Humphrey Walrond’s royalist revolt on Barbados in 1650 is the first instance of the deliberate use of lies and threats of violence to overcome the will of the legal majority that I know might have influenced South Carolina.
When England tried, sentenced and executed Charles I in 1649, Barbados was a fragile society. Slavery was still new and the mechanisms for control weren’t yet in place. Indentured servants had plotted rebellion in 1647. In September of 1649, Oliver Cromwell told Parliament he had executed every tenth soldier captured at Drogheda and sent the rest to Barbados along with Catholic soldiers caught in other Irish towns.
The recent, unwilling arrivals had not yet been absorbed by a society that was rapidly converting to slave labor nor had many yet had the opportunity to remigrate to newly opened islands like Antigua. Any references made by agitators to violent rebellion or enslavement were heard against this background.
Land title on the island was dependent on the Lord Proprietor, and through him, on the English government which granted him a charter. In 1648, Francis Willoughby assumed the Barbados patent when he paid some debts of the current Earl of Carlisle. James Hay’s son James then revoked the appointment of Philip Bell as governor. Willoughby had appointed no successor and Bell was still in place.
Not only was there no legitimate chain of authority, most landowners realized their titles ultimately depended on the good will of the government that was still being petitioned by the creditors of William Courteen, who claimed his grant had priority over that of Hays-Willoughby. Most Barbadians wished to offend as few people as possible in England and so wished to remain neutral.
The Walrond rebellion began in Bermuda in 1649 when royalists overthrew the governor and replaced him with one who refused the request for loyalty from the Commonwealth’s Council of State and declared Charles I’s son Charles the legitimate power in England. They also banished the Independents to the Bahamas.
The term Independent was used for any dissident from the Anglican church, including a number of Puritans sent by the chief shareholder in the Somers Isle Company, Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick. Their rebellion was then against both the state and their landlord.
Bermuda sent agents to the wealthier Barbados asking it to support Charles Stuart and join a mutual defense alliance. Royalists on the island favored the Bermudans, but one of the largest landowners, James Drax, convinced the government it could sell arms but should remain neutral.
Walrond began plotting against Drax, who he began calling an Independent, and infiltrating the key positions in the civil government. The treasurer, Guy Molesworth, was banished for his alleged role in the servant plot two years earlier. William Byam, recently deported from the Tower of London, was made treasurer and Master of the Magazines. Molesworth told Parliament that Drax was responsible for the false rumors.
By mid April, moderate royalists like Thomas Modyford, who were concerned that Walrond’s continued maneuvering for recognition of Charles Stuart could ruin the island, proposed a widely support Act for Uniting the Inhabitants of the Island under the Government which simply required every citizen obey the island’s government.
Walrond’s lawyer brother, Edward, added inflammatory language that anyone who attended an Independent service or did not attend communion should be sentenced for three months on the first offence, and then banished if he persisted.
Drax suggested to Bell that he should call an election for the General Assembly that, in effect, would be a referendum on the Modyford-Walrond bill. Humphrey Walrond responded with libelous broadsheets against Drax, each more scurrilous. He finally wrote the men who petitioned for an election:
"are Independents, their aim is wholly to Cashier the Gentry...and change for our Peace War, and for our Unity Division. Colonel Drax that devout Zealot (of the deeds of the Devil and the cause of the seven headed Dragon of Westminster) is the Agent...I have vowed to impeach him and prosecute him, but not in point of Law; for then I know he would subdue me (but at the point of Sword;)..against the pretense of Liberty, for thereby is meant Slavery and Tyranny" [Spelling modernized, emphasis added]
Walrond then began gathering armed men to force the governor, Philip Bell, to proclaim Charles king. When Bell wasn’t able to gather an equally strong military, he acquiesced at a showdown on the outskirts of Bridgetown. The next day, Francis Willoughby appeared in the harbor, talked with Bell and agreed to return in three months to assume power.
That gave Walrond time to deport as many people as he could, including Drax. Some of the wealthier men went to London to explain conditions to the Council of State. Inevitably, the Commonwealth declared the island in revolt and, in 1651, dispatched a fleet to blockade, then subdue the rebels.
Willoughby grew increasingly angry with the banished landowners, and seized more estates to pay for war. Men began to question the validity of Willoughby and Walrond’s claims of a vast, Roundhead conspiracy. Others, no doubt including the Roman Catholic refugees, grew less comfortable with the demands for religious conformity.
In December, Modyford began negotiating with Cromwell’s representative, George Ayscue. When Willoughby refused any treaties, Modyford raised a thousand men to match Willoughby’s thousand. The two armies spent several days in the rain in January, 1652, contemplating battle, which would necessarily have been war between neighbors, before Willoughby surrendered.
The treaty forgave as many actions as possible, and only made one action the grounds for future prosecution:
"the main and chief cause of our late troubles and miseries has grown by lose, base and uncivil language, tending to sedition and derision, too commonly used among many people here: it is there further agreed that at the next General Assembly a strict law be made against all such persons, with a heavy penalty to be inflicted upon them that shall be guilty of any reviling speeches of what nature soever, by remembering or raveling into former differences, and reproaching any man with the cause he has formerly defended." [emphasis added]
In March, Willougby banished the still threatening Walrond, his brother Edward, Byam and several more of their hard core supporters, but not before the pattern of minority subversion through threat of force and intemperate language was set.
Notes: Nicholas Darnell Davis, The Cavaliers & Roundheads of Barbados, 1650-1652, 1887 and available on-line, is the best place to start understanding the rebellion. More recent historians, no doubt, correct his errors and provide better analysis, but they offer less clear chronologies.
No comments:
Post a Comment