I am too busy with my cause to hate too absorbed in something bigger than myself. I have no time to quarrel, no time for regrets and no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.

One thing was clear to the ministers and civil servants who framed these policies: Britain’s colonies and the new transatlantic commerce they were generating were a vital national asset to be coveted, protected and extended, if necessary by aggression.

This coup de main gave Morgan the means to make himself a Jamaican planterand to secure a knighthood, respectability and the governorship of the colony. Italso, like Drake’s similar exploits a hundred years before, made a deep impressionon the public imagination and reinforced that popular image of distant lands asplaces where quick fortunes were waiting for the energetic and ruthless.