James Browne (pirate)

To the dismay of English lords eager to find allies in Europe, privateers would regularly abuse their legal commissions to attack shipping of all nations.

[3] Early in 1677 he captured the Dutch West Indies Company slaving ship Golden Sun off Cartagena, killing several of its officers and crew.

[1] He argued that setting Browne free would set a bad precedent ("hindering the sentence of execution will be of evil example and bad consequence"); the Assembly countered that “if this execution take place all our privateers which are out may think this Act a snare and possibly make those already in go out again.”[6] The Assembly's Chief Justice Samuel Long and Speaker (and future governor) William Beeston ordered Browne's execution delayed, but Browne had been hanged only minutes earlier: “Half-an-hour after, the Marshal came with an order signed by the Speaker to observe the Chief Justice's writ of habeas corpus.”[6] Vaughn was incensed with Long and Beeston and dissolved the Jamaican Assembly.

[7] After going through three governors in two years, it took until mid-1679 for Jamaica to repay the Dutch West India Company for the loss of slaves to Browne's piracy, and then only when the Lords of Trade and Plantations forced Carlisle to do so.

[6] The following year (1680) Carlisle levied the same charges against Justice Long that Vaughn had, still holding him accountable for the "disorderly" manner in which he had handled Browne's trial.