4

POLITICIZED EMPIRE: THE
CROWN, THE AFRICAN COMPANY, AND CENTRALIZATION,
1671–1678

In September 1670, before being removed from the governorship, Thomas Modyford informed Secretary of State Arlington of rumors circulating in Jamaica that “his Majesty as Lord of this island may impose wt taxes he pleaseth on ye native commodities of this place.” He warned that colonists were afraid that soon “we shall be under an arbitrary government which your Lordship well knows how much Englishmen abhor.” Modyford urged the king to declare that neither “he nor his successors will impose any tax, tallidge, ayde, subsidy, loane or any other charge upon them without ye consent of ye major part of ye representatives of ye freeholders of his island, according to their usual manner (by the Royal Writs) assembled.” In the same batch of letters, Modyford also offered criticisms of the African Company and its monopoly. He pleaded, “for ye further encrease of his Majesty’s subjects wee may have licence Gratis or at more moderate rates to trade for Negroes in Afrik, giving security to carry them to noe other market but this.” He continued, presumably referring to the Duke of York and his allies, “Did those Honourable persons which make yt Royal Company so glorious, but fall into considerations, how much more it is his Majesty’s interest to encrease ye number of his subjects yn bullion of gold or silver (which by law all nations may import) they would not only freely consent to this proposal for us, but for ye whole nation & forrayners also; Mankinde is ye principall, Gold ye accessory, encrease ye first considerably & ye other must follow.”1 It is unclear why Modyford issued these warnings. Calling for an open slave trade was certainly nothing new for a colonial governor. But Modyford claimed slavery was not only beneficial because it improved colonial production. In his estimation, remarkably, slaves became “subjects” of the Crown and were therefore a net increase in population to the entire realm. The fact that the African Company’s backers and imperial authorities focused so much of their energy on accumulating bullion and monopolizing trade was misguided as far as Modyford was concerned. The supply of forced labor in the colonies was the key to imperial success.

Modyford’s remarks about the African Company, coupled with his warnings about arbitrary taxation without representation, represented a good articulation of what had evolved as the colonial-planter imperial ideal during the 1660s, a vision that Modyford had helped mold. It turned out Modyford’s thoughts offered a prescient foreshadowing of things to come. During the next decade, the Crown attempted to implement some of the “arbitrary” designs Modyford described. The second phase of Restoration Stuart imperialism was marked by serious attempts at increased centralization and control in terms of revenue extraction and the extension of executive authority. Noting this trend, scholars have offered a variety of explanations for this apparent shift in policy during the 1670s. Philip Haffenden argues that this development was primarily legal in origin and offered a “prelude” to the imperial designs of the Tory Reaction and the reign of James II of the next decade. Richard Dunn has posited that the imperial “crack down” of the 1670s was motivated primarily by concerns of “English mercantilists [who] were determined to gear [colonial production] to the needs of the home market.” Offering another approach, Stephen Saunders Webb has emphasized that the government’s central concern was maintaining control of the colonies by military force, and that all other considerations were secondary. Robert Bliss has suggested that increased attempts at imperial control merely reflected the desire for greater efficiency in government, and not any underlying political ideology.2

Although scholars are correct to mark the 1670s as a turning point in English imperial administration, none takes into consideration the prominent role that the African Company and England’s participation in the slave trade played in shaping these new arrangements. During the 1670s, Restoration imperial designs underwent significant transformation in response to changing political, economic, and social circumstances at home and in the colonies. As many historians have noted, the 1670s were a particularly volatile decade. The emergence of vocal, although hardly cohesive, groups opposed to the Crown’s diplomatic, military, economic, religious, and imperial positions contributed to the divisiveness of the age. Major events such as the Stop of the Exchequer (1672) and the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1674) had a direct impact on imperial administration. In 1670 and again in 1672, the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations was transformed and in 1675 experienced further overhaul in light of political upheaval in the government. Most significantly, the African Company was reorganized in 1672. All of these events had implications for colonial governance and reflected the government’s efforts to centralize imperial administration through a more-effective use of the king’s prerogative authority in the colonies.

This chapter explores how the English government attempted to implement its imperial agenda in the West Indies during the early to mid-1670s. The Crown’s vision of empire had commercial, legal, and military dimensions and led to continued confrontations over the power, influence, and authority of the African Company. As Stuart politics and imperialism became more politicized, so did the influence and underlying political-economic foundations of the African Company. Many planters, merchants, privateers, and colonial officials continued to be critical of the company’s monopoly and its power to seize illegal slave cargoes. Such groups regularly sent petitions and complaints to London and occasionally obstructed the company’s ability to function in the colonies by altering local laws or ignoring the company’s authority. In doing so, these constituencies continued to refine their own imperial ideals that had emerged during the previous decade, which were based on maintaining oppressive slave regimes by opening the slave trade and maintaining a flexible political relationship with the English government. In response, imperial authorities tried to contain these dissenting voices at home and in the colonies. The conflicts that resulted did not merely reflect disagreement over commercial policies, however, but had political and ideological significance. By the end of the 1670s, the Crown responded more forcefully than ever to such perceived threats to the integrity of the empire.

CHANGES IN IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION

The transition to the second phase of Restoration imperialism at the end of the 1660s involved alterations in colonial governance and imperial administration in London. The Second Anglo-Dutch War had ended with a humiliating naval defeat of the English on the river Medway, forcing peace negotiations in the summer of 1667. On top of these military disasters, the English government was stretched to its financial limit due to a devastating outbreak of plague in 1665–1666 and the Great Fire of London in September 1666. Some sought to blame the demoralizing outcome of the war and the perceived financial corruption that lay behind it on Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Clarendon’s impeachment in 1667 led to the reorganization of Privy Council committees, including the Councils of Foreign Plantations and Trade. A new Council of Trade was created in 1668, which was ordered by the Privy Council’s plantations committee to conduct an investigation into the state of the West Indies colonies. The council’s subsequent report highlighted numerous problems with colonial administration, including the fact that governors did not swear the required oaths to uphold the Navigation Acts, allowed colonists to trade with foreigners, and evaded customs requirements. They suggested that customs farmers maintain one person in each colony to collect revenue and administer proper oaths to colonial officials.3 Although nothing came of this plan, it indicated a new tendency toward centralized imperial control.

The Council of Trade was once again reorganized in 1670, and its directives also reflected an increased desire for information and more centralized control of colonial affairs. The new Council of Plantations, under the leadership of the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, was ordered “to enquire and inform yourselves by the best ways and means you can of ye state and condition of all and every our said respective colonies and plantations, what it is, by whom they are respectively governed, and what commissions, powers and instructions have been granted by us, or any way derived from us to that end, and how ye same have been duly executed and observed.” Such information was necessary to determine the nature of the political and economic relationship between the colonies and the metropolitan government. It was understood that new levels of oversight were essential to keep colonial officials and assemblies from overstepping their authority and to keep colonial populations submissive to imperial policies. This occurred in large part as a reaction to the problems governing Barbados and Jamaica during the 1660s.⁴

The African Company also transformed during the early 1670s. The old company, already in dire financial straits before the Second Anglo-Dutch War, was in terrible shape by war’s end. Although the Treaty of Breda restored most of the company’s African holdings, it was unable to reestablish its trade to Africa with any seriousness. Since 1666, in fact, it had been granting licenses to private traders who could provide their own ships and capital. During 1668 and 1669, the company actively tried to collect remaining unpaid subscriptions to its stock, which met with little success. Devastation of its holdings in Africa during the war, coupled with the large debt owed to the company by shareholders and colonial planters, made the creation of a new company imperative.⁵ A subscription was opened for a new corporation in late 1671, and in September 1672 Charles II issued a charter for the Royal African Company. A wide variety of courtiers, merchants, and others with colonial interests invested in the joint-stock company. The Duke of York served as governor from 1672 until his departure from England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, now Earl of Shaftesbury, was among the founding members, and other subscribers included Prince Rupert, the Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, and Treasury Secretary Lord Clifford. Other notable shareholders included Thomas Povey, the colonial merchant who had helped orchestrate the Western Design and who had recently served as York’s personal treasurer; the future East India Company governor Josiah Child; Sir Charles Lyttleton, the former deputy governor of Jamaica; the future secretary of state for the northern department, Sir Joseph Williamson; and Shaftesbury’s close associate John Locke. In addition to its extensive monopoly powers, the company had the authority to establish a court of judicature in Africa, made up of one lawyer and two merchants to “have cognizance and power to hear and determine all cases of forfeiture and seizures of any ship or ships goods and merchandises trading and coming upon any the said coasts or limits contrary to the true intents of these presents.” These quasi-Admiralty powers were extraordinary; not even the East India Company had this authority until 1683.6 These powers were seen as a direct extension of the king’s prerogative as well as the Duke of York’s authority as Lord High Admiral.

In addition to reorganizing the African Company, in 1672 the King-in-Council further restructured the Council of Trade. In September, the same month the king granted the company its charter, he established another new council. Many of the subscribers to the African Company also served on this council, including Shaftesbury, York, Prince Rupert, and Locke, who served as its secretary. Shaftesbury was especially influential on this new committee. He had been involved in colonial affairs since the 1640s, when he became a part owner of a plantation in Barbados. He had also served on Cromwell’s advisory committee that oversaw the Western Design. In addition, Shaftesbury was a major investor and proprietor of the Carolina colony established in the 1660s. His political career was in its ascendancy as a leading member of the so-called “Cabal” alliance of the king’s chief ministers after Clarendon’s downfall, and in November 1672 was named Lord Chancellor. In addition to his service on the Council of Trade, he worked as the African Company’s subgovernor from 1672 to 1673, and in 1674 he was elected to the company’s court of assistants.⁷

Political instability in England during the early 1670s had a direct impact on imperial administration and the shaping of colonial policies. There were many interconnected problems facing Charles II and his government, especially the Crown’s desperate need for money as well as deteriorating relations with the Dutch. In late 1671, as the new African Company opened its subscription books, the Treasury essentially ran out of funds. In January 1672, the king ceased repaying the government’s debts in an action known as the Stop of the Exchequer. This threw the government’s financial situation into turmoil, as the king and his closest advisers had secret plans to once again declare war on the Dutch. Historian K. G. Davies has suggested that owing to Dutch dominance of African trade, those who were aware of this arrangement, including York and his inner circle, took the opportunity to invest in the new African Company, hoping that war would distract the Dutch and its merchant marine from the African trade. Davies points out that a number of the king’s ministers who would have known about the treaty purchased shares in the new company, including Arlington, Clifford, Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Prince Rupert, Sir William Coventry, and Sir Joseph Williamson. After raising money through private bankers, England declared war on the Dutch in March 1672. It is telling that the Royal African Company was reorganized at the same time that plans were under way to embroil England in yet another war with the Dutch.8 The company’s predecessor corporation had been used by the state as a tool of war during the 1660s. Although the Third Anglo-Dutch War was fought primarily in European waters and not in West Africa, the new company’s main commercial purpose was to remove the Dutch from supplying slaves to English and Spanish colonies. It is not surprising that in the midst of imperial reorganization and centralization, as well as continued anti-Dutch sentiment on the part of the Stuart court, the new African Company would have a pivotal role.

The Royal African Company was commercially successful during the 1670s. In the West Indies, it increased its market share relative to both Dutch traders and English interlopers. Economic historians have in part attributed this success to the privileges granted by the company’s charter, which gave it a kind of “patent protection.” In addition, over the course of the 1670s, the African Company came to be seen as not only a staunch ally of the Crown but intertwined with Crown policies, politics, and interests. The company came to be closely associated with the Stuarts and their political ideologies, especially the belief shared by Charles II and his brother in the definitive authority of the royal prerogative.⁹ In large part this had to do with York’s influence over the company, which contributed to serious conflicts between the company and various interests, including planters, colonial governors, merchants, as well as politicians in England who distrusted York and his political and religious ideologies. Although many of these conflicts ostensibly had to do with differences of opinion regarding commercial policies, they were also deeply political, as the ways in which the company and Crown responded to these confrontations will reveal. These disagreements led all sides to attempt to better articulate their own imperial visions and ideals.

THE ROYAL AFRICAN COMPANY, PLANTERS, AND PRIVATEERS

The African Company’s monopoly and the royal prerogative on which it was based were put to the test in Barbados in the years immediately following the company’s reorganization. The Council of Trade created a new structure of government for Barbados in late 1670, just as the sugar refining conflict described in the previous chapter gathered momentum in Parliament. William, Lord Willoughby, returned as royal governor with a new set of instructions that aimed to limit the power of the colony’s assembly and council. First, the Leeward Islands, the residents of which had long since requested to be a separate colony, were administratively split from Barbados and given their own governor, Sir Charles Wheeler. Willoughby came to Barbados in 1672 with his new instructions, including limitations on his power to appoint or remove the colony’s council members. He was specifically ordered to report to London on the political opinions of all council members in order to keep track of potential troublemakers. In addition, the island’s laws were only to remain in force for two years unless approved by the king. Previously, laws were in force indefinitely unless explicitly vetoed. After Willoughby’s return, Barbados bore the brunt of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in the Caribbean, and he was instrumental in organizing a successful raid on the Dutch island of Tobago.10 But the governor died shortly thereafter, just as the new Council of Trade and the Royal African Company tried in earnest to get colonial governance and trade under their firm authority.

The King-in-Council appointed Sir Jonathan Atkins, a career army officer and former governor of Guernsey, to succeed Willoughby. Imperial authorities hoped his status as an outsider to Barbados would make him willing to confront the planters in the colony’s assembly who had caused so many problems for imperial authorities. Atkins’s instructions and commission reflected the Council of Trade’s desire for greater control over imperial administration. Unlike his predecessors, Atkins no longer had the power to appoint the members of the colony’s council; instead, he would come to Barbados with names preselected by the King-in-Council. But Atkins, who as governor of Guernsey had been allowed relative autonomy in such matters, resented the new restrictions. Before leaving England, he pointed out to the Council of Trade that the king would inevitably turn to Barbados merchants and planters residing in England for suggestions on who should be appointed to the council, thus ensuring that the planter interest in the colony would remain strong. This seemed strange to him because he understood that he had been appointed specifically because he was not “a Planter … which I am told the king refused being informed they were so much more inclined to Popular government.” In response, the secretary of the Council of Trade, John Locke, scoured previous governors’ instructions and commissions to justify the king’s authority. “The Nomination of ye Councill [is] reserved in his Majesty here,” Locke maintained, “Because ye Government would thereby more immediately depend upon his Majesty and so ye Island be better secured under his obedience.”11 Dependence on England and obedience to the royal prerogative explicitly dictated Restoration imperial designs by 1673.

By the time Atkins arrived in Barbados in 1674, the assembly had been at odds with the African Company and its agents for some time. For the company, the main issue was planters’ outstanding debts. In 1673, the company’s factors on the island, Robert Bevin and Edwin Stede, wrote to the Council of Trade complaining that the island’s laws concerning debt collection favored debtors rather than creditors. “By the law of this island,” the agents explained, “no freeholder … can be arrested or imprisoned notwithstanding his debt be of 100 times more value than his land, which is contrary to ye law & practice in England & breeds great delay here.” What was worse, those in charge of assessing the value of a freeholder’s property were usually other planters also in debt to the company, who therefore tended to undervalue the property of their fellow debtors. Eventually Atkins managed to get this law repealed, but the antagonistic relationship between Barbados planters and the African Company remained.¹²

Edwin Stede, the company’s most vocal factor, was by no means friendly with most of the planters on the assembly. In addition to Stede’s serving as the African Company’s agent, in 1670 the king appointed him provost marshal, and in 1674 he became collector of the customs. This was a position created to gather the revenue raised by a new act regulating colonial trade. Passed in 1673, the Plantation Act placed customs duties on enumerated goods traded between England’s colonies unless the ship’s captain left a bond, or monetary promise, to return with the goods to England. Tobacco was to be taxed one penny per pound, and sugar five shillings for each one hundred pounds. Colonial governors were required to swear an oath to make sure the act would be enforced, and collection of the duty was charged to new commissioners of the customs to be assigned to each colony. The act was especially troubling for Barbados, which relied on trading sugar to New England and other northern colonies for basic supplies of timber and food. The act represented a desire to extract as much revenue from the colonies as possible and to force a dependence on the English government.¹³ Therefore Stede, as African Company factor, provost marshal, and collector of the new customs, represented the encroachment of imperial authority and was especially distrusted in Barbados.

Although Atkins had been appointed because he was an outsider, he soon allied himself with the powerful planters of the assembly for his own political survival. In doing so he effectively declared his opposition to Stede and the African Company and embraced the imperial vision of the colony’s big planters. In November 1675, an interloping ship with eighty slaves was seized by Stede and his new partner, Stephen Gascoigne, but shortly thereafter the slaves “were violently taken away from them, and they and those who assisted them beaten & wounded.” The agents complained to Atkins, who arrested “the assaulters” and held them “in recognizance of 40s with two sureties of 20s a piece to appear at the next sessions.” But Stede and Gascoigne decided not to prosecute the case because “it will be not easy matter for us to obtain a verdict against interlopers, especially since it is a maxime with many in this country that the King cannot grant any such Charter as yours is, to exclude the rest of the subjects from trading where they please without it were ratifyed by Act of Parliament in England.” They placed the blame squarely on Atkins for allowing known interlopers to hold government offices and for perpetuating an atmosphere that was antagonistic to the company and the king’s prerogative. In March 1676, Atkins’s friend and ally Secretary of State Sir Henry Coventry wrote admonishing him for not being tough on interlopers and for the violence of the November incident, and “for taking so small and insignificant a recognizance in the case of so high an offence.” The warning was the first in a long line of reprimands to Atkins issued at the insistence of the African Company. Such protests became so frequent that Atkins later complained that he felt “the merchants of the Guinea Company” had far too much influence over imperial affairs, and insinuated that “their several designs take upon them in some measure or other to be Governors of Barbados, so that having so many masters, I know not who to please.”14

The ability of interlopers to find a market in Barbados reflected the colony’s growing dependence on slavery. But the dangers inherent in this system continued to worry the white planter establishment. In the spring of 1675, these fears were nearly realized when an attempted slave revolt was discovered. According to an English pamphleteer who reported the incident, “this Conspiracy first broke out and was hatched by the Cormantee or Gold-Coast Negro’s about three years since, and afterwards cunningly and clandestinely carried, and kept secret.” A female domestic slave, upon learning of the plot, came forward to her master who in turn told Atkins. The governor swiftly rounded up the alleged ringleaders and was “forced to Execute 35 of them for example to the rest.” The following year the Barbados government passed a number of laws that aimed to strengthen the 1660 slave code by imposing greater punishments on slaves caught trespassing or harming whites or their property, as well as limiting the movements of slaves between plantations in an attempt to prevent such plots in the first place. In addition, slaves were forbidden from performing work in “arts and trades.” By making it a crime to allow slaves to perform skilled and semiskilled labor, it was hoped that white servants and former servants would be less likely to leave the island, which continued to be a significant problem. By 1670, Barbados had a population of approximately 22,400 whites and 40,400 blacks, and by the end of the decade, about 20,500 whites and 44,900 blacks, continuing the population trends described in the previous chapter.15 The conspiracy, and the reaction to it, further heightened racial tensions in Barbados and was an indication of the colony’s inherent vulnerability as it evolved into a slave society. Slave conspiracies and uprisings contributed to an atmosphere of fear among the colony’s white planter elite, who incorporated the use of extreme violence as a means of social and economic control into their imperial ideal. This social reality also informed how planters responded to imperial directives from the metropolis.

Barbados was not the only colony to experience conflict with the Crown during the early 1670s. Jamaica had its own confrontations with the English government over the authority of the Royal African Company. In August 1671, the colony’s governor, Sir Thomas Modyford, was arrested and sent back to London for disobeying instructions and allowing Jamaican privateers to attack Spanish ships and cities. His actions were in direct opposition not only to the king’s and Council of Trade’s orders, but also to the interests of the African Company. His replacement, Sir Thomas Lynch, was sent as lieutenant governor with explicit instructions to restrain privateers and promote peaceful trade with the Spanish. Like Willoughby in Barbados, he had orders to keep tabs on the political opinions and activities of the colony’s council members.¹⁶ After sending Modyford back to England as a prisoner, Lynch began in earnest to curtail the actions of privateers by announcing the king’s intention to forgive their past offenses if they became planters or joined the navy. Many privateers soon realized they could not secure their interests with a governor intent on maintaining peaceful relations with the Spanish, and they left Jamaica to seek out French commissions on the island of Tortuga. Lynch then attempted to appease the growing class of planters on the island, many of whom served on the first assembly he called in February 1672. In addition to issuing significant grants of land to his friends and allies, Lynch allowed an act to pass “declaring the laws of England in force” in Jamaica.¹⁷ Colonists wanted to be assured that their rights and liberties were secured against the encroachments of the Crown, but this action raised many questions. If the laws of England were in force in the colonies, what did that mean in terms of the political relationship with the metropolitan government? What did it mean relative to other laws specifically written in the colonies that did not agree with “English law,” such as laws governing slaves? Did English common law have primacy in Jamaica at the expense of Admiralty or other jurisdictions? Did the colonists and their governor have the right to make this declaration in the first place? For the time being, however, Lynch wanted to oblige the assembly to ensure peace and help him cultivate trade with the Spanish.

As a sugar planter, Lynch was a strong advocate for the development of the slave trade to Jamaica. He even offered to serve as the African Company’s agent in the colony, probably with as much desire to profit from selling slaves to the Spanish himself as to promote the company’s interests. He conceded that this was an uphill battle, as Spanish governors were “so fearful” of the English because of their history of privateering. In 1673 Lynch urged the Council of Trade to persuade the company to take advantage of the imminent expiration of the asiento treaty, but the Spanish proved unwilling to consider the possibility of an English proprietor of the contract. The Spanish continued to be wary of the English because many former buccaneers from Jamaica had turned to another enterprise, the cutting of logwood along the Bay of Campeche and the Mosquito Coast of Central America, territories claimed by Spain. Logwood was used as a dye, and the English found the trade to be extremely profitable. But the Spanish considered the cutters to be nothing better than pirates illegally squatting on their land and stealing resources. Caught between antagonizing Spain and reaping logwood’s financial benefits, the English government treated the issue of logwood cutting, as it did privateering, with a fair amount of ambivalence. In the summer of 1672, the Queen Regent of Spain authorized her privateers to attack English ships carrying logwood, and by July 1673 Lynch claimed that at least forty Jamaican ships had been taken by Spanish privateers.18

Despite the logwood controversy, however, a robust contraband slave trade to the Spanish flourished during Lynch’s governorship. Frequently individual merchants based in Port Royal bought slaves from African Company factors and would then sell them to Spanish traders who came to the colony. Although it was technically illegal, English and Spanish authorities, colonial servants, and company agents condoned and often personally profited from such trade.¹⁹ Lynch’s efforts to gain the asiento for the African Company never came to fruition, however, in large part because of the changing political climate in Europe. The Third Anglo-Dutch War, which broke out in March 1672, was hardly good news for Lynch, who reported that summer, “we have noe ships, [and] our forts not finish’d.” Rumors circulated in London that the Dutch, in an alliance with the Spanish, aimed to take Jamaica, and frigates were sent to protect the island and to organize a possible English invasion of Curaçao. In the spring of 1673, Lynch declared martial law and conscripted the labor of hundreds of slaves, many owned by members of the assembly, to build up the colony’s forts and fortifications. Unhappy that the governor and council had drafted their servants and slaves, the assembly refused to allocate any funds to fortify Port Royal, despite the king’s orders that the colony pay for such defenses itself. Lynch’s frustration with the assembly was palpable when he later concluded that “Assemblyes are apt to be refractory, when they are not restrayned by an absolute character & power such as (I suppose) ye King will conferre on that noble man he sends Governour that his Majesty’s authority & interest be here establish’t betymes.”20

The war continued poorly for the English in Europe and the West Indies. During the summer of 1673, wary of Dutch, French, and Spanish intentions in the Caribbean, Charles II and his Privy Council turned to the one man in London who knew the most about the region, Captain Henry Morgan. After his arrest for unauthorized privateering, Morgan proved he had no knowledge of the Treaty of Madrid and managed to win a reprieve. Now he wanted to get back to Jamaica. In August 1673, Morgan issued a report suggesting that the king “order one fifth Rate Frigett for my transportation & give the merchants of [Jamaica] leave to send a ship of 26 guns,” for their protection. The following year, Morgan and Sir Thomas Modyford, who had also been released from the Tower of London, met with John Evelyn, who claimed the men “told me 10,000 men would easily conquer all the Spanish Indies, they were so secure.” Although the Crown never seriously considered trying to conquer more Spanish territory, Morgan and Modyford were still set on disrupting Spanish trade and settlement in the New World and seemed to find a receptive audience with Charles II. In the meantime, England had broken its alliance with France and signed a separate peace with the Dutch in February 1674. But English fears of French and Spanish intentions in the Caribbean remained strong, especially while logwood cutting remained a significant issue. Who better to keep enemies in check than the most notorious privateer of the age? Both Morgan and Modyford would be sent back to Jamaica with the blessing and encouragement of the imperial administration. Although Morgan would not be officially sanctioned to coordinate privateering raids, there was some expectation that his presence in the region might instill fear with England’s enemies.²¹

The return of Morgan and Modyford to Jamaica seems puzzling, however, considering the African Company’s anti-privateering position, as well as the Crown’s desire to promote peaceful trade with Spain in the West Indies. Lynch, after all, had been sent to Jamaica in 1671 with explicit instructions to discourage buccaneers. But tacit approval of privateering did not necessarily represent the abandonment of the underlying interests of the company and its political-economic position. Raiding Spanish, Dutch, or French ships and ports for gold, silver, slaves, and other goods meant that the enemy would necessarily have fewer resources. And importantly for Jamaica, privateers provided relatively cheap protection against foreign invasion. At the same time, however, the Spanish had to be appeased for the continued problem of logwood cutting. At the request of the Spanish envoy in London, Lynch was removed as lieutenant governor of Jamaica for allowing logwood cutting to continue. In January 1674, the Earl of Carlisle was named the new governor, with Henry Morgan as his deputy. Carlisle refused the commission, however, and the third Earl of Carbery, John, Lord Vaughan, was appointed in his place.22 Vaughan and Sir Henry Morgan, who was knighted just before Christmas 1674, left in separate ships for Jamaica in January 1675.

Vaughan, another outsider who had been a reliable servant to Charles II in Parliament, was sent with orders to promote the interests of the African Company and to maintain peace with Spain. But the arrival of Vaughan, Morgan, and Modyford threw Jamaica’s politics into turmoil. At first, Vaughan seemed to take his instructions seriously, especially in terms of enforcing the African Company’s monopoly. But the logwood issue remained unresolved, much to Vaughan’s consternation.²³ In addition, Vaughan’s willingness to support the African Company and his order to restrain privateers alienated him from most of the political groupings on the island. Traditionally, historians have portrayed colonial Jamaican society and politics as deeply divisive and dysfunctional, with planters and privateers at odds over a variety of issues regarding the economic development of the colony. But distrust of the African Company and its power often provided a way for these seemingly disparate groups to find some common ground. The last thing either privateers or planters wanted was the company monopolizing the slave trade or a governor undermining efforts to continue raiding Spanish ships and ports. This indicates there were more overlapping interests between the planters and privateers than we might at first expect. Morgan’s arrival in Jamaica as deputy governor, council member, and Admiralty Court judge, however, acted as a counterbalance to Vaughan’s official orders to discourage the privateers. Although he could no longer issue commissions or act the pirate himself, Morgan profited immensely from his connections to the French buccaneers who had helped him in the Panama raid of 1671.²⁴

As an outsider to the island, Vaughan had an extremely difficult time making allies of either Morgan’s privateering party or Lynch’s planter cronies in the assembly. Instead, he relied on Modyford, now chief justice for the colony, for political support and survival, a move that triggered jealousy and animosity from other political factions. The meeting of Vaughan’s first assembly in the spring of 1675 did not go well for the governor. The speaker of the assembly, Samuel Long, was an old ally of Lynch’s who obstructed Vaughan’s attempts to exercise executive authority and went so far as to remove the king’s name from the 1675 revenue bill to ensure that money raised would remain in Jamaica. Upon learning of this incident, the English government launched an investigation into Jamaica’s laws. In addition, Vaughan had significant problems with Morgan, whose actions helping the French buccaneers placed the governor in an extremely difficult position. Once Morgan’s profiteering became intolerable, Vaughan sent evidence of Morgan’s actions to London and was then ordered to investigate Morgan’s conduct and report his findings to the colony’s council. By alerting imperial authorities, however, Vaughan raised suspicions about his own conduct and failures in office, and the English government began to take a particular interest in Jamaica.25

THE LORDS OF TRADE AND COMPETING VISIONS OF EMPIRE

Governors Atkins and Vaughan had both been selected because they had no apparent ties or obligations in the colonies, but both proved to be disappointing imperial servants. In large part this dissatisfaction stemmed from highly politicized changes in imperial administration that occurred soon after both men left England. By 1675, a new administrative body charged with imperial administration, the Lords of Trade, enforced the Crown’s political and economic agenda in the colonies more forcefully than any previous committee. The origins of the Lords of Trade reflected the contentious environment that had come to characterize Restoration political culture and occurred as a direct result of the Earl of Shaftesbury’s fall from political power. Since 1672, Shaftesbury had served as president of the Council of Trade and as Charles II’s Lord Chancellor, and both Atkins’s and Vaughan’s instructions had been crafted by Shaftesbury’s council. But within a year, Shaftesbury became politically isolated. England’s poor showing in the Third Anglo-Dutch War contributed to Shaftesbury’s situation. Although he had strongly supported the war initially, by the spring of 1673 he began to voice concerns about England’s alliance with France. He also became an outspoken opponent to the Duke of York’s marriage to the Catholic Italian duchess Mary of Modena, and in late 1673 he was removed as Lord Chancellor. Throughout 1674 in the House of Lords, Shaftesbury repeatedly called for stricter enforcement of laws depriving Catholics of political power, and even supported talk of excluding York from the succession.²⁶

Despite Shaftesbury’s removal from the Privy Council, he continued to attend Council of Trade meetings until March 1674. His presence at these meetings has led historians to minimize the significance of his fall from royal favor in terms of imperial administration. But by 1674, Shaftesbury’s political influence was greatly imperiled by his strong anti-Catholic, anti-York position, which made him especially dangerous to the Stuart court. Therefore his removal from royal favor should not be minimized. When his Council of Trade was dissolved by the king and the new Lords of Trade created in 1675, it was under the direct influence of York and in opposition to men like Shaftesbury, who was eventually considered so dangerous to the regime that he was sent to the Tower two years later. Shaftesbury’s removal from power and influence was underscored by his decision between 1675 and 1677 to sell his shares in the Royal African Company, which by the mid-1670s had become a bastion of ultra-Royalists who had no sympathy for any opposition to York or the Crown’s imperial and commercial policies. Shaftesbury was joined by his protégé John Locke, who also sold his shares at this time.27

The creation of the Lords of Trade, so deeply implicated in metropolitan political maneuverings, marked a significant turning point in imperial administration. Over the course of its thirteen-year existence this committee embarked on an ambitious plan of imperial centralization and increased metropolitan control of imperial affairs. The new Lords of Trade was a committee of the Privy Council, and as such it was under greater control and influence of the Crown than had been previous colonial committees. It was dominated by York and the new Lord Treasurer, Thomas Osborne (soon to -be the Earl of Danby), a politician with strong loyalties to the king and the idea of monarchical privilege. The committee was packed with men loyal to the Stuarts and their imperial ideology of extending the reach of the royal prerogative in the colonies and continued hostility toward the Dutch.²⁸ Members included the future governor of Jamaica and career military officer Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle; the Anglican Royalist, Royal African Company founder, and longtime servant to the Stuarts, William, Earl of Craven; and Thomas Belasyse, Viscount Fauconberg, who would later become a fervent anti-Exclusionist. Many owned stock in the African Company, including Vice Chamberlain Sir George Carteret and Secretary of State Sir Joseph Williamson.²⁹ The Lords of Trade and the imperial policies it generated were deeply connected to metropolitan political events, imperial institutions, and ideological conflicts. The men on the committee were in no mood to deal with recalcitrant governors and assemblies or to entertain any ideas emanating from the colonies about opening up the slave trade.

In November 1675, in the wake of the attempted slave uprising and a hurricane that devastated parts of the island in August, Governor Atkins authorized the Barbados Assembly and Council to petition Charles II with three grievances. The first concerned the long-hated 4.5 percent duty on raw materials exported from the island. The second requested an end to the African Company’s monopoly and a suspension of the Acts of Trade and Navigation in order to enable trade with Scotland for servants. The third had to do with properly measuring casks of sugar for export. On the second grievance the petition read, “whereas the produce of your Majesty’s island depends upon the labour of Negro slaves (of whom we need a great continual supply & without whom we cannot subsist), The Royal African Company … doe supply us very scantly with them and their price is become excessive; wee are well assured that your Majesty established that Company to enable them to buy cheaper of the African Infidels, & not to enable them to sell dearer to yr own subjects: And doubtlesse they might afford them much cheaper then can be done in open trade.” The assembly’s complaints were not new; during the governorships of both Francis and William Willoughby, its members had requested an open trade with Africa for slaves. This was the most important component of the colonial-planter imperial ideal. But this was something Atkins had been ordered to control. As an outsider to the island and its politics, it was hoped he would have more sympathy with Crown and company policies than with those he was sent to govern. Atkins explained to Coventry that he had allowed the petition because he “esteemed it my duty to join with their interest while seeing the contents are true.” He even asserted in direct opposition to imperial policies that “whensoever you intend to plant a new colony, you must make their port a free port for all people to trade with them that will come.”30

Upon reading the petition and letters, the members of the Lords of Trade were appalled. Atkins had to be reprimanded “for using these expressions without giving any reason for them, and where he proposes a liberty of trade as necessary for settling a new plantation, the Lords take notice of this notion as dangerous in regard of the old ones,” they continued, “and prejudicial to England itself, and resolve to give him a cheque for upholding this maxime of a free trade.” A colonial governor suggesting the possibility of free trade almost amounted to treason as far as the Lords of Trade were concerned. This was not simply an example of colonists disagreeing with mercantilist commercial policies. It represented a much more serious ideological divide that had to be contained, because it threatened the authority of the African Company, existing English laws, and the royal prerogative. In the fall of 1676 the Lords of Trade held hearings to investigate the claims made by the governor and assembly. They invited Sir George Downing, the former ambassador to the Netherlands and one of the chief architects of Restoration finance; Sir Peter Colleton, the absentee sugar planter and African Company investor; and Colonel Edward Thornburgh, the colony’s agent in London, to attend. At one meeting Thornburgh “confessed that Barbados is at present well enough supplied with Negroes, and that the complaint was made at a time when the Dutch war had occasioned a great scarcity of them, and therefore disowns the instance which is now made by Sir Jonathan Atkins in this behalf.”31 The effect of the investigation was to present the planters’ complaints as baseless and make the governor out to be a troublemaker.

In November the Lords of Trade issued a report to the king, stating clearly that the opinions expressed by the Barbados planters and governor were at best dangerous and at worst treasonous. “We need not lay before your Majesty,” the report warned, “of what evil consequence it is that any of your subjects should presume to petition your Majesty against Acts of Parliament (which are ye laws they must live under) and call them grievances.” The “whole frame of the trade and navigation of this Kingdom doth turn” on these laws, it continued. Granting a “dispensation” to the colonists in Barbados would undermine the very foundation of the empire. In any event, such an action would be “only fit to be done by your Majesty in Parliament, the whole nation being concerned in it.” The Lords of Trade had especially harsh words for Atkins. “We humbly conceive that your subjects of ye plantations would hardly presume to make any address of this kind to your Majesty were they not connived at therein by your Majesty’s governor.” Atkins, they maintained, was at the root of this discontent and was essentially instigating potential rebellion in Barbados. “We find him, if not ye prompter, yet ye consenter with ye inhabitants of the island for suspending ye Acts of Navigation and Trade, and that he doth labour with more arguments for it than ye inhabitants themselves in their said paper of grievances.” This showed a blatant disregard for his duties and instructions. “It was ye duty of your Majesty’s governor,” the report reminded the king, “to have suppressed any such address from the inhabitants. We are therefore humbly of opinion that it is very necessary for your Majesty’s service that Sir Jonathan Atkins should by letter from your Majesty be severely reprehended for his error and mistake, and by his concurrence encouraging ye people therein.” Charles II did send a reprimand to the governor in December, but interpreted Atkins’s potential insubordination as “zeal” for the welfare of Barbados, and stated “we chose rather to caution you upon this occasion to be more careful and circumspect in your proceedings for the time to come.” The Lords of Trade issued its own order to Atkins, “commanding him to secure the Royal Company, and their agents in their quiet enjoyment of their privileges, and to take care that no vexatious actions be brought, and encouraged there against them, contrary to law and his Majesty’s Charter.”32

According to the king, the Lords of Trade, and the African Company, to criticize the Navigation Acts or the company’s charter was an attack on the royal prerogative that would subvert the ideological framework upon which the entire empire depended. Although English people in the colonies had the right to petition the king, according to the Crown’s emerging imperial ideal, they did not have the right to be critical of laws deemed essential for the functioning of the empire. As the Lords of Trade wrote to Atkins, “we do not so much wonder at these representations from the body of a people, who may by malicious or unadvised suggestions be perswaded into misapprehensions of their own interest and welfare,” but a colonial governor should know better. Atkins continued to question the authority of the Crown over colonial affairs, however, and even went so far as to claim that the king lacked the power to make appointments to important offices in Barbados. To imperial authorities, this was absurd; the king had the absolute authority to make the appointments he wished anywhere in the realm. Coventry warned the governor, “The advice that I should give you is this, if you are at any time aggrieved at any commands of his Majesty’s, seek the remedy by way of address and not by disputing his power especially where the law is on his side.” The position of the king and the Lords of Trade was clear: no colonial assembly or governor had the right to undermine or question the authority of the royal prerogative.³³

These disagreements were emblematic of the widespread problems with English colonial governance in the late seventeenth century. Stuart imperial policies, embodied in the African Company’s monopoly, frequently led to significant conflicts between the Lords of Trade and colonial administrators, planters, and merchants. These confrontations forced all sides to refine their own concepts of how the empire should function and be governed, and made the business of governing colonies increasingly political and divisive. By attempting to silence dangerous opinions in the colonies, the Lords of Trade hoped to limit the growth of similar ideas at home. This was especially important in 1676, a year that was proving to be extraordinarily difficult in terms of imperial administration. News of a violent rebellion in Virginia reached London early that year, and in the following months, nearly all other imperial affairs were put on hold while the King-in-Council organized an expedition of one thousand soldiers to be sent to suppress Bacon’s Rebellion. In addition, a bloody war broke out in New England with the Algonquin tribes of eastern Rhode Island and Massachusetts Bay, known as King Philip’s War.³⁴ The combination of these events led the Lords of Trade to be even more rigorous in their attempts at increasing imperial control over transatlantic colonies during the next decade.

The Lords of Trade in 1676 also had to deal with encroachments on the African Company’s authority in Jamaica, which would shape how they viewed governance in that colony. In early 1676, an interloping slave ship, the St. George, was seized outside Port Royal on Governor Vaughan’s orders. Traditionally such cases were heard at the colony’s Admiralty Court, but the ship’s captain and his lawyer argued that the Admiralty lacked jurisdiction in the case. This was because of an act passed during the previous year’s session of the assembly that made the waters where the ship was captured “within the Parish of St. Dorothy’s, within the body of the island.” Therefore the ship had been captured beyond the Admiralty’s jurisdiction, which “reacheth not within the body of any county, but on the high sea onely.” The ship’s captain and his lawyer maintained the case should instead be heard at the colony’s Court of Common Pleas and therefore subject to a jury trial. The three Admiralty judges, including Sir Henry Morgan and his brother-in-law Robert Byndloss, agreed with this argument and ordered the ship’s cargo released. Outraged, Vaughan immediately dismissed Morgan and Byndloss. Morgan, who also served as the colony’s deputy governor, revealed in a letter to Secretary of State Henry Coventry the true purpose of the law when he admitted that transferring cases from Admiralty to Common Pleas made it impossible for the African Company to win a conviction against illegal traders.35 No jury made up of planters and privateers, the company’s traditional enemies in the colony, would ever find in favor of the company. The law not only appeared to be designed to challenge the authority of the Admiralty but also was specifically aimed at weakening the African Company’s ability to prosecute illegal slave traders in Jamaica.

Not surprisingly, the case did not sit well with the Lords of Trade, who sought the legal opinion of Richard Lloyd, Advocate of the Admiralty Court in England, as well as Attorney General William Jones. Lloyd reported that the English court “would not have dismissed a case of this nature,” and that the Jamaican assembly did not have the authority “to make the high sea part of a parish, much less to deprive the Lord Admiral of his jurisdiction.” Not only did the law obstruct the African Company’s right to pursue interlopers, it directly challenged the authority of the Lord High Admiral, the Duke of York. It seemed to be a double-edged attack on the prerogative. Attorney General Jones agreed and went further than Lloyd in his conclusions. It was not clear to Jones whether or not the laws of England were in force in Jamaica, something colonists had been claiming since Lynch’s governorship. “But this I conceive is playne,” Jones asserted, “that by his Majesty’s acquisition of that country he is absolute sovereigne thereof, And may impose what forme of constitution both of Government and Lawes he pleaseth. And the Inhabitants are in no sort intitled to ye Lawes of England or to be governed thereby, but by ye mere Grace and Grant of ye King.”36 In other words, the king’s authority over imperial governance was absolute, and legally he could do with his colonies what he pleased. In response, Secretary of State Williamson drafted a memorandum to be sent to Jamaica, whereby “his Majesty will not have his prerogative questioned at Jamaica (which is and ought to be governed by his prerogative); His Royal Highness’s jurisdiction as Lord High Admiral trampled on nor the Royal Charter granted to the Royal African Company of England to be there questioned as a monopoly.” The Lords of Trade ordered Vaughan to “take care to preserve the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, and that the King’s Prerogative be not called in question concerning forfeitures.”³⁷ Prerogative, above all else, had to be preserved.

By late 1676, the Lords of Trade, already suspicious of Jamaica’s assembly, laws, and government, were in no mood to entertain any ideas altering Admiralty jurisdiction or limiting the prerogative of the African Company and, by extension, the king. Vaughan became the focus of much of the criticism for the incident. Coventry reprimanded the governor for the “dexterous disappointing not only the Duke of York’s jurisdiction of the Admiralty, but in effect annulling his Majesties charter to the African Company, and encouraging other plantations to do the like.” For the time being Vaughan remained in Jamaica, but his relationship with the assembly and council became strained, which Deputy Governor Morgan attributed to “some Commonwealth Spirits that do what they can to lessen his Majesty’s prerogative & ye honour of his government & governour.” In May 1677, Vaughan offered his own thoughts on Jamaica’s government. Leaving political control in the hands of the assembly, which had proven itself “obstinate as much as illiterate & so factiously bent,” results in getting little if anything done. “The title being called representatives makes them swell into very high conceits.” Vaughan concluded the problem lay in Jamaica’s constitution, which provided “so little power in the governour, & so much given the people.” Ultimately, Vaughan’s opinions were not enough to save his job. The day the governor dissolved the assembly in July 1677, word reached Jamaica that he would be replaced by a member of the Lords of Trade, Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle.³⁸ But interestingly, many of his suggestions were contained in the new governor’s instructions.

Like many political and military servants of the Restoration era, Carlisle had a mixed political background with both royalist and parliamentarian sympathies during the Civil War and Interregnum periods. Carlisle was in some ways a surprising choice. He was known to be close to Shaftesbury, and had even supported the idea of excluding York from the succession in early 1674. But Carlisle added a noble title to the office and served on the Lords of Trade and in other ways probably seemed a good choice. He came from the prominent Howard family; had served as England’s ambassador to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark; and had acted as Lord Lieutenant of Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland. Carlisle’s family connections and military and diplomatic experience made him an ideal candidate to restrain the troublemakers on the Jamaican council and assembly, especially as war with France seemed imminent in 1678.39

In addition to choosing Carlisle as the new governor, the Lords of Trade took the opportunity to attempt to transform the constitutional relationship between Jamaica and London. Imperial authorities wanted to be sure that Jamaica, where the assembly consistently obstructed the interests of the Crown and the African Company, was brought into line. Carlisle arrived in July 1678 armed with orders to force the council and assembly to accept forty laws imperial authorities wanted to be made permanent. This included a revenue bill and a militia bill that granted the governor supreme authority to declare martial law and impress men into service during military emergencies. Carlisle’s commission also included instructions to overhaul Jamaica’s government. Assemblies would in future only meet at the behest of the king, not the governor. Acts that originated in the assembly and signed by the governor now explicitly had to be sent to the King-in-Council for amendment and approval. The laws would then be sent back to the assembly for final acceptance or refusal, but the assembly would not be able to amend any bills approved by the king. This arrangement was a version of “Poynings’ Law,” which had been in place in Ireland since the late fifteenth century. In addition, members of the colony’s council would henceforth be preselected by the Crown, and the governor would have the authority to remove council members as he wished. The laws were intended to concentrate political power in the hands of the governor at the expense of the assembly. In order to emphasize the king’s authority over colonial lawmakers, it was ordered that “the present style of enacting laws [with the preamble] By the Governor, Council, and Representatives be converted to, By the King’s most excellent Majesty by and with the consent of the General Assembly.” The new constitution aimed to assert the authority of the governor, who became the king’s viceroy in all but name.⁴⁰

Attempting to impose a new structure of government in Jamaica was part and parcel of the imperial agenda of Charles II and the Lords of Trade, under the direct influence of men like York and Danby. It stemmed from a long history of political conflict between the colony and the Crown, which often had to do with the power and influence of the African Company in Jamaica. This decision in 1678 was likely related to the controversy surrounding the interloping ship the St. George and the contested jurisdictions of the African Company and Admiralty. In addition to attempting to alter Jamaica’s relationship to the Crown, the Lords of Trade attempted similar transformations in other colonies during the late 1670s. A new governor of Virginia, Lord Culpepper, was sent in late 1679 with orders to transform that colony’s government along similar lines in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion three years earlier. Around the same time, the King-in-Council also began legal proceedings to recall the charters of Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and the Bermuda Company in order to restructure those governments more favorably for the Crown.41 These were all attempts to centralize authority, limit local autonomy, and create a clearer political relationship between the colonies and imperial authorities. This indicated a desire to eliminate the ambiguity that seemed to plague English imperial governance, which had promoted confusion and allowed colonists too much flexibility and independence. With these directives, colonists would be reminded of their foremost obligation to be obedient to Crown commands.

The new constitutional arrangement had legal, economic, and military objectives all aimed at extending and strengthening the authority of the royal prerogative in the colonies. In settling the issue of revenue permanently, it was hoped Jamaica would provide a steady flow of money without the nuisance of regular assemblies and their “Commonwealth Spirits.” With the militia bill, governors would be able to declare emergency powers without obstructions from planters on the council, who might object to the conscription of their servants and slaves to build fortifications, not to mention the suspension of civil law. By seizing control over when and how often the colony’s assembly would meet, imperial authorities attempted to strip lawmaking power from the legislature, whose “resolutions,” according to the King-in-Council, had proven “less agreeable to His Majesty’s intentions.” Underlying the entire plan was a firm commitment to promoting England’s imperial interests, removing ambiguity in governance, and more powerfully extending the authority of the royal prerogative.⁴²

It is important to underscore that this attempt to overhaul Jamaica’s constitution came in the aftermath not only of Vaughan’s troubles with the colony’s legislature, but also the problems with Atkins in Barbados, King Philip’s War in New England, and Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. Bacon’s Rebellion was especially troubling to the Crown and contributed to the idea growing popular in London that colonies, if given too much autonomy, could disintegrate into anarchy. Not only was rebellion in and of itself deeply troubling, but the Crown had expended significant resources to suppress the revolt in Virginia. By openly flouting laws and the jurisdiction of the Crown and the African Company, Jamaica seemed headed in the same direction. The fact that the new arrangement apparently needed the consent of the colony’s council and assembly, however, was a fascinating recognition on the part of the English government that its powers were uncertain in this matter. Despite Attorney General Jones’s assertion in the case of the St. George, it remained unclear which laws were in force in Jamaica, either by the grace of the king or otherwise.43 This uncertainty was exactly what the Crown and the Lords of Trade hoped to do away with. Carlisle would soon meet stiff resistance from the colonists to these new plans, but for the time being, it appeared that imperial authorities intended to do away with such ambiguity.

CONTEMPORARY DEBATES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY AND EMPIRE

Conflicts with governors, assemblies, and colonial constituencies exposed significant differences of opinion in terms of imperial outlooks and ideals. But colonial officials and planters were not alone in criticizing England’s commercial and imperial policies during the 1670s. Throughout the period, a number of economic writers took direct aim at England’s imperial policies, especially the Navigation Acts and chartered monopolies, indicating that the “mercantilist mind” had its share of detractors. The overwhelming historiographical focus on the hegemony of mercantilism has led scholars to misidentify the parameters of imperial and economic debates in early modern England as well as their impact on the developing empire. A number of economic writers were highly critical of the government’s mercantilist policies. For example, Roger Coke in 1670 argued for an end to the “law of Navigation [that] excludes much the greater trading part of the world from Trading with us from abroad” as well as the dismantling of monopoly “corporations [that] restrain our Trade to as few at home: so as Trade, which ever flourishes in multitude and freedom, is by us, by all imaginable ways circumscribed, taxed, and reduced to a few.” The political writer William Petyt claimed, “Nor can the like Expedient be found in any Nation on the Earth, who have or aspire to a great Navigation or Trade.” In 1671 the merchant and republican Slingsby Bethel argued that monopolistic “Societies, in restraining the number, both of Buyers of the Native, and Sellers of the Foreign Commodities, must consequently tend to the abating the price of the first, and enhancing the rate of the latter.” In addition, Bethel maintained that liberty of conscience should be granted to all Protestant Dissenters to encourage trade, but that Catholics, “because they own a foreign head upon the accounting of their Religion” should be actively discriminated against, rhetoric clearly aimed at the Duke of York. Rather than fight the Dutch as a commercial and ideological rival, Bethel called for a trading alliance and “union” with the Netherlands to improve England’s trade and technological development. Many of these writers saw the French as the real threat to England’s security and economic well-being. Carew Reynell in 1674 not only insisted that “the Guiny Trade would be much advanced by being freer,” but also urged Charles II to be wary of emulating the absolutist style of the French king. “If his Majesty desires to advance his Empire, it is but granting more privileges to Trade, and security to mens persons and properties from Arbitrary power.”44

Many of these writers not only took aim at England’s imperial and commercial policies; remarkably, as demonstrated in chapter 2, some also took issue with the existence of an overseas empire. Rather than relieving England of its dangerous overabundant population, colonies actually appeared to drain England of its potential wealth. By the 1670s, this idea had even entered popular political discourse. In November 1675, Sir William Coventry, who was hardly afraid to shy away from criticizing the court and its policies, claimed in a Commons debate regarding a bill that would have banned the export of wool that “we have fewer people than ever we had, and more product, by the plantations, Ireland, (and speaks not of the plague and war) which continually drain from us.”⁴⁵ According to this position, migration to the colonies would ultimately leave the nation poor and defenseless. Instead of focusing on imperial expansion, England should turn its attention to promoting the growth of its most important economic resource, its population.

Contrary to the supposedly hegemonic mercantilist mentality, these thinkers viewed the establishment of colonies as detrimental to the national interest because they drained England of its own valuable workforce. According to these critics, by focusing on empire building instead of maintaining population, England had lost out on trades it had traditionally dominated, because other nations had taken advantage of England’s imperial distractions. “After our American Plantations became peopled by us,” complained Roger Coke, “the Dutch began to partake with us in the Turkey and Muscovy Trades; our Stable at Antwerp diminished in a very great measure … we neglected the Fishing Trade, whereby … the Dutch in a manner became solely in a short time possessed of it.” One author in 1686 wrote, “That people that can get the Trade of the World may quickly, without pursuing the toils of the Caesars and the Alexanders, be, (in effect) Lords of their Neighbours.” These writers were concerned with international competition, but not because they viewed the possibility of unlimited economic growth as unattainable. According to these commentators, in order for England to compete successfully with its economic rivals, it should focus on the proper management of labor and population, not on territorial acquisition and conquest. “These Plantations may be Considered as the true Grounds and Causes of all our present Mischiefs,” bemoaned Petyt, “for, had our Fishers been put on no other Employment, had those Millions of People which we have lost or been prevented of by the Plantations, continued in England, the Government would long since have been under a necessity of Easing and regulating our Trade.” Although some felt that certain colonies were worth holding on to, many agreed that new colonial endeavors should be abandoned. “Most of our Plantations in the West-Indies,” warned Carew Reynell in 1674, “except Barbados and Jamaica, are but unprofitable.” Coke admonished, “In this condition I leave to thee, Reader, to judg whether it will not be yet much more pernicious to the Trade of this Nation to endeavour a further discovery of new Plantations.”46

These ideas contributed to the volatile political atmosphere of the day and indicated that English imperialism, like English politics, did not develop without conflict and controversy. Such sympathies and the people who supported them were increasingly seen as dangerous to the integrity of the empire and as maliciously contributing to political instability. Charles II’s government felt so strongly about this that it issued a proclamation on January 1, 1676, suppressing coffeehouses and other public spaces where such pamphlets and their dangerous ideas circulated. Although this proclamation proved politically disastrous and was abandoned in a matter of weeks, it was a strong indication of lengths the government went to in trying to control public debate.⁴⁷

These critics of empire demonstrated the intimate connection between domestic political divisiveness and imperial policies and designs. For example, in the 1680s Coke became a well-known Whig pamphleteer and opponent of James II’s political and commercial designs. Not much is known about Reynell’s political leanings, but Bethel was eventually considered a serious threat to the Stuart regime. He was openly critical of many of Charles II’s policies, especially regarding religion and trade. He was later a radical Whig and served as a sheriff of the City of London during the Exclusion Crisis and was known to be associated with Algernon Sidney.⁴⁸ In addition, he was related by marriage to Buckingham and was also said to be close to Shaftesbury, neither of whom were held in the court’s esteem by the mid-1670s. The anti-imperial rhetoric of men like Coke and Bethel was especially dangerous to the Duke of York and the Lords of Trade, as it aimed directly at the heart of their imperial aspirations, not to mention York specifically for his anti-Dutch position as well as his Catholicism. Such ideas also indicate that notions of “free trade” did not develop in colonial isolation, but were part of a transatlantic economic discourse.49 In the highly charged political atmosphere of the mid-1670s, such sympathies and the people who supported them were increasingly seen as dangerous to the African Company’s monopoly, the integrity of the English empire, and the royal prerogative on which they both relied for legitimacy.

CONCLUSION

The imperial policies of the second decade of the Restoration were characterized by efforts at imperial centralization and control and were implemented as a result of the perceived failures of the 1660s. Beginning with the creation of a new Royal African Company and Council of Trade in 1672, to the politically charged atmosphere surrounding the creation of the Lords of Trade in 1675, the 1670s were a transformative decade. On the eve of the Exclusion Crisis, imperial authorities had been dealing with troublemaking assemblies in Barbados and Jamaica for years. Confrontations over the power and jurisdictional authority of the Royal African Company framed many of these debates. But conflicts over commercial regulations and the company’s monopoly went beyond purely economic disagreements. They were frequently as much political and ideological as they were economic. The Barbados grievances authorized by Atkins in 1676 and the law altering Admiralty jurisdiction in Jamaica in 1675 were especially dangerous in this tense political environment. Responses by English imperial authorities to these actions and ideas indicated that the Crown viewed complaints about the Navigation Laws and the African Company’s monopoly as potential threats to the stability of the government at home and in the colonies. In order for the goals of Restoration imperialism to be realized, colonies had to be brought under firmer control. The coming of the Exclusion Crisis, however, would test the government’s ability to implement these transformations.