Edward Kritzler: Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

3. Francis J. Osborne, History of the Catholic Church in Jamaica (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988), 84: The synod decreed the Jamaican abbot should come under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Santo Domingo on February 15, 1624.

4. Frank Cundall and Joseph Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, abstracted from the Archives of Seville (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1919), 17: Miguel Delgado, one of the Portugals who founded La Vega (Spanish Town) in 1534, was lieutenant governor in 1583; Morales, Spanish Jamaica, 86: Diego de Mercado ruled from 1583 to 1597. Prominent Jamaicans who bore those names were all of Jewish ancestry. See Jacob Andrade, A Record of the Jews of Jamaica (Kingston: Jamaica Times, 1941).

5. Cundall and Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, 21, 26.

6. Ibid., 30.

7. Ibid., 30–31.

8. Ibid., 17–34. Melgarejo’s thirst for power exceeded his authority. Though loyal to the Crown, he had no qualms about feathering his own nest. After Philip II’s death in 1604, six merchants petitioned Philip III, accusing the governor of corruption, and “prayed he might be recalled.” They alleged he traded with foreign ships and pirates, “while taking for himself and his lieutenants all negroes and merchandise which entered the island.” However, the king was pleased with Melgarejo’s performance and appointed him to another term. When Melgarejo left office, Philip III, “on the petition of the people of Jamaica,” pardoned the illicit traders.

9. Ibid., 24.

10. Ibid., 47, 48: Jamaica’s governor tried, without success “to take from Francisco de Leyba Ysazi [sic] a tannery he has on the river which cause a lot of sickness being so near the town.”

11. Osborne, History of the Catholic Church in Jamaica, Appendix C, 445–76, lists the synod decrees. Don Nuño’s abbot, Mateo de Moreno, attended the synod, but the novice prelate was outmaneuvered by forces aligned against the Columbus family.

12. Cundall and Pietersz, Jamaica Under the Spaniards, 44–45; S.A.G. Taylor, The Western Design: An Account of Cromwell’s Expedition to the Caribbean (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica and Jamaican Historical Society, 1969), 74.

13. Robert F. Marx, Treasure Fleets of the Spanish Main (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1968), 4–5. Charles impatiently waited for the galleons: “The importance of the treasure from the New World to Spain can be readily understood from the following dispatch sent by the Venetian ambassador in Spain to the doge in September 1567:…‘there was great anxiety all over Spain over the delay of the arrival of the treasure fleet from the Indies and, when the Genoese bankers informed the King that unless the fleet reached port shortly, that they would be unable to negotiate any further loans for him, Philip II fell into such a state of shock that he had to be confined to bed by his physicians…I am happy to inform you that news has just arrived from Seville that the fleet has made port safely and there is now great rejoicing not only here in the Royal Court, but all over the land as well.’”

14. Irwin R. Blacker, ed., “The English Voyages of Sir Anthony Shirley,” cited in Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1598–1600, vol. 3, 601 (New York: Viking Press, 1965), 294.

15. Shannon Miller, Invested with Meaning: The Raleigh Circle in the New World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 158.

16. Robert Lacey, Sir Walter Raleigh (New York: Athenaeum Press, 1974), 344–45: James handed Gondomar “a precise inventory of Raleigh’s ships, armaments, ports of call and estimated dates of arrival.”

17. Antonia Fraser, King James VI of Scotland, I of England, (New York: Random House, 1975), 375: “Gondomar demanded…an immediate audience with James. Assuming a lofty and insolent tone, he declared the King could not judge Raleigh as he had commissioned him and was surrounded by his friends. Rather Raleigh and his captains were pirates and must be sent in chains to Madrid to be hanged in the main square. James, angered by his friend’s audacity, threw his hat on the floor, clutched his hair, and shouted that might be justice in Spain but not in England. Gondomar sneered that there was indeed a difference between England and Spain in regards to piracy, and abruptly left the room. Buckingham, who had been present, sided with Gondomar.” Philip Gibbs, The Reckless Duke: The Romantic Story of the First Duke of Buckingham and the Stuart Court (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931), 76: “[Gondomar’s] most insolent demands had a tone of imperial dignity. His manner was that of a man who moved the world. His confidence in himself and in his country gave strength to his diplomacy and majesty to his deportment.” Coffin, The Dukes of Buckingham, 71–72: After Raleigh’s beheading, Gondomar and the king made friends. Next to Buckingham, Gondomar was “the most frequent visitor to the King’s bed-chamber” 73: “Although Gondomar had captivated James, beyond Whitehall he was despised. Once, while passing a group of Englishmen in the litter that Buckingham had made the vogue, Gondomar was cursed by one who shouted, ‘There goeth the Devil in a dung cart!’” Fraser concludes (p. 375): He was “perhaps the most influential foreign ambassador ever to reside in England…With a folly bordering on madness James admitted to intimacy the most dangerous man with whom he ever had to deal.”

18. Most references to Columbus’s gold mine in Jamaica are found in Lord Clarendon’s papers kept at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library: Clarendon State Papers, vol. 1, no. 237, 14. Clarendon’s transcription of Hermyn’s “secret discoveries” includes a coded invasion plan of Jamaica, cryptic references to the location of the secret gold mine, and the promise by local “Portingals” to reveal this to their liberator.

19. Clarendon State Papers, vol. 1, no. 237, 14.

20. Roth, A History of the Marranos, 246. Although she said she would sooner enter a convent than marry a heretic, it is interesting to note “her confessor, Fra. Vincente de Rocamora, a Dominican friar famous for his ‘piety and eloquence,’ disappeared from Spain in 1643 and shows up in Amsterdam, under the name of Isaac, studying medicine and playing a prominent part in the general life of the Jewish community.”

21. J. H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares, The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 232: “The most perfidious of all heretics condemned by the church—namely the Jews” see page 10 for Olivares’s Jewish ancestry.

22. Jonathan I. Israel, Diasporas Within a Diaspora, Crypto Jews and the World’s Maritime Empires (1540–1740), Brill Series in Jewish Studies, ed. David S. Katz (Boston, 2002), 148: Olivares’ economic plan to recruit Portuguese conversos “had much to do with the absence of specific measures against Portuguese New Christians in the Indies in 1624.” Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1713 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990): Accepting Olivares’s invitation, more than four thousand Portuguese conversos settled in Seville and Madrid. Among them was Moses Cohen Henriques, who figures later in the Columbus gold mine venture. By 1640, the Portuguese expatriates in Seville constituted nearly a quarter of the population. “They had grown rich on legal and illegal trade, lived bejeweled lives, dressed in fancy clothes…Their ostentatious life style aroused the resentment of the Spanish merchants who viewed the Portuguese as nouveau riche foreigners. The Portuguese conversos occupied positions that made them easy to hate.