Note (return) — Chapter VI

Lord Carlisle cannot escape the charge of culpable negligence for having permitted these vessels in the first place to leave Jamaica. All the leaders in the expedition were notorious privateers, men who had repeatedly been concerned in piratical outrages against the Dutch and Spaniards. Coxon and Harris had both come in after taking part in the expedition against Santa Marta; Sawkins had been caught with his vessel by the frigate "Success" and sent to Port Royal, where on 1st December 1679 he seems to have been in prison awaiting trial;410 while Essex had been brought in by another frigate, the "Hunter," in November, and tried with twenty of his crew for plundering on the Jamaican coast, two of his men being sentenced to death.411 The buccaneers themselves declared that they had sailed with permission from Lord Carlisle to cut logwood.412 This was very likely true; yet after the exactly similar ruse of these men when they went to Honduras, the governor could not have failed to suspect their real intentions.