The date of his birth is not quite certain, but it is generally supposed to belong to the year 1635. He first saw light in Glamorganshire, and his existence was tinged with adventure almost from the first. For whilst he was a mere boy, he was kidnapped and sold as a servant at Barbados. Thus it was that he was thrust on to the region of the West Indies, and in this corner of the world, so rich in romance, so historic for its association with Spanish treasure-ships of Elizabethan times, so reminiscent of Drake and others, he was to perform deeds of daring which as such are not unworthy to be ranked alongside the achievements of the great Elizabethan seamen. But he differed from Drake in one important respect. The Elizabethan was severe even to harshness, but he was a more humane being than Morgan. All the wonderful things which the Welshman performed are overshadowed by his cruel, brutish atrocities. In a cruel, inhuman age Morgan unhappily stands out as one of the wickedest sailors of his time. And yet, although we live in an epoch which is somewhat prone to white-washing the world’s most notorious criminals, yet we must modify the popular judgment which prevails in regard to Morgan. To say that he was a pirate and nothing else is not accurate. At heart he certainly was this. But as Sir John Laughton, our greatest modern naval historian has already pointed out, he attacked only those who were the recognised enemies of England. I admit that in practice, especially in the case of men of such piratical character as Henry Morgan, the difference between privateering and piracy is very slight. The mere possession of a permission to capture the ships belonging to other people is nothing compared to a real sea-robbing intention. Morgan was lucky in having been required for a series of certain peculiar emergencies. His help happened at the time to be indispensable, and so he was able to do legally what otherwise he would have done illegally. All those seizures were legalised by the commission which he was granted at various times. But this is not to say that without those commissions he would not have acted in a somewhat similar manner.