Morgan seems to
have taken his place as the foremost buccaneer leader in Jamaica, and
during the next twenty years he was one of the most considerable men in
the colony. He was but thirty-three years old when he led the expedition
against Porto Bello.[267]
In the beginning of 1668 Sir Thomas Modyford, having had "frequent and
strong advice" that the Spaniards were planning an invasion of Jamaica,
had commissioned Henry Morgan to draw together the English privateers
and take some Spanish prisoners in order to find out if these rumours
were true. The buccaneers, according to Morgan's own report to the
governor, were driven to the south cays of Cuba, where being in want of
victuals and "like to starve," and meeting some Frenchmen in a similar
plight, they put their men ashore to forage. They found all the cattle
driven up into the country, however, and the inhabitants fled. So the
freebooters marched twenty leagues to Puerto Principe on the north side
of the island, and after a short encounter, in which the Spanish
governor was killed, possessed themselves of the place. Nothing of value
escaped the rapacity of the invaders, who resorted to the extremes of
torture to draw from their prisoners confessions of hidden wealth. On
the entreaty of the Spaniards they forebore to fire the town, and for a
ransom of 1000 head of cattle released all the prisoners; but they
compelled the Spaniards to salt the beef and carry it to the ships.[268]
Morgan reported, with what degree of truth we have no means of judging,
that seventy men had been impressed in Puerto Principe to go against
Jamaica, and that a similar levy had been made throughout the island.
Considerable forces, moreover, were expected from the mainland to
rendezvous at Havana and St. Jago, with the final object of invading the
English colony.
On returning to the ships from the sack of Puerto Principe, Morgan
unfolded to his men his scheme of striking at the very heart of Spanish
power in the Indies by capturing Porto Bello. The Frenchmen among his
followers, it seems, wholly refused to join him in this larger design,
full of danger as it was; so Morgan sailed away with only the English
freebooters, some 400 in number, for the coasts of Darien. Exquemelin
has left us a narrative of this exploit which is more circumstantial
than any other we possess, and agrees so closely with what we know from
other sources that we must accept the author's statement that he was an
eye-witness. He relates the whole story, moreover, in so entertaining
and picturesque a manner that he deserves quotation.
"Captain Morgan," he says, "who knew very well all the avenues of this
city, as also all the neighbouring coasts, arrived in the dusk of the
evening at the place called Puerto de Naos, distant ten leagues towards
the west of Porto Bello.[269] Being come unto this place, they mounted
the river in their ships, as far as another harbour called Puerto
Pontin, where they came to anchor. Here they put themselves immediately
into boats and canoes, leaving in the ships only a few men to keep them
and conduct them the next day unto the port. About midnight they came to
a certain place called Estera longa Lemos, where they all went on shore,
and marched by land to the first posts of the city. They had in their
company a certain Englishman, who had been formerly a prisoner in those
parts, and who now served them for a guide. Unto him, and three or four
more, they gave commission to take the sentry, if possible, or to kill
him upon the place. But they laid hands on him and apprehended him with
such cunning as he had no time to give warning with his musket, or make
any other noise. Thus they brought him, with his hands bound, unto
Captain Morgan, who asked him: 'How things went in the city, and what
forces they had'; with many other circumstances, which he was desirous
to know. After every question they made him a thousand menaces to kill
him, in case he declared not the truth. Thus they began to advance
towards the city, carrying always the said sentry bound before them.
Having marched about one quarter of a league, they came to the castle
that is nigh unto the city, which presently they closely surrounded, so
that no person could get either in or out of the said fortress.
"Being thus posted under the walls of the castle, Captain Morgan
commanded the sentry, whom they had taken prisoner, to speak to those
that were within, charging them to surrender, and deliver themselves up
to his discretion; otherwise they should be all cut in pieces, without
giving quarter to any one. But they would hearken to none of these
threats, beginning instantly to fire; which gave notice unto the city,
and this was suddenly alarmed. Yet, notwithstanding, although the
Governor and soldiers of the said castle made as great resistance as
could be performed, they were constrained to surrender unto the Pirates.
These no sooner had taken the castle, than they resolved to be as good
as their words, in putting the Spaniards to the sword, thereby to strike
a terror into the rest of the city. Hereupon, having shut up all the
soldiers and officers as prisoners into one room, they instantly set
fire to the powder (whereof they found great quantity), and blew up the
whole castle into the air, with all the Spaniards that were within. This
being done, they pursued the course of their victory, falling upon the
city, which as yet was not in order to receive them. Many of the
inhabitants cast their precious jewels and moneys into wells and
cisterns or hid them in other places underground, to excuse, as much as
were possible, their being totally robbed. One party of the Pirates
being assigned to this purpose, ran immediately to the cloisters, and
took as many religious men and women as they could find. The Governor of
the city not being able to rally the citizens, through the huge
confusion of the town, retired unto one of the castles remaining, and
from thence began to fire incessantly at the Pirates. But these were not
in the least negligent either to assault him or defend themselves with
all the courage imaginable. Thus it was observed that, amidst the horror
of the assault, they made very few shot in vain. For aiming with great
dexterity at the mouths of the guns, the Spaniards were certain to lose
one or two men every time they charged each gun anew.
"The assault of this castle where the Governor was continued very
furious on both sides, from break of day until noon. Yea, about this
time of the day the case was very dubious which party should conquer or
be conquered. At last the Pirates, perceiving they had lost many men and
as yet advanced but little towards the gaining either this or the other
castles remaining, thought to make use of fireballs, which they threw
with their hands, designing, if possible, to burn the doors of the
castle. But going about to put this in execution, the Spaniards from the
walls let fall great quantity of stones and earthen pots full of powder
and other combustible matter, which forced them to desist from that
attempt. Captain Morgan, seeing this generous defence made by the
Spaniards, began to despair of the whole success of the enterprise.
Hereupon many faint and calm meditations came into his mind; neither
could he determine which way to turn himself in that straitness of
affairs. Being involved in these thoughts, he was suddenly animated to
continue the assault, by seeing the English colours put forth at one of
the lesser castles, then entered by his men, of whom he presently after
spied a troop that came to meet him proclaiming victory with loud shouts
of joy. This instantly put him upon new resolutions of making new
efforts to take the rest of the castles that stood out against him;
especially seeing the chief citizens were fled unto them, and had
conveyed thither great part of their riches, with all the plate
belonging to the churches, and other things dedicated to divine service.
"To this effect, therefore, he ordered ten or twelve ladders to be made,
in all possible haste, so broad that three or four men at once might
ascend by them. These being finished, he commanded all the religious men
and women whom he had taken prisoners to fix them against the walls of
the castle. Thus much he had beforehand threatened the Governor to
perform, in case he delivered not the castle. But his answer was: 'He
would never surrender himself alive.' Captain Morgan was much persuaded
that the Governor would not employ his utmost forces, seeing religious
women and ecclesiastical persons exposed in the front of the soldiers to
the greatest dangers. Thus the ladders, as I have said, were put into
the hands of religious persons of both sexes; and these were forced, at
the head of the companies, to raise and apply them to the walls. But
Captain Morgan was deceived in his judgment of this design. For the
Governor, who acted like a brave and courageous soldier, refused not, in
performance of his duty, to use his utmost endeavours to destroy
whosoever came near the walls. The religious men and women ceased not to
cry unto him and beg of him by all the Saints of Heaven he would deliver
the castle, and hereby spare both his and their own lives. But nothing
could prevail with the obstinacy and fierceness that had possessed the
Governor's mind. Thus many of the religious men and nuns were killed
before they could fix the ladders. Which at last being done, though with
great loss of the said religious people, the Pirates mounted them in
great numbers, and with no less valour; having fireballs in their hands,
and earthen pots full of powder. All which things, being now at the top
of the walls, they kindled and cast in among the Spaniards.
"This effort of the Pirates was very great, insomuch as the Spaniards
could no longer resist nor defend the castle, which was now entered.
Hereupon they all threw down their arms, and craved quarter for their
lives. Only the Governor of the city would admit or crave no mercy; but
rather killed many of the Pirates with his own hands, and not a few of
his own soldiers, because they did not stand to their arms. And although
the Pirates asked him if he would have quarter, yet he constantly
answered: 'By no means; I had rather die as a valiant soldier, than be
hanged as a coward.' They endeavoured as much as they could to take him
prisoner. But he defended himself so obstinately that they were forced
to kill him; notwithstanding all the cries and tears of his own wife and
daughter, who begged of him upon their knees he would demand quarter and
save his life. When the Pirates had possessed themselves of the castle,
which was about night, they enclosed therein all the prisoners they had
taken, placing the women and men by themselves, with some guards upon
them. All the wounded were put into a certain apartment by itself, to
the intent their own complaints might be the cure of their diseases; for
no other was afforded them.
"This being done, they fell to eating and drinking after their usual
manner; that is to say, committing in both these things all manner of
debauchery and excess.... After such manner they delivered themselves up
unto all sort of debauchery, that if there had been found only fifty
courageous men, they might easily have re-taken the city, and killed all
the Pirates. The next day, having plundered all they could find, they
began to examine some of the prisoners (who had been persuaded by their
companions to say they were the richest of the town), charging them
severely to discover where they had hidden their riches and goods. But
not being able to extort anything out of them, as they were not the
right persons that possessed any wealth, they at last resolved to
torture them. This they performed with such cruelty that many of them
died upon the rack, or presently after. Soon after, the President of
Panama had news brought him of the pillage and ruin of Porto Bello. This
intelligence caused him to employ all his care and industry to raise
forces, with design to pursue and cast out the Pirates from thence. But
these cared little for what extraordinary means the President used, as
having their ships nigh at hand, and being determined to set fire unto
the city and retreat. They had now been at Porto Bello fifteen days, in
which space of time they had lost many of their men, both by the
unhealthiness of the country and the extravagant debaucheries they had
committed.[270]
"Hereupon they prepared for a departure, carrying on board their ships
all the pillage they had gotten. But, before all, they provided the
fleet with sufficient victuals for the voyage. While these things were
getting ready, Captain Morgan sent an injunction unto the prisoners,
that they should pay him a ransom for the city, or else he would by fire
consume it to ashes, and blow up all the castles into the air. Withal,
he commanded them to send speedily two persons to seek and procure the
sum he demanded, which amounted to one hundred thousand pieces of eight.
Unto this effect, two men were sent to the President of Panama, who gave
him an account of all these tragedies. The President, having now a body
of men in readiness, set forth immediately towards Porto Bello, to
encounter the Pirates before their retreat. But these people, hearing of
his coming, instead of flying away, went out to meet him at a narrow
passage through which of necessity he ought to pass. Here they placed an
hundred men very well armed; the which, at the first encounter, put to
flight a good party of those of Panama. This accident obliged the
President to retire for that time, as not being yet in a posture of
strength to proceed any farther. Presently after this rencounter he sent
a message unto Captain Morgan to tell him: 'That in case he departed not
suddenly with all his forces from Porto Bello, he ought to expect no
quarter for himself nor his companions, when he should take them, as he
hoped soon to do.' Captain Morgan, who feared not his threats knowing he
had a secure retreat in his ships which were nigh at hand, made him
answer: 'He would not deliver the castles, before he had received the
contribution money he had demanded. Which in case it were not paid down,
he would certainly burn the whole city, and then leave it, demolishing
beforehand the castles and killing the prisoners.'
"The Governor of Panama perceived by this answer that no means would
serve to mollify the hearts of the Pirates, nor reduce them to reason.
Hereupon he determined to leave them; as also those of the city, whom he
came to relieve, involved in the difficulties of making the best
agreement they could with their enemies.[271] Thus, in a few days more,
the miserable citizens gathered the contribution wherein they were
fined, and brought the entire sum of one hundred thousand pieces of
eight unto the Pirates, for a ransom of the cruel captivity they were
fallen into. But the President of Panama, by these transactions, was
brought into an extreme admiration, considering that four hundred men
had been able to take such a great city, with so many strong castles;
especially seeing they had no pieces of cannon, nor other great guns,
wherewith to raise batteries against them. And what was more, knowing
that the citizens of Porto Bello had always great repute of being good
soldiers themselves, and who had never wanted courage in their own
defence. This astonishment was so great, that it occasioned him, for to
be satisfied therein, to send a messenger unto Captain Morgan, desiring
him to send him some small pattern of those arms wherewith he had taken
with such violence so great a city. Captain Morgan received this
messenger very kindly, and treated him with great civility. Which being
done, he gave him a pistol and a few small bullets of lead, to carry
back unto the President, his Master, telling him withal: 'He desired him
to accept that slender pattern of the arms wherewith he had taken Porto
Bello and keep them for a twelvemonth; after which time he promised to
come to Panama and fetch them away.' The governor of Panama returned the
present very soon unto Captain Morgan, giving him thanks for the favour
of lending him such weapons as he needed not, and withal sent him a ring
of gold, with this message: 'That he desired him not to give himself the
labour of coming to Panama, as he had done to Porto Bello; for he did
certify unto him, he should not speed so well here as he had done
there.'
"After these transactions, Captain Morgan (having provided his fleet
with all necessaries, and taken with him the best guns of the castles,
nailing the rest which he could not carry away) set sail from Porto
Bello with all his ships. With these he arrived in a few days unto the
Island of Cuba, where he sought out a place wherein with all quiet and
repose he might make the dividend of the spoil they had gotten. They
found in ready money two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of eight,
besides all other merchandises, as cloth, linen, silks and other goods.
With this rich purchase they sailed again from thence unto their common
place of rendezvous, Jamaica. Being arrived, they passed here some time
in all sorts of vices and debauchery, according to their common manner
of doing, spending with huge prodigality what others had gained with no
small labour and toil."[272]
Morgan and his officers, on their return to Jamaica in the middle of
August, made an official report which places their conduct in a
peculiarly mild and charitable light,[273] and forms a sharp contrast to
the account left us by Exquemelin. According to Morgan the town and
castles were restored "in as good condition as they found them," and the
people were so well treated that "several ladies of great quality and
other prisoners" who were offered "their liberty to go to the
President's camp, refused, saying they were now prisoners to a person of
quality, who was more tender of their honours than they doubted to find
in the president's camp, and so voluntarily continued with them till the
surrender of the town and castles." This scarcely tallies with what we
know of the manners of the freebooters, and Exquemelin's evidence is
probably nearer the truth. When Morgan returned to Jamaica Modyford at
first received him somewhat doubtfully, for Morgan's commission, as the
Governor told him, was only against ships, and the Governor was not at
all sure how the exploit would be taken in England. Morgan, however, had
reported that at Porto Bello, as well as in Cuba, levies were being made
for an attack upon Jamaica, and Modyford laid great stress upon this
point when he forwarded the buccaneer's narrative to the Duke of
Albemarle.
The sack of Porto Bello was nothing less than an act of open war against
Spain, and Modyford, now that he had taken the decisive step, was not
satisfied with half measures. Before the end of October 1668 the whole
fleet of privateers, ten sail and 800 men, had gone out again under
Morgan to cruise on the coasts of Caracas, while Captain Dempster with
several other vessels and 300 followers lay before Havana and along the
shores of Campeache.[274] Modyford had written home repeatedly that if
the king wished him to exercise any adequate control over the
buccaneers, he must send from England two or three nimble fifth-rate
frigates to command their obedience and protect the island from hostile
attacks. Charles in reply to these letters sent out the "Oxford," a
frigate of thirty-four guns, which arrived at Port Royal on 14th
October. According to Beeston's Journal, it brought instructions
countenancing the war, and empowering the governor to commission
whatever persons he thought good to be partners with His Majesty in the
plunder, "they finding victuals, wear and tear."[275] The frigate was
immediately provisioned for a several months' cruise, and sent under
command of Captain Edward Collier to join Morgan's fleet as a private
ship-of-war. Morgan had appointed the Isle la Vache, or Cow Island, on
the south side of Hispaniola, as the rendezvous for the privateers; and
thither flocked great numbers, both English and French, for the name of
Morgan was, by his exploit at Porto Bello, rendered famous in all the
neighbouring islands. Here, too, arrived the "Oxford" in December. Among
the French privateers were two men-of-war, one of which, the "Cour
Volant" of La Rochelle, commanded by M. la Vivon, was seized by Captain
Collier for having robbed an English vessel of provisions. A few days
later, on 2nd January, a council of war was held aboard the "Oxford,"
where it was decided that the privateers, now numbering about 900 men,
should attack Cartagena. While the captains were at dinner on the
quarter-deck, however, the frigate blew up, and about 200 men, including
five captains, were lost.[276] "I was eating my dinner with the rest,"
writes the surgeon, Richard Browne, "when the mainmasts blew out, and
fell upon Captains Aylett, Bigford, and others, and knocked them on the
head; I saved myself by getting astride the mizzenmast." It seems that
out of the whole ship only Morgan and those who sat on his side of the
table were saved. The accident was probably caused by the carelessness
of a gunner. Captain Collier sailed in la Vivon's ship for Jamaica,
where the French captain was convicted of piracy in the Admiralty Court,
and reprieved by Governor Modyford, but his ship confiscated.[277]
Morgan, from the rendezvous at the Isle la Vache, had coasted along the
southern shores of Hispaniola and made several inroads upon the island
for the purpose of securing beef and other provisions. Some of his
ships, meanwhile, had been separated from the body of the fleet, and at
last he found himself with but eight vessels and 400 or 500 men,
scarcely more than half his original company. With these small numbers
he changed his resolution to attempt Cartagena, and set sail for
Maracaibo, a town situated on the great lagoon of that name in
Venezuela. This town had been pillaged in 1667, just before the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, by 650 buccaneers led by two French captains,
L'Olonnais and Michel le Basque, and had suffered all the horrors
attendant upon such a visit. In March 1669 Morgan appeared at the
entrance to the lake, forced the passage after a day's hot bombardment,
dismantled the fort which commanded it, and entered Maracaibo, from
which the inhabitants had fled before him. The buccaneers sacked the
town, and scoured the woods in search of the Spaniards and their
valuables. Men, women and children were brought in and cruelly tortured
to make them confess where their treasures were hid. Morgan, at the end
of three weeks, "having now got by degrees into his hands about 100 of
the chief families," resolved to go to Gibraltar, near the head of the
lake, as L'Olonnais had done before him. Here the scenes of inhuman
cruelty, "the tortures, murders, robberies and such like insolences,"
were repeated for five weeks; after which the buccaneers, gathering up
their rich booty, returned to Maracaibo, carrying with them four
hostages for the ransom of the town and prisoners, which the inhabitants
promised to send after them. At Maracaibo Morgan learnt that three large
Spanish men-of-war were lying off the entrance of the lake, and that the
fort, in the meantime, had been armed and manned and put into a posture
of defence. In order to gain time he entered into negotiations with the
Spanish admiral, Don Alonso del Campo y Espinosa, while the privateers
carefully made ready a fireship disguised as a man-of-war. At dawn on
1st May 1669, according to Exquemelin, they approached the Spanish ships
riding at anchor within the entry of the lake, and sending the fireship
ahead of the rest, steered directly for them. The fireship fell foul of
the "Almirante," a vessel of forty guns, grappled with her and set her
in flames. The second Spanish ship, when the plight of the Admiral was
discovered, was run aground and burnt by her own men. The third was
captured by the buccaneers. As no quarter was given or taken, the loss
of the Spaniards must have been considerable, although some of those on
the Admiral, including Don Alonso, succeeded in reaching shore. From a
pilot picked up by the buccaneers, Morgan learned that in the flagship
was a great quantity of plate to the value of 40,000 pieces of eight. Of
this he succeeded in recovering about half, much of it melted by the
force of the heat. Morgan then returned to Maracaibo to refit his prize,
and opening negotiations again with Don Alonso, he actually succeeded in
obtaining 20,000 pieces of eight and 500 head of cattle as a ransom for
the city. Permission to pass the fort, however, the Spaniard refused.
So, having first made a division of the spoil,[278] Morgan resorted to
an ingenious stratagem to effect his egress from the lake. He led the
Spaniards to believe that he was landing his men for an attack on the
fort from the land side; and while the Spaniards were moving their guns
in that direction, Morgan in the night, by the light of the moon, let
his ships drop gently down with the tide till they were abreast of the
fort, and then suddenly spreading sail made good his escape. On 17th May
the buccaneers returned to Port Royal.
These events in the West Indies filled the Spanish Court with impotent
rage, and the Conde de Molina, ambassador in England, made repeated
demands for the punishment of Modyford, and for the restitution of the
plate and other captured goods which were beginning to flow into England
from Jamaica. The English Council replied that the treaty of 1667 was
not understood to include the Indies, and Charles II. sent him a long
list of complaints of ill-usage to English ships at the hands of the
Spaniards in America.[279] Orders seem to have been sent to Modyford,
however, to stop hostilities, for in May 1669 Modyford again called in
all commissions,[280] and Beeston writes in his Journal, under 14th
June, that peace was publicly proclaimed with the Spaniards. In
November, moreover, the governor told Albemarle that most of the
buccaneers were turning to trade, hunting or planting, and that he hoped
soon to reduce all to peaceful pursuits.[281] The Spanish Council of
State, in the meantime, had determined upon a course of active reprisal.
A commission from the queen-regent, dated 20th April 1669, commanded her
governors in the Indies to make open war against the English;[282] and a
fleet of six vessels, carrying from eighteen to forty-eight guns, was
sent from Spain to cruise against the buccaneers. To this fleet belonged
the three ships which tried to bottle up Morgan in Lake Maracaibo. Port
Royal was filled with report and rumour of English ships captured and
plundered, of cruelties to English prisoners in the dungeons of
Cartagena, of commissions of war issued at Porto Bello and St. Jago de
Cuba, and of intended reprisals upon the settlements in Jamaica. The
privateers became restless and spoke darkly of revenge, while Modyford,
his old supporter the Duke of Albemarle having just died, wrote home
begging for orders which would give him liberty to retaliate.[283] The
last straw fell in June 1670, when two Spanish men-of-war from St. Jago
de Cuba, commanded by a Portuguese, Manuel Rivero Pardal, landed men on
the north side of the island, burnt some houses and carried off a number
of the inhabitants as prisoners.[284] On 2nd July the governor and
council issued a commission to Henry Morgan, as commander-in-chief of
all ships of war belonging to Jamaica, to get together the privateers
for the defence of the island, to attack, seize and destroy all the
enemy's vessels he could discover, and in case he found it feasible, "to
land and attack St. Jago or any other place where ... are stores for
this war or a rendezvous for their forces." In the accompanying
instructions he was bidden "to advise his fleet and soldiers that they
were upon the old pleasing account of no purchase, no pay, and therefore
that all which is got, shall be divided amongst them, according to the
accustomed rules."[285]
Morgan sailed from Jamaica on 14th August 1670 with eleven vessels and
600 men for the Isle la Vache, the usual rendezvous, whence during the
next three months squadrons were detailed to the coast of Cuba and the
mainland of South America to collect provisions and intelligence. Sir
William Godolphin was at that moment in Madrid concluding articles for
the establishment of peace and friendship in America; and on 12th June
Secretary Arlington wrote to Modyford that in view of these negotiations
his Majesty commanded the privateers to forbear all hostilities on land
against the Spaniards.[286] These orders reached Jamaica on 13th August,
whereupon the governor recalled Morgan, who had sailed from the harbour
the day before, and communicated them to him, "strictly charging him to
observe the same and behave with all moderation possible in carrying on
the war." The admiral replied that necessity would compel him to land in
the Spaniards' country for wood, water and provisions, but unless he was
assured that the enemy in their towns were making hostile preparations
against the Jamaicans, he would not touch any of them.[287] On 6th
September, however, Vice-Admiral Collier with six sail and 400 men was
dispatched by Morgan to the Spanish Main. There on 4th November he
seized, in the harbour of Santa Marta, two frigates laden with
provisions for Maracaibo. Then coasting eastward to Rio de la Hacha, he
attacked and captured the fort with its commander and all its garrison,
sacked the city, held it to ransom for salt, maize, meat and other
provisions, and after occupying it for almost a month returned on 28th
October to the Isle la Vache.[288] One of the frigates captured at Santa
Marta, "La Gallardina," had been with Pardal when he burnt the coast of
Jamaica. Pardal's own ship of fourteen guns had been captured but a
short time before by Captain John Morris at the east end of Cuba, and
Pardal himself shot through the neck and killed.[289] He was called by
the Jamaicans "the vapouring admiral of St. Jago," for in June he had
nailed a piece of canvas to a tree on the Jamaican coast, with a curious
challenge written both in English and Spanish:--
"I, Captain Manuel Rivero Pardal, to the chief of the squadron of
privateers in Jamaica. I am he who this year have done that which
follows. I went on shore at Caimanos, and burnt 20 houses, and fought
with Captain Ary, and took from him a catch laden with provisions and a
canoe. And I am he who took Captain Baines and did carry the prize to
Cartagena, and now am arrived to this coast, and have burnt it. And I
come to seek General Morgan, with 2 ships of 20 guns, and having seen
this, I crave he would come out upon the coast and seek me, that he
might see the valour of the Spaniards. And because I had no time I did
not come to the mouth of Port Royal to speak by word of mouth in the
name of my king, whom God preserve. Dated the 5th of July 1670."[290]
Meanwhile, in the middle of October, there sailed into Port Royal three
privateers, Captains Prince, Harrison and Ludbury, who six weeks before
had ascended the river San Juan in Nicaragua with 170 men and again
plundered the unfortunate city of Granada. The town had rapidly decayed,
however, under the repeated assaults of the buccaneers, and the
plunderers secured only £20 or £30 per man. Modyford reproved the
captains for acting without commissions, but "not deeming it prudent to
press the matter too far in this juncture," commanded them to join
Morgan at the Isle la Vache.[291] There Morgan was slowly mustering his
strength. He negotiated with the French of Tortuga and Hispaniola who
were then in revolt against the _régime_ of the French Company; and he
added to his forces seven ships and 400 men sent him by the
indefatigable Governor of Jamaica. On 7th October, indeed, the venture
was almost ruined by a violent storm which cast the whole fleet, except
the Admiral's vessel, upon the shore. All of the ships but three,
however, were eventually got off and repaired, and on 6th December
Morgan was able to write to Modyford that he had 1800 buccaneers,
including several hundred French, and thirty-six ships under his
command.[292] Upon consideration of the reports brought from the Main by
his own men, and the testimony of prisoners they had taken, Morgan
decided that it was impossible to attempt what seems to have been his
original design, a descent upon St. Jago de Cuba, without great loss of
men and ships. On 2nd December, therefore, it was unanimously agreed by
a general council of all the captains, thirty-seven in number, "that it
stands most for the good of Jamaica and safety of us all to take Panama,
the President thereof having granted several commissions against the
English."[293] Six days later the fleet put to sea from Cape Tiburon,
and on the morning of the 14th sighted Providence Island. The Spanish
governor capitulated next day, on condition of being transported with
his garrison to the mainland, and four of his soldiers who had formerly
been banditti in the province of Darien agreed to become guides for the
English.[294] After a delay of five days more, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph
Bradley, with between 400 and 500 men in three ships, was sent ahead by
Morgan to the isthmus to seize the Castle of San Lorenzo, situated at
the mouth of the Chagre river.
The President of Panama, meanwhile, on 15th December, had received a
messenger from the governor of Cartagena with news of the coming of the
English.[295] The president immediately dispatched reinforcements to the
Castle of Chagre, which arrived fifteen days before the buccaneers and
raised its strength to over 350 men. Two hundred men were sent to Porto
Bello, and 500 more were stationed at Venta Cruz and in ambuscades along
the Chagre river to oppose the advance of the English. The president
himself rose from a bed of sickness to head a reserve of 800, but most
of his men were raw recruits without a professional soldier amongst
them. This militia in a few days became so panic-stricken that one-third
deserted in a night, and the president was compelled to retire to
Panama. There the Spaniards managed to load some of the treasure upon
two or three ships lying in the roadstead; and the nuns and most of the
citizens of importance also embarked with their wives, children and
personal property.[296]
The fort or castle of San Lorenzo, which stood on a hill commanding the
river Chagre, seems to have been built of double rows of wooden
palisades, the space between being filled with earth; and it was
protected by a ditch 12 feet deep and by several smaller batteries
nearer the water's edge. Lieutenant-Colonel Bradley, who, according to
Exquemelin, had been on these coasts before with Captain Mansfield,
landed near the fort on the 27th of December. He and his men fought in
the trenches from early afternoon till eight o'clock next morning, when
they stormed and carried the place. The buccaneers suffered severely,
losing about 150 in killed and wounded, including Bradley himself who
died ten days later. Exquemelin gives a very vivid account of the
action. The buccaneers, he writes, "came to anchor in a small port, at
the distance of a league more or less from the castle. The next morning
very early they went on shore, and marched through the woods, to attack
the castle on that side. This march continued until two o'clock,
afternoon, by reason of the difficulties of the way, and its mire and
dirt. And although their guides served them exactly, notwithstanding
they came so nigh the castle at first that they lost many of their men
with the shot from the guns, they being in an open place where nothing
could cover nor defend them. This much perplexed the Pirates ..." (but)
"at last after many doubts and disputes among themselves they resolved
to hazard the assault and their lives after a most desperate manner.
Thus they advanced towards the castle, with their swords in one hand and
fireballs in the other. The Spaniards defended themselves very briskly,
ceasing not to fire at them with their great guns and muskets
continually crying withal: 'Come on, ye English dogs, enemies to God and
our King; let your other companions that are behind come on too, ye
shall not go to Panama this bout.' After the Pirates had made some trial
to climb up the walls, they were forced to retreat, which they
accordingly did, resting themselves until night. This being done, they
returned to the assault, to try if by the help of their fireballs they
could overcome and pull down the pales before the wall. This they
attempted to do, and while they were about it there happened a very
remarkable accident, which gave them the opportunity of the victory. One
of the Pirates was wounded with an arrow in his back, which pierced his
body to the other side. This he instantly pulled out with great valour
at the side of his breast; then taking a little cotton that he had about
him, he wound it about the said arrow, and putting it into his musket,
he shot it back into the castle. But the cotton being kindled by the
powder, occasioned two or three houses that were within the castle,
being thatched with palm-leaves, to take fire, which the Spaniards
perceived not so soon as was necessary. For this fire meeting with a
parcel of powder, blew it up and thereby caused great ruin, and no less
consternation to the Spaniards, who were not able to account for this
accident, not having seen the beginning thereof.
"Thus the Pirates perceiving the good effect of the arrow and the
beginning of the misfortune of the Spaniards, were infinitely gladdened
thereat. And while they were busied in extinguishing the fire, which
caused great confusion in the whole castle, having not sufficient water
wherewithal to do it, the Pirates made use of this opportunity, setting
fire likewise to the palisades. Thus the fire was seen at the same time
in several parts about the castle, which gave them huge advantage
against the Spaniards. For many breaches were made at once by the fire
among the pales, great heaps of earth falling down into the ditch. Upon
these the Pirates climbed up, and got over into the castle,
notwithstanding that some Spaniards, who were not busied about the fire,
cast down upon them many flaming pots, full of combustible matter and
odious smells, which occasioned the loss of many of the English.
"The Spaniards, notwithstanding the great resistance they made, could
not hinder the palisades from being entirely burnt before midnight.
Meanwhile the Pirates ceased not to persist in their intention of taking
the castle. Unto which effect, although the fire was great, they would
creep upon the ground, as nigh unto it as they could, and shoot amidst
the flames, against the Spaniards they could perceive on the other side,
and thus cause many to fall dead from the walls. When day was come, they
observed all the moveable earth that lay between the pales to be fallen
into the ditch in huge quantity. So that now those within the castle did
in a manner lie equally exposed to them without, as had been on the
contrary before. Whereupon the Pirates continued shooting very furiously
against them, and killed great numbers of Spaniards. For the Governor
had given them orders not to retire from those posts which corresponded
to the heaps of earth fallen into the ditch, and caused the artillery to
be transported unto the breaches.
"Notwithstanding, the fire within the castle still continued, and now
the Pirates from abroad used what means they could to hinder its
progress, by shooting incessantly against it. One party of the Pirates
was employed only to this purpose, and another commanded to watch all
the motions of the Spaniards, and take all opportunities against them.
About noon the English happened to gain a breach, which the Governor
himself defended with twenty-five soldiers. Here was performed a very
courageous and warlike resistance by the Spaniards, both with muskets,
pikes, stones and swords. Yet notwithstanding, through all these arms
the Pirates forced and fought their way, till at last they gained the
castle. The Spaniards who remained alive cast themselves down from the
castle into the sea, choosing rather to die precipitated by their own
selves (few or none surviving the fall) than to ask any quarter for
their lives. The Governor himself retreated unto the corps du garde,
before which were placed two pieces of cannon. Here he intended still to
defend himself, neither would he demand any quarter. But at last he was
killed with a musket shot, which pierced his skull into the brain.
"The Governor being dead, and the corps du garde surrendered, they found
still remaining in it alive to the number of thirty men, whereof scarce
ten were not wounded. These informed the Pirates that eight or nine of
their soldiers had deserted their colours, and were gone to Panama to
carry news of their arrival and invasion. These thirty men alone were
remaining of three hundred and fourteen, wherewith the castle was
garrisoned, among which number not one officer was found alive. These
were all made prisoners, and compelled to tell whatsoever they knew of
their designs and enterprises."[297]
Five days after the taking of the castle, Morgan arrived from Providence
Island with the rest of the armament; but at the entrance to the Chagre
river, in passing over the bar, his flagship and five or six smaller
boats were wrecked, and ten men were drowned. After repairing and
provisioning the castle, and leaving 300 men to guard it and the ships,
Morgan, on 9th January 1671, at the head of 1400 men, began the ascent
of the river in seven small vessels and thirty-six canoes.[298] The
story of this brilliant march we will again leave to Exquemelin, who
took part in it, to relate. The first day "they sailed only six leagues,
and came to a place called De los Bracos. Here a party of his men went
on shore, only to sleep some few hours and stretch their limbs, they
being almost crippled with lying too much crowded in the boats. After
they had rested awhile, they went abroad, to see if any victuals could
be found in the neighbouring plantations. But they could find none, the
Spaniards being fled and carrying with them all the provisions they had.
This day, being the first of their journey, there was amongst them such
scarcity of victuals that the greatest part were forced to pass with
only a pipe of tobacco, without any other refreshment.
"The next day, very early in the morning, they continued their journey,
and came about evening to a place called Cruz de Juan Gallego. Here they
were compelled to leave their boats and canoes, by reason the river was
very dry for want of rain, and the many obstacles of trees that were
fallen into it. The guides told them that about two leagues farther on
the country would be very good to continue the journey by land. Hereupon
they left some companies, being in all one hundred and sixty men,[299]
on board the boats to defend them, with intent they might serve for a
place of refuge in case of necessity.
"The next morning, being the third day of their journey, they all went
ashore, excepting those above-mentioned who were to keep the boats. Unto
these Captain Morgan gave very strict orders, under great penalties,
that no man, upon any pretext whatsoever, should dare to leave the boats
and go ashore. This he did, fearing lest they should be surprised and
cut off by an ambuscade of Spaniards, that might chance to lie
thereabouts in the neighbouring woods, which appeared so thick as to
seem almost impenetrable. Having this morning begun their march, they
found the ways so dirty and irksome, that Captain Morgan thought it more
convenient to transport some of the men in canoes (though it could not
be done without great labour) to a place farther up the river, called
Cedro Bueno. Thus they re-embarked, and the canoes returned for the rest
that were left behind. So that about night they found themselves all
together at the said place. The Pirates were extremely desirous to meet
any Spaniards, or Indians, hoping to fill their bellies with what
provisions they should take from them. For now they were reduced almost
to the very extremity of hunger.
"On the fourth day, the greatest part of the Pirates marched by land,
being led by one of the guides. The rest went by water, farther up with
the canoes, being conducted by another guide, who always went before
them with two of the said canoes, to discover on both sides the river
the ambuscades of the Spaniards. These had also spies, who were very
dextrous, and could at any time give notice of all accidents or of the
arrival of the Pirates, six hours at least before they came to any
place. This day about noon they found themselves nigh unto a post,
called Torna Cavallos. Here the guide of the canoes began to cry aloud
he perceived an ambuscade. His voice caused infinite joy unto all the
Pirates, as persuading themselves they should find some provisions
wherewith to satiate their hunger, which was very great. Being come unto
the place, they found nobody in it, the Spaniards who were there not
long before being every one fled, and leaving nothing behind unless it
were a small number of leather bags, all empty, and a few crumbs of
bread scattered upon the ground where they had eaten.[300] Being angry
at this misfortune, they pulled down a few little huts which the
Spaniards had made, and afterwards fell to eating the leathern bags, as
being desirous to afford something to the ferment of their stomachs,
which now was grown so sharp that it did gnaw their very bowels, having
nothing else to prey upon. Thus they made a huge banquet upon those bags
of leather, which doubtless had been more grateful unto them, if divers
quarrels had not risen concerning who should have the greatest share. By
the circumference of the place they conjectured five hundred Spaniards,
more or less, had been there. And these, finding no victuals, they were
now infinitely desirous to meet, intending to devour some of them rather
than perish. Whom they would certainly in that occasion have roasted or
boiled, to satisfy their famine, had they been able to take them.
"After they had feasted themselves with those pieces of leather, they
quitted the place, and marched farther on, till they came about night to
another post called Torna Munni. Here they found another ambuscade, but
as barren and desert as the former. They searched the neighbouring
woods, but could not find the least thing to eat. The Spaniards having
been so provident as not to leave behind them anywhere the least crumb
of sustenance, whereby the Pirates were now brought to the extremity
aforementioned. Here again he was happy, that had reserved since noon
any small piece of leather whereof to make his supper, drinking after it
a good draught of water for his greatest comfort. Some persons who never
were out of their mothers' kitchens may ask how these Pirates could eat,
swallow and digest those pieces of leather, so hard and dry. Unto whom I
only answer: That could they once experiment what hunger, or rather
famine, is, they would certainly find the manner, by their own
necessity, as the Pirates did. For these first took the leather, and
sliced it in pieces. Then did they beat it between two stones and rub
it, often dipping it in the water of the river, to render it by these
means supple and tender. Lastly they scraped off the hair, and roasted
or broiled it upon the fire. And being thus cooked they cut it into
small morsels, and eat it, helping it down with frequent gulps of water,
which by good fortune they had nigh at hand.
"They continued their march the fifth day, and about noon came unto a
place called Barbacoa. Here likewise they found traces of another
ambuscade, but the place totally as unprovided as the two precedent
were. At a small distance were to be seen several plantations, which
they searched very narrowly, but could not find any person, animal or
other thing that was capable of relieving their extreme and ravenous
hunger. Finally, having ranged up and down and searched a long time,
they found a certain grotto which seemed to be but lately hewn out of a
rock, in which they found two sacks of meal, wheat and like things, with
two great jars of wine, and certain fruits called Platanos. Captain
Morgan, knowing that some of his men were now, through hunger, reduced
almost to the extremity of their lives, and fearing lest the major part
should be brought into the same condition, caused all that was found to
be distributed amongst them who were in greatest necessity. Having
refreshed themselves with these victuals, they began to march anew with
greater courage than ever. Such as could not well go for weakness were
put into the canoes, and those commanded to land that were in them
before. Thus they prosecuted their journey till late at night, at which
time they came unto a plantation where they took up their rest. But
without eating anything at all; for the Spaniards, as before, had swept
away all manner of provisions, leaving not behind them the least signs
of victuals.
"On the sixth day they continued their march, part of them by land
through the woods, and part by water in the canoes. Howbeit they were
constrained to rest themselves very frequently by the way, both for the
ruggedness thereof and the extreme weakness they were under. Unto this
they endeavoured to occur, by eating some leaves of trees and green
herbs, or grass, such as they could pick, for such was the miserable
condition they were in. This day, at noon, they arrived at a plantation,
where they found a barn full of maize. Immediately they beat down the
doors, and fell to eating of it dry, as much as they could devour.
Afterwards they distributed great quantity, giving to every man a good
allowance thereof. Being thus provided they prosecuted their journey,
which having continued for the space of an hour or thereabouts, they met
with an ambuscade of Indians. This they no sooner had discovered, but
they threw away their maize, with the sudden hopes they conceived of
finding all things in abundance. But after all this haste, they found
themselves much deceived, they meeting neither Indians nor victuals, nor
anything else of what they had imagined. They saw notwithstanding on the
other side of the river a troop of a hundred Indians more or less, who
all escaped away through the agility of their feet. Some few Pirates
there were who leapt into the river, the sooner to reach the shore to
see if they could take any of the said Indians prisoners. But all was in
vain; for being much more nimble on their feet than the Pirates they
easily baffled their endeavours. Neither did they only baffle them, but
killed also two or three of the Pirates with their arrows, shooting at
them at a distance, and crying: 'Ha! perros, a la savana, a la savana.
Ha! ye dogs, go to the plain, go to the plain.'
"This day they could advance no further, by reason they were
necessitated to pass the river hereabouts to continue their march on the
other side. Hereupon they took up their repose for that night. Howbeit
their sleep was not heavy nor profound, for great murmurings were heard
that night in the camp, many complaining of Captain Morgan and his
conduct in that enterprise, and being desirous to return home. On the
contrary, others would rather die there than go back one step from what
they had undertaken. But others who had greater courage than any of
these two parties did laugh and joke at all their discourses. In the
meanwhile they had a guide who much comforted them, saying: 'It would
not now be long before they met with people, from whom they should reap
some considerable advantage.'
"The seventh day in the morning they all made clean their arms, and
every one discharged his pistol or musket without bullet, to examine the
security of their firelocks. This being done, they passed to the other
side of the river in the canoes, leaving the post where they had rested
the night before, called Santa Cruz. Thus they proceeded on their
journey till noon, at which time they arrived at a village called
Cruz.[301] Being at a great distance as yet from the place, they
perceived much smoke to arise out of the chimneys. The sight hereof
afforded them great joy and hopes of finding people in the town, and
afterwards what they most desired, which was plenty of good cheer. Thus
they went on with as much haste as they could, making several arguments
to one another upon those external signs, though all like castles built
in the air. 'For,' said they, 'there is smoke coming out of every house,
and therefore they are making good fires to roast and boil what we are
to eat.' With other things to this purpose.
"At length they arrived there in great haste, all sweating and panting,
but found no person in the town, nor anything that was eatable wherewith
to refresh themselves, unless it were good fires to warm themselves,
which they wanted not. For the Spaniards before their departure, had
every one set fire to his own house, excepting only the storehouses and
stables belonging to the King.
"They had not left behind them any beast whatsoever, either alive or
dead. This occasioned much confusion in their minds, they not finding
the least thing to lay hold on, unless it were some few cats and dogs,
which they immediately killed and devoured with great appetite. At last
in the King's stables they found by good fortune fifteen or sixteen jars
of Peru wine, and a leather sack full of bread. But no sooner had they
begun to drink of the said wine when they fell sick, almost every man.
This sudden disaster made them think that the wine was poisoned, which
caused a new consternation in the whole camp, as judging themselves now
to be irrecoverably lost. But the true reason was, their huge want of
sustenance in that whole voyage, and the manifold sorts of trash which
they had eaten upon that occasion. Their sickness was so great that day
as caused them to remain there till the next morning, without being able
to prosecute their journey as they used to do, in the afternoon. This
village is seated in the latitude in 9 degrees and 2 minutes, northern
latitude, being distant from the river of Chagre twenty-six Spanish
leagues, and eight from Panama. Moreover, this is the last place unto
which boats or canoes can come; for which reason they built here
store-houses, wherein to keep all sorts of merchandise, which from hence
to and from Panama are transported upon the backs of mules.
"Here therefore Captain Morgan was constrained to leave his canoes and
land all his men, though never so weak in their bodies. But lest the
canoes should be surprised, or take up too many men for their defence,
he resolved to send them all back to the place where the boats were,
excepting one, which he caused to be hidden, to the intent it might
serve to carry intelligence according to the exigency of affairs. Many
of the Spaniards and Indians belonging to this village were fled to the
plantations thereabouts. Hereupon Captain Morgan gave express orders
that none should dare to go out of the village, except in whole
companies of a hundred together. The occasion hereof was his fear lest
the enemy should take an advantage upon his men, by any sudden assault.
Notwithstanding, one party of English soldiers stickled not to
contravene these commands, being thereunto tempted with the desire of
finding victuals. But these were soon glad to fly into the town again,
being assaulted with great fury by some Spaniards and Indians, who
snatched up one of the Pirates, and carried him away prisoner. Thus the
vigilance and care of Captain Morgan was not sufficient to prevent every
accident that might happen.
"On the eighth day, in the morning, Captain Morgan sent two hundred men
before the body of his army, to discover the way to Panama, and see if
they had laid any ambuscades therein. Especially considering that the
places by which they were to pass were very fit for that purpose, the
paths being so narrow that only ten or twelve persons could march in a
file, and oftentimes not so many. Having marched about the space of ten
hours, they came unto a place called Quebrada Obscura. Here, all on a
sudden, three or four thousand arrows were shot at them, without being
able to perceive from whence they came, or who shot them. The place,
from whence it was presumed they were shot was a high rocky mountain,
excavated from one side to the other, wherein was a grotto that went
through it, only capable of admitting one horse, or other beast laden.
This multitude of arrows caused a huge alarm among the Pirates,
especially because they could not discover the place from whence they
were discharged. At last, seeing no more arrows to appear, they marched
a little farther, and entered into a wood. Here they perceived some
Indians to fly as fast as they could possible before them, to take the
advantage of another post, and thence observe the march of the Pirates.
There remained, notwithstanding one troop of Indians upon the place,
with full design to fight and defend themselves. This combat they
performed with huge courage, till such time as their captain fell to the
ground wounded, who although he was now in despair of life, yet his
valour being greater than his strength, would demand no quarter, but,
endeavouring to raise himself, with undaunted mind laid hold of his
azagaya, or javelin, and struck at one of the Pirates. But before he
could second the blow, he was shot to death with a pistol. This was also
the fate of many of his companions, who like good and courageous
soldiers lost their lives with their captain, for the defence of their
country.
"The Pirates endeavoured, as much as was possible, to lay hold on some
of the Indians and take them prisoners. But they being infinitely
swifter than the Pirates, every one escaped, leaving eight Pirates dead
upon the place and ten wounded.[302] Yea, had the Indians been more
dextrous in military affairs, they might have defended that passage, and
not let one sole man to pass. Within a little while after they came to a
large campaign field open and full of variegated meadows. From here they
could perceive at a distance before them a parcel of Indians who stood
on the top of a mountain, very nigh unto the way by which the Pirates
were to pass. They sent a troop of fifty men, the nimblest they could
pick out, to see if they could catch any of them, and afterwards force
them to declare whereabouts their companions had their mansions. But all
their industry was in vain, for they escaped through their nimbleness,
and presently after showed themselves in another place, hallooing unto
the English, and crying: 'A la savana, a la savana, cornudos, perros
Ingleses;' that is, 'To the plain, to the plain, ye cockolds, ye English
dogs!' While these things passed, the ten Pirates that were wounded a
little before were dressed and plastered up.
"At this place there was a wood and on each side thereof a mountain. The
Indians had possessed themselves of the one, and the Pirates took
possession of the other that was opposite unto it. Captain Morgan was
persuaded that in the wood the Spaniards had placed an ambuscade, as
lying so conveniently for that purpose. Hereupon he sent before two
hundred men to search it. The Spaniards and Indians, perceiving the
Pirates to descend the mountain, did so too, as if they designed to
attack them. But being got into the wood, out of sight of the Pirates,
they disappeared, and were seen no more, leaving the passage open unto
them.
"About night there fell a great rain, which caused the Pirates to march
the faster and seek everywhere for houses wherein to preserve their arms
from being wet. But the Indians had set fire to every one thereabouts,
and transported all their cattle unto remote places, to the end that the
Pirates, finding neither houses nor victuals, might be constrained to
return homewards. Notwithstanding, after diligent search, they found a
few little huts belonging to shepherds, but in them nothing to eat.
These not being capable of holding many men, they placed in them out of
every company a small number, who kept the arms of the rest of the army.
Those who remained in the open field endured much hardship that night,
the rain not ceasing to fall until the morning.
"The next morning, about break of day, being the ninth of this tedious
journey, Captain Morgan continued his march while the fresh air of the
morning lasted. For the clouds then hanging as yet over their heads were
much more favourable unto them than the scorching rays of the sun, by
reason the way was now more difficult and laborious than all the
precedent. After two hours' march, they discovered a troop of about
twenty Spaniards. who observed the motions of the Pirates. They
endeavoured to catch some of them, but could lay hold on none, they
suddenly disappearing, and absconding themselves in caves among the
rocks, totally unknown to the Pirates. At last they came to a high
mountain, which, when they ascended, they discovered from the top
thereof the South Sea. This happy sight, as if it were the end of their
labours, caused infinite joy among the Pirates. From hence they could
descry also one ship and six boats, which were set forth from Panama,
and sailed towards the islands of Tavoga and Tavogilla. Having descended
this mountain, they came unto a vale, in which they found great quantity
of cattle, whereof they killed good store. Here while some were employed
in killing and flaying of cows, horses, bulls and chiefly asses, of
which there was greatest number, others busied themselves in kindling of
fires and getting wood wherewith to roast them. Thus cutting the flesh
of these animals into convenient pieces, or gobbets, they threw them
into the fire and, half carbonadoed or roasted, they devoured them with
incredible haste and appetite. For such was their hunger that they more
resembled cannibals than Europeans at this banquet, the blood many times
running down from their beards to the middle of their bodies.
"Having satisfied their hunger with these delicious meats, Captain
Morgan ordered them to continue the march. Here again he sent before the
main body fifty men, with intent to take some prisoners, if possibly
they could. For he seemed now to be much concerned that in nine days'
time he could not meet one person who might inform him of the condition
and forces of the Spaniards. About evening they discovered a troop of
two hundred Spaniards, more or less, who hallooed unto the Pirates, but
these could not understand what they said. A little while after they
came the first time within sight of the highest steeple of Panama. This
steeple they no sooner had discovered but they began to show signs of
extreme joy, casting up their hats into the air, leaping for mirth, and
shouting, even just as if they had already obtained the victory and
entire accomplishment of their designs. All their trumpets were sounded
and every drum beaten, in token of this universal acclamation and huge
alacrity of their minds. Thus they pitched their camp for that night
with general content of the whole army, waiting with impatience for the
morning, at which time they intended to attack the city. This evening
there appeared fifty horse who came out of the city, hearing the noise
of the drums and trumpets of the Pirates, to observe, as it was thought,
their motions. They came almost within musket-shot of the army, being
preceded by a trumpet that sounded marvellously well. Those on horseback
hallooed aloud unto the Pirates, and threatened them, saying, 'Perros!
nos veremos,' that is, 'Ye dogs! we shall meet ye.' Having made this
menace they returned to the city, excepting only seven or eight horsemen
who remained hovering thereabouts, to watch what motions the Pirates
made. Immediately after, the city began to fire and ceased not to play
with their biggest guns all night long against the camp, but with little
or no harm unto the Pirates, whom they could not conveniently reach.
About this time also the two hundred Spaniards whom the Pirates had seen
in the afternoon appeared again within sight, making resemblance as if
they would block up the passages, to the intent no Pirates might escape
the hands of their forces. But the Pirates, who were now in a manner
besieged, instead of conceiving any fear of their blockades, as soon as
they had placed sentries about their camp, began every one to open their
satchels, and without any preparation of napkins or plates, fell to
eating very heartily the remaining pieces of bulls' and horses' flesh
which they had reserved since noon. This being done, they laid
themselves down to sleep upon the grass with great repose and huge
satisfaction, expecting only with impatience for the dawnings of the
next day.
"On the tenth day, betimes in the morning, they put all their men in
convenient order, and with drums and trumpets sounding, continued their
march directly towards the city. But one of the guides desired Captain
Morgan not to take the common highway that led thither, fearing lest
they should find in it much resistance and many ambuscades. He presently
took his advice, and chose another way that went through the wood,
although very irksome and difficult. Thus the Spaniards, perceiving the
Pirates had taken another way, which they scarce had thought on or
believed, were compelled to leave their stops and batteries, and come
out to meet them. The Governor of Panama put his forces in order,
consisting of two squadrons, four regiments of foot, and a huge number
of wild bulls, which were driven by a great number of Indians, with some
negroes and others to help them.
"The Pirates being now upon their march, came unto the top of a little
hill, from whence they had a large prospect of the city and campaign
country underneath. Here they discovered the forces of the people of
Panama, extended in battle array, which, when they perceived to be so
numerous, they were suddenly surprised with great fear, much doubting
the fortune of the day. Yea, few or none there were but wished
themselves at home, or at least free from the obligation of that
engagement, wherein they perceived their lives must be so narrowly
concerned. Having been some time at a stand, in a wavering condition of
mind, they at last reflected upon the straits they had brought
themselves into, and that now they ought of necessity either to fight
resolutely or die, for no quarter could be expected from an enemy
against whom they had committed so many cruelties on all occasions.
Hereupon they encouraged one another, and resolved either to conquer, or
spend the very last drop of blood in their bodies. Afterwards they
divided themselves into three battalions, or troops, sending before them
one of two hundred buccaneers, which sort of people are infinitely
dextrous at shooting with guns.[303] Thus the Pirates left the hill and
descended, marching directly towards the Spaniards, who were posted in a
spacious field, waiting for their coming. As soon as they drew nigh unto
them, the Spaniards began to shout and cry, 'Viva el Rey! God save the
King!' and immediately their horse began to move against the Pirates.
But the field being full of quags and very soft under foot, they could
not ply to and fro and wheel about, as they desired. The two hundred
buccaneers who went before, every one putting one knee to the ground,
gave them a full volley of shot, wherewith the battle was instantly
kindled very hot. The Spaniards defended themselves very courageously,
acting all they could possibly perform, to disorder the Pirates. Their
foot, in like manner, endeavoured to second the horse, but were
constrained by the Pirates to separate from them. Thus finding
themselves frustrated of their designs, they attempted to drive the
bulls against them at their backs, and by this means to put them into
disorder. But the greatest part of that wild cattle ran away, being
frightened with the noise of the battle. And some few that broke through
the English companies did no other harm than to tear the colours in
pieces; whereas the buccaneers, shooting them dead, left not one to
trouble them thereabouts.
"The battle having now continued for the space of two hours, at the end
thereof the greatest part of the Spanish horse was ruined and almost all
killed. The rest fled away. Which being perceived by the foot, and that
they could not possibly prevail, they discharged the shot they had in
their muskets, and throwing them on the ground, betook themselves to
flight, every one which way he could run. The Pirates could not possibly
follow them, as being too much harassed and wearied with the long
journey they had lately made. Many of them not being able to fly whither
they desired, hid themselves for that present among the shrubs of the
seaside. But very unfortunately; for most of them being found out by the
Pirates, were instantly killed, without giving quarter to any.[304] Some
religious men were brought prisoners before Captain Morgan; but he being
deaf to their cries and lamentations, commanded them all to be
immediately pistoled, which was accordingly done. Soon after they
brought a captain to his presence, whom he examined very strictly about
several things, particularly wherein consisted the forces of those of
Panama. Unto which he answered: Their whole strength did consist in four
hundred horse, twenty-four companies of foot, each being of one hundred
men complete, sixty Indians and some negroes, who were to drive two
thousand wild bulls and cause them to run over the English camp, and
thus by breaking their files put them into a total disorder and
confusion.[305] He discovered more, that in the city they had made
trenches and raised batteries in several places, in all which they had
placed many guns. And that at the entry of the highway which led to the
city they had built a fort, which was mounted with eight great guns of
brass and defended by fifty men.
"Captain Morgan, having heard this information, gave orders instantly
they should march another way. But before setting forth, he made a
review of all his men, whereof he found both killed and wounded a
considerable number, and much greater than he had believed. Of the
Spaniards were found six hundred dead upon the place, besides the
wounded and prisoners.[306] The Pirates were nothing discouraged, seeing
their number so much diminished, but rather filled with greater pride
than before, perceiving what huge advantage they had obtained against
their enemies. Thus having rested themselves some while, they prepared
to march courageously towards the city, plighting their oaths to one
another in general they would fight till never a man was left alive.
With this courage they recommenced their march, either to conquer or be
conquered, carrying with them all the prisoners.
"They found much difficulty in their approach unto the city. For within
the town the Spaniards had placed many great guns, at several quarters
thereof, some of which were charged with small pieces of iron, and
others with musket bullets. With all these they saluted the Pirates, at
their drawing nigh unto the place, and gave them full and frequent
broadsides, firing at them incessantly. Whence it came to pass that
unavoidably they lost, at every step they advanced, great numbers of
men. But neither these manifest dangers of their lives, nor the sight of
so many of their own as dropped down continually at their sides, could
deter them from advancing farther, and gaining ground every moment upon
the enemy. Thus, although the Spaniards never ceased to fire and act the
best they could for their defence, yet notwithstanding they were forced
to deliver the city after the space of three hours' combat.[307] And the
Pirates, having now possessed themselves thereof, both killed and
destroyed as many as attempted to make the least opposition against
them. The inhabitants had caused the best of their goods to be
transported to more remote and occult places. Howbeit they found within
the city as yet several warehouses, very well stocked with all sorts of
merchandise, as well silks and cloths as linen, and other things of
considerable value. As soon as the first fury of their entrance into the
city was over, Captain Morgan assembled all his men at a certain place
which he assigned, and there commanded them under very great penalties
that none of them should dare to drink or taste any wine. The reason he
gave for this injunction was, because he had received private
intelligence that it had been all poisoned by the Spaniards. Howbeit it
was the opinion of many he gave these prudent orders to prevent the
debauchery of his people, which he foresaw would be very great at the
beginning, after so much hunger sustained by the way. Fearing withal
lest the Spaniards, seeing them in wine, should rally their forces and
fall upon the city, and use them as inhumanly as they had used the
inhabitants before."
Exquemelin accuses Morgan of setting fire to the city and endeavouring
to make the world believe that it was done by the Spaniards. Wm. Frogge,
however, who was also present, says distinctly that the Spaniards fired
the town, and Sir William Godolphin, in a letter from Madrid to
Secretary Arlington on 2nd June 1671, giving news of the exploit which
must have come from a Spanish source, says that the President of Panama
left orders that the city if taken should be burnt.[308] Moreover the
President of Panama himself, in a letter to Spain describing the event
which was intercepted by the English, admits that not the buccaneers but
the slaves and the owners of the houses set fire to the city.[309] The
buccaneers tried in vain to extinguish the flames, and the whole town,
which was built mostly of wood, was consumed by twelve o'clock midnight.
The only edifices which escaped were the government buildings, a few
churches, and about 300 houses in the suburbs. The freebooters remained
at Panama twenty-eight days seeking plunder and indulging in every
variety of excess. Excursions were made daily into the country for
twenty leagues round about to search for booty, and 3000 prisoners were
brought in. Exquemelin's story of the sack is probably in the main true.
In describing the city he writes: "There belonged to this city (which is
also the head of a bishopric) eight monasteries, whereof seven were for
men and one for women, two stately churches and one hospital. The
churches and monasteries were all richly adorned with altar-pieces and
paintings, huge quantity of gold and silver, with other precious things;
all which the ecclesiastics had hidden and concealed. Besides which
ornaments, here were to be seen two thousand houses of magnificent and
prodigious building, being all or the greatest part inhabited by
merchants of that country, who are vastly rich. For the rest of the
inhabitants of lesser quality and tradesmen, this city contained five
thousand houses more. Here were also great numbers of stables, which
served for the horses and mules, that carry all the plate, belonging as
well unto the King of Spain as to private men, towards the coast of the
North Sea. The neighbouring fields belonging to this city are all
cultivated with fertile plantations and pleasant gardens, which afford
delicious prospects unto the inhabitants the whole year long."[310] The
day after the capture, continues Exquemelin, "Captain Morgan dispatched
away two troops of Pirates of one hundred and fifty men each, being all
very stout soldiers and well armed with orders to seek for the
inhabitants of Panama who were escaped from the hands of their enemies.
These men, having made several excursions up and down the campaign
fields, woods and mountains, adjoining to Panama, returned after two
days' time bringing with them above 200 prisoners, between men, women
and slaves. The same day returned also the boat ... which Captain Morgan
had sent into the South Sea, bringing with her three other boats, which
they had taken in a little while. But all these prizes they could
willingly have given, yea, although they had employed greater labour
into the bargain, for one certain galleon, which miraculously escaped
their industry, being very richly laden with all the King's plate and
great quantity of riches of gold, pearl, jewels and other most precious
goods, of all of the best and richest merchants of Panama. On board of
this galleon were also the religious women, belonging to the nunnery of
the said city, who had embarked with them all the ornaments of their
church, consisting in great quantity of gold, plate, and other things of
great value....
"Notwithstanding the Pirates found in the ports of the islands of Tavoga
and Tavogilla several boats that were laden with many sorts of very good
merchandise; all which they took and brought unto Panama; where being
arrived, they made an exact relation of all that had passed while they
were abroad to Captain Morgan. The prisoners confirmed what the Pirates
had said, adding thereto, that they undoubtedly knew whereabouts the
said galleon might be at that present, but that it was very probable
they had been relieved before now from other places. These relations
stirred up Captain Morgan anew to send forth all the boats that were in
the port of Panama, with design to seek and pursue the said galleon till
they could find her. The boats aforesaid being in all four, set sail
from Panama, and having spent eight days in cruising to and fro, and
searching several ports and creeks, they lost all their hopes of finding
what they so earnestly sought for. Hereupon they resolved to return unto
the isles of Tavoga and Tavogilla. Here they found a reasonable good
ship, that was newly come from Payta, being laden with cloth, soap,
sugar and biscuit, with twenty thousand pieces of eight in ready money.
This vessel they instantly seized, not finding the least resistance from
any person within her. Nigh unto the said ship was also a boat whereof
in like manner they possessed themselves. Upon the boat they laded great
part of the merchandises they had found in the ship, together with some
slaves they had taken in the said islands. With this purchase they
returned to Panama, something better satisfied of their voyage, yet
withal much discontented they could not meet with the galleon....
"Captain Morgan used to send forth daily parties of two hundred men, to
make inroads into all the fields and country thereabouts, and when one
party came back, another consisting of two hundred more was ready to go
forth. By this means they gathered in a short time huge quantity of
riches, and no lesser number of prisoners. These being brought into the
city, were presently put unto the most exquisite tortures imaginable, to
make them confess both other people's goods and their own. Here it
happened, that one poor and miserable wretch was found in the house of a
gentleman of great quality, who had put on, amidst that confusion of
things, a pair of taffety breeches belonging to his master with a little
silver key hanging at the strings thereof. This being perceived by the
Pirates they immediately asked him where was the cabinet of the said
key? His answer was: he knew not what was become of it, but only that
finding those breeches in his master's house, he had made bold to wear
them. Not being able to extort any other confession out of him, they
first put him upon the rack, wherewith they inhumanly disjointed his
arms. After this they twisted a cord about his forehead, which they
wrung so hard, that his eyes appeared as big as eggs, and were ready to
fall out of his skull. But neither with these torments could they obtain
any positive answer to their demands. Whereupon they soon after hung him
up, giving him infinite blows and stripes, while he was under that
intolerable pain and posture of body. Afterwards they cut off his nose
and ears, and singed his face with burning straw, till he could speak
nor lament his misery no longer. Then losing all hopes of hearing any
confession from his mouth, they commanded a negro to run him through
with a lance, which put an end to his life and a period to their cruel
and inhuman tortures. After this execrable manner did many others of
those miserable prisoners finish their days, the common sport and
recreation of these Pirates being these and other tragedies not inferior
to these.
"They spared in these their cruelties no sex nor condition whatsoever.
For as to religious persons and priests, they granted them less quarter
than unto others, unless they could produce a considerable sum of money,
capable of being a sufficient ransom. Women themselves were no better
used ... and Captain Morgan, their leader and commander, gave them no
good example in this point....[311]
"Captain Morgan having now been at Panama the full space of three weeks,
commanded all things to be put in order for his departure. Unto this
effect he gave orders to every company of his men, to seek out for so
many beasts of carriage as might suffice to convey the whole spoil of
the city unto the river where his canoes lay. About this time a great
rumour was spread in the city, of a considerable number of Pirates who
intended to leave Captain Morgan; and that, by taking a ship which was
in the port, they determined to go and rob upon the South Sea till they
had got as much as they thought fit, and then return homewards by the
way of the East Indies into Europe. For which purpose they had already
gathered great quantity of provisions which they had hidden in private
places, with sufficient store of powder, bullets and all other sorts of
ammunition; likewise some great guns belonging to the town, muskets and
other things, wherewith they designed not only to equip the said vessel
but also to fortify themselves and raise batteries in some island or
other, which might serve them for a place of refuge.
"This design had certainly taken effect as they intended, had not
Captain Morgan had timely advice thereof given him by one of their
comrades. Hereupon he instantly commanded the mainmast of the said ship
should be cut down and burnt, together with all the other boats that
were in the port. Hereby the intentions of all or most of his companions
were totally frustrated. After this Captain Morgan sent forth many of
the Spaniards into the adjoining fields and country, to seek for money
wherewith to ransom not only themselves but also all the rest of the
prisoners, as likewise the ecclesiastics, both secular and regular.
Moreover, he commanded all the artillery of the town to be spoiled, that
is to say, nailed and stopped up. At the same time he sent out a strong
company of men to seek for the Governor of Panama, of whom intelligence
was brought that he had laid several ambuscades in the way, by which he
ought to pass at his return. But those who were sent upon this design
returned soon after, saying they had not found any sign or appearance of
any such ambuscades. For a confirmation whereof they brought with them
some prisoners they had taken, who declared how that the said Governor
had had an intention of making some opposition by the way, but that the
men whom he had designed to effect it were unwilling to undertake any
such enterprise; so that for want of means he could not put his design
into execution.[312]
"On the 24th of February of the year 1671,[313] Captain Morgan departed
from the city of Panama, or rather from the place where the said city of
Panama did stand. Of the spoils whereof he carried with him one hundred
and seventy-five beasts of carriage, laden with silver, gold and other
precious things, besides 600 prisoners, more or less, between men,
women, children and slaves. That day they came unto a river that passeth
through a delicious campaign field, at the distance of a league from
Panama. Here Captain Morgan put all his forces into good order of
martial array in such manner that the prisoners were in the middle of
the camp, surrounded on all sides with Pirates. At which present
conjuncture nothing else was to be heard but lamentations, cries,
shrieks and doleful sighs, of so many women and children, who were
persuaded Captain Morgan designed to transport them all, and carry them
into his own country for slaves. Besides that, among all those miserable
prisoners, there was extreme hunger and thirst endured at that time.
Which hardship and misery Captain Morgan designedly caused them to
sustain, with intent to excite them more earnestly to seek for money
wherewith to ransom themselves, according to the tax he had set upon
every one. Many of the women begged of Captain Morgan upon their knees,
with infinite sighs and tears, he would permit them to return unto
Panama, there to live in company of their dear husbands and children, in
little huts of straw which they would erect, seeing they had no houses
until the rebuilding of the city. But his answer was: he came not
thither to hear lamentations and cries, but rather to seek money.
Therefore, they ought to seek out for that in the first place, wherever
it were to be had, and bring it to him, otherwise he would assuredly
transport them all to such places whither they cared not to go....
"As soon as Captain Morgan arrived, upon his march, at the town called
Cruz, seated on the banks of the river Chagre, as was mentioned before,
he commanded an order to be published among the prisoners, that within
the space of three days every one of them should bring in their ransom,
under the penalty aforementioned, of being transported unto Jamaica. In
the meanwhile he gave orders for so much rice and maize to be collected
thereabouts as was necessary for the victualling all his ships. At this
place some of the prisoners were ransomed, but many others could not
bring in their moneys in so short a time. Hereupon he continued his
voyage ... carrying with him all the spoil that ever he could transport.
From this village he likewise led away some new prisoners, who were
inhabitants of the said place. So that these prisoners were added to
those of Panama who had not as yet paid their ransoms, and all
transported.... About the middle of the way unto the Castle of Chagre,
Captain Morgan commanded them to be placed in due order, according to
their custom, and caused every one to be sworn, that they had reserved
nor concealed nothing privately to themselves, even not so much as the
value of sixpence. This being done, Captain Morgan having had some
experience that those lewd fellows would not much stickle to swear
falsely in points of interest, he commanded them every one to be
searched very strictly, both in their clothes and satchels and
everywhere it might be presumed they had reserved anything. Yea, to the
intent this order might not be ill taken by his companions, he permitted
himself to be searched, even to the very soles of his shoes. To this
effect by common consent, there was assigned one out of every company to
be the searchers of all the rest. The French Pirates that went on this
expedition with Captain Morgan were not well satisfied with this new
custom of searching. Yet their number being less than that of the
English, they were forced to submit unto it, as well as the others had
done before them. The search being over, they re-embarked in their
canoes and boats, which attended them on the river, and arrived at the
Castle of Chagre.[314] ... Here they found all things in good order,
excepting the wounded men, whom they had left there at the time of their
departure. For of these the greatest number were dead, through the
wounds they had received.
"From Chagre, Captain Morgan sent presently after his arrival, a great
boat unto Porto Bello, wherein were all the prisoners he had taken at
the Isle of St. Catherine, demanding by them a considerable ransom for
the Castle of Chagre, where he then was, threatening otherwise to ruin
and demolish it even to the ground. To this message those of Porto Bello
made answer: they would not give one farthing towards the ransom of the
said castle, and that the English might do with it as they pleased. This
answer being come, the dividend was made of all the spoil they had
purchased in that voyage. Thus every company and every particular person
therein included received their portion of what was gotten; or rather
what part thereof Captain Morgan was pleased to give them. For so it
was, that the rest of his companions, even of his own nation, complained
of his proceedings in this particular, and feared not to tell him openly
to his face, that he had reserved the best jewels to himself. For they
judged it impossible that no greater share should belong unto them than
two hundred pieces of eight per capita, of so many valuable purchases
and robberies as they had obtained. Which small sum they thought too
little reward for so much labour and such huge and manifest dangers as
they had so often exposed their lives unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf
to all these and many other complaints of this kind, having designed in
his mind to cheat them of as much as he could."[315]
On 6th March 1671, Morgan, after demolishing the fort and other edifices
at Chagre and spiking all the guns, got secretly on board his own ship,
if we are to believe Exquemelin, and followed by only three or four
vessels of the fleet, returned to Port Royal. The rest of the fleet
scattered, most of the ships having "much ado to find sufficient
victuals and provisions for their voyage to Jamaica." At the end of
August not more than ten vessels of the original thirty-six had made
their way back to the English colony. Morgan, with very inadequate
means, accomplished a feat which had been the dream of Drake and other
English sailors for a century or more, and which Admiral Vernon in 1741
with a much greater armament feared even to attempt. For display of
remarkable leadership and reckless bravery the expedition against Panama
has never been surpassed. Its brilliance was only clouded by the cruelty
and rapacity of the victors--a force levied without pay and little
discipline, and unrestrained, if not encouraged, in brutality by Morgan
himself. Exquemelin's accusation against Morgan, of avarice and
dishonesty in the division of the spoil amongst his followers, is,
unfortunately for the admiral's reputation, too well substantiated.
Richard Browne, the surgeon-general of the fleet, estimated the plunder
at over £70,000 "besides other rich goods," of which the soldiers were
miserably cheated, each man receiving but £10 as his share. At Chagre,
he writes, the leaders gave what they pleased "for which ... we must be
content or else be clapped in irons." The wronged seamen were loud in
their complaints against Morgan, Collier and the other captains for
starving, cheating and deserting them; but so long as Modyford was
governor they could obtain no redress. The commanders "dared but seldom
appear," writes Browne, "the widows, orphans and injured inhabitants who
had so freely advanced upon the hopes of a glorious design, being now
ruined through fitting out the privateers."[316] The Spaniards reckoned
their whole loss at 6,000,000 crowns.[317]
On 31st May 1671, the Council of Jamaica extended a vote of thanks to
Morgan for the execution of his late commission, and formally expressed
their approval of the manner in which he had conducted himself.[318]
There can be no question but that the governor had full knowledge of
Morgan's intentions before the fleet sailed from Cape Tiburon. After the
decision of the council of officers on 2nd December to attack Panama, a
boat was dispatched to Jamaica to inform Modyford, and in a letter
written to Morgan ten days after the arrival of the vessel the governor
gave no countermand to the decision.[319] Doubtless the defence made,
that the governor and council were trying to forestall an impending
invasion of Jamaica by the Spaniards, was sincere. But it is also very
probable that they were in part deceived into this belief by Morgan and
his followers, who made it their first object to get prisoners, and
obtain from them by force a confession that at Cartagena, Porto Bello or
some other Spanish maritime port the Spaniards were mustering men and
fitting a fleet to invade the island.
By a strange irony of fate, on 8th-18th July 1670 a treaty was concluded
at Madrid by Sir William Godolphin for "composing differences,
restraining depredations and establishing peace" in America. No trading
privileges in the West Indies were granted by either crown, but the King
of Spain acknowledged the sovereignty of the King of England over all
islands, colonies, etc., in America then in possession of the English,
and the ships of either nation, in case of distress, were to have
entertainment and aid in the ports of the other. The treaty was to be
published in the West Indies simultaneously by English and Spanish
governors within eight months after its ratification.[320] In May of the
following year, a messenger from San Domingo arrived in Port Royal with
a copy of the articles of peace, to propose that a day be fixed for
their publication, and to offer an exchange of prisoners,[321] Modyford
had as yet received no official notice from England of the treaty, and
might with justice complain to the authorities at home of their
neglect.[322] Shortly after, however, a new governor came to relieve him
of further responsibility. Charles II. had probably placated the Spanish
ambassador in 1670 by promising the removal of Modyford and the dispatch
of another governor well-disposed to the Spaniards.[323] At any rate, a
commission was issued in September 1670, appointing Colonel Thomas Lynch
Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, to command there in the "want, absence
or disability" of the governor;[324] and on 4th January following, in
spite of a petition of the officers, freeholders and inhabitants of
Jamaica in favour of Modyford,[325] the commission of the governor was
revoked.[326] Lynch arrived in Jamaica on 25th June with instructions,
as soon as he had possession of the government and forts, to arrest Sir
Thomas Modyford and send him home under guard to answer charges laid
against him.[327] Fearing to exasperate the friends of the old governor,
Lynch hesitated to carry out his instructions until 12th August, when he
invited Modyford on board the frigate "Assistance," with several members
of the council, and produced the royal orders for his arrest. Lynch
assured him, however, that his life and fortune were not in danger, the
proceeding being merely a sop to the indignant Spaniards.[328] Modyford
arrived in England in November, and on the 17th of the month was
committed to the Tower.[329]
The indignation of the Spaniards, when the news of the sack of Panama
reached Spain, rose to a white heat. "It is impossible for me to paint
to your Lordship," wrote Godolphin to Lord Arlington, "the face of
Madrid upon the news of this action ... nor to what degree of
indignation the queen and ministers of State, the particular councils
and all sorts of people here, have taken it to heart."[330] It seems
that the ambassador or the Spanish consul in London had written to
Madrid that this last expedition was made by private intimation, if not
orders, from London, and that Godolphin had been commanded to provide in
the treaty for a long term before publication, so as to give time for
the execution of the design. Against these falsehoods the English
ambassador found it difficult to make headway, although he assured the
queen of the immediate punishment of the perpetrators, and the arrest
and recall of the Governor of Jamaica. Only by the greatest tact and
prudence was he able to stave off, until an official disavowal of the
expedition came from England, an immediate embargo on all the goods of
English merchants in Spain. The Spanish government decided to send a
fleet of 10,000 men with all speed to the Indies; and the Dukes of
Albuquerque and Medina Coeli vied with each other in offering to raise
the men at their own charge from among their own vassals. After
Godolphin had presented his official assurance to the queen, however,
nothing more was heard of this armament. "God grant," wrote the English
ambassador, "that Sir Thomas Modyford's way of defending Jamaica (as he
used to call it) by sending out the forces thereof to pillage, prove an
infallible one; for my own part, I do not think it hath been our
interest to awaken the Spaniards so much as this last action hath
done."[331]
Footnotes:
[Footnote 206: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 635.]
[Footnote 207: Ibid., Nos. 656 and 664. Dated 15th and 18th February
respectively.]
[Footnote 208: Ibid., No. 739.]
[Footnote 209: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 739 and 744.]
[Footnote 210: Ibid., Nos. 762 and 767.]
[Footnote 211: Ibid., No. 746; Beeston's Journal.]
[Footnote 212: S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 192; C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No.
753.]
[Footnote 212: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 744; _cf._ also No. 811, and
Lyttleton's Report, No. 812.]
[Footnote 214: Ibid., No. 789.]
[Footnote 215: Ibid., Nos. 859, 964; Beeston's Journal. For disputes
over the cargo of the Spanish prize captured by Williams, _cf._ C.S.P.
Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1140, 1150, 1177, 1264, 1266.]
[Footnote 216: Ibid., No. 767.]
[Footnote 217: Add. MSS., 11,410, pp. 16-25.]
[Footnote 218: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 786; _cf._ also Add. MSS.,
11,410, f. 303:--"Mr. Worseley's discourse of the Privateers of
Jamaica."]
[Footnote 219: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. vii. pp. 57-65.]
[Footnote 220: For the biography of Jean-David Nau, surnamed l'Olonnais,
_cf._ Nouvelle Biographie Générale, t. xxxviii. p. 654.]
[Footnote 221: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 744, 812.]
[Footnote 222: Ibid., Nos. 744, 765, 786, 812.]
[Footnote 223: C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660, pp. 363, 421, 433.]
[Footnote 224: Ibid., pp. 419, 427, 428.]
[Footnote 225: Ibid., p. 447; Egerton MSS., 2395, f. 167.]
[Footnote 226: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 101; _cf._ also Nos. 24, 32,
122. From orders contained in the MSS. of the Marquis of Ormonde issued
on petitions of convicted prisoners, we find that reprieves were often
granted on condition of their making arrangements for their own
transportation for life to the West Indies, without expense to the
government. The condemned were permitted to leave the gaols in which
they were confined and embark immediately, on showing that they had
agreed with a sea-captain to act as his servant, both during the voyage
and after their arrival. The captains were obliged to give bond for the
safe transportation of the criminals, and the latter were also to find
security that they would not return to the British Isles without
license, on pain of receiving the punishment from which they had been
originally reprieved. (Hist. MSS. Comm. Rept. X., pt. 5, pp. 34, 42, 85,
94). _Cf._ also C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1268.]
[Footnote 227: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 331, 769-772, 790, 791, 798,
847, 1720.]
[Footnote 228: Ibid., No. 866.]
[Footnote 229: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 839, 843.]
[Footnote 230: Ibid., No. 786.]
[Footnote 231: Ibid., No. 943.]
[Footnote 232: Ibid., Nos. 910, 919, 926.]
[Footnote 233: Ibid., Nos. 942, 976.]
[Footnote 234: Ibid., No. 944.]
[Footnote 235: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 979. There were really nine
ships and 650 men. Cf. _ibid._, No. 1088.]
[Footnote 236: Ibid., Nos. 980, 983, 992.]
[Footnote 237: Ibid., No. 1088.]
[Footnote 238: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1073, 1088.]
[Footnote 239: Ibid., No. 1042, I. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Morgan (not
to be confused with Colonel Edward Morgan), who was left in command of
St. Eustatius and Saba, went in April 1666 with a company of buccaneers
to the assistance of Governor Watts of St. Kitts against the French. In
the rather shameful defence of the English part of the island Morgan's
buccaneers were the only English who displayed any courage or
discipline, and most of them were killed or wounded, Colonel Morgan
himself being shot in both legs. (Ibid., Nos. 1204, 1205, 1212, 1220,
1257.) St. Eustatius was reconquered by a French force from St. Kitts in
the early part of 1667. (Ibid., No. 1401.)]
[Footnote 240: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1082.]
[Footnote 241: Ibid., No. 1125. Stedman was later in the year, after the
outbreak of war with France, captured by a French frigate off
Guadeloupe. With a small vessel and only 100 men he found himself
becalmed and unable to escape, so he boldly boarded the Frenchman in
buccaneer fashion and fought for two hours, but was finally overcome.
(Ibid., No. 1212.)]
[Footnote 242: Ibid., No. 1085; Beeston's Journal. Mansfield was the
buccaneer whom Exquemelin disguises under the name of "Mansvelt."]
[Footnote 243: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1130, 1132-37.]
[Footnote 244: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1129, 1263.]
[Footnote 245: Ibid., Nos. 1144, 1264.]
[Footnote 246: Ibid., Nos. 1138, 1144.]
[Footnote 247: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1264, slightly condensed from
the original.]
[Footnote 248: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1142, 1147. The Governor of
Havana wrote concerning this same exploit, that on Christmas Eve of 1665
the English entered and sacked the town of Cayo in the jurisdiction of
Havana, and meeting with a vessel having on board twenty-two Spaniards
who were inhabitants of the town, put them all to the sword, cutting
them to pieces with hangers. Afterwards they sailed to the town of
Bayamo with thirteen vessels and 700 men, but altering their plans, went
to Sancti Spiritus, landed 300, plundered the town, cruelly treated both
men and women, burnt the best houses, and wrecked and desecrated the
church in which they had made their quarters. (S.P. Spain, vol. 49, f.
50.)
Col. Beeston says that Mansfield conducted the raid; but according to
the Spanish account to which Duro had access, the leader was Pierre
Legrand. (Duro, _op. cit._, v. p. 164).]
[Footnote 249: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1147; Beeston's Journal.
Beeston reports that after a six weeks' search for Mansfield and his men
he failed to find them and returned to Jamaica.]
[Footnote 250: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1213.]
[Footnote 251: Exquemelin, however, says that he had 500 men. If he
attacked Providence Island with only 200 he must have received
reinforcements later.]
[Footnote 252: Duro, _op. cit._, v. p. 167; S.P. Spain, vol. 49, f. 50.
The accounts that have come down to us of this expedition are obscure
and contradictory. Modyford writes of the exploit merely that "they
landed 600 men at Cape Blanco, in the kingdom of Veragua, and marched 90
miles into that country to surprise its chief city, Cartago; but
understanding that the inhabitants had carried away their wealth,
returned to their ships without being challenged." (C.S.P. Colon.,
1661-68, No. 1213.) According to Exquemelin the original goal of the
buccaneers was the town of Nata, north of Panama. The Spanish accounts
make the numbers of the invaders much greater, from 800 to 1200.]
[Footnote 253: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1263.]
[Footnote 254: Ibid., Nos. 1309, 1349. The capture of Providence Island
was Mansfield's last exploit. According to a deposition found among the
Colonial papers, he and his ship were later captured by the Spaniards
and carried to Havana where the old buccaneer was put in irons and soon
after executed. (Ibid., No. 1827.) Exquemelin says that Mansfield,
having been refused sufficient aid by Modyford for the defence of
Providence, went to seek assistance at Tortuga, when "death suddenly
surprised him and put a period to his wicked life."]
[Footnote 255: Exquemelin refers to a voyage of Henry Morgan to
Campeache at about this time, and says that he afterwards accompanied
Mansfield as his "vice-admiral." There were at least three Morgans then
in the West Indies, but Colonel Edward and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas
were at this time doubtless busy preparing the armament against
Curaçao.]
[Footnote 256: "Villa de Mosa is a small Town standing on the Starboard
side of the River ... inhabited chiefly by Indians, with some
Spaniards.... Thus far Ships come to bring Goods, especially European
Commodities.... They arrive here in November or December, and stay till
June or July, selling their Commodities, and then load chiefly with
Cacao and some Sylvester. All the Merchants and petty Traders of the
country Towns come thither about Christmas to Traffick, which makes this
Town the chiefest in all these Parts, Campeache excepted."--Dampier,
_ed._ 1906, ii. p. 206. The town was twelve leagues from the river's
mouth.]
[Footnote 257: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1142; Beeston's Journal, 20th
August 1665. The viceroy of New Spain, in a letter of 28th March 1665,
reports the coming, in February, of 150 English in three ships to
Tabasco, but gives the name of the plundered town as Santa Marta de la
Vitoria. According to his story, the buccaneers seized royal treasure
amounting to 50,000 pieces of eight, besides ammunition and slaves.
(S.P. Spain, vol. 49, f. 122.)]
[Footnote 258: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 1826, 1827, 1851;
Exquemelin, _ed._ 1684, Part II. pp. 65-74.]
[Footnote 259: S.P. Spain, vols. 46-49. Correspondence of Sir Richard
Fanshaw.]
[Footnote 260: Ibid., vol. 46, f. 192.]
[Footnote 261: Ibid., vol. 49, f. 212.]
[Footnote 262: Ibid., vol. 52, f. 138; Record Office, Treaties, etc.,
466.]
[Footnote 263: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1276.]
[Footnote 264: Ibid., No. 1264.]
[Footnote 265: Ibid., No. 1537.]
[Footnote 266: Ibid., No. 1264.
There was probably some disagreement in the Council in England over the
policy to be pursued toward the buccaneers. On 21st August 1666 Modyford
wrote to Albemarle: "Sir James Modyford will present his Grace with a
copy of some orders made at Oxford, in behalf of some Spaniards, with
Lord Arlington's letter thereon; in which are such strong inculcations
of continuing friendship with the Spaniards here, that he doubts he
shall be highly discanted on by some persons for granting commissions
against them; must beg his Grace to bring him off, or at least that the
necessity of this proceeding may be taken into serious debate and then
doubts not but true English judges will confirm what he has done." On
the other hand he writes to Arlington on 30th July 1667: "Had my
abilities suited so well with my wishes as the latter did with your
Lordship's, the privateers' attempts had been only practised on the
Dutch and French, and the Spaniards free of them, but I had no money to
pay them nor frigates to force them; the former they could not get from
our declared enemies, nothing could they expect but blows from them, and
(as they have often repeated to me) will that pay for new sails and
rigging?... (but) will, suitable to your Lordship's directions, as far
as I am able, restrain them from further acts of violence towards the
Spaniards, unless provoked by new insolences." Yet in the following
December the governor tells Albemarle that he has not altered his
posture, nor does he intend until further orders. It seems clear that
Arlington and Albemarle represented two opposite sets of opinion in the
Council.]
[Footnote 267: On 21st December 1671, Morgan in a deposition before the
Council of Jamaica gave his age as thirty-six years. (C.S.P. Colon.,
1669-74, No. 705.)]
[Footnote 268: C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 1838; Exquemelin, _ed._ 1684,
Part II., pp. 79-88. According to Exquemelin the first design of the
freebooters had been to cross the island of Cuba in its narrowest part
and fall upon Havana. But on receiving advice that the governor had
taken measures to defend and provision the city, they changed their
minds and marched to Puerto Principe.]
[Footnote 269: The city of Porto Bello with its large commodious harbour
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.
The pirate successors of the buccaneers were distinguished from their
predecessors mainly by the fact that they preyed on the commerce of all
flags indiscriminately, and were outlawed and hunted down by all nations
alike. They, moreover, widely extended their field of operations. No
longer content with the West Indies and the shores of the Caribbean Sea,
they sailed east to the coast of Guinea and around Africa to the Indian
Ocean. They haunted the shores of Madagascar, the Red Sea and the
Persian Gulf, and ventured even as far as the Malabar Coast,
intercepting the rich trade with the East, the great ships from Bengal
and the Islands of Spice. And not only did the outlaws of all nations
from America and the West Indies flock to these regions, but sailors
from England were fired by reports of the rich spoils obtained to
imitate their example. One of the most remarkable instances was that of
Captain Henry Avery, _alias_ Bridgman. In May 1694 Avery was on an
English merchantman, the "Charles II.," lying near Corunna. He persuaded
the crew to mutiny, set the captain on shore, re-christened the ship the
"Fancy," and sailed to the East Indies. Among other prizes he captured,
in September 1695, a large vessel called the "Gunsway," belonging to the
Great Mogul--an exploit which led to reprisals and the seizure of the
English factories in India. On application of the East India Company,
proclamations were issued on 17th July, 10th and 21st August 1696, by
the Lords Justices of England, declaring Avery and his crew pirates and
offering a reward for their apprehension.[531] Five of the crew were
seized on their return to England in the autumn of the same year, were
tried at the Old Bailey and hanged, and several of their companions were
arrested later.[532]
In the North American colonies these new pirates still continued to find
encouragement and protection. Carolina had long had an evil reputation
as a hot-bed of piracy, and deservedly so. The proprietors had removed
one governor after another for harbouring the freebooters, but with
little result. In the Bahamas, which belonged to the same proprietors,
the evil was even more flagrant. Governor Markham of the Quaker colony
of Pennsylvania allowed the pirates to dispose of their goods and to
refit upon the banks of the Delaware, and William Penn, the proprietor,
showed little disposition to reprimand or remove him. Governor Fletcher
of New York was in open alliance with the outlaws, accepted their gifts
and allowed them to parade the streets in broad daylight. The merchants
of New York, as well as those of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, who
were prevented by the Navigation Laws from engaging in legitimate trade
with other nations, welcomed the appearance of the pirate ships laden
with goods from the East, provided a ready market for their cargoes, and
encouraged them to repeat their voyages.
In 1699 an Act was passed through Parliament of such severity as to
drive many of the outlaws from American waters. It was largely a revival
of the Act of 28, Henry VIII., was in force for seven years, and was
twice renewed. The war of the Spanish Succession, moreover, gave many
men of piratical inclinations an opportunity of sailing under lawful
commissions as privateers against the French and Spaniards. In this long
war, too, the French filibusters were especially numerous and active. In
1706 there were 1200 or 1300 who made their headquarters in Martinique
alone.[533] While keeping the French islands supplied with provisions
and merchandise captured in their prizes, they were a serious
discouragement to English commerce in those regions, especially to the
trade with the North American colonies. Occasionally they threatened the
coasts of Virginia and New England, and some combined with their West
Indian cruises a foray along the coasts of Guinea and into the Red Sea.
These corsairs were not all commissioned privateers, however, for some
of them seized French shipping with as little compunction as English or
Dutch. Especially after the Treaty of Utrecht there was a recrudescence
of piracy both in the West Indies and in the East, and it was ten years
or more thereafter before the freebooters were finally suppressed.
Footnotes:
[Footnote 424: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 501, 552. _Cf._ also Nos.
197, 227.]
[Footnote 425: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 364-366, 431, 668.]
[Footnote 426: Ibid., Nos. 476, 609, 668. Paine was sent from Jamaica
under arrest to Governor de Cussy in 1684, and thence was shipped on a
frigate to France. (Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9325, f. 334.)]
[Footnote 427: Ibid., Nos. 668, 769, 963.]
[Footnote 428: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 769, 963, 993.]
[Footnote 429: Ibid., Nos. 1065, 1313.]
[Footnote 430: Ibid., No. 1313.]
[Footnote 431: Ibid., Nos. 1190, 1216.]
[Footnote 432: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 1173.]
[Footnote 433: Ibid., Nos. 1168, 1190, 1223, 1344; _cf._ also Nos. 1381,
1464, 1803.
In June 1684 we learn that "Hamlin, captain of La Trompeuse, got into a
ship of thirty-six guns on the coast of the Main last month, with sixty
of his old crew and as many new men. They call themselves pirates, and
their ship La Nouvelle Trompeuse, and talk of their old station at Isle
de Vaches." (Ibid., No. 1759.)]
[Footnote 434: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 777, 1188, 1189, 1223, 1376,
1471-1474, 1504, 1535, 1537, 1731.]
[Footnote 435: Ibid., Nos. 1222, 1223, 1676, 1678, 1686, 1909; _cf._
also Nos. 1382, 1547, 1665.]
[Footnote 436: Ibid., Nos. 552, 599, 668, 712.
Coxon continued to vacillate between submission to the Governor of
Jamaica and open rebellion. In October 1682 he was sent by Sir Thos.
Lynch with three vessels to the Gulf of Honduras to fetch away the
English logwood-cutters. "His men plotted to take the ship and go
privateering, but he valiently resisted, killed one or two with his own
hand, forced eleven overboard, and brought three here (Port Royal) who
were condemned last Friday." (Ibid., No. 769. Letter of Sir Thos. Lynch,
6th Nov. 1682.) A year later, in November 1683, he had again reverted to
piracy (_ibid._, No. 1348), but in January 1686 surrendered to
Lieut.-Governor Molesworth and was ordered to be arrested and tried at
St. Jago de la Vega (_ibid._, 1685-88, No. 548). He probably in the
meantime succeeded in escaping from the island, for in the following
November he was reported to be cutting logwood in the Gulf of Campeache,
and Molesworth was issuing a proclamation declaring him an outlaw
(_ibid._, No. 965). He remained abroad until September 1688 when he
again surrendered to the Governor of Jamaica (_ibid._, No. 1890), and
again by some hook or crook obtained his freedom.]
[Footnote 437: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 660, 673.]
[Footnote 438: Ibid., Nos. 627, 769.]
[Footnote 439: He is not to be confused with the Peter Paine who brought
"La Trompeuse" to Port Royal. Thomas Pain, a few months before he
arrived in the Bahamas, had come in and submitted to Sir Thomas Lynch,
and had been sent out again by the governor to cruise after pirates.
(C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 769, 1707.)]
[Footnote 440: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1509, 1540, 1590, 1924,
1926.]
[Footnote 441: Ibid., Nos. 1927, 1938.]
[Footnote 442: Ibid., Nos. 1540, 1833.]
[Footnote 443: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. viii. p. 130. In 1684 there
were between 2000 and 3000 filibusters who made their headquarters in
French Hispaniola. They had seventeen vessels at sea with batteries
ranging from four to fifty guns. (C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 668; Bibl.
Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9325, f. 336.)]
[Footnote 444: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. viii. pp. 128-30.]
[Footnote 445: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 963, 998, 1065.]
[Footnote 446: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 709, 712.]
[Footnote 447: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 1163; Charlevoix, liv. viii.
p. 133; Narrative contained in "The Voyages and Adventures of Captain
Barth, Sharpe and others in the South Sea." Lon. 1684.
Governor Lynch wrote in July 1683: "All the governors in America have
known of this very design for four or five months." Duro, quoting from a
Spanish MS. in the Coleccion Navarrete, t. x. No. 33, says that the
booty at Vera Cruz amounted to more than three million reales de plata
in jewels and merchandise, for which the invaders demanded a ransom of
150,000 pieces of eight. They also carried away, according to the
account, 1300 slaves. (_Op. cit._, v. p. 271.) A real de plata was
one-eighth of a peso or piece of eight.]
[Footnote 448: S.P. Spain, vol. 69, f. 339.]
[Footnote 449: Ibid., vol. 70, f. 57; C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 1633.]
[Footnote 450: During de Franquesnay's short tenure of authority,
Laurens, driven from Hispaniola by the stern measures of the governor
against privateers, made it understood that he desired to enter the
service of the Governor of Jamaica. The Privy Council empowered Lynch to
treat with him, offering pardon and permission to settle on the island
on giving security for his future good behaviour. But de Cussy arrived
in the meantime, reversed the policy of de Franquesnay, received Laurens
with all the honour due to a military hero, and endeavoured to engage
him in the services of the government (Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv.
viii. pp. 141, 202; C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1210, 1249, 1424, 1461,
1649, 1718 and 1839).]
[Footnote 451: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. viii. pp. 139-145; C.S.P.
Colon., 1685-88, No. 378.]
[Footnote 452: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. ix. pp. 197-99; Duro., _op.
cit._, v. pp. 273-74; C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, Nos. 193, 339, 378, 778.]
[Footnote 453: According to Charlevoix, de Grammont was a native of
Paris, entered the Royal Marine, and distinguished himself in several
naval engagements. Finally he appeared in the West Indies as the
commander of a frigate armed for privateering, and captured near
Martinique a Dutch vessel worth 400,000 livres. He carried his prize to
Hispaniola, where he lost at the gaming table and consumed in debauchery
the whole value of his capture; and not daring to return to France he
joined the buccaneers.]
[Footnote 454: "Laurens-Cornille Baldran, sieur de Graff, lieutenant du
roi en l'isle de Saint Domingue, capitaine de frégate légère, chevalier
de Saint Louis"--so he was styled after entering the service of the
French king (Vaissière, _op cit._, p. 70, note). According to Charlevoix
he was a native of Holland, became a gunner in the Spanish navy, and for
his skill and bravery was advanced to the post of commander of a vessel.
He was sent to American waters, captured by the buccaneers, and joined
their ranks. Such was the terror inspired by his name throughout all the
Spanish coasts that in the public prayers in the churches Heaven was
invoked to shield the inhabitants from his fury. Divorced from his first
wife, whom he had married at Teneriffe in 1674, he was married again in
March 1693 to a Norman or Breton woman named Marie-Anne Dieu-le-veult,
the widow of one of the first inhabitants of Tortuga (_ibid._). The
story goes that Marie-Anne, thinking one day that she had been
grievously insulted by Laurens, went in search of the buccaneer, pistol
in hand, to demand an apology for the outrage. De Graff, judging this
Amazon to be worthy of him, turned about and married her (Ducéré, _op.
cit._, p. 113, note). In October 1698 Laurens de Graff, in company with
Iberville, sailed from Rochefort with two ships, and in Mobile and at
the mouths of the Mississippi laid the foundations of Louisiana (Duro,
_op. cit._, v. p. 306). De Graff died in May 1704. _Cf._ also Bibl.
Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9325 f. 311.]
[Footnote 455: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1958, 1962, 1964, 1991,
2000.
Dampier writes (1685) that "it hath been usual for many years past for
the Governor of Petit Guaves to send blank Commissions to Sea by many of
his Captains, with orders to dispose of them to whom they saw
convenient.... I never read any of these French Commissions ... but I
have learnt since that the Tenor of them is to give a Liberty to Fish,
Fowl and Hunt. The Occasion of this is, that ... in time of Peace these
Commissions are given as a Warrant to those of each side (i.e., French
and Spanish in Hispaniola) to protect them from the adverse Party: But
in effect the French do not restrain them to Hispaniola, but make them a
pretence for a general ravage in any part of America, by Sea or
Land."--Edition 1906, I. pp. 212-13.]
[Footnote 456: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 668, 769, 942, 948, 1281,
1562, 1759; _ibid._, 1685-88, No. 558.
In a memoir of MM. de St. Laurent and Begon to the French King in
February 1684, they report that in the previous year some French
filibusters discovered in a patache captured from the Spaniards a letter
from the Governor of Jamaica exhorting the Spaniards to make war on the
French in Hispaniola, and promising them vessels and other means for
entirely destroying the colony. This letter caused a furious outburst of
resentment among the French settlers against the English (_cf._ also
C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 1348). Shortly after, according to the
memoir, an English ship of 30 guns appeared for several days cruising in
the channel between Tortuga and Port de Paix. The sieur de Franquesnay,
on sending to ask for an explanation of this conduct, received a curt
reply to the effect that the sea was free to everyone. The French
governor thereupon sent a barque with 30 filibusters to attack the
Englishman, but the filibusters returned well beaten. In despair de
Franquesnay asked Captain de Grammont, who had just returned from a
cruise in a ship of 50 guns, to go out against the intruder. With 300 of
the corsairs at his back de Grammont attacked the English frigate. The
reception accorded by the latter was as vigorous as before, but the
result was different, for de Grammont at once grappled with his
antagonist, boarded her and put all the English except the captain to
the sword.--Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9325 f. 332.
No reference to this incident is found in the English colonial records.]
[Footnote 457: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, No. 963.]
[Footnote 458: Ibid., Nos. 1844, 1852.]
[Footnote 459: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1246, 1249, 1250, 1294,
1295, 1302, 1311, 1348, 1489, 1502, 1503, 1510, 1562, 1563, 1565.]
[Footnote 460: Ibid., No. 1938; _ibid._, 1685-88, Nos. 33, 53, 57, 68,
128, 129, 157.]
[Footnote 461: Ibid., 1681-85, Nos. 668, 769; _ibid._, 1685-88, No.
986.]
[Footnote 462: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1163, 1198; Bibl. Nat.,
Nouv. Acq., 9325, f. 332.]
[Footnote 463: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1796, 1854, 1855, 1943;
_ibid._, 1685-88, Nos. 218, 269, 569, 591, 609, 706, 739.]
[Footnote 464: Ibid., 1681-85, Nos. 1163, 1198, 1249, 1630.]
[Footnote 465: Ibid., Nos. 963, 992, 1938, 1949, 2025, 2067.]
[Footnote 466: Ibid., Nos. 963, 992, 1759.]
[Footnote 467: Ibid., Nos. 1259, 1563.]
[Footnote 468: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1845, 1851, 1862, 2042.
His ship is called in these letters "La Trompeuse." Unless this is a
confusion with Hamlin's vessel, there must have been more than one "La
Trompeuse" in the West Indies. Very likely the fame or ill-fame of the
original "La Trompeuse" led other pirate captains to flatter themselves
by adopting the same name. Breha was captured in 1686 by the Armada de
Barlovento and hung with nine or ten of his companions (Charlevoix, _op.
cit._, liv. ix. p. 207).]
[Footnote 469: Ibid., Nos. 1299, 1862.]
[Footnote 470: Ibid., No. 1249.]
[Footnote 471: C.S.P. Colon., 1681-85, Nos. 1560, 1561.]
[Footnote 472: Ibid., Nos. 1605, 1862.]
[Footnote 473: Ibid., Nos. 1634, 1845, 1851, 1862.]
[Footnote 474: Ibid., 1685-88, Nos. 363, 364, 639, 1164.]
[Footnote 475: Ibid., Nos. 1029, 1161; Hughson: Carolina Pirates, p.
24.]
[Footnote 476: Ibid., 1681-85, No. 1165.]
[Footnote 477: Hughson, _op. cit._, p. 22.]
[Footnote 478: C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, Nos. 1277, 1278.]
[Footnote 479: Ibid., No. 1411.]
[Footnote 480: Ibid., No. 1463.]
[Footnote 481: Ibid., No. 1602; _cf._ also _ibid._, 1693-96, No. 2243.]
[Footnote 482: C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, Nos. 116, 269, 805.]
[Footnote 483: Ibid., Nos. 1066, 1212.]
[Footnote 484: Ibid., Nos. 965, 1066, 1128.]
[Footnote 485: Ibid., 1681-85, Nos. 1759, 1852, 2067; _ibid._, 1685-88,
No. 1127 and _cf._ Index.
For the careers of John Williams (_alias_ Yankey) and Jacob Everson
(_alias_ Jacobs) during these years _cf._ C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, Nos.
259, 348, 897, 1449, 1476-7, 1624, 1705, 1877; Hist. MSS. Comm., xi. pt.
5, p. 136 (Earl of Dartmouth's MSS.).]
[Footnote 486: C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, Nos. 1406, 1656, 1670, 1705,
1723, 1733; _ibid._, 1689-92, Nos. 52, 515; Hist. MSS. Commiss., xi. pt.
5, p. 136.]
[Footnote 487: C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, No. 1959.]
[Footnote 488: Ibid., No. 433.]
[Footnote 489: Ibid., Nos. 706, 1026.]
[Footnote 490: Ibid., No. 1567.]
[Footnote 491: Ibid., Nos. 758, 920, 927, 930, 1001, 1187, 1210.]
[Footnote 492: C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, Nos. 1567, 1646, 1655, 1656,
1659, 1663, 1721, 1838, 1858.]
[Footnote 493: Dict. of Nat. Biog.]
[Footnote 494: C.S.P. Colon., 1685-88, No. 1941; _cf._ also 1906.]
[Footnote 495: Ibid., No. 1940.]
[Footnote 496: Ibid., 1689-92, Nos. 6, 29, 292.]
[Footnote 497: Ibid., No. 299.]
[Footnote 498: Ibid., No. 493.]
[Footnote 499: Ibid., Nos. 7, 50, 52, 54, 85, 120, 176-178, 293,
296-299, 514, 515, 874, 880, 980, 1041.]
[Footnote 500: C.S.P. Colon., 1689-92, Nos. 293, 467; Ibid., 1693-96,
Nos. 1931, vii., 1934.]
[Footnote 501: Ibid., 1689-92, Nos. 515, 616, 635, 769.]
[Footnote 502: C.S.P. Colon., 1689-92, Nos. 873, 980, 1021, 1041.]
[Footnote 503: Ibid., No. 714.]
[Footnote 504: Ibid., Nos. 2034, 2043, 2269, 2496, 2498, 2641, 2643.]
[Footnote 505: Ibid., Nos. 72-76, 2034.]
[Footnote 506: Ibid., Nos. 2034, 2044, 2047, 2052, 2103.]
[Footnote 507: Ibid., Nos. 2278, 2398, 2416, 2500.]
[Footnote 508: Ibid., 1693-96, Nos. 634, 635, 1009, 1236.]
[Footnote 509: C.S.P. Colon., 1693-96, Nos. 778, 876; Archives
Coloniales, Corresp. Gen. de St. Dom. III. Letter of Ducasse, 30 March
1694.]
[Footnote 510: C.S.P. Colon., 1693-96, Nos. 1109, 1236 (i.).]
[Footnote 511: Ibid., Nos. 1074, 1083, 1106, 1109, 1114, 1121, 1131,
1194, 1236; Charlevoix, I. x. p. 256 _ff._; Stowe MSS., 305 f., 205 b;
Ducéré: Les corsaires sous l'ancien regime, p. 142.]
[Footnote 512: The number of white men on the island at this time was
variously estimated from 2000 to 2400 men. (C.S.P. Colon., 1693-96, Nos.
1109 and 1258.)]
[Footnote 513: C.S.P. Colon, 1693-96, No. 1516.]
[Footnote 514: Ibid., Nos. 207, 876, 1004.]
[Footnote 515: C.S.P. Colon., 1693-96, Nos. 1946, 1973, 1974, 1980,
1983, 2022. According to Charlevoix, it was the dalliance and cowardice
of Laurens de Graff, who was in command at Cap François, and feared
falling into the hands of his old enemies the English and Spaniards,
which had much to do with the success of the invasion. After the
departure of the allies Laurens was deprived of his post and made
captain of a light corvette. (Charlevoix, I. x. p. 266 _ff._)]
[Footnote 516: Ducéré, _op. cit._ p. 148.]
[Footnote 517: Narrative of de Pointis.]
[Footnote 518: Narrative of de Pointis; C.S.P. Colon., 1696-97, No.
824.]
[Footnote 519: Narrative of de Pointis; C.S.P. Colon., 1696-97, No.
868.]
[Footnote 520: Narrative of de Pointis.]
[Footnote 521: C.S.P. Colon., 1696-97, Nos. 373-376, 413, 661, 769.]
[Footnote 522: Ibid., Nos. 715, 868.]
[Footnote 523: C.S.P. Colon., 1696-97, Nos. 375, 453.]
[Footnote 524: Ibid., 944. 978.]
[Footnote 525: The mouth of the harbour, called Boca Chica, was defended
by a fort with 4 bastions and 33 guns; but the guns were badly mounted
on flimsy carriages of cedar, and were manned by only 15 soldiers.
Inside the harbour was another fort called Santa Cruz, well-built with 4
bastions and a moat, but provided with only a few iron guns and without
a garrison. Two other forts formed part of the exterior works of the
town, but they had neither garrison nor guns. The city itself was
surrounded by solid walls of stone, with 12 bastions and 84 brass
cannon, to man which there was a company of 40 soldiers. Such was the
war footing on which the Spanish Government maintained the "Key of the
Indies." (Duro, _op. cit._, v. p. 287.)]
[Footnote 526: Narrative of de Pointis. _Cf._ Charlevoix, _op cit._,
liv. xi., for the best account of the whole expedition.]
[Footnote 527: Charlevoix, _op. cit._, liv. xi. p. 352.
In one of the articles of capitulation which the Governor of Cartagena
obtained from de Pointis, the latter promised to leave untouched the
plate, jewels and other treasure of the churches and convents. This
article was not observed by the French. On the return of the expedition
to France, however, Louis XIV. ordered the ecclesiastical plate to be
sequestered, and after the conclusion of the Peace of Ryswick sent it
back to San Domingo to be delivered to the governor and clergy of the
Spanish part of the island. (Duro, _op. cit._, v. pp. 291, 296-97).]
[Footnote 528: Duro, _op. cit._, v. p. 310.]
[Footnote 529: C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 697.]
[Footnote 530: Ibid.; _cf._ C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 138: "The number
of tippling houses is now doubly increased, so that there is not now
resident upon the place ten men to every house that selleth strong
liquors. There are more than 100 licensed houses, besides sugar and rum
works that sell without licence."]
[Footnote 531: Crawford: Bibliotheca Lindesiana. Handlist of
Proclamations.]
[Footnote 532: Firth: Naval Songs and Ballads, pp. l.-lii.; _cf._ also
Archives Coloniales, Corresp. Gén. de St Dom., vols. iii.-ix.; Ibid.,
Martinique, vols. viii.-xix.]
[Footnote 533: Archives Coloniales, Corresp. Gén. de Martinique, vol.
xvi.]
APPENDIX I
An account of the English buccaneers belonging to Jamaica and Tortuga in
1663, found among the Rawlinson MSS., makes the number of privateering
ships fifteen, and the men engaged in the business nearly a thousand.
The list is as follows:--
_Captain Ship Men Guns_
Sir Thomas Whetstone a Spanish prize 60 7
Captain Smart Griffon, frigate 100 14
Captain Guy James, frigate 90 14
Captain James American, frigate 70 6
Captain Cooper his frigate 80 10
Captain Morris a brigantine 60 7
Captain Brenningham his frigate 70 6
Captain Mansfield a brigantine 60 4
Captain Goodly a pink 60 6
Captain Blewfield, belonging
to Cape Gratia de Dios,
living among the Indians a barque 50 3
Captain Herdue a frigate 40 4
There were four more belonging to Jamaica, of which no account was
available. The crews were mixed of English, French and Dutch.
APPENDIX II
List of filibusters and their vessels on the coasts of French San
Domingo in 1684:--
_Captain Ship Men Guns_
Le sieur Grammont le Hardy 300 52
" capitaine Laurens de Graff " Neptune 210 54
" " Michel la Mutine 200 44
" " Janquais " Dauphine 180 30
" " le Sage le Tigre 130 30
" " Dedran " Chasseur 120 20
" sieur du Mesnil la Trompeuse 100 14
" capitaine Jocard l'Irondelle 120 18
" " Brea la Fortune 100 14
La prise du cap^ne. Laurens -- 80 18
Le sieur de Bernanos la Schitie 60 8
" capitaine Cachemarée le St Joseph 70 6
" " Blot la Quagone 90 8
" " Vigeron " Louse (barque) 30 4
" " Petit le Ruzé (bateau) 40 4
" " Lagarde la Subtille 30 2
" " Verpre le Postilion 25 2
(Paris, Archives Coloniales, Corresp. gén. de St. Dom., vol. i.--Mémoire
sur l'estat de Saint Domingue à M. de Seignelay par M. de Cussy.)
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscript Sources in England
_Public Record Office:_
State Papers. Foreign. Spain. Vols. 34-72. (Abbreviated in the footnotes
as S.P. Spain.)
_British Museum:_
Additional MSS. Vols. 11,268; 11,410-11; 12,410; 12,423; 12,429-30;
13,964; 13,975; 13,977; 13,992; 18,273; 22,676; 36,314-53.
Egerton MSS. Vol. 2395.
Sloane MSS. Vols. 793 or 894; 2724; 2752; 4020.
Stowe MSS. Vols. 305f; 205b.
_Bodleian Library:_
Rawlinson MSS. Vols. a. 26, 31, 32, 175, 347.
Tanner MSS. Vols. xlvii.; li.
Manuscript Sources in France
_Archives du ministère des Colonies:_
Correspondance générale de Saint-Domingue. Vols. i.-ix.
Historique de Saint-Domingue. Vols. i.-iii.
Correspondance générale de Martinique. Vols. i.-xix.
_Archives du ministère des affaires étrangères:_
Mémoires et documents. Fonds divers. Amérique. Vols. v., xiii., xlix.,
li.
Correspondance politique. Angleterre.
_Bibliothèque nationale:_
Manuscrits, nouvelles acquisitions. Vols. 9325; 9334.
Renaudat MSS.
Printed Sources
Calendar of State Papers. Colonial series. America and the West Indies.
1574-1699. (Abbreviated in the footnotes as C.S.P. Colon.)
Calendar of State Papers. Venetian. 1603-1617. (Abbreviated in the
footnotes as C.S.P. Ven.)
Dampier, William: Voyages. Edited by J. Masefield. 2 vols. London, 1906.
Gage, Thomas: The English American ... or a new survey of the West
Indies, etc. London, 1648.
Historical Manuscripts Commission: Reports. London, 1870 (in progress).
Margry, Pierre: Relations et mémoires inédits pour servir à l'histoire
de la France dans les pays d'outremer. Paris, 1867.
Pacheco, Cardenas, y Torres de Mendoza: Coleccion de documentos
relativos al describrimiento, conquista y colonizacion de las posesiones
españoles en América y Oceania. 42 vols. Madrid, 1864-83; _continued as_
Coleccion de documentos ineditos ... de ultramar. 13 vols. Madrid,
1885-1900.
Pointis, Jean Bernard Desjeans, sieur de: Relation de l'expedition de
Carthagène faite par les François en 1697. Amsterdam, 1698.
Present state of Jamaica ... to which is added an exact account of Sir
Henry Morgan's voyage to ... Panama, etc. London, 1683.
Recopilacion de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, mandadas imprimir y
publicar por rey Carlos II. 4 vols. Madrid, 1681.
Sharp, Bartholomew: The voyages and adventures of Captain B. Sharp ...
in the South Sea ... Also Captain Van Horn with his buccanieres
surprising of la Vera Cruz, etc. London, 1684.
Thurloe, John. A collection of the State papers of, etc. Edited by
Thomas Birch. 7 vols. London, 1742.
Venables, General. The narrative of, etc. Edited by C.H. Firth. London,
1900.
Wafer, Lionel: A new voyage and description of the Isthmus of America,
etc. London, 1699.
Winwood, Sir Ralph. Memorials of affairs of State ... collected from the
original papers of, etc. Edited by Edmund Sawyer. London, 1725.
* * * * *
Among the printed sources one of the earliest and most important is the
well-known history of the buccaneers written by Alexander Olivier
Exquemelin (corrupted by the English into Esquemeling, by the French
into Oexmelin). Of the author himself very little is known. Though
sometimes claimed as a native of France, he was probably a Fleming or a
Hollander, for the first edition of his works was written in the Dutch
language. He came to Tortuga in 1666 as an _engagé_ of the French West
India Company, and after serving three years under a cruel master was
rescued by the governor, M. d'Ogeron, joined the filibusters, and
remained with them till 1674, taking part in most of their exploits. He
seems to have exercised among them the profession of barber-surgeon.
Returning to Europe in 1674, he published a narrative of the exploits in
which he had taken part, or of which he at least had a first-hand
knowledge. This "history" is the oldest and most elaborate chronicle we
possess of the extraordinary deeds and customs of these freebooters who
played so large a part in the history of the West Indies in the
seventeenth century, and it forms the basis of all the popular modern
accounts of Morgan and other buccaneer captains. Exquemelin, although he
sadly confuses his dates, seems to be a perfectly honest witness, and
his accounts of such transactions as fell within his own experience are
closely corroborated by the official narratives.
(Biographies of Exquemelin are contained in the "Biographie Universelle"
of Michaud, vol. xxxi. p. 201, and in the "Nouvelle Biographie Générale"
of Hoefer, vol. xxxviii. p. 544. But both are very unsatisfactory and
display a lamentable ignorance of the bibliography of his history of the
buccaneers. According to the preface of a French edition of the work
published at Lyons in 1774 and cited in the "Nouvelle Biographie,"
Exquemelin was born about 1645 and died after 1707.)
The first edition of the book, now very rare, is entitled:
De Americaensche Zee-Roovers. Behelsende eene pertinente
en waerachtige Beschrijving van alle de voornaemste
Roveryen en onmenschliycke wreend heden die Englese en
France Rovers tegens de Spanjaerden in America gepleeght
hebben; Verdeelt in drie deelen ... Beschreven door A.
O. Exquemelin ... t'Amsterdam, by Jan ten Hoorn, anno
1678, in 4º.
(Brit. Mus., 1061. _Cf._ 20 (2). The date, 1674, of the first Dutch
edition cited by Dampierre ("Essai sur les sources de l'histoire des
Antilles Françaises," p. 151) is doubtless a misprint.)
(Both Dampierre (_op. cit._, p. 152) and Sabin ("Dict. of Books relating
to America," vi. p. 310) cite, as the earliest separate account of the
buccaneers, Claes G. Campaen's "Zee-Roover," Amsterdam, 1659. This
little volume, however, does not deal with the buccaneers in the West
Indies, but with privateering along the coasts of Europe and Africa.)
This book was reprinted several times and numerous translations were
made, one on the top of the other. What appears to be a German
translation of Exquemelin appeared in 1679 with the title:
Americanische Seeräuber. Beschreibung der grössesten
durch die Französische und Englische Meer-Beuter wider
die Spanier in Amerika verübten Raubery Grausamheit ...
Durch A. O. Nürnberg, 1679. 12º.
("Historie der Boecaniers of Vrybuyters van America ... Met Figuuren, 3
Deel. t'Amsterdam, 1700," 4º.--Brit. Mus., 9555. c. 19.)
This was followed two years later by a Spanish edition, also taken from
the Dutch original:
Piratas de la America y luz a la defensa de las costas
de Indias Occidentales. Dedicado a Don Bernadino Antonio
de Pardinas Villar de Francos ... por el zelo y cuidado
de Don Antonio Freyre ... Traducido de la lingua
Flamenca en Espanola por el Dor. de Buena-Maison ...
Colonia Agrippina, en casa de Lorenzo Struickman. Ano de
1681. 12º.
(Brit. Mus., G. 7179. The appended description of the Spanish Government
in America was omitted and a few Spanish verses were added in one or two
places, but otherwise the translation seems to be trustworthy. The
portraits and the map of the isthmus of Panama are the same as in the
Dutch edition, but the other plates are different and better. In the
Bibl. Nat. there is another Spanish edition of 1681 in quarto.)
This Spanish text, which seems to be a faithful rendering of the Dutch,
was reprinted with a different dedication in 1682 and in 1684, and again
in Madrid in 1793. It is the version on which the first English edition
was based. The English translation is entitled:
Bucaniers of America; or a true account of the ...
assaults committed ... upon the coasts of the West
Indies, by the Bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga ...
especially the ... exploits of Sir Henry Morgan ...
written originally in Dutch by J. Esquemeling ... now
... rendered into English. W. Crooke; London, 1684. 4º.
(Brit. Mus., 1198, a. 12 (or) 1197, h. 2.; G. 7198.)
The first English edition of Exquemelin was so well received that within
three months a second was published, to which was added the account of a
voyage by Captain Cook and a brief chapter on the exploits of Barth.
Sharp in the Pacific Ocean. In the same year, moreover, there appeared
an entirely different English version, with the object of vindicating
the character of Morgan from the charges of brutality and lust which had
appeared in the first translation and in the Dutch original. It was
entitled:
The History of the Bucaniers; being an impartial
relation of all the battels, sieges, and other most
eminent assaults committed for several years upon the
coasts of the West Indies by the pirates of Jamaica and
Tortuga. More especially the unparalleled achievements
of Sir Henry Morgan ... very much corrected from the
errors of the original, by the relations of some English
gentlemen, that then resided in those parts. _Den
Engelseman is een Duyvil voor een Mensch._ London,
printed for Thomas Malthus at the Sun in the Poultry.
1684.
(Brit. Mus., G. 13,674.)
The first edition of 1684 was reprinted with a new title-page in 1695,
and again in 1699. The latter included, in addition to the text of
Exquemelin, the journals of Basil Ringrose and Raveneau de Lussan, both
describing voyages in the South Seas, and the voyage of the Sieur de
Montauban to Guinea in 1695. This was the earliest of the composite
histories of the buccaneers and became the model for the Dutch edition
of 1700 and the French editions published at Trevoux in 1744 and 1775.
The first French translation of Exquemelin appeared two years after the
English edition of 1684. It is entitled:
Histoire des Aventuriers qui se sont signalez dans les
Indes contenant ce qu'ils ont fait de plus remarquable
depuis vingt années. Avec la vie, les Moeurs, les
Coutumes des Habitans de Saint Domingue et de la Tortuë
et une Description exacte de ces lieux; ... Le tout
enrichi de Cartes Geographiques et de Figures en
Taille-douce. Par Alexandre Olivier Oexmelin. A Paris,
chez Jacques Le Febre. MDCLXXXVI., 2 vols. 12º.
(Brit. Mus., 9555, aa. 4.)
This version may have been based on the Dutch original; although the
only indication we have of this is the fact that the work includes at
the end a description of the government and revenues of the Spanish
Indies, a description which is found in none of the earlier editions of
Exquemelin, except in the Dutch original of 1678. The French text,
however, while following the outline of Exquemelin's narrative, is
greatly altered and enlarged. The history of Tortuga and French
Hispaniola is elaborated with details from another source, as are also
the descriptions of the manners and customs of the cattle-hunters and
the freebooters. Accounts of two other buccaneers, Montbars and
Alexandre Bras-le-Fer, are inserted, but d'Ogeron's shipwreck on Porto
Rico and the achievements of Admiral d'Estrees against the Dutch are
omitted. In general the French editor, the Sieur de Frontignières, has
re-cast the whole story. A similar French edition appeared in Paris in
1688, (Brit. Mus., 278, a. 13, 14.) and in 1713 a facsimile of this last
was published at Brussels by Serstevens (Dampierre, p. 153). Sabin (_op.
cit._, vi. 312) mentions an edition of 1699 in three volumes which
included the journal of Raveneau de Lussan. In 1744, and again in 1775,
another French edition was published in four volumes at Trevoux, to
which was added the voyage of Montauban to the Guinea Coast, and the
expeditions against Vera Cruz in 1683, Campeache in 1685, and Cartagena
in 1697. The third volume contained the journal of R. de Lussan, and the
fourth a translation of Johnson's "History of the Pirates." (Brit. Mus.,
9555, aa. 1.) A similar edition appeared at Lyons in 1774, but I have
had no opportunity of examining a copy. (Nouvelle Biographie Générale,
tom. xxxviii. 544. The best bibliography of Exquemelin is in Sabin, _op.
cit._, vi. 309.)
Secondary Works
Of the secondary works concerned with the history of the buccaneers, the
oldest are the writings of the French Jesuit historians of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dutertre (Histoire générale des
Antilles. Paris, 1667-71), a chronicler of events within his own
experience as well as a reliable historian, unfortunately brings his
narrative to a close in 1667, but up to that year he is the safest guide
to the history of the French Antilles. Labat, in his "Nouveau Voyage aux
Isles de l'Amerique" (Paris, 1722), gives an account of eleven years,
between 1694 and 1705, spent in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and although
of little value as an historian, he supplies us with a fund of the most
picturesque and curious details about the life and manners of the people
in the West Indies at the end of the seventeenth century. A much more
important and accurate work is Charlevoix's "Histoire de l'Isle
Espagnole ou de S. Domingue" (Paris, 1732), and this I have used as a
general introduction to the history of the French buccaneers. Raynal's
"Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce
européen dans les deux Indes" (Amsterdam, 1770) is based for the origin
of the French Antilles upon Dutertre and Labat and is therefore
negligible for the period of the buccaneers. Adrien Dessalles, who in
1847 published his "Histoire générale des Antilles," preferred, like
Labat and Raynal, to depend on the historians who had preceded him
rather than endeavour to gain an intimate knowledge of the sources.
In the English histories of Jamaica written by Long, Bridges, and
Gardner, whatever notice is taken of the buccaneers is meagre and
superficial, and the same is true of Bryan Edwards' "History, civil and
commercial, of the British colonies in the West Indies." Thomas Southey,
in his "Chronological History of the West Indies" (Lond. 1827), devotes
considerable space to their achievements, but depends entirely upon the
traditional sources. In 1803 J.W. von Archenholz published "Die
Geschichte der Flibustier," a superficial, diffuse and even puerile
narrative, giving no references whatever to authorities. (It was
translated into French (Paris, 1804), and into English by Geo. Mason
(London, 1807).) In 1816 a "History of the Buccaneers in America" was
published by James Burney as the fourth volume of "A chronological
History of the Discoveries in the South Seas or Pacific Ocean." Burney
casts but a rapid glance over the West Indies, devoting most of the
volume to an account of the voyages of the freebooters along the coast
of South America and in the East Indies. Walter Thornbury in 1858 wrote
"The Buccaneers, or the Monarchs of the Main," a hasty compilation,
florid and overdrawn, and without historical judgment or accuracy. In
1895 M. Henri Lorin presented a Latin thesis to the Faculty of History
in Paris, entitled:--"De praedonibus Insulam Santi Dominici
celebrantibus saeculo septimo decimo," but he seems to have confined
himself to Exquemelin, Le Pers, Labat, Dutertre and a few documents
drawn from the French colonial archives. The best summary account in
English of the history and significance of the buccaneers in the West
Indies is contained in Hubert H. Bancroft's "History of Central America"
(ii. chs. 26, 28-30). Within the past year there has appeared an
excellent volume by M. Pierre de Vaissière describing creole life and
manners in the French colony of San Domingo in the century and a half
preceding the Revolution. (Vaissière, Pierre de: Saint Dominigue.
(1629-1789). Paris, 1909.) It is a reliable monograph, and like his
earlier volume, "Gentilshommes campagnards de l'ancienne France," is
written in a most entertaining style. De Vaissière contributes much
valuable information, especially in the first chapter, about the origins
and customs of the French "flibustiers."
I have been able to find only two Spanish works which refer at all to
the buccaneers. One is entitled:
Piraterias y agresiones de los ingleses y de otros
pueblos de Europa en la America espanola desde el siglo
XVI. al XVIII., deducidas de las obras de D. Dionisio de
Alcedo y Herrera. Madrid, 1883. 4º.
Except for a long introduction by Don Justo Zaragoza based upon
Exquemelin and Alcedo, it consists of a collection of extracts referring
to freebooters on the coasts of Peru and Chili, and deals chiefly with
the eighteenth century. The other Spanish work is an elaborate history
of the Spanish navy lately published in nine volumes by Cesareo
Fernandez Duro, and entitled:--
Armada espanola desde la union de los reinos de Castilla
y de Aragon. Madrid, 1895.
There are numerous chapters dealing with the outrages of the French and
English freebooters in the West Indies, some of them based upon Spanish
sources to which I have had no access. But upon comparison of Duro's
narrative, which in so far as it relates to the buccaneers is often
meagre, with the sources available to me, I find that he adds little to
what may be learned on the subject here in England.
One of the best English descriptions of the Spanish colonial
administration and commercial system is still that contained in book
viii. of Robertson's "History of America" (Lond. 1777). The latest and
best summary account, however, is in French, in the introduction to vol.
i. of "La traite négrière aux Indes de Castille" (Paris, 1906), by
Georges Scelle. Weiss, in vol. ii. of his history of "L'Espagne depuis
Philippe II. jusqu'aux Bourbons" (Paris, 1844), treats of the causes of
the economic decadence of Spain, and gives an account of the contraband
trade in Spanish America, drawn largely from Labat. On this general
subject Leroy-Beaulieu, "De la colonization chez les peuples modernes"
(Paris, 1874), has been especially consulted.
The best account of the French privateers of the sixteenth century in
America is in an essay entitled: "Les corsairs français au XVI^e siècle
dans les Antilles" (Paris, 1902), by Gabriel Marcel. It is a short
monograph based on the collections of Spanish documents brought together
by Pacheco and Navarrete. The volume by E. Ducéré entitled, "Les
corsairs sous l'ancien regîme" (Bayonne, 1895), is also valuable for the
history of privateering. For the history of the Elizabethan mariners I
have made use of the two works by J. S. Corbett: "Drake and the Tudor
Navy" (Lond. 1898), and "The successors of Drake" (Lond. 1900). Other
works consulted were:
Arias de Miranda, José: Examen critico-historico del influyo que tuvo en
el comercio, industria y poblacion de Espana su dominacion en America.
Madrid, 1854.
Blok, Pieter Johan: History of the people of the Netherlands. Translated
by C. A. Bierstadt and Ruth Putnam. 4 vols. New York, 1898.
Brown, Alex.: The Genesis of the United States. 2 vols. Lond., 1890.
Crawford, James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of: Bibliotheca Lindesiana.
Handlist of proclamations. 3 vols. Aberdeen, 1893-1901.
Dumont, Jean: Corps universel diplomatique. 13 vols. Hague, 1726-39.
Froude, James Anthony: History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the
defeat of the Spanish armada. 12 vols. 1870-75. English seamen in the
sixteenth century. Lond., 1901.
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson: History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,
1649-1660. 3 vols. Lond., 1894-1903.
Geographical and historical description of ... Cartagena, Porto Bello,
La Vera Cruz, the Havana and San Augustin. Lond., 1741.
Gibbs, Archibald R.: British Honduras ... from ... 1670. Lond., 1883.
Hakluyt, Richard: The principal navigations ... of the English nation,
etc. 3 vols. Lond., 1598-1600.
Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio: Historia general de las Indias. 4 vols.
Madrid, 1601-15.
Hughson, Shirley C.: The Carolina pirates and colonial commerce.
Baltimore, 1894.
Lucas, C. P.: A historical geography of the British colonies. 4 vols.
Oxford, 1905. Vol. ii. The West Indies.
Monson, Sir William: The naval tracts of ... Edited ... by M. Oppenheim.
Vols. i. and ii. Lond., 1902--(in progress).
Oviedo y Valdes, Gonzalo Fernandez de: Historia general de las Indias.
Salamanca, 1547.
Peytraud, Lucien: L'Esclavage aux Antilles françaises avant 1789, etc.
Paris, 1897.
Saint-Yves, G.: Les compagnes de Jean d'Estrées dans la mer des
Antilles, 1676-78. Paris, 1900.
Strong, Frank: Causes of Cromwell's West Indian expedition. (Amer. Hist.
Review. Jan. 1899).
Veitia Linaje, Josef de: Norte de la Contratacion de las Indias
Occidentales. Sevilla, 1672.
Vignols, Leon: La piraterie sur l'Atlantique au XVIII^e siècle. Rennes,
1891.
INDEX
Acapulco, 21
Aix-la-Chapelle, peace of, 156
_Ajoupa_, 68, 79
Albemarle, first duke of, _see_ Monck, George
" second duke of, _see_ Monck, Christopher
Albuquerque, Duke of, 109, 199
Alexander VI., Bull of Pope, 3, 30
Allison, Captain (buccaneer), 224
Antigua, 48, 55, 229
Araya salt-mine, 53-54
Archenholz, J.W. von, 283
Arlington, Earl of, _see_ Bennett, Sir Henry
Arundell, James, 114, 117
Assiento of negroes, 26, 36-7, 103, 184 _n._
Association, Island, _see_ Tortuga
Aston, Lord of Forfar, 102
Avery, Captain Henry, 270-71
Aves, Isle d', _see_ Isle d'Aves
Aylett, Captain (buccaneer), 156
_Azogues_, 22, 101
Azores, 3, 4, 15, 20, 42, 84
Bahama Islands, 2, 237, 238 and _n._, 271
Bahia, 49
Bancroft, Hubert H., 284
Banister, Major James, 205
Bannister, Captain (buccaneer) 254
_Barbacoa_, 68
Barbadoes, 47, 50, 67, 74, 85 and _n._, 87, 92, 99, 104, 120, etc.
Barbuda, 48
Barinas, Marques de, 268
Barker, Andrew, 40
Barlovento, Armada de, 109, 251 _n._, 261
Barnard, Captain (buccaneer), 111
Barnes, Captain ( " ), 219
Barre, Charles, 215
Barry, Colonel Samuel, 118 and _n._
Beckford, Peter, 217
Beeston, Captain (afterwards Sir), William, 97 _n._, 108 _n._, 118, 135
and _n._, 142, 155, 158, 200, 202, 259, etc.
Begon, M. Michel (Intendant of the French Islands), 244, 247 _n._
Benavides, Don Juan de, 50
Bennett, Sir Henry (afterwards Earl of Arlington), 100, 122, 128, 132,
133, 142, 143 _n._, 160, 186, 198, etc.
Berkeley, Sir Thomas, 41
Bermuda, 20, 75, 92, 201
Bernanos, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Bernard, Samuel, 255, 257
Bigford, Captain (buccaneer), 156
"Biscayners," 254-5
Blake, Captain, R.N., 93
Blewfield, Captain (buccaneer), 273
Blot, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Boston (Mass.), 251
Bradley, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph (buccaneer), 164-5
Brayne, Lieutenant-General William, 96, 114, 127
Brazil, 3, 25, 36, 47, 49 and _n._, 102
Breda, treaties of, 141
Breha, Captain, _see_ Landresson, Michel
Brenningham, Captain (buccaneer), 273
Brest, corsairs of, 42, 262, 265
Bridges, George W., 283
Browne, Captain James (buccaneer), 217-18
Browne, Richard (buccaneer), 156, 190 _n._, 195, 196
Buccaneers, cruelties of, 147-50, 153 _n._, 185 _ff._
" customs of, 70-78, 163 _n._
" derivation of the word, 66
Buccaneers, laws against, _see_ Laws against privateers and pirates
" numbers of, 124, 240 _n._, 271
" origins of, 67, 69, 78-80, 125-27
" suppression of, 200 _ff._
" vessels of, 75
Buenos Ayres, 10, 22
Bull of Pope Alexander VI., _see_ Alexander VI.
Burney, James, 283
Burough, Cornelius, 99
Butler, Gregory (Commissioner of Jamaica), 85 _n._
Byndloss, Colonel Robert, 215, 248, 255
Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, 3
Cachemarée, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Cadiz, 9 _n._, 12 and _n._, 13 and _n._, 16, 20, 22, 25 _n._, 26, 40, 96
_n._, etc.
Campeache, city of, 12 _n._, 22, 107-8, 109, 111, 210, 222, 245
" province of, 21, 107, 137 _n._, 138, 143, 155, 201, 204, 207,
208, etc.
Campo y Espinosa, Don Alonso del, 157, 158
Canary Islands, 14, 15, 42, 241
Cap François, 220, 221, 258, 261, 262 _n._
Caracas, 10, 12 _n._, 15, 16, 22, 50, 154, 222, 240, 242
Cardenas, Alonso de, 52, 53
Carey, Colonel Theod., 129, 130
Carleill, General Christopher, 39
Carleton, Sir Dudley, Viscount Dorchester, 102
Carlile, Captain Charles, R.N., 236
Carlisle, Earl of, _see_ Howard, Charles
Carolinas, 3, 47, 239, 250, 251, 252, 253, 271
Cartagena (New Granada), 9 _n._, 11, 14 and _n._, 15, 16, 19, 23, 38,
39, 262, etc.
Cartago (Costa Rica), 136 and _n._
_Casa de Contratacion_, 11, 12, 13 _n._, 22, 25 and _n._, 42
Catherine of Braganza, 100
Cattle-hunters, 57-58, 62, 65, 66-69
Cavallos (Honduras), 21
Cayenne (Guiana), 233, 234
Cecil, Robert, Viscount Cranborne and Earl of Salisbury, 32 _n._, 51
"Centurion," 104, 105, 108 and _n._
Chagre, port of, 43, 195, 267
" river, 17 _n._, 164, 168, 175, 193
Chaloner, Captain, 54
Charles I., King of England, 50, 52, 102
" II., King of England, 97, 100, 101, 103, 109, 110, 117, 119,
120, 121, etc.
" II., King of Spain, 268
" V., Emperor, 10, 13 _n._, 45, 46
Charleston (Carolina), 252, 253
Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier, 58, 62, 70, 78, 81, 245, 246 _n._,
262 _n._, 283, 284 _n._
_Chasse-partie_, 73
Chili, 10, 11, 17, 48, 229
_Cinquantaines_, 63
Clandestine trade, 8 and _n._, 25-27, 36-38, 102-104
Clarke, Robert (Governor of the Bahamas), 237-8
Clifford, George, Earl of Cumberland, 34, 40, 41
Codrington, Christopher (Deputy-Governor of Nevis), 229
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, Marquis de Seignelay, 8 _n._, 9 _n._
Coligny, Admiral Gaspard de, 47
Colleton, James (Governor of Carolina), 252
Collier, Edward (buccaneer), 155, 156, 160, 182 _n._, 190 _n._, 196
Colombia, U.S. of, _see_ New Granada
Columbus, Christopher, 2, 42
_Consulado_, 12, 13
Contraband trade, _see_ Clandestine trade
Cooke, Captain (buccaneer), 224
Cooper, Captain (buccaneer), 111, 273
Corbett, Julian S., 286
Cordova, Don Luis de, 242
Cornwallis, Sir Charles, 51, 54
Coro (Venezuela), 98
Cortez, Hernando, 3, 46
Costa Rico, 136 and _n._
Cottington, Francis, Lord, 101-2
Council of the Indies, 13 and _n._, 14, 22, 25 _n._, 102
"Cour Volant," 155-6, and _n._
Coventry, Sir Henry (Secretary of State), 215
Coxon, Captain John (buccaneer), 220, 223, 224, 225 _n._, 226, 227-8 and
_n._, 235, 237 and _n._, 238, 245, etc.
Cranborne, Viscount, _see_ Cecil, Robert
Criminals transported to the colonies, 5, 92, 125-6
Cromwell, Oliver, 85, 87-90, 92, 100
Cuba, 2, 19, 21, 23, 26, 32, 42, 46, 49, 77, etc.
Cumana (Venezuela), 16, 53, 98, 267
Cumanagote (Venezuela), 267
Cumberland, Earl of, _see_ Clifford, George
Curaçao, 48, 67, 128, 129, 131, 134, 135, 143, 220, 221, etc.
Cussy, Sieur Tarin de (Governor of French Hispaniola), 243-4 and _n._,
245, 246, 258
Dalyson, Captain William, 99 _n._
Dampier, William, 73 _n._, 108 _n._, 221 _n._, 225 _n._, 228 _n._, 247
_n._
Daniel, Captain (buccaneer), 74
Darien, Isthmus of, 3, 22, 39, 40, 43, 145, 163, 191 _n._, 225 and _n._,
226, etc.
Deane, John (buccaneer), 213-14
Dedran, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Dempster, Captain (buccaneer), 154
Deschamps, Jérémie, Seigneur de Rausset (Governor of Tortuga), 116 and
_n._, 117, 119
Deseada, 14, 15, 20
Desjeans, Jean-Bernard, Sieur de Pointis, 262 _ff._
Dessalles, Adrien, 283
Diaz Pimienta, Don Francisco, 55, 56 _n._
Diego Grillo (buccaneer), 201 and _n._
Dieppe, corsairs of, 42, 48
Dominica, 20, 38, 74, 235
"Don Francisco," 207
"Don Juan Morf," 60 and _n._, 61
Dorchester, Viscount _see_ Carleton, Sir Dudley
Doyley, Colonel Edward (Governor of Jamaica), 91, 96-97, 98, 99 and
_n._, 100, 101, 107, 116, 122, 124, etc.
Drake, Sir Francis, 31, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 50, 89 and _n._, 195, 210,
etc.
Ducasse, Jean-Baptiste (Governor of French Hispaniola), 260-61, 262,
263, 265, 266
Ducéré, Eduard, 285-6
Duro, Cesario Fernandez, 135 _n._, 211 _n._, 243 _n._, 285
Dutch wars, _see_ War
" West India Company, 47, 49
Dutertre, Jean-Baptiste, 70, 114, 116 _n._, 118 _n._, 282, 284
East Indies, _see_ Indies, East
Edmondes, Sir Thomas, 54
Edwards, Bryan, 283
Elizabeth, Queen, 29, 31, 34, 38, 39, 46, 50, 101, 136
Elletson, Robert, 248, 249, 255, 257
_Engagés_, 59, 79-80, 124
Equador, 17, 229
Esmit, Adolf (Governor of St. Thomas), 234-37
" Nicholas (Governor of St. Thomas), 236
Esnambuc, Mons. d', 63
Essex, Captain Cornelius (buccaneer), 224, 226
Estrées, Jean, Comte d', 9 _n._, 220-221
Everson, Captain Jacob (buccaneer), 228 and _n._, 254 _n._
Everson, Jory (Governor of St. Thomas), 237
Exquemelin, Alexander Olivier, 70, 77, 78, 79, 124, 131 _n._, 135 _n._,
136 _n._, 137 _n._, 277-82
Fanshaw, Sir Richard, 103, 106, 120, 121, 140, 141
Ferdinand and Isabella, Kings of Spain, 3, 10
Fitzgerald, Philip, 206-7
Fletcher, Benjamin (Governor of New York), 271
_Flibustiers_, derivation of the word, 66; _see_ Buccaneers
Fload, Captain (Governor of Tortuga), 64 _n._
Flores, _see_ Azores.
Florida, 2, 47, 54.
Flota, 20, 38-9, 49, 77, 95, 96 and _n._, 103, 109, 242;
_cf. also_ Treasure fleets
Fontenay, Chevalier de (Governor of Tortuga), 81-84, 113, 116
Fortescue, Major-General Richard, 92, 96, 127
Franquesnay, Sieur de (Governor of French Hispaniola), 222, 244 and
_n._, 247 _n._
French wars, _see_ War
French West India Company, 48, 117, 123, 162
Frobisher, Martin, 39
Frogge, William, 174 _n._, 177 _n._, 184 _n._, 186, 196 _n._
Fuemayor, Rui Fernandez de, 61 and _n._
Gage, Thomas, 16 _n._, 18, 23, 55 _n._, 90
Galicia, Company of, 12 _n._
Galleons, 14-20, 21, 22, 23, 25 _n._, 55, 56 _n._, 62, 76;
_cf. also_ Treasure fleets.
Galleons' passage, 15
Gardner, William J., 283
Gautemala, 10, 16, 17 _n._, 22, 77
Gaves, Don Gabriel de, 60
"Gens de la côte," 69
Gibraltar (Venezuela), 157, 267
Godolphin, Sir William, 103, 160, 186, 197, 198, 199, 207, 208, 209-10
"Golden Hind," 39
Golden Island, 225, 253
Goodly, Captain (buccaneer), 273
Goodson, Vice-Admiral William, 92-96, 98 _n._, 99, 104
Graff, Laurens-Cornille Baldran, Sieur de, 241-43, 244 _n._, 245, 246
and _n._, 248, 258-59, 262 _n._, 274
Grammont, Sieur de (buccaneer), 73, 221-2, 240-1, 243, 244, 245, 246 and
_n._, 248 and _n._
Granada (Nicaragua), 16 _n._, 136, 138-9, 162, 267, 268
Granjeria de las Perlas (New Granada), 44
Grenville, Sir Richard, 40
Guadaloupe, 14, 20, 48, 67, 131, 282
"Guanahani," 2
Guiana, 10, 41, 47, 54
Guinea, coast of, 36, 37, 38, 235, 241, 270, 272
Guipuzcoa, Company of, 12 _n._
"Gunsway," 270
Guy, Captain (buccaneer), 273
Guzman, Gonzalo de, 43
" Don Juan Perez de, _see_ Perez de Guzman.
Hamlin, Captain Jean (buccaneer), 234-6 and _n._, 251 _n._
Hampton, Thomas, 37-38
Haro, Don Francisco de, 183 _n._
" Don Luis de, 100
Harris, Captain Peter (buccaneer), 225, 226, 245
Harrison, Captain, (buccaneer), 162
Hattsell, Captain, ( " ), 136
Havana, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 42, 43, 45, etc.
Havre, corsairs, of, 48
Hawkins, Sir John, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 210.
" William, 36
Heath, Attorney-General Sir Robert, 52
Henrietta Island, 55, 59 _n._
Henry II., King of France, 53
" IV., " 9 _n._, 48
" VIII. King of England, 36 and _n._
Herdue, Captain (buccaneer), 273
Heyn, Admiral Piet, 49, 96
Hilton, Captain (Governor of Tortuga), 59, 60
Hispaniola, 2, 20 and _n._ 26, 32, 34, 35, 37, 46, 55, 57, etc.
Holland, Earl of, _see_ Rich, Henry
Holmes, Admiral Sir Robert, 253
Honduras, 50, 107, 208, 211, 223, 226, 234, 249
Hopton, Sir Arthur, 53
Howard, Charles, Earl of Carlisle (Governor of Jamaica), 205, 211, 212,
222-28, 232
" Sir Philip, 255
Humanes, Conde de, 102
Ibarra, Don Carlos, 62 _n._
Inchiquin, Earl of, _see_ O'Brien, William
Indian Ocean, pirates in, _see_ Pirates
Indians, _see_ Spain, cruelties to Indians
Indies, Council of the, _see_ Council
" exclusion of foreigners from, _see_ Spain
Indies, East, pirates in, _see_ Pirates
" West, colonisation of, 45-48
" " first English ship in, 34-35
"Indults," 25
Interlopers, _see_ Clandestine trade
Isabella, Queen, _see_ Ferdinand and Isabella
Isle d'Aves, 220 and _n._, 221, 222, 241
" la Vache, 155, 156, 160, 161, 162, 205, 212, 235, 236 _n._, 245,
etc.
Jackman, Captain (buccaneer), 137, 143
Jackson, Captain William, 50, 67, 85
Jacobs, Captain (buccaneer), _see_ Everson
Jamaica, 2, 19, 46, 50, 57, 73, 77, 85, 86, 90, etc.
" assembly of, 110, 217, 218, 227, 230, 231, 233, 248
" Council of, 104, 106, 107, 111, 118, 132, 159, 196, 202, 203, etc.
James, Captain (buccaneer), 273
" ("President of Tortuga"), 64 _n._
James I., King of England, 46, 50, 51, 101 _n._
" II., King of England, 253, 255, 257, 258
Jamestown (Virginia), 47
Jenkins, Sir Leoline, 208
Jiménez, Don José Sánchez, 139
Jocard, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Johnson, Captain (buccaneer), 202-3
" " R.N., 234
"Judith," 39
_Juzgado de Indias_, 13 _n._
Kingston (Jamaica), 50, 86
Knollys, Francis, 39, 40
Labat, Jean-Baptiste, 70, 73-5, 282, 284, 285
Lagarde, Captain (buccaneer), 274
La Guayra (Venezuela), 240-41
Lancers, _see Cinquantaines_
Landresson, Captain Michel, _alias_ Breha (buccaneer), 251 and _n._,
252, 274
Langford, Captain Abraham, 118-19
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, Bishop of Chiapa, 32
Laurens de Graff, _see_ Graff.
La Vivon, Mons., 155-6 and _n._
Laws against privateers and pirates, 110, 217, 218, 220, 227, 230-31,
251-53, 271
Le Clerc, Captain François, 42
Legane (Hispaniola), 124, 258, 261
Legrand, Pierre (buccaneer), 135 _n._
"Le Pain," _see_ Paine, Peter
Le Pers (Jesuit writer), 284 and _n._
Lerma, Duque de, 9 _n._
Leroy-Beaulieu, Pierre-Paul, 1, 285
Le Sage, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Lessone, " ( " ), 224
Levasseur, Mons., 63-66, 78, 80-82, 116
Ley, James, Earl of Marlborough, 52, 53
Lilburne, Robert (Governor of Bahamas), 238-39
Lima (Peru), 16, 17, 25
Linhares, Conde de, 102
Logwood, 201, 208-12, 226, 234, 249
Long, Edward, 127, 283
" Samuel, 226
Lonvilliers, Mons. de, 81
Lorin, Henri, 284
Louis XIV., King of France, 9 _n._, 116, 219, 257, 258, 266 _n._
Ludbury, Captain (buccaneer), 162
Ludwell, Philip (Governor of Carolina), 253
Lynch, Sir Thomas (Governor of Jamaica), 111, 121, 197, 198, 200-205,
209, 213, 216, 232-38, 243, and _n._, etc.
Lyttleton, Sir Charles (Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica), 106, 109, 110,
111, 112, 118, 127
Madeira, 42
Maggott, Captain (buccaneer), 224
Maintenon, Marquis de, 222
Maldonado de Aldana, 108
Mansfield, Captain Edward (buccaneer), 73, 131, and _n._, 134-36, 138,
143, 163 _n._, 164, 273
"Mansvelt," _see_ Mansfield
Maracaibo (Venezuela), 15, 22, 50, 156-8, 159, 161, 210, 222, 267
Marcel, Gabriel, 285
Margarita Island, 2, 15, 16, 38, 222
" patache, 15, 16, 19 and _n._
Margot, Port (Hispaniola), 64, 65, 83, 84, 123
Marie-Anne of Austria, Queen Regent of Spain, 141, 159, 184 _n._, 198,
199, 208, 211
Markham, William (Governor of Pennsylvania), 271
Marlborough, Earl of, _see_ Ley, James
"Marston Moor," 87, 97, 98 and _n._, 99
Marteen, Captain David (buccaneer), 134
Martin, 81-82, 83 _n._
Martinique, 48, 67, 73, 74, 75, 220, 246 _n._, 272, 282
"Mary of Guildford," 36 _n._
Mary, Queen of England, 259
Massachusetts, 252, 271
_Matelotage_, 69
Medina Coeli, Duque de, 199
" de los Torres, Duque de, 141
Merida (Yucatan), 210, 245
Mesnil, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Mexico, _see_ New Spain
Michel, Captain (buccaneer), 274
" le Basque (buccaneer), 124, 156
Milton, John (Latin Secretary of State), 89 _n._
Mitchell, Captain (buccaneer), 108 _n._
Modyford, Colonel Charles, 203
" Sir James, 127, 137, 143 _n._, 163 _n._
" Sir Thomas (Governor of Jamaica), 119-23,
127, 128, 131-35, 136 _n._, 137 and _n._, 140, 142, 143 _n._, 144, etc.
Moledi, Don Patricio, 111
Molesworth, Hender (Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica), 237 _n._, 248, 249,
253-54, 255, 257
Molina, Conde de, 158, 197 _n._
Mompos (New Granada), 264
Mona, Island of, 20, 34
Monck, Christopher, second Duke of Albemarle (Governor of Jamaica), 255-57
" George, first Duke of Albemarle, 132, 133, 142, 143 _n._, 154, 159
Montagu, Edward, Earl of Sandwich, 103, 141, 142
Montemayor, Don Juan Francisco de, 82
Montespan, Marquise de, 218 _n._
Montserrat, 48, 129
Moralis, Don Pedro de, 105
Moreton, Joseph (Governor of Carolina), 252
Morgan, Captain (buccaneer), 235
" Colonel Blodre (buccaneer), 163 _n._, 182 _n._
" Colonel Edward, 120, 121, 129, 130, 133, 137 _n._, 143
" Sir Henry (buccaneer and Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica),
73, 137 and _n._, 143-96, 204-6, 210, 212-16, 222, 226, 227, 228, etc.
" Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas, 130 _n._, 137 _n._
Morris, Captain John (buccaneer), 137, 143, 161, 182 _n._, 273
Mosquito Coast, 19, 55, 76, 138, 245
Munden, Captain Robert, 118
Myngs, Captain Christopher, R.N., 98 and _n._, 99 and _n._, 105, 106,
107, 108 and _n._, 109, 121
Nata de los Santos (Darien), 136 _n._, 191 _n._
Nau, Jean-David (buccaneer), 124 and _n._, 156, 157
Navigation Laws, 99, 101 _n._, 102, 214, 271
"Navio del Oro," 17
Negro slave-trade, 36-38;
_cf. also_ Clandestine trade
Negroes, Assiento of, _see_ Assiento
Netherlands, truce of 1609, 52
" wars of, _see_ War
Nevill, Vice-Admiral John, 264, 265
Nevis, 47, 63, 86, 129, 229
New England, 86, 92, 93, 116, 201, 250, 272
Newfoundland, 35, 265
New Granada, 11, 16, 42, 232
New Providence Island (Bahamas), 237-39
New Spain, 3, 10, 21, 22, 32, 33, 46, 76, 90, 111, etc.
New York, 129, 201, 271
Nicaragua, 19, 76, 137, 162
" Lake, 16, 138
Nimuegen, peace of, 240
Nombre de Dios (Darien), 14 _n._, 17 _n._, 40
Norris, Commodore Sir John, 265
O'Brien, William, Earl of Inchiquin (Governor of Jamaica), 257, 259
Ogeron, Bertrand d' (Governor of French Hispaniola), 118, 123-4, 216,
217, 218, 239
Olivares, Conde de, 9 _n._
Olonnais (buccaneer), _see_ Nau, Jean-David
Orinoco River, 2, 32 _n._, 47, 85 _n._, 111
Oxenham, John, 40
"Oxford," 155
Pain, Captain Thomas (buccaneer), 238 and _n._, 239, 259
Paine, Peter, 233-34 and _n._, 238 _n._
Panama, city of, 10, 16, 17 and _n._, 18, 40, 97, 120, 136 _n._, 139,
140, etc.
" Isthmus of, _see_ Darien
" President of, _see_ Perez de Guzman
Payta (Peru), 17, 188
Penalva, Conde de, 113
Penn, Admiral William, 85 and _n._, 86, 87, 93, 113
" William (proprietor of Penns.), 271
Pennsylvania, 271
Perez de Guzman, Don Juan (President of Panama), 139, 164, 170 _n._, 184
_n._, 186, 191 and _n._, 192 _n._
" Diego, 44
Pernambuco, 49
Perry, Mr. 61 _n._
Peru, 3, 10, 11, 16, 17, 22, 25, 32, 42, 46, etc.
Petit, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Petit-Goave (Hispaniola), 118, 119, 124, 221, 241, 242, 243, 244, 247
and _n._, 248, etc.
Philip II., King of Spain, 14, 30, 31, 34, 37, 39, 40, 46, 101
Philip III., King of Spain, 51
" IV., King of Spain, 9 _n._, 55, 141
Philippine Islands, 3, 21
"Piece of eight," value of, 77 _n._
"Pie de Palo," _see_ Heyn, Admiral Piet _and_ Le Clerc, François
Pirates, depredations in the East, 270, 272
" laws against, _see_ Laws
" trials of, 202, 203, 213-15, 218, 226, 228, 229
Pizarro, Francisco, 3, 46
Place, Sieur de la (Deputy-Governor of Tortuga), 117, 124
Plenneville, Clement de, 118
Poincy, Mons. de (Governor of the French West Indies), 63, 64, 80, 81
Pointis, Sieur de, _see_ Desjeans
Pontchartrain, Louis Phelypeaux, Comte de, 262
Port de Paix (Hispaniola), 65, 247 _n._, 261
Porto Bello, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17 and _n._, 18, 19, 23, 76, 143-54, etc.
Porto Rico, 2, 20 and _n._, 22, 31 _n._, 34, 35, 41, 46, 56, 57, etc.
Port Royal (Carolina), 47, 252
" (Jamaica), 97, 98 and _n._, 101, 107, 108 and _n._, 111,
112, 121, 127, 128, etc.
Pouançay, Mons. de (Governor of French Hispaniola), 216, 219, 220, 221,
222, 239, 240, 244, 247, 248, etc.
Prince, Captain Lawrence (buccaneer), 162, 182 _n._
Privateers, laws against, _see_ Laws
Providence Company, 55, 59 and _n._, 60, 61 _n._, 62, 64 _n._
Providence Island, 55 and _n._, 56 _n._, 64, 76, 86, 135-7, 139-40, 143,
163 and _n._, etc.
Puerta de Plata (Hispaniola), 115
Puerto Cabello (Venezuela), 98
" Principe (Cuba), 117, 144 and _n._, 145, 222
Queen Regent of Spain, _see_ Marie-Anne of Austria
Quito, province of, _see_ Equador
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 34, 40, 41, 47, 89
Rancherias (New Granada), 16, 40
Rausset, Sieur de, _see_ Deschamps
Raynal, Guillaume, Thomas-François, 283
Red Sea, pirates in, _see_ Pirates
Rhode Island, 223, 251, 271
Rich, Henry, Earl of Holland, 59
" Robert, Earl of Warwick, 50 and _n._, 52
Rio Garta, 138
Rio de la Hacha (New Granada), 38, 40, 44, 93, 98 _n._, 161, 232, 267
Rio Nuevo (Jamaica), 91
Riskinner, Captain Nicholas (Governor of Tortuga), 62
Rivero Pardal, Manuel, 159, 161
Roanoke Island (Carolina), 47
Roatan Island, 76, 138
Robertson, William, 285
Rogers, Captain Thomas (buccaneer), 174 _n._
Ronquillo, Don Pedro, 223 _n._, 243
Row, Captain (buccaneer), 224
Roxas de Valle-Figueroa, Don Gabriel, 82-83
Ruyter, Admiral Michel-Adriaanszoon van, 129
Ryswick, treaty of, 266 _n._
Saba, 129, 130 and _n._
St. Augustine (Florida), 238, 251, 252
St. Christopher, _see_ St. Kitts
St. Eustatius, 48, 67, 129, 130 and _n._, 133, 143
St. Jago de Cuba, 21, 42, 44, 91, 100, 104-6, 108 _n._, 109, 145, 159,
etc.
" de la Vega (Jamaica), 50, 85, 86, 234, 237 _n._
" de los Cavalleros (Hispaniola), 114-15, 258
St. Kitts, 47, 48, 50, 54, 56, 58, 60, 63, 67, 80, etc.
St. Laurent, Mons. de, 244, 247 _n._
St. Malo, corsairs of, 48
St. Martins, 130
St. Thomas, 235-7
Salisbury, Earl of, _see_ Cecil, Robert
Samana, 77 _n._
Samballas Islands, 228 _n._
"Samson," 36 _n._
Sancti Spiritus (Cuba), 134, 135 and _n._
San Domingo, city of, 9 _n._, 21, 22, 35, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 60, 86,
etc.
" French, _see_ Hispaniola
Sandwich, Earl of, _see_ Montagu, Edward
San Juan de Porto Rico, 21, 40, 41, 49
" d'Ulloa, _see_ Vera Cruz
" River (Nicaragua), 16, 136, 138, 162
San Lorenzo, castle of (Chagre), 164-8, 170 _n._, 193, 194 and _n._
San Lucar, 11, 13, 15, 20
Santa Catalina, _see_ Providence Island
Santa Cruz, 20, 48, 56, 117
Santa Marta (New Granada), 15, 40, 44, 93, 97, 161, 219-20, 226, 267
Santa Marta de la Vitoria (Tabasco), 139 _n._
" Tomas (Orinoco), 111, 222
Sasi Arnoldo, Don Christopher, 91, 105
"Satisfaction," 156 _n._
Sawkins, Captain (buccaneer), 225, 226
Scaliger, Joseph-Juste, 28
Scelle, Georges, 3, 285
Searle, Daniel (Governor of Barbadoes), 85 _n._
Searles, Captain Robert (buccaneer), 122, 131
Sedgwick, Major-General Robert, 96, 104
Seignelay, Marquis de, _see_ Colbert
Seville, 11, 22, 26, 54, 103, 106, 109, 159 _n._, 207, etc.
Sharp, Captain Bartholomew (buccaneer), 223, 224, 225 _n._, 228, 229,
245
Shirley, Sir Anthony, 85
"Sloop-trade," 27
Smart, Captain (buccaneer), 273
Smith, Major Samuel, 137, 139, 140
Sore, Jacques, 42, 45
Southey, Thomas, 283
Spain, colonial laws, 5, 10, 12, 13, 24
" colonial system, 1 _ff._
" commercial system, 6-13
" cruelties to English mariners, 29, 53-54, 88, 89 _n._, 207
" cruelties to Indians, 4, 9, 10, 32, 33, 89 _n._
" decline of, 1 _ff._, 46
" discovery and exploration in South America, 2-3
" exclusion of foreigners from Spanish Indies, 24
" privateers of, 207, 211 and _n._
" trade relations with England, 101-104
" treaty of 1667 with England, 141
" " 1670 with England, 196-7, 200, 209
" truce of 1609 with the Netherlands, _see_ Netherlands
" venality of Spanish colonial governors, 26 _n._
" weakness of Spanish ships, 23
Spragge, Captain, R.N., 254
Stanley, Captain (buccaneer), 140
Stapleton, Sir William (Governor of Leeward Islands), 234, 236, 237
Stedman, Captain (buccaneer), 131 and _n._
Style, John, 153 _n._
Tabasco River, 138, 139 _n._
Tavoga Island, 179, 188
Tavogilla Island, 179, 188
Taylor, John, 102
Terrier, Jean, 42
Thibault, 81-82, 83 _n._
Thomas, Dalby, 33
Thornbury, Walter, 284
Thurloe, John (Secretary of State), 104
Thurston, Captain (buccaneer), 201
Tobago, 15, 48, 67, 131, 268
Toledo, Don Federico de, 54, 58
Tolu (New Granada), 97, 267
Tortola, 130
Tortuga, 2, 55, 58-66, 69, 70, 73, 77, 80, 81, 113, etc.
Trade, clandestine, _see_ Clandestine trade
Treasure fleets, 13-24, 31, 85;
_cf. also_ Flota _and_ Galleons
Treval, Mons. de, 82
Trinidad, 2, 15, 32 _n._, 46, 131, 222
"Trompense, La," 233-36, 238 _n._, 248, 249, 251 _n._
" La Nouvelle," 236 _n_.
Truxillo (Honduras), 21, 22, 50, 77, 138, 222
Turrialva (Costa Rica), 136
Utrecht, Treaty of, 272
Vache, Isle la, _see_ Isle la Vache
_Vaisseaux de registre_, 11, 22 and _n._
Vaissière, Pierre de, 284
Valladolid (Yucatan), 210
Valle-Figueroa, Don Gabriel Roxas de, _see_ Roxas de Valle-Figueroa
Van Horn, Captain Nicholas (buccaneer), 241-43, 248
Vaughan, John, Lord (Governor of Jamaica), 205, 211, 212-22, 232
Venables, General Robert, 85 and _n._, 86, 87, 88, 89, 96, 113
Venezuela, 16, 23, 156
Venta Cruz (Darien), 17 _n._, 164, 170 _n._, 174 and _n._, 177 _n._, 192
_n._, 193
Vera Cruz (New Spain), 11, 12 _n._, 14, 21, 22, 38, 49, 103, 109, 111,
etc., 241
Veragua, 136 and _n._
Vernon, Admiral Edward, 195
Verpre, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Vervins, Treaty of, 48
_Viande boucannée_, 66
Vigneron, Captain (buccaneer), 274
Villa de Mosa (Tabasco), 138 and _n._
Villalba y Toledo, Don Francisco de, 77
Villars, Marquis de, 9 _n._
Virgin Islands, 40, 235, 236
Virginia, 47, 51, 54, 112, 129, 201, 207, 272
War between England and France, 1666-67, 131, 141
War between England and Netherlands, 1665-67, 127-41
War between France and Netherlands, 1674-78, 219 _ff._
War of the Spanish Succession, 271-72
" Succession of the Palatinate, 258 _ff._
Watson, Sir Francis, 257
Watts, Elias (Governor of Tortuga), 114, 116 and _n._, 117
Watts, Colonel William (Governor of St. Kitts), 130 _n._
Weiss, Charles, 285
West Indies, _see_ Indies, West
Whitstone, Sir Thomas (buccaneer), 140, 273
Wilgress, Captain, 201
William III., King of England, 257, 258
Williams, Captain John, _alias_ Yankey (buccaneer), 235, 254 _n._, 274
" Captain Morris (buccaneer), 122 and _n._
Williamson, Sir Joseph (Secretary of State), 213 _n._, 217
Willoughby, William, Lord (Governor of Barbadoes), 131
Wilmot, Commodore Robert, 261
Windebank, Sir Francis (Secretary of State), 53
Windsor, Thomas, Lord (Governor of Jamaica), 97, 101 and _n._, 104, 105,
106-7, 111, 117, 118, 137
Winslow, Edward (Commissioner of Jamaica), 85 _n._
Winter, Sir William, 40
Witherborn, Captain Francis (buccaneer), 202
Wormeley, Captain Christopher (Governor of Tortuga), 59, 62 and _n._
Yallahs, Captain (buccaneer) 201, 211
"Yankey," _see_ Williams, Captain John
Yucatan, 2, 23, 82 _n._, 208, 210, 211
Zuniga, Don Pedro de, 51
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