en caught with his vessel
by the frigate "Success" and sent to Port Royal, where on 1st December
1679 he seems to have been in prison awaiting trial;[410] while Essex
had been brought in by another frigate, the "Hunter," in November, and
tried with twenty of his crew for plundering on the Jamaican coast, two
of his men being sentenced to death.[411] The buccaneers themselves
declared that they had sailed with permission from Lord Carlisle to cut
logwood.[412] This was very likely true; yet after the exactly similar
ruse of these men when they went to Honduras, the governor could not
have failed to suspect their real intentions.

At the end of May 1680 Lord Carlisle suddenly departed for England in
the frigate "Hunter," leaving Morgan again in charge as
lieutenant-governor.[413] On his passage home the governor met with
Captain Coxon, who, having quarrelled with his companions in the
Pacific, had returned across Darien to the West Indies and was again
hanging about the shores of Jamaica. The "Hunter" gave chase for
twenty-four hours, but being outsailed was content to take two small
vessels in the company of Coxon which had been deserted by their
crews.[414] In England Samuel Long, whom the governor had suspended from
the council and dismissed from his post as chief justice of the colony
for his opposition to the new Constitution, accused the governor before
the Privy Council of collusion with pirates and encouraging them to
bring their plunder to Jamaica. The charges were doubtless conceived in
a spirit of revenge; nevertheless the two years during which Carlisle
was in Jamaica were marked by an increased activity among the
freebooters, and by a lukewarmness and negligence on the part of the
government, for which Carlisle alone must be held responsible. To accuse
him of deliberately supporting and encouraging the buccaneers, however,
may be going too far. Sir Henry Morgan, during his tenure of the chief
command of the island, showed himself very zealous in the pursuit of the
pirates, and sincerely anxious to bring them to justice; and as Carlisle
and Morgan always worked together in perfect harmony, we may be
justified in believing that Carlisle's mistakes were those of negligence
rather than of connivance. The freebooters who brought goods into
Jamaica increased the revenues of the island, and a governor whose
income was small and tastes extravagant, was not apt to be too
inquisitive about the source of the articles wh