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 outmanœuvre 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]

Footnote 1: [(return)]
Herrera: Decades II. 1, p. 4, cited in Scelle: la Traite Négrière, I. p. 6. Note 2.

Footnote 2: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. pp. 6-9.

Footnote 3: [(return)]
"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: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 35.

Footnote 5: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Weiss, op. cit., II. p. 205.

Footnote 7: [(return)]
Ibid., II. p. 206.

Footnote 8: [(return)]
Oppenheim: The Naval Tracts of Sir Wm. Monson. Vol. II. Appendix B., p. 316.

Footnote 9: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 36 ff.

Footnote 11: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 52 and note; Duro: Armada Espanola, I. p. 204.

Footnote 13: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Memoir of MM. Duhalde and de Rochefort to the French king, 1680 (Margry, op. cit., p. 192 ff.).

Footnote 15: [(return)]
Memoir of MM. Duhalde and de Rochefort to the French king, 1680 (Margry, op. cit., p. 192 ff.)

Footnote 16: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 64; Dampier: Voyages, ed. 1906, i. p. 200.

Footnote 17: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Gage, ed. 1655, pp. 196-8.

Footnote 21: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 65.

Footnote 22: [(return)]
Oppenheim, ii. p. 338.

Footnote 23: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Duhalde and de Rochefort.

Footnote 25: [(return)]
Rawl. MSS., A. 175, 313 b; Oppenheim, ii. p. 338.

Footnote 26: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Duhalde and de Rochefort.

Footnote 28: [(return)]
Quintal=about 100 pounds.

Footnote 29: [(return)]
These "vaisseaux de registre" were supposed not to exceed 300 tons, but through fraud were often double that burden.

Footnote 30: [(return)]
Duhalde and de Rochefort; Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 54.

Footnote 31: [(return)]
Gage, ed. 1655, pp. 199-200.

Footnote 32: [(return)]
Duhalde and de Rochefort; Oppenheim, ii. p. 318.

Footnote 33: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. 45; Recop., t. i. lib. iii. tit. viii.

Footnote 34: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Weiss, op. cit., ii. p. 226.

Footnote 36: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Froude: History of England, viii. p. 436 ff.

Footnote 38: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., ii. p. xiii.

Footnote 40: [(return)]
Scelle, op. cit., i. p. ix.

Footnote 41: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
"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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Hakluyt, ed. 1600, iii. p. 700; Froude, op. cit., viii. p. 427.

Footnote 45: [(return)]
Scelle., op. cit., i. pp. 123-25, 139-61.

Footnote 46: [(return)]
Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar. tom. vi. p. 15.

Footnote 47: [(return)]
Froude, op. cit., viii. pp. 470-72.

Footnote 48: [(return)]
Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy, i. ch. 3.

Footnote 49: [(return)]
Corbett: Drake and the Tudor Navy, ii. chs. 1, 2, 11.

Footnote 50: [(return)]
Corbett: The Successors of Drake, ch. x.

Footnote 51: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 22.

Footnote 54: [(return)]
Ibid., p. 23.

Footnote 55: [(return)]
Marcel, op. cit., p. 16.

Footnote 56: [(return)]
Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.

Footnote 57: [(return)]
Colecc. de doc. ... de ultramar, tom. vi. p. 360.

Footnote 58: [(return)]
Lucas: A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vol. ii. pp. 37, 50.

Footnote 59: [(return)]
Weiss, op. cit., ii. p. 292.

Footnote 60: [(return)]
Duro, op. cit., iii. ch. xvi.; iv. chs. iii., viii.

Footnote 61: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p. 36.

Footnote 63: [(return)]
Blok: History of the People of the Netherlands, iv. p. 37; Duro, op. cit., iv. p. 99; Gage, ed. 1655, p. 80.

Footnote 64: [(return)]
Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,325, No. 10.

Footnote 65: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Brit. Mus., Sloane MSS., 793 or 894; Add. MSS., 36,327, No. 9.

Footnote 67: [(return)]
Winwood Papers, ii. pp. 75-77.

Footnote 68: [(return)]
Brown: Genesis of the United States, i. pp. 120-25, 172.

Footnote 69: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.

Footnote 70: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660.

Footnote 71: [(return)]
Clarendon State Papers, ii. p. 87; Rymer: Fœdera, xx. p. 416.

Footnote 72: [(return)]
Duro, op. cit., ii. p. 462.

Footnote 73: [(return)]
Duro, op. cit., iii. pp. 236-37.

Footnote 74: [(return)]
C.S.P. Venet., 1603-07, p. 199.

Footnote 75: [(return)]
Winwood Papers, ii. p. 233.

Footnote 76: [(return)]
Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,319, No. 7; 36,320, No. 8; 36,321, No. 24; 36,322, No. 23.

Footnote 77: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:—1629, 5th and 30th Nov.; 1630, 29th July.

Footnote 78: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660:—1635, 19th March; 1636, 26th March.

Footnote 80: [(return)]
Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 36,323, No. 10.

Footnote 81: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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 manœuvred, 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 manœuvred 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.

Footnote 83: [(return)]
Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9334, f. 48.

Footnote 84: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Ibid., p. 131.

Footnote 86: [(return)]
Ibid.

Footnote 87: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1574-1660, pp. 131-33.

Footnote 89: [(return)]
Ibid., pp. 174, 175.

Footnote 90: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,977, pp. 222-23.

Footnote 94: [(return)]
Ibid., pp. 226-27, 235.

Footnote 95: [(return)]
Ibid., pp. 226, 233, 235-37, 244.

Footnote 96: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Charlevoix, op. cit., liv. vii. p. 10; Bibl. Nat. Nouv. Acq., 9334, p. 48 ff.

Footnote 98: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Dutertre: Histoire générale des Antilles, tom. i. p. 171.

Footnote 100: [(return)]
Charlevoix: op. cit., liv. vii. pp. 12-13.

Footnote 101: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Labat: Nouveau voyage aux isles de l'Amerique, ed. 1742, tom. vii. p. 233.

Footnote 103: [(return)]
Le Pers, printed in Margry, op. cit.

Footnote 104: [(return)]
Le Pers, printed in Margry, op. cit.

Footnote 105: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Labat, op. cit., tom. i. ch. 9.

Footnote 107: [(return)]
Labat, op. cit., tom. vii. ch. 17.

Footnote 108: [(return)]
Ibid., tom. ii. ch. 17.

Footnote 109: [(return)]
Gibbs: British Honduras, p. 25.

Footnote 110: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
A piece of eight was worth in Jamaica from 4s. 6d. to 5s.

Footnote 112: [(return)]
Exquemelin, ed. 1684, Part I. pp. 21-22.

Footnote 113: [(return)]
Dutertre, op. cit., tom. i. ch. vi.

Footnote 114: [(return)]
Charlevoix, op. cit., liv. vii. p. 16.

Footnote 115: [(return)]
Charlevoix, op. cit., liv. vii. pp. 17-18.

Footnote 116: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Add. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.

Footnote 118: [(return)]
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.[¹³⁰] 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]

Footnote 119: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Gardiner: Hist. of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, vol. iii. ch. xlv.; Narrative of Gen. Venables.

Footnote 121: [(return)]
Gardiner: op. cit., iii. p. 368.

Footnote 122: [(return)]
Cf. the "Commission of the Commissioners for the West Indian Expedition." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 109.)

Footnote 123: [(return)]
Cf. American Hist. Review, vol. iv. p. 228; "Instructions unto Gen. Robt. Venables." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 111.)

Footnote 124: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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.

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.

Footnote 126: [(return)]
Gardiner, op. cit., iii. p. 346; cf. also "Present State of Jamaica, 1683."

Footnote 127: [(return)]
Long: "History of Jamaica," i. p. 260; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 274.

Footnote 128: [(return)]
Long, op. cit., i. p. 272 ff.

Footnote 129: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 229, 232; Lucas: Historical Geography of the British Colonies, ii. p. 101, and note.

Footnote 132: [(return)]
Lucas, op. cit., ii. p. 109.

Footnote 133: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 230, 231. Fortescue was Gen. Venables' successor in Jamaica.

Footnote 134: [(return)]
Ibid., No. 218; Long, op. cit., i. p. 262.

Footnote 135: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 218, 252; Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 451, 457.

Footnote 136: [(return)]
Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 152, 493.

Footnote 137: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 236.

Footnote 138: [(return)]
Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 604.

Footnote 139: [(return)]
Ibid., pp. 454-5, 604.

Footnote 140: [(return)]
Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 452.

Footnote 141: [(return)]
Ibid., v. pp. 96, 151.

Footnote 142: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 260, 263, 266, 270, 275; Thurloe Papers, V. p. 340.

Footnote 144: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Tanner MSS., LI. 82.

Footnote 148: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 316. Some figures put it as high as £500,000.

Footnote 149: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
Ibid., Nos. 327, 331.

Footnote 151: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, No. 326.

Footnote 152: [(return)]
S.P. Spain, vol. 44, f. 318.

Footnote 153: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 17, 61.

Footnote 154: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 20.

Footnote 155: [(return)]
Ibid., No. 145.

Footnote 156: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
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: [(return)]
S.P. Spain, vol. 35.

Footnote 159: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 61.

Footnote 160: [(return)]
Ibid., No. 259.

Footnote 161: [(return)]
Ibid., No. 355.

Footnote 162: [(return)]
Ibid., No. 364.

Footnote 163: [(return)]
Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 154.

The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century

THE BUCCANEERS IN THE WEST INDIES IN THE XVII CENTURY

BY

C.H. HARING

WITH TEN MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS