o
take all felons convicted in the circuits and at the Old Bailey who were
afterwards reprieved for transportation to foreign plantations, and to
transmit them to the governor of Jamaica;[228] and this practice was
continued throughout the whole of the buccaneering period.

Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits,
impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an
employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the
plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and
when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken
part in them fell to robbing on their private account. Sir Charles
Lyttleton, we have seen, zealously defended and encouraged the
freebooters; and Long, the historian of Jamaica, justified their
existence on the ground that many traders were attracted to the island
by the plunder with which Port Royal was so abundantly stocked, and that
the prosperity of the colony was founded upon the great demand for
provisions for the outfit of the privateers. These effects, however,
were but temporary and superficial, and did not counterbalance the
manifest evils of the practice, especially the discouragement to
planting, and the element of turbulence and unrest ever present in the
island. Under such conditions Governor Modyford found it necessary to
temporise with the marauders, and perhaps he did so the more readily
because he felt that they were still needed for the security of the
colony. A war between England and the States-General then seemed
imminent, and the governor considered that unless he allowed the
buccaneers to dispose of their booty when they came in to Port Royal,
they might, in event of hostilities breaking out, go to the Dutch at
Curacao and other islands, and prey upon Jamaican commerce. On the other
hand, if, by adopting a conciliatory attitude, he retained their
allegiance, they would offer the handiest and most effective instrument
for driving the Dutch themselves out of the Indies.[229] He privately
told one captain, who brought in a Spanish prize, that he only stopped
the Admiralty proceedings to "give a good relish to the Spaniard"; and
that although the captor should have satisfaction, the governor could
not guarantee him his ship. So Sir Thomas persuaded some merchants to
buy the prize-goods and contributed one quarter of the money himself,
with the understanding that he should receive nothing if th