eet from Porto Bello or Vera Cruz brought with it
English prisoners from Cartagena and other Spanish fortresses, who were
lodged in the dungeons of Seville and often condemned to the galleys or
to the quicksilver mines. The English ambassador sometimes secured their
release, but his efforts to obtain redress for the loss of ships and
goods received no satisfaction. The Spanish Government, believing that
Parliament was solicitous of Spanish trade and would not supply Charles
II. with the necessary funds for a war,[359] would disburse nothing in
damages. It merely granted to the injured parties despatches directed to
the Governor of Havana, which ordered him to restore the property in
dispute unless it was contraband goods. Godolphin realized that these
delays and excuses were only the prelude to an ultimate denial of any
reparation whatever, and wrote home to the Secretary of State that
"England ought rather to provide against future injuries than to depend
on satisfaction here, till they have taught the Spaniards their own
interest in the West Indies by more efficient means than
friendship."[360] The aggrieved merchants and shipowners, often only too
well acquainted with the dilatory Spanish forms of procedure, saw that
redress at Havana was hopeless, and petitioned Charles II. for letters
of reprisal.[361] Sir Leoline Jenkins, Judge of the Admiralty, however,
in a report to the king gave his opinion that although he saw little
hope of real reparation, the granting of reprisals was not justified by
law until the cases had been prosecuted at Havana according to the
queen-regent's orders.[362] This apparently was never done, and some of
the cases dragged on for years without the petitioners ever receiving
satisfaction.

The excuse of the Spaniards for most of these seizures was that the
vessels contained logwood, a dyewood found upon the coasts of Campeache,
Honduras and Yucatan, the cutting and removal of which was forbidden to
any but Spanish subjects. The occupation of cutting logwood had sprung
up among the English about ten years after the seizure of Jamaica. In
1670 Modyford writes that a dozen vessels belonging to Port Royal were
concerned in this trade alone, and six months later he furnished a list
of thirty-two ships employed in logwood cutting, equipped with
seventy-four guns and 424 men.[363] The men engaged in the business had
most of them been privateers, and as the regions in which they sought
the precious