"That is very good," and, "That is true."'-Other persons coming in, persons of quality so called, I drew back; lingered; and then was for retiring: 'he caught me by the hand,' and with moist-beaming eyes, 'said "Come again to my house! If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul." —“Hearken to God's voice!" said George in conclusion: "Whosoever hearkens to it, his heart is not hardened;" his heart remains true, open to the Wisdoms, to the Noblenesses; with him it shall be well!- Captain Drury' wished me to stay among the Lifeguard gentlemen, and dine with them; but I declined, not being free hereto.*

* Fox's Journal (Leeds 1836), i., 265.

LETTERS CXLI.-CXLIII.

JAMAICA.

WE said already the grand Sea-Armament, which sailed from Portsmouth at Christmas, 1654, had proved unsuccessful. It went westward; opened its Sealed Instructions at a certain latitude ; found that they were instructions to attack Hispaniola, to attack the Spanish Power in the West Indies; it did attack Hispaniola, and lamentably failed; attacked the Spanish Power in the West Indies, and has hitherto realized almost nothing,—a mere waste Island of Jamaica, to all appearance little worth the keeping at such cost. It is hitherto the unsuccessfulest enterprise Oliver Cromwell ever had concern with. Desborow fitted it out at Ports mouth, while the Lord Protector was busy with his First refrac tory Pedant Parliament; there are faults imputed to Desborow but the grand fault the Lord Protector imputes to himself, Tha. he chose or sanctioned the choice of Generals improper to command it. Sea-General Penn, Land-General Venables, they were unfortunate, they were incompetent; fell into disagreements, into distempers of the bowels; had critical Civil Commissioners with them, too, who did not mend the matter. Venables lay 'six weeks in bed,' very ill of sad West-India maladies; for the rest, a covetous lazy dog, who cared nothing for the business, but wanted to be home at his Irish Government again. Penn is Father of Penn the Pennsylvanian Quaker; a man somewhat quick of temper, like to break his heart' when affairs went wrong; unfit to right them again. As we said, the two Generals came voluntarily home, in the end of last August, leaving the wreck of their forces in Jamaica; and were straightway lodged in the Tower for quitting their post.

A great Armament of Thirty, nay of Sixty ships; of Fourthousand soldiers, two regiments of whom were veterans, the rest a somewhat sad miscellany of broken Royalists, unruly Level

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 d; 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 succes. sively 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, cooperates 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 Jan. 1655-6 (Thurloe, iv., 338).

In Cromwelliana, p. 134.