tuga to collect the tenths on prize goods brought into Jamaica under
cover of these commissions. The quarrel came to a head over the arrest
and trial of a buccaneer named John Deane, commander of the ship "St.
David." Deane was accused of having stopped a ship called the "John
Adventure," taken out several pipes of wine and a cable worth L100, and
forcibly carried the vessel to Jamaica. He was also reported to be
wearing Dutch, French and Spanish colours without commission.[375] When
the "John Adventure" entered Port Royal it was seized by the governor
for landing goods without entry, contrary to the Acts of Navigation, and
on complaint of the master of the vessel that he had been robbed by
Deane and other privateers, Sir Henry Morgan was ordered to imprison the
offenders. The lieutenant-governor, however, seems rather to have
encouraged them to escape,[376] until Deane made so bold as to accuse
the governor of illegal seizure. Deane was in consequence arrested by
the governor, and on 27th April 1676, in a Court of Admiralty presided
over by Lord Vaughan as vice-admiral, was tried and condemned to suffer
death as a pirate.[377] The proceedings, however, were not warranted by
legal practice, for according to statutes of the twenty-seventh and
twenty-eighth years of Henry VIII., pirates might not be tried in an
Admiralty Court, but only under the Common Law of England by a
Commission of Oyer and Terminer under the great seal.[378] After
obtaining an opinion to this effect from the Judge of the Admiralty, the
English Council wrote to Lord Vaughan staying the execution of Deane,
and ordering a new trial to be held under a proper commission about to
be forwarded to him.[379] The Governor of Jamaica, however, upon
receiving a confession from Deane and frequent petitions for pardon, had
reprieved the pirate a month before the letter from the council reached
him.[380] The incident had good effect in persuading the freebooters to
come in, and that result assured, the governor could afford to bend to
popular clamour in favour of the culprit. In the latter part of 1677 a
standing commission of Oyer and Terminer for the trial of pirates in
Jamaica was prepared by the attorney-general and sent to the
colony.[381]

After the trial of Deane, the lieutenant-governor, according to Lord
Vaughan, had openly expressed himself, both in the taverns and in his
own house, in vindication of the condemned man and in disparagement of
Vaughan hims