Note (return) — Chapter VI

At the end of May 1680 Lord Carlisle suddenly departed for England in the frigate "Hunter," leaving Morgan again in charge as lieutenant-governor.413 On his passage home the governor met with Captain Coxon, who, having quarrelled with his companions in the Pacific, had returned across Darien to the West Indies and was again hanging about the shores of Jamaica. The "Hunter" gave chase for twenty-four hours, but being outsailed was content to take two small vessels in the company of Coxon which had been deserted by their crews.414 In England Samuel Long, whom the governor had suspended from the council and dismissed from his post as chief justice of the colony for his opposition to the new Constitution, accused the governor before the Privy Council of collusion with pirates and encouraging them to bring their plunder to Jamaica. The charges were doubtless conceived in a spirit of revenge; nevertheless the two years during which Carlisle was in Jamaica were marked by an increased activity among the freebooters, and by a lukewarmness and negligence on the part of the government, for which Carlisle alone must be held responsible. To accuse him of deliberately supporting and encouraging the buccaneers, however, may be going too far. Sir Henry Morgan, during his tenure of the chief command of the island, showed himself very zealous in the pursuit of the pirates, and sincerely anxious to bring them to justice; and as Carlisle and Morgan always worked together in perfect harmony, we may be justified in believing that Carlisle's mistakes were those of negligence rather than of connivance. The freebooters who brought goods into Jamaica increased the revenues of the island, and a governor whose income was small and tastes extravagant, was not apt to be too inquisitive about the source of the articles which entered through the customs. There is evidence, moreover, that French privateers, being unable to obtain from the merchants on the coast of San Domingo the cables, anchors, tar and other naval stores necessary for their armaments, were compelled to resort to other islands to buy them, and that Jamaica came in for a share of this trade. Provisions, too, were more plentiful at Port Royal than in the cul-de-sac of Hispaniola, and the French governors complained to the king that the filibusters carried most of their money to foreign plantations to exchange for these commodities. Such French vessels if they came to Jamaica were not strictly within the scope of the laws against piracy which had been passed by the assembly, and their visits were the more welcome as they paid for their goods promptly and liberally in good Spanish doubloons.415