Pedro Hortelano, resident in this city and presidio, the person who represents [the person] of Captain Alexandro Thomas de Leon, now deceased, as his lieutenant, and who he made leader of one of the privateer galliots which came from the port of Havana to this [port], in voice and name of all the soldiers and officers of the said privateer expedition, in the best way and form that by law there is cause for, and without the harm of whichever other person who might vie with me what I protest to make use of each [time] and before whom it suits me.(67) NOTE 67. The following document is a handwritten letter from Pedro Hortelano to Governor Marquez Cabrera, and constitutes his formal petition for the suspension of the governor's decision to seize the booty of the Leon expedition. Hortelano was speaking on behalf of the rest of the corsairs who participated in the expedition. The text is written in a convoluted and sometimes confusing style, and thus was difficult to render into clear English. I appear before Your Lordship and say that there has been made known and notified to me an auto pronounced by Your Lordship in view of the proceedings that have been done officially about the seizures of eleven black slaves, two boats [botes], and other trifles which [?] the people brought to this port, where we find ourselves, by which auto, Your Lordship was pleased to command, among other things that are mentioned in it, that a delivery of all the aforementioned seized [items] should be made in order to place them in deposit until meanwhile His Majesty (may God preserve him), with view of the autos that are to be remitted officially, should determine and command something else, like the referred with the rest, by that said auto, to which I refer, according to what I have come to understand; and alleging and saying for now as is my right with reservation and protest of doing it, in the manner of each [case] that there might be cause, and that the autos (duly finding) should be delivered to me, and Your Lordship, in justice and right, should be served to command the suspension of the execution of the said auto and the remission of that which is officially carried out to His Majesty, with respect to my not having been heard in the judgment and case as I ought, by Your Lordship having proceeded solely [f.21, vto.] officially, which according to the law in this [case], as in all types of trials, the interested sides ought to be heard in them, so that the decision might be made more securely; (68) NOTE 68. Here Pedro Hortelano presents his petition for the suspension of the governor's auto, and provides his justification, stating that he was never consulted prior to the decision and its execution, as was his legal right as an interested party. for which reason, being [an interested party] as much as I am in this case, and all the people who find themselves enlisted and in the exercise of the said privateering expedition, it will not be just, nor correct, to deprive us of the right that assists us about the propriety of the said plundering and seizure that we made against enemies, and the defense about it that we ought to have and place, to which it is alleged for more right in our favor that arranged and declared by His Majesty in his royal cedula of the twenty-second of February, sixteen seventy-four,(69) NOTE 69. Here Hortelano makes reference to a royal cedula outlining the specific rights granted to corsair expeditions by the Spanish crown, a copy of which he seems to have had in his possession. issued with regard to the privateering expeditions that he permits that there are and that should be armed in the Indies, since in the sixth chapter of the instruction inserted in the said royal cedula (that I protest to present in legal form each time it is suitable to me, and that the autos should be delivered to me), His Majesty arranges and commands that at the port where a privateering expedition might arrive with prisoners, the justices of the said ports are to find out about the causes of them solely in the first instant, and the appeals which might be interposed about it and the said causes are for the Royal Audiencias of their district and jurisdiction, and not for any other tribunal or council;(70) NOTE 70. Hortelano argues here that the cited royal cedula only permits the initial investigation of returning corsair expeditions at the port where they first arrive, leaving any appeals and further legal actions for the jurisdiction of the Royal Audiencia to which that port pertains (in the case of St. Augustine, that of Mexico). for which reason, with regard to that arranged by Your Lordship in the remission of the case to His Majesty, it is and results in contravention of that declared in the said royal cedula, as well as in notable harm to me, and to all the people of the said privateering expedition, meanwhile during the referred [remission] leaving without means the Royal Audiencia of the city of Mexico, to which belong and pertain in the second instance the cases and appeals which are interposed regarding them in this city, and to whose law and recourse we ought to be each time I, being heard in this trial and case on my part, ought to interpose some appeal of that determined and declared by Your Lordship in your autos; in consideration of which, and of the rest that is done or could be done in my favor and right, and in that of the said privateering expedition and its soldiers, and if it suits me more or better [f.22] to ask and allege that which is repeated and expressed here; I ask and supplicate Your Lordship, in attention of that said and alleged in this text, that it please you to order the suspension of the execution of that determined and commanded in the said auto, and that the officially performed autos about the said reason should be delivered to us in order to say and allege about them, and in view of them to justify what is suitable to our justice and right; and of the contrary (speaking duly) I protest for myself, and in the name of all the people of the said privateering expedition, what is suitable for us to protest, and that a copy of this text as well as what Your Lordship might provide should be given to me, authorized in a certified form and manner, for the protection of our right, with respect to which I ask for the fulfillment of Justice.(71) NOTE 71. Here Hortelano requests a full copy of the documentation surrounding the seizure of the booty. I swear in legal form and in the form which is necessary. Pedro Hortelano [This petition] having been presented, place it with the autos, and regarding what the party of Pedro Hortelano, leader of the galliot anchored in this port, asks for, that the auto provided on the twenty-seventh of the current [month] and the accord by His Grace and the royal officials of today, the said day, should be suspended, and that if there is cause for it, the said resolution should be remitted to the Royal Audiencia where the determination of the autos carried out about approving the seizure might apply, there is no cause, since an account should be given to His Grace so that he might command what serves him, by where [the seizure] was made being territory [f.22, vto.] in which seizures or other hostilities are not declared to be approved, by His Majesty having commanded the contrary by his royal cedulas, and by it not being on record by other [cedulas] or orders which the said leaders might bring from the governor of Havana, because they were sent to aid this presidio, and by His Grace having given order from this city, as is on record by it, that they should only follow the corsairs, and in particular the Monsiur de Agramont, who had been at this port and headed in the direction of those to the north, as is on record from the declarations made by reason of this, and likewise so that they should depopulate the lands of His Majesty on the Island of Santa Elena of Englishmen.(72) NOTE 72. Here Governor Marquez Cabrera argues that inasmuch as the Leon expedition did not follow their instructions and orders not to push northward into Carolina, thus contravening previous royal cedulas, any cedulas which they might provide were ofno bearing. By relegating the decision regarding the disposition of the slaves and other seized goods to the King himself, and not to the local Audiencia, Governor Marquez Cabrera effectively extended the amount of time needed for a final determination to a scale of years. Therefore, His Grace ordered that the said autos and accord should be fulfilled and guarded, and the royal officials should pass to the execution ofwhat is contained in them, making the inventory of the rest of the goods, and for this they should take the oath of the said leader and the rest of the persons so that under it they should declare [the goods] that they might have taken and captured in the plantations of the said town of San Jorxe, for which His Grace was giving and gave comission in sufficient form, according to and how he holds it from His Majesty, and [Pedro Hortelano] should be given a copy of this text of what was provided, and of that of yesterday, the twenty-seventh of the current [month], and the accord of today, the stated day, with that which is at the head of the autos, all in certified public form, attentive of not being able to give a copy of all the autos due to the declarations of the prisoners,(73) NOTE 73. This passage makes reference to the governor's unwillingness to release copies of the prisoners' testimony to Hortelano, presumably based on the fact that these contained what amounted to secret intelligence information in 1686. Interestingly, due largely to the illegal sack of English plantations in Carolina, the testimony was never fully exploited by the Spanish, remaining secret for another three centuries. and in case the seizure should be pronounced as legitimate by His Majesty, the slaves should be placed in the royal fort and with good security so that they might not flee, joined by some slaves that have been brought from Havana [f.23] to be sold at this presidio as a form of exile because of their being delinquents and incorrigible,(74) NOTE 74. Such slaves, labeled as troublemakers in Havana and banished to Florida in exile, were considered a dangerous influence on the captured slaves from Carolina. and also six or seven who find themselves in the Convent of San Francisco with Andres Ranzon, a corsair and pirate on these coasts, of the English nation, on account of criminal and cruel offenses,(75) NOTE 75. Governor Marquez Cabrera here refers to the group of pirates captured early in the 1684 Jingle raid along the northern coast ofFlorida. The presence of their leader Andrew Ranson in the Franciscan convent, a product ofa failed execution attempt followed by their taking sanctuary among the friars, was undoubtedly a continual thorn in the governor's side (see Wright, 1960). as experience demonstrates in the flight of Thomas, the mulatto slave of Captain Antonio de Arguelles, who went away to San Jorxe with an Indian, whom one ought to suspect due to his experience in these provinces.(76) NOTE 76. Arguelles's slave Thomas disappeared during the Leon expedition, and ultimately aided the English against his former owners. The unexpected storm in Carolina, and the death of Leon (who had assured the governor of Thomas's conduct), set the circumstances for the slave's escape. His own account of the event is clearly mixed with substantial equivocation. [Wihile sacking [the plantations], one night a storm struck them that obligated the said piraguas to beach on land and abandon them on account of the weather, and during the dawn watch [el quarto del alba] this witness encountered the said Captain Alexandro Thomas and two Apalachee Indians of those that he had taken from this city, and wishing to cross an arm of a river in order to go to a plantation where part of his people were, by having gone that night to sack it, a quantity of Chiluque Indians surrounded them and apprehended them and took them to the army where more than two hundred Englishmen were together with as many again Indians, who had joined upon the alarm of their arrival eight leagues from the settlement, and having apprehended them they remitted them to the said settlement to the presence of its governor (Torre 1687). Details were provided by a Spanish sailor who had spoken with Torre after his return to St. Augustine. he said that after the [galliot] was lost they went to take shelter in a place or ranch [estancia] that was near there, which they had already sacked, and at the time that they wished to arrive, they found an estuary that was there before arriving at the ranch, so full of water that they could not achieve it, and having seen this they took shelter in a forest because of the great cold and water, until such time as the water lowered in order to cross, and in this interim some enemy Indians attached to the English saw them and imprisoned them and carried them to the army of the said English and delivered the said mulatto and his companions (San Payo, 1688). The slave's claim that he and Alejandro Thomas de Leon met after the wreck and were interrogated together as prisoners in Charles Town is clearly a lie, since all witnesses confirm that Leon was killed in the wreck of El Rosario. Based on other sources of evidence, Thomas de la Torre evidently made his escape with an Indian named Pedro during the storm and fled directly to the English, who at the time referred to him and his companion as "Two fugitives from the Spaniards" who had made depositions revealing the location of the invading galliots prior to August 29 (Moore et al., 1686). According to former Spanish prisoners of Captain Yankey (based in Charles Town), on whose ship they, Arguielles's escaped slave, and the Indian Pedro later embarked, Torre "fled and went to the said port of San Jore, taking in his company three Indians who he said were his servants, two of which he sold there as slaves, and the other he brought in his company named Pedro" (Penate, 1688). The remnants of Leon's crew "presumed that he had fled to the settlement of San Jorje, which is also of Englishmen, in order to achieve his liberty" (Barios, 1688). Tonfe's later claims that he was captured against his will after becoming lost in the storm was clearly designed to conceal the truth of his flight (and the fact that he actively encouraged the Carolinians to assault St. Augustine, as noted below). The senor Captain and Sergeant Major Don Juan Marquez Cabrera, governor and captain general of this stated city and presidio of St. Augustine, Florida, and its provinces for His Majesty, provided the auto above, and he signed it on the twenty-eighth of the month of September, sixteen eighty-six. Juan Marquez Cabrera Before me, Alonso Solana Public and Governmental Notary In the city of St. Augustine, Florida, on the thirtieth of the month of September, sixteen eighty-six, the senores Captains [f.23, vto.] Don Thomas Menendez Marquez, accountant for His Majesty, and Francisco de la Rocha, treasurer and quartermaster, official judges of the Royal Hacienda and Coffer of these provinces, having accepted the commission contained in the three folios with this one, which was given to Their Graces by the senor Captain and Sergeant Major Don Juan Marquez Cabrera, governor and captain general of this stated city and its provinces for His Majesty, and having sworn in legal form before God and a sign of a cross that they would make use of the said commission faithfully and legally to their full knowledge and understanding, and in its fulfillment Their Graces ordered to appear before them Pedro Ortelano, resident in this stated city, leader of the galliots that came from the city of Havana to the aid of this presidio and that went to scour these coasts to the north of this presidio, who was sworn in before God Our Lord and a sign of the cross, according to legal form, and having done so, aware of it, he promised to tell the truth, and being questioned according to the tenor of the said auto and commission, he said that in the declaration that he made before Their Graces, the said senores royal officials, in the visitation they made when he entered in this port, [the seizure] was the said eleven items of slaves, one candelabra of silver, an old chasuble, two boats, and beyond that a mirror, [f.24] which he newly manifests and declares, and likewise he declares and manifests a cauldron [caldero] of iron,(77) NOTE 77. Here Pedro Hortelano complies with the original order by Governor Mafrquez Cabrera, listing all the goods seized by the Leon expedition. This list is more complete than that of the earlier visitation, although several other items were noted by other members of the expedition. All of these objects fall within the range of items listed by Paul Grimball (1689) as his losses during the invasion. and that he does not know of anything other than what he has declared, and this is the truth, aware of the oath that he has made, which he affirms and ratifies, and he is of the age of thirty-seven years. He did not sign, not knowing how to. Their Graces signed it. Thomas Menendez Marquez Francisco de la Rocha Before me, Alonso Solana Public and Governmental Notary