The Other Is Chiefly Inhabited With
Lawyers And Brave Gentlemen, Being The Chief Or Highest Appeal Of
Their Suits In Law Of All The Islands About It And Of The Mainland
Coast Next Unto It.
And it is of no such account as Carthagena, for
these and some like reasons which I could give you, over long to be
now written.
The warning which this town received of our coming towards them from
St. Domingo, by the space of 20 days before our arrival here, was
cause that they had both fortified and every way prepared for their
best defence. As also that they had carried and conveyed away all
their treasure and principal substance.
The ransom of 110,000 ducats thus concluded on, as is aforesaid, the
same being written, and expressing for nothing more than the town of
Carthagena, upon the payment of the said ransom we left the said town
and drew some part of our soldiers into the priory or abbey, standing
a quarter of an English mile below the town upon the harbour water-
side, the same being walled with a wall of stone; which we told the
Spaniards was yet ours, and not redeemed by their composition.
Whereupon they, finding the defect of their contract, were contented
to enter into another ransom for all places, but specially for the
said house, as also the blockhouse or castle, which is upon the mouth
of the inner harbour. And when we asked as much for the one as for the
other, they yielded to give a thousand crowns for the abbey, leaving
us to take our pleasure upon the blockhouse, which they said they were
not able to ransom, having stretched themselves to the uttermost of
their powers; and therefore the said blockhouse was by us undermined,
and so with gunpowder blown up in pieces.
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