Note (return) — Chapter VI

The excuse of the Spaniards for most of these seizures was that the vessels contained logwood, a dyewood found upon the coasts of Campeache, Honduras and Yucatan, the cutting and removal of which was forbidden to any but Spanish subjects. The occupation of cutting logwood had sprung up among the English about ten years after the seizure of Jamaica. In 1670 Modyford writes that a dozen vessels belonging to Port Royal were concerned in this trade alone, and six months later he furnished a list of thirty-two ships employed in logwood cutting, equipped with seventy-four guns and 424 men.363 The men engaged in the business had most of them been privateers, and as the regions in which they sought the precious wood were entirely uninhabited by Spaniards, Modyford suggested that the trade be encouraged as an outlet for the energies of the buccaneers. By such means, he thought, these "soldiery men" might be kept within peaceable bounds, and yet be always ready to serve His Majesty in event of any new rupture. When Sir Thomas Lynch replaced Modyford, he realized that this logwood-cutting would be resented by the Spaniards and might neutralize all his efforts to effect a peace. He begged repeatedly for directions from the council in England. "For God's sake," he writes, "give your commands about the logwood."364 In the meantime, after consulting with Modyford, he decided to connive at the business, but he compelled all who brought the wood into Port Royal to swear that they had not stolen it or done any violence to the Spaniards.365 Secretary Arlington wrote to the governor, in November 1671, to hold the matter over until he obtained the opinion of the English ambassador at Madrid, especially as some colour was lent to the pretensions of the logwood cutters by the article of the peace of 1670 which confirmed the English King in the possession and sovereignty of all territory in America occupied by his subjects at that date.366 In May 1672 Ambassador Godolphin returned his answer. "The wood," he writes, "is brought from Yucatan, a large province of New Spain, about 100 leagues in length, sufficiently peopled, having several great towns, as Merida, Valladolid, San Francisco de Campeache, etc., and the government one of the most considerable next to Peru and Mexico.... So that Spain has as well too much right as advantage not to assert the propriety of these woods, for though not all inhabited, these people may as justly pretend to make use of our rivers, mountains and commons, as we can to enjoy any benefit to those woods." So much for the strict justice of the matter. But when the ambassador came to give his own opinion on the trade, he advised that if the English confined themselves to cutting wood alone, and in places remote from Spanish settlements, the king might connive at, although not authorize, their so doing.367 Here was the kernel of the whole matter. Spain was too weak and impotent to take any serious revenge. So let us rob her quietly but decently, keeping the theft out of her sight and so sparing her feelings as much as possible. It was the same piratical motive which animated Drake and Hawkins, which impelled Morgan to sack Maracaibo and Panama, and which, transferred to the dignified council chambers of England, took on a more humane but less romantic guise. On 8th October 1672, the Council for the Plantations dispatched to Governor Lynch their approval of his connivance at the business, but they urged him to observe every care and prudence, to countenance the cutting only in desolate and uninhabited places, and to use every endeavour to prevent any just complaints by the Spaniards of violence and depredation.368