Tortuga (French Colony)

The withdrawal of the colonial government from the northern coastal region opens the way for French buccaneers, who have a base on Tortuga Island (Ile de la Tortue), off the northwest coast of present-day Haiti, to settle on Hispaniola in the mid-seventeenth century.

The creation of the French West India Company in 1664 signal France's intention to colonize western Hispaniola.

Intermittent warfare will go on between French and Spanish settlers over the next three decades; Spain, however, is hard-pressed by warfare in Europe and cannot maintain a garrison in Santo Domingo sufficient to protect the entire island against encroachment.

This era sees the wholesale introduction of a slavery-based plantation economy in Jamaica, which, under English rule, has become a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan, who raids up and down the Spanish Main with buccaneers from all over the Caribbean.

Large buccaneer attacks on Spanish settlements, secretly condoned by the English authorities, will continue till the end of the century, gradually laying waste to the entire region.

Jamaica’s population in 1660 is about forty-five hundred whites and some fifteen hundred blacks.

General-at-Sea William Penn and General Robert Venables had seized Jamaica in 1655 without orders in the name of Britain's Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, seeking to make up for the disastrous failure of the mission Cromwell had assigned them: to seize Hispaniola.

Spanish resistance has continued for some years, in some cases with the help of the maroons, but Spain will ever succeed in retaking the island.

Under English rule Jamaica has become a haven of privateers, buccaneers, and occasionally outright pirates: Christopher Myngs, Edward Mansvelt, and most famously, Henry Morgan.

Myngs had earned a reputation for unnecessary cruelty during his actions as a commerce raider during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1654, sacking and massacring entire towns in command of whole fleets of buccaneers.

The Spanish government considers Myngs a common pirate and mass murderer, protesting to no avail to the Cromwell government about his conduct.

Because he had shared half of the bounty of his 1659 raid on Venezuela, about a quarter of a million pounds, with the buccaneers against the explicit orders of Edward D'Oyley, the English Commander of Jamaica, he had been arrested for embezzlement and sent back to England on the Marston Moor in 1660.

The later governor described him in an accompanying letter as "unhinged and out of tune".

The Restoration government has retained Myngs in his command however, and in August 1662 he is sent to Jamaica commanding the Centurion in order to resume his activities, despite the fact the war with Spain had ended.

This is part of a covert English policy to undermine the Spanish dominion of the area, by destroying as much as possible of the infrastructure.

Myngs decides that the best way to accomplish this is to employ the full potential of the buccaneers by promising them the opportunity for unbridled plunder and rapine.

He has the complete support of the new governor, Lord Windsor, who fires a large contingent of soldiers to fill Myngs's ranks with disgruntled men.

This year, ...

...Myngs attacks Santiago de Cuba and takes and sacks the town despite its strong defenses.

The Crown in November 1662 relieves Lord Windsor, who has refused to stop the pirates from attacking Spanish ships, and appoints his deputy, Brigadier General Charles Lyttelton, as acting governor of Jamaica.

Buccaneers from all over the Caribbean join the pirate Myngs in 1663 for the announced next expedition.

Myngs directs the largest buccaneer fleet as yet assembled, fourteen ships strong and with fourteen hundred pirates aboard, among them such notorious privateers as Henry Morgan and Abraham Blauvelt, and sacks San Francisco de Campeche in February.

Myngs’s atrocities lead to an outrage and Charles II of England is forced to forbid further attacks in April, a policy to be carried out by Jamaica’s new acting governor, Thomas Lynch.

Nevertheless, a pattern has been set and large buccaneer attacks on Spanish settlements, secretly condoned by the English authorities, will continue till the end of the century, gradually laying waste to the entire region.

Colonel Sir Thomas Modyford, the son of a mayor of Exeter with family connections to the Duke of Albemarle, had emigrated to Barbados as a young man with other family members in 1647, in the opening stages of the English Civil War.

He had one thousand o for a down payment on a plantation and six thousand pounds to commit in the next three years.

Modyford soon was dominant in Barbados island politics, rising to be speaker of the house of assembly in Barbados.

Having negotiated with the Commissioners of the Commonwealth to be acting governor of Barbados, he had assumed this office in July 1660, which had put him in an awkward position with the Restoration of the English monarchy, and served only a month before being replaced as acting governor by Humphrey Walrond.

Modyford had then become a factor for the newly organized Company of Royal Adventurers, who have a monopoly in the slave trade to the islands under their new name, the Royal African Company.

He is appointed Governor of Jamaica, by commission dated February 15, 1664.

Thomas Modyford arrives in Jamaica on June 4, 1664, with seven hundred planters and their slaves, marking the wholesale introduction of a slavery-based plantation economy in Jamaica.

He appoints to his council his brother, Colonel Sir James Modyford.

Jamaica’s newly installed Governor Thomas Modyford divides the island into parishes in late 1664, soon after his arrival from Barbados.

Sir James Modyford is granted a royal license in November to ship convicted felons from England to his brother in Jamaica, where Sir Thomas uses a labor force of twenty-eight English indentured servants.

As governor, Modyford is required to call in all pirates and privateers of the West Indies because England and Spain are temporarily at peace.

However, the majority of these buccaneers either refuse to return or do not receive the message that there has been a recall, including Henry Morgan, whose uncle, Edward Morgan, had preceded Modyford as acting governor of Jamaica in 1664.

Henry Morgan had married his uncle's daughter Mary, a cousin.

Richard Browne, who would serve as the pirate Morgan's surgeon at Panama, said that Morgan came to Jamaica in 1658 as a young man, and raised himself to "fame and fortune by his valour".

Although Modyford proclaims loyalty to the Crown, he is to become a critical element of Henry Morgan’s exhibitions by going against the word of the king and granting Morgan letters of marque to attack Spanish ships and settlements.