After the Willoughby brothers, the king imposed governors in Barbados who he expected to be loyal to him instead of the colony. The first two backfired in dramatically different ways, one siding with the colonists, and the other descending into embarrasing levels of tyranny and corruption.
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History of Africa plug
After the Willoughby brothers’ deaths, Charles II moved to install governors in Barbados who were loyal only to him. This change would ultimately prove disastrous enough to lead to the first serious rumors of American colonies seeking independence.
Introduction
After William Lord Willoughby died, Barbadians asked the king to select a colonist as their governor, someone loyal to the island, who understood its needs and problems. And frankly, someone who had a vested interest in whether the island was successful. Barbados was largely populated by former royalists, and they had shown their loyalty in not one but two Dutch Wars, giving up unfathomable amounts for the good of the king. It shouldn’t be a problem or source of concern to select a colonist as governor.
They also asked that the infamous 4.5% export duty on sugar be eliminated until the most recent war with the Dutch was over. They emphasized how much public debt they’d been forced to endure, the fact that because of this the island didn’t have money to repair its forts, or its jail, its assembly was meeting in taverns because it couldn’t pay for a courthouse, and that they didn’t even have the ships necessary to prevent their Dutch enemies from blockading the island. The 4.5% had originally been passed with not just the expectation, but the stipulation that it must be used in part to pay the island’s public expenses, and the king had illegally taken it all. They were struggling financially, and they needed some relief.
The king listened to none of this, telling the island’s residents that “they were too much inclined to popular government already,” and instead sent Jonathan Atkins to Barbados to act as its new governor. Atkins was a loyal courtier with both civil and military experience. He’d been a Royalist colonel during the wars, and also the Governor of Guernsey. The king, he reiterated, would be the one who named the councilmembers, and on the advice of one John Locke, any law not signed by the king would lapse after two years, “because the government would thereby more immediately depend upon his majesty, so the island be better secured under his obedience.”
Before Atkins left, the London merchants, the Gentlemen Planters in London, gave him a petition backing Barbadian requests about the 4.5% being used in part to pay the island’s expenses, and asking that all Barbadian offices be filled by Barbadians, rather than irresponsible deputies of the king. The petition also asked for some direct assistance to be given to Barbados to help it get through the war, and Atkins did present this on behalf of Barbados before he left.
The king predictably rejected it, but this was the first hint of what Atkins’s surprising approach to governing would be.
When he arrived, he found Barbadians continuing their passive resistance to all royal authority. In one particular case, they had refused to admit a man named Edwin Stede to the post of provost-marshal, essentially head of the island’s law enforcement, rightfully saying this went against the colony’s constitution. When they had no choice but to install him, they announced that as head of the island’s law enforcement, his job was to watch over the decayed jail, and just try to keep the prisoners in there. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie Support Your Local Sheriff, but it was pretty much that, he had to try to keep prisoners in a jail in which they could simply slip out of holes in the wall and leave, in front of him at noon with there being no way for him to stop it. When Stede said this was impossible, Barbadians informed him that if he wanted his job to be easier, maybe he should get the king to pay for a new jail out of the 4.5% which was supposed to pay for it in the first place. Until then, he could just try.
It was that kind of passive aggressive rebellion that Barbados had perfected, and it was that environment that Atkins entered. But much to Barbados’s surprise, Atkins soon showed himself to be completely on their side. The Willoughbies had been sympathetic to Barbados, but they would fight to keep the more belligerent colonists in line, even as they petitioned to England on the colony’s behalf. Atkins, though, never argued with them. He asked them to do things nicely, and sometimes they even did. For instance, asked them to repeal a law which was allowing them to defraud the Royal African Company, and they actually agreed! They also agreed to pay for island improvements via a tax on liquors, as long as they kept control of the money, an obvious demand because the last time they’d sent it through the king, he’d just taken it. And all the while, in England, Atkins was accused of fighting the Barbadian cause even harder than the islanders, themselves, which was saying something. And, they gave him 200,000 pounds of sugar in gratitude for his support of their cause.
Barbados started to think that he might actually be able to help. They wrote to the London merchants, while he wrote to the Privy Council. A hurricane destroyed a year’s worth of sugar, and a potential slave revolt was thwarted, and both wrote begging for relief. And this time, they kind of expected to get it. After all, the king’s own representative was wholeheartedly on their side.
But that didn’t happen. In fact, Atkins’s support of Barbados made Charles II even more irritable. He refused everything, and now demanded increasingly detailed records from the island so that he could make sure they weren’t siphoning off the top of the 4.5% without permission.
And, he demanded that Barbados support Antigua in conflicts it was having with the French, even though he had split Antigua and the other Leewards from Barbados’s patent, against Barbados’s wishes and at the Leewards’ request.
Basically, the French had started to move toward the idea of pushing the English out of the West Indies. The Spanish were a fraction of their former power, and the Dutch presence had collapsed after the two wars. Now it was between the English and the French, and the English government hadn’t established any sort of a military or naval presence in the area. In fact, colonists in all the islands had complained about this. The French had taken to entering English waters without saluting first to acknowledge English authority there, and in Antigua, the English had fired on them to force them to do this. The French called their bluff, and the English had nothing. Charles II loved Antigua’s actions, but also didn’t send anything to back them.
So the French started to recruit Carib help to harass Antigua’s residents without provoking an international incident. They armed Caribs from Dominica, encouraged them to launch a series of raids on Antigua’s colonists, and paid them for any loot and slaves they managed to obtain during the attacks. So, Antigua launched a series of counterattacks, of the standard, kill and burn type, but then things had gotten weird.
Way, way back in the day, Thomas Warner had been one of the first English leaders in Barbados and the rest of the English Caribbean. He was long dead, but he had two sons. One was Philip, the son of his wife, and the other was Indian, the son of a Carib woman. Philip was one of the leaders of Antigua. Indian was a little more complicated. He led some Dominica Caribs, but had always supported the English, and especially Barbados. Dominica was supposed to be under Barbados’s patent, and Indian supported that island’s government. He’d been good friends with the Willoughbies, he’d helped Barbados maintain some good relationships with at least some of the Caribs, and he’d even fought on Barbados’s side in some conflicts.
When the conflicts with the French-backed Caribs had started, though, Philip lured a group led by Indian onto a ship, and massacred them all. Atkins arrested Philip and had him sent to England to be tried, but the king sent him back to Barbados to stand trial. He ordered Barbados to convict Philip of “this inhuman act,” and hopefully to send the heads of Philip and his associates to disaffected Indian tribes as a peace offering. But, Barbados, despite not approving of the act, acquitted Philip. It wasn’t their business what happened in Antigua, and they weren’t cooperating with the king’s government.
This incident was the beginning of the end for Atkins. Barbados saw that, despite Atkins’s good intentions, he wasn’t winning the fights in any way. The king kept increasing his demands for authority, doing things like appointing people to posts he had no right to appoint them to, and then allowing those people to simply lease out the offices to people looking to make some money. So they went back to talking only to the merchants, and not even engaging much with Atkins.
And Atkins, who saw this trend and the fact that he really wasn’t getting anywhere with the king, took his English arguments to the next level. He attacked the Navigation Acts, highlighting all the problems they caused for the island, and asking that they be removed with colonists simply paying an export duty in Barbados to fund the crown. On the face of it, this was reasonable, but you know, I know, and Barbadian colonists knew something that Atkins didn’t. The Navigation Acts weren’t just about money for the king. They were the most important English colonial policy, the foundations of the emerging empire. The merchants were some of the most powerful people in England, and they wanted it, too. And merchant support of Barbados in arguments with the king had been predicated on Barbados’s constant avoidance of actually attacking the Navigation Acts. Everything Atkins said was true, but saying it jeopardized everything Barbados hoped to achieve.
When they got Atkins’s message, both the lords and the king censured him severely. And then, they demanded he start sending a list of all Barbadian laws to England, so that the king could go through every law Barbados had ever had in its history and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. He also wanted maps, and documentation of every single event that happened on the island, even as simple as a birth or baptism, and detailed accounts of exactly how much sugar was grown and exported. Atkins now refused, sending instead another list of grievances. The lords threatened him, so he sent a few newer laws here and there, but started making excuses for why he wasn’t sending everything else. He couldn’t send a map, because the only mapmaker there was a Quaker, whose religious principles forbade him from marking any military posts, forts or defenses on it. As for the laws, he explained that the assembly was refusing to give them up, and added why wouldn’t they? If he was going to leave them in a lawless society. And he point blank refused on the sugar.
And then, for some reason, the Royal African Company got involved. Atkins had just informed the king that Barbados’s military stores were ok for the time being, and the Royal African Company wrote contradicting him, and saying that Barbados urgently needed a supply of pikes. And the king rushed to send them 1,500. He also reprimanded Atkins for misinforming him about the state of the island’s military stores.
It’s a bizarre little interaction, and it’s quite likely that they were trying to make a case for Atkins needing to provide thorough documentation of colony affairs, but instead they gave him the opportunity to go nuclear. He got Barbados’s assembly together to draft a formal letter to the lords, basically saying “why would you send us this, you morons?” First, Barbados had just told them that they didn’t need military supplies at the moment. Second, Barbados needed guns, not pikes, because pikes rotted in the heat or were eaten by the insects of the island. Of all the things in the world, this was the stupidest, most wasteful thing that England could possibly spend money on, and just showed that the king took advice from the Royal African Company more seriously than that from the people who actually lived there. Did the Royal African Company think it was the governing body of Barbados? Did the king think the Royal African Company was the governing body of Barbados? Was Atkins supposed to answer to them in addition to everyone else in England? He seemed to have so many masters that he didn’t know who to please. The king’s encroachment on Barbadian autonomy was ridiculous, and now it was leading to decisions that were just plain stupid. So maybe, in the future, they shouldn’t listen to anyone about what was going on in Barbados without asking the people who actually, I dunno, lived there.
Seventeenth century BURN.
And the king had no real response to this. He sent Thomas Warner to investigate the island’s forts and resources, but with no official commission, so Atkins threatened to treat him as a spy. The king demanded that a Barbadian judge be sent to England to stand trial for helping to undermine the Royal African Company’s monopoly, but Atkins and the assembly responded, much as Massachusetts had a decade before, that to send someone to England for a trial meant that whether or not he was guilty, he would be financially ruined, and that wasn’t right. He demanded copies of the laws, and Atkins continued to refuse to send the older ones, saying the assembly understandably refused to hand them over, and also saying that he’d sent to England all laws currently in force, anyway.
And that was his turn to stumble. The officials in charge of the 4.5% protested a law that Atkins had never sent over, and therefore had claimed was not in force, and they were able to prove that the law existed. The lords of trade and plantations censured Atkins both for lying about the laws, and allowing a bill that was so contrary to the king’s financial interests to pass in the first place. They would recall him if he didn’t give them every single law within three months. Atkins explained that the reason he’d misled them was actually because he’d already stopped the law by the time the issue arose, because he saw that it hurt the king’s finances, and he promised to obey them in the future, and asked to be kept as governor. He sent a bunch of information, most of which he’d sent in the past, but it was too late, and he was recalled after four years in charge of the colony.
The commission for the next governor showed that he had had more success than anyone had realized, though. Specifically, he had won two major victories. First, Barbados went back to automatically keeping their laws unless the king vetoed them, as opposed to the king needing to sign off on each one individually. And second, the king wouldn’t appoint people to offices other than the ones he’d already granted. Both of those were important, and impressive, but they also weren’t enough.
And the man who replaced Atkins was his opposite, Richard Dutton. I could find no biographical information about Dutton, but he has gone down in infamy for what happened under him in Barbados. He arrived in Barbados ready to assert the king’s authority in a way never before attempted. He’d even asked for additional gubernatorial powers before leaving England to help him achieve this goal. He wanted to be able to pass emergency ordinances without the assembly’s consent, and to prevent suspended councilmembers from being elected to the assembly. And, he wanted no London merchants to be able to so much as speak at Whitehall on Barbados’s behalf unless he, the governor, endorsed the visit. He was going to quash the rebellion, whatever it took, but he needed the king to give him unprecedented power to do so. And the king obviously agreed.
On arrival, Dutton went to work governing as one of the most heavyhanded leaders our story has ever seen, and certainly the most heavyhanded since the earliest days of the most struggling colonies. The first order of duty was to raise some money to pay island debts and expenses, and for this, Dutton demanded the colonists pass an excise duty on imported liquors. They of course refused, in part because the king owed them money, and in part because they suspected the king just wanted to give the excise money to one of his many mistresses, the Lady Portsmouth. He had illegally seized the 4.5%, so what would stop him from taking the money from an excise?
Dutton was prepared, though, and he announced that he would only call an assembly session after they gave him the excise duty to pay for it. This increased hostility created such a deadlock that a group of prisoners that Dutton had arrested almost starved to death because no one would pay to feed them. The compromise became that they would hold an assembly, and simply not pay any of the councilors or representatives. The assembly would be free, so no one would have to pay.
When it came time to try the prisoners I just mentioned, Dutton refused to allow judges, the council or a jury to participate. He simply imposed the sentences himself. The assembly protested, and Dutton responded that having judges present at sentencing was nothing more than a pretended custom. “I have never heard that the king granted you a new magna carta, though you dispute all his commands as though he had, so I tell you plainly that those who obstinately oppose their prince’s commands (as you apparently do on all occasions) would, if they had power and opportunity, as confidently make war upon him … It is an insolence beyond expression to imagine that the king should be bound up by the petulant and factious humors of some ill-men among you (for I do not condemn all) to lessen or enlarge his commission.”
The dumbfounded assembly proposed a compromise, saying Dutton could levy the fines alone if he would then spend the money on the fortifications he was trying to get them to fund. But, Dutton’s answer was again, “no,” saying that once the fine was levied, the money was the king’s and he couldn’t spend it without royal consent. Dutton had effectively just announced that he could be as uncooperative with Barbados as they were with him.
And then he went to work attacking every institution the island had, starting with the Church. Barbados’s Anglican Church was being run by people who didn’t hold Anglican orders, and had been for the past 24 years. This is because virtually no Anglican ministers had any desire to go to America. There weren’t enough of them to go around England, so why would they uproot their lives and try to make it in such a harsh environment? That, incidentally, is why even Royalist colonies came to have puritan-style Churches. The South being Presbyterian and Baptist is a direct result of this. Even Suriname had had a puritan minister, who went to Boston via Barbados after the colony was taken by the Dutch. So Barbados Anglicans had made do with what they could get, and what they could get was a guy who did the Anglican thing without official Anglican consent, and Dutton forced him to flee to England, sending a letter after him informing English authorities about what he’d done, and announcing that Atkins had knowingly allowed this.
Then he went after the schools, which were being run by Quakers and Baptists, who he treated similarly. He shouldn’t have been shocked to find Quakers in Barbados because, in addition to the island’s longstanding history of religious toleration, Charles II had banished the most radical group of Quakers to Barbados to get rid of them. This group was led by John Perrot, and claimed more affinity with the Seekers and Baptists than Fox’s more mainstream Quaker movement, which accused him of being radical to the point of nihilism. But now Dutton was going to persecute them all, Quaker and Anglican alike. He informed the colonists that he wouldn’t tolerate their former liberties, and he asked the king to send him formal instructions to establish an ecclesiastical court which would allow him to censure people.
And when the assembly met, he vetoed every single bill the Barbadians put forth, identified the members of the opposition, and kicked every single one out of whatever office he might be holding, replacing these people with those who showed themselves to be compliant. Militarily, he even went so far as to outfit the militia with English-style uniforms as a symbol of who that militia actually served, and this was the first time this had happened anywhere.
And he demanded money. He demanded an excise on alcohol, the proceeds of which he would control on the king’s behalf, to pay public expenses. The colonists refused, citing the 4.5%. Not only was that supposed to pay those expenses, also the king’s behavior on that issue showed that they couldn’t trust him with the money. The king had taken the 4.5% illegally, so what would stop him from just taking this and giving it to one of his many mistresses? It seemed likely that if they passed the excise, they’d just end up right back where they started, just with even less money than before. Dutton refused to hear their objections, and both sides refused to bend even the slightest bit to the other’s will.
This only changed when Dutton announced an impending war with France. The war never actually materialized, but there clearly was tension as the conflict over Indian Warner illustrates. Actually, it’s funny because Antigua residents had come to Dutton to repeat the requests they’d made to Atkins, and Dutton’s response was bluntly that the people of Barbados weren’t interested in the Leeward Islands and “would be well content to see them lessened rather than advanced,” and that they would therefore be unable to help.
I can only imagine what Antigua thought of that, but back to Barbados, the threat of impending war, whether real or feigned, shook the assembly and made them more willing to accept the idea of giving extra money. They still maintained that Barbados needed to be in charge of it, though, and that they were only going to pass the excise for three months, rather than the year Dutton demanded.
And then, Dutton turned to blackmail. He had found proof that Christopher Codrington, one of the most respected members of the opposition, had been skimming off the top of some public money, and if the assembly didn’t back down on the excise issue, he would have Codrington sent to England to stand trial as a debtor to the king. Codrington showed that the king was actually in his debt for 1,200 pounds, in comparison to the 579 pounds 10 shillings that he’d taken, so actually the king was still in his debt. Dutton said he would have to prove that at the trial. This was a very dangerous position for Codrington, but it was also a dangerous precedent to set for the rest of the island. Pretty much everyone there was in the same position. So they capitulated and gave Dutton the excise, for a year, giving up control of the money, and even adding to that a gift of 1,500 pounds of sugar to be given to Dutton himself.
As Dutton exerted his authoritah, he wrote to England disparaging the colonists and bragging about his exploits. He said that political incindiaries must be treated like mutineers, with quickness and resolution in seizure. He said the island had been expecting the monarchy to collapse, but he had disillusioned them and pushed them into obedience. And he received commendations from both king and lords, and even money to pay his salary. “Take care of your health,” read the commendation. “For a man so valuable as you is not often met with.”
They also agreed to Dutton’s request to visit England on furlough. He left John Witham in charge, vetoed every law the assembly had proposed, dissolved it, and then ordered that while he was away, Barbadians should figure out how to pay for a jail and a public magazine without using either the 4.5% or the excise they’d just passed. And then, he said that the assembly must not meet at all while he was away, and again ignored their protests that that’s not how things worked in Barbados.
Wow! I think I hate that guy!
When Dutton returned to England, though, he returned to his own legal trouble. One of those men he’d arrested early on was an influential colonist named Hanson, and Hanson had escaped from the decayed prison, sailed to England and accused Dutton of imprisoning him for refusing to take an illegal oath, written by Dutton, which would have required him to witness against himself. Hanson had petitioned the privy council and lords of trade, who now asked Dutton to make a detailed legal defense. And when Dutton did so, they found that the fine against Hanson had, in fact, been illegal, but that the original charges against Hanson were serious enough that the whole case had to be reheard in front of them. And they said that if Hanson wanted any of his money back, he would have to have the case tried a third time, in a court of common law. At the end of the affair, Hanson and Dutton walked away with minimal legal and financial damage, but Dutton’s reputation did end up a little tarnished. Most notably, the legal battles had shown that Dutton had accepted a bribe of 1,500 pounds from Spanish merchants who were trading for slaves in Barbados.
When Dutton returned to Barbados, in September 1684, he found that Witham had successfully, though with difficulty, maintained order. But when Dutton returned to Barbados, he moved to steal the half of the governor’s salary Witham had earned for running the island while he was away. The standard arrangement was that when the governor was away, the governor’s salary was to be split 50/50 between him and the deputy governor acting in his place. Dutton wanted to keep the whole salary, leaving Witham with nothing for his service. Witham, who was ill in bed at the time, refused to give him the money, saying that what he’d earned for 16 months service was barely enough to pay basic expenses.
That had been a private exchange, but when Witham refused, Dutton went to the assembly and asked them about how satisfied they were with Witham’s time in office. Of course the assembly disliked Witham, as they did all of the king’s representatives, and of course they were happy to air grievances. And then, Dutton asked them if they felt Witham deserved that half of the governor’s salary for his service. That was an odd question, and the assembly started to see where the interrogation was headed. So, they reversed their position, saying he’d led the island well. Dutton had gotten a couple negative remarks, though, so he suspended Witham from all public offices, and had him arrested.
And then, at his trial, Dutton refused to preside over the court. Instead, he appointed Henry Walrond, son of the old agitator Humphrey, and the man with whom Witham had clashed most violently in Dutton’s absence, to act as president of the court in his stead. It was clear even before the trial started that Witham was going to be pronounced guilty, and Walrond fined the ex-deputy governor 5,000 pounds, and sentenced him to prison.
It was bizarrely over the top, and there was no reason for it except for money. A panicked Witham wrote to England, sending a detailed description of the trial to both the Earl of Sunderland and the lords of trade and plantations. The lords ordered that the sentence be suspended, and said the king would hear the case.
In England, Witham didn’t just defend himself. He accused Dutton of a long list of crimes including the receipt of bribes, appropriation of public funds and arbitrary imprisonment. He was able to show that the governor had earned, skimmed, or otherwise illegally obtained no less than 12,000 pounds sterling during his time as governor. Dutton’s accusations against Witham were proven false, and in addition to everything else, Dutton had also refused Witham’s right to appeal to the king.
No one could find any defense for Dutton’s behavior, and the committee hearing the trial declared Dutton’s actions to be “altogether violent and malicious,” motivated by nothing more than getting Witham’s money. Witham was restored to all his offices, and Dutton faced yet-more inquiries into charges of tyranny and misuse of public funds. He was soon recalled in utter disgrace, and this disgrace fell both on him and the king who had sent, supported and lauded him at every given opportunity.
The whole fiasco led to a rather interesting rumor. For the first time ever, the idea clearly circulated within England and beyond that England’s colonies might separate from their mother country and form their own, independent commonwealths.
That would still be a few decades away, and Barbados wouldn’t join when the time actually came, but yet again, that colony had led the way. This was the 1680s, though, and Barbados wasn’t actually in the position to do anything. It was just trying to survive. The Navigation Acts had crushed the price of sugar, as other sugar-producing islands started to compete with Barbados. At the beginning of the Restoration, a hundred pounds of white sugar had cost seven pounds. Now, it cost two pounds 10 shillings. Of that, 4.5% went to an export duty, while 1s 6d per 100 pounds of sugar was taken as an import duty. That duty had been passed when prices were high and remained stable, so it had gone from being 0.75% to an additional 2.05% percent of sugar’s total value. And then there were the taxes and expenses, like the excise, within Barbados, itself. At the end of the day, colonists were receiving about 10 shillings per 100 pounds of sugar, which was barely enough to meet their expenses.
Barbados had gone from being the wealthiest place in the English speaking world to the verge of bankruptcy, and a Virginia-style struggling economy, and taxation would only increase under Charles’s brother James, head of the Royal African Company who took the throne on his death. James claimed that his new duty on sugar would be paid by English consumers, but of course it wasn’t. Barbadian James Lyttleton called James’s statement a “mere mockery,” saying that “the buyer, they say, must pay the duty, but sure the seller may pay it if he please. And he will please to pay it, rather than not sell his sugar. If he will not, there are enough beside that will.” Lyttleton explained that in the 1680s, foreign goods were now more competitive in English markets than English colonial goods were. Barbados’s status had been reduced to that of Virginia, with planters barely able to pay for food, and totally at the mercy of people whose primary goal was to get as much money from them as they could, totally unheard, and economically helpless.
The silver lining to this situation comes from a group of people we haven’t yet discussed in our story. Groups of Jewish merchants lived in every English colony, as well as London and Amsterdam, and these people formed a smuggling network which was able to bypass English customs and regulations. They sailed in unassuming ships, sailed to unassuming ports, and bribed customs officials to look the other way. Then, they sold and bought at near-free market prices. It’s possible that a majority of colonial trade was conducted by these people, and at the very least, it was enough to keep Barbados and similar colonies afloat.
And that’s it for Barbados and the Leewards for a few months. The colony, full of exiled former royalists, had eagerly anticipated and celebrated the Restoration, only to see Cromwell’s policies continued and expanded by a cynical and exploitative king to the point where they permanently crippled their economy. But that same English government was at work in all the other colonies. We’ll take a quick stop in Jamaica next week to see how everything played out there, and then we’ll move on to the founding of Carolina.