f the money due on this contract.[85]

Not long after this agreement was made the possibility of a war with
the Dutch began to appear. The company considered ways by which Grillo
might be induced to mitigate the contract.[86] Complications
concerning the security to be given arose, and Grillo complained that
the required number of Negroes was not being furnished to him. Under
the circumstances this was almost impossible because the outbreak of
the Anglo-Dutch war made it very difficult to obtain slaves.
Nevertheless, on May 26, 1665, the company resolved to procure as many
Negroes as possible to fill the contract, providing Grillo made prompt
payments.[87]

As may be surmised no great number of slaves was exported from
Barbadoes or Jamaica on this contract. Only one ship arrived at
Barbadoes from Cadiz desiring to secure one thousand slaves, but the
company's factors could obtain only eight hundred. Lord Willoughby
carefully reported that he had complied with his Majesty's command not
to exact any export duty for these slaves.[88] In Jamaica fewer
Negroes are known to have been sold on this contract to Spanish ships
which came from Cartagena.[89] There may have been other instances of
sales not recorded, but it is certain that the war interfered to such
an extent that the number of Negroes sold to Grillo fell far short of
what the contract called for. In order to keep the agreement intact
the company resolved, March 23, 1666, to lay the situation before the
king, and to ask him to permit Grillo's agents to buy sufficient
Negroes in the plantations to make up the required number, and that no
export duties be charged on them.[90] The king complied with the
company's request, and the desired orders were sent to the governors
of Jamaica and Barbadoes.[91] Some trouble had arisen in Jamaica,
however, between Grillo's agents and Governor Modyford. Since the
company believed that Grillo's agents were primarily to blame for
this, it resolved in the future to deliver Negroes only at Barbadoes
in return for ready money.[92]

This was virtually the end of the contract. In 1667 the company spoke
of the agreement as having been broken by the Grillos, and that it was
under no further obligation to carry out its terms. Altogether, it
declared, that no more than 1,200 Negroes had been delivered to
Grillo's agents.[93] Thus this project which the company at first
asserted would bring into the English kingdom 86,000 pounds of Spanish