Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/23

Morgan much clerical preferment. He became rector of Walwyn's Castle, Pembrokeshire, 12 Feb. 1529-30; prebendary of Spaldwick in the diocese of Lincoln, 13 Dec. 1532 (, Cathedrals, p. 232); prebendary of St. Margaret's, Leicester, also in the diocese of Lincoln, 7 June 1536 (ib. p. 202); canon of Bristol, 4 June 1542 (ib. p. 791); prebendary of the collegiate church of Crantock in Cornwall, 1547; canon of Exeter, 1548; rector of Mawgan, Cornwall, 1549, and of St. Columb Major, Cornwall, 1550; prebendary of Hampton in Herefordshire, 1 March 1551 (ib. p. 574).

Upon the deprivation of Robert Ferrar [q. v.] he was appointed by Queen Mary bishop of St. David's in 1554, which see he held until he was deprived of it, on the accession of Elizabeth, about midsummer 1559. He then retired to Wolvercote, near Oxford, where some relatives, including the Owens of Godstow House, resided. He died at Wolvercote 23 Dec. 1559, and was buried in the church there.

John Foxe, in his 'Acts and Monuments of the Church' (sub anno 1558), like Thomas Beard in his 'Theatre of God's Judgments,' i. cap. 13, states that Morgan was 'stricken by God's hand' with a very strange malady, of which he gives some gruesome details; but Wood could find no tradition to that effect among the inhabitants of Wolvercote, though he made a careful inquiry into the matter. Wood mentions several legacies left by Morgan, proving 'that he did not die in a mean condition.'

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ii. 788, Fasti i. 67; Boase's Register of the Univ. of Oxford, p. 124; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Owen's Pembrokeshire, 1892, p. 240; Coote's English Civilians; Freeman and Jones's History of St. Davids.]

 MORGAN, HENRY (1635?–1688), buccaneer, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, eldest son of Robert Morgan of Llanrhvmny, Glamorganshire,was born about 1635 (, Limbus Patrum Morganiæ, p. 315). While still a mere lad he is said to have been kidnapped at Bristol and sold as a servant at Barbados, whence, on the expiration of his time, he found his way to Jamaica and joined the buccaneers. His uncle, Colonel Edward Morgan, went out as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica in 1664 (ib. ff. 189-90), and died in the attack on St. Eustatius, in July 1665 (Cal. State Papers, America and West Indies, 10 May 1664, No. 739 ; 23 Aug., 16 Nov. 1665, Nos. 1042, 1085, 1088). But Henry Morgan had no command in this expedition; and although the presence of at least three Morgans in the West Indies at Morgan the time renders identification difficult, it is possible that he was the Captain Morgan who, having commanded a privateer from the beginning of 1663, was, in January 1665, associated with John Morris and Jackman in their expedition up the river Tabasco in the Bay of Campeachy, when they took and plundered Vildemos; after which, returning eastwards, they crossed the Bay of Honduras, took Truxillo, and further south, went up the San Juan river in canoes as far as Lake Nicaragua, landed near Granada, which they sacked, and came away after overturning the guns and sinking the boats (ib. 1 March 1666, No.J1142). This appears the more probable, as the later career of John Morris was closely connected with that of Henry Morgan (ib. 7 Sept. 1668, No. 1838 ; 12 Oct. 1670, No. 293).

After the death of Colonel Edward Morgan, the governor of Jamaica, Sir Thomas Modyford [q. v.], commissioned a noted buccaneer, Edward Mansfield, to undertake the capture of Curaçoa, early in 1666. In that expedition Henry Morgan is first mentioned" as commanding a ship, and he was with Mansfield when he seized the island of Providence or Santa Catalina, which the Spaniards had taken from the English in 1641. Leaving a small garrison in the island, Mansfield returned to Jamaica on 12 June (ib. 16 June 1666, No. 1216), but shortly afterwards, falling into the hands of the Spaniards, he was put to death (ib. No. 1827), and the buccaneers elected Morgan to be their 'admiral.' Santa Catalina was retaken by the Spaniards in August 1666. In the beginning of 1668 Morgan was directed by Modyford to levy a sufficient force and take some Spanish prisoners, so as to find out their intentions respecting a rumoured plan for the invasion of Jamaica. Morgan accordingly got together some ten ships with about five hundred men, at a rendezvous on the south side of Cuba, near the mouth of the San Pedro river. There, finding that the people had fled, and had driven all the cattle away, they marched inland to Puerto Principe, which, owing to its distance from the coast, had hitherto escaped such visits. The people mustered for the defence, but were quickly overpowered. The town was taken and plundered, but was not burnt on payment of a ransom of a thousand beeves, and Morgan was able to send Modyford word that considerable forces had been levied for an expedition against Jamaica.

Morgan himself, with his little fleet, sailed towards the mainland and resolved to attempt Porto Bello, where not only were levies for the attack on Jamaica being made, but where, it was said, several Englishmen  VOL. XXXIX