The Spaniards nevertheless did, as we have seen, engage in active reprisal, especially as they knew the cutting of logwood to be but the preliminary step to the growth of English settlements upon the coasts of Yucatan and Honduras, settlements, indeed, which later crystallized into a British colony. The Queen-Regent of Spain sent orders and instructions to her governors in the West Indies to encourage privateers to take and punish as pirates all English and French who robbed and carried away wood within their jurisdictions; and three small frigates from Biscay were sent to clear out the intruders.[369] The buccaneer Yallahs, we have seen, was employed by the Governor of Campeache to seize the logwood-cutters; and although he surprised twelve or more vessels, the Governor of Jamaica, not daring openly to avow the business, could enter no complaint. On 3rd November 1672, however, he was compelled to issue a proclamation ordering all vessels sailing from Port Royal for the purpose of cutting dye-wood to go in fleets of at least four as security against surprise and capture. Under the governorship of Lord Vaughan, and after him of Lord Carlisle, matters continued in this same uncertain course, the English settlements in Honduras gradually increasing in numbers and vitality, and the Spaniards maintaining their right to take all ships they found at sea laden with logwood, and indeed, all English and French ships found upon their coasts. Each of the English governors in turn had urged that some equitable adjustment of the trade be made with the Spanish Crown, if peace was to be preserved in the Indies and the buccaneers finally suppressed; but the Spaniards would agree to no accommodation, and in March 1679 the king wrote to Lord Carlisle bidding him discourage, as far as possible, the logwood-cutting in Campeache or any other of the Spanish dominions, and to try and induce the buccaneers to apply themselves to planting instead.[370]
The reprisals of the Spaniards on the score of logwood-cutting were not the only difficulties with which Lord Vaughan as governor had to contend. From the day of his landing in Jamaica he seems to have conceived a violent dislike of his lieutenant, Sir Henry Morgan, and this antagonism was embittered by Morgan's open or secret sympathy with the privateers, a race with whom Vaughan had nothing in common. The ship on which Morgan had sailed from England, and which was cast away upon the Isle la Vache, had contained the military stores for Jamaica, most of which were lost in the wreck. Morgan, contrary to Lord Vaughan's positive and written orders, had sailed before him, and assumed the authority in Jamaica a week before the arrival of the governor at Port Royal. This the governor seems to have been unable to forgive. He openly blamed Morgan for the wreck and the loss of the stores; and only two months after his coming to Jamaica, in May 1675, he wrote to England that for the good of His Majesty's service he thought Morgan ought to be removed, and the charge of so useless an officer saved.[371] In September he wrote that he was "every day more convinced of (Morgan's) imprudence and unfitness to have anything to do in the Civil Government, and of what hazards the island may run by so dangerous a succession." Sir Henry, he continued, had made himself and his authority so cheap at the Port, drinking and gaming in the taverns, that the governor intended to remove thither speedily himself for the reputation of the island and the security of the place.[372] He recommended that his predecessor, Sir Thomas Lynch, whom he praises for "his prudent government and conduct of affairs," be appointed his deputy instead of Morgan in the event of the governor's death or absence.[373] Lord Vaughan's chief grievance, however, was the lieutenant-governor's secret encouragement of the buccaneers. "What I most resent," he writes again, "is ... that I find Sir Henry, contrary to his duty and trust, endeavours to set up privateering, and has obstructed all my designs and purposes for the reducing of those that do use this course of life."[374] When he had issued proclamations, the governor continued, declaring as pirates all the buccaneers who refused to submit, Sir Henry had encouraged the English freebooters to take French commissions, had himself fitted them out for sea, and had received authority from the French Governor of Tortuga to collect the tenths on prize goods brought into Jamaica under cover of these commissions. The quarrel came to a head over the arrest and trial of a buccaneer named John Deane, commander of the ship "St. David." Deane was accused of having stopped a ship called the "John Adventure," taken out several pipes of wine and a cable worth £100, and forcibly carried the vessel to Jamaica. He was also reported to be wearing Dutch, French and Spanish colours without commission.[375] When the "John Adventure" entered Port Royal it was seized by the governor for landing goods without entry, contrary to the Acts of Navigation, and on complaint of the master of the vessel that he had been robbed by Deane and other privateers, Sir Henry Morgan was ordered to imprison the offenders. The lieutenant-governor, however, seems rather to have encouraged them to escape,[376] until Deane made so bold as to accuse the governor of illegal seizure. Deane was in consequence arrested by the governor, and on 27th April 1676, in a Court of Admiralty presided over by Lord Vaughan as vice-admiral, was tried and condemned to suffer death as a pirate.[377] The proceedings, however, were not warranted by legal practice, for according to statutes of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth years of Henry VIII., pirates might not be tried in an Admiralty Court, but only under the Common Law of England by a Commission of Oyer and Terminer under the great seal.[378] After obtaining an opinion to this effect from the Judge of the Admiralty, the English Council wrote to Lord Vaughan staying the execution of Deane, and ordering a new trial to be held under a proper commission about to be forwarded to him.[379] The Governor of Jamaica, however, upon receiving a confession from Deane and frequent petitions for pardon, had reprieved the pirate a month before the letter from the council reached him.[380] The incident had good effect in persuading the freebooters to come in, and that result assured, the governor could afford to bend to popular clamour in favour of the culprit. In the latter part of 1677 a standing commission of Oyer and Terminer for the trial of pirates in Jamaica was prepared by the attorney-general and sent to the colony.[381]
After the trial of Deane, the lieutenant-governor, according to Lord Vaughan, had openly expressed himself, both in the taverns and in his own house, in vindication of the condemned man and in disparagement of Vaughan himself.[382] The quarrel hung fire, however, until on 24th July when the governor, in obedience to orders from England,[383] cited Morgan and his brother-in-law, Colonel Byndloss, to appear before the council. Against Morgan he brought formal charges of using the governor's name and authority without his orders in letters written to the captains of the privateers, and Byndloss he accused of unlawfully holding a commission from a foreign governor to collect the tenths on condemned prize goods.[384] Morgan in his defence to Secretary Coventry flatly denied the charges, and denounced the letters written to the privateers as forgeries; and Byndloss declared his readiness "to go in this frigate with a tender of six or eight guns and so to deal with the privateers at sea, and in their holes (sic) bring in the chief of them to His Majesty's obedience or bring in their heads and destroy their ships."[385] There seems to be little doubt that letters were written by Morgan to certain privateers soon after his arrival in Jamaica, offering them, in the name of the governor, favour and protection in Port Royal. Copies of these letters, indeed, still exist;[386] but whether they were actually used is not so certain. Charles Barre, secretary to Sir Henry Morgan, confessed that such letters had been written, but with the understanding that the governor lent them his approval, and that when this was denied Sir Henry refused to send them.[387] It is natural to suppose that Morgan should feel a bond of sympathy with his old companions in the buccaneer trade, and it is probable that in 1675, in the first enthusiasm of his return to Jamaica, having behind him the openly-expressed approbation of the English Court for what he had done in the past, and feeling uncertain, perhaps, as to Lord Vaughan's real attitude toward the sea-rovers, Morgan should have done some things inconsistent with the policy of stern suppression pursued by the government. It is even likely that he was indiscreet in some of his expressions regarding the governor and his actions. His bluff, unconventional, easygoing manners, natural to men brought up in new countries and intensified by his early association with the buccaneers, may have been distasteful to a courtier accustomed to the urbanities of Whitehall. It is also clear, however, that Lord Vaughan from the first conceived a violent prejudice against his lieutenant, and allowed this prejudice to colour the interpretation he put upon all of Sir Henry's actions. And it is rather significant that although the particulars of the dispute and of the examination before the Council of Jamaica were sent to the Privy Council in England, the latter body did not see fit to remove Morgan from his post until six years later.
As in the case of Modyford and Lynch, so with Lord Vaughan, the thorn in his side was the French colony on Hispaniola and Tortuga. The English buccaneers who would not come in under the proclamation of pardon published at Port Royal, still continued to range the seas with French commissions, and carried their prizes into French ports. The governor protested to M. d'Ogeron and to his successor, M. de Pouançay, declaring that any English vessels or subjects caught with commissions against the Spaniards would be treated as pirates and rebels; and in December 1675, in compliance with the king's orders of the previous August, he issued a public proclamation to that effect.[388] In April 1677 an act was passed by the assembly, declaring it felony for any English subject belonging to the island to serve under a foreign prince or state without licence under the hand and seal of the governor;[389] and in the following July the council ordered another proclamation to be issued, offering ample pardon to all men in foreign service who should come in within twelve months to claim the benefit of the act.[390] These measures seem to have been fairly successful, for on 1st August Peter Beckford, Clerk of the Council in Jamaica, wrote to Secretary Williamson that since the passing of the law at least 300 privateers had come in and submitted, and that few men would now venture their lives to serve the French.[391]
Even with the success of this act, however, the path of the governor was not all roses. Buccaneering had always been so much a part of the life of the colony that it was difficult to stamp it out entirely. Runaway servants and others from the island frequently recruited the ranks of the freebooters; members of the assembly, and even of the council, were interested in privateering ventures; and as the governor was without a sufficient naval force to deal with the offenders independently of the council and assembly, he often found his efforts fruitless. In the early part of 1677 a Scotchman, named James Browne, with a commission from M. d'Ogeron and a mixed crew of English, Dutch and French, seized a Dutch ship trading in negroes off the coast of Cartagena, killed the Dutch captain and several of his men, and landed the negroes, about 150 in number, in a remote bay of Jamaica. Lord Vaughan sent a frigate which seized about 100 of the negroes, and when Browne and his crew fell into the governor's hands he had them all tried and condemned for piracy. Browne was ordered to be executed, but his men, eight in number, were pardoned. The captain petitioned the assembly to have the benefit of the Act of Privateers, and the House twice sent a committee to the governor to endeavour to obtain a reprieve. Lord Vaughan, however, refused to listen and gave orders for immediate execution. Half an hour after the hanging, the provost-marshal appeared with an order signed by the speaker to observe the Chief-Justice's writ of Habeas Corpus, whereupon Vaughan, resenting the action, immediately dissolved the Assembly.[392]
The French colony on Hispaniola was an object of concern to the Jamaicans, not only because it served as a refuge for privateers from Port Royal, but also because it threatened soon to overwhelm the old Spanish colony and absorb the whole island. Under the conciliatory, opportunist regime of M. d'Ogeron, the French settlements in the west of the island had grown steadily in number and size;[393] while the old Spanish towns seemed every year to become weaker and more open to attack. D'Ogeron, who died in France in 1675, had kept always before him the project of capturing the Spanish capital, San Domingo; but he was too weak to accomplish so great a design without aid from home, and this was never vouchsafed him. His policy, however, was continued by his nephew and successor, M. de Pouançay, and every defection from Jamaica seemed so much assistance to the French to accomplish their ambition. Yet it was manifestly to the English interest in the West Indies not to permit the French to obtain a pre-eminence there. The Spanish colonies were large in area, thinly populated, and ill-supported by the home government, so that they were not likely to be a serious menace to the English islands. With their great wealth and resources, moreover, they had few manufactures and offered a tempting field for exploitation by English merchants. The French colonies, on the other hand, were easily supplied with merchandise from France, and in event of a war would prove more dangerous as neighbours than the Spaniards. To allow the French to become lords of San Domingo would have been to give them an undisputed predominance in the West Indies and make them masters of the neighbouring seas.
In the second war of conquest waged by Louis XIV. against Holland, the French in the West Indies found the buccaneers to be useful allies, but as usually happened at such times, the Spaniards paid the bill. In the spring of 1677 five or six English privateers surprised the town of Santa Marta on the Spanish Main. According to the reports brought to Jamaica, the governor and the bishop, in order to save the town from being burnt, agreed with the marauders for a ransom; but the Governor of Cartagena, instead of contributing with pieces of eight, despatched a force of 500 men by land and three vessels by sea to drive out the invaders. The Spanish troops, however, were easily defeated, and the ships, seeing the French colours waving over the fort and the town, sailed back to Cartagena. The privateers carried away the governor and the bishop and came to Jamaica in July. The plunder amounted to only £20 per man. The English in the party, about 100 in number and led by Captains Barnes and Coxon, submitted at Port Royal under the terms of the Act against Privateers, and delivered up the Bishop of Santa Marta to Lord Vaughan. Vaughan took care to lodge the bishop well, and hired a vessel to send him to Cartagena, at which "the good old man was exceedingly pleased." He also endeavoured to obtain the custody of the Spanish governor and other prisoners, but without success, "the French being obstinate and damnably enraged the English had left them" and submitted to Lord Vaughan.[394]
In the beginning of the following year, 1678, Count d'Estrées, Vice-Admiral of the French fleet in the West Indies, was preparing a powerful armament to go against the Dutch on Curaçao, and sent two frigates to Hispaniola with an order from the king to M. de Pouançay to join him with 1200 buccaneers. De Pouançay assembled the men at Cap François, and embarking on the frigates and on some filibustering ships in the road, sailed for St. Kitts. There he was joined by a squadron of fifteen or more men-of-war from Martinique under command of Count d'Estrées. The united fleet of over thirty vessels sailed for Curaçao on 7th May, but on the fourth day following, at about eight o'clock in the evening, was wrecked upon some coral reefs near the Isle d'Aves.[395] As the French pilots had been at odds among themselves as to the exact position of the fleet, the admiral had taken the precaution to send a fire-ship and three buccaneering vessels several miles in advance of the rest of the squadron. Unfortunately these scouts drew too little water and passed over the reefs without touching them. A buccaneer was the first to strike and fired three shots to warn the admiral, who at once lighted fires and discharged cannon to keep off the rest of the ships. The latter, however, mistaking the signals, crowded on sail, and soon most of the fleet were on the reefs. Those of the left wing, warned in time by a shallop from the flag-ship, succeeded in veering off. The rescue of the crews was slow, for the seas were heavy and the boats approached the doomed ships with difficulty. Many sailors and marines were drowned, and seven men-of-war, besides several buccaneering ships, were lost on the rocks. Count d'Estrées himself escaped, and sailed with the remnant of his squadron to Petit Goave and Cap François in Hispaniola, whence on 18th June he departed for France.[396]
The buccaneers were accused in the reports which reached Barbadoes of deserting the admiral after the accident, and thus preventing the reduction of Curaçao, which d'Estrées would have undertaken in spite of the shipwreck.[397] However this may be, one of the principal buccaneer leaders, named de Grammont, was left by de Pouançay at the Isle d'Aves to recover what he could from the wreck, and to repair some of the privateering vessels.[398] When he had accomplished this, finding himself short of provisions, he sailed with about 700 men to make a descent on Maracaibo; and after spending six months in the lake, seizing the shipping and plundering all the settlements in that region, he re-embarked in the middle of December. The booty is said to have been very small.[399] Early in the same year the Marquis de Maintenon, commanding the frigate "La Sorcière," and aided by some French filibusters from Tortuga, was on the coast of Caracas, where he ravaged the islands of Margarita and Trinidad. He had arrived in the West Indies from France in the latter part of 1676, and when he sailed from Tortuga was at the head of 700 or 800 men. His squadron met with little success, however, and soon scattered.[400] Other bands of filibusters pillaged Campeache, Puerto Principe in Cuba, Santo Tomas on the Orinoco, and Truxillo in the province of Honduras; and de Pouançay, to console the buccaneers for their losses at the Isle d'Aves, sent 800 men under the Sieur de Franquesnay to make a descent upon St. Jago de Cuba, but the expedition seems to have been a failure.[401]
On 1st March 1678 a commission was again issued to the Earl of Carlisle, appointing him governor of Jamaica.[402] Carlisle arrived in his new government on 18th July,[403] but Lord Vaughan, apparently because of ill-health, had already sailed for England at the end of March, leaving Sir Henry Morgan, who retained his place under the new governor, deputy in his absence.[404] Lord Carlisle, immediately upon his arrival, invited the privateers to come in and encouraged them to stay, hoping, according to his own account, to be able to wean them from their familiar courses, and perhaps to use them in the threatened war with France, for the island then had "not above 4000 whites able to bear arms, a secret not fit to be made public."[405] If the governor was sincere in his intentions, the results must have been a bitter disappointment. Some of the buccaneers came in, others persevered in the old trade, and even those who returned abused the pardon they had received. In the autumn of 1679, several privateering vessels under command of Captains Coxon, Sharp and others who had come back to Jamaica, made a raid in the Gulf of Honduras, plundered the royal storehouses there, carried off 500 chests of indigo,[406] besides cocoa, cochineal, tortoiseshell, money and plate, and returned with their plunder to Jamaica. Not knowing what their reception might be, one of the vessels landed her cargo of indigo in an unfrequented spot on the coast, and the rest sent word that unless they were allowed to bring their booty to Port Royal and pay the customs duty, they would sail to Rhode Island or to one of the Dutch plantations. The governor had taken security for good behaviour from some of the captains before they sailed from Jamaica; yet in spite of this they were permitted to enter the indigo at the custom house and divide it in broad daylight; and the frigate "Success" was ordered to coast round Jamaica in search of other privateers who failed to come in and pay duty on their plunder at Port Royal. The glut of indigo in Jamaica disturbed trade considerably, and for a time the imported product took the place of native sugar and indigo as a medium of exchange. Manufacture on the island was hindered, prices were lowered, and only the king's customs received any actual benefit.[407]