Cromwell decides in favor of Baltimore’s proprietorship in Maryland, Virginia works to subvert English puritan leadership and reinstall a royalist government, Bermuda has its first slave revolt, and Barbados foreshadows Revolutionary War sentiments by opposing taxation without representation.
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While Independent Puritans tried to process and understand the course their revolution was taking, Royalists and Presbyterians felt a renewed sense of hope. At the same time as Hugh Davenport spoke in New England about the possibility of a restoration of the English monarchy, the same sense spread in Virginia, and things were looking up in Maryland, too.
Introduction
The few surviving letters from England to Virginia after Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump Parliament highlighted how tense and dangerous life seemed there. Parliamentarians were refusing to pay taxes, because they’d been passed by Cromwell with no input from Parliament. Royalists were refusing to pay taxes because they’d been passed by Cromwell with no input from Parliament, and they were also being pushed to pay an additional 10% tax. And, Royalists organized another major series of uprisings. The most notable of these plans was to take over the Royalist-leaning towns of Salisbury, Newcastle, York and Winchester while encouraging smaller uprisings in Nottinghamshire and Cheshire, and then to assassinate Cromwell and welcome Charles II back as king of England. The plan was thwarted, seven leaders executed, and most of the rest transported to Barbados and other Caribbean islands. A few were imprisoned, including Willoughby, our old Barbados governor, who spent his time after his return to England helping to plot and carry out Royalist rebellions. He was imprisoned a couple times for this, but I mean he of all people could not be sent back to the colonies.
Now, first things first, Cromwell finally decided on who should run Maryland, and he actually decided in favor of Baltimore. Baltimore had been arguing his case for over a year by now, countering every point raised against him. And it worked. In addition to these arguments, there were also the practical issues of the Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware, who would take over if Maryland collapsed, and of Virginia, whose government still wanted control of Maryland, while it could barely control its own colony. Plus, the execution of prisoners was a big deal, and by the way, Baltimore said he’d poured way too much money into the colony to not be allowed to get a return on his investment. Cromwell praised Baltimore as a lawyer and businessman, ruled in his favor, and ordered Bennett’s government to back off.
Baltimore appointed Joias Fendall as his new governor, instituted a draft, with a larger militia, ordered a survey to clear up all border disputes, published those results as a detailed map, and invited a new wave of immigrants to the colony, focusing on those from France, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. Apart from reinstating the Toleration Act, though, he largely abandoned his original vision and adopted a modern form of government in Maryland. There were still Puritans in Providence, now again Anne Arundel, who refused to acknowledge Fendall, and in exchange for their loyalty, Baltimore and Fendall met their demands. Concessions had been made, but Maryland, finally, was stable again by 1659.
News of the state of affairs in England encouraged Virginia enough to lead it into a period of arguable rebellion to the English government. Bennett’s term as governor ended around this time, thanks both to this and to the Battle of the Severn. Apart from Maryland, he’d spent his term focusing on exclusively practical issues, like bringing Irish transportees to Virginia, handling issues of expansion, and sending out people beyond the Tidewater region of the Chesapeake to find new places for new colonists to go. He couldn’t really do much else, even though Cromwell would have liked him to. As part of the plan for expansion, he also implemented a reservation system, the first in the Chesapeake, for the more hostile tribes, like the Chicahominie and Pamunkey. The General Assembly declared that troubles with the neighboring tribes had been caused by “two particulars, our extreme pressures on them, and their wanting something to hazard and lose beside their lives.” The English were pushing too hard, and the Indians had nothing to lose by trying to push back. So, they would designate some space for them, getting some input from the Werowances, and the colony would vow to never make any Indian child a slave who was brought to the English to be cared for. This does seem to have won some support for the English in those tribes, whose problems were being verbally recognized by the Virginia government, and who were being given land the English were agreeing not to take.
Two schools were being set up, but not by the government. One was set up by the decidedly Royalist Richard Lee, and another by the probably Puritan William Whittington.
And perhaps the most interesting thing that Bennett himself had been working on was trying to encourage the diversification of the Virginia economy, paying 4,000 pounds of tobacco to recruit an Armenian silkmaker named George to come to Virginia and try to figure out how to make the colony a silkmaking hub. He ordered people to devote a percentage of their land to mulberry trees for silk growing and promised hefty rewards for anyone who was able to make significant amounts of money producing anything that wasn’t tobacco, and an additional hefty reward if what they produced was silk.
But in 1655, Bennett’s term was up, and as he was pushed out, Cromwell tried to impose his own governor on Virginia, again, much like Charles I had in Massachusetts, and much like Charles, he highlighted his own weakness by failing to do so.
Instead, Bennett was replaced by Edward Digges, who was either the most moderate guy ever, or, more likely, a very patient Royalist. Under him, it is very easy to see Virginia’s Royalist sentiments bubbling toward the surface. Most notably, the colony started offering exorbitant amounts of money to recruit ministers, 20 pounds sterling, or half a year’s wages for anyone who would import one, along with tax exemptions for ministers’ households, including up to six servants. The people in charge of vetting these potential recruits, though, and determining whether they or the people who transported them were worthy of this reward, were staunch Anglicans who had left England in the wave of distressed Cavaliers after Cromwell’s victory. It was yet another underhanded way to strengthen Virginia’s Royalist Anglicanism and subvert Puritan authority. They were ready.
The other interesting thing that happened during Digges’s term was that a group of 6-700 Indians from an unknown tribe settled within the boundaries of Virginia English society. They seem to have been Iroquois who had moved down from the New York area, but regardless, Virginia prepared a militia which would join forces with the Chicahominie and Pamunkey to drive these people out, “without war, if possible.” But militia leader Edward Hill attacked unnecessarily, and in the resulting confrontation the English were defeated so badly that it became known as the Battle of Bloody Run. The Chicahominie and Pamunkey in particular were wiped out, and their leaders killed. Hill was blamed for the defeat, deprived of all his offices and forced to pay the costs of making peace.
Perhaps because of this, Digges was replaced as governor after only a year, and the man who took his place was none other than Samuel Mathews, longterm leader of Virginia’s puritan faction. And it wasn’t long before his council and the Royalist-leaning elected portion of the General Assembly, known as the House of Burgesses, had a falling out.
A year into his term, on April 1, 1658, Mathews tried to dismiss Virginia’s General Assembly, Cromwell-style, and this led to a minor revolution in the colony’s government. From subsequent events and communication, it seems as if the elected portion of the Assembly, the House of Burgesses, was pushing back against things that Mathews wanted to do, dragging their feet and simply not cooperating with him on even the most basic business matters. In response to their uncooperativeness, Mathews tried to dismiss them so he could govern alone with his thoroughly Puritan council, getting things done how he wanted, when he wanted.
The Burgesses responded that the governor didn’t have the power to dissolve an elected legislature. They said they’d work with him to get colony affairs managed as quickly as possible, but that he didn’t have the right to dissolve the Assembly. And to this, Mathews said he was going to send the question to Cromwell. Realistically speaking Cromwell, the Puritan who had been ruling on his own since dissolving his own legislative assembly, and who had wanted to impose his own government in Virginia, would side with Mathews.
So the Burgesses pushed back. They drew up a resolution to assert their own power, saying not only that only were the Burgesses the only people who could dismiss the Assembly, but also that the Burgesses were the people in charge of the election and appointment of the governor and council. They then declared all former elections to be null and void, and though they reappointed Mathews as governor, they also made him take a new oath of office the next day. The act of accepting that new oath of office would confirm their supremacy. And Mathews agreed. He still had his hopes on Cromwell’s intervention. Then, because the Burgesses were the ones in charge of the colony, they ordered Claiborne to give them the colony records, and appointed two Royalists, John Carter and Warham Horsmandon, to be the people in charge of them.
They didn’t start governing the colony in a non-Puritan way, and they didn’t overturn anything that previous Puritan governments had done, nor did they kick any Puritan leaders out of their offices, but what the House of Burgesses had just done was big. They’d put it on the record that the Burgesses were in charge of their own colony, and that by Parliamentary values, Royalists were the ones in charge of Virginia.
Mathews’ only hope was that Cromwell would back him up, and he went along with the Burgesses’ demands until he received a reply to his letter. But, when he received communication from England, it didn’t address his question at all. Instead, it was an announcement that Oliver Cromwell had died and been replaced as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. The announcement ordered that Richard be proclaimed in Virginia, and Mathews did that, but a couple months later, he died, too.
And with Mathews’s death, the importance of what the Burgesses had just done became apparent. Because the person they now picked to replace him was none other than William Berkeley. Berkeley had been supposed to return to England, but he’d been allowed to stay in Virginia by the colony’s puritan governments. As long as he stayed quiet, making sure he left wasn’t worth the fight for them. And as long as Cromwell’s government was too strong to topple, it wasn’t worth the fight for Berkeley to do anything but remain quiet. So he’d just been working at his plantation, biding his time in yet another example of Virginia’s Interregnum Detente. Now that Cromwell and Mathews were both dead, though, and the Royalist-leaning House of Burgesses was the highest authority in the colony, the Burgesses chose William Berkeley as governor of Virginia. He was declared in Lower Norfolk County first, on March 9, 1659, and then in the colony as a whole on March 13.
And then, at least according to tradition, they followed Berkeley’s appointment by proclaiming Charles II as the king. Officially, we don’t know if this is true. There’s no documentation of the event, but also, even if it happened, of course there would be no documentation of the event, which would have essentially been a rebellion against England’s government. I mean, the mere act of appointing Berkeley was essentially a rebellion, and in fact, the mere fact that Royalists could have retaken the House of Burgesses was evidence of at the very least severe neglect of Commonwealth orders.
And because of all of this, the still-puritan Governor’s Council did push back against Berkeley as governor, and in response to that, Berkeley told the Assembly that they should probably choose someone else for the time being. He thanked them for electing him, but said that at that time, controversy surrounding him would keep him from being able to do the things that Virginia needed, and which someone else could do. He suggested they “make choice of one who hath more vigorous qualities to manage and support your affairs, and who hath more dexterity to untie these knots which I can neither unloose nor break amongst the council.” When they agreed to his advice, he gave a brief speech encouraging the colony and telling them it was the right thing to do. “You have given me a great treasure, but in vain, except you help me carry it to a place of safety. You have raised a high expectation of me, but you must entrust and prompt me how to satisfy it. You have laid high honors on me, but except your help to support me under them, they will sink me into disgrace.”
And so, instead of taking the governorship, Berkeley left Virginia for England and Europe. It’s funny, when he was ordered to return to England, he stayed, only to leave when elected governor again. But this was a sign of Virginia’s hope.
The most famous Royalist ballad declared “All’s to no end, for the times will not mend ‘till the king enjoys his own again. Yes this I can tell that all will be well when the king enjoys his own again.” They’d been singing it for sixteen years, first openly, and then in secret, and now Royalists on both sides of the Atlantic sensed a possibility that the time was approaching. And when they did, every problem would be undone. Every Puritan innovation would be reversed. No more empire. No more direct control of the colonies. No more being forbidden to trade with the Dutch. Colonies that had been left alone before would be left alone again, taxes would be lowered, Christmas revived, religious unity restored, and all of the interference in people’s everyday lives would be rolled back. And most of all, in colonist eyes, no more Navigation Act. More than anything, that act had fueled Royalist support in the colonies, with desire for free trade pushing all but the most dedicated Independent Puritans to embrace the king’s cause.
If there was any possibility of returning to Royal rule, this was probably the time. When William Penn had offered to help Charles II invade England, Charles’s response had been to wait and be patient, and now that waiting seemed to be coming to an end. Hugh Davenport had acknowledged it in New England. And now, Berkeley was willing to bet on it, declining the governorship in favor of meeting with the exiled king.
To take a break from the relentless optimism, though, Bermuda was still floundering. Rebuilding from all the problems we previously discussed was already slow, and then, in 1656, the colony had its first attempted slave revolt. Like every American colony, Bermuda had a growing group of Irish transportation victims. Like the Caribbean colonies, it had a large group of slaves, and unlike most other colonies, it had a large group of freed Africans who had left former Spanish territories. A lot of these people were serving as indentured servants as a way, much like the English did, to get a foothold and invest in a future life in the colony.
This group of people formed perhaps the largest group of people moving to Bermuda, and to prevent their becoming the majority, the colony increased the term of indenture for blacks to 99 years. Obviously, this meant for life. Any free black who moved to Bermuda to start a new life would be made, for all intents and purposes, a slave.
So free, or technically free, blacks were unhappy, and the Irish indentured servants were also not thrilled to be in Bermuda. And, the colony’s social system was still weak enough that there were openings for a possible rebellion. The plan was that a dozen slaves and servants, led by a free black man named William Force, would murder their English masters. Two of the servants reported the plan at the last minute, though, and colonists arrested the conspirators. Two of the leaders were hanged, while Force was sent to Eleutheria in the Bahamas.
And then, all of Bermuda’s free blacks were given a choice. They could follow Force to the Bahamas, or they could become slaves. Most of them left. For the slaves who remained, laws were put in place that were so violent and draconian that no colonists actually followed them. Slaves, the government ordered, were not allowed to trade, not allowed to sell tobacco, and were required to be in their quarters by thirty minutes after sunset, unless they had a pass. Any Englishman who met a slave on the roads at this time was ordered to shoot them on sight. The penalty for failing to shoot the slave would be a fine of 100 pounds of tobacco. Like I said, no Bermudian ever followed this law, and during this time, a group of slaves did manage to successfully escape the island.
And it was a year later that Bermuda had its second attempted revolt, this time led more clearly by Irish transportees. These transportees developed a policy of strict noncompliance with the English. They did no work, harassed people, and found every opportunity they could to cause problems for the English. If they were asked to transport a cask of rum, they drank it. They surrounded people on the roads and assaulted them. And they simply refused to live within the island’s already fragile society. The government warned colonists to get rid of their Irish indentured servants, and said that they’d be held liable and fined if the transportees did anything wrong. But, the problems continued. In fact, at least one Scottish transportee joined forces with the Irish and slaves, and there was yet another escape attempt, though this one failed.
And then, the Irish announced publicly that, unless they were given their liberty, they’d join forces with the slaves and take it by force. They would cut the throats of any English person who stood in their way of freedom. And in response to this announcement, the government disarmed every member of both groups, made it illegal for any Bermudian to buy any more Irish indentures for any any reason, and ordered the Irish to be confined under guard any time the colony had to do anything that would leave its population vulnerable. They also ordered that any black or Irish person who was caught meeting with even one other black or Irish person would be whipped. There was no uprising, and soon the Irish left Bermuda.
But it was in Barbados, as is so often the case, where the story of the years of Cromwell’s Protectorate government were most interesting of all. Colonists there were, like we said, pretty angry at Cromwell at this point. They were still refusing to enforce the Navigation Act, with courts simply finding everyone in violation of it not guilty, they were upset with the burdens of the Western Design, and thanks to their wealth, the increasingly imperial nature of English Colonization always impacted them first. And, as they’d done a couple times in the past, Barbados made yet another move which would foreshadow North American Revolutionary sentiment.
In December of 1659, Barbados sent a petition to England requesting self-government. Specifically, it wanted to appoint its own governor and mint its own money. And it wanted the ability to elect two Members of Parliament to represent the colony in London. At this point, it said, the English government was treating Barbados as if it was part of England. Barbados paid taxes, taxes which were way too high for comfort, and its colonists lived directly under the laws passed by the English government. Because of this, it should have representation in that government. It was absolutely wrong that Barbadians would be treated like people in England when it came to the impact of legislation and taxation, but be treated as less than Englishmen when it came to representation. The balance had been disturbed by recent changes in England, and they would like it to be restored.
Richard Cromwell’s government gave Barbados none of what it asked for, and instead it got rid of Searle as governor and replaced him with Modyford, who was still deeply unpopular for his support of the Western Design. But, the issue of taxation without representation had been raised and not addressed by the English government, and that’s important. And in Barbadian minds, this would be yet another reason to hope for the restoration of the monarchy.
The thing that had a more immediate impact, though, was the plight of transported indentured servants in Barbados. This time, it wasn’t the Irish, but instead it was Englishmen transported after that failed Royalist rebellion I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. And this time, it wasn’t a servant rebellion, but instead it was another petition to England, and an accompanying pamphlet entitled “England’s slavery, or Barbados Merchandise.”
By 1659, some of the earliest transportation indentures were ending. A term of indenture was seven years, so that meant that everyone who’d been transported since 1652 was now released. That includes everyone who had been sent while the actual wars were going on, and then some.
If they wanted to return to England, though, they’d have to pay their own ship fare, and that meant that virtually none had any chance of returning to their homes, but a handful did. And that handful came with stories that weren’t that great, and caused people to question the system at least a little bit. But, in 1659, two Royalist rebels named Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle sent documents back to England, describing their situation in detail.
They had allegedly been part of the force which planned to take over Salisbury in that 1655 Royalist rebellion, but the plot had been thwarted before they’d even approached the city. They hadn’t been caught red handed doing anything, and then, there hadn’t been any sort of a trial to find them guilty of participation in the plot. A fair trial was a basic English right, but they’d not only been imprisoned without a trial, they’d been imprisoned and then sent to Barbados to do seven years of insanely difficult manual labor without a trial. They’d worked at mills and furnaces, dug in the dirt, fed little more than potatoes. They’d been bought and sold from one planter to another, whipped for no reason, and forced to live worse than the island’s animals. Not even the Turks would treat Christians that badly, they said, and for Christians to do it to each other was unthinkable.
And if that weren’t bad enough, Rivers and Foyle were gentlemen. No one could dismiss this as the case of a couple of common criminals. They were members of established, old, important families. Neither the lack of a fair trial nor treating gentlemen that way was ok, but the two combined was enough to create another scandal for the Protectorate government.
So now, in addition to everything else, people started talking about the Protectorate Government as a source of tyranny and degrading labor. And, hearing Rivers and Foyles’s stories about life in Barbados showed people just how tough New World life was, too, in the years when colonization was being redefined in terms of national pride. People rushed to speak out against what had happened, in a way that that is probably familiar to those of us in the modern world.
So a ship’s captain who had helped transport people condemned the colonists who would have bought the indentures, saying “I abhor the thoughts of setting 100 pounds upon any man’s person.” Regicide Edmund Ludlow said that the late Cromwell had lightly dispensed of English lives in the West Indies, and English liberties at home. And another MP said that if transportation continued, “our lives will be as cheap as those of the negroes.” But it wasn’t just people rushing to distance themselves. Henry Vane, who himself had just been released from prison, and who for his flaws was at least true to his principles, denounced what had happened to Rivers and Foyle as nothing short of barbarous.
It was yet another scandal, yet another cause of disillusionment, and yet another event which made people ready for a change that would return England to what it had been before the wars, to reverse a revolution that ever more people were convinced had been a big mistake.
And that’s where we’ll stop for today. Next episode, we’ll go back up to New England to see exactly what was happening there at this time.