to
an ingenious stratagem to effect his egress from the lake. He led the
Spaniards to believe that he was landing his men for an attack on the
fort from the land side; and while the Spaniards were moving their guns
in that direction, Morgan in the night, by the light of the moon, let
his ships drop gently down with the tide till they were abreast of the
fort, and then suddenly spreading sail made good his escape. On 17th May
the buccaneers returned to Port Royal.

These events in the West Indies filled the Spanish Court with impotent
rage, and the Conde de Molina, ambassador in England, made repeated
demands for the punishment of Modyford, and for the restitution of the
plate and other captured goods which were beginning to flow into England
from Jamaica. The English Council replied that the treaty of 1667 was
not understood to include the Indies, and Charles II. sent him a long
list of complaints of ill-usage to English ships at the hands of the
Spaniards in America.[279] Orders seem to have been sent to Modyford,
however, to stop hostilities, for in May 1669 Modyford again called in
all commissions,[280] and Beeston writes in his Journal, under 14th
June, that peace was publicly proclaimed with the Spaniards. In
November, moreover, the governor told Albemarle that most of the
buccaneers were turning to trade, hunting or planting, and that he hoped
soon to reduce all to peaceful pursuits.[281] The Spanish Council of
State, in the meantime, had determined upon a course of active reprisal.
A commission from the queen-regent, dated 20th April 1669, commanded her
governors in the Indies to make open war against the English;[282] and a
fleet of six vessels, carrying from eighteen to forty-eight guns, was
sent from Spain to cruise against the buccaneers. To this fleet belonged
the three ships which tried to bottle up Morgan in Lake Maracaibo. Port
Royal was filled with report and rumour of English ships captured and
plundered, of cruelties to English prisoners in the dungeons of
Cartagena, of commissions of war issued at Porto Bello and St. Jago de
Cuba, and of intended reprisals upon the settlements in Jamaica. The
privateers became restless and spoke darkly of revenge, while Modyford,
his old supporter the Duke of Albemarle having just died, wrote home
begging for orders which would give him liberty to retaliate.[283] The
last straw fell in June 1670, when two Spanish men-of-war from St. Jago
de Cuba, commanded by a Portu