:

lers, and the like, who would volunteer,-whom Venables aug. mented at Barbadoes, with a still more unruly set, to Nine-thousand this great Armament the Lord Protector has strenuously hurled, as a sudden fiery bolt, into the dark Domdaniel of Spanish Iniquity in the far West; and it has exploded there, almost without effect. The Armament saw Hispaniola, and Hispaniola with fear and wonder saw it, on the 14th of April, 1655: but the Armament, a sad miscellany of distempered unruly persons, durst not land where Drake had landed,' and at once take the Town and Island: the Armament hovered hither and thither; and at last agreed to land some sixty miles off; marched therefrom through thick-tangled woods, under tropical heats, till it was nearly dead with mere marching; was then set upon by ambuscadoes; fought miserably ill, the unruly persons of it, or would not fight at all; fled back to its ships a mass of miserable disorganic ruin; and dying there at the rate of two-hundred a day,' made for Jamaica.*

Jamaica, a poor unpopulous Island, was quickly taken, as rich Hispaniola might have been, and the Spaniards were driven. away but to men in biliary humor it seemed hardly worth the taking or the keeping. Immense droves of wild cattle, cows and horses, run about Jamaica ;' dusky Spaniards dwell in hatos, unswept shealings; 80,000 hogs are killed every year for the sake of their lard, which is sold under the name of hog's-butter at Carthagena:' but what can we do with all that! The poor Armament continuing to die as if by murrain, and all things looking worse and worse to poor biliary Generals, Sea-General Penn set sail for home, whom Land-General Venables swiftly followed; leaving Vice-Admiral Goodson,' Major-General Fortescue,' or almost whosoever liked, to manage in their absence, and their ruined moribund forces to die as they could; and are now lodged in the Tower, as they deserved to be. The Lord Protector, and virtually England with him, had hoped to see the dark empire of bloody Antichristian Spain a little shaken in the West; some reparation got for its inhuman massacrings and long-con

Journal of the English Army in the West Indies: by an Eye-witness (in Harl. Miscell, vi., 372-390.) A lucid and reasonable Narrative.

tinued tyrannies,-massacrings, exterminations of us, 'at St. Kitts in 1629, at Tortuga in 1637, at Santa Cruz in 1650:' so, in the name of England, had this Lord Protector hoped; and he has now to take his disappointment.

The ulterior history of these Western Affairs, of this new Jamaica under Cromwell, lies far dislocated, drowned deep, in the Slumber-Lakes of Thurloe and Company; in a most dark, stupified, and altogether dismal condition. A history, indeed, which, as you painfully fish it up and by degrees reawaken it to life, is in itself sufficiently dismal. Not much to be intermeddled with here. The English left in Jamaica, the English successively sent thither, prosper as ill as need be; still die, soldiers and settlers of them, at a frightful rate per day; languish, for most part, astonished in their strange new sultry element; and cannot be brought to front with right manhood the deadly inex tricable jungle of tropical confusions, outer and inner, in which they find themselves. Brave Governors, Fortescue, Sedgwick, Brayne, one after the other, die rapidly, of the climate and of broken heart; their life-fire all spent there, in that dark chaos, and as yet no result visible. It is painful to read what misbehavior there is, what difficulties there are.*

Almost the one steady light-point in the business is the Protector's own spirit of determination. If England have now a 'WestIndia Interest,' and Jamaica be an Island worth something, it is to this Protector mainly that we owe it. Here too, as in former darknesses, Hope shines in him, like a pillar of fire, when it has gone out in all the others.' Having put his hand to this work, he will not for any discouragement turn back. Jamaica shall yet be a colony; Spain and its dark Domdaniel shall yet be smitten to the heart, the enemies of God and His Gospel, by the soldiers and servants of God. It must, and it shall. We have failed in the West, but not wholly; in the West and in the East, by sea

* Thurloe, iii., iv.,—in very many places, all in a most unedited, confused condition. Luminous Notices too in Carte's Ormond Papers, ii. Long's History of Jamaica (London, 1774), i., 221 et seq., gives in a vague but tolerably correct way some of the results of Thurloe; which Byron Edwards has abridged. Godwin (iv., 192-200) is exact, so far as he goes.

and by land, as occasion shall be ministered, we will try it again and again.

'On the 28th of November, 1655, the Treaty with France is proclaimed by heralds and trumpets,' say the old Newspapers.* Alliance with France, and Declaration against Spain, within the tropics where there is never Peace, and without the tropics where Peace yet is, there shall now be War with Spain. Penn and Venables, cross-questioned till no light farther could be had from them, are dismissed; in Penn's stead, Montague is made Admiral. We will maintain Jamaica, send reinforcement after reinforcement to it; we will try yet for the Spanish Plate Fleets; we will hurl yet bolt after bolt into the dark Domdaniel, and have no Peace with Spain. In all which, as I understand, the spirit of England, mindful of Armadas, and wedded once for all to blessed Gospel Light and Progress, and not to accursed Papal Jesuitry and Stagnancy, coöperates well with this Protector of the Commonwealth of England. Land-fighting too we shall by and by come upon; in all ways, a resolute prosecution of hostilities against Spain. Concerning the policy' of which, and real wisdom and unwisdom of which, no reader need consult the current Sceptical Red-tape Histories of that Period, for they are much misinformed on the matter.

Here are Three Official Letters, or Draughts of Letters, concerning the business of Jamaica; which have come to us in a very obscure, unedited condition, Thomas Birch having been a little idle. Very obscure; and now likely to remain so, they and the others,-unless indeed Jamaica should produce a Poet of its own, pious towards the Hero-Founder of Jamaica, and courageous to venture into the Stygian Quagmires of Thurloe and the others, and vanquish them on his and its behalf!

Apparently these Official Letters are First-draughts, in the hand of Thurloe or some underling of his; dictated to him, as is like, by the Protector: they would afterwards be copied-fair, dated, and duly despatched; and only the rough originals, unhappily without date, are now left us. Birch has put them

In Cromwelliana, p. 134. † Jan. 1655-6 (Thurloe, iv., 338).

down without much criticism; the arrangement of some is palpably wrong. By the spelling and punctuation we judge them to be of Thurloe's handwriting; but the sense is clearly Oliver's, and probably, with some superficial polishings, the composition. They cannot, after much inquiry, be dated except approximately; the originals are gone with Birch, who has not even told us in whose handwriting they were, much less has tried to make any sense of them for himself, the idle ineffectual Editor! In fact, Thurloe in regard to these Jamaica businesses has had to go without editing; lies wide-spread, dislocated, dark; and, in this passage, read by Birch's light, is mere darkness visible. One of the Letters, we at length find, is even misaddressed,—seemingly by idle Birch, at random. Happily it is with the sense alone that we are much concerned; and that is in good part legible. Fancy Penn and Venables dismissed, after some light got out of them by cross-questioning; fancy Vice-Admiral Goodson, Major-General Fortescue, Daniel Serle Governor of Barbadoes, and Major-General Sedgwick' new from England, made Commissioners, with Instructions,** with full power over Jamaica ;-and then read.

LETTER CXLI.

VICE-ADMIRAL GOODSON, as his title indicates, went out as second under Penn; whose place he now fills as chief. Letters of his in Thurloe indicate a thick blunt stout-hearted sailor character, not nearly so stupid as he looks; whose rough piety, sense, stoicism, and general manfulness grow luminous to us at last. The Protector hopes the Lord may have blessed Goodson to have lighted upon some of the Enemy's vessels, and burnt them ;'-which is a hope fulfilled: for Goodson has already been at St. Martha on the Spanish Main, and burnt it; but got few ships,' nor any right load of plunder either; the people having had him in sight for six hours before landing, and run away with everything to the woods. He got 'thirty brass guns and two bases,' whatever these

Thurloe, iv., 634.

are.

6

The rest of the plunder, being accurately sold at the mast of each ship' by public auction, yielded just 4717. sterling, which was a very poor retnrn. At the Rio de Hacha ('Rio de hatch,' as we here write it) the bay was so shoal' no great ships could get near; and our 'hoys' and small craft, on trying it, saw nothing feasible; wherefore we had drawn back again. Santa Martha, and plunder sold by auction to the amount above stated, was all we could get.'

SIR,

*

I have written to Major-General Fortescue divers advertisements of our purpose and resolution, the Lord willing, to prosecute this Business; and you shall not want bodies of men nor yet anything in our power for the carrying on of the work. I have also given divers hints unto him of things which may probably be attempted, and should+ be very diligently looked after by you both; but are left to your better judgments upon the place. Wherein I desire you would consult together how to prosecute your affairs with that brotherly kindness that upon no color whatsoever any divisions or distractions should be amongst you, but that you may have one shoulder to the work; which will be very pleasing to the Lord; and not unnecessary, considering what an enemy you are like to have to deal withal.

We hope that you have with 'you' some of those ships which came last, near Twenty men-of-war; which I desire you to keep equipt, and make yourselves as strong as you can to beat the Spaniard, who will doubtless send a good force into the Indies. I hope, by this time the Lord may have blessed you to have light upon some of their vessels,— whether by burning them in their harbors or otherwise. And it will be worthy of you to improve your strength, what you can, both to weaken them by parcels, and to engage them as you have opportunity,—which, at such a distance I may probably guess, would be best managed' by not suffering, if you can help it, the new Fleet, which comes from Spain, te go unfought, before they join with the ships that are to the Leeward of you. We are sending to you, with all possible speed, Seven more stout men-of-war, some of them forty guns, and the rest not under thirty, for your assistance. This Ship goes before, with instructions to encourage you to go on in the work; and also with instruction to Mevis, • Goodson's Letter, in Thurloe, iv., 159 et seq. † 'would' in orig.