Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlnds 117

Jackson had found at St. Marks and sentenced to death for in-
citing the Indians to hostilities, had written to Bagot a few months
before, describing the sufferings of the Indians from alleged en-
croachments of "Anglo-American" frontier settlers. But Bagot had
paid no attention to the communication, apparently being influ-
enced by the current suspicion that "Arbuthnot" was a pseudonym
of Captain George Woodbine, promoter of a plot to capture the
Floridas." That suspicion proved false, but Arbuthnot and Robert
C. Ambrister, the latter a plotter who turned out to be an agent of
Woodbine, went to their deaths without protest from the British
government. Castlereagh, after reading the certified minutes of
the courts-martial which sentenced the two Indian traders, wrote
to Bagot:
I have... stated to Mr Bush [the United States minister at London] that...
as it is impossible not to admit, that the unfortunate Sufferers whatever their
intentions, had been engaged in unauthorized practices of such a description
as to have deprived them of any Claim on their own Govt. for interference on
their behalf, it has not been deemed ft, under all the Circumstances of this
Case, to instruct you to take any further step in this business."

Castlereagh added some unfavorable comments on the harshness of
the army courts-martial in this country, and berated Jackson for
changing the announced sentence of Ambrister from fifty lashes
and a year's confinement to death. But in spite of a pronounced
British dislike for the victor of New Orleans, the punishments were
not officially protested.
 The foreign minister, with great restraint, curbed not only re-
sentment over Jackson's escapade, but also opposition to the signs
of expansionist sentiment in the United States. Still an important
Caribbean power, England, as a matter of sound policy, looked
askance at any advance of the ambitious republic toward that sea."
Official opinion toward the Floridas is clearly expressed in Castle-
reagh's statement to Bagot that
 Were Great Britain to look to its own interests alone, & wre that interest
 worth asserting at the present moment, at the hazard of being embroiled with
 the United States there can be no question that we have an obvious motive for
 desiring that the Spaniards should continue to be our neighbours in East
 Florida, rather than that our West Indian Possessions should be so closely
 approached by the Territory of the United States-but this is a consideration,
 that we are not prepared to bring forward in the discussion at the preset
 moment, in bar to a settlement between Spain & North Ameri. The