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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Like the Dutch, the English colonists in general, and especially the Puritans among them, cherished an inappeasable hatred of the Spaniards, and sincerely believed that in plundering them, they were not merely enriching themselves but serving the cause of God and true religion.[55]

Nor were the Spaniards less guiltless of similar unprovoked aggressions, as was shown by a deposition of Charles Hadsell, master of the ship Prosperous of London, taken before Sir Charles Lyttleton, as Judge of the Court of Admiralty for the American seas. Hadsell described the capture of his ship, which was carried into San Domingo by a Spanish royal man-of-war. After being kept in prison there for fourteen months, he was sent to Havana, whence he had made his escape with five other English prisoners. Two of them were seamen, who had been taken more than a year before in the bay of Matanzas in a ship owned by Colonel Arundell. After a month's captivity at Puerto Principe, Arundell and the master of his ship had been taken into the woods by negroes and there killed. These men had seen their heads carried into the town by their murderers, and believed that they had only been saved from a like fate by the influence of a Flemish friar, by whose intercession they had been sent to Havana. Hadsell estimated his loss through the confiscation of his ship at not less than five thousand pounds.[56]