| “…on the 12th instant arrived Captain Mansfield, and one other ship, and commplains that the desobedience of several officers and soldiers was the cause of their not proceeding on the design of Curaçao; in the meantime the old fellow was resolved (as he tells me) never to see my face again until he has done some service to His Majesty, and therefore with 200 men, which were all were left him, and about 80 of them French, he resolved to attempt the Providence Island, which was formerly English, and by the Spaniards’ whole armada taken from us in 1641, and ever since carefully garrisoned. In order to do this he set sail, and being an excellent coaster, which is his chief, if not his only virtue, in the night he came within half a mile of it by an unusual passage among the rocks, and in the early morning landed, marched four leagues, surprised the governor, who was taken prisoner. The soldiers got into the fort, being about 200, but on conditions to be landed on the main they yielded. Twenty-six pieces of ordnance, 100 double jars of powder, shot and all things necessary were found, and the fort very strongly built, they acknowledge very little plunder, only 150 negroes; they brought off 100, and left Captain Hattsell keeper of magazine, and so have rendered it to me for his Majesty’s account; they say that many of the guns have Queen Elizabeth’s arms engraven on them. I have as yet only reproved Mansfield for doing it without His Majesty’s express orders, lest I should drive them from that allegiance which they make great professions of now more than ever. Neither could I without manifest imprudence but accept the tender of it in His Majesty’s behalf, and considering its good situation for favouring any design on the rich main, lying near the river which leads to the lake, I hold it my duty to reinforce that garrison, and to send some able person to command it.” |