Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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Orders were given "to procure some able miners to repair thither and search for to try the ore" to be found in the mountains of Jamaica.[121]

An emergency embargo had been laid on all merchant ships in English ports to obtain seamen by impressment for manning the ships of the Royal Navy, urgently required for service in the war with Holland and France, but special orders were given for the exemption of the Jamaica Merchant, bound for Port Royal, which was to be allowed to "proceed freely with idle and vagabond persons and three convicted Quakers."[122]

Some months later the Sheriff of London was commanded to deliver sixty Quakers, then confined in Newgate prison, to the master of the Black Eagle, to be transported in that ship to Jamaica, and instructions were sent to the governor to receive them. In this way fifteen members of the Society of Friends arrived at Port Royal in October, 1664, followed by sixty-eight in November, and by ten others in February, 1665. A number were already in the island, and it is stated on good authority that Colonel John Cope, for many years a member of the Council, was a Quaker. Six years later George Fox visited Jamaica, where he found three personal friends, "who had been there labouring in the service of truth," and held "many meetings there, which were large and very quiet." He and other missionaries of the sect testified to the kindness shown them by Lynch and Modyford.[123]