RESTORATION IMPERIALISM: THE SHAPING OF IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION, 1660–1671
With the death of Oliver Cromwell in late 1658 and the uncertain political situation in Britain, Governor Edward D’Oyley of Jamaica became extremely concerned for his colony and his position. “Your honours may now easily imagine,” he wrote to the commissioners of the Admiralty in July 1660, “with what sorrow and unwillingness I part with this frigate, whose departure not only fills me with apprehension of our future condition but imprints into ye sense of being disserted by our Country.” D’Oyley concluded, “All our hope rests in this, that when God shall give a settlement to ye nation, and put a period to those unnatural divisions, this unjust & useless war with Spain will either be owned or disowned, and accordingly retain either a vigorous resolution with a hearty concurrence of ye nation, or an absolute dissertion.” D’Oyley had good reason to be concerned, because in fact it was not clear what Charles II would do with Jamaica. In 1656, Charles had promised Spain he would return the island when he recovered the throne, but by 1660 he felt no obligation to fulfill this promise. Rumors even circulated in the West Indies that the colony would be abandoned.1
In 1660 Jamaica was at a crossroads. It could be deserted with certain embarrassment, left as a military outpost to plunder the Spanish fleet, or developed into a plantation colony with full support from England.2 For five years, the officers in charge of the island and the merchants and planters who had orchestrated the Western Design had urged the government to transform the military garrison into a settled colony for the benefit of traders and plantation owners. Despite proclamations and official encouragement, without considerable financial investment, administrative support, and a steady supply of people, this vision could never be realized. The merchants and army officers who had encouraged Cromwell to hold on to his conquest now had to convince the restored king to do the same and get him to promise a serious commitment to the colony.
Traditionally, historians have argued that the Restoration government, especially during its early years, lacked a coherent imperial agenda. Jack Sosin, for example, emphasizes the seemingly chaotic and unsystematic nature of Restoration imperial administration. Sosin and others have also argued that efforts by the restored monarchy to profit from colonial trade simply reflected the mercantilist outlook of a perpetually cash-poor Crown and not any underlying or consistent imperial agenda. Robert Bliss has rightfully placed the formation of the restored monarchy’s imperial plans in the context of the political settlement at home. Rather than focusing on the Navigation Acts and other pieces of commercial legislation as essential to Restoration imperialism, Bliss argues that such laws and imperial policies more generally need to be understood as part of the regime’s desire “to secure and then sustain its power.” But in doing so he misunderstands some of the key political and social developments in the Caribbean colonies and dismisses the significance of monopoly trading companies to the English government, such as the African Companies, and the growing importance of slavery to Restoration imperial designs.3
This chapter investigates the competing imperial visions that evolved during the first decade of the Restoration. It focuses on the first two African Companies and the ways that different groups with colonial interests were forced to confront them and the political authority they represented. These companies, which were granted royal charters in 1660 and 1663, respectively, held monopolies on all trade to and from West Africa. Their monopoly was enforced by a joint-stock structure; only those subscribing could participate in the African trade, and planters could only purchase slaves from company agents in the colonies. Monopoly was considered essential to defeat international competition and represented a view of political economy in which wealth was necessarily limited. This did not merely reflect a traditional mercantilist economic perspective, however, because the imperialism embodied by the company had an explicitly political component, as well. The company’s monopoly rested firmly in the authority of the king’s prerogative through its royally granted charter. Belief in the definitive authority of the royal prerogative was one of the most consistent ideologies held by the later Stuarts. According to this position, the king had ultimate control over all political, economic, diplomatic, and military concerns. For Charles II and his brother the Duke of York, the administration of the colonies was the king’s exclusive domain, and the royal prerogative allowed them to govern their entire empire as they saw fit.4
The African Company’s monopoly was central to the overall imperial outlook of the restored monarchy and served as a commercial arm of the royal prerogative in the colonies. This brought the company into conflict with a variety of constituencies, including planters, privateers, merchants, and even colonial officials sent with orders to enforce its monopoly. It was in these confrontations that competing visions of empire emerged and evolved among these different (although frequently overlapping) interests. This, in turn, influenced the shaping of Restoration imperial policy. As this and the following two chapters will illustrate, the administration of the overseas empire by the later Stuarts was admittedly haphazard and uneven, and examining confrontations with the African Company provides a sense of the waxing and waning quality of early modern imperial administration. But disorganized implementation and the actions or inactions of unreliable servants did not betray a lack of imperial intent on the part of the Crown. Later Stuart imperialism needs to be understood as a trajectory of policies, laws, and customs over the course of nearly thirty years. Looking for “coherence” at one particular stage misses the point because it is necessary to understand adaptations to changing situations as part of an entire process of imperialism.
The imperial agenda of the restored monarchy was based on reaping the benefits of colonial servile labor through the use of monopolistic merchant/state enterprises, such as the African Companies. As the King-in-Council proclaimed in August 1663, these policies were crucial “for the keeping our plantations in a constant dependence on us & [to] maintaineth a thorough correspondence betwixt our subjects here & there, which in process of time otherwise would decay.”5 But this was more than simple mercantilism. Over the course of the 1660s, this vision evolved into an imperialism in which colonies were to be not only economically subordinate to the home country, but explicitly politically subordinate as well. Those with interests in the colonies, on the other hand, tended to emphasize the fact that they had enjoyed relative autonomy in the past and, as Englishmen, would like to keep enjoying such “liberties,” especially that of “free trade.” In doing so they developed a concept of a mutually dependent empire, in which colonies were understood to be economic and political extensions of England. Central to the development of both ideals was the expansion of African slavery and England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. As this and the subsequent two chapters will show, there were vigorous disagreements over how the slave trade and the empire should be managed. These confrontations revealed how slavery emerged as a key element of English imperialism both for colonists and for the Crown.
EARLY RESTORATION IMPERIALISM AND THE AFRICAN COMPANIES
Those who had orchestrated the Western Design lost no time in 1660 trying to convince the new regime to keep Jamaica. Although many had been steadfast Parliamentarians, they were more than prepared to cooperate with the restored monarchy to promote their imperial and commercial interests. Charles II and his brother the Duke of York were equally willing to work with former Parliamentarians, many of whom were instrumental in bringing the Stuarts back to England, most notably General George Monck, who became the first Duke of Albemarle. In addition, many of the colonial merchants who had orchestrated the Western Design retained or resumed influence over commercial and imperial affairs. In 1660, the Privy Council established a Council of Trade and a Council of Foreign Plantations, both of which were designed by the new Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. The councils shared twenty-eight members, including the merchants Thomas Kendall (Thomas Modyford’s brother-in-law), Sir Andrew Riccard, and Sir Nicholas Crispe (a longtime trader to Africa), and the ubiquitous Martin Noell and Thomas Povey.6 Historians have tended to dismiss the influence that merchants and colonial officials ultimately had over these councils, not to mention the overall importance of the councils themselves. But Clarendon’s reliance on those with strong kinship and business ties to the American colonies should not be underestimated. Noell, Povey, and others had been intimately involved in the planning and implementation of the Western Design, and their access to information on the West Indies must have seemed invaluable.7 Many of these merchants and experts on colonial affairs played an essential role in laying some of the key foundations of Restoration imperialism: the formation of the first African Companies, and the decision to retain Jamaica.
Charles II’s government attempted to profit from its overseas empire by establishing joint-stock corporations that had trading monopolies granted by the king. In December 1660 the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa was organized and given a charter by Charles II. It was founded by the Duke of York and his cousin Prince Rupert, with the support of a long list of courtiers and a number of men with colonial interests and close connections to Stuart households. Eight men who served on both the Council of Trade and the Council of Foreign Plantations were original subscribers to the company. They were mostly merchants, all had colonial connections, and some had been involved in planning and promoting the Western Design, including Crispe, Riccard, Sir John Shaw (a commissioner of the customs), John Colleton (whose brother Peter ran a large sugar plantation on Barbados), and, of course, Martin Noell and Thomas Povey. The company was given a monopoly on trade from the west coast of Africa for “discovering the golden mines and settling of plantations there.” The Crown claimed two-thirds of all gold extracted by the company, which would retain the remaining third. To achieve these goals the company had extraordinary power to act with full military authority over all territory it conquered and settled in Africa.8
Cromwell’s merchant allies found the restored monarchy sympathetic to their imperial ideals and commercial designs. Their next task was to convince the king to hold on to Jamaica and promote its development as a plantation colony, one where demand for African slaves would rival Barbados. In the first instance, the Privy Council solicited suggestions from Thomas Povey, who as secretary to the Council for Foreign Plantations was asked to gather information about Jamaica from merchants and army officers. Povey looked upon the Restoration as a fresh opportunity for investment and profit in Jamaica. In April 1660 he issued his report, which contained suggestions for providing the island with soldiers and provisions. But he also advised that the army be reduced in size and that prisoners from England be sent to the colony for its speedy settlement. The following month he issued a further report that provided twenty-five reasons why England should retain Jamaica, which included supporting those colonists who had already transported themselves at “vast charge.” Povey also argued that Jamaica offered opportunities for people who “are forced to desert the [other] Carribbee Islands, their plantations being worn out, and their woods waste.” He claimed that settling Jamaica “would be so obnoxious to ye Spaniard that probably he will rather permit a trade then prosecute so disadvantageous a warre.” He concluded, “If the King doth owne and supply this people and place, hee may enable them to make a full compensation for the dishonour and miscarriage of the first Grand Design, but if they should be diserted or otherwise enforced to surrender the island on disadvantageous tearmes, the English honour will thereby receive new and irreparable wounds.”9
The Privy Council also heard from Captain Thomas Lynch, who had served under General Venables in the 1650s. Lynch, who eventually became a governor of Jamaica and a major plantation owner, suggested that “a person of Honour & Reputation [must] be commissioned” governor of the colony. Lynch also urged that the army be disbanded, not only because the soldiers had proven themselves unwilling to plant, but because “the very name of soldier is generally so much dreaded that persons of quality have alleged, that they removed not to Jamaica, because they would not live under the discipline of any martial law.” But the army had to be paid before it could be disbanded. Lynch suggested that the state pay soldiers in the form of indentured servants taken from “vagabonds, beggars and petty felons” in England, which “would likewise rid this Kingdom of abundance of idle and burdensome people.” In order to encourage merchants to come to Jamaica, Lynch recommended that the island’s fortifications be strengthened. He also proposed that no other colony be established in the region, and that the king purchase a plantation on the island.10
Further suggestions for Jamaica came from James Ley, third Earl of Marlborough, a royalist naval officer with interests in the West Indies, who also served on the Council of Trade. To promote Jamaica as a plantation colony, he emphasized the overall need for labor on the island and suggested that the new Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa take advantage of the situation. Although the slave trade was not mentioned in the company’s charter in 1660, Marlborough urged “the R[oyal] Company be persuaded to make Jamaica the staple for the trade of Blacks as they shall think fit to be sold to the inhabitants for goods.” He also suggested that the king purchase one hundred slaves to be sold on the island. In addition, Marlborough recommended “that care be taken for ye sending over women for planters wives; and that Newgate and Bridewell may be spared as much as may be; and instead of such, that poor maids (with which few parishes in England are unburdened) be sent over.”11
Here were three plans for Jamaica that those who had sponsored the Western Design had hoped to see. For years they had urged Cromwell to promote similar schemes to populate the island with settlers, convicts, servants, and slaves but had been disappointed by the Protectorate’s unwillingness to promote Jamaica’s economic development. But in December 1660, the same month the Company of Royal Adventurers was founded, the restored monarchy officially chose to hold on to Jamaica. These resolutions must be understood as interrelated. The decision by Charles II, Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and the Privy Council to retain Jamaica was influenced by the men who had supported the Western Design and were now in positions of power on the Councils of Trade and Foreign Plantations, as well as in the African Company. The decision to keep Jamaica, however, did not represent a mere continuation of Cromwellian military and commercial policies on the part of the Restoration government. It is imperative to consider the decision to maintain Jamaica in 1660 as part of the Restoration’s own imperial agenda and to understand that the hopes of the merchants and officers who had conquered the colony were met with the imperial aspirations of the new regime.12 It demonstrated a broad agreement on the part of Protectorate advisers like Noell and Povey with Restoration imperial designs. They shared a desire to develop plantation colonies to expand the servant and slave trades for the benefit of English merchants and the state.
Although there was no mention in the 1660 charter of the slave trade, as Marlborough’s plans indicated, there was hope that the African Company would be involved in the trade. However, there is little indication the company did much besides capture a few islands in the Gambia River from the Dutch and send some ivory, wax, and hides back to England. It never received the full amount of funding from its original subscription, and in late 1662, the company’s directors asked the king to grant a new license. The charter for the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading into Africa was issued in January 1663. This new company had a different governing structure, made up of a governor, subgovernors, and deputy governors, as well as a large court of assistants with rotating membership. In addition to many of the same courtiers who had founded the previous company, this one also included numerous merchants and others with colonial interests as its founding members. For example, Sir James Modyford and Sir John Colleton came from families who owned large sugar plantations in Barbados; their brothers Thomas and Peter, respectively, became the company’s agents in the colony in 1663. Other founding members included Sir Martin Noell, knighted in 1662; his sons Martin, Edward, and James; and the ubiquitous Thomas Povey. The presence of these men as founding members of the Royal Adventurers not only underscored their ascent to positions of influence over imperial affairs during the early years of the Restoration, but also illustrated the centrality of the slave trade to their personal interests and to the interests of the state’s evolving imperial policies.13
The Company of Royal Adventurers was founded with the explicit purpose of selling African slaves to English planters and Spanish merchants to divert the trade away from the Dutch, who dominated the slave trade by the middle of the seventeenth century. The company’s “Publique Declaration and Invitation” in January 1663 stated that its monopoly was necessary “by reason of the universal intestine Confusion of the Times; by the advantage whereof, other Nations have taken confidence so far to invade and disturb His Majesty’s Subjects in the said Trade, that it is in danger utterly to be lost to this Nation.” In other words, whatever trade another nation gained, England necessarily lost. The African Company’s monopoly represented a major component of later Stuart political and imperial ideology. As the company itself declared in early 1663, “his Majestie[’s] granting of any such license, is a Prerogative of the Crown, as being the suspension of a law, and soe, a meere act of Royal Grace and therefore is free to be placed where his Majestie shall please, without giving any just cause of complaint to any others, that share not in it.”14 In other words, the company was an extension of the royal prerogative and subject to no other legal limitations.
In order to maintain its monopoly and ensure profits, the African Company needed colonial officials to help enforce its charter, an expectation that was usually incorporated into governors’ instructions.15 Governors were required to make sure “interlopers,” or illegal private traders, were unable to land or sell cargoes in the colonies. They were also expected to seize interloping ships, or allow the company the freedom to do so, and to prosecute those caught trading illegally. In addition, colonial officials were required to help the company collect debts from planters who generally lacked hard currency and relied heavily on credit as well as in-kind payments of sugar and other commodities. Unable to collect cash for the slaves they sold to English planters, the African Company turned to the Spanish, who could pay for slaves with hard currency. The asiento, or exclusive contract to provide the Spanish with slaves, was highly coveted by the English, and profiting from the slave trade to the Spanish was a central goal of the reorganized African Company. In an arrangement established at the formation of the new company in 1663, the Spanish agreed to pay a duty of 5 percent for all cargoes purchased in English plantations, intended to go directly into the Crown’s coffers.16 Unlike the Cromwellians, rather than fight the Spanish in the New World, the restored monarchy hoped to profit from Spanish wealth through plunder and trade.
By seeking access to the Spanish American market for African slaves, the company hoped not only to eliminate English interlopers, but to further undermine the Dutch. In a petition to Charles II in February 1663, soon after receiving its new charter, the company indicated its desire to control this trade exclusively because “it’s thought reasonable that the Company should injoy all those benefits, which are ye necessary consequences of his Majesties charter.” The company claimed that if the trade remained open “it will be impossible to reserve the benefit to the English only. For avaritious or necessitous persons will without doubt lend their names to disguise the good of the French, Hollander & other strangers, who will not only draine the advantage from his Majesty’s subjects, but find meanes also to cheat the King of his due, by conveying the Spaniards’ commodities from our plantations directly to foreign parts.” The same day Charles II received this petition, he issued orders to the governor of Barbados to allow the Spanish to trade freely in his colony, “the Act of Navigation or any other law, statute or ordinance or any letters of mart or reprisal given or to be given to the contrary notwithstanding.” A few weeks later, he issued a similar order to the governor of Jamaica.17 The willingness of the king to agree to these demands illustrated the central role the company played in Restoration imperial and commercial designs. This intention to cultivate a lucrative slave trade with the Spanish set the tone for Stuart imperial policy for the next two decades.
COMPETING IMPERIAL IDEALS: PLANTERS VERSUS THE CROWN AND COMPANY
The African Company’s desire to profit from selling slaves to the Spanish put it at odds with a variety of different colonial constituencies, most notably planters. This was especially true in Barbados, where by the 1660s the elected assembly was made up of the richest and most powerful planters in the colony. They felt that selling slaves to Spanish merchants diminished the availability of much-needed labor in the colony and made those slaves that did enter the Barbados market unaffordable. And by 1660, Barbados was well on its way to becoming a sugar plantation colony totally dependent on slavery. Russell Menard has estimated that by 1660 Barbados had approximately twenty-six thousand white inhabitants and twenty-seven thousand black slaves.18 The African Company wanted to harness this demand for slave labor in the English colonies, while at the same time profit from the Spanish American slave market.
In early 1660, the planter and promoter of the Western Design, Colonel Thomas Modyford, had been named governor of Barbados by the Protectorate Council of State but lost that position after the Restoration, and the governorship returned to Francis, Lord Willoughby of Parham. The idea of a proprietary governor returning to Barbados was deeply troubling for many planters, who had hoped that political confusion in England would allow them once again to enjoy relative autonomy. Issues of land ownership and dubious tenure practices could be called into question with a new proprietor making claims for control of land and revenue. In the event, Willoughby was willing to strike a deal with both planters and the Crown in order to take up his position. The Crown, anxious to avoid any question about its legal authority in the colonies, would assume the proprietary over “the Caribbees,” and planters’ questionable property holdings would be secured. The Privy Council ordered that in exchange for these concessions, Barbados would pay a set customs duty. After arriving in August 1663, Willoughby convinced members of the assembly already in session to grant a permanent revenue to the Crown in the form of a 4.5 percent tax on all “dead” commodities produced and exported. After much wrangling the assembly agreed to the tax with the understanding that a good portion of the revenue would remain in Barbados to maintain the colony’s defenses.19
In addition to securing revenue, Willoughby had been instructed to allow the African Company to sell slaves to Spanish traders. But in November 1663, the company petitioned the king that Willoughby had obstructed its agents’ attempts to establish such a trade in Barbados. The company reported that its agents on the island, Thomas Modyford and the merchant-planter Sir Peter Colleton, “having more Negroes for your petitioners accompts then the planters of that island had occasion to buy, did resolve and accordingly dispatch one hundred & sixty of them (which were never landed upon the island) to be sent upon your petitioners’ ship the Blackmore to the Terra Firma.” Instead of allowing the agents to send the slaves to South America freely, Modyford and Colleton claimed Willoughby collected an export duty of 5 percent because the cargo was being sent to a foreign port. The company asked the king “to give your express order and command to the said Lord Willoughby to make immediate restitution to your petitioners said factors of the said three hundred and twenty pounds,” and to cease collecting the tax in the future. Within weeks Charles II dispatched a letter to Willoughby stating almost exactly the requests of the Royal Adventurers, and in December, the king issued licenses to Spanish merchants allowing them to trade in Tangier and Barbados.20 The willingness of Charles II and his Privy Council to agree to the African Company’s demands illustrated the important role the company played in Restoration imperial plans.
As governor of the Caribbees, Willoughby was in charge of both Barbados and the Leeward Islands. These colonies were financially and militarily stretched to the limit as European allegiances and diplomatic arrangements shifted throughout the 1660s. Willoughby regularly criticized imperial policies that to him seemed to weaken colonies, such as the Navigation Acts, which had been renewed in 1660. In 1664 he claimed that trade in Barbados and Nevis had ground to a halt because ships “were tyed up by these Acts,” which he argued diminished the Crown’s revenues. War with the Dutch and later the French devastated the Leeward Islands and seriously threatened Barbados during the mid-1660s, draining the islands of stores, money, and men. Although the Council of Trade considered altering the Navigation Acts during war, this plan never came to fruition.21 After thwarting an attempt by the Dutch to take Barbados in April 1665, Willoughby complained that the colony lacked basic necessities for self-defense, such as gunpowder and arms. He was especially frustrated over the issue of revenue, and claimed that because the king had ordered that the 5 percent imposition for slaves sold to the Spanish should be reserved for the African Company, Barbados lacked a major source of income. He turned to the colony’s assembly, but its members were outraged that the 4.5 percent duty, instead of being used for the island’s defenses, appeared to be going straight into the Crown’s coffers. Under the leadership of its new speaker, Samuel Farmer, the assembly blocked Willoughby’s efforts to build up the island’s defenses. “My back is at the wall,” he later wrote, “and I find good words & meek carriage begets little but contempt, where no other can be used amongst a people who have been rough bred, & not used to the yoak; no money to be raised, without their own consents, therefore nothing to be done but what they please.”22 In his frustration, Willoughby revealed the extreme lengths colonial planters seemed to be willing to go to in order to avoid paying taxes or submitting to imperial regulations. He felt he had little choice but to dissolve this assembly.
This conflict over the use of the 4.5 percent duty and the rights of colonial assemblies provides a sense of how various interests began to articulate and refine their own imperial agendas. It demonstrated the difficulties governors like Willoughby had in acting on behalf of the Crown, while at the same time feeling hamstrung by the Crown’s policies. On the one hand, as governor, he wanted to ensure that Barbados and the Leeward Islands prospered, and he clearly felt it was his duty to tell imperial authorities when he thought certain policies or regulations hindered that development. On the other hand, Willoughby knew he had to keep planters and their potentially seditious ideas in check; it was one thing to plead or petition, but it was another thing to demand rights and privileges. The following year, in January 1666, Saint Christopher in the Leeward Islands fell to the French. Willoughby feared for the safety of Barbados and called a new assembly early that year, which ultimately proved more inclined to raise funds for the island’s protection. In July, Willoughby left Barbados with a small militia to try to recover Saint Christopher on the king’s orders. Before leaving, he once again urged Charles II to grant English colonists the liberty to trade freely “with all places & people in amity with your Majesty,” especially “to Guinea for Negroes.” Willoughby and his ship were lost in a hurricane before reaching the Leeward Islands. In the meantime Saint Christopher and Antigua were utterly destroyed by the French, who confiscated land and slaves and left the English colonists to starve.23
ENGLISH CARIBBEAN SOCIETY AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE PLANTERS’ VISION OF EMPIRE
When Francis Willoughby departed Barbados, he left his nephew William in charge as deputy governor. William faced many of the same problems his uncle had, including the multiple ways that the colony’s growing dependence on slavery transformed Barbados into a dangerously racially polarized society. He was especially concerned about his inability to muster a sufficiently large or dependable militia during the threat of foreign invasion. In December 1666, he claimed that of the seven thousand white men eligible to serve in the colony’s militia, only two thousand could be counted on to provide loyal service. In a particularly insightful letter to the king, he described why the bulk of the white population could not be trusted during an emergency. “Smalle planters” he wrote, “who formerly have bin accompted the strength of this island but at present through want of Negroes and scarcity of all things needefull, are so impoverished & disheartened that theire interest and consequently the welfaire of this place is but little esteemed by them.” He noted that landless day laborers were equally unreliable, “haveing passed a sharpe servitude in this country & findeing no meanes heere to mend theire condition, will without difficultie stoope to any alteration.” Finally, indentured servants, because they were treated so harshly, would willingly abandon Barbados altogether and were “ready to serve new Masters.” Willoughby warned that these people “being without interest or hopes of benefit heere, ‘tis much doubted whether they will expose themselves to danger for the preservation of it.”24 In other words, such people could not be counted on to defend Barbados because they felt they no longer had a stake in the colony’s society.
William Willoughby eloquently described the precarious social and political situation that had developed in Barbados as a result of the colony’s growing reliance on slave labor. Maintaining stable populations of servants and small planters had become increasingly difficult because by the 1660s most arable land had been claimed by powerful and wealthy plantation owners. Smaller planters who could not turn a profit were often forced to sell their land, and indentured servants who had completed their terms could not look forward to owning land if they remained in the colony. These were the very men who would have made up the bulk of the colonial militia. The consolidation of land into larger and larger sugar plantations benefited those few wealthy men who often served on the island’s council and assembly and proved so vexing to the Crown. According to colonial officials like Willoughby, it was therefore in the interest of the English government to try to hinder their progress by helping small planters to acquire land, servants, and slaves. Whether or not this would have been the case is debatable, but Willoughby’s analysis highlighted some of the complex ways slavery had transformed Barbados society by the 1660s. These changes also seem to have contributed to changing migration patterns to and from the colony. Richard Dunn has estimated that perhaps ten thousand people left Barbados during the second half of the seventeenth century. Most well known were migrants to South Carolina, but Barbadians also settled in places like Virginia, New York, Jamaica, and New England. As a result of this emigration, combined with high mortality and low birth rates, the white population in Barbados peaked at thirty thousand around 1650 and declined steadily for the rest of the century. In stark contrast, the slave population increased dramatically. In 1650, blacks, the great majority of whom would have been slaves, made up approximately 30 percent of the population; by 1660, the proportion was about 51 percent and by 1670, 64 percent.25
The ways that colonial officials and powerful planters chose to interpret and attempted to address these social changes are especially revealing. The men of the Barbados Council, for example, argued that one of the main causes of depopu-lation by whites was the lack of availability of African slaves. They claimed this resulted in rich planters producing less sugar than they otherwise would, which forced poorer planters “daily to forsake these countries.” This “hath been a greater loss in the revenue of the customs to your Majesty, than the Spanish trade which [can in] any ways recompense.” In his report William Willoughby agreed, and urged the king to send supplies and “Negroes on reasonable termes.” Other officials expressed similar concerns and proposed comparable solutions. When William Willoughby’s father, also named William, became governor in 1667, he was instructed to “prevent ye departure of freemen out of your several colonies,” but like his predecessors, he felt that England’s imperial policies hindered rather than helped the colonies under his jurisdiction. “Two things there are,” Willoughby urged Charles II, “which except speedily remedied whither peace or war will ruin these plantations.” He continued, “First, the want of free trade with Scotland by which formerly this and the rest of the islands was supplyed with brave servants & faithful subjects … The second a free trade to Guinney for Negroes … So excessive scarce & dear are they now here that the poor planters (on whom I must rely for ye justifying ye Majesty’s right) will be forced to go to foreign plantations for a livelihood.”26 Even in times of dire emergency, such as war or slave uprisings, and despite heavily skewed population ratios, West Indies planters continued to clamor for more slaves.
In a place like Barbados, it was this dangerous reliance on slave labor that contributed to the emergence of a particular imperial ideal among West Indies planters. Constructing brutal social and legal systems to maintain white mastery became central to this vision of empire. In addition, demands for free trade to Africa, or at least a trade free from the control of a monopoly company, and for increasing numbers of slaves on “reasonable terms,” became its complementary theme. It is interesting to note that this ideal developed not only from demand for slave labor but that it came to be understood as a solution to the problem of white depopulation in the English Caribbean colonies. Although petitions from the colonies still requested more servants from places like England and Scotland, a common feature became requests for more slaves. In the long run, of course, this intensified existing social, economic, and political tensions in Barbados.27
Restoration imperial policies also seemed to exacerbate the problem of maintaining the white population in Barbados. For example, throughout the 1660s, each new governor of Jamaica was ordered to encourage migrants from Barbados and the Leeward Islands to seek their fortunes in the new colony. Moving people from one colony to another reinforced a system in which colonies competed with each other for scarce resources, and, not surprisingly, it put the Barbados planters on the defensive. In 1661, Governor D’Oyley of Jamaica was ordered to send Captain Richard Whiting to Barbados “to fetch passengers,” but he was “met with great obstructions in that designe, … the chief men here being very averse from acting any thing to the good of Jamaica.” After appointing Thomas, Lord Windsor, governor of Jamaica in 1662, the king and Council of Trade ordered him to issue proclamations “in our neighbour colonies and plantations, for the transplanting of all such persons, goods, and families as are willing to transport themselves to our island of Jamaica.” In June 1662, Windsor stopped at Barbados, where he declared that all those willing to go to Jamaica could depart with his fleet, regardless of profession or religious persuasion. Not surprisingly, this blanket freedom to leave caused anxiety among the island’s planter oligarchs, who were afraid that indentured servants and debtors would quit the island as they had in the Western Design in 1655. In an attempt to prevent people from departing, the Barbados Assembly and Council passed an act ordering that all those wishing to leave should sign a registry with the island’s secretary general. Rather than registering with the colony’s secretary, however, those wishing to leave apparently signed with Windsor and his commissioners. The assembly complained that “there was no care taken by those Commissioners to discover whether they entred their right names, or whether they were free men, or persons indebted.” Governor Willoughby later offered his own opinion that promoting Jamaica’s development “hath robbed your other colonies of people.”28
Despite these pleas, such policies of transplantation continued. When Thomas Modyford was appointed governor of Jamaica in 1664, he received similar orders to encourage people to move with him from Barbados and the Leeward Islands. All those wishing to leave would have free passage to Jamaica, where they were guaranteed land, freedom from customs for twenty years, and “free trade with all nations in amity with England except for Negroes which are to be furnished by the Royal Company.” Modyford optimistically hoped that Barbados would provide Jamaica a “yearly supply of 1000 persons,” and according to his own records, 987 people came from Barbados in June 1664. It did not take long for Governor Willoughby to protest politely to Secretary of State Sir Henry Bennet. “I shall make it my humble request to you that you will be pleased to divert the King from giving me any more such orders,” the governor implored, “for it is not beginning at the right end to improve his Majesty’s interest in these parts for he doth but take out of his right pocket, to put into his left.” Willoughby continued, “Europe is the magazine of people, & from thence his Majesty might to send them a constant supply every year into all these parts.”29
Transplanting people from one colony to another was nothing new; Cromwell had encouraged moving settlers from the Leeward Islands and New England to Jamaica and Ireland. And despite the restored monarchy’s desire to promote Jamaica, it wanted to do so as cheaply as possible, and therefore turned first to existing colonies. There were a variety of reasons for this. First, it was thought that these settlers, especially from the other West Indies colonies, would have the experience and physical disposition necessary for survival. Chances were they had already gone through the “seasoning” process of moving to the tropics, and they might have had some experience working on a sugar, indigo, cotton, or tobacco plantation. According to one promotional pamphlet for Jamaica circulating in England in 1661, “the Major part of the Inhabitants being old West Indians, who now naturalized to the country, grow the better by their transplantation.” Even more important, there were fewer people in England who were willing to go overseas by the mid-seventeenth century, as discussed in chapter 2. This was the consequence of many factors, not the least of which was a slight population decline in England during the middle of the 1600s, which resulted in higher wages at home that might have made it less likely for people to migrate. In addition, popular pamphlets in England had depicted Barbados as a colony with little land or opportunity since at least the time of the Western Design. One pamphlet from 1655 warned that “Barbados, (with the rest of those small islands, Subject to this Dominion, who were wont to be a receptacle for such vermin) are now so filled, that they vomit forth of their superfluities into other places.” The 1661 pamphlet promoting Jamaica similarly claimed “in St. Kitts, Barbados, &c. you cannot turn a Horse out but he presently trespasseth upon his neighbour, if not upon your own [sugar] canes: the most barren Rocks (even in the Scotland of Barbados) owning a Proprietor, and the whole Island pestered with a super-numerary glut of Inhabitants; too small a Hive for such a swarm of people.”30 These images of colonies filled with “swarms of people” were remarkably similar to those describing England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to promote transatlantic colonization. These perceptions, combined with the dramatic increases in the slave population, made Barbados a much less desirable destination for would-be servants and free migrants.
The African Company played an important role in shaping these perceptions, and grievances about the company poured out of Barbados during the mid-1660s. In September 1667, the assembly issued a petition to Charles II reiterating Willoughby’s requests for freer trade. They claimed the remedy to Barbados’s hardship was simple: the king should grant the colony the freedom to trade “to any place in amity with England.” As for the African Company’s monopoly, the Barbadians “humbly pray that we may be permitted free trade on the Coast of Guinney, for Negro servants.” According to the colonists, if the Crown was reluctant to provide enough stores and arms for Barbados, the least it could do was provide the colony with the means necessary to supply itself with slaves. The assembly’s demands for “free trade” did not signify a simple economic disagreement with “mercantilist” imperial policies, however.31 Such conflicts represented a much larger struggle between competing imperial ideals over the political and economic relationship of the colonies to the metropolis.
Demands for freer trade to Africa, even in the context of war and economic hardship, prompted the Company of Royal Adventurers to defend its position. In 1667, the company published a pamphlet that seemed to answer many of the charges made by the Barbados Assembly, declaring that the company “supplied the Plantations more plentifully and cheaper, and given as much credit or more for Negroes, than ever the private Traders did or could give.” It defended selling slaves to Spanish merchants and claimed the company did so “for preventing of that Bargain to Hollanders.” In a direct response to the Barbados petition, the company’s secretary, Sir Ellis Leighton, argued that free trade would only benefit Barbados, rather than “preserve the trade of the nation.” For the company, it was an either/or proposition: if Barbados prospered because of free trade, England would necessarily suffer. There was unwillingness or inability to think of colonies as economic or political extensions of England, which was exactly how Barbadians viewed themselves and their colony. “We think their desire of a free trade will prove as unpracticable and pernicious to themselves as it would be destructive to all other publique interests as well as ours,” Leighton wrote.32
In the meantime, things went from bad to worse in Barbados. In April 1668, a fire devastated a good portion of the main port of Bridgetown, destroying the supply magazine. Some “Merchants and Planters of Barbados” used the occasion to once again ask for “free trade for Negroes and for servants from Scotland.” In a petition that August, the assembly complained about what they saw as flagrant misuse of the 4.5 percent revenue by the Crown. In addition to repeating requests for free trade, especially for slaves, this petition went further and asked the king to consider “granting us a charter including the benefits hereby requested, and such other immunities as we shall propose to your Majesty which shall not be derogatory to your Majesty’s Honour.” This request for a “charter” to help the colonists ensure their perceived rights and privileges was remarkable and indicated that their concerns about the reach of imperial authority went beyond commercial policies and extended to the nature of the political relationship between colony and Crown. It was a shocking proposal that aimed to preserve local autonomy at the expense of imperial authority, which stemmed in no small part from the colony’s transformation into a slave society and from experiences and problems with the African Company. Barbados planters desperately wanted to stake a claim to their own freedom in order to distinguish themselves from the situation of their slaves. In order to do this, West Indies colonists hoped to codify a negotiated, integrated empire, in which colonies were seen as political as well as economic extensions of England. For his part, Willoughby fully understood the implications of the assembly’s request and was quick to distance himself from this “impudent address” by which the assembly “fully declared what they aime at.”33
Facing increased pressures from the confused implementation of the 4.5 percent duty and accusations by the assembly of mismanagement, Willoughby was granted permission to return to England in early 1669. Once in London, Willoughby took up his seat in the House of Lords and attended meetings of the Council of Trade. In the meantime, the Barbados Assembly organized a lobbying group of “Gentlemen Planters,” made up of absentee planters resident in England, who were paid by the island’s assembly to serve as their advocates in London and to attend meetings of the Council of Trade. In early 1671 Willoughby and the Gentlemen Planters worked to defeat an effort led by English sugar refiners to increase duties on sugars refined in the colonies. According to the Gentlemen Planters, English refiners had formed an alliance with merchants with interests in the Portuguese trade who imported Brazilian sugar into England. This coalition had convinced the Commons to pass a bill that increased taxes on imported refined sugar by four times.34
Before the House of Lords took up the bill, the refiners and planters each presented their cases to a special committee of the Lords, each side offering doomsday scenarios should the legislation pass or not. Members of the committee hearing the testimony included Willoughby, the Earl of Sandwich, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who led a newly reformed Council of Plantations. The positions of the refiners and planters represented two fundamentally different understandings of political economy and, ultimately, competing imperial agendas. According to the English refiners, it was “undeniable” that as more refineries opened in England, “soe it must Decrease in other Countreys.” They argued that the new legislation “will be an Advantage to our English Planters that they may have a markett for theire [unrefined] sugars in England without running a second Risque to seeke a foraigne market.” For the refiners, it had to be one way or the other: either refining prospered in England or it prospered in the colonies and foreign countries. This underscored a reluctance to envision the colonies as fundamental parts of the realm in political or economic terms. In contrast, the planters viewed the colonies as integral to the empire and argued that colonial production, because it was actually English, should not be subject to import duties. They maintained that manufacturing in the colonies was beneficial for the imperial economy and did not necessarily compete with English sugar refiners. They accused the refiners of planning to “engross” the sugar market.35
The Lords committee, after hearing these appeals and greatly influenced by the presence of the governor of Barbados as a member, reported in April 1671 to the entire House of Lords that if the bill took effect as the Commons had designed it, “the Planters being so discouraged, it would produce the evil Consequences of the Loss of our Navigation, and the Consumption of our Home Manufactures, destroying the English Refiners, losing a Million in the Balance of our Trade.” They proposed that the House of Lords alter the bill by “lessening the Impost upon White Sugar One Farthing and Half a Farthing in the Pound.” The Lords committee went further and argued “That, by encouraging the English Sugar Plantations, and making it a Matter of State so to do, we might in short Space of Time engross that Manufacture to ourselves” at the expense of other nations. In other words, the government should do its utmost to promote the sugar plantations for the benefit of the entire imperial economy. The colonies were integral parts of the realm, and therefore any manufacturing occurring in the colonies benefited the whole empire. The House of Lords followed the committee’s suggestions and voted to lower the duty on refined sugar. These actions, however, triggered a constitutional crisis, as the Commons claimed the Lords had no right to alter a bill concerning taxation. In frustration the king prorogued Parliament on April 22, 1671, and with more than a little relief, the Gentlemen Planters informed the Barbados Assembly “we are eased of this tax for the present.”36
This conflict between English sugar refiners and colonial planters represented more than a simple conflict over commercial regulations. On the one hand, refiners in England argued that manufacturing should be confined to the home country and that sending brown sugars from Barbados to be finished in England was best for the nation’s economy and balance of trade. On the other hand, planters felt that the development of manufacturing in the colonies was in their economic interest, because they could charge higher prices for refined white sugar than for unfinished brown. And as far as they were concerned, manufacturing in either the metropolis or the colonies was economically beneficial to the entire empire. It made little difference where the manufacturing took place, because colonies were not in competition with the home country. What was only occasionally mentioned in the debate, however, was the fact that both the planters’ and the refiners’ imperial visions depended so heavily on African slavery.
The Barbadians’ clamoring for an open slave trade, their unwillingness to deal with land consolidation, issues of population and security, and the quarrel over sugar refining raised the concerns of imperial authorities. But the conflicts between Barbados and London during the 1660s did not represent a simple economic division between mercantilist commercial policies and colonial demands for free trade. By requesting a more-open slave trade, not to mention charters codifying local autonomy, Barbados planters were asking the Crown to eliminate key components of the Restoration imperial agenda, which centered on monopoly and increasingly on the use of royal prerogative. As a result, as far as imperial authorities were concerned, planters were guilty of questioning the very foundations of the empire and the royal prerogative upon which it was based.
JAMAICA AND PRIVATEERING
Other groups with colonial interests confronted Restoration imperial designs and the policies of the African Companies, including privateers who made Jamaica their home base. During the 1660s, the colony took center stage for English imperial administration, as Charles II hoped to transform the island into a profitable plantation colony.37 To promote the development of Jamaica as “the most eminent plantation of all his Majesty’s distant dominions,” Charles II issued a proclamation in December 1661 encouraging people to move to the island. It promised each free person over the age of twelve the right to claim thirty acres of land, and allowed for the unobstructed passage of people and their possessions (except for gold and bullion) from England. In order to ease the transition to planting, the king also declared his intention to provide disbanded soldiers in Jamaica with a “Royal Gift,” which included a supply of three hundred African slaves from the Royal Company. Jamaica seemed an ideal place for the company to establish itself in the slave trade, especially to the Spanish colonies. But the company’s desire to develop a peaceful trade with the Spanish was obstructed by the activities of Jamaica’s infamous privateers. Governor Edward D’Oyley had invited buccaneers from the island of Tortuga to help protect the island in 1657, and in the subsequent years, many of the English soldiers sent during the Western Design had joined their ranks.38 Although England and Spain agreed to a peace treaty at the Restoration, D’Oyley and the next three royal governors of Jamaica all actively promoted privateering raids against Spanish ships and ports as a means to raise revenue for themselves and the island and to help protect the colony from foreign attacks. Eventually these activities brought Jamaica into conflict with the African Company and the Crown.
D’Oyley was reappointed governor by the restored monarchy in the autumn of 1660. He was granted total authority over land distribution and military affairs. Reflecting the Restoration government’s desire to develop Jamaica as a plantation colony, one of the first things he set about doing was establishing laws to regulate servants and slaves on the island. In July 1661 D’Oyley and the council adopted their own version of Barbados’s rigid slave and servant code, which had been implemented in 1660. It established a strict system of punishment for servants and slaves who assaulted or killed their masters, married without their masters’ permission, or otherwise deserted their obligations. In addition, the Jamaica Council ordered all servants under the age of eighteen arriving without a contract to serve masters for seven years, and those over eighteen for five years. Although in 1661 the colony had only approximately three thousand white inhabitants and about five hundred slaves, D’Oyley and imperial authorities were determined to transform Jamaica into a plantation society dependent upon servile labor.39
By the early 1660s there was already demand for slaves in Jamaica. Dutch merchants had started to take advantage of this emerging market, and D’Oyley even tried to profit from the trade. In June 1661, the governor seized a Dutch ship with 180 slaves off Cagway Bay and tried to convince the island’s council to allow him to purchase the slaves for resale despite the Navigation Acts. He argued that the king had promised “to make yt island a glorious place; & yt ye way to do it, was by supplying ye island with slaves & servants.” The council refused to go along, but D’Oyley, “inraged,” went ahead and purchased the slaves the same day. Captain Richard Whiting managed to seize the ship from the governor, but not before D’Oyley had sold at least 40 of the slaves. The council demanded an explanation, but D’Oyley simply responded that he was not answerable to them, only to the king. Whiting reported a similar incident in March 1662, in which D’Oyley again seized a Dutch slave ship and sold 45 slaves for his own profit.40
Despite the growing demand for slaves, Jamaica’s transition to a plantation colony was too slow for many on the island. D’Oyley himself understood that quick profits could not be made from planting, and he continued to license former Cromwellian soldiers as privateers against the Spanish. But D’Oyley’s tenure was to be short-lived. Charles II announced the appointment of Thomas, Lord Windsor, as the new governor in late spring 1661, and unofficial word reached Jamaica that fall. Windsor had been a royalist army officer and was serving as Lord Lieutenant of Worcester, where he had a reputation of cracking down on republican radicals. Significantly, Windsor was given permission “to entertain any commerce with the Spanish Plantations … if you find it to be advantageous for the prosperity of our island.” If Spanish governors were unwilling to trade, an additional instruction gave Windsor permission to “endeavour to procure and settle a trade with his subjects in those parts by force.” In Jamaica, this meant enlisting privateers. After arriving in August 1662, Windsor declared war on the Spanish colonies and commanded an experienced privateer named Christopher Myngs with thirteen hundred privateers to raid Campeche (in southern Mexico) and Cuba. When Myngs’s fleet returned from Santiago, Cuba, in October 1662, Windsor took his share of the plunder and returned to England after spending just ten weeks on the island.41
Windsor’s official sanction to use privateers illustrated the government’s ambivalence regarding privateering. Raiding Spanish ships and ports and the financial and military benefits it provided Jamaica placed the restored monarchy in an awkward position throughout the 1660s. On the one hand, the Crown was happy to reap the rewards of privateering and enjoyed the protection and financial independence it gave the fledgling colony. Although the Stuarts promoted peace with Spain officially in Europe, as Windsor’s instructions indicate, they were more than willing to allow that peace to lapse “beyond the line.” Plundering from other European powers was hardly antithetical to the vision at the heart of Restoration imperial designs, which understood international competition to be fierce and resources to be finite. Such a policy, however, seemed to be at odds with the regime’s imperial and commercial aspirations. When the Royal Company of Adventurers of England trading into Africa was reorganized in 1663 it became a top priority for its investors and governors to cultivate a peaceful trade with Spanish merchants in the West Indies.42 The threat of attack by English-sponsored privateers would diminish the company’s ability to gain the trust of the Spaniards in the New World. Influenced by the African Company, restraining privateers became official imperial policy by 1663.
The English government’s official desire to rein in privateers was slow to reach Jamaica, however. Upon his departure, Windsor left his deputy governor, Sir Charles Lyttleton, in charge of the island’s affairs, and he authorized another attack on the Spanish Main in November 1662. In April 1663, the King-in-Council ordered Lyttleton to cease all such raids because they distracted inhabitants from planting, which was described by the king as “that industry which alone can render ye Island considerable.” The order did not reach the deputy governor until October, however, after he had orchestrated further raids on Campeche and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Lyttleton admitted he had been informed of the desire for peace but claimed he had been told “the warr with the privateers was not intended to be taken off by the king’s instructions.” This apparent confusion over where exactly privateering, and colonial policy as a whole, fit into Charles II’s diplomatic agenda illustrated the Crown’s ambivalence regarding the practice.43
Privateering faced an uncertain future in Jamaica, however, in large part because of the interests of the African Company. In order for the company to profit from trading with Spanish merchants, colonial officials had to discourage privateering. It was therefore necessary for colonial governors to be sympathetic to the company and its aspirations. The company’s earliest influence over administration in Jamaica occurred in 1664 when Charles II appointed the Barbados planter, politician, and former promoter of the Western Design, Sir Thomas Modyford, governor of Jamaica. Modyford had been serving as one of the African Company’s factors in Barbados and had promoted the idea that the best way to turn a profit was to encourage trade with the Spanish. Modyford had numerous connections with London’s colonial merchant community, many of whom were active in the new Royal Company as well as on the Council of Foreign Plantations. His brother, Sir James Modyford, was a founding member of the company in 1663, and his brother-in-law, Thomas Kendall, served on the Councils of Trade and Foreign Plantations. He had long since been connected to the powerful colonial merchants Martin Noell and Thomas Povey, who had worked with Modyford in promoting the Western Design. In addition, Modyford was a cousin of the Duke of Albemarle, and this connection almost certainly influenced his appointment.44 Considering these credentials, Modyford probably seemed to be an ideal candidate as far as the government and the African Company were concerned.
Most of Modyford’s instructions were similar to those of his two predecessors, with some important differences. Unlike Windsor’s carte blanche to use force against the Spanish if they refused to trade, Modyford was ordered to restrain privateers “for the future persuading and encouraging the inhabitants rather to turn their labour and industry to the manuring [of land] and benefit of ye plantation.” In addition, Modyford was urged to promote the interests of the African Company, “since you have had it in your care whilst you resided in our island of Barbados.” In order for the company to benefit from selling slaves to the Spanish, the Spanish had to feel that it was safe to trade in Jamaica in the first place. Significantly, however, Modyford was granted permission to act as he saw fit “with the Advice of the Councill” in “extraordinary cases … for which it is not easy for us to prescribe such rules and directions for you.”45 This discretionary clause would soon put Modyford into direct conflict with the interests of the African Company and imperial authorities.
Upon arriving as governor, Modyford declared that “all acts of hostility against the Spaniards should cease.” He soon learned, however, that there were “noe lesse than 1500 lusty fellows now abroad” serving as privateers on Lyttleton’s commissions. He feared that “if made desperate by any act of injustice or oppression, [the privateers] may miserably infest this place” and endanger Jamaica’s well-being. He supported a scheme for the English to invade Tortuga, the island haven for pirates ostensibly controlled by France, but nothing came of this plan. In the meantime, England’s relations with its European rivals underwent significant change. By 1664, a group of influential courtiers and naval officers, led by the Duke of York, began to argue that it was in England’s national interest once again to fight the Dutch for imperial and commercial dominance. York’s coalition included many politically powerful African Company merchants who argued that the Dutch intended to monopolize global trade through unfair practices and violence. The duke needed little convincing that the republican Dutch threatened the restored monarchy and England’s economic prosperity. Ideological hostility toward the Dutch became another main feature of the Stuarts’ overall imperial and diplomatic agenda.46
In the Caribbean, the English sought to conquer small islands held by the Dutch to remove them as an economic force in the region. It was hoped the privateers would aim for Curaçao, the center of the Dutch slave trade near the northern coast of South America. In November 1664, six months before the official declaration of war, the King-in-Council ordered that although Jamaica’s privateers should cease hostilities against the Spanish, they were free to attack Dutch ships and settlements. Modyford, however, was more concerned with the maneuverings of the French than the Dutch in the Caribbean. He offered his own proposal for war, which included sacking a series of smaller Dutch islands, starting with Saint Eustatius and Saba, near Saint Christopher. From there, forces would move on to Curaçao and eventually take Tortuga and Hispaniola from the French. Modyford argued that by removing the French as well as the Dutch from the West Indies, the English and Spanish could be left to develop peaceful trade. This was a plan designed to win the endorsement of Secretary of State Henry Bennet (now Lord Arlington), the former ambassador to Spain and a strong proponent of curbing privateering. In April 1665, Modyford commissioned his lieutenant governor, Colonel Edward Morgan, and sent him with a fleet of ten ships and nearly five hundred privateers to Saint Eustatius. Anticipating criticism that this scheme diverted men from planting, Modyford claimed that there was “scarce a Planter amongst them brave Resolute fellowes” sent out with Morgan. Upon landing on Saint Eustatius, Morgan collapsed and died, but the English were able to capture it and the neighboring island of Saba under the command of Colonel Theodore Cary. Although the islands were small, the plunder was significant. Modyford reported that at least nine hundred slaves were seized, “about 500 of which” were brought to Jamaica “with many coppers & stills & much mill works to ye great furtherance of this collony.”47
According to Modyford, the campaign to capture Curaçao was “frustrated,” however, because of Cary’s greed and ineptitude. Modyford planned to have the remaining privateers in Jamaica carry out his plans for Curaçao, but he grew anxious about what they would do after the Dutch campaign ended. In February 1666, he easily convinced Jamaica’s council that privateering against the Spanish as a means to maintain the loyalty of the buccaneers was “a matter of great security to this island.” Modyford maintained such a policy “helps the poorer planters by selling his provision to the men of war,” which “will enable many to buy slaves, and settle plantations.” Modyford presumably felt that during war he was well within the limits of his discretionary instructions that referred to “extraordinary cases.” As soon as he learned that Albemarle had granted him tacit permission to issue licenses to privateers against the Spanish, he declared war against Spain. Rather than attempting to take Curaçao, which was still part of Modyford’s official plan, the privateers under the command of Captain Edward Mansfield in May 1666 recaptured Providence Island, which the Spanish had taken from the English in 1641.48
Although protected to a certain degree by his cousin Albemarle, Modyford still had to justify his actions to imperial authorities, especially Arlington. “My Lord you cannot imagine what a universal change,” Modyford reported to Arlington in August 1666, “there was presently after this declaration in ye faces of men” in Port Royal. Without these commissions, Modyford claimed, “I could not have kept this place against French Buckaneers, who would have ruined all our sea side plantations at least & perhaps with our own men have put faire for ye Main.” Modyford added, “There is no profitable employment for the privateers in the West Indies against the French or Dutch; & they being a sort of people which will not be brought to the humour of planting, [and] will continually prey on the Spaniards, whether they be countenanced in it at Jamaica or not.”49 Better the privateers had English commissions, Modyford maintained, so that the English king and his colony could reap the benefits of their marauding.
Despite his claims that revenue raised by privateers helped finance plantations, Modyford’s decision to license attacks on the Spanish were at odds with his instructions to protect the interests of the African Company and the slave trade. But Charles II’s ministers were willing to turn a blind eye to privateering against the Spanish in the West Indies, at least during war, so long as the privateers successfully protected Jamaica and brought in revenue. The Spanish, moreover, were perpetually wary of English intentions, especially in Jamaica. As the colony’s provost marshal Thomas Lynch noted in 1664, few if any Spanish merchants had dared to enter Port Royal’s harbor to trade for slaves or anything else and instead turned to “Genuese” traders for slaves. In addition, the Royal Company had not been able to supply Jamaica with many slaves to begin with, and once the war against the Dutch began, the company practically ceased operations.50 Not only had trading become too dangerous, but the company also had to defend its fortifications in West Africa from the Dutch. The company had even been authorized by the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral to call its own council of war to plan attacks and reprisals against the Dutch West India Company. Under the command of Sir Robert Holmes, in late 1664 and early 1665 English and African mercenary forces captured many Dutch outposts in West Africa, including Gorée. This prompted a massive naval response by the Dutch, and in the spring of 1665 Admiral Michiel de Ruyter recaptured all that Holmes had taken and more, leaving only Cape Coast Castle (in modern-day Ghana) for the English.51 The company had become an instrument of the Stuart war for imperial and commercial dominance over its chief political and economic rival. Wars against the Dutch and the French and toleration of privateering against the Spanish were military manifestations of the restored monarchy’s imperial and economic agenda in the 1660s. While Modyford’s actions clearly contradicted official policy, at the same time they fit together with the government’s broader imperial and economic strategy, in which the only means to guarantee England’s commercial and military supremacy was to eliminate, conquer, or steal from foreign competition.
For the remainder of the decade, Modyford continued his unofficial war against Spain. He actively encouraged privateering, despite the 1667 Treaty of Madrid, which called for a cessation of hostilities between the two countries.52 From 1667 to 1669, Captain Henry Morgan, under orders from Modyford, led devastatingly successful campaigns against the Spanish in Panama, Cuba, Portobelo, Santo Domingo, and Maracaibo. The Spanish retaliated by attacking the northern shore of Jamaica and taking prisoners in early 1670. Later that year, Modyford and the Jamaica Council responded by declaring war against Spain, promoting Morgan to admiral of Jamaica, and authorizing him to raid the Spanish Main.53 This led to Morgan’s most infamous and spectacular raid, on the Isthmus of Panama in January 1671 with a fleet of thirty-eight ships and about two thousand men. Morgan’s men burned the city of Panama to the ground and looted the surrounding area for a month. Meanwhile, England and Spain had formalized a new Treaty of Madrid in late 1670, once again setting terms of peace between the two nations. According to the new treaty, Spain formally recognized England’s conquest of Jamaica. Despite the fact that direct trade between Spanish and English colonies remained illegal, it was widely expected that English merchants were free to cultivate peaceful contraband trade. But official toleration of privateering was over. Although word of the Panama raid did not reach London until the summer of 1671, Charles II and his advisers knew Modyford could not be trusted to enforce this new treaty and chose Sir Thomas Lynch to replace him in late 1670. Lynch was ordered to do what Modyford had dramatically failed to do: rein in the privateers for the good of imperial stability, relations with the Spanish, and the interests of the African Company. He was sent with instructions to arrest Modyford and send him to London for prosecution. The heyday of the officially sanctioned (or conveniently ignored) privateer was over, and never again would a colonial governor declare war on another European power without the direct order and consent of the metropolitan government.54
CONCLUSION
The 1660s ended with a renewed interest on the part of the Crown in centralizing imperial control, and more strongly confronting challenges to imperial authority. This stemmed from a realization on the part of the English government that changes had to occur to make colonies more obedient and reliably profitable. As a result, the late 1660s and early 1670s were a turning point in imperial administration, which occurred as a direct result of confrontations between the Crown and company on the one hand and planters, privateers, and colonial officials on the other. Amid these confrontations, different interests were forced to articulate, clarify, and in the case of the Crown, codify their own imperial visions. Establishing and expanding brutal slave regimes based on racial difference while at the same time demanding charters guaranteeing rights and liberties on the part of colonial assemblies were both manifestations of the planters’ imperial ideal. The desire to ransack Spanish ships and settlements with impunity and even the protection of the Crown represented that of many privateers. The end of the 1660s marked a transitional moment to the second phase of Restoration imperialism, which witnessed an increasing willingness to emphasize colonial dependency and accentuate the reach of the royal prerogative. The main instruments of this control would be the re-formed Royal African Company and a more finely tuned sense of extending the authority of the royal prerogative on the part of the Crown.