Last Years
Morgan was now forty-five and drinking heavily. Even so, he was at the pinnacle of his success. Carlisle left in May of 1680 and one of his last acts was to set up a seven-man committee headed up by Morgan to analyze how merchant shipping in the area around the island and beyond could be protected. The committee drew up their report and Carlisle took it with him to London. In appreciation for his work, Carlisle gave Morgan a stipend of £600 annually from his own pocket.1
With Carlisle gone, Morgan was virtually in complete control of Jamaica. In his biography of Sir Henry Morgan, Dudley Pope tells us that Morgan was now Justice of the Peace, Judge of Admiralty Court, Vice Admiral, Colonel/Commandant of the Port Royal Regiment and the Lieutenant General of Jamaica, as well as acting governor.2
Still tall and lean, the heavy drinking was beginning to take a toll on Morgan. But the drinking was not that of a sad man or a man that drank to forget; it was because he was a larger than life character who spent many of his evenings smoking and drinking, exchanging stories of wild adventures with his peers.
Morgan was still a rugged man and though he liked to live the life of a buccaneer, his life had undergone a substantial change. Since his return to Jamaica after being arrested he’d entered the political arena with a passion, having been the deputy governor to two governors. He’d made enemies of both Lynch and Vaughan, built up Jamaica’s defences and added to his plantations.
However, there was one thing that set Morgan apart. While he may have caroused in the evening with old friends and relatives, he’d separated himself from his past. As a deputy governor he’d been charged with the eradication of piracy from Jamaica—a task that was almost impossible. But he set about this task with gusto, determined to do it to his best ability. ‘The Admiral had seen the future, and it was trade, not pillage. Privateering had given him estates and status, but he knew that only a rational system of trade and a lasting peace could ensure his family’s position for generations to come.’3
Morgan had done what few pirates or buccaneers could ever do: change their stripes. He’d looked to the future and realized that true power and wealth lay in trade with all the outlying colonies, indeed with his old enemy, the Spanish. As such he clamped down on piracy and privateering.
As the acting governor, in his third term in office much of Morgan’s time was taken up in putting down the privateering and piracy so that he could establish peaceful trading relations with the Dutch, French and Spanish. He regularly wrote letters about his activities in this regard:
We are not less troubled with privateers belonging to this Island. Strict orders for their arrest were issued by Lord Carlisle before his departure and by myself since, and some of their men having been taken, who are now in prison awaiting trial, the rest are alarmed, and not daring to enter any of our ports, keep on the wing until they can find some place to settle on. I much fear that this may occasion the loss of many men to this Island, but it can only be prevented by the continual attendance of some nimble small frigate in coasting round the Island and surprising the privateers.4
Further evidence of Morgan’s change towards the privateers can be seen when he wrote to London that:
Nothing can be more fatal to the prosperity of this Colony than the temptingly alluring boldness and success of the privateers, which draws off white servants and all men of unfortunate or desperate condition. I spare no care to put down this growing evil, having lately granted a special commission for the trial of several runaway whites who fired in a body at a party sent to apprehend them. These privateers discourage the Spaniards from private trade with us, which would otherwise be considerable.5
One incident illustrates this point most effectively. An unknown sloop anchored in Montego Bay but the crew remained on board and nothing was unloaded or loaded onto the vessel. Morgan was notified of this and became suspicious. It was the kind of thing that buccaneers would do if they were unsure of the reception they would get if they came ashore. Morgan sent an invitation to the seventeen men aboard the sloop to join him for dinner at the governor’s mansion, King’s House, in Port Royal. The food was excellent, the alcohol flowed, and the more it did, the more the men confessed that they were pirates and that they knew where the best Spanish ships were ripe for the taking. Laughter filled the evening and Morgan regaled them with stories of his adventures. Finally, they all went to their beds and in the morning as the men left they were arrested by the militia and put in prison.
When the seventeen men were brought into the admiralty court they were stunned to find Morgan staring down at them from the bench. As the Chief Judge, he was a different man from the one they’d caroused with. The trial was quick; they were sentenced to death and hung the same day.
Morgan filled the council and the top spots in the Jamaican government with his friends, family and other supporters. ‘His brothers-in-law, Byndloss and Archbold, were on the council and Robert Byndloss was Chief Justice.’ The Commandant of Port Royal was his third brother-in-law, Charles Byndloss, and the Attorney General was his great friend, Roger Elleston.6
In London, fellow Welshman Sir Leoline Jenkins became the new Secretary of State and as Morgan kept up his letters and reports to London detailing his activities in putting down piracy and increasing trade, he soon learned that both Lynch and Vaughan were plotting against him.
By the end of 1680, Morgan had also acquired another 1,200 acres near Port Maria that he called Llanrhymni, after the place where he’d been born.7
In February 1682, Morgan sent the writs out for elections to hold a new assembly. Yet despite Morgan’s efforts a new pirate had appeared on the scene who was causing havoc. The Dutch pirate Captain Jacob Eversten had a crew of sixty-four British and six Spanish aboard his brigantine. Repeated attempts at catching the pirate at sea failed but one evening Morgan received a report that the Dutchman had anchored in Bull Bay, not far from Port Royal. Sensing his chance to catch the pirate, Morgan ordered that two dozen soldiers from the Port Royal Regiment embark on a merchant sloop with smaller coasters also carrying soldiers following. For some reason Eversten did not believe the little fleet posed a threat but by the time he realized his mistake, he and his men were quickly overwhelmed by the soldiers. In the ensuing engagement Eversten and most of his crew managed to swim to shore but they were rounded up, along with the twenty-six pirates captured during the battle. In all, sixty British pirates and some Spanish came before Morgan. The Spanish he sent to the governor of Cartagena. When the remaining men came before him he stated they:
were tried by a special Commission of oyer and terminer in the Court of Admiralty, when they were convicted of piracy and sentenced to die. But after deliberation, and reflection that the General Assembly was to meet on the 18th following, I thought it not fit to post them to execution lest it should scare all others abroad from returning to their allegiance.8
Morgan’s intense dislike of privateers of all nationalities can be seen in his many letters to London. In one, dated 16 February, which he sent to Lord Sunderland, Morgan stated:
I present this complaint to your Lordship against the unchristianlike conduct and unneighbourliness of the Spaniard, who take all our ships at sea or in port. They have this year captured twenty-two sail and absolutely ruined our Bay trade. Though not ordinarily prejudicial to this Colony, this is most detrimental to the King’s customs, as you will perceive from depositions which I have forwarded to Lord Carlisle. I could multiply them if I chose to countenance addresses against the Spaniards’ inhumanity. We treat them on all occasions with all imaginable respect and kindness, and in return receive only ingratitude; they have many English prisoners, we not one Spanish, and why they should have credit at Whitehall and we want it I leave to your Lordship.9
Breverton tells us that Morgan’s enemies in London were plotting his overthrow and that Lynch bribed the king—his coffers virtually bare from his wild lifestyle—with £50,000 so he could return to Jamaica as governor. The king took the money and Lynch returned in 1682, much to Morgan’s surprise and chagrin.
In May of 1682, Lynch arrived in Jamaica a sick man. His earlier dismissal from his post and seeing Morgan taking up the reins of deputy governor must have rankled with him so much that he spent many years plotting Morgan’s downfall. Now he was in a position to achieve some sort of triumph over Morgan, who was ten times the man that Lynch would ever be. We can’t know the emotions that drove Lynch but from his subsequent actions we can guess that he was a petty man. Where Morgan was decisive, vigorous, brave, courageous, strong-willed, full of charisma and able to lead hundreds of men by his will alone, Lynch was nothing of the sort. He lodged with one of his supporters on the island, Hender Molesworth, and on 14 May he handed Morgan a letter that stripped him of his role as lieutenant governor and lieutenant general. Lynch dismissed Morgan from power but not from being a council member.
For Morgan the new state of affairs sent him into heavy drinking. He was upset at being cast aside after having done so much for Jamaica, possibly the one man who had saved Jamaica from becoming Spanish.
Lynch then turned to Morgan’s friends and began wholesale dismissals. Lynch had orchestrated a condition on his returning to Jamaica, which was that he had the power to dismiss members of the council. Lynch dismissed Roger Elleston from his role as Attorney General in January 1683 for speaking out against Protestant dissenters who spoke against the king. Elleston, Morgan, Byndloss, Ballard and Watson were part of the Loyal Club, loyalists to the king and country.
Lynch’s charge against Elleston was that his speech was malicious and that Morgan was behind his actions. It is strange that both Lynch and Vaughan believed that every bad thing that befell them during their time as governors was always down to Morgan. They could not see that the real reasons were their own deficiencies.
With Lynch in total control, piracy grew once again, with eighteen ships being captured off the coast of Hispaniola by just one French privateer, the Trompeuse. This was a loss of some £50,000 and there were several privateers—French, Spanish and Dutch—operating in the Caribbean.
The next to go from the council was Byndloss on 10 October, as well as being removed from the militia and any form of public office. The following day, Morgan’s other brother-in-law, Charles Morgan, was also removed from the council and his position as Commandant of Port Royal was also taken away from him. The following day it was Morgan’s turn to be booted off the council when the membership voted that he should be stripped of all his offices, commands and then suspended.
Morgan’s health was deteriorating; he had swellings in his stomach and his legs, and problems with his liver were taking effect—all from his heavy drinking and the results of the fever he’d never really been able to get rid of.
By 1684, every Morgan supporter on the council had been removed by Lynch, who now filled the council with his own supporters, friends and family. Morgan sent Charles Morgan (also his cousin) to London to protest the way that Lynch had acted. As Morgan had been a few years earlier, Lynch was now in charge of Jamaica with virtually no opposition. He did not have long to enjoy this position as he died on 24 August 1684 and was succeeded by his great friend, Hender Molesworth, who took over as acting governor of the island.
Around this time two booksellers in England picked up Esquemeling’s book and published an English version translated from the Spanish edition because it had done so well in Holland, France and Spain. Thomas Malthus and William Crooke, both booksellers, were hoping for the same success in England. In London, Charles Morgan saw the new English translations for sale and purchased copies of each, which he sent to Morgan in Jamaica. He also consulted a lawyer, just in case.
While the book ‘painted Morgan as a bold and sometimes brilliant leader, it also painted him as a rampaging, torturing, thieving pirate.’10 Morgan was furious. To him, respect of the family was everything. While he held the commissions from the king he was acting respectably and within the king’s instructions. That meant he was not and never was a pirate. He was a privateer. The fact that the book made him out to be a criminal is what incensed him most of all. He immediately instructed his lawyer to sue the booksellers for libel.
In London, Morgan’s lawyer, John Greene, began the libel suit against the two booksellers. Immediate compliance came first from Crooke, who agreed that he would put an insert about Morgan that would be very favourable to him in the second edition. To add to his compliance he also issued a pamphlet, according to Breverton, stating that Esquemeling had falsely reported several things about Morgan in his book and ‘wrongfully represented and consequently are much redounding on the Disreputation and Dishonour of the Worthy Person, Sir Henry Morgan; For the Wounds of whose reputation by that Author, I have been, ever since my better information, both heartily sorrowful, and concerned in the sincerity of my mind.’11 The libel case against Crooke was dropped.
However, Malthus was a different story and he refused to settle. The action went to court and in the end Malthus was forced to publish an apology and pay £200 damages to Morgan. This libel suit had set a precedent where money could be awarded for legal libel.
Back in Jamaica, Morgan heard news that filled him with joy. His old friend from his younger days, the Duke of Albemarle, had been made governor of Jamaica. Albemarle had fought on the side of the new king, Catholic King James II, who had succeeded Charles II, during the Duke of Monmouth rebellion. That rebellion had been put down with Albemarle’s help and in return he wanted to be governor of Jamaica. In 1686, while Molesworth remained as acting governor, he was busy lining his pockets with the slave trade, as Terry Breverton tells us in his book. ‘Molesworth was a factor of the Royal Africa Company, which now had a monopoly on the slave trade with Spain. He had no need for Morgan or any other local leaders—he was too busy making money.’12
While still in London, Albemarle asked for both Byndloss and Morgan to be reinstated on the council but his request was refused by the king.
In early 1687, Robert Byndloss died, which left Morgan to look after his old friend’s wife and eight children. With the help of the king, Albemarle had sent an expedition to the West Indies in search of Spanish gold and silver from a sunken ship said to have gone down somewhere near the north-east coast of Hispaniola. His luck was in as the first of the two ships he’d sent to find it came back filled with gold bullion and other treasure and then returned to salvage more. Albemarle had frittered away the fortune he’d inherited from his father and this treasure had made him wealthy again.
Once the two ships had returned from their treasure hunting, with Albemarle’s fortune intact, he set sail for Jamaica and arrived on 20 December 1687. He immediately dismissed Molesworth and gave Morgan an unofficial role as ‘chief advisor to the governor’, writes Breverton.
With Albemarle in Jamaica he did his best to get Morgan reinstated to the council.
I think it will be truly necessary for the King’s service to have always a considerable number of members of Council resident in the island. Sir Charles Modyford is dead, Colonel Cope is sick beyond hope of recovery, and sickness and other accidents have prevented several from attending, insomuch that once we had not members enough present to make a quorum, and the Council had to be postponed. Several times only the bare number of five has appeared, and that after long waiting. I hope that you have approved of Sir Henry Morgan and have represented him to the King as a fit man for the Council here, for the Council have recommended him to me as I have already told you.13
Yet, by early 1688, Morgan had still not been reinstated onto the council, which was his chief desire. By this time he was very ill with dropsy. One of the finest medical men of the time had accompanied the Duke of Albemarle to Jamaica, chiefly to look after the Duke’s highly strung wife, whose mental illness was growing more and more profound. Dr Hans Sloane also attended Morgan and he provides a description of our hero in the last days of his life. He described him as lean, sallow with yellowish eyes and a prominent stomach. Morgan was complaining that he had no appetite and ‘had a kicking or reach to vomit every morning and generally a small looseness attending him, and withal was much given to drinking and sitting up late which I supposed had been the cause of his present indisposition.’14
Morgan continued to drink, perhaps to keep the pain of his swollen stomach and legs at bay. He spent most of the time lying in his hammock, unable to move. Sloane stated that his condition did not allow for a remedy of purging and medicines that could have helped his condition that was ‘threatening his life’.
Finally, in July 1688 news came that the Lords of Trade and Plantations had finally agreed to allow Morgan to be reinstated to the Council of Jamaica. The ship that brought the news from London brought happiness to Morgan and his family. Albemarle called a meeting of the council for 12 July, when Morgan was officially recalled to the council. There was a ceremony to mark the special day and the council also voted for a new assembly to be called. Morgan and his supporters—all Tories and Loyalists to king and Country – won the majority of the seats, ‘becoming the largest party’, as Breverton states.
By this time his body was bloated and he found it difficult to pass water. Yet he kept on drinking. This ceremony was Morgan’s last public outing. He arrived in a carriage and now used a cane to help his mobility. After the ceremony, Roger Elleston, whom Lynch had banned from practising law in Jamaica and now the speaker of the new assembly, gave a rousing and touching tribute to Morgan from his early days in Jamaica through the expeditions and everything the man had done for the independence, survival and prosperity of the island. The tables had turned and in his last few days Morgan triumphed over the small-minded, vengeful Lynch. He’d triumphed over Vaughan as well.
On 25 August, Morgan died in his Llanrhymni estate, leaving Elizabeth everything in his will.
I have admitted Sir Henry Morgan to the Council pursuant to the King’s order, but I am afraid that he will not live long, being extraordinarily ill.15
Governor Albemarle, also quite ill, gave Morgan a proper state funeral with all the trappings of a major government official and politician. He had a horse-drawn carriage with many people in black walking beside it. Indeed, Talty tells us that Albemarle granted a twenty-four-hour amnesty for anyone who wanted to come and either pay their respects or revel over the fact that Morgan was dead. This amnesty brought in buccaneers and privateers from many different places, along with people from all walks of life, some his friends, others his enemies. Some had not forgiven Morgan for what they thought was his violation of trust during the Panama raid and yet Morgan was by far so much more than just that one expedition.16
Morgan was fifty-three when he died. At the time of his death his estate was worth £5,000 and it was all left to his wife, Elizabeth. Upon her death, the estate would go to his nephew, Charles Byndloss, as long as he changed his last name to Morgan so as to carry on the family name.
The Duke of Albemarle died in October of 1688, only a few months after Morgan.