Carlos Enriquez Clerck, who went from England with Captain Narbrough, was at this time executed at Lima, on a charge of holding correspondence with the English of Jamaica; which act of severity probably is attributable more to the alarm which prevailed in the Government of Peru, than to any guilty practices of Clerck.
CHAP. XI.
Disputes between the French Government and their West-India Colonies. Morgan becomes Deputy Governor of Jamaica. La Vera Cruz surprised by the Flibustiers. Other of their Enterprises.
1680. Proceedings of the Buccaneers in the West Indies. Prohibitions against Piracy by the French Government; Whilst so many of the English Buccaneers were seeking plunder in the South Sea, the French Flibustiers had not been inactive in the West Indies, notwithstanding that the French government, after the conclusion of the war with Spain, issued orders prohibiting the subjects of France in the West Indies from cruising against the Spaniards. A short time before this order arrived, a cruising commission had been given to Granmont, who had thereupon collected men, and made preparation for an expedition to the Tierra Firma; and they did not choose that so much pains should be taken to no purpose. The French settlers generally, were at this time much dissatisfied on account of some regulations imposed upon them by the Company of Farmers, whose privileges and authority extended to fixing the price upon growth, the produce of the soil; and which they exercised upon tobacco, the article then most cultivated by the French in Hispaniola, rigorously requiring the planters to deliver it to the Company at the price so prescribed. Many of the inhabitants, ill brooking to live under such a system of robbery, made preparations to withdraw to the English and Dutch settlements; but their discontent on this account was much allayed by the Governor writing a remonstrance to the French Minister, and promising them his influence towards obtaining a suppression of the farming tobacco. Fresh cause of discontent soon occurred, by a monopoly of the French
African Slave Trade being put into the hands of a new company, which was named the Senegal Company.
Disregarded by the French Buccaneers. Granmont and the Flibustiers engaged with him, went to the coast of Cumana, where they did considerable mischief to the Spaniards, with some loss, and little profit, to themselves.
1680-1. Sir Henry Morgan, Deputy Governor of Jamaica. His Severity to the Buccaneers. In the autumn of this same year, the Earl of Carlisle, who was Governor of Jamaica, finding the climate did not agree with his constitution, returned to England, and left as his Deputy to govern in Jamaica, Morgan, the plunderer of Panama, but who was now Sir Henry Morgan. This man had found favour with King Charles II. or with his Ministers, had been knighted, and appointed a Commissioner of the Admiralty Court in Jamaica. On becoming Deputy Governor, his administration was far from being favourable to his old associates, some of whom suffered the extreme hardship of being tried and hanged under his authority; and one crew of Buccaneers, most of them Englishmen, who fell into his hands, he sent to be delivered up (it may be presumed that he sold them) to the Spaniards at Carthagena. Morgan's authority as Governor was terminated the following year, by the arrival of a Governor from England[30].
The impositions on planting and commerce in the French settlements, in the same degree that they discouraged cultivation, encouraged cruising, and the Flibustier party so much increased, as to have little danger to apprehend from any Governor's authority. 1683. The matter however did not come to issue, for in 1683, war again broke out between France and Spain. But before the intelligence arrived in the West Indies, 1200 French Flibustiers had assembled under Van Horn (a native