The capture of Jamaica by the expedition sent outby Cromwell in 1655 was the blundering beginningof a new era in West Indian history. It wasthe first permanent annexation by another Europeanpower of an integral part of Spanish America. Before1655 the island had already been twice visited by Englishforces. The first occasion was in January 1597, whenSir Anthony Shirley, with little opposition, took andplundered St. Jago de la Vega. The second was in 1643,when William Jackson repeated the same exploit with500 men from the Windward Islands. Cromwell's expedition,consisting of 2500 men and a considerable fleet, setsail from England in December 1654, with the secretobject of "gaining an interest" in that part of the WestIndies in possession of the Spaniards. Admiral Penncommanded the fleet, and General Venables the landforces.
119 The expedition reached Barbadoes at the end ofJanuary, where some 4000 additional troops were raised,
{86}besides about 1200 from Nevis, St. Kitts, and neighbouringislands. The commanders having resolved to direct theirfirst attempt against Hispaniola, on 13th April a landingwas effected at a point to the west of San Domingo, andthe army, suffering terribly from a tropical sun and lackof water, marched thirty miles through woods andsavannahs to attack the city. The English received twoshameful defeats from a handful of Spaniards on 17th and25th April, and General Venables, complaining loudly ofthe cowardice of his men and of Admiral Penn's failureto co-operate with him, finally gave up the attempt andsailed for Jamaica. On 11th May, in the splendid harbouron which Kingston now stands, the English fleet droppedanchor. Three small forts on the western side werebattered by the guns from the ships, and as soon as thetroops began to land the garrisons evacuated their posts.St. Jago, six miles inland, was occupied next day. Theterms offered by Venables to the Spaniards (the same asthose exacted from the English settlers on ProvidenceIsland in 1641—emigration within ten days on pain ofdeath, and forfeiture of all their property) were accepted onthe 17th; but the Spaniards were soon discovered to haveentered into negotiations merely to gain time and retirewith their families and goods to the woods and mountains,whence they continued their resistance. Meanwhile thearmy, wretchedly equipped with provisions and othernecessities, was decimated by sickness. On the 19thtwo long-expected store-ships arrived, but the suppliesbrought by them were limited, and an appeal for assistancewas sent to New England. Admiral Penn, disgustedwith the fiasco in Hispaniola and on bad terms withVenables, sailed for England with part of his fleet on25th June; and Venables, so ill that his life was despairedof, and also anxious to clear himself of the responsibilityfor the initial failure of the expedition, followed in the
{87}"Marston Moor" nine days later. On 20th September bothcommanders appeared before the Council of State toanswer the charge of having deserted their posts, and togetherthey shared the disgrace of a month in the Tower.
120The army of General Venables was composed of veryinferior and undisciplined troops, mostly the rejected ofEnglish regiments or the offscourings of the West Indiancolonies; yet the chief reasons for the miscarriage beforeSan Domingo were the failure of Venables to commandthe confidence of his officers and men, his inexcusableerrors in the management of the attack, and the lack ofcordial co-operation between him and the Admiral. Thedifficulties with which he had to struggle were, of course,very great. On the other hand, he seems to have beendeficient both in strength of character and in militarycapacity; and his ill-health made still more difficult atask for which he was fundamentally incompetent. Thecomparative failure of this, Cromwell's pet enterprise, wasa bitter blow to the Protector. For a whole day he shuthimself up in his room, brooding over the disaster forwhich he, more than any other, was responsible. He hadaimed not merely to plant one more colony in America,but to make himself master of such parts of the WestIndian islands and Spanish Main as would enable him todominate the route of the Spanish-American treasurefleets. To this end Jamaica contributed few advantagesbeyond those possessed by Barbadoes and St. Kitts, andit was too early for him to realize that island for islandJamaica was much more suitable than Hispaniola as theseat of an English colony.
121Religious and economic motives form the key toCromwell's foreign policy, and it is difficult to discover
{88}which, the religious or the economic, was uppermost inhis mind when he planned this expedition. He inheritedfrom the Puritans of Elizabeth's time the traditionalreligious hatred of Spain as the bulwark of Rome, andin his mind as in theirs the overthrow of the Spaniardsin the West Indies was a blow at antichrist and anextension of the true religion. The religious ends ofthe expedition were fully impressed upon Venables andhis successors in Jamaica.
122 Second only, however, toOliver's desire to protect "the people of God," was hisambition to extend England's empire beyond the seas.He desired the unquestioned supremacy of Englandover the other nations of Europe, and that supremacy,as he probably foresaw, was to be commercial andcolonial. Since the discovery of America the world'scommerce had enormously increased, and its controlbrought with it national power. America had becomethe treasure-house of Europe. If England was to be setat the head of the world's commerce and navigation,she must break through Spain's monopoly of the Indiesand gain a control in Spanish America. San Domingowas to be but a preliminary step, after which the restof the Spanish dominions in the New World would begradually absorbed.
123The immediate excuse for the attack on Hispaniolaand Jamaica was the Spaniards' practice of seizingEnglish ships and ill-treating English crews merely becausethey were found in some part of the CaribbeanSea, and even though bound for a plantation actually inpossession of English colonists. It was the old questionof effective occupation
versus papal donation, and both
{89}Cromwell and Venables convinced themselves thatSpanish assaults in the past on English ships andcolonies supplied a sufficient
casus belli.
124 There was nojustification, 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 herselfwith England. There had been actual negotiations foran alliance, and Cromwell's offers, though rejected, hadnever been really withdrawn. Without a declarationof war or formal notice of any sort, a fleet was fittedout and sent in utmost secrecy to fall unawares uponthe colonies of a friendly nation. The whole aspectof the exploit was Elizabethan. It was inspired byDrake and Raleigh, a reversion to the Elizabethangold-hunt. It was the first of the great buccaneeringexpeditions.
125Cromwell was doubtless influenced, too, by therepresentations of Thomas Gage. Gage was an Englishmanwho had joined the Dominicans and had beensent by his Order out to Spanish America. In 1641he returned to England, announced his conversion toProtestantism, took the side of Parliament and becamea minister. His experiences in the West Indies andMexico he published in 1648 under the name of "TheEnglish-American, or a New Survey of the WestIndies," a most entertaining book, which aimed toarouse Englishmen against Romish "idolatries," to showhow valuable the Spanish-American provinces mightbe to England in trade and bullion and how easilythey might be seized. In the summer of 1654, moreover,Gage had laid before the Protector a memorial inwhich he recapitulated the conclusions of his book,assuring Cromwell that the Spanish colonies weresparsely peopled and that the few whites were unwarlikeand scantily provided with arms and ammunition. Heasserted that the conquest of Hispaniola and Cubawould be a matter of no difficulty, and that even CentralAmerica was too weak to oppose a long resistance.
126All this was true, and had Cromwell but sent a respectableforce under an efficient leader the resultwould have been different. The exploits of thebuccaneers a few years later proved it.
It was fortunate, considering the distracted stateof affairs in Jamaica in 1655-56, that the Spaniards werein no condition to attempt to regain the island. Cuba,the nearest Spanish territory to Jamaica, was beingravaged by the most terrible pestilence known therein years, and the inhabitants, alarmed for their ownsafety, instead of trying to dispossess the English, were
{91}busy providing for the defence of their own coasts.
127 In 1657,however, some troops under command of the old Spanishgovernor of Jamaica, D. Christopher Sasi Arnoldo, crossedfrom St. Jago de Cuba and entrenched themselves on thenorthern shore as the advance post of a greater force expectedfrom the mainland. Papers of instructions relating tothe enterprise were intercepted by Colonel Doyley, thenacting-governor of Jamaica; and he with 500 picked menembarked for the north side, attacked the Spaniards in theirentrenchments and utterly routed them.
128 The next yearabout 1000 men, the long-expected corps of regular Spanishinfantry, landed and erected a fort at Rio Nuevo. Doyley,displaying the same energy, set out again on 11th Junewith 750 men, landed under fire on the 22nd, and nextday captured the fort in a brilliant attack in which about300 Spaniards were killed and 100 more, with manyofficers and flags, captured. The English lost aboutsixty in killed and wounded.
129 After the failure of asimilar, though weaker, attempt in 1660, the Spaniardsdespaired of regaining Jamaica, and most of those stillupon the island embraced the first opportunity to retireto Cuba and other Spanish settlements.
As colonists the troops in Jamaica proved to bevery discouraging material, and the army was soon ina wretched state. The officers and soldiers plunderedand mutinied instead of working and planting. Theirwastefulness led to scarcity of food, and scarcity of foodbrought disease and death.
130 They wished to force the
{92}Protector to recall them, or to employ them in assaultingthe opulent Spanish towns on the Main, an occupationfar more lucrative than that of planting corn and provisionsfor sustenance. Cromwell, however, set himselfto develop and strengthen his new colony. He issueda proclamation encouraging trade and settlement in theisland by exempting the inhabitants from taxes, andthe Council voted that 1000 young men and an equalnumber of girls be shipped over from Ireland. TheScotch government was instructed to apprehend andtransport idlers and vagabonds, and commissioners weresent into New England and to the Windward and LeewardIslands 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 4500whites, besides 1500 or more negro slaves.
132To dominate the Spanish trade routes was one of theprincipal objects of English policy in the West Indies.This purpose is reflected in all of Cromwell's instructionsto the leaders of the Jamaican design, and it appears againin his instructions of 10th October 1655 to Major-GeneralFortescue and Vice-Admiral Goodson. Fortescue wasgiven power and authority to land men upon territoryclaimed by the Spaniards, to take their forts, castles andplaces of strength, and to pursue, kill and destroy all whoopposed him. The Vice-Admiral was to assist him withhis sea-forces, and to use his best endeavours to seize all
{93}ships belonging to the King of Spain or his subjects inAmerica.
133 The soldiers, as has been said, were moreeager to fight the Spaniards than to plant, and opportunitieswere soon given them to try their hand. AdmiralPenn had left twelve ships under Goodson's charge, andof these, six were at sea picking up a few scattered Spanishprizes which helped to pay for the victuals supplied out ofNew England.
134 Goodson, however, was after larger prey,no less than the galleons or a Spanish town upon themainland. He did not know where the galleons were,but at the end of July he seems to have been lying witheight vessels before Cartagena and Porto Bello, and on22nd November he sent Captain Blake with nine ships tothe same coast to intercept all vessels going thither fromSpain or elsewhere. The fleet was broken up by foulweather, however, and part returned on 14th Decemberto refit, leaving a few small frigates to lie in wait for somemerchantmen reported to be in that region.
135 The firsttown on the Main to feel the presence of this new powerin the Indies was Santa Marta, close to Cartagena on theshores of what is now the U.S. of Columbia. In thelatter part of October, just a month before the departureof Blake, Goodson sailed with a fleet of eight vessels toravage the Spanish coasts. According to one account hisoriginal design had been against Rio de la Hacha nearthe pearl fisheries, "but having missed his aim" he sailedfor Santa Marta. He landed 400 sailors and soldiersunder the protection of his guns, took and demolished thetwo forts which barred his way, and entered the town.Finding that the inhabitants had already fled with asmuch of their belongings as they could carry, he pursued
{94}them some twelve miles up into the country; and on hisreturn plundered and burnt their houses, embarked withthirty pieces of cannon and other booty, and sailed forJamaica.
136 It was a gallant performance with a handfulof men, but the profits were much less than had beenexpected. It had been agreed that the seamen andsoldiers should receive half the spoil, but on counting theproceeds it was found that their share amounted to nomore than £400, to balance which the State took thethirty 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 notpay for the powder and shot spent in that service."
138Sedgwick was one of the civil commissioners appointedfor the government of Jamaica. A brave, pious soldierwith a long experience and honourable military record inthe Massachusetts colony, he did not approve of this typeof warfare against the Spaniards. "This kind of marooningcruising West India trade of plundering and burningtowns," he writes, "though it hath been long practised inthese parts, yet is not honourable for a princely navy,neither was it, I think, the work designed, though perhapsit may be tolerated at present." If Cromwell was toaccomplish his original purpose of blocking up the Spanishtreasure route, he wrote again, permanent foothold mustbe gained in some important Spanish fortress, eitherCartagena or Havana, places strongly garrisoned, however,and requiring for their reduction a considerable army andfleet, such as Jamaica did not then possess. But to wasteand burn towns of inferior rank without retaining themmerely dragged on the war indefinitely and effected littleadvantage or profit to anybody.
139 Captain Nuberry
{95}visited Santa Marta several weeks after Goodson's descent,and, going on shore, found that about a hundred people hadmade bold to return and rebuild their devastated homes.Upon sight of the English the poor people again fledincontinently to the woods, and Nuberry and his mendestroyed their houses a second time.
140On 5th April 1656 Goodson, with ten of his best ships,set sail again and steered eastward along the coast ofHispaniola as far as Alta Vela, hoping to meet with someSpanish ships reported in that region. Encounteringnone, he stood for the Main, and landed on 4th May withabout 450 men at Rio de la Hacha. The story of theexploit is merely a repetition of what happened at SantaMarta. The people had sight of the English fleet sixhours before it could drop anchor, and fled from the townto the hills and surrounding woods. Only twelve menwere left behind to hold the fort, which the English stormedand took within half an hour. Four large brass cannonwere carried to the ships and the fort partly demolished.The Spaniards pretended to parley for the ransom of theirtown, but when after a day's delay they gave no sign ofcomplying with the admiral's demands, he burned the placeon 8th May and sailed away.
141 Goodson called again atSanta Marta on the 11th to get water, and on the 14thstood before Cartagena to view the harbour. Leavingthree vessels to ply there, he returned to Jamaica, bringingback with him only two small prizes, one laden with wine,the other with cocoa.
The seamen of the fleet, however, were restless andeager for further enterprises of this nature, and Goodsonby the middle of June had fourteen of his vessels lying offthe Cuban coast near Cape S. Antonio in wait for thegalleons or the Flota, both of which fleets were thenexpected at Havana. His ambition to repeat the achievement
{96}of Piet Heyn was fated never to be realised. Thefleet of Terra-Firma, he soon learned, had sailed intoHavana on 15th May, and on 13th June, three days beforehis arrival on that coast, had departed for Spain.
142 Meanwhile,one of his own vessels, the "Arms of Holland," wasblown up, with the loss of all on board but three men andthe captain, and two other ships were disabled. Five ofthe fleet returned to England on 23rd August, and withthe rest Goodson remained on the Cuban coast until theend of the month, watching in vain for the fleet fromVera Cruz which never sailed.
143Colonel Edward Doyley, the officer who so promptlydefeated the attempts of the Spaniards in 1657-58 tore-conquer Jamaica, was now governor of the island. Hehad sailed with the expedition to the West Indies aslieutenant-colonel in the regiment of General Venables,and on the death of Major-General Fortescue in November1655 had been chosen by Cromwell's commissioners inJamaica as commander-in-chief of the land forces. InMay 1656 he was superseded by Robert Sedgwick, butthe latter died within a few days, and Doyley petitionedthe Protector to appoint him to the post. William Brayne,however, arrived from England in December 1656 to takechief command; and when he, like his two predecessors,was stricken down by disease nine months later, the placedevolved permanently upon Doyley. Doyley was a veryefficient governor, and although he has been accused ofshowing little regard or respect for planting and trade, the
{97}charge appears to be unjust.
144 He firmly maintained orderamong men disheartened and averse to settlement, and atthe end of his service delivered up the colony a comparativelywell-ordered and thriving community. He wasconfirmed in his post by Charles II. at the Restoration, butsuperseded by Lord Windsor in August 1661. Doyley'sclaim to distinction rests mainly upon his vigorous policyagainst the Spaniards, not only in defending Jamaica, butby encouraging privateers and carrying the war into theenemies' quarters. In July 1658, on learning from someprisoners that the galleons were in Porto Bello awaitingthe plate from Panama, Doyley embarked 300 men on afleet of five vessels and sent it to lie in an obscure baybetween that port and Cartagena to intercept the Spanishships. On 20th October the galleons were espied, twenty-ninevessels in all, fifteen galleons and fourteen stoutmerchantmen. Unfortunately, all the English vesselsexcept the "Hector" and the "Marston Moor" were atthat moment absent to obtain fresh water. Those twoalone could do nothing, but passing helplessly through theSpaniards, hung on their rear and tried without success toscatter them. The English fleet later attacked and burntthe town of Tolu on the Main, capturing two Spanishships in the road; and afterwards paid another visit tothe unfortunate Santa Marta, where they remained threedays, marching several miles into the country and burningand destroying everything in their path.
145On 23rd April 1659, however, there returned to PortRoyal another expedition whose success realised thewildest dreams of avarice. Three frigates under command
{98}of Captain Christopher Myngs,
146 with 300 soldiers onboard, had been sent by Doyley to harry the SouthAmerican coast. They first entered and destroyedCumana, and then ranging along the coast westward,landed again at Puerto Cabello and at Coro. At thelatter town they followed the inhabitants into the woods,where besides other plunder they came upon twenty-twochests of royal treasure intended for the King of Spain,each chest containing 400 pounds of silver.
147 Embarkingthis money and other spoil in the shape of plate, jewelsand cocoa, they returned to Port Royal with the richestprize that ever entered Jamaica. The whole pillage wasestimated at between £200,000 and £300,000.
148 Theabundance of new wealth introduced into Jamaica did muchto raise the spirits of the colonists, and set the island wellupon the road to more prosperous times. The sequel tothis brilliant exploit, however, was in some ways unfortunate.Disputes were engendered between the officers of theexpedition and the governor and other authorities onshore over the disposal of the booty, and in the early partof June 1659 Captain Myngs was sent home in the"Marston Moor," suspended for disobeying orders andplundering the hold of one of the prizes to the value of12,000 pieces of eight. Myngs was an active, intrepidcommander, but apparently avaricious and impatient of
{99}control. He seems to have endeavoured to divert mostof the prize money into the pockets of his officers and men,by disposing of the booty on his own initiative beforegiving a strict account of it to the governor or steward-generalof the island. Doyley writes that there was aconstant market aboard the "Marston Moor," and thatMyngs and his officers, alleging it to be customary to breakand plunder the holds, permitted the twenty-two chests ofthe King of Spain's silver to be divided among the menwithout any provision whatever for the claims of the State.
149There was also some friction over the disposal of six Dutchprizes which Doyley had picked up for illegal trading atBarbadoes on his way out from England. These, too, hadbeen plundered before they reached Jamaica, and whenMyngs found that there was no power in the colony to tryand condemn ships taken by virtue of the Navigation Laws,it only added fuel to his dissatisfaction. When Myngsreached England he lodged counter-complaints againstGovernor Doyley, Burough, the steward-general, and Vice-AdmiralGoodson, alleging that they received more thantheir share of the prize money; and a war of mutualrecrimination followed.
150 Amid the distractions of theRestoration, however, little seems ever to have been madeof the matter in England. The insubordination of officersin 1659-60 was a constant source of difficulty and impedimentto the governor in his efforts to establish peace andorder in the colony. In England nobody was sure wherethe powers of government actually resided. As Buroughwrote from Jamaica on 19th January 1660, "We are herejust like you at home; when we heard of the Lord-Protector's
{100}death we proclaimed his son, and when weheard of his being turned out we proclaimed a Parliamentand now own a Committee of safety."
151 The effect of thisuncertainty was bound to be prejudicial in Jamaica, a newcolony filled with adventurers, for it loosened the reins ofauthority and encouraged lawless spirits to set the governorat defiance.
On 8th May 1660 Charles II. was proclaimed King ofEngland, and entered London on 29th May. The warwhich Cromwell had begun with Spain was essentially awar of the Commonwealth. The Spanish court wastherefore on friendly terms with the exiled prince, andwhen he returned into possession of his kingdom acessation of hostilities with Spain naturally followed.Charles wrote a note to Don Luis de Haro on 2nd June1660, proposing an armistice in Europe and Americawhich was to lead to a permanent peace and a re-establishmentof commercial relations between the two kingdoms.
152At the same time Sir Henry Bennett, the English residentin Madrid, made similar proposals to the Spanish king.A favourable answer was received in July, and the cessationof arms, including a revival of the treaty of 1630was proclaimed on 10th-20th September 1660. Preliminarynegotiations for a new treaty were entered upon atMadrid, but the marriage of Charles to Catherine ofBraganza in 1662, and the consequent alliance withPortugal, with whom Spain was then at war, put adamper upon all such designs. The armistice with Spainwas not published in Jamaica until 5th February of thefollowing year. On 4th February Colonel Doyley receivedfrom the governor of St. Jago de Cuba a letter enclosingan order from Sir Henry Bennett for the cessation ofarms, and this order Doyley immediately made public.
153{101}About thirty English prisoners were also returned by theSpaniards with the letter. Doyley was confirmed in hiscommand of Jamaica by Charles II., but his commissionwas not issued till 8th February 1661.
154 He was verydesirous, however, of returning to England to look afterhis private affairs, and on 2nd August another commissionwas issued to Lord Windsor, appointing him as Doyley'ssuccessor.
155 Just a year later, in August 1662, Windsorarrived at Port Royal, fortified with instructions "toendeavour to obtain and preserve a good correspondenceand free commerce with the plantations belonging to theKing of Spain," even resorting to force if necessary.
156The question of English trade with the Spanishcolonies in the Indies had first come to the surface in thenegotiations for the treaty of 1604, after the long warsbetween Elizabeth and Philip II. The endeavour of theSpaniards to obtain an explicit prohibition of commercewas met by the English demand for entire freedom. TheSpaniards protested that it had never been granted informer treaties or to other nations, or even withoutrestriction to Spanish subjects, and clamoured for at leasta private article on the subject; but the English commissionerssteadfastly refused, and offered to forbid tradeonly with ports actually under Spanish authority. Finallya compromise was reached in the words "in quibus antebellum fuit commercium, juxta et secundum usum etobservantiam."
157 This article was renewed in Cottington's
{102}Treaty of 1630. The Spaniards themselves, indeed, in1630, were willing to concede a free navigation in theAmerican seas, and even offered to recognise the Englishcolony of Virginia if Charles I. would admit articles prohibitingtrade and navigation in certain harbours andbays. Cottington, however, was too far-sighted, andwrote to Lord Dorchester: "For my own part, I shallever be far from advising His Majesty to think of suchrestrictions, for certainly a little more time will open thenavigation to those parts so long as there are no negativecapitulations or articles to hinder it."
158 The monopolisticpretensions of the Spanish government were evidentlyrelaxing, for in 1634 the Conde de Humanes confided tothe English agent, Taylor, that there had been talk inthe Council of the Indies of admitting the English to ashare in the freight of ships sent to the West Indies, andeven of granting them a limited permission to go to thoseregions on their own account. And in 1637 the Conde deLinhares, recently appointed governor of Brazil, told theEnglish ambassador, Lord Aston, that he was veryanxious that English ships should do the carrying betweenLisbon and Brazilian ports.
The settlement of the Windward and Leeward Islandsand the conquest of Jamaica had given a new impetus tocontraband trade. The commercial nations were settingup shop, as it were, at the very doors of the SpanishIndies. The French and English Antilles, condemnedby the Navigation Laws to confine themselves to agricultureand a passive trade with the home country, had no recoursebut to traffic with their Spanish neighbours.
{103}Factors of the Assiento established at Cartagena, PortoBello and Vera Cruz every year supplied Europeanmerchants with detailed news of the nature and quantityof the goods which might be imported with advantage;while the buccaneers, by dominating the whole CaribbeanSea, hindered frequent communication between Spain andher colonies. It is not surprising, therefore, that thecommerce of Seville, which had hitherto held its own,decreased with surprising rapidity, that the sailings of thegalleons and the Flota were separated by several years,and that the fairs of Porto Bello and Vera Cruz werealmost deserted. To put an effective restraint, moreover,upon this contraband trade was impossible on either side.The West Indian dependencies were situated far fromthe centre of authority, while the home governmentsgenerally had their hands too full of other matters toadequately control their subjects in America. TheSpanish viceroys, meanwhile, and the governors in theWest Indian Islands, connived at a practice which linedtheir own pockets with the gold of bribery, and at thesame time contributed to the public interest and prosperityof their respective colonies. It was this illicit commercewith Spanish America which Charles II., by negotiation atMadrid and by instructions to his governors in the WestIndies, tried to get within his own control. At theSpanish court, Fanshaw, Sandwich and Godolphin in turnwere instructed to sue for a free trade with the Colonies.The Assiento of negroes was at this time held by twoGenoese named Grillo and Lomelin, and with them theEnglish ambassadors several times entered into negotiationfor the privilege of supplying blacks from the Englishislands. By the treaty of 1670 the English colonies inAmerica were for the first time formally recognised by theSpanish Crown. Freedom of commerce, however, was asfar as ever from realisation, and after this date Charles
{104}seems to have given up hope of ever obtaining it throughdiplomatic channels.
The peace of 1660 between England and Spain wassupposed to extend to both sides of the "Line." TheCouncil in Jamaica, however, were of the opinion that itapplied only to Europe,
159 and from the tenor of LordWindsor's instructions it may be inferred that the EnglishCourt at that time meant to interpret it with the samelimitations. Windsor, indeed, was not only instructed toforce the Spanish colonies to a free trade, but was empoweredto call upon the governor of Barbadoes for aid"in case of any considerable attempt by the Spaniardsagainst Jamaica."
160 The efforts of the Governor, however,to come to a good correspondence with the Spanishcolonies were fruitless. In the minutes of the Council ofJamaica of 20th August 1662, we read: "Resolved that theletters from the Governors of Porto Rico and San Domingoare an absolute denial of trade, and that according to HisMajesty's instructions to Lord Windsor a trade by forceor otherwise be endeavoured;"
161 and under 12th Septemberwe find another resolution "that men be enlisted fora design by sea with the 'Centurion' and other vessels."
162This "design" was an expedition to capture and destroySt. Jago de Cuba, the Spanish port nearest to Jamaicanshores. An attack upon St. Jago had been projected byGoodson as far back as 1655. "The Admiral," wroteMajor Sedgwick to Thurloe just after his arrival inJamaica, "was intended before our coming in to havetaken some few soldiers and gone over to St. Jago deCuba, a town upon Cuba, but our coming hindered himwithout whom we could not well tell how to do anything."
163In January 1656 the plan was definitely abandoned, because
{105}the colony could not spare a sufficient number ofsoldiers for the enterprise.
164 It was to St. Jago that theSpaniards, driven from Jamaica, mostly betook themselves,and from St. Jago as a starting-point had come the expeditionof 1658 to reconquer the island. The instructionsof Lord Windsor afforded a convenient opportunity toavenge past attacks and secure Jamaica from molestationin that quarter for the future. The command of the expeditionwas entrusted to Myngs, who in 1662 was againin the Indies on the frigate "Centurion." Myngs sailedfrom Port Royal on 21st September with eleven ships and1300 men,
165 but, kept back by unfavourable winds, did notsight the castle of St. Jago until 5th October. Althoughhe had intended to force the entrance of the harbour, hewas prevented by the prevailing land breeze; so he disembarkedhis men to windward, on a rocky coast, where thepath up the bluffs was so narrow that but one man couldmarch at a time. Night had fallen before all were landed,and "the way (was) soe difficult and the night soe darkthat they were forced to make stands and fires, and theirguides with brands in their hands, to beat the path."
166 Atdaybreak they reached a plantation by a river's side, somesix miles from the place of landing and three from St.Jago. There they refreshed themselves, and advancingupon the town surprised the enemy, who knew of the latelanding and the badness of the way and did not expectthem so soon. They found 200 Spaniards at the entranceto the town, drawn up under their governor, Don Pedrode Moralis, and supported by Don Christopher de SasiArnoldo, the former Spanish governor of Jamaica, with areserve of 500 more. The Spaniards fled before the firstcharge of the Jamaicans, and the place was easily mastered.
The next day parties were despatched into the countryto pursue the enemy, and orders sent to the fleet to attackthe forts at the mouth of the harbour. This was successfullydone, the Spaniards deserting the great castle afterfiring but two muskets. Between scouring the countryfor hidden riches, most of which had been carried farinland beyond their reach, and dismantling and demolishingthe forts, the English forces occupied their time untilOctober 19th. Thirty-four guns were found in the fortificationsand 1000 barrels of powder. Some of the guns werecarried to the ships and the rest flung over the precipiceinto the sea; while the powder was used to blow up thecastle and the neighbouring country houses.
167 The expeditionreturned to Jamaica on 22nd October.
168 Onlysix men had been killed by the Spaniards, twenty morebeing lost by other "accidents." Of these twenty somemust have been captured by the enemy, for when SirRichard Fanshaw was appointed ambassador to Spain inJanuary 1664, he was instructed among other things tonegotiate for an exchange of prisoners taken in the Indies.In July we find him treating for the release of CaptainMyngs' men from the prisons of Seville and Cadiz,
169 andon 7th November an order to this effect was obtainedfrom the King of Spain.
170The instructions of Lord Windsor gave him leave,as soon as he had settled the government in Jamaica, toappoint a deputy and return to England to confer with theKing on colonial affairs. Windsor sailed for England on28th October, and on the same day Sir Charles Lyttleton'scommission as deputy-governor was read in the JamaicanCouncil.
171 During his short sojourn of three months the
{107}Governor had made considerable progress toward establishingan ordered constitution in the island. He disbandedthe old army, and reorganised the military under a stricterdiscipline and better officers. He systematised legal procedureand the rules for the conveyance of property. Heerected an Admiralty Court at Port Royal, and above all,probably in pursuance of the recommendation of ColonelDoyley,
172 had called in all the privateering commissionsissued by previous governors, and tried to submit thecaptains to orderly rules by giving them new commissions,with instructions to bring their Spanish prizes to Jamaicafor judicature.
173The departure of Windsor did not put a stop tothe efforts of the Jamaicans to "force a trade" with theSpanish plantations, and we find the Council, on 11thDecember 1662, passing a motion that to this end anattempt should be made to leeward on the coasts of Cuba,Honduras and the Gulf of Campeache. On 9th and10th January between 1500 and 1600 soldiers, many ofthem doubtless buccaneers, were embarked on a fleet oftwelve ships and sailed two days later under commandof the redoubtable Myngs. About ninety leagues thisside of Campeache the fleet ran into a great storm, inwhich one of the vessels foundered and three others wereseparated from their fellows. The English reached thecoast of Campeache, however, in the early morning ofFriday, 9th February, and landing a league and a halffrom the town, marched without being seen along anIndian path with "such speed and good fortune" thatby ten o'clock in the morning they were already mastersof the city and of all the forts save one, the Castle ofSanta Cruz. At the second fort Myngs was wounded bya gun in three places. The town itself, Myngs reported,might have been defended like a fortress, for the houses
{108}were contiguous and strongly built of stone with flat roofs.
174The forts were partly demolished, a portion of the townwas destroyed by fire, and the fourteen sail lying in theharbour were seized by the invaders. Altogether the bootymust have been considerable. The Spanish licentiate,Maldonado de Aldana, placed it at 150,000 pieces of eight,
175and the general damage to the city in the destruction ofhouses and munitions by the enemy, and in the expenditureof 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. Thenumber of casualties on each side was surprisingly small.The invaders lost only thirty men killed, and the Spaniardsbetween fifty and sixty, but among the latter were thetwo alcaldes and many other officers and prominentcitizens of the town.
176To satisfactorily explain at Madrid these two presumptuousassaults upon Spanish territory in America
{109}was an embarrassing problem for the English Government,especially as Myngs' men imprisoned at Seville andCadiz were said to have produced commissions to justifytheir actions.
177 The Spanish king instructed his residentin London to demand whether Charles accepted responsibilityfor the attack upon St. Jago, and the proceedings ofEnglish cases in the Spanish courts arising from the depredationsof Galician corsairs were indefinitely suspended.
178When, however, there followed upon this, in May 1663, thenews of the sack and burning of Campeache, it stirred upthe greatest excitement in Madrid.
179 Orders and, whatwas rarer in Spain, money were immediately sent toCadiz to the Duke of Albuquerque to hasten the work onthe royal Armada for despatch to the Indies; and effortswere made to resuscitate the defunct Armada de Barlovento,a small fleet which had formerly been used tocatch interlopers and protect the coasts of Terra-Firma.In one way the capture of Campeache had touched Spainin her most vulnerable spot. The Mexican Flota, whichwas scheduled to sail from Havana in June 1663, refused tostir from its retreat at Vera Cruz until the galleons fromPorto Bello came to convoy it. The arrival of the Americantreasure in Spain was thus delayed for two months, andthe bankrupt government put to sore straits for money.
The activity of the Spaniards, however, was merely ablind to hide their own impotence, and their clamourswere eventually satisfied by the King of England's writingto Deputy-Governor Lyttleton a letter forbidding all suchundertakings for the future. The text of the letter is asfollows: "Understanding with what jealousy and offencethe Spaniards look upon our island of Jamaica, and howdisposed they are to make some attempt upon it, and
{110}knowing how disabled it will remain in its own defence ifencouragement be given to such undertakings as havelately been set on foot, and are yet pursued, and whichdivert the inhabitants from that industry which alone canrender the island considerable, the king signifies his dislikeof all such undertakings, and commands that no suchbe pursued for the future, but that they unitedly applythemselves to the improvement of the plantation andkeeping the force in proper condition."
180 The original draftof the letter was much milder in tone, and betrays the realattitude of Charles II. toward these half-piratical enterprises:"His Majesty has heard of the success of theundertaking upon Cuba, in which he cannot choose butplease himself in the vigour and resolution wherein it wasperformed ... but because His Majesty cannot foresee anyutility likely to arise thereby ... he has thought fit herebyto command him to give no encouragement to such undertakingsunless they may be performed by the frigates ormen-of-war attending that place without any additionfrom the soldiers or inhabitants."
181 Other letters weresubsequently sent to Jamaica, which made it clear that thewar of the privateers was not intended to be called off bythe king's instructions; and Sir Charles Lyttleton, therefore,did not recall their commissions. Nevertheless, in theearly part of 1664, the assembly in Jamaica passed an actprohibiting public levies of men upon foreign designs, andforbidding any person to leave the island on any suchdesign without first obtaining leave from the governor,council and assembly.
182When the instructions of the authorities at home wereso ambiguous, and the incentives to corsairing so alluring,it was natural that this game of baiting the Spaniards
{111}should suffer little interruption. English freebooters whohad formerly made Hispaniola and Tortuga their headquartersnow resorted to Jamaica, where they found acordial welcome and a better market for their plunder.Thus in June 1663 a certain Captain Barnard sailed fromPort Royal to the Orinoco, took and plundered the townof Santo Tomas and returned in the following March.
183On 19th October another privateer named Captain Cooperbrought into Port Royal two Spanish prizes, the larger ofwhich, the "Maria" of Seville, was a royal azogue andcarried 1000 quintals of quicksilver for the King of Spain'smines in Mexico, besides oil, wine and olives.
184 Cooper inhis fight with the smaller vessel so disabled his own shipthat he was forced to abandon it and enter the prize; andit was while cruising off Hispaniola in this prize that hefell in with the "Maria," and captured her after a four hours'combat. There were seventy prisoners, among them anumber of friars going to Campeache and Vera Cruz.Some of the prize goods were carried to England, andDon Patricio Moledi, the Spanish resident in London,importuned the English government for its restoration.
185Sir Charles Lyttleton had sailed for England on2nd May 1664, leaving the government of Jamaica in thehands of the Council with Colonel Thomas Lynch aspresident;
186 and on his arrival in England he made formalanswer to the complaints of Moledi. His excuse was thatCaptain Cooper's commission had been derived not fromthe deputy-governor himself but from Lord Windsor; andthat the deputy-governor had never received any orderfrom the king for recalling commissions, or for thecessation of hostilities against the Spaniards.
187 Lyttleton
{112}and the English government were evidently attemptingthe rather difficult circus feat of riding two mounts at thesame time. The instructions from England, as Lyttletonhimself acknowledged in his letter of 15th October 1663,distinctly forbade further hostilities against the Spanishplantations; on the other hand, there were no specificorders that privateers should be recalled. Lyttleton wasfrom first to last in sympathy with the freebooters, andprobably believed with many others of his time that "theSpaniard is most pliable when best beaten." In August1664 he presented to the Lord Chancellor his reasons foradvocating a continuance of the privateers in Jamaica.They are sufficiently interesting to merit a
résumé of theprincipal points advanced. 1st. Privateering maintained agreat number of seamen by whom the island was protectedwithout the immediate necessity of a naval force.2nd. If privateering were forbidden, the king would losemany men who, in case of a war in the West Indies, wouldbe of incalculable service, being acquainted, as they were,with the coasts, shoals, currents, winds, etc., of the Spanishdominions. 3rd. Without the privateers, the Jamaicanswould have no intelligence of Spanish designs against them,or of the size or neighbourhood of their fleets, or of thestrength of their resources. 4th. If prize-goods were nolonger brought into Port Royal, few merchants would resortto Jamaica and prices would become excessively high. 5th.To reduce the privateers would require a large numberof frigates at considerable trouble and expense; Englishseamen, moreover, generally had the privateering spiritand would be more ready to join with them than opposethem, as previous experience had shown. Finally, theprivateers, if denied the freedom of Jamaican ports, wouldnot take to planting, but would resort to the islands ofother nations, and perhaps prey upon English commerce.
188
The first known inhabitants of the islands were Taíno Indians, who left evidence of their occupation in the form of utensils and a ball court. Locals claim that the islands were the first landfall of Columbus in 1492. Some argue for Grand Turk, where a monument casts the claim in stone. The arrival of Europeans spelled the end for the Taínos, who had either been forced into slavery or had succumbed to European-borne diseases by the mid-16th century. 
