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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Little reliable record has been found of the youth of Henry Morgan beyond what he wrote himself in middle life, when, acting as governor of Jamaica, he stated that: "The office of Judge Admiral was not given to me for my understanding of the business better than others, nor for the profitableness thereof, for I left the schools too young to be a great proficient in that or other laws, and have been more used to the pike than the book."[5] This want of education so frankly confessed was probably due to the disturbed state of the country, as he was born too late to take any very active part in the civil war and was still in his twentieth year when the expedition commanded by Venables sailed from Portsmouth in December, 1654.

Leslie must have relied on local tradition when he wrote fifty years after Morgan's death:

"His Father was a Farmer of pretty good Repute, and designed his Son for the same Way of Life; but his Inclinations were turned on another way; and finding his Father positive in his Resolution, bid him adieu and rambled to Bristol, where he bound himself a Servant for Four Years and was transported to Barbadoes; there he was sold and served his Master with a great deal of Fidelity."[6]