The foundations of the British Empire were laid as England passed the Navigation Act of 1651, declaring that all English colonies were created by and for Parliament, were directly accountable to the English government, and must trade only with English merchants.
It also moved to force colonies who had declared for Charles II into submission to the English government. This led to a three month siege in Barbados, the purging of the Somers Island company, and the sending of both Willoughby and Berkeley back to England, not to return without permission from Parliament.
Prince Rupert’s disastrous voyages through the Caribbean mark the end of his time in the civil wars.
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Up until this point, we’ve been talking about an America comprised of colonies run by joint stock companies and lords proprietor, with one exception run by the king himself, but when we think about America on the eve of the Revolutionary War, the picture is very different, an image of colonies subordinated to a massive, monolithic Empire, and slogans to match, like “no taxation without representation.” The question becomes how we went from one dynamic to the other, and the answer to that question, like so many others, is Oliver Cromwell.
Introduction
I love this era of American history. It’s overwhelmingly untamed, uncharted, uncertain, a time where unparalleled uniqueness of vision would meet unparalleled intensity of hardship. The notion of a frontier, of course, will continue, even up until 1907, but after today there will be a fundamental, and increasingly dramatic, change from these earliest years. And for the most part, the change did not come from America, which continued to be populated by the same sorts of people for the same sorts of reasons as early on, but from America’s relationship to England, and in the nature of England, itself.
Beyond the elimination of the institution of monarchy, and beyond the new acceptance of religious sects, the Civil War in England had produced a vastly different country from the one that preceded it. Very much unlike the England that we’ve become so intimately familiar with, the version which was beginning to emerge looked a whole lot like a modern state.
Perhaps the best example we can use to illustrate this is the military. Charles I and his predecessors had relied on a militia. The notion of a standing army was deeply controversial, and even if it had been widely accepted, the king couldn’t have afforded one. The navy was the same way, comprised mostly of privateers. But in 1650, England had a standing army of 30,000 and a government-run navy of almost 20,000 people, and the numbers were increasing. And it paid for this with taxes which grew to be eleven times higher than those under Charles I. One of those taxes was the excise tax, which had the additional purpose of trying to modify individuals’ behavior, which was also a bit of a novelty, at least on the scale it was now attempted.
In some of these changes, England lagged behind mainland Europe, and in some, it was way ahead of the curve. But their combined effect was a massive centralization of power in London. And with that, England dramatically changed its international posture from a defensive one to an offensive one, and its colonial focus from exploration and experimentation, to expansion and, most of all, profit. Not just profit if you managed to make your colony successful, but profit as in how England, itself, could get the most out of its colonies.
Looking, especially at Barbados and areas of India, England started to see that the colonies could make London a center of world trade, bringing in previously unseen amounts of money to both English merchants and the English government.
And thinking in these terms, the new English Commonwealth immediately started to treat its colonies differently.
Reforms in this vein had certainly been happening, as we’ve discussed, since the first year of war. But now that Cromwell and the Rump had emerged with ultimate control of the country, the new government’s attitude toward the colonies was quickly stated: “You belong to us.” Colonies existed specifically for the benefit of the Mother Country. This was a completely new approach. They weren’t companies or counties doing their own thing within the English framework. They were assets of, and accountable directly to, the English Government. It was a very fast, very dramatic redefinition of everything it meant to be a colonist.
Specifically, this was first articulated in the Rump’s response to the colonies which had declared Charles II to be king, and thus that the Commonwealth was illegitimate. This act was entitled “An act prohibiting trade with the Barbada’s, Virginia, Bermuda’s and Antego,” and the title pretty much explains the contents, but there are two really noteworthy details which solidified the government’s changing attitude.
The first was a practical statement of the new government’s new colonial policy.
“Whereas [they] hath been and are colonies and plantations which were planted at the cost and settled by the people and authority of this nation, which are and ought to be subordinate to, and dependent upon England, and hath ever since the planting thereof been and ought to be subject to such Laws, orders and Regulations as are or shall be made by the Parliament of England …”
In other words, English colonies should be governed directly by the English Parliament. They even gave Parliament credit for founding the colonies, something which was decidedly inaccurate. Previously, colonies had been governed by their companies, and those companies had been beholden to the English government, but colonists weren’t directly answering to King or Parliament. That semi-autonomy had been the whole foundation of New England’s society, and of Baltimore’s whole vision for Maryland. And threats to these colonies had gone through the Company or Lord Proprietor. English governance and society had been very decentralized, and colonization had followed this pattern.
Now England was centralizing, and its colonies would be expected to follow this pattern. If you’re in an English colony, you’re under Parliament, and you answer to Parliament, end of story. This of course helped with regards to an emerging Imperial vision, and it also carried little risk or responsibility as even the most tenuous of colonies had stabilized at this point.
The second change solidified by the act was an extension of this, in which the Council of State claimed the authority to control who traded in its colonies. Specifically, that trade with the four main rebel colonies by anyone, including foreign ships, was forbidden, and privateering authorized against anyone who tried. On the one hand, this makes reasonable sense. They were putting down a rebellion of sorts, and certainly any embargo of Royalist colonies would fail if the colonists could simply turn and trade with the Dutch.
But, English merchants had been pushing for years for the exclusive right to trade in English colonies, and with the redefinition of English colonies as being colonies created by and for England, enacting something like this was now possible. No colony wanted to lose the Dutch trade which had consistently been more valuable than the English trade, and which had lifted multiple colonies out of poverty, so starting small, with a group of colonies that needed to be dealt with anyway, was a logical first step.
To Royalists, this was vindication from the act of regicide. At the next meeting of the Assembly, Berkeley made an impassioned speech, giving thanks that “God hath separated the Virginians from the guilt of the crying blood of our pious sovereign of ever blessed memory,” and closing with “Gentlemen, by the Grace of God, we will not so tamely part with our king, and all these blessings we enjoy under him, and if they oppose us do but follow me. I will either lead you to victory or lose a life which I cannot more gloriously sacrifice than for loyalty and your security.”
Now, this act may have been one of the first steps in creating the British Empire, but it was also step one in what you could easily argue was the last phase of the English Civil Wars, which was the new Commonwealth forcing the colonies to submit to its authority.
In tiny Newfoundland, the Commonwealth nullified the patent of its Royalist proprietor and governor, David Kirke. They imprisoned him pending trial for the accusation that he had interfered with the shipowners who frequented the colony, and two years later, still waiting for his trial, he died in prison. His family, and plenty of the original settlers remained in the colony, heavily royalist, but there was nothing they could actually do for the cause and Newfoundland’s rebellion was officially over.
And in Barbados, Willoughby’s thinking echoed Berkeley’s. Willoughby was absolutely willing to give Barbados’s coveted sugar trade to Dutch merchants at war with an English government he considered wholly illegitimate. He was in charge there now, and like Bell before him, he had positioned himself as a consummate moderate. Using this moderation, he had united most of the island behind him, and been recognized as governor. He’d even repealed acts targeting the colony’s Roundheads, restoring their land to them, but he would not submit to an England without its rightful king. And he would trade with the Dutch without hesitation.
And in response to his defiance, England prepared a fleet. Not only was Barbadian sugar fabulously valuable, which prompted London merchants to petition the Rump for a military expedition to enforce its trade ban, but in addition, some of the colony’s Roundheads were now in England, petitioning the government to push royalists out by armed force, and replace Willoughby with Edward Winslow. At least one Barbadian Roundhead actually spoke in Willoughby’s favor, citing his reversal of anti-roundhead policies, but such people were in the minority, and England started preparing its naval expedition. To illustrate just how much English merchants had invested in this argument, they asked for and received permission to send merchant ships with the navy’s fleet, so that they could trade their goods for sugar as soon as the island submitted.
So, England sent a manifesto declaring Barbados rebels and traitors to the Commonwealth, and then they sent a fleet led by Colonel George Ayscue, a loyal Parliamentarian who had served under the Earl of Warwick, and whose greatest achievement thus far had been preventing his fleet’s defection to the Royalists during a naval revolt during the Second Civil War.
And, as they crossed the Atlantic, Willoughby heard of their pending arrival. He also heard about Charles II’s presence in Scotland, with that country largely unified behind him. And he heard that Prince Rupert was in the West Indies. And he didn’t know exactly what Parliament would do when it got control of Barbados. So he did the calculations, chose perhaps the most optimistic result, and decided Barbados should fight. He went to the Assembly, and they agreed, and together they published a Declaration stating their intent to fight rather than submit to the Commonwealth. It is absolutely amazing how much this Declaration sounds like the Declaration of Independence.
“Shall we be bound to the government and lordship of a Parliament in which we have no representatives? In truth this would be a slavery far exceeding all that the English nation hath yet suffered.”
I mean this is groundbreaking. No other colony took this approach, and the document has been repeatedly used and cited since by colonial legislatures opposing imperial interference. Though he was no longer in charge, Bell’s influence was written all over this, because he was the moderate Presbyterian who had formed Barbados’s government along Constitutional-type lines. Willoughby was in many ways a perfectly suited successor to Bell.
And the next day, they started preparing to fight. Everyone who refused would be stripped of their land. A militia of 6,000 foot and 400 horse was raised, and a levy of 50,000 pounds of sugar and 20,000 pounds of tobacco imposed to pay it. The export duty which had been granted to Willoughby was also used for this. Forts were prepared, and every ship nearby was required to contribute 1-2 pieces of ordinance. And they were intensely strict about all of this. Divided sympathies would doom the colony, and like we’ve discussed, Barbados was at this point full of people who had lost everything to Parliament and had no sympathy for anyone who had any sympathy for the Commonwealth. The Dutch helped, sending daily ships trading drought provisions, arms and ammunition in exchange for sugar, and Willoughby ordered that trade only be conducted with them.
It was frenzied, and it was extreme, but Willoughby promised the moderates that if good terms were offered, he’d be willing to accept them, but more than anything he held out hope for Charles II in Scotland.
And then they waited. Ayscue had stopped on the way to subdue Royalists in the Scilly Isles, and then he had spent some time searching for Prince Rupert without success.
And then he headed for Barbados, and at dusk on October 15, 1651, Barbadians stationed on Carlisle Bay saw a fleet of Parliamentary ships in the distance. Ayscue ordered his troops to stay where they were for the night, so they might seize any Dutch vessels which approached. And the next morning, they did just that, capturing a small group of Dutch ships, but only after it was emptied of cargo.
And they sailed into the bay. Barbadians fired their artillery, but did virtually no damage. Willoughby distributed his army along the coast to stop a landing, and they fought hard. It became clear that Barbados was well enough defended that Ayscue couldn’t successfully invade, so he sat back and blockaded it. He sent Willoughby a formal demand to surrender Barbados to the Parliament of England, and Willoughby replied that he acknowledged “no supreme authority over Englishmen but the Kings, and by his Commission, and for him I do, and by God’s assistance, shall defend this place.”
And just as an illustration of how strongly Willoughby felt about all of this, he wrote this to his wife, who had asked him to surrender for his own safety. “No, I will not do it, and therefore, Dear Heart, let me entreat thee to leave off thy persuasions to submit to them, who so unjustly, so wickedly have ruined thee and me and mine. If ever they get the island, it will cost them more than it is worth before they have it.”
So, blockade or not, Willoughby was obviously not going to work with Ayscue, so Ayscue circulated pamphlets to the other colonists, pushing them to turn against him. And he increased colonists’ tensions with a series of raids, small, destructive, unpredictable and often bloody attacks. So there were ships in or out, raids, alarms, and just a constant state of uncertainty, but Barbados was still unwavering in its allegiance to both king and governor. And meanwhile, Ayscue’s own troops were suffering. Enough of them were dying from scurvy that he could barely man the ships, but he was meticulous about maintaining the illusion of strength.
Then came news that Charles II had lost at Worcester and the Royalist cause was doomed, and Ayscue passed this information on to the colonists, too. But Willoughby was still unwavering. “I have never served the king in expectation so much of his prosperous condition, as in the consideration of my duty. And if it have pleased God to add this sadd affliction to his former, I will not be a means of increasing it by delivering this place ot your keeping.”
So the blockade, raids and pamphlets continued for two more months. Ayscue’s men got a couple of disturbingly effective raids in, though, even at Barbadian strongholds, and this shook the colonists. And in December, when reinforcements came on their way to Virginia to subdue the royalists there, the apparent doubling of Ayscue’s fleet shook them even more. They didn’t know that this fleet had been severely weakened by illness, too. Moderates started to push Willoughby to negotiate. Willoughby still had no desire to do this, but he reluctantly agreed. So reluctantly, in fact, that Ayscue didn’t believe his offer was genuine.
So, Ayscue planned an attack to push even harder for negotiations. He gathered 400 people, some from each fleet, some Barbadians who had defected, and even 150 Scottish Prisoners who he was able to pay to fight. And they launched an overwhelmingly successful raid on Barbados, killing 100 people and taking 60 prisoners while losing only 8. His success meant that the Barbadian army would now have to be continually mobilized, even when the fleet bound for Virginia left.
At this point, Barbados was tense enough that Ayscue could play on the divisions. He reached out to Modiford with immensely favorable terms, and negotiated with him instead of Willoughby. Modiford liked the terms, and his faction demanded surrender. They reminded Willoughby of his promise to surrender if terms were favorable enough, and the Assembly went to work preparing for negotiations. These negotiations went nowhere, because at the end of the day, Willoughby’s faction, which included so many victims of transportation and sequestration, did not want to submit without being allowed to declare their allegiance to monarchical government, and that’s one thing that Ayscue was not going to allow.
This did finalize the split of the moderates, though. And at this point, they decided to take over the island and accept Ayscue’s terms. Ayscue encouraged them to do this, even when they wavered, reminding them of the supplies they’d be able to get, and of the island’s past struggles. They declared their resolution, and Ayscue once again tried to get Willoughby to back down. But once again, Willoughby refused. “Neither the treachery of one, nore the supineness of others” had weakened his or his followers’ to the point of accepting a dishonorable peace.
So, Modiford and Ayscue met, with an army of 2000 men and 100 horse, and started marching. The two forces were just about equally matched at this point, and Willoughby’s soldiers started to desert. This was going to be big, and this was going to be bloody, and he was going to lose, and after retreating two miles, he surrendered. They met at a place called the Mermaid Tavern at Austin’s Bay, and agreed to terms. In these negotiations, Barbados gave Ayscue its fortifications, and agreed to accept Parliament’s choice of commissioners and governors, as well as its control of the militia. And, they agreed to give back Barbadian Roundheads’ estates.
In exchange, though, they got their own sequestered estates back, whether they were in England, Scotland or Ireland, as well as the promise that they would not be punished for their rebellion, and they got the right to free trade with any country which was at peace with England. The terms were extremely generous, so generous in fact that Ayscue worried that the Rump Parliament wouldn’t ratify them, but he had to make the concessions that would solidify peace fast, before Modiford’s group decided he was all talk and rejoined WIlloughby’s. He was particularly worried about free trade, knowing that the English government was contemplating making all colonies trade exclusively with the English, but he explained the issue away … to Parliament at least … by saying he only meant that they’d be given the fullest extent of free trade allowed by English law.
The articles were ratified, though, Willoughby was forced to return to England, not to return without Parliamentary permission, and Ayscue took over the governorship. He reviewed everything about the way the island ran and ensured that everyone in any position of authority was reliably loyal to the Commonwealth. He publicly proclaimed things like the Act against Kingship, and then banished a group of Cavaliers for a year, violating his own peace terms, and all acts passed during Willoughby’s time in office were repealed. And with this, he appointed a new governor and left, stopping by Suriname where Willoughby had started a small colony of people who had been pushed out of Barbados, to ensure that that one was in submission, too. And then, the rest of the West Indies. He didn’t even have to go to Antigua, because the small colony had written a letter indicating their surrender when Barbados fell.
Willoughby hadn’t been wrong that Prince Rupert was coming with a fleet of ships. In fact, he’d wanted to come earlier, but after fighting in Ireland, and Portugal, and the Mediterranean, incurring debt to keep the fight going, his fleet wasn’t in great shape and his captains had opposed the idea of crossing the Atlantic. Instead, he’d been doing some privateering around the English gold mines in Africa. But now, as he arrived, it was too late. The French welcomed him, and there were pockets of English sympathy but colonial leadership was uniformly hostile. There were people on St. Kitts willing to trade with him, but an Englishman who had sailed with him was executed by the local authorities.
His fleet did what they could to help the Dutch war effort against the English, but they were devastated by a hurricane, and one of the many casualties was Rupert’s brother Maurice, who went down with his ship, the Defiance. Then disease started to spread. Things were going downhill fast, and Rupert himself was seriously ill. Nothing good would come of staying, so he sailed back to Europe and docked in France. He came ashore and promptly collapsed from disease and exhaustion. It was weeks before he could even stand again, and he never fully recovered. He stayed at Charles II’s court in exile for a while, until they had an argument about that debt that I’d mentioned. Disgusted, Rupert left for Germany to live in obscurity.
And especially after the fall of Barbados, there was virtually nothing the intensely rural, unfortified Virginia could do. Cromwell appointed a small group including William Claiborne and Richard Bennet as commissioners to reduce it and Maryland to submission to the Commonwealth, backed up by that fleet which had helped in Barbados.
When Berkeley heard about this, he started planning for the colony’s defense, gathering about 11,000 Englishmen at Jamestown, while a local Indian tribe promised an additional 500 warriors. But the message from other colonists was clear. You know we can’t win this. You know we can’t survive without trading our tobacco. And you know we really can’t do any good for the king anyway. Barbados might have had a little more leeway because of the intense wealth and value of sugar, but Virginia always hung by a thread. If Virginia had to endure even a fraction of what Barbados had, it would crush them. The leading voices in this argument were certainly sympathetic to Parliament. Regicide Edmund Ludlow claimed that his relative George was one of them, but they had a point. Virginia and Bermuda couldn’t stand alone against the weight of the government that had defeated every force which had ever opposed it. And honestly, though it was true that they couldn’t do much for the king, it was also true that England couldn’t do much to enforce its demands in Virginia after submission. Berkeley couldn’t argue against this, and Virginia, too, submitted.
Those who refused to take an oath to the Commonwealth weren’t punished, and the Commonwealth agreed to allow them to pray for the king and speak well of him privately for one year without punishment. Like Barbados, it was given freedom from any taxation that its own Assembly hadn’t agreed to, though of course this assembly would be filled with people loyal to the Commonwealth while Berkeley and his leading supporters would be sent to England like Willoughby.
And that was the general tone. Anything that the Commonwealth couldn’t enforce anyway, the English commissioners granted as a concession. Officially, they demanded submission, but realistically it wasn’t worth the fight. With Berkeley gone, Virginia couldn’t cause much trouble, and as long as they didn’t cause trouble, Parliament didn’t care.
Bennett took over the governorship, with Claiborne Secretary of State, and the new council included Captain John West, Samuel Mathews, Nathaniel Littleton, and Argoll Yeardley, among others. They’d do what they needed to to keep Virginia in line-ish. When Virginians put forth an actual Cavalier as the head of the House of Burgesses, the man wasn’t able to take his position under the threat that his private business would be made public. In other words, he’d be held accountable for the laws he’d broken in opposing the Commonwealth. So that showed how things would be. If Virginians stayed quiet, they’d be left alone. If they tried to change things, they’d be singled out and held accountable for the laws they were breaking.
And, at this point, Virginia essentially disappears from the historical record. There’s virtually no information about what happened there for the next eight years. The only things that survive are the acts and orders of the General Assembly. They passed a lot of laws in the Puritan vein, for what most of that was worth. And ordinary Virginians kept doing the same thing they’d always done, regardless of these laws. They read from the prayer book even after it was illegal, and they followed what Anglican pastors they had, even if those pastors were preaching illegally. Laws were virtually impossible to enforce, and Bennet’s government knew this.
And in England, Parliament had purged the Somers Islands Company of members who opposed the Commonwealth, so its remaining members pushed Bermuda into submission. They also allowed the Eleutherian Adventurers to return to Bermuda from the Bahamas, and pushed Governor Forster to punish the people who had revolted after the regicide … or tried. Forster evaded their questions, feigned ignorance, and downplayed both the revolt and the previous governor’s participation in it. He protected his predecessor, and the rebels, from the consequences demanded by the company on Parliament’s behalf, and to his credit, Bermudians lived peacefully thanks to his leadership.
As for Maryland, we’re just going to have to discuss that in the next episode.
But, with the colonies essentially submitted to the Commonwealth, the Rump Parliament took another step toward becoming an empire. “Merchants and trade were making great strides,” observed the Venetian resident. “As government and trade are ruled by the same persons.” So, if the merchants wanted exclusive trade in the colonies, they were going to get it, and a group of merchants including Maurice Thoompson, William Pennoyer, Benjamin Worseley and even James Drax, along with Oliver St. John, drafted the Navigation Act of 1651, declaring that all colonies must trade only with English ships, and that they “are and ought to be subordinate to such Laws, Orders and Regulations as are or shall be made by Parliament.” And the Rump passed it.
If they had done this before, the colonies would have united and fought much harder than they did. This was an explicit demand from Barbadians in exchange for submission, and they in particular now felt that this had been granted in bad faith. When they protested, England blew them off, and so even their Commonwealth-loyal governor ignored the law and they kept trading with the Dutch. Virginia was going to ignore the law anyway, and they did, as did Bermuda, and one can imagine, the other colonies, too.
But this set of events, more than perhaps any other we’ve discussed, laid the foundation for the British Empire, and even if colonies could temporarily ignore the laws, American history would be forever changed.