Edward Mansvelt

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, ...

The Brethren or "Brethren of the Coast", a loose coalition of pirates and privateers commonly known as buccaneers and active in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, are a syndicate of captains with letters of marque and reprisal who regulate their privateering enterprises within the community of privateers and with their outside benefactors.

They are primarily private individual merchant mariners of Protestant background, usually of English and French origin.

During their heyday when the Thirty Years War was devastating the Protestant communities of France, Germany, and the Netherlands and England was engaged in various conflicts, the privateers of these nationalities had been issued letters of marque to raid Catholic French and Spanish shipping and territories.

Based primarily on the island of Tortuga off the coast of Haiti and in the city of Port Royal on the island of Jamaica, the original Brethren were mostly French Huguenot and British Protestants, but their ranks have been joined by other adventurers of various nationalities including Spaniards, and even African sailors, as well as escaped slaves and outlaws of various sovereigns.

In keeping with their Protestant and mostly Common Law heritage the Brethren are governed by codes of conduct that favor legislative decision-making, hierarchical command authority, individual rights, and equitable division of revenues.

Edward Mansfield, or Mansvelt, is at this time the acknowledged informal chieftain of the Brethren.

His background is largely obscure, with conflicting accounts as a Dutchman from Curaçao or an Englishman.

He is first recorded accepting a privateering commission from Governor Edward D'Oyley at Port Royal in 1659.

Based from Jamaica during the early 1660s, he had begun raiding Spanish shipping and coastal settlements traveling overland as far as the Pacific coast of South America.

He had in late 1665 attacked a Cuban village with two hundred buccaneers.

Soon after this raid, he is offered a commission by Modyford at Port Royal to sail against the Dutch at Curaçao.

His men refuse to fight the Dutch however, some themselves being Dutchmen, while others believe it will be far more lucrative to continue their raids against the Spanish.

Mansvelt and his crew leave Jamaica in January 1666.

According to writer and historian Alexandre Exquemelin, Mansvelt led the fleet which captured and looted Granada and the Isle of St. Catherine, although this is disputed.

He was, however, elected admiral of the fleet consisting between ten to fifteen ships and an estimated five hundred men.

Sailing for Costa Rica in April, he intended to attack Cartago several miles inland but was turned back by heavy resistance from Spanish defenders near Turrialba.

Several members chose to leave the expedition to return to Jamaica or Tortuga after this setback.

Mansvelt, however, takes what remains of the fleet, successfully raiding the Isle of St. Catherine and capturing the island of Santa Catalina (later renamed Providence Island by the English who will later establish a successful colony there.)

After occupying St. Catherine, Mansvelt sends word to Port Royal for reinforcements in order to use the island as a base to attack the Spanish.

The island may have been what is today called San Andres, located one hundred miles off Nicaragua.

He fails to persuade the governor in his request, as well as his attempts to use the island as a pirate haven, and dies of a sudden illness.

Another version, again according to Exquemelin, claims he sailed from the island to Tortuga where he was captured by the Spanish in Cuba and executed for piracy.

Regardless, his authority is assumed by another rising buccaneering captain, Henry Morgan, following news of his death.

Morgan is perhaps the most famous member of the Brethren and the one usually noted with codifying its organization.