Neither the king nor Barbados was willing to budge over the financial issues surrounding the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and what ensued was the biggest showdown between king and colony in American history.
Transcript
“They dread nothing like the 4.5%.” Those were acting governor Christopher Codrington’s words while describing Barbados’s plight and attitude after the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Its finances were being pushed into a downward spiral, but it was the principal of it all that really bothered them. This led, in 1670, to the biggest showdown that any colony had had with its king in at least 30 years, and perhaps ever.
Introduction
Barbados was consumed with fury in 1669. They had just spent a hundred thousand pounds to defend the Leeward Islands, their main town had burned to the ground twice, they had lost devastating quantities of sugar, the colony’s labor sources had dried up, and the majority of its young male population was either dead or had moved away, and now they were being expected to billet soldiers who seemed to be there primarily to intimidate them into submission to the crown. The king wasn’t recognizing that he owed them anything, really. And their governor, Willoughby, was back in England defending himself from colonists’ rage-induced attempts to kick him out of office and demand self-government instead.
They didn’t get less angry when acting-governor Codrington’s first action was to strictly enforce the Navigation Acts under the instructions of Charles’s top advisor. He intercepted three Jewish-owned, Amsterdam-based ships who had come to trade for sugar. The king backed Codrington on this with the colonists, and Codrington thanked him for the support. Soon, though, he went even further by seizing a vessel which had a majority Scottish crew, even though its captain was English. The Barbados courts supported that ship’s appeal, though. The Navigation Acts were officially in force.
Bridge’s regiment was also still stuck in Barbados, not paid, and resentfully quartered. Willoughby had personally lent Bridge some money, as had some other colonists, and he’d been able to use that to keep the regiment alive. The regiment should have been paid a total of 500,000 pounds at this point, but while the king insisted that Barbados was responsible for paying that money, Bridge, himself, had gone 300,000 pounds into debt trying to support his soldiers.
And of course, neither Carlisle’s creditors nor Willoughby had been paid what they were owed out of the 4.5%.
And with all these financial stresses centered around the 4.5%, the king made a decision. He decided to make it not his problem. A group of English gentlemen under Charles Wheler had offered to pay him a flat 7,000 pounds per year for the rights to the 4.5% duty, as well as promising to pay Bridge’s regiment’s arrears and compensate Barbadians for their lost ships and sugar during the war, and the king took them up on this. On their part, it was a gamble. They’d lose money if Barbados produced less than 156,000 pounds worth of sugar per year, and they’d make money if its production exceeded that value. For Charles, though, it meant that whatever happened was no longer his responsibility, and he’d be guaranteed a healthy income from the island. Obviously no one was rich enough to do pay everything Wheler said he would, but Barbados could take that up with him.
Willoughby protested, citing what the king owed Barbados and emphasizing what the 4.5% was supposed to pay according to the act, and saying that the colonists “will now see what they have provided for themselves shipped to England.”
And Barbadians responded predictably. Before getting this news, they were already united in refusal to cooperate with the king’s government on even the smallest of issues. After getting the news, they were apoplectic. Codrington wrote to Willoughby that his own best case scenario as acting governor was to keep the peace until the governor returned. They wouldn’t pay a cent for even local government charges, and point blank refused to quarter the soldiers anymore. They weren’t just refusing to cooperate with the king’s government, but any government. They did back down on the issue of the soldiers, because it’s one thing to say another person’s life isn’t your responsibility, and another to watch them starve to death in front of you, but they at least made the acting governor beg them repeatedly to quarter these people, while advocating for them in order to be paid, himself.
It was clear that Barbados wasn’t going to back down, so the king prepared his own strategy to counter colonists’ demands. The Royal African Company, run by Charles’s brother, lodged a complaint accusing Barbadian courts of protecting planters from having to pay their debts, and saying that that had injured the company. Using this as an excuse, the privy council ordered that in the future, any Barbadian who fell into debt would have his lands and goods confiscated and sold in payment. Given the amount of money the island now owed and was owed, every single planter on the island was technically in debt, and much of this to the Royal African Company. That meant that the king’s brother would have the legal authority to sell every Barbadian colonist’s estate for his own profit if they didn’t stop their political agitation.
It was a massive threat, and even if Willoughby managed to convince him not to take this step, it let the governor know just how far the king was willing to go to quash Barbadian ideas about opposing him.
So, Willoughby wrote to the colonists and told them to drop the 4.5% thing, saying that if they kept defying the act, they would bring greater inconvenience on themselves than they could possibly imagine.
Barbadians wouldn’t budge, though. It was too much, and they were done, though they did thank Willoughby for his support and voted to give him 100,000 pounds of sugar as a token of their gratitude. They petitioned the king again, with a formal letter restating their position and detailing how exactly they intended to defend that position, and then they turned to the merchants.
The merchants couldn’t be said to be on their side, as we know from countless stories, but the merchants needed Barbados to remain a viable colony for their own income. And the king was preparing some export duties to cripple the Barbadian sugar industry, which would also hurt the merchants, who would be forced to transport sugar in a form that was both bulkier and less valuable. Barbadians had been pretty careful to avoid alienating the merchants in their opposition to the Navigation Acts, and the two would now unite for a common cause.
Before the petition to the king even reached England, the merchants told the colonists that they needed to stop sending him stuff. Now was not the time. The king was getting ready to bludgeon them with import duties if they kept pushing. He was going to raise the import duties so high that Barbadians couldn’t make money exporting refined sugar, molasses and rum, and so they’d only be able to eek out a living exporting raw sugar. He was going to send sugar the way of Virginia tobacco, so they needed to step back, take a breath, and organize a little bit.
The merchants said Barbados needed to build a group of advocates in England who could defend their interests. That group could be headed by the merchants, and they would need to pay them for the help. At the same time, they needed to choose a courtier to whom they would give a salary to advocate their cause at court. Barbadians agreed, and the merchants suggested a specific courtier, Lord Lauderdale, a Scottish politician who had been a leader of the Engagers, who had supported the Covenanters in the first, and the king in the Second Civil War. Choosing a Scottish courtier was strategic, because one of his highest priority tasks would be to ask for free trade between Barbados and Scotland. Barbadians agreed, and the merchants collected 145 pounds to pay Lauderdale until Barbadian money came in.
And then the merchants sent Barbados a message which honestly just solidifies the love I have formed for this colony. And I will admit, as this show has gone on, understanding its flaws, I have grown to absolutely love Barbados. In this message, the merchants told Barbados that it needed to stop sending any messages directly to the king, because the tone of the messages they’d been sending had sounded like they thought they were an independent nation. They were talking to the king like they were his equals. That just didn’t look good, and it put people off, and it put the king off most of all. Barbadians were the king’s subjects, and they were talking to their sovereign like they’d forgotten that. For their own sake, they needed to reword, and actually, they just needed to send every message directly to the merchant committee, who would rewrite it in more humble language that would be more palatable at court.
Barbadians agreed, and they gathered the money they needed. They appointed a committee to keep up a continual correspondence with their London allies, and this transatlantic team became the driving force in Barbadian politics for the next few years. Whatever they suggested, Barbados did. Their hope was to eliminate the 4.5% and open up trade with Scotland, and their dream was to get a charter that would give them autonomy from England, but before any of that could happen, there was clearly damage control that needed to be done.
The import duty on sugar which the king was considering had actually made it to parliament, and had even passed the house of commons. It was up to Lauderdale and Willoughby to stop it.
Ultimately Willoughby was the one who showed the house of lords that English refinery owners were the people behind the proposed law. This was because they would be the ones who profited from it most. All the revenue that the colonists and merchants lost would go to them, because they would buy the unrefined sugar and sell the refined sugar, tobacco and rum. They had been the people who had pushed the bill through the house of commons, and when the lords learned this, they rejected the proposal. They changed the duty to be only slightly higher than it already was, and this was one of if not the first time the lords had dared meddle with a money-related bill since the civil wars. The political, economic and religious tensions that had defined the Civil War era hadn’t gone away, and meddling became a point of severe contention. The issue of Catholic rights had already made the atmosphere tense, and adding money to the mix increased conflict so much that the king prorogued Parliament and refused to call it for the next couple years. This meant that the bill fell through entirely, and there ended up being no increase in the import duty at all.
This was a big win for Barbados, and indeed for all of the Leeward Isles and Jamaica. But I mean looking at the victory in context, it’s understandable that this one win didn’t take the edge off Barbadian resentment. Think of how much Barbados had done and lost in the last couple episodes, in defense of English interests, by the way, not Barbadian ones. Barbados would have been best off if the Dutch were still strong enough in the region to help thwart the Navigation Acts, and if England lost most of the competing sugar producing colonies, so the war had gone directly against what was best for Barbados. It had fought anyway, without support, and now, just months later, its great victory in England was the thwarting of a new tax which would have intentionally reduced it to Virginia-like levels of poverty.
And to add to the lingering resentment, just as this victory happened, the other Leeward Islands had renewed their agitation for separation from Barbados.
So Barbados’s feelings hadn’t changed. It was still refusing to pay for the island’s government, and it still struggled with the issue of Bridge’s regiment. Codrington was begging them on a monthly basis to keep quartering them, and they kept resentfully agreeing in exchange for concessions. And fortunately, the king did pay off and disband Bridge’s regiment at this point, and granted land in Jamaica and the Leewards to soldiers who wanted it. A bunch of them went to Jamaica, joined by 200 Barbadians, while several hundred more prepared to follow.
And speaking of people who hadn’t been paid, acting governor Codrington was one of them. Of Barbadian officials, only Willoughby was paid directly by the king, and colonists refused to pay anyone else unless it was a reward for going above and beyond in their interests, meaning their showdown with the king. Forcing the colonists to pay for everything themselves was therefore backfiring in the king’s efforts to reduce the island to submission, because if Codrington wanted money, the only way to get it was to help the colonists resist him. This was a dynamic that would provide Barbados its greatest tool in fighting for autonomy for the next century.
The king did move to change Barbados’s government to make it less capable of resistance, but he didn’t address this issue. He issued new instructions that any bills passed there would have to be explicitly approved by the king before they could be made permanent. This was standard in the newer colonies, but a change for Barbados, where the king’s input had previously been limited to veto power.
More interestingly, though, now only the king would be able to appoint people to colonial office. The problem with this was that it eliminated a major tool that colonial governors used to lead their constituents. The giving of governmental offices was one of the best tools a governor had to build relationships, reward support and otherwise incentivize cooperation. It’s how Berkeley had won over Virginia, and it’s how Francis Lord Willoughby had successfully taken the reins in Barbados, but now only the king was allowed to do this. And true to character, the king’s first appointment was one which was clumsily designed to drive home the point that he was the boss. His first appointment was Bridge.
Codrington refused to admit Bridge to the council, correctly pointing out that he wasn’t legally eligible because he didn’t own land in Barbados, and it became yet another issue in which the king’s actions were counterproductive. In fairness, it did help Codrington ingratiate himself with angry colonists, but this was only because the acting governor stood up to the king.
Practically speaking, Codrington had two choices. He could back the king, against the law, face likely armed revolt from the colonists and not get paid, or he could disobey the king, keep the colonists peaceful and get paid, as well as following the law. The choice was clear, and Codrington’s popularity skyrocketed while the king’s stayed right where it was, because it couldn’t fall any further.
And fundamentally, the fact was that if there were another war, Barbados wasn’t going to help any of England’s other colonies, nor would it serve the king. This was doubly true because now the merchants and other islands had in fact successfully gotten the king to separate Barbados from the rest of the Leewards. This meant that Willoughby would only be governor of Barbados, while Antigua, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat did their own thing. And to emphasize the point that they would not fight for the king, they refused to build or repair forts unless paid for by the 4.5%. When the king refused to pay, they simply let their defenses deteriorate.
And the issue of another war wasn’t far off. In 1671, while Willoughby was still in England, the Third Anglo-Dutch War was declared. This time, the French were England’s allies, and in fact, they had paid Charles for his participation. This was part of the reason he’d gotten involved in the first place, hoping this money would make him independent of parliament in addition to the war giving him a reputation as a military leader.
When war was declared, Willoughby asked the king for small investments to protect his West Indian colonies. He requested an armed frigate patrol the Caribbean to protect English shipping from Dutch privateers, and he asked for a temporary wartime dispensation to the Navigation Acts to allow Barbados import food and clothing from foreign colonies, necessities which England had totally failed to provide colonists during the last war. because England had totally failed to provide its colonists with anything during the last war.
But the king again refused, and he followed up his refusal by saying that since there was a war on, Willoughby should probably go govern the colony where he was a governor. And he again ordered him to put Bridge on the council when he got there.
And he sent Willoughby with an offer for the colonists. Barbados wanted the 4.5% eliminated, and would be willing to pay a lump sum for that. The king’s offer was to replace the 4.5% with a flat 5,000 pounds sterling per year in exchange for the elimination of all debt he owed them. Basically, they’d give him 1-200,000 pounds sterling in exchange for the possibility of paying up to 2,000 pounds fewer in taxes per year. Or, with the falling sugar prices, they might still end up paying more. Who knows. The king thought this was a great idea. Barbadians did not.
Codrington, whose tenure as assistant governor had gotten off to such a rough start with his dedicated enforcement of the Navigation Acts, had by the time Willoughby returned so earned the island’s loyalty that he was elected speaker of the house for nine of the next ten years.
Perhaps fortunately, and honestly, perhaps unfortunately in a way, the third Anglo-Dutch War didn’t really involve the West Indies much. Willoughby took the opportunity to seize Tobago from the Dutch, for the benefit of Barbados rather than England. Tobago was strategically located, and therefore threatening in wartime, as well as being a sugar producing rival in times of peace. In addition, this battle was a good way to get rid of Bridge and his surviving soldiers, and it ended up being a cheap and successful fight. Willoughby made a present of Tobago to Barbados as an island under its own jurisdiction. And the assembly thanked him, but it also said Barbados didn’t have enough money or workers to settle it at that point in time.
Beyond that, the only real events of the war that involved Barbados were the capture of a merchant fleet filled with Barbadian sugar, as well as yet-another fire at St. Michaelstown, which destroyed their food and other supplies.
Shortly after all this happened, though, in April 1672, Willoughby fell sick, and soon it was clear that he wasn’t going to get better. He appointed Sir Peter Colleton as deputy governor, and three days later, he died. This marked the end of an era for Barbados. As Francis Lord Willoughby’s death had coincided with the end of Barbados’s economic preeminence, William Lord Willoughby’s would mark the end of its political distinction. With William’s death, king stopped appointing Willoughby family members to serve as governor, and opted instead to choose people with no loyalty to the island.
And that’s where we’ll stop for today. Next episode, we’ll return to Jamaica and do the pirate thing again.