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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After venting his displeasure upon the unlucky commanders of the expedition for their failure to take Hispaniola, Cromwell decided to retain and colonize their actual conquest and published a proclamation describing Jamaica as "spacious in extent, commodious in its harbours and rivers within itself, healthful by its situation, well stored with horses and other cattle, and generally fit and worthy to be planted and improved to the advantage, honour, and interest of this nation." Laws and ordinances for its government were promulgated. Surveyors were appointed to lay out lands for desirable settlers. It announced that all "planters and adventurers to that island" would be exempted from paying any excise or custom duty "on goods and necessaries transported thither for seven years, and that no customs or other tax or impost would be laid upon any product imported from thence into any other English possession for the next ten years," dating in each case from the following Michaelmas, and that no embargo would be imposed during that period on any ships or seamen sailing for Jamaica. The struggling colonists of New England, who had begun to despond, were invited "to remove themselves or such numbers of them as shall be thought convenient, out of those parts where they now are to Jamaica."[12]