Having now at last done something, the English leaders hastened to deprive themselves personally of all credit by deserting their command and running back to England. The early history of Jamaica is a very painful one, and need not be told here. Perhaps the moral of it all is best given by a witness who wrote after the Restoration of Charles II. He reported that when the Spaniards saw how fast the English died, they were surprised, but that, when they learned how much they drank, they were surprised that any of them lived. The military and naval leaders squabbled, and the soldiers and sailors fought. At last it was decided that Penn should return to England with the bulk of the fleet, leaving Goodson with twelve of the lighter vessels. He sailed on the 25th of June, returning home by the western end of Cuba and the Florida Channel. One English vessel, the =Discovery=, had been blown up by accident at Jamaica. On the way another disaster occurred. The =Paragon=, which had been Badiley's ship in the Mediterranean, caught fire and blew up, with the loss of a hundred lives. Penn returned to England in a very intelligibly dismal state of mind. He was inclined to see the hand of the Lord visiting the sins of the expedition, and something he referred to mysteriously as the "sin in England," on the men of little faith about him. He was also visibly nervous as to the reception it was likely he would meet with from the Protector, and began garrulously excusing himself before he reached home. It was not without cause that he, and possibly his colleague Venables, of whom we have less evidence, looked forward to facing Oliver Cromwell. The old explanation of the Protector's anger, that he punished the generals for taking Jamaica when they were ordered to take San Domingo, was given in ignorance of their instructions; but he had good cause to be angry with them, both for the incapacity displayed at San Domingo, and for their hasty desertion of their conquest of Jamaica. As his spy service was both watchful and efficient, it is at least possible that Cromwell had warning of their letters to the king. They reached England on the 31st August, anchoring at Spithead. Within a fortnight they were both in the Tower, on the recommendation of the Protector's Council. They did not escape from this till they had made abject submission. Penn retired to the estate which he had begged for himself out of the confiscated property of the king's friends in Ireland, and was no more employed during Oliver Cromwell's life.