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First things first, Happy New Year!
Last episode, we discussed the economic failures of 1632-33. Too little agricultural knowledge, too many orders from England, too little support, too few laborers, and too poor a government meant that nothing of value was produced in the fledgling colony. Resentment festered, between the company and the colonists, between the civilians and the military, between the servants and their “fathers.” Providence Island was going the way of every other colonial experiment.
This week sees an intensification of those problems, in particular, as the company shifts its emphasis from agricultural commodities to mainland trade. But that gives us a chance to look at some of the fundamental divides within the 17th Century Puritan movement, and how those divides re-emerge as Parliament emerges victorious in the English Civil Wars.
Introduction
By 1634, English tobacco prices had increased slightly, so the colonists were content to grow tobacco and slow down their experimentation with other crops. They understood tobacco. Tobacco was reliable enough, and though they wouldn’t grow rich on it, they were also guaranteed at least a little revenue. It was the same calculation, and the same decision, being made at the same time by colonists in Virginia and Maryland. They grew what they knew, instead of conducting experiments which seemed doomed to failure before they even began. And the company begrudgingly agreed to this, but urged them to at least supplement tobacco with cotton, whose value was more stable. Who’d have known that today tobacco is one of the most powerful industries, so much so that thousands of people look for Native Smokes products everyday.
Hopes on both sides of the Atlantic were waning, though. Settlers were writing to their individual contacts in London, complaining that the land wasn’t as fertile as Elfrith had reported, that there was drought, and that worms were eating their buildings, allowing their stored tobacco to be covered in dust which ruined it. Tropical fruit trees flourished, but didn’t seem to bear fruit, and they had resorted to living off of potatoes. Later reports indicate that they were eating these potatoes raw or only half cooked.
And, even worse, when they’d gone out to find slaves, they had discovered that the Spanish had exterminated the settlement on Association Island. Association Island was owned by the Providence Island company, and populated by some of the Providence Island-bound settlers, and had built a small agricultural community to capitalize on the island’s flat land and fertile soil. It was the smaller, less important colony, and to compensate for this it had brought in slave labor a couple years before. So, contacting the governor there seemed like a good place to start in the attempt to get slaves. When they reached the island, though, they found only the governor alive. The Spanish had invaded, captured the island, hanged 150 English settlers on the spot, and imprisoned the others. It was lucky that they hadn’t found Providence on the same trip.
In addition to external pressures, or perhaps in response to them, factionalization had increased. Sherrard had become the leader of the island’s malcontents, much like Morgan before him. People with complaints from the pettiest to the most fundamental, saw him as their standard bearer. The ones pushing for fundamental change were Halhead and Rishworth, who wanted a New England-like system, democratically controlled, but where only the sufficiently religious had a voice in government. Even among the most devout of Puritans, this was a controversial idea, as we’ll discuss later. And Sherrard played his role with gusto, denying the sacrament to people he disagreed with randomly and without warning. So they’d be sitting in Church, waiting for communion, and he would simply, publicly pass them by if he felt like it.
On the other side of the factional divide, were the military people. They were used to a rough, hedonistic life that shocked the civilians, who had been promised the creation of a Godly society, and they expected to be the ones in control of the colony, because they were skilled, experienced, higher class and politically connected – Elfrith was, after all, Governor Bell’s father in law. And, confined to the island after his provocation of the Spanish, Elfrith had become the most combative, most quarrelsome and most frustrating of their group. He even bickered with some of the other captains, particularly Axe. So, there are two sides to every story, and while Sherrard’s actions weren’t appropriate, they were performed within a context which justifiably appalled him. The military people gathered around Bell, expecting him to take their side, but to their chagrin, he didn’t. Bell was religious, fanatically rule-oriented, and someone who had experience governing factionalized colonies. He put order above politics, and instead of exacerbating the conflict, he tried to smooth it over. And, to make this possible, he expelled the two most contentious members from the council – Sherrard, his pastor, and Elfrith, his father in law. And when Sherrard increased his agitation, condemning Bell as a tyrant and pushing harder and harder for his faction, Bell stopped the conflict by throwing him in jail for three months. In response to allegations of unfair distribution of supplies, he also demanded the magazine clerks present their books for inspection immediately, and when they refused, he imprisoned them, too. Elfrith and Rishworth had gotten involved in the magazine fight, too, and by the end, both groups hated Bell, who was criticized as impious and despotic. Meetings actually began to become so time consuming, frequent and heated that the company disallowed the council from meeting outside of specific times, except in case of emergency. They also made council meetings secret instead of being heard publicly, in order to try to contain the divisions.
They also took steps to stop disputes on Providence Island from ruining colonists’ reputations within England. Not only were reports coming in that were so heated and accusatory they couldn’t figure out who was right and wrong, their own friends and family members were the victims of the worst accusations. John Pym and Benjamin Rudyerd’s relatives had been accused of particularly horrible behavior. Arthur Rous, the minister, had been accused of abusing his servants and helping the Charity’s captain abuse the Providence Island-bound passengers in 1632. But, when Ditloff had returned to England, he said that was all made up and the problems had been Halhead’s fault. Rous had died soon after arriving at the island, but his behavior was still on the record as an unresolved colonial dispute. So, now they removed it. William Rudyerd had horribly beaten one of his servants for being lazy when he started to show the symptoms of scurvy. At this point in time, there was some debate about whether laziness was a symptom or cause of the disease. The servant had later died, and the rest of the colonists weren’t sure whether he’d killed the boy or the scurvy had. The event was so brutal that Rudyerd was sent back to England to explain his actions, along with other servants who testified about the incident, though they said that Rudyerd’s beating hadn’t been uncharacteristic of life on the island. And William Rous, also Pym’s relative by marriage, had struck the island’s smith, traditionally unacceptable treatment for a skilled laborer. Rous was humiliatingly kicked off the council, and his punishment was the subject of debate on both sides of the Atlantic, but they ultimately didn’t punish him, and reinstated him. The records which came from the island weren’t formal, weren’t reliable, weren’t complete, and weren’t even comprehensible in many cases, but accusations about the behavior of one colonist or another were frequent. So, to minimize embarassment, and to minimize the slander of innocent individuals, the Company decided that Pym, Rudyerd and two other investors would investigate each letter and remove any reputation-destroying remarks.
But, the company had clearly shifted its focus to the mainland. It hadn’t sent them the supplies or men they needed, and it hadn’t sent any official communication in over a year. When they did send word, they announced that they’d gotten a patent to colonize the mainland, and were sending the dozens of the most experienced people from Providence Island to the nearby Moskito Coast. There, they’d look for more valuable commodities, and try to open trade with the natives. They’d look for Lignum vitae, gum, agava, sasparilla, dyes, bezor stones from animal stomachs, stones which were supposedly found in the heads of alligators, and those in the bodies of manatees. They were to look for potential silkgrasses, sugarcane, and dette, an American form of vanilla, and to open relations with the natives. And, they were allowed to prioritize the shipment home of anything found on the mainland over Providence Island crops. So, to colonists, it seemed very clear what kind of a role Providence Island would take in the future. There was a brief hope that the company would send the military faction to the mainland and leave the civilians on Providence Island to build their model society in peace, but the company quickly dashed those hopes. Bad as the factionalization was, they didn’t actually want Sherrard’s faction to gain exclusive control and build a New England-like society. Sherrard was already denying people communion at the drop of a hat. Allowing a society in which he’d have actual power would be crazy.
It wasn’t long before Lane, Camock, Axe, Albertus Blauveldt and 50 more of Providence Island’s most skilled and experienced colonists headed out in two groups to the Moskito Coast, specifically to one place called Darien, and another called Cape Gracias a Dios, which had been named by Columbus after a storm. There, they met the local Indians, who were friendly, and apparently had once upon a time met Sir Francis Drake. His visit had supposedly left them with a legend that they’d ultimately live under the rule of benevolent, grey eyed people, and when the English seemed to fit the description, they welcomed them heartily. They showed them all the flora and fauna of the region, including aloe vera to treat sunburn, but none of it was particularly valuable. They gathered samples of a new kind of silkgrass, which they named Camock’s flax, as well as sugar cane and dette. They also got slaves from Dutch privateers, and from the Indians, who slaves running away from the Spanish colonies. Some male Indians also went to live on Providence Island to learn more about Christianity and English culture. Their leader’s son went to live in England, where he was educated and formed a lifelong bond of friendship with the English. And, in return, a young company servant named Lewis Morris went to live among the Indians to learn their language and set up a station to hunt turtles. Morris’s story is an interesting one. He’d already been taught some navigation while serving one of the captains, so after returning to Providence Island he spent the remainder of his time there either with the Indians or sailing for the company. He then moved to Barbados, set up a massive sugar plantation with his brother, participated in Cromwell’s Western Design, though he was criticized for his particularly profane behavior, then converted to quakerism, and later moved to New York, where he set up the Tinton Manor Ironworks, which he passed onto his nephew, who founded the political dynasty which produced the founding father Gouvernor Morris, and the Lewis Morris who signed the Declaration of Independence. And it all started with him as an indentured servant on Providence Island.
So, the company allowed worldly men who swore and drank to join the more profitable expedition, and they de-prioritized the shipment of goods grown on Providence Island, and they ordered the remaining colonists to plant extra food for the mainland explorers. They worried that they would soon be no more than a storage, supply and organization point for the people who actually got rich, and meanwhile they’d face the danger of spanish attack, without land, without self government, and without the opportunity to profit, themselves. They complained, but what was the company going to do? By now they were almost 4,000 pounds in debt with seemingly no chance of getting their money back. It didn’t even matter whether the colonists were giving valid reasons or excuses for this, they couldn’t afford to pour money into the colony indefinitely. If the Moskito Coast would fund it, they needed to pursue that, and figure out the details later. Rumors circulated that the company was planning to sell the island, but they denied that, and they were being honest. And, rumors circulated that the Spanish were getting ready to push English settlements out of the West Indies. This was harder to deny given the fate of Association Island.
Back in England, the company was every bit as frustrated as the colonists. They’d started testing the sample commodities. The Mechoacan hadn’t been as valuable as they’d hoped, and cattle had eaten all of the dette plants. And most disappointingly of all, the Camock’s flax was too hard to separate to be a good industrial commodity. It produced fantastic cloth, but separating the flax was too difficult and time consuming with the technology which was available at the time. They’d have to abandon it as a commodity. By this time, the company was 4000 pounds in debt, and company members were also being cheated by the merchants transporting their goods. A shipment of wood from Association Island, for instance, had been sent to France, and the French who bought it claimed it was in bad condition. They paid a fraction of the expected price, and created a multi-year dispute. The company never got its money back. At the same time they also sent Henry Darley to Holland to investigate whether ships from Association Island were going there to sell their cargoes, bypass the company and get more money. And, another ship they owned wrecked off the coast of Brittany at this time, and a year later the company was still trying to settle issues surrounding the cargo.
When Rudyerd returned from Providence Island, after being accused of beating his servant to death, he testified that the island wasn’t even worth keeping except as a privateering base, and their authorization to privateer had been withdrawn years ago as the peace with Spain had solidified.
So, they wrote back to the colonists with the news, with an explanation of their own problems, and more accusations of colonists’ laziness. It seemed like they were more interested in bickering with each other than working crops, and it seemed like they had no understanding of the stakes involved in colonization. How had they let the cattle eat the dette? How hadn’t they started to at least grow cotton in addition to their tobacco? How had they let their gunpowder get ruined in the rain? Did they not realize that that gunpowder had cost money? “It seems strange to us that powder so chargeable to us, and so useful to you, should perish for want of boards, than which nothing may be more easily had.” Evidently, in their frustration with the company, Providence Islanders had also traded their entire crop of tobacco for Dutch wine, too, which was just too much. After this ship, they’d send no more money and no more servants until the colonists started sending back a staple commodity. If they were having so much difficulty growing stuff, then servants would just be more mouths to feed. That’s not exactly fair, because one problem the colonists had been facing was a labor shortage, and that problem was only getting worse as more and more settlers were asking to be allowed to return to England, and servant terms were starting to expire. They were also having trouble recruiting people to go, including servants, something they blamed on the colonists, but which probably had more to do with the fact that Providence Island was now competing with New England for settlers. At the same time, the company also overturned Bell’s imprisonment of the Magazine clerks. And, they asked Camock, who had found the flax and the dette, to keep looking and trying to grow the most valuable of dye plants, annotto.
Of course, this compounded settler frustration. By the time the company had discovered that Camock’s flax was worthless, they had already written letters encouraging settlers to keep working with it, so they just sent those letters anyway. The colonists had waited over a year to hear from the company, and when they did hear from them, they got instructions which were obsolete even before they left England. This discouragement was the last straw for many colonists, who returned to England, while the rest turned their efforts exclusively to tobacco.
By this point in time, New England was really taking off, with waves of people traveling there every couple months. Roote, who had considered taking his congregation of 100 to Providence Island, decided to go to New England instead. He’d demanded the company adopt a New England-like governmental structure, and when the company hesitated, he went to North America, where he founded Rowley, Massachusetts instead. He was only one of many ministers the Providence Island company tried to recruit, who ended up going to New England. And, the story was always the same. Each one demanded Providence Island adopt a New England-like government system before they’d relocate, but each time the company was reluctant enough that they ultimately gave up on the idea. Even Sherrard wrote the company asking for permission to return to England. He said the faction against him was unbearable, spreading lies about him, publicly disgracing him, and that he’d been in jail for months. He reiterated accusations of Bell’s tyrannical tendencies A friend of his also wrote, asking for Sherrard to be given special servants and a stipend, and the company agreed to the requests. To date, he’d been the only minister they’d been able to recruit.
So, throughout this episode, one of the big themes that’s emerged has been the conflict between the Providence Island vision and the New England Model. And a second is the, not just faction fighting, but absolute animosity among groups of colonists and investors. These divisions shed fascinating light the internal divisions among Puritans, which would become so obvious as Parliament emerged victorious during the English Civil Wars.
In fact, it was at this time that some of the investors, including Lords Saye and Brooke, considered going to Massachusetts. They saw the two ventures as fitting within a larger Puritan American Vision, and their close associate, Henry Vane, had recently moved there. As we know, they wrote with proposed government changes, and when those were rejected, they decided not to move to New England after all. In the eyes of Massachusetts colonists, they chose not to go because they’d lose their aristocratic status, but their reasoning was more complex than that.
The majority of the English investors – especially Lords Saye and Brooke – saw New England’s society as a road to theocratic despotism. Lord Saye went so far as to say that “no wise man should be so foolish as to live where every man is a master and masters must not correct their servants, where wise man propound and fools determine.” He said that New England settlers had overturned the basis of order and true liberty, removing protections for any individuals’ rights or security. They emphasized that being approved by a minister shouldn’t be a prerequisite to citizenship. The New England Model was nothing more than a return to all the worst parts of Catholicism, and it robbed people of freedom of conscience – there should be at least some level of religious and moral tolerance within a society. People shouldn’t have to agree with the majority to be allowed basic rights and protections. There should be separation between Church and State, because ministers should focus on people’s spiritual needs, and because as humans they were no less corruptible than anyone else. Good government, based on laws and checked by parliamentary representatives, was the key to liberty, and New England had failed to set that up. Instead, it had created a purely democratic system in which one person per town was responsible for selecting the voters. When Saye and Brooke had offered to go to New England, it was in part to help shape New England’s government, but their ideas were rejected. And, when the Antinomian Controversy happened, the Providence Island grandees felt their fears had been confirmed.
In contrast to the New England Model, Saye and Brooke’s ideal society was more of a refinement of the current English system, and that’s what they tried to implement on Providence Island. King and Parliament, Company and Council. Leading locals would preserve community order, and large scale issues and court cases would be handled by the central government. They wanted moderation in punishment, and felt Bell tended to punish people far, far too severely. And they said leaders should set a good example for the rest of the colony. They valued ceremony, and encouraged it within the colony as a way to help maintain order. They even sent a silver plate and tipstaff to the island and wrote up a set of ceremonial rules to use there. Live and let live. Freedom. Gentleness. Ceremony and moderation. These were the ideals which Saye and Brooke envisioned for their fledgling societies, and for England as a whole.
I don’t have to tell you which was more effective. Even in New England, Winthrop and Nathaniel Ward wrote that colonists had become shockingly lazy and profane. Ward said that, witnessing the change, several colonists had felt they’d made the wrong decision in emigrating, making “an ill change, even from the snare to the pit.”
These contradictory visions persisted through the war, and re-emerged after it. Lots of Company members died during the war, but the surviving members of Saye and Brooke’s company group ended up distancing themselves, at least somewhat, from Cromwell’s regime while New Englanders took central places in it. Saye went into retirement after the execution of the king, and Oliver St. John expressed his own reservations about it, though he did end up getting pulled back into Cromwell’s government. Henry Vane, their close friend who had left New England in mutual disgust with its inhabitants, turned against Cromwell. And Mandeville, who became the Earl of Manchester, was one of Cromwell’s strongest Parliamentary opponents, to the point of helping initiate the Restoration.
There were company members who didn’t take this stance, but there were also disputes among company members regarding their colony. Pym and Brooke, most notably, ended up in an intense feud which only grew more heated as the colony’s problems mounted. One of the earliest instances happened at this time period, with Brooke and Pym fighting over whether to allow Lane to return to the colony after his return to England. Brooke won, with the help of Saye, Barrington and company husbandman William Woodcock, but Pym would continue to try to minimize Brooke’s influence over the colony.
And, settler factions were similarly predictive. The captains and military men all took positions of rank within Cromwell’s army and government, many of them helping to lead the Western Design, along with Warwick. And the civilians really didn’t. Halhead became disillusioned with the Parliamentary cause even before the war was won, upset that Parliamentarians didn’t act against the enclosures, and noting that many members of the House of Commons had gotten rich because of the enclosures. After his death, a book he wrote became one of the key works of the Leveller movement. Sherrard worked as a small parish preacher in Kent and later Cornwall, in contrast to people like Thomas Shepard and Hugh Peters, and despite the fact that he’d returned from Providence Island as a hero. Lane died in the Bahamas, and his children ended up in Maryland. Sadly, Rishworth and his family died of disease in Barbados almost immediately after the fall of Providence Island, so we don’t get to see how he would have dealt with the future developments. It might have been particularly interesting because he, as we’ll discuss later, became an anti-slavery agitator on Providence.
So, it’s just an interesting glimpse into the divisions and disputes which so characterized the rise of Parliament, and which would ultimately help pave the way for the Restoration. Two – or even three – ideas of liberty, each accusing the other of being despotic. And, each would vie for power in the years to come. But the divisions were first tangible here, in the colonies, and they were refined in the colonies,