Note (return) — Chapter VII

A second difficulty encountered by Sir Thomas Lynch, in the first year of his return, was the privateering activity of Robert Clarke, Governor of New Providence, one of the Bahama Islands. Governor Clarke, on the plea of retaliating Spanish outrages, gave letters of marque to several privateers, including Coxon, the same famous chief who in 1680 had led the buccaneers into the South Seas. Coxon carried his commission to Jamaica and showed it to Governor Lynch, who was greatly incensed and wrote to Clarke a vigorous note of reproof.436 To grant such letters of marque was, of course, contrary to the Treaty of Madrid, and by giving the pirates only another excuse for their actions, greatly complicated the task of the Governor of Jamaica. Lynch forwarded Coxon's commission to England, where in August 1682 the proprietors of the Bahama Islands were ordered to attend the council and answer for the misdeeds of their governor.437 The proprietors, however, had already acted on their own initiative, for on 29th July they issued instructions to a new governor, Robert Lilburne, to arrest Clarke and keep him in custody till he should give security to answer accusations in England, and to recall all commissions against the Spaniards.438 The whole trouble, it seems, had arisen over the wreck of a Spanish galleon in the Bahamas, to which Spaniards from St. Augustine and Havana were accustomed to resort to fish for ingots of silver, and from which they had been driven away by the governor and inhabitants of New Providence. The Spaniards had retaliated by robbing vessels sailing to and from the Bahamas, whereupon Clarke, without considering the illegality of his action, had issued commissions of war to privateers.