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Updated: June 2, 2025
At Chagre, he writes, the leaders gave what they pleased "for which ... we must be content or else be clapped in irons." The wronged seamen were loud in their complaints against Morgan, Collier and the other captains for starving, cheating and deserting them; but so long as Modyford was governor they could obtain no redress.
Modyford was convinced that all the circumstances were favourable to such a course of action, and on 22nd February assembled the Council. A resolution was passed that it was to the interest of the island to grant letters of marque against the Spaniards, and a proclamation to this effect was published by the governor at Port Royal and Tortuga.
Langford, moreover, seems not to have made a brilliant success of his short stay at Petit-Goave, and was probably distrusted by the authorities both in England and in the West Indies. When Modyford came as governor to Jamaica, the possibility of recovering Tortuga was still discussed, but no effort to effect it was ever made again. MSS., 13,992, f. 499.
Modyford arrived in England in November, and on the 17th of the month was committed to the Tower. The indignation of the Spaniards, when the news of the sack of Panama reached Spain, rose to a white heat.
In May of the following year, a messenger from San Domingo arrived in Port Royal with a copy of the articles of peace, to propose that a day be fixed for their publication, and to offer an exchange of prisoners, Modyford had as yet received no official notice from England of the treaty, and might with justice complain to the authorities at home of their neglect.
It was in the very midst of Lord Sandwich's negotiations that Modyford had, as Beeston expresses it in his Journal, declared war against the Spaniards by the re-issue of privateering commissions. He had done it all in his own name, however, so that the king might disavow him should the exigencies of diplomacy demand it.
The goods were seized and sold in the interest of the Spanish owner. Nevertheless, the effects of the proclamation were not at all encouraging. In the first month only three privateers came in with their commissions, and Modyford wrote to Secretary Bennet on 30th June that he feared the only effect of the proclamation would be to drive them to the French in Tortuga.
Encouraged by a letter from the king, Governor Modyford continued his exertions against the Dutch. Lord Willoughby, governor of Barbadoes, had also fitted out an expedition to take the island, but the Jamaicans were three or four days before him.
Modyford drew up an elaborate design for rooting out at one and the same time the Dutch settlements and the French buccaneers, and on 20th April he wrote that Lieutenant-Colonel Morgan had sailed with ten ships and some 500 men, chiefly "reformed prisoners," resolute fellows, and well armed with fusees and pistols. Their plan was to fall upon the Dutch fleet trading at St. Kitts, capture St.
His commission and instructions for Jamaica were carried to the West Indies by Colonel Edward Morgan, who went as Modyford's deputy-governor and landed in Barbadoes on 21st April. Modyford was instructed, among other things, to prohibit the granting of letters of marque, and particularly to encourage trade and maintain friendly relations with the Spanish dominions.
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