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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Such a man of "desperate fortune" was Sir Thomas Whetstone, a nephew of Oliver Cromwell, but a royalist of such unquestioned fidelity that he had been employed by the King while in exile on a special mission to the Baltic squadron to win over its commander, Edward Mountague. After the restoration he had become extremely dissipated, and in September, 1661, he humbly petitioned Secretary Nicholas for assistance to save him from perishing miserably through starvation, being then confined for debt in the Marshalsea prison, without any prospect of release. Nicholas advised the Lord Chancellor that it was expedient to advance Whetstone a hundred pounds to enable him to obtain his liberty and remove to Jamaica. This must have been done, as two years later Whetstone was in chief command of a small squadron of Jamaican privateers, and in October, 1664, he was elected a member of the newly constituted House of Assembly, for the parish of St. Catherine, and was chosen as its first Speaker.[32]

D'Oyley was worn out by a long term of arduous service in the tropics, and soon requested to be relieved of his office and given permission to return to England. Early in the summer of 1662, he was informed that his application had been granted and that Thomas, Lord Windsor (afterwards Earl of Plymouth) had been appointed to succeed him. The new governor was given new royal instructions, by one article of which he was directed to "grant such commissions as to you may seem requisite for the subduing of all our enemies by sea and land, within and upon the Coast of America."[33]