The expedition of buccaneers under the command of M. de Grammont in February, 1679, was another event that justified the fears of the Cubans and their steps to insure the safeguard of their ports. M. de Grammont landed with a force of six hundred men at Guanaja and succeeded in capturing Puerto del Principe. But the inhabitants valiantly organized and armed themselves to fight the invader. With a scanty reenforcement of soldiers from the garrison they managed to defeat the enemy's horde and pursued them as far as the port of Guanaja. There M. de Grammont, who was wounded in the course of the combat, retired into a trench which was sufficiently fortified to offer some resistance. On the twenty-fifth of the month an engagement took place, which forced the pirates to take to their ships and hurriedly to leave for the open sea. They had not only accomplished nothing, but suffered the loss of seventy dead and many wounded.
Notwithstanding the two countries being at peace, the feeling between Great Britain and Spain was gradually becoming more and more hostile. During the pirate raids and other expeditions of British vessels off the Spanish-American coasts, British soldiers and sailors had been taken prisoners and were held in what was equivalent to bondage. The British government had repeatedly remonstrated against this procedure, but the Cuban authorities had not forgotten Jamaica and other operations of the British in Spanish America and were not inclined to parley. Ships had been sent to Havana to demand the release of the men, but even then the emissaries of the British government failed to obtain any satisfaction. Their demands were flatly refused. Finally the Earl of Clarence, who was then governor of Jamaica, dispatched the British ship Hunter under command of Captain John Tosier to Havana. A full account of this expedition is given in "A Letter from Captain John Tosier, Commander of His Majesty's ship the Hunter at Jamaica. With a narrative of his embassy to the governor of Havana to demand His Majesty's of Great Britain's Subjects kept prisoners there." The letter is dated Port Royal, Jamaica, March 28th, 1679, and was published in London in the same year.
Captain Tosier tells of previous efforts made to obtain the deliverance of these British prisoners, saying that even messengers backed by frigates of fifty guns had so far failed in their purpose. He sailed from Port Royal on the twenty-fifth of January and on the eleventh of February arrived off the coast of Havana. There he waited for two days for more settled weather before he approached within two miles of Morro castle, "top-sails a-Trip, Jack, Ancient and Pendant flying." He sent a boat with Mr. Richard Bere, Governor Carlisle's "Gentleman of the Horse" as messenger and interpreter, and bearer of the list of British subjects kept prisoners in Havana. The guard of Morro castle ordered the boat ashore, put a sergeant and soldiers on board and escorted the messenger to Governor Ledesma. Another guard remained on the boat. Governor Ledesma read the letter and the sailing orders and replied that the British prisoners were pirates. According to Captain Tosier's narrative he refused the British emissaries the customary salute and more or less politely ordered them out of the house. They were escorted back to the boat and "were forced to sea at seven o'clock at night."
Early the next morning the answer was received by Captain Tosier. Within three hours he sent the boat ashore once more, telling the governor of Havana "His Majesty's Ship under my command is well Man'd, where he might be safe and welcome if he would vouchsafe to give her his company; and His Majesty of England never spared his powder to answer Civilities, nor received such indignities as waiters or guards on board of any of His Majesty's Ships of War, which will be a strange report, when His Majesty shall come to hear of it." Captain Tosier then demanded in the name of the King of England and "in obedience to the Catholic King" that forthwith all subjects of his "most Excellent Majesty" detained as prisoners in Havana be set at liberty and delivered to him to be transported to the Territories of the King of England. If pirates they were, they should have been sent to Old Spain to be tried. Great was the excitement at the government house in Havana, when this message reached there. But the Cuban authorities saw no other way out of the difficulty but to give up the captives. Captain Tosier reports that the governor ordered the prisoners to be called over in a back court near his house and examined some of them, one after another, and before he had done said: "Though I have no order to deliver them to you and though I may be blamed, yet take them all with you, and if there be any more, let them come forth immediately and they shall be discharged."
Captain Tosier had cause to be proud of his success, as the Spanish authorities had never before been known to deliver any British prisoners. The announcement that they were free was received with wild cheers by the forty-six Englishmen who had spent from one to six years in Cuban captivity. The following day the Hunter sailed and at some distance out of Havana, Captain Tosier came across a long boat, containing one hundred and forty-four men with their commander, Captain John Graves who had sailed a month before for London and eight days before meeting the Hunter had been cast away thirty leagues east of Havana and expected to be utterly lost or to be made prisoners by the Cubans.
Though Governor Ledesma had in this instance yielded to the pressure exercised by the British, he was by no means convinced of the honesty and sincerity of the Governor of Jamaica. He had reasons to believe that in spite of peace between the two countries the governor of Jamaica was secretly in league with the pirates that had molested Cuba, and that while pretending to persecute the outlaws, he had really encouraged them in their raids upon the Spanish colonies. Governor Ledesma collected evidence to that effect and presented it at the court of Spain. But his appeal arrived at a time when Spain's European losses had alarmingly decreased her prestige and when even her national wealth showed a perceptible shrinkage. So the court at Madrid did nothing but deliberate at length upon the ever present problem of insuring the safety of the colonies and limited its practical assistance to the sending over of a few ships with instructions to organize an armada which was to patrol the coasts and force the outlaws to respect Spanish possessions. The island itself armed a few vessels and the garrisons were slightly increased.
The great earthquake of the year 1675 added to the sufferings of the people of Cuba and caused loss of life and property. Three years later a violent hurricane swept over the island and worked great havoc. It not only robbed great numbers of the inhabitants of their homes, and did serious damage to commerce and traffic, but it also destroyed the recently finished cathedral. Though such catastrophes were of no rare occurrence in that climate, they invariably left the people's spirits depressed and indirectly affected their initiative and enterprise. Thus the copper mines were abandoned about this time, because their production seemed out of proportion to the labor and expense of working them. But the real reason was probably the ignorance and inefficiency of the forces in charge of the work and the lack of energy and courage which frequently manifested itself in the wake of great disasters.
A change in the ecclesiastical affairs of Cuba caused considerable commotion during the administration of Governor Ledesma. Bishop Saenz de Manosca was promoted to the bishopric of Guatemala. The Trinitarian (in Mexico a member of a society hired to carry the corpse in the funeral procession) who had temporarily succeeded him was shortly after appointed Bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo. Thus the diocese came under the wise spiritual guidance of the Canon of Avila, D. Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon, who was not only a learned theologian of great reputation, but a priest of uncompromising moral austerity. He devoted himself with great ardor to reforming the church in the West Indies. On a single visit to Florida he was reported to have made as many as four thousand converts. On his return to Cuba he inaugurated a reign of unwonted severity. He had been deeply shocked by the levity and frivolity of his diocesans; he had learned that even ordained priests and personages in high official positions were in the habit of attending public balls and masquerades, the latter especially offering opportunity to indulge in polite intrigues and adventures of a dubious nature. He justly opined that men in clerical garb and those in responsible government offices lowered their dignity and abused the trust reposed in them by participating in such entertainments. He prohibited his diocesans under threat of excommunication to attend such amusements and by this rigorous restriction of the gayeties in which the people had been accustomed to indulge, made not a few enemies. When he died on the sixteenth of March, 1676, public rumor attributed his death to poison administered by some person in revenge for his interference with the social life of his diocese.
Spain was at this period at the lowest ebb of her