Episode 13: An end to neutrality
Welcome back! And, I am so sorry for the delay. It lasted longer than I expected, but I am so excited to be back to the podcast! This week, we’re going to pick up where we left off, at the end of the first English Civil War.
Intro
First, though, I’ll start with a quick summary of what’s happened so far, so if you need a refresher, here it is.
By the early 1640s, England had a handful of American colonies, best-established on the North American continent, but also a handful of fledgling settlements around the Caribbean. It also had a deeply unpopular king and a powerful Puritan opposition to said king, and in 1642, the two groups clashed in what is, for my money, the most interesting war in history.
America’s colonies had differing sympathies in that war. The Puritan colonies of New England were unified in their support of Parliament. Virginia’s loyalty strongly skewed in favor of the king. Maryland was a mess, with its founders being Catholics with Royalist sympathies, but with a radical, belligerent and growing Puritan minority which favored Parliament. Bermuda’s loyalties were split, but early on the Parliamentarians had all the power, and abused said power in pretty shocking ways. As for the Caribbean, different islands had different political leanings, but by far the biggest colony was Barbados, which managed to remain completely and totally neutral thanks to the leadership of its governor, Philip Bell.
During the war, every colony was forced by necessity to maintain at least an officially neutral position. They couldn’t afford the political fallout of backing the wrong side, and they certainly couldn’t afford to be picky about which ships they traded with to sell their goods and buy things they needed – like clothes, food and tools. Though it’s not immediately relevant, I should also remind you that trading with the Dutch was far preferable to trading with any English ships, because they could pay higher prices for every colonial product, and sell necessities for lower than any English merchant would. So great was the difference that it was only trade with the Dutch that lifted the Chesapeake in particular out of the inescapable poverty which characterized its early years. But, tangent aside, during the war, even the most passionate colonist could only watch, wait and wonder how things would turn out, while going about business as usual.
Meanwhile, England was being torn apart. Death and devastation were everywhere, violence escalated, life was miserable. As Puritans started to win the war, they also found their own side splitting into increasingly polarized factions, the more conservative Presbyterians, many of whom started to join the Royalist ranks, and the Independents, who were radical enough that their getting political power would have been unthinkable before the war started. Buuuuut, since the Independents, led by Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, effectively won the war for Parliament, their credibility increased and so did their popularity.
And, in 1646, it was over, for a couple years, at least. The turning point was in 1644 at the Battle of Marston Moor, then the remainder of the king’s army was nearly wiped out at Naseby in June of 1645, and just a couple months after that, the last Royalist port, Bristol, fell, rendering all Royalist ships fair game for Parliamentary privateers. And then finally, in 1646, the king surrendered.
I didn’t actually discuss the surrender in the last episode, but basically Charles had spent the previous few months trying to weigh his options and see if he could salvage a victory. He ultimately decided that the best option was to head north from Oxford and meet with the Covenanter Scots at Newark, and it was to them that he ultimately surrendered. That’s a very complicated, very significant story, but one which I’ll touch on when we get back to discussing England. For now, though, what you need to know is that the king surrendered, the war was over, and a by-now-deeply-divided Parliamentarian side had emerged victorious. There were new taxes, like the justifiably unpopular excise tax on things like salt, meat and beer, Royalist estates were sequestered, confiscated by Parliament and sold back to them at a Parliament-decided price. Aaaaaaand the policy of transportation began.
Now, I won’t get too much into the North American colonies today. The longterm effects of Parliamentary victory are complicated, and we’ll go into them in depth over the course of time. The immediate reactions, on the other hand, are largely predictable. New England rejoiced and started editing the king out of its history books, literally, revising its official chronologies to remove the fact that the king had issued their beloved charter. By 1649, they would erroneously be giving Parliament credit for this. Virginia mourned, while waves of disaffected, destitute Cavaliers sought a fresh start in a friendly colony.
Maryland deserves its own episode – recovering from the Plundering Time and Calvert’s death, struggling with food shortages, subduing Kent Island rebels and trying to solidify new colony leadership.
But then you have Bermuda, and Barbados, and that’s what we’ll discuss today, because this is where we’ll see the most dramatic changes as a direct result of the end of the war.
First, Bermuda. Bermuda had been grappling with intensely divided loyalties during the war, and a company which was indecisive enough, quite probably thanks to its own divided loyalties, that it couldn’t prevent one side from abusing the other. First, the Independents were in control, and their behavior was radical enough and tyrannical enough to drive even Presbyterians into alliance with the Anglican Royalists, a foreshadowing of things to come to England. Then, the company had unsuccessfully tried to even out the balance of power by appointing a triumverate instead of one governor, but this blurriness just led to both sides just being horrible to each other.
But, when the war ended, and Independents entered England’s national spotlight, there was a surge of Royalist sentiment among anyone with even the slightest loyalty to the crown. It was in this atmosphere that the Bermuda Company sent Presbyterian Thomas Turner to quash the Independents once and for all, ish, and Turner went about his job with gusto.
He forbade Independents from holding meetings, preaching or even taking part in government. He accused John White of treason. Independents became little more than political targets, sent to jail for minor offenses, and forced to hold their services in secret. Popular anti-Independent sentiment had combined with the personal desire to retaliate and created a situation just as horrible as the Independents had once created, just in reverse.
This would not be a permanent thing, as we’ll see, in just a couple years Bermuda would go back to the muddled and ambiguous division of power it had experienced under the triumverate. It wasn’t actually the company’s intention for people to retaliate this way, and some of the actions occurred against their explicit instructions. The situation remained long enough, though, to cause one important development.
Back in 1644, Bermudians had sent a couple ships to a Caribbean island they called Eleutheria, or Eleuthera. One had sunk on the trip, killing everyone on board, and the other had returned with news that the island just wasn’t an appealing colonization prospect, and they hadn’t pursued the idea of settling it.
By 1647, though, a couple years had passed, and times had certainly changed. The island might not be that great overall, but it was probably good enough, and it was the closest, easiest Caribbean island to reach from Bermuda. It might be a good place to found a new settlement, based purely on the Independent spirit as it existed in the 1640s. They described it as a lan of pure liberty of conscience, where “every man might enjoy his own opinion on religion without control or question,” complete and utter toleration.
The true nature of what they sought was a bit different than that all-too-tempting description. Liberty and toleration were the language of their movement, not the reality of their movement. It wouldn’t have included Catholics, and given their previous actions it would be surprising if theirs had even included Presbyterians, and certainly not high-Church Anglicans. The point was no bishops, no king. No hierarchy, no limit to their particular brand of radicalism, people like familists, later Quakers, anabaptists, the intellectual descendents of Elizabethan Brownists. Economically just shy of the Levelers, politically favoring a system as close to a popular democracy as practically possible. It’s most akin to what Roger Williams had created in Rhode Island, but even more extreme.
It was a movement with support, though. Sayle was close to the Independents of the Bermuda Company, as well as former Bermudian Independents. He found support among future regicides, and even members of the old Providence Island company shareholders. On July 9, 1647, Sayle and 25 shareholders signed the Articles and Orders of the Company of Eleutherian Adventurers, with a constitution which reflected their shared ideals to the letter. Everyone would have access to land, natural resources and a vote. No bishops, no kings, no real involvement from London, which was actually possible for this colony because the costs of moving from Bermuda were so much less than the costs of moving from England, so there was no real investment necessary. It could be free and experimental because it was cheap.
All land would be worked communally for the first three years, an idea which had already been tried in both Plymouth and Jamestown, but afterward the land would be distributed proportionally to investment. There would be a unicameral legislature that held all political power, authorized to appoint justices, distribute public lands, manage public labor and finances and pass laws. The governor was only head of this senate.
Document in hand, commissioned governor, supplies gathered and volunteers accompanying him, Sayle returned to Bermuda just long enough to gather 70 of the island’s congregationalists to head to Eleutheria. They reached the island without too much trouble, and then looked for a place to settle. A handful of people got off at the first landing place, led by a young captain from England who refused to worship or accept any authority whatsoever. Most of the others made their way to the north of the island, where their ship wrecked among the reefs, destroying all their provisions, supplies and livestock. They made their way to a small cave for their first refuge and place of worship, today dubbed Preacher’s Cave, and spent the first few months of their new lives surviving on whatever wild fruits and animals they could forage – no tents, no houses, no tools to build them.
Sayle immediately went to Virginia to get supplies from that colony’s Independent sympathizers, and meanwhile more reinforcements prepared to leave Bermuda. When these arrived, it was time to clear the land, and plant corn, peas and pumpkins, interestingly using Powhatan cultivation techniques which had now become standard. Like all early settlements, though, they struggled with their first crops and only found viable growing practices through trial and error. Like all colonies, the settlement of Eleuthera continued to struggle, but it survived and has officially joined our story, though in the future, I’ll be referring to it, at least sometimes, by its more recognizable name – the Bahamas.
So, that was the story of how the Bahamas were founded because of Oliver Cromwell.
And now to Barbados. When last we left Barbados, it was unique among English colonies. It was, of course, now firmly rooted in sugar production, and already the wealthiest of all English colonies. It was also the first colony apart from Providence Island to intentionally import slaves, though at this point it only had about 800 out of population of 18,000, but this was still triple the number of Africans who lived in Virginia at the time, and unlike in Virginia, these colonies were also specifically designated as slaves. Still, the colony mostly depended on indentured labor from England.
Barbados was an island with deep political divisions stemming not only from its English roots, but from specific conflicts regarding its patent which had led to immense devastation in the earliest years of the colony, and to counteract the greater-than-average risk that the war would spread in a violent way to Barbadian soil, the colony had united around the absolute necessity of remaining neutral, not just with regard to merchant vessels and trade, but even to the point of personal interactions. This was an effective policy enabled by effective leadership, and despite push after push from England after Carlisle’s defection to the Parliamentary side, the island’s residents united in upholding neutrality.
The end of war, though, would bring far greater threats to Barbadian neutrality than the years of war ever had, and it would come from both sides in very different ways. From the Royalist side was simply the flood of exiles, and from the Parliamentarian side, Carlisle was planning to go to Barbados personally to replace Bell as governor and declare the colony’s allegiance to Parliament. If I were in Barbados, I would be very, very nervous right about now.
First, the Royalists. Like I said, the end of war pushed Royalists out of England en masse. They’d lost everything, and England itself had lost its familiarity as the Independents grew in power. Between that and the policy of transportation, for which Barbados was the most common destination, Barbados experienced a population boom even bigger than that of Virginia’s, going from 18,000 to 30,000 colonists in just 5 years.
There was a difference, too, and let’s put aside transportation for just a minute. If you were a destitute Royalist choosing where to build a new life, Virginia and Barbados had different selling points. Virginia was never renowned for its standard of living, but if you were a royalist exile, you could count on a friendly government and probably a few friendly faces in Virginia. Cavalier veterans were welcomed as heroes in Virginia, and William Berkeley had himself spent some time fighting in the war. Yes, the disease issue was still there, and Virginia had never quite managed to strike it rich on tobacco. The average Virginian still lived in a way that would be comparable to the English poor, and the most successful Virginians didn’t live much better. If you went to Virginia, you went for the culture and connections, and likely because you already had family and friends there. You went for the people, because the colony really couldn’t offer much else. I’ve always said that the decision to go to Virginia is more of a reflection on someone’s desperate circumstances than anything, but these were desperate times, and between 1640 and 1650, Virginia’s population rose from 10,000 to about 19,000. Like you can imagine, though, this was able to happen without any appreciable change in culture. If anything, it only strengthened already-dominant cultural trends.
Barbados, though, was rich, even by English standards. Sugar was valuable, and merchants happily supplied the island with the finest foods and wines from Europe. It was a hub of trade for New Englanders, the Dutch, and pretty much everyone else. If you went to Barbados, at least voluntarily, you went for the opportunity. Lots of people had lost everything in the war, and Barbados was the best chance to rebuild that. Plenty of people didn’t have all that much to begin with, and for them, Barbados was also an opportunity. It wasn’t about family, community or culture. It was an economic decision.
And, let’s return to transportation, whose victims were scattered around the American colonies but who more often than not ended up in the Caribbean, especially Barbados. Everyone from loyal royalists to prisoners of war to Irish non-landowners to prostitutes to people who had committed misdemeanors and ended up in a jail that didn’t want to bother housing them – could end up being transported to Barbados as an indentured servant. One of Hugh Peters’s pet projects was to send poor kids and orphans to the colonies, and plenty of children were actively tricked and stolen from their parents by people hoping to make some money, a practice called “spiriting.” It was the great threat, and the great fear, of the post-war world, such a feared prospect that it actually made it harder to recruit indentured servants in legitimate ways. One Virginian who had gone to London to try to entice the city’s poor found himself shunned when he so much as mentioned the colonies, with people fearing he was a spirit. So, needless to say that the people who actually ended up being “Barbadosed” weren’t exactly thrilled, either.
So, I just want you to imagine right now that you are a member of either of these groups. Now imagine that when you arrive to Barbados, a local tells you that, “we have this policy that you’re not supposed to call your enemies by derogatory names, and that if you do you have to throw a dinner party for everyone who hears you.” I say this as someone who has the highest respect for the peace Barbados had managed to maintain during the war, it’s just a different world, and words that would ring extremely hollow for anyone who had experienced the war first hand.
So it’s not even a criticism of either group, but the practical effect of this is that the Barbadians who had so diligently maintained peace and neutrality were now overwhelmed by people who had lost so much, so painfully that they had no aspiration toward neutrality.
And at the same time, Carlisle prepared to sail to Barbados to force the island to declare loyalty to Parliament. He would replace Bell as governor, and he was perfectly content to deal with any retaliation from the island’s royalists. It was past time that the colonists declared their loyalty to Parliament, and any conflict or fallout would just have to be dealt with directly.
And this is where Barbados got lucky. When Carlisle prepared to go to Barbados, lots of people in England stepped forward to stop him. The day he got his pass, two groups of people filed objections. The first was people to whom he owed money. Most of this was debt his father had accumulated, but Carlisle had the money to pay them back and had chosen not to. Now they accused him of leaving to avoid paying, and emphasized that they actually needed their money back.
The second was led by London Merchants. London merchants, in general, were pretty aggressive with their attempts to profit off of colonial ventures, and mostly this was at the expense of the colonists. In this case, though, Barbadian and merchant interests aligned. If Carlisle really did go and cause all this fallout in Barbados, they would lose a lot of money. To prevent this, they went back to the colony’s origins and claimed that Carlisle’s ownership of the colony wasn’t legitimate, and that in fact it should be led by the heirs of William Courteen, its legitimate owner. Courteen’s allies who had spent time in Barbados also joined in the lawsuit, and while either petition would likely have been enough to keep Carlisle in England, the combination definitely was.
The Committee of Plantations started to investigate the validity of Carlisle’s patent, and Carlisle started looking for various ways to defend his claim. One thing he did, the most important for our story, was to lease his claim to a relatively prominent Presbyterian named Francis Willoughby. Willoughby had been the man to muster the trainbands of Lincolnshire at the beginning of the war. He leased it to Willoughby on extremely good terms, 21 years, and Willoughby would be entitled to half of all quit rents in Carlisle’s Caribbean islands. Willoughby was about to become a very wealthy man.
Carlisle was banking on a couple things here. He was hoping that a Presbyterian deal with the king would solidify Presbyterian leadership of the whole country, and that leasing the land to Willoughby would incentivize him to use his influence to back up Carlisle’s claims.
It wasn’t a terrible plan, except for one thing. Presbyterian negotiations with the king fell through, and with that failure, their influence in England crumbled. The Independents emerged as the dominant force in post war England, and Willoughby’s Presbyterians really didn’t have much influence at all. Willoughby still had the lease, though, for another 21 years, and therefore, he has officially entered our story.
As for the lawsuit, well, it fizzled, too. Courteen had been dead for a decade at this point, and none of his kids was particularly interested in running Barbados. Between them, they were either fighting another lawsuit regarding some Dutch lands, had shifted their focus to trading in the East Indies, or were among the destitute Royalists whose estates had been sequestered. Even though Warwick’s Commission voted unanimously in their favor, no one stepped forward to claim the title. Parliament then had to leave the title with Carlisle, but only after having ruled against the legitimacy of his patent, so they could step in and take over at any time.
Another threat had been averted, but Barbados did have a new Parliamentary leader, or did it? When the Presbyterian cause collapsed and the Independents started taking control of England, Willoughby joined the ranks of alarmed Presbyterians who defected to the Royalists. He met with the king, went to the Netherlands and became Vice-Admiral of Prince Rupert’s navy. Prince Charles, on order of the king, confirmed his lease and appointed him royal governor of Barbados. So actually, the victory of Parliament and Carlisle’s aggressiveness on their behalf pushed Barbados firmly toward the Royalist camp, both in terms of population, and in terms of leadership.
And that’s where we’ll leave it for today. Next week, it’s back to the North American continent to look at what’s going on in Maryland, and after that we’ll check in quickly with New England before getting to the Second English Civil War.