Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

Chapter Nine

THE GOLDEN DREAM OF CHARLES II¹

Where next?” This had been the challenge facing the leaders of La Nação after quitting Brazil, and Abraham Cohen helped determine the answer. Back in Amsterdam, he had taken a second wife, Rebekah Palache, the grandniece of Rabbi Samuel Palache, and fathered three children. Though he had lost most of his fortune when the Portuguese “beat the Dutch out of Brazil,” in rebuilding his shipping business he became one of the chief architects in resurrecting another Rock of Israel in the New World.

Encouraged by Holland’s initial success in Brazil, France and England had cautiously occupied a few small islands on the eastern rim of the New Spanish Sea. Their survival alongside an enemy empire required a special type of colonizer, and the refugee conversos fit the bill. Although the conversos were welcomed by these upstart colonies, because their mother countries were still closed to Jews, Cohen’s first priority was to settle Holland’s other New World possessions.

A natural choice was Curaçao, a small, rocky island off the coast of Venezuela, first settled by the Dutch in 1634. Cohen had been back in Amsterdam only a few months when his son Jacob returned from there. While attending the wedding of his namesake cousin, he became acquainted with David Nassy and Abraham Drago, two Amsterdam Jews who had been authorized by the Company to settle the island. They had been granted a license on their claim to have recruited fifty pioneering families, but it was an empty boast. When Jacob arrived, he encountered fewer than a dozen Jewish families.² Hoping to entice other settlers, Nassy and Drago enlisted his help.

Back in Amsterdam, Jacob, with his father paving the way, persuaded the Parnassim to sponsor additional settlers in Curaçao. However, while plans were going forward, Israel and his son arrived with news that put their enterprise on hold. With friends and family reportedly stranded in New Amsterdam, homeless, broke, and threatened with expulsion, immediate action was called for.

In February 1655, after the Company grudgingly approved Jewish settlement in the northern territory, Abraham Israel and Abraham Cohen made the decision to send their sons Jacob and Isaac to confront Stuyvesant. Joining them was Jacob’s friend Joseph da Costa, the nephew of Uriel da Costa, who had served with him on Zur Israel’s Mahamad. Stuyvesant fought them every step of the way, but by mid-1657, with the Company’s reluctant but potent backing, they overcame the final hurdle and gained burgher status for Jews in the colony. They thereupon returned to Amsterdam.

Abraham and friends now focused on settling Holland’s Wild Coast colony, a sparsely inhabited region north of Brazil. Before the year was out, the States General, pressured by Cohen and the Jewish lobby, granted “the People of the Hebrew nation that are to goe to the Wilde Cust…[all] privileges and immunities” enjoyed by Dutch settlers.³ Documentation of Cohen’s settlement activities from Amsterdam’s shipping records show that he recruited settlers and bought and transported slaves and goods to settlements along the “Wilde Cust.”⁴ Holland’s pecuniary interest in encouraging Jewish settlement there was revealed in a confidential letter from England’s agent in Italy to Cromwell’s Jewish intelligencer Antonio Carvajal:

It seems the States of Holland are making a plantation betwixt Surinam and Cartagena in the West Indies…aiming chiefly at trade with the Spanyard…who are in most extreme want of all European commodities. They have sent…about 25 families of Jews and granted them many privileges and immunitys. Spanish is the Jews’ mother tongue…and they will be very useful to the Dutch…to converse with the Spanyard by reason of their civility. If our planters at Surinam took the same course it would be much to their advantage.⁵

The Jews’ “privileges and immunitys” were consistent with those prescribed in the Patenta Onrossa, with one significant addition: The States General—as they had with Rabbi Palache and Moses Cohen Henriques—declared that Jewish settlers who so desired would be issued privateer licenses, “to capture and deliver to the Company Portuguese vessels.”⁶ Their names are not recorded, but there is no reason to doubt that a number of Jewish captains, having been legally empowered as privateers, sailed from the Wild Coast to plunder ships of enemy nations.

In the fall of 1658, Charles II was playing tennis in Belgium when a messenger rode up with news that ended the match: Cromwell had died “a sudden,” and England was rejoicing. A period diarist commented, “None but dogs cried.”⁷ For a decade, Puritanism had dampened all pleasures—handholding was frowned on, theaters boarded up, singing and dancing forbidden; even Christmas was banned for being popish. “The populace had nothing to do but contemplate their sins and wail for forgiveness.”⁸

The Protector had died of natural causes. At first, there was little change. His son Richard assumed power and an unnatural quiet descended on the realm, so that Thurloe wrote, “There is not a dog that wags his tongue, so great a calm are we in.”⁹

Public apathy did not last. Under the Puritans, the nation’s moral pendulum had reached an apex, balanced there for a time, and now swung back with increasing speed. Young Cromwell resigned after nine months and the ineffectual Parliament that replaced him came under increasing pressure to recall the king. No longer primed meekly to accept Puritan restraints, the populace looked to their absent monarch who lived by the axiom “I think no joys are above the pleasures of love.”¹⁰ Charles’s ten-year exile in France, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, and Holland was that of a wandering king without a realm. Aside from many mistresses, he possessed little else. Even so, at one point, he jokingly wrote that he only lacked “fiddlers and someone to teach the new dances.”¹¹

His was a false gaiety. When Cromwell’s power was at its peak, Charles’s fortunes were such that his housekeeper wrote he had not even laundry money. In this ebb, he turned to England’s archenemy, Spain. For arms and money, he promised to join Spain’s war against England, and upon his restoration, to revoke the anti-Catholic laws and return Jamaica.

But Cromwell’s death and the public’s clamor for his return had changed things. Charles, now in Holland and anticipating his return, pledged that he harbored no prejudices and that no one would be “disquieted or called in question” for religious practice that did not threaten the peace. His so-called Declaration of Breda, promising “a liberty to tender consciences,” was read aloud in the House of Commons and a grant of fifty thousand pounds was approved to aid his return.

On May 28, 1660, Charles landed at Dover and the following day rode bareback into London on the flower-strewn route. It was his thirtieth birthday, and “the common joy,” an observer noted, “was past imagination. The ringing of church bells that greeted his entry was scarcely heard above the din.”¹² It was a magnificent homecoming that he compared to “the return of the Jews from Babylonian captivity.”¹³ But for all the pomp, Charles was broke. Despite Parliament’s grant, he couldn’t even pay the sailors who brought him home. The nation’s debt was such that there was not enough money to run the country, much less fund a penniless king.¹⁴ All this played into his recognition of Jews as a ready source of capital.

Since 1657, London’s thirty-five Jewish families had been holding services in a house at 5 Creechurch Lane (near the present synagogue in Bevis Marks). They met openly, but their situation was tenuous, as there was nothing in the public record to show that the banishment decree had been revoked. They were reminded of this when, shortly after Cromwell’s death, London merchants petitioned for their expulsion.¹⁵ No action was taken, but their status remained insecure. In December 1659, six months before Charles’s return, Thomas Violet, a London alderman, appeared in court arguing that Jewish settlement was illegal. When the judge put off his decision, citing the nation’s unsettled political climate, Violet tried another ploy. He had given an associate a purse of counterfeit coins, instructing him to pass them on to the rabbi, thinking he would circulate the bogus money. He could then accuse Jews of plotting to bring economic ruin to the nation. But the plot was revealed when his confederate confessed the scheme to the authorities.¹⁶

Charles was back only a couple of months when London’s Lord Mayor presented him with yet another merchants’ petition which characterized the Jews as “a swarm of locusts [who] debauched English women [and] ruined trade” and called for their removal. Calling Cromwell “the late execrable Usurper,” the merchants accused him of illegally admitting Jews to “a free cohabitation and trade [and] the right to practice their Judaical superstition.” They asked Charles to enforce the former laws against the Jews, “and recommend that Parliament enact new ones for their expulsion…and to bar the door after them.”¹⁷ Violet, “a restless, meddling man,” followed their petition with another. The Jews, he demanded, due to their “criminal proclivities,” should be imprisoned and their properties confiscated until ransomed by rich brethren abroad.¹⁸

Despite such accusations, Charles’s personal repute with Jewish leaders was high, as noted by their rabbi in a letter to a friend in the summer of 1660: “According to what everyone says, the King’s good will is such that no intermediary is necessary.”¹⁹ Charles’s tolerant nature was one reason for their optimism; another was his lack of funds. In August he confessed he had less money now than when he first returned: “I must tell you, I am not richer, that is, I have not so much money in my purse as when I came to you.”²⁰ Aware of the Crown’s finances, in November, the Jew-obsessed Violet called for the Jews to be heavily taxed:

Their usurious and fraudulent practices flourish so much that they endeavored to buy St. Paul’s for a synagogue in the late usurper’s time…suggest the imposition of heavy taxes, seizure of their personal property, and banishment for those without license.²¹

This last attempt at their expulsion was a final straw that spurred Carvajal’s widow, María, to take action. As her husband had taken the lead in petitioning Cromwell, so María now stepped forward. Her own family had been victims of the Inquisition, so she knew well what was at stake. Learning of Violet’s latest petition, she summoned her coreligionists to her home to compose and sign a petition for “his Majesty’s protection to continue and reside in his dominions.”²² Charles forwarded their plea to the House of Commons with a note, requesting their “advice…for the protection of the Jews.” Commons, sensing he wanted to protect rather than expel them, allowed the privileges Cromwell granted them to stand.²³

On April 23, 1661, Charles was formally crowned at Westminster, and in the months thereafter demonstrated in no uncertain terms his support of the Jewish community. Before year’s end, he naturalized nineteen Jews and approved the trading rights for de Caceres’s brothers in Barbados.

When local merchants objected that “the Jews are so subtle…that in a short time they will engross all trade,” Charles paid them no mind. His position was more in line with the planters in his colonies who wrote, “the admission of Jews and the accession of free trade will exceedingly tend to the advantage of the Colonies and His Majesty…If it were not for the Jews, [the merchants] would garner the whole trade, necessitating the planter to accept any prices they think fit.”²⁴

Charles’s treatment of Jews in his realm was consistent with the tolerance he expressed in the Declaration of Breda. London’s Jews, no longer having to disguise themselves or hide their wealth,²⁵ gathered each Sabbath in the rickety first floor synagogue in Creechurch Lane. Their place in society was endorsed by John Greenhalgh, a prominent Christian, who, having visited the synagogue in April 1662, observed in a letter to a friend:

When I was in the Synagogue I counted about a hundred Jews…all merchants…not one mechanic person of them; most were rich in apparel, with various jewels glittering (for they are the richest jewelers of any). They are generally black and may be distinguished from Spaniards or native Greeks, their hair a more perfect raven black; they have a quick piercing eye and strong intellect; several of them are comely, gallant, proper gentlemen. I knew many who I saw daily upon the Exchange.²⁶

Across the North Sea, four months earlier, Abraham Cohen and Abraham Israel decided the time was opportune to pay the king a visit. Their friend Benjamin Bueno Mesquita, just back from Jamaica,²⁷ had told them that the Jamaican Jews who first revealed the mine, namely Abraham Suares and Jacob Vilhoa, had followed his lead and kept it secret all these years. Now that Jews were legally settled in Britain and the colonies, and the king had shown himself an ally, the partners sailed for England to set in motion their long-delayed design to gain Columbus’s mine. It was in this connection that in February 1662, Charles’s agent in Reading alerted him of the arrival from Amsterdam of “certain Jews having knowledge of the gold mine which a Spaniard told His late Majesty existed in Jamaica.”²⁸ They were on their way to London and were seeking a royal audience.

On March 5, 1662, Sir William Davidson, the king’s agent in Holland, introduced to Charles the three Dutch Jews who claimed to know the location of Columbus’s lost mine. They were Abraham Cohen, Abraham Israel, and the latter’s son Isaac. The two older gentlemen, he said, were well respected in Amsterdam, where they were major players in Holland’s colonial trade, and wealthy beyond need.

Israel recounted how he had learned of the mine from Jamaica’s covert Jews when he was imprisoned on the then-Spanish island. He told the king they had confided in him because they feared their feigned Christianity would be exposed by the Inquisitors due from Colombia. Knowing he was about to be released, they asked him to use this knowledge to encourage a foreign invasion. But by the time he got back to Europe, Cromwell’s army had already sailed, and Jamaica was already targeted. But rather than dicker with a contentious Parliament, they had waited seven years until the king was restored to his throne before coming forward.

Although Charles had earlier promised to return Jamaica to Spain, the prospect of the mine’s supposed riches changed his mind. It is not known what the Jews said to convince him, only that, as stated in their contract, “reposing trust & confidence in ye abilities, [he was] well pleased and contented [to] grant [them] full power…and authority…in Jamaica…to search for, discover, dig, and raise…a Mine Royal of Gold…whether the same be opened or not opened.”²⁹

The Jews, at their expense, would command a two-year expedition to find and work the mine, for which the king was to receive two-thirds of the gold “gotten into wedges,” and the Jews one-third. Once the mine was found, they would be awarded a trade monopoly in brazilwood and pimento spice, Jamaica’s major exports. In addition, each miner (including slaves) would receive thirty acres. As a show of good faith, they were made English citizens, and when the draft of the contract was initialed, Charles, in an expansive mood, removed the gold necklace he was wearing and placed it over the head of Israel’s son. With his friend George Villiers Jr., the second Duke of Buckingham, looking on approvingly, he told his Hebrew partners he was “bestowing a gold chain for their encouragement.”³⁰

Villiers, the orphaned son of the unfortunate first duke, had been taken into the king’s household after his father’s assassination and raised as a kind of surrogate brother to the young prince. From childhood, the two had known about the mine, which was first offered to their fathers as an inducement to invade. They knew that it was somewhere in Jamaica, but as the vein of gold was reportedly only “two inches wyde,” finding it on a 4,500-square-mile island of thickly forested mountains was like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Columbus’s family reportedly kept the mine hidden to prevent others “from invading an island as weakly manned as Jamaica.”³¹

Charles had accompanied his father during the first years of the civil war, but after the king’s army was defeated in 1646, he went to live in France with his Catholic mother. Buckingham, after a three-year frolic in Italy, where his family had sent him, soon joined Charles, and the two immersed themselves in the pleasures of Paris. The bishop of Salisbury, one of their six tutors (among them was Thomas Hobbes) blamed the eighteen-year-old duke for introducing the sixteen-year-old prince to “all the vices and impieties of the age.”³² The two aristocrats shared a love of women, adventure, and theater, particularly actresses. They were fascinated as well by the era’s scientific findings. Charles founded the Royal Society of Science in July 1662 to encourage serious researchers like Sir Isaac Newton, while Buckingham’s involvement was more dilettantish. In an early address to the Society, he promised to donate a unicorn horn.

This was the extravagant duo that contracted the Jews to fulfill the lifelong dream that had first galvanized their fathers.

In March 1663, HMS Great Gift put into Port Royal with a trio of fathers and sons on a mission to find and work the fabled mine. Disembarking were Abraham and Jacob Cohen, Benjamin and Joseph Bueno Mesquita, and Abraham and Isaac Israel, the last sporting a heavy gold chain.

With England, Holland, and France competing along the trade routes, Jewish merchant adventurers, particularly those from Amsterdam, were courted, and sometimes given credibility beyond their due. Was this the case with these so-called “gold finding Jews”? The harbormaster thought so. Suspicious from the start, William Beeston wrote in his diary:

Six Jews arrived (with a rich cargo) under the specious pretext that they came in search of a vein of gold known to them during the Spaniards government…[but] this was basely a pretence for their design was only to insinuate themselves for the sake of Trade.³³

As with Spain’s exclusive trade policy, England’s Navigation Act forbade foreigners from trading with her colonies. Beeston’s judgment is supported by the fact that not only were the partners granted citizenship, but the second part of their contract awarded them a monopoly to ship “hollow ground pepper,” aka pimento or allspice, for which the island is still famous. A year later, when no mine had been found, the Jews were accused of fraud. Charles revoked their privileges and ordered them expelled from Jamaica. In his pique, he further demanded that they return his gold necklace. But in May 1664, when his banishment decree reached Jamaica, the partners were already gone. The president of the Council of Jamaica wrote the king: “The gold finding Jew went hence a month ago…he has left here ore and direction to find the gold, but we are all infidels, because the miracle is to be wrought in our country.”³⁴

Every historian who has looked into this story has endorsed the harbormaster’s derisive judgment that Cohen and his partners came “for the sake of Trade,” and that the search for the mine was a ruse of these conniving Jews who spellbound a king with the promise of treasure. Later doings by the harbormaster reveal that he had a private reason for rendering his verdict. Even so, Beeston’s bias didn’t necessarily negate his charge. Further support was seen in a charge in 1664 that Mesquita was engaged in illicit trade with Cuba while he and his partners were supposedly looking for the mine.³⁵

This cynical view has largely prevailed. However, a sheaf of seventeenth-century documents discovered by the author in the Island Record Office in Spanish Town, Jamaica’s old capital, suggests that, to the contrary, the only fraud the partners may have perpetrated was in declaring they had not found the mine. This archival evidence is best understood in the context of events in Jamaica during this period, later memoralized as the golden age of piracy.