The buccaneers assembled near Cape Catoche to the number of about 1000 men, and sailed in the middle of May for Vera Cruz. Learning from some prisoners that the Spaniards on shore were expecting two ships from Caracas, they crowded the landing party of about 800 upon two of their vessels, displayed the Spanish colours, and stood in for the city. The unfortunate inhabitants mistook them for their own people, and even lighted fires to pilot them in. The pirates landed at midnight on 17th May about two miles from the town, and by daybreak had possession of the city and its forts. They found the soldiers and sentinels asleep, and "all the people in the houses as quiet and still as if in their graves." For four days they held the place, plundering the churches, houses and convents; and not finding enough plate and jewels to meet their expectations, they threatened to burn the cathedral and all the prisoners within it, unless a ransom was brought in from the surrounding country. The governor, Don Luis de Cordova, was on the third day discovered by an Englishman hidden in the hay in a stable, and was ransomed for 70,000 pieces of eight. Meanwhile the Spanish Flota of twelve or fourteen ships from Cadiz had for two days been lying outside the harbour and within sight of the city; yet it did not venture to land or to attack the empty buccaneer vessels. The proximity of such an armament, however, made the freebooters uneasy, especially as the Spanish viceroy was approaching with an army from the direction of Mexico. On the fourth day, therefore, they sailed away in the very face of the Flota to a neighbouring cay, where they divided the pillage into a thousand or more shares of 800 pieces of eight each. Vanhorn alone is said to have received thirty shares for himself and his two ships. He and Laurens, who had never been on good terms, quarrelled and fought over the division, and Vanhorn was wounded in the wrist. The wound seemed very slight, however, and he proposed to return and attack the Spanish fleet, offering to board the "Admiral" himself; but Laurens refused, and the buccaneers sailed away, carrying with them over 1000 slaves. The invaders, according to report, had lost but four men in the action. About a fortnight later Vanhorn died of gangrene in his wound, and de Grammont, who was then acting as his lieutenant, carried his ship back to Petit Goave, where Laurens and most of the other captains had already arrived.[447]
The Mexican fleet, which returned to Cadiz on 18th December, was only half its usual size because of the lack of a market after the visit of the corsairs; and the Governor of Vera Cruz was sentenced to lose his head for his remissness in defending the city.[448] The Spanish ambassador in London, Ronquillo, requested Charles II. to command Sir Thomas Lynch to co-operate with a commissioner whom the Spanish Government was sending to the West Indies to inquire into this latest outrage of the buccaneers, and such orders were dispatched to Lynch in April 1684.[449]
M. de Cussy, who had been appointed by the French King to succeed his former colleague, de Pouançay, arrived at Petit Goave in April 1684, and found the buccaneers on the point of open revolt because of the efforts of de Franquesnay, the temporary governor, to enforce the strict orders from France for their suppression.[450] De Cussy visited all parts of the colony, and by tact, patience and politic concessions succeeded in restoring order. He knew that in spite of the instructions from France, so long as he was surrounded by jealous neighbours, and so long as the peace in Europe remained precarious, the safety of French Hispaniola depended on his retaining the presence and good-will of the sea-rovers; and when de Grammont and several other captains demanded commissions against the Spaniards, the governor finally consented on condition that they persuade all the freebooters driven away by de Franquesnay to return to the colony. Two commissioners, named Begon and St. Laurent, arrived in August 1684 to aid him in reforming this dissolute society, but they soon came to the same conclusions as the governor, and sent a memoir to the French King advising less severe measures. The king did not agree with their suggestion of compromise, and de Cussy, compelled to deal harshly with the buccaneers, found his task by no means an easy one.[451] Meanwhile, however, many of the freebooters, seeing the determined attitude of the established authorities, decided to transfer their activities to the Pacific coasts of America, where they would be safe from interference on the part of the English or French Governments. The expedition of Harris, Coxon, Sharp and their associates across the isthmus in 1680 had kindled the imaginations of the buccaneers with the possibilities of greater plunder and adventure in these more distant regions. Other parties, both English and French, speedily followed in their tracks, and after 1683 it became the prevailing practice for buccaneers to make an excursion into the South Seas. The Darien Indians and their fiercer neighbours, the natives of the Mosquito Coast, who were usually at enmity with the Spaniards, allied themselves with the freebooters, and the latter, in their painful marches through the dense tropical wilderness of these regions, often owed it to the timely aid and friendly offices of the natives that they finally succeeded in reaching their goal.
In the summer of 1685, a year after the arrival of de Cussy in Hispaniola, de Grammont and Laurens de Graff united their forces again at the Isle la Vache, and in spite of the efforts of the governor to persuade them to renounce their project, sailed with 1100 men for the coasts of Campeache. An attempt on Merida was frustrated by the Spaniards, but Campeache itself was occupied after a feeble resistance, and remained in possession of the French for six weeks. After reducing the city to ashes and blowing up the fortress, the invaders retired to Hispaniola.[452] According to Charlevoix, before the buccaneers sailed away they celebrated the festival of St. Louis by a huge bonfire in honour of the king, in which they burnt logwood to the value of 200,000 crowns, representing the greater part of their booty. The Spaniards of Hispaniola, who kept up a constant desultory warfare with their French neighbours, were incited by the ravages of the buccaneers in the South Seas, and by the sack of Vera Cruz and Campeache, to renewed hostilities; and de Cussy, anxious to attach to himself so enterprising and daring a leader as de Grammont, obtained for him, in September 1686, the commission of "Lieutenant de Roi" of the coast of San Domingo. Grammont, however, on learning of his new honour, wished to have a last fling at the Spaniards before he settled down to respectability. He armed a ship, sailed away with 180 men, and was never heard of again.[453] At the same time Laurens de Graff was given the title of "Major," and he lived to take an active part in the war against the English between 1689 and 1697.[454]
These semi-pirates, whom the French governor dared not openly support yet feared to disavow, were a constant source of trouble to the Governor of Jamaica. They did not scruple to attack English traders and fishing sloops, and when pursued took refuge in Petit Goave, the port in the cul-de-sac at the west end of Hispaniola which had long been a sanctuary of the freebooters, and which paid little respect to the authority of the royal governor.[455] In Jamaica they believed that the corsairs acted under regular commissions from the French authorities, and Sir Thomas Lynch sent repeated complaints to de Pouançay and to his successor. He also wrote to England begging the Council to ascertain from the French ambassador whether these governors had authority to issue commissions of war, so that his frigates might be able to distinguish between the pirate and the lawful privateer.[456] Except at Petit Goave, however, the French were really desirous of preserving peace with Jamaica, and did what they could to satisfy the demands of the English without unduly irritating the buccaneers. They were in the same position as Lynch in 1671, who, while anxious to do justice to the Spaniards, dared not immediately alienate the freebooters who plundered them, and who might, if driven away, turn their arms against Jamaica. Vanhorn himself, it seems, when he left Hispaniola to join Laurens in the Gulf of Honduras, had been sent out by de Pouançay really to pursue "La Trompeuse" and other pirates, and his lieutenant, de Grammont, delivered letters to Governor Lynch to that effect; but once out of sight he steered directly for Central America, where he anticipated a more profitable game than pirate-hunting.[457]
On the 24th of August 1684 Sir Thomas Lynch died in Jamaica, and Colonel Hender Molesworth, by virtue of his commission as lieutenant-governor, assumed the authority.[458] Sir Henry Morgan, who had remained lieutenant-governor when Lynch returned to Jamaica, had afterwards been suspended from the council and from all other public employments on charges of drunkenness, disorder, and encouraging disloyalty to the government. His brother-in-law, Byndloss, was dismissed for similar reasons, and Roger Elletson, who belonged to the same faction, was removed from his office as attorney-general of the island. Lynch had had the support of both the assembly and the council, and his actions were at once confirmed in England.[459] The governor, however, although he had enjoyed the confidence of most of the inhabitants, who looked upon him as the saviour of the island, left behind in the persons of Morgan, Elletson and their roystering companions, a group of implacable enemies, who did all in their power to vilify his memory to the authorities in England. Several of these men, with Elletson at their head, accused the dead governor of embezzling piratical goods which had been confiscated to the use of the king; but when inquiry was made by Lieutenant-Governor Molesworth, the charges fell to the ground. Elletson's information was found to be second-hand and defective, and Lynch's name was more than vindicated. Indeed, the governor at his death had so little ready means that his widow was compelled to borrow £500 to pay for his funeral.[460]
The last years of Sir Thomas Lynch's life had been troublous ones. Not only had the peace of the island been disturbed by "La Trompeuse" and other French corsairs which hovered about Hispaniola; not only had his days been embittered by strife with a small, drunken, insolent faction which tried to belittle his attempts to introduce order and sobriety into the colony; but the hostility of the Spanish governors in the West Indies still continued to neutralize his efforts to root out buccaneering. Lynch had in reality been the best friend of the Spaniards in America. He had strictly forbidden the cutting of logwood in Campeache and Honduras, when the Spaniards were outraging and enslaving every Englishman they found upon those coasts;[461] he had sent word to the Spanish governors of the intended sack of Vera Cruz;[462] he had protected Spanish merchant ships with his own men-of-war and hospitably received them in Jamaican ports. Yet Spanish corsairs continued to rob English vessels, and Spanish governors refused to surrender English ships and goods which were carried into their ports.[463] On the plea of punishing interlopers they armed small galleys and ordered them to take all ships which had on board any products of the Indies.[464] Letters to the governors at Havana and St. Jago de Cuba were of no avail. English trade routes were interrupted and dangerous, the turtling, trading and fishing sloops, which supplied a great part of the food of Jamaica, were robbed and seized, and Lynch was compelled to construct a galley of fifty oars for their protection.[465] Pirates, it is true, were frequently brought into Port Royal by the small frigates employed by the governor, and there were numerous executions;[466] yet the outlaws seemed to increase daily. Some black vessel was generally found hovering about the island ready to pick up any who wished to join it, and when the runaways were prevented from returning by the statute against piracy, they retired to the Carolinas or to New England to dispose of their loot and refit their ships.[467] When such retreats were available the laws against piracy did not reduce buccaneering so much as they depopulated Jamaica of its white inhabitants.
After 1680, indeed, the North American colonies became more and more the resort of the pirates who were being driven from West Indian waters by the stern measures of the English governors. Michel Landresson, alias Breha, who had accompanied Pain in his expedition against St. Augustine in 1683, and who had been a constant source of worriment to the Jamaicans because of his attacks on the fishing sloops, sailed to Boston and disposed of his booty of gold, silver, jewels and cocoa to the godly New England merchants, who were only too ready to take advantage of so profitable a trade and gladly fitted him out for another cruise.[468] Pain himself appeared in Rhode Island, displayed the old commission to hunt for pirates given him by Sir Thomas Lynch, and was protected by the governor against the deputy-collector of customs, who endeavoured to seize him and his ship.[469] The chief resort of the pirates, however, was the colony of Carolina. Indented by numerous harbours and inlets, the shores of Carolina had always afforded a safe refuge for refitting and repairing after a cruise, and from 1670 onwards, when the region began to be settled by colonists from England, the pirates found in the new communities a second Jamaica, where they could sell their cargoes and often recruit their forces. In the latter part of 1683 Sir Thomas Lynch complained to the Lords of the Committee for Trade and Plantations;[470] and in February of the following year the king, at the suggestion of the committee, ordered that a draft of the Jamaican law against pirates be sent to all the plantations in America, to be passed and enforced in each as a statute of the province.[471] On 12th March 1684 a general proclamation was issued by the king against pirates in America, and a copy forwarded to all the colonial governors for publication and execution.[472] Nevertheless in Massachusetts, in spite of these measures and of a letter from the king warning the governors to give no succour or aid to any of the outlaws, Michel had been received with open arms, the proclamation of 12th March was torn down in the streets, and the Jamaica Act, though passed, was never enforced.[473] In the Carolinas, although the Lords Proprietors wrote urging the governors to take every care that no pirates were entertained in the colony, the Act was not passed until November 1685.[474] There were few, if any, convictions, and the freebooters plied their trade with the same security as before. Toward the end of 1686 three galleys from St. Augustine landed about 150 men, Spaniards, Indians and mulattos, a few leagues below Charleston, and laid waste several plantations, including that of Governor Moreton. The enemy pushed on to Port Royal, completely destroyed the Scotch colony there, and retired before a force could be raised to oppose them. To avenge this inroad the inhabitants immediately began preparations for a descent upon St. Augustine; and an expedition consisting of two French privateering vessels and about 500 men was organized and about to sail, when a new governor, James Colleton, arrived and ordered it to disband.[475] Colleton was instructed to arrest Governor Moreton on the charge of encouraging piracy, and to punish those who entertained and abetted the freebooters;[476] and on 12th February 1687 he had a new and more explicit law to suppress the evil enacted by the assembly.[477] On 22nd May of the same year James II. renewed the proclamation for the suppression of pirates, and offered pardon to all who surrendered within a limited time and gave security for future good behaviour.[478] The situation was so serious, however, that in August the king commissioned Sir Robert Holmes to proceed with a squadron to the West Indies and make short work of the outlaws;[479] and in October he issued a circular to all the governors in the colonies, directing the most stringent enforcement of the laws, "a practice having grown up of bringing pirates to trial before the evidence was ready, and of using other evasions to insure their acquittal."[480] On the following 20th January another proclamation was issued by James to insure the co-operation of the governors with Sir Robert Holmes and his agents.[481] The problem, however, was more difficult than the king had anticipated. The presence of the fleet upon the coast stopped the evil for a time, but a few years later, especially in the Carolinas under the administration of Governor Ludwell (1691-1693), the pirates again increased in numbers and in boldness, and Charleston was completely overrun with the freebooters, who, with the connivance of the merchants and a free display of gold, set the law at defiance.
In Jamaica Lieutenant-Governor Molesworth continued in the policy and spirit of his predecessor. He sent a frigate to the Bay of Darien to visit Golden Isle and the Isle of Pines (where the buccaneers were accustomed to make their rendezvous when they crossed over to the South Seas), with orders to destroy any piratical craft in that vicinity, and he made every exertion to prevent recruits from leaving Jamaica.[482] The stragglers who returned from the South Seas he arrested and executed, and he dealt severely with those who received and entertained them.[483] By virtue of the king's proclamation of 1684, he had the property in Port Royal belonging to men then in the South Seas forfeited to the crown.[484] A Captain Bannister, who in June 1684 had run away from Port Royal on a privateering venture with a ship of thirty guns, had been caught and brought back by the frigate "Ruby," but when put on trial for piracy was released by the grand jury on a technicality. Six months later Bannister managed to elude the forts a second time, and for two years kept dodging the frigates which Molesworth sent in pursuit of him. Finally, in January 1687, Captain Spragge sailed into Port Royal with the buccaneer and three of his companions hanging at the yard-arms, "a spectacle of great satisfaction to all good people, and of terror to the favourers of pirates."[485] It was during the government of Molesworth that the "Biscayners" began to appear in American waters. These privateers from the Bay of Biscay seem to have been taken into the King of Spain's service to hunt pirates, but they interrupted English trade more than the pirates did. They captured and plundered English merchantmen right and left, and carried them to Cartagena, Vera Cruz, San Domingo and other Spanish ports, where the governors took charge of their prisoners and allowed them to dispose of their captured goods. They held their commissions, it seems, directly from the Crown, and so pretended to be outside the pale of the authority of the Spanish governors. The latter, at any rate, declared that they could give no redress, and themselves complained to the authorities in Jamaica of the independence of these marauders.[486] In December 1688 the king issued a warrant to the Governor of Jamaica authorizing him to suppress the Biscayans with the royal frigates.[487]
On 28th October 1685 the governorship of the island was assigned to Sir Philip Howard,[488] but Howard died shortly after, and the Duke of Albemarle was appointed in his stead.[489] Albemarle, who arrived at Port Royal in December 1687,[490] completely reversed the policy of his predecessors, Lynch and Molesworth. Even before he left England he had undermined his health by his intemperate habits, and when he came to Jamaica he leagued himself with the most unruly and debauched men in the colony. He seems to have had no object but to increase his fortune at the expense of the island. Before he sailed he had boldly petitioned for powers to dispose of money without the advice and consent of his council, and, if he saw fit, to reinstate into office Sir Henry Morgan and Robert Byndloss. The king, however, decided that the suspension of Morgan and Byndloss should remain until Albemarle had reported on their case from Jamaica.[491] When the Duke entered upon his new government, he immediately appointed Roger Elletson to be Chief Justice of the island in the place of Samuel Bernard. Three assistant-judges of the Supreme Court thereupon resigned their positions on the bench, and one was, in revenge, dismissed by the governor from the council. Several other councillors were also suspended, contrary to the governor's instructions against arbitrary dismissal of such officers, and on 18th January 1688 Sir Henry Morgan, upon the king's approval of the Duke's recommendation, was re-admitted to the council-chamber.[492] The old buccaneer, however, did not long enjoy his restored dignity. About a month later he succumbed to a sharp illness, and on 26th August was buried in St. Catherine's Church in Port Royal.[493]