The Island that Disappeared Page 14
With Robert Hunt in charge, the ‘libertines’ on the island council had all the more reason to go roving for Spanish prizes. This left the Old Councillors holding sway in meetings, but they did more to stoke than to calm the islanders’ fears, and were no more able to address the problems they faced than the military faction. A coarse grass had invaded their fields—according to Captain Axe, it grew a finger’s length every night. Their crops withered in the oppressive heat, and their cattle gave milk only in the rainy season. The only creatures thriving on the island were the rats. Toward the end of 1636, the settlers sent the company another petition, in which they threatened to abandon the island for the Miskito Coast unless their grievances were addressed.
Robert Hunt also had to deal with the lingering disputes the military faction had left in its wake. Following Philip Bell’s resignation, the company had invited him to remain on the island council, and instructed Hunt to show him ‘all the respect to his own person that may be convenient,’ in the hope that the former governor would not be ‘transported with any jealousy.’16 Hunt did his best to keep relations with his predecessor cordial but soon realized that Bell had fallen out with his father-in-law, Daniel Elfrith, and several other veterans from the Somers Isles during his time as governor. Despite the company’s instructions to mediate between them, Hunt did nothing to protect Bell when the veterans decided to seize his property, servants, and slaves. This was the last straw for the former governor: he sold his remaining possessions and sailed for England on the next ship.*
No longer able to count on his son-in-law’s protection, Daniel Elfrith was exposed to the incriminating zeal of the Old Councillors, who insisted that such ‘a carnal and ungodly man’ could play no part in the running of a Puritan colony. Capt. Samuel Axe also weighed into the fray, complaining that several of the island’s forts would have to be rebuilt because of Elfrith’s ‘mistakes and ignorance.’ Like Bell, Elfrith was forced to stand down from the island council; after a period in the wilderness, he was made commander of the fort at Black Rock.17
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Philip Bell returned to England in June 1637, and traveled to Brooke House to present his final report to the company. He offered the shareholders a gloomy assessment of Providence’s potential for commercial farming. The good news was that whatever the island lacked in the way of commodities could be found on the Miskito Coast, whose soils were ‘capable of the richest drugs and merchandise which come from America.’18 Once the fortifications were complete, Providence would be practically impregnable to attack; perhaps the island was destined to serve as a fortress, garden, and storehouse for a new colony in Central America.
Building a new colony would be expensive. The shareholders had already spent the equivalent of £30 for every man sent to Providence, and it was costing them £8,000 per year just to keep the colony going. Yet the company’s treasurer, John Pym, was confident of attracting a further £100,000 to finance the venture, most of it from the king. Pym’s confidence in the king’s support would prove misplaced: Charles was already considering a rapprochement with Spain, and his relations with members of the long-dormant Parliament were worse than ever. In November 1637, John Hampden, a prominent MP and Providence Island Company shareholder, was prosecuted for refusing to pay ship money. As well as being one of the king’s most forceful critics, Hampden was one of the richest landowners in Buckinghamshire, and his trial became a showdown between the king and the gentryfolk who ran local government in the shires. Hampden was defended in court by another company shareholder, Oliver St. John. They lost the case, but their defiance of the royal writ earned them the admiration of many MPs, and Charles received just a fifth of the ship money he had hoped to raise.
Prior to the trial, the Earl of Warwick had appeared before the king to explain his opposition to taxation without representation. His Essex tenants ‘were all old, and accustomed to the mild rule of Queen Elizabeth and King James,’ he told him. They were unwilling to die ‘under the stigma of having, at the end of their lives, signed away the liberties of the realm,’ and Warwick would not have them do otherwise. If Charles would only recall Parliament and make a forceful and effective intervention in the Wars of Religion raging on the Continent, he was confident that the House would grant him whatever he asked. He was himself ready ‘to sacrifice his blood as well as his goods for his Majesty.’19
Charles listened to the earl’s speech with a frosty smile, thanked him for his expression of loyalty, and promptly ignored his advice. Not only had Puritan opposition to his moneymaking ventures brought his government to the verge of bankruptcy, he had heard rumors that the Providence Island Company had become the pole around which all manner of dissidents were clustering. The company’s meetings had always been held at Brooke House in London, but its shareholders had taken to gathering at Lord Saye’s home at Broughton Castle. The company had always kept thorough minutes of their meetings; suddenly, they became scant. It was whispered in Whitehall that the company’s meetings were being used as cover for the first organized political party in opposition to an English government.
Their lordships could see that they wouldn’t be able to count on Charles’s support for much longer. They couldn’t even count on the support of their fellow shareholders, most of whom were tired of throwing good money after bad. The Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye, and Lord Brooke vowed to go on, partly because they had the deepest pockets, but mainly because of the opportunity they had been given to harass Spain.
In March 1638, their lordships declared that they would go to Providence and ‘settle the affairs of the company’ in person. They were growing anxious at the state of England, and privateering looked to be an ideal sphere of action for men of their rank. Only the presence of great men could rescue the islanders from their petty infighting and purposeless drifting. But when they sought Charles’s permission to immigrate to Providence, he did not respond to their petition, preferring to keep such ‘notorious malcontents’ in plain sight.20 Their lordships never did get to see Providence for themselves.
Between them, the shareholders managed to raise a further £6,000. This made the building of a new colony unfeasible and left them with no choice but to consolidate the progress they had made to date, and await the return of more favorable conditions at court. The Earl of Warwick upped his stake in the Caribbean by buying the Earl of Pembroke’s holdings in Trinidad, Tobago, St. Bernard, and Barbados. He also received a commission from the king, who was keen to see him kept occupied far from home, that empowered him to seize ships and even towns where Englishmen were denied free navigation. This gave the earl practically unlimited power: not only could he set forth as many armed vessels as he liked from any of the king’s ports and harbors in the Americas, he could also storm, occupy, or destroy any town or territory belonging to any nation that denied an Englishman his right to trade. In October, he sent the Warwick and the Robert to Providence and was soon making serious money from the proceeds of privateering.
Nothing had been heard of Thomas Newman, one of the company’s favorite rovers, since his departure from London two years before. But, in August 1638, the Happy Return lived up to its name, docking with a cargo of tobacco, tallow, and hides worth £4,000. Captain Newman was not aboard, for he had chosen to stay on the Miskito Coast with the Providence, which he eventually took to Massachusetts with a cargo of sarsaparilla that he sold for £900. Unfortunately his return to England was not a happy one: as the Providence approached Dungeness on Christmas Day 1638, it was attacked by pirates from Dunkirk. Most of the crew were killed, and Newman was forced to surrender his ship and its valuable cargo. The Frenchmen made off with ambergris, indigo, sarsaparilla, and pearls worth £30,000—ten times the annual income of a member of the House of Lords.21 Privateering might be a suitable sphere of action for a gentleman, but their lordships were learning the hard way that there is no honor among thieves.
*Only with the arrival of a letter from the company in March 1637 were all judgments against Bell
declared to be null and void, and his property restored to him. The principal actors in Bell’s downfall—Lt. William Rous and Samuel Rishworth—were ordered home, although the company had no intention of punishing either of them.
[9]
‘Raw Potatoes and Turtle Meat’
WITH THE TURN TO PRIVATEERING, the company’s priority had to be the further fortification of Providence and a stiffening of the islanders’ military preparedness. Robert Hunt had already antagonized the military men on the island council, most of whom were by now roving for prizes at sea. In their absence, he had neglected the forts, several of which were practically in ruins, and had even left the barrels of gunpowder out in the rain. This was ‘a great inconsiderateness, and such as might have brought the whole colony into a strange confusion and hazard, if God’s wise and gracious providence had not watched over you,’ the shareholders told him.1 The company was by now making most of its money from the capture of Spanish prizes and the trade in slaves. This made it all the more important that the forts were well maintained, and the islanders willing and able to handle firearms. Hunt clearly wasn’t cognizant of the more aggressive role the shareholders envisaged for Providence—he would have to go.
In casting around for his replacement, they sought above all ‘a man of ability in regard to the danger from the Spaniard.’ Early in 1638, they had received reports of ‘great preparations in Spain for the West Indies,’ and spent the rest of the year in nervous anticipation of a second attempt to destroy their colony. The Earl of Warwick knew just the man for the job: Nathaniel Butler had been governor of the Somers Isles between 1619 and 1622, but was also an experienced captain who had commanded ships in King Charles’s ill-fated attempt to lift the siege of French Huguenots at La Rochelle. If Robert Hunt had joined the Old Councillors in looking skyward for signs of divine guidance, Nathaniel Butler was the counter to their righteous wailing. Whatever God’s intentions for the island, only a man of action could fulfill them.
Butler was sixty-one when he arrived on Providence. He was carrying instructions to make the island’s fortifications and the military training of its settlers his ‘principal care,’ and consolidate Providence’s role as an aerie from which to swoop down onto Spanish ships. As the value of prizes seized increased, the island would become the base of operations for the company’s new colony in Central America. Daniel Elfrith was ordered home, and Robert Hunt took his place as commander of the fort at Black Rock.
Butler was a sophisticated, urbane man who spoke French and Italian fluently. While his house at New Westminster was considerably less lavish than the little Venetian palace he had occupied on the Somers Isles, he did his best to maintain the style of a Renaissance prince. He always dined in company and often entertained as many as a hundred guests, including the captains of the three or four privateering vessels that came into the harbor every month. He had long been associated with the Earl of Warwick’s privateering ventures, and took great pleasure in overseeing the supply of weaponry to outbound ships and inspecting the prizes they brought back to the island.
Before taking up his new post, Butler had made it clear to the company that endless instructions from London could be no substitute for hard-won experience. He spent his mornings adjudicating in the settlers’ disputes over land, slaves, and the distribution of supplies from the company’s store. These were never-ending and distracted him from more pressing concerns, but he seems to have been a fair judge. After a generous luncheon, he liked to spend his afternoons circumnavigating the island in a small boat, as Captain Axe pointed out the progress of the fortifications being built in the south of the island.
Meetings of the island council were as fractious as ever, but the company had advised him not to take sides in the long-running dispute between the godly faction and the island’s privateers. He was familiar with such quarrels from the time he had spent on the Somers Isles, and recognized the same belligerent intransigence in the Old Councillors, who stood with the bulk of the settlers in their opposition to privateering and the military preparedness that accompanied it. The islanders had also come to depend on the godly faction to speak up against the mistreatment of servants and to argue for the re-creation of the productive, self-sustaining farming communities they remembered from home.
In response to the deadlock reached whenever the Old Councillors locked horns with the military faction, John Pym had made plans for a general overhaul of the island’s government. Among those to arrive on Providence with the new governor were new clerks and council members, and an additional 131 servants to assist in the strengthening of the island’s fortifications. The shareholders also created a council of war, to be headed by Butler, in order to circumvent the island council.
Butler allowed the Old Councillors to keep their seats on the island council, but they were now radical protestors, rather than participants in the government of the island. The new governor did his best to assuage the godly faction’s concerns: he appreciated that they resented taking orders from army officers and that life spent on a war footing only heightened their anxiety over the future of the island. But their children would only grow up to become freemen if they were willing and able to defend the island from attack.
Yet the Old Councillors still held court in the island’s two little churches, and whatever was discussed in council during the week was sure to figure in Hope Sherrard’s Sunday sermon. As well as being a devoted churchgoer, Nathaniel Butler was also a keen diarist, and his journal bears testament to the ‘angry,’ ‘vile,’ and ‘wild’ note that Sherrard was wont to strike in his sermons.2 As he confessed in a letter to Lord Saye, ‘I never lived among men of more spleen, nor of less wit to conceal it.’3
Butler had no time for the culture of discipline that the Old Councillors wanted to inculcate in the islanders. Before leaving London, the company had instructed him to investigate allegations that some of the ‘families’ were spending their evenings in ‘riotous feasting.’ Butler ignored the order; he was by nature pleasure-loving, had no interest in what the islanders did in their free time, and happily sided with the epicureans.
Nor did he share their rabid anti-Catholicism. Shortly after his arrival, he ordered a prison built, for he was already making plans to hold captured Spaniards to ransom. Yet he had no qualms about spending Easter Day 1639 with the two Spanish friars being held in the prison, and even invited them to join him for dinner at his residence, where they prepared a feast to celebrate la buena Pascua. Whatever discomfort he might have felt was clearly outweighed by the pleasure he took in antagonizing Hope Sherrard, whose next sermon was sure to feature a bitter denunciation of his impious entertainment of the two agents of Rome.
* * *
After seven years of the company’s experiment in godly living, the colony faced multiple threats. Aside from the failure to find a viable commercial crop, the recurring conflicts that kept the island council feeble and convulsive, and the inevitability of a second Spanish attack, the company’s relations with King Charles were getting worse by the day.
Amid so many threats from so many powerful forces, it was easy to overlook those who appeared most powerless: the Africans. In the feverish atmosphere that pervaded the island in the days leading up to the Spanish attack, Philip Bell had promised them that if they helped him to win the coming battle, he would make them freemen. They had willingly agreed, but their excitement turned to disappointment after Captain de Castellar returned to Cartagena. Philip Bell not only reneged on his promise, he tightened the yolk around their necks, in the hope that his cruelty would put an end to their talk of freedom.
Many of the slaves were runaways, who had escaped their Spanish masters before being captured by the Indians and sold to the English on Providence. The governor’s broken promise caused lasting bitterness and made the Africans more combustible than ever. Few islanders felt moved to defend them apart from Samuel Rishworth, who had remained true to his convictions and helped several of them escape to the high hills aro
und Palmetto Grove, in the middle of the island. There they created their own community, much like the palenques built by runaway slaves from Cartagena to Jamaica. Others followed the example set by Francisco Biafara and slipped away from the island on stolen boats under cover of the night. Although most of the island’s servants were keen to preserve the small but crucial distinction that separated them from the slaves, they too had good reason to flee their masters, and runaways were often mixed groups of Africans and English. Mindful of the surliness of its unpaid workforce, the company issued strict instructions to keep the Africans in small groups, so they would have no chance to plot rebellion en masse.
What turned flight into fight was the example set by the Africans on Association Island. The Spanish had either hanged or imprisoned most of its inhabitants in 1635, but they did not leave a garrison on Association, and it was soon reoccupied by buccaneers, renegades, and skin-of-their-teeth planters. Later that year, the company sent a Dartmouth merchant, Nicholas Riskinner, to the island to become its new governor. The following year, they received a report describing conditions on the island. Governor Riskinner had died shortly after arriving, leaving eighty English and one hundred fifty Africans to eke out a living by themselves. Although ‘the number of negroes in the island was much short of what they first received information,’ the settlers were having great difficulty controlling them. ‘They are not in subjection, and it may cost some lives, much time and difficulty to bring them in,’ one of them warned. No details of the revolt of 1637 have survived; all we know is that within a year of receiving the report, the company had abandoned Association because of ‘the great number of negroes’ on the island.4