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

93 страница из 128

His sudden retreat was ascribed by the more devout inhabitants of Cartago to the miraculous intervention of "Our Lady of the Conception", whose image presented by King Philip II to the Franciscans of Costa Rica, was then an object of great veneration in the convent church of the neighbouring village of Ujarraz. Witnesses were not wanting who declared that they, as well as their enemies, had seen on the heights above Turrialba, a host of spectral warriors headed by a radiant feminine form. They firmly believed these ghostly auxiliaries to be an army of angels led by the Virgin Mary, who had come to the aid of her chosen people, and for a hundred years at least, an annual procession of pious pilgrims to her shrine at Ujarraz commemorated this legend.[108]

Mansfield was then deserted by four ships, two of which returned to Port Royal and two went to Tortuga. To obtain a convenient base for future operations he decided to attempt the capture of the island of Santa Catalina, or Old Providence, lying off the eastern coast of Nicaragua, near the edge of the long shoal known as the Moskito Bank, almost equidistant from Cartagena, Puerto Bello, and Jamaica, and very close to the usual route of Spanish ships sailing between those two important ports on the Main and Havana and Vera Cruz. For about ten years that island had been the seat of an English Puritan colony, founded by a group of friends, including several of the richest peers and leading commoners of the Kingdom. Its most noted members were the Earl of Warwick, who had made several visits to the West Indies, his son-in-law, Lord Mandeville, heir of the Earl of Manchester, Lord Saye and Sele, the Earl of Bedford, John Pym, John Hampden, and St. John. In the last days of this colony, this island had become a favourite resort for English privateers, who preyed upon Spanish commerce. The forcible expulsion of the settlers by the Spaniards, who had killed some of them and cruelly maltreated others, was the subject of bitter complaint by Cromwell, to whom the history of the colony was well known. In his letter to Major General Fortescue, already quoted, he said it was a place he "could heartily wish were in our hands again, believing it lies so advantageously in reference, and especially for the hindrance of the Peru trade and Cartagena, that you might not only have great advantage thereby of intelligence and surprise, but even block up the same."[109]