organ to sack Maracaibo and Panama, and which,
transferred to the dignified council chambers of England, took on a more
humane but less romantic guise. On 8th October 1672, the Council for the
Plantations dispatched to Governor Lynch their approval of his
connivance at the business, but they urged him to observe every care and
prudence, to countenance the cutting only in desolate and uninhabited
places, and to use every endeavour to prevent any just complaints by the
Spaniards of violence and depredation.[368]

The Spaniards nevertheless did, as we have seen, engage in active
reprisal, especially as they knew the cutting of logwood to be but the
preliminary step to the growth of English settlements upon the coasts of
Yucatan and Honduras, settlements, indeed, which later crystallized into
a British colony. The Queen-Regent of Spain sent orders and instructions
to her governors in the West Indies to encourage privateers to take and
punish as pirates all English and French who robbed and carried away
wood within their jurisdictions; and three small frigates from Biscay
were sent to clear out the intruders.[369] The buccaneer Yallahs, we
have seen, was employed by the Governor of Campeache to seize the
logwood-cutters; and although he surprised twelve or more vessels, the
Governor of Jamaica, not daring openly to avow the business, could enter
no complaint. On 3rd November 1672, however, he was compelled to issue a
proclamation ordering all vessels sailing from Port Royal for the
purpose of cutting dye-wood to go in fleets of at least four as security
against surprise and capture. Under the governorship of Lord Vaughan,
and after him of Lord Carlisle, matters continued in this same uncertain
course, the English settlements in Honduras gradually increasing in
numbers and vitality, and the Spaniards maintaining their right to take
all ships they found at sea laden with logwood, and indeed, all English
and French ships found upon their coasts. Each of the English governors
in turn had urged that some equitable adjustment of the trade be made
with the Spanish Crown, if peace was to be preserved in the Indies and
the buccaneers finally suppressed; but the Spaniards would agree to no
accommodation, and in March 1679 the king wrote to Lord Carlisle bidding
him discourage, as far as possible, the logwood-cutting in Campeache or
any other of the Spanish dominions, and to try and induce the buccaneers
to apply themselves to planting