Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  But nor was it on the other hand “the dunghill whereon England doth cast forth its rubbish” as one member of the expedition, Henry Whistler, rudely termed it in his Journal. There was always a total lack of understanding in England as to how circumstances had inevitably created a new kind of society in this faraway and fertile place. During the Civil Wars, Barbados, termed by another contemporary historian in contrast to Whistler’s insult “this happy island”, had enjoyed a particularly salubrious period of virtual autonomy, with the attention of the mother country so far distracted. Trade with the Netherlands and New England had flourished. In such an atmosphere of affluence, neutrality towards England’s internal dissensions seemed the best policy to the inhabitants, and there was even said to be a local by-law: “whoever named the word Roundhead or Cavalier should give to all those that heard him a shot and a Turkey, to be eaten at his house that made the forfeit.” The population of Barbados, about twenty thousand in 1645, had reached thirty thousand in 1650.14

  An influx of Royalists after the collapse of their cause in England put an end to this prosperous merriment. In its place there unfolded what Nicholas Foster called “a doleful and intestine story” of “Horrid Rebellion”.15 In short in 1650 the island proclaimed for King Charles II, under the recently arrived Lord Willoughby of Parham as Royalist Governor. Parliament was furious, both at the unlooked-for insurrection and at the news of the colony’s trading with the Dutch. It was left to Sir George Ayscue to quell the rebels with two men of war and a small force of under one thousand men. Ayscue found Lord Willoughby quite erroneously celebrating a Royalist victory at Worcester. Like the insistence of the London merchants that Barbados should not trade direct with New England – for all their earnest petitions to be permitted to do so – it all demonstrated what a plangent distance stretched between the two countries, and what strange notions each could entertain of the other.

  For all the liberal treatment of Barbados accorded by Ayscue after his victory, to the extent that he even feared Parliament would not ratify the treaty, the claims of London merchants, Barbadan settlers and Commonwealth Government continued to pull in very different directions. The new Governor Daniel Searle, although able, was hampered by not being able to choose his own Council. Whereas by January 1654 London traders with Barbados were complaining to the Protector that they had suffered greatly from “distractions in the Caribees” and would appreciate the government of Barbados being handed over to a commission who would choose a President well disposed to their interests, the inhabitants themselves wanted nothing so much as to be allowed to plant, trade and flourish with the minimum of interference from home. It was obvious that the arrival of a punitive expedition, intended to reduce the local population drastically in order to pursue some new idea of conquest, would scarcely be welcomed with open arms by the Barbadans. Venables’s men suffered from the flux as they devoured the delicious fruits of the tropics, the limes, oranges and lemons for which their stomachs were ill-prepared. Venables continued to bombard England with requests for more supplies, for bread and meat, lest they have to rely on cassavy which could only be planted in June for the following year, sounding a note which was all too percipient when he wrote: “Pray let not the old proverb be verified in us, out of sight, out of mind; if so, you will quickly hear we are out of this world.”16

  Nevertheless somehow an additional five thousand men were levied, some of them from the Leeward Islands taken on at St Kitt’s. But since no more additional supplies were shipped – a real failure on the part of Venables – and since the English provisions ships had been so much disturbed by the weather that many of them only arrived at Barbados after the fleet proper had sailed, the conditions of the English soldiers were only worsened by the arrival of the newcomers. They had left Ligon’s happy island at the end of March. Soon they were down to half rations. As Winslow had predicted, this failure of planning also led to troubles between the two commanders. Already Venables was wailing back to England that the sailors were holding on to all the invaluable supplies of staple biscuit.

  The crux of the controversy was saved for the fatal attack on Hispaniola in mid-April. Neither the exact date on which the choice was made, nor the precise reason for it, are known, but at least it seems to have been agreed on as a target. On the correct landing-place for the attack there was less agreement: and the eventual choice of desolate Point Nizao, dictated by Penn, was disastrous. For all that Venables had at least eight thousand men with him, not counting those who remained on board, the English were repulsed twice by the Spaniards, in a preliminary encounter on 17 April and “shamefully” on 25 April. Over a thousand English soldiers were lost, either killed or wasted by disease. The humiliated army had to regain their ships and abandon Hispaniola to its previous Spanish occupants. In the general holocaust of blame, the unpleasant but inevitable concomitant perhaps of any such defeat, Venables blamed the cowardice of his troops with something less than the generosity Cromwell always showed to his men. He also complained that the official order against plunder led to sulky lack-lustre soldiers. Penn, angrily rebutting the blame put upon him by Venables for the choice of landing-place, accused Venables in his turn of obstinately refusing his offers of assistance to besiege San Domingo.

  In truth both men were to blame for their lack of mutual co-operation; while both were ill-served by the inadequate preparations for which neither was originally responsible. But if the history of the attack on Hispaniola was a shambles from which little good could emerge, the effect of the news on England was electrifying. Indeed, the first rumours to arrive were of a success: it was not until July that the newsletters were sounding a more cautious note. It must be remembered that no such thing as a military defeat had been encountered before by the forces of the new order, nor officially by those men in power: such petty rebuffs as Clonmel or Newbury counted for but little compared to the serried ranks of famous victories, those names that rang out from the pulpits, Marston Moor, Naseby and Dunbar, those countries brought to heel by the power of the sword in the hands of the godly, Ireland, Scotland and to a lesser extent the Netherlands. To such men there is no doubt that the fiasco of Hispaniola dealt a grievous blow.

  It was not only the hostile Fifth Monarchists who were quick to “cry up” the unsuccessful outcome as a judgement from God. As in Scotland when the Presbyterians reluctantly admitted that their defeat at the hands of the English might have to be attributed to their own failings, so Cromwell himself wrote in a letter to Admiral Goodson that “it is not to be denied but the Lord hath greatly humbled us in that sad loss sustained at Hispaniola”. The Royalists spread news of a more tempestuous reaction from the Lord Protector: he was supposed to have fallen into such convulsions of anger that he actually fell dead. In this, the wish was no doubt father to the thought. But Hyde heard from his London agents of some “violent distempers” or rages on the part of the Protector. From London too Sir William Dugdale reported that the Government was not best pleased by open discussion of the subject, and were trying to restrain the publication of all pamphlets save Mercurius Politicus. On the actual details of the Protector’s reaction, Cromwell’s own circle were discreetly silent: but that it represented much grief at the time can be seen by his oblique but still pained reference to Parliament in the year following: “It may be we have not (as the world terms it) been so fortunate in all our successes. Truly, if we have that mind, that God may not determine us in these things, I think we shall quarrel at that which God will answer .. ,”17 Such sentiments might be admirably philosophic, but they certainly represented a considerable and necessary change from the exultant reflections with which Oliver had been wont to follow the news of his own previous military victories.

  * * *

  In the faraway West Indies the mood of the expedition was scarcely less melancholy. But in view of the fact that Venables, for all his losses, still had a substantial force of seven thousand men under his command, the most obvious course was to try and offset these depressi
ons with the prospect of an immediate gain. In this mood, the island of Jamaica, some hundred miles to the west of Hispaniola, became the next target of the Western Design. Large, beautiful and fertile as it was, Jamaica was nevertheless held only by a comparatively small force of Spaniards, its total population, including the remnants of the Arawak Indians, some Portuguese and the imported African slaves, not amounting to more than two thousand five hundred. Both for capture and for colonization, it might be supposed that Jamaica presented an easily assimilable prey. It was true that the assault was successful: the English landed on 10 May and by 17 May the Governor had capitulated, the chief town of Villa la Vega being in the hands of the invaders. But the condition of the English army, decimated by disease, weakened by something close to starvation, led to such appalling sufferings thereafter that any humanitarians might have regarded the acquisition of Jamaica as a Pyrrhic victory indeed.

  Edward Winslow had already died of fever before they arrived, to be buried within sight of Jamaica. Of the dignitaries, Thomas Gage died early the following year, paying with his own life for the inadequate and over-optimistic intelligence with which he had fed the Council of State (for their part they took care of the debts of his widow). It was the soldiers who died in their thousands; as the Spaniards retreated to the mountains to practise for some months the art of guerilla warfare, other cruel foes such as dysentery joined their cause. Food was not only short, but scarcity was exacerbated by inefficient distribution, so that some unfortunates complained of “starving in a cook’s shop”.

  Sheer ignorance of tropical conditions was responsible for one of the worst privations: there were no water-bottles, a catastrophe to be compared in magnitude with the lack of tents in the Scottish expedition of 1650. A correspondent spoke feelingly of their absence in a letter of 13 June back to the merchant, Martin Noell: “without the last not one man can march in these torrid Regions, where Water is precious and scant… Our wants [are] great” went on this pathetic epistle “our difficulties are many; unruly raw Soldiers, the major part ignorant; lazy dull officers that have a large portion of Pride, but not of Wit, Valour or Authority”. Henry Whistler described vividly the terrors that a tropical island could hold for English soldiers: at night the giant crabs would crawl out of the woods to feed, the noise of their claws rattling together in the darkness bringing a chill of terror to even the stoutest heart. All in all, it has been estimated that between May and November, nearly half the original force of seven thousand men perished in Jamaica.18

  It was hardly to be expected that such perils would unite the warring commanders, and their disputes ranged from the conviction of the Army that the Navy was hugging all the brandy to itself, to the matter of the lances. Altogether the English had insufficient arms, but the Spanish were particularly agile with their long lances, twelve foot long. Venables however accused Penn of refusing to let him have lances to supplement his shortage of pikes; so Venables had to make do with half-pikes, a mere eight foot long, made by the smiths, and his men were correspondingly gored. By 25 June Penn had sailed for home with part of the fleet, under the impression that his own mission had been completed. The commissioner Butler had also abandoned Jamaica. Now Venables in his turn embarked, in the ship Marston Moor, giving as an excuse illness – he had not had one day’s health, he said, since he left Barbados. Although in the absence of Butler, the appointment was of dubious validity, he left in control an honest soldier in the shape of Fortescue. So like Tweedledum and Tweedledee Penn and Venables bore down on the London administration, each with his own woeful tale of mismanagement.

  At home the news of the successful outcome of the Jamaican expedition had naturally been hailed with much relieved rejoicing: Mercurius Politicus waxed enthusiastic on the subject ofjamaica, “our men” were reported to be planting apace and resolved to continue; in September “our men” were further if inaccurately said to be settling down well, “their Bodies seasoned to the climate”.19 But Cromwell showed scant appreciation of the rival claims of General and Admiral to his sympathy. Both were clapped into the Tower. It is possible that Penn owed his arrest to some inkling of his earlier Royalist overtures. But when Venables presented a long and querulous petition for his own release, the Protector was seen to hurl it aside in a rage, saying that Venables was trying to blame him, Cromwell, for everything that had happened. Since both Penn and Venables were subsequently released, retiring in each case from active public life, it seems more probable that their short-lived incarcerations were a tribute to the humiliation and annoyance caused by the whole affair of Hispaniola. Yet it was the Protector who should have counted himself lucky indeed to have acquired a new lush property for his Empire, excellently placed too in the Caribbean for defensive purposes, despite the drawbacks of an ill-prepared and inadequately mounted expedition. If Flecknoe’s estimate of Hispaniola as Cromwell’s one great mistake is accepted, then he was doubly fortunate to have emerged from it the richer by one colony, for all the dreadful loss of human life.

  In the colonization ofjamaica by the English which now proceeded apace, however, Cromwell continued to manifest his sincere belief that Providence had guided them thither. He maintained this earnestly in spite of massive reports of continuing disease and suffering which came flooding back from the island. One can criticize the immediate results of his policy in purely humanitarian terms, but one cannot deride the genuine faith that inspired it, the conviction that good would ultimately come of it all. In the summer of 1656 he did get as far as writing: “I do acknowledge these things have very great discouragements in them” but it was only to follow this admission with the news that those at home after “a solemn seeking of the Lord” had decided that they could never square it with their consciences to desert the cause “wherein we are engaged against the Spaniard in the West Indies”.

  To encourage all comers of the right quality, a proclamation had been quickly issued after the first capture of the island giving what were believed to be tempting terms of emigration to those who transplanted themselves to Jamaica. Every male over twelve was to have twenty acres of land, every female ten; there were to be no customs or excise for three years, and all the benefits enjoyed by English citizens should be enjoyed by the new Jamaicans. It was confidently expected that the settlers of North America in particular would wish to avail themselves of these privileges. Surprisingly few people however seemed to understand the richness of the opportunity. Soon Cromwell was forced to suggest that one thousand Irish boys and girls should be rounded up to fill the empty island, Lord Broghill having thought it doubtful that you could find any such emigrants in Edinburgh; another of Cromwell’s schemes for sending the Highlanders had to be abandoned when he was warned that they might well incite the whole colony to rebellion.20

  The strange dichotomy at the heart of the principles of colonization was once more apparent. On the one hand Cromwell sought to fill Jamaica with the godly, while on the other there were plans to export the sinners of various types from areas where they were generally felt to be less welcome. This balancing act was much on the level of the soldiers’ attitude to the native inhabitants ofjamaica: Major Sedgewick, a commissioner, wrote back to Thurloe regretting that they could not converse with the blacks, so that they were hindered in their intentions of “dispersing any thing of the knowledge of the true God in Jesus Christ to the inhabitants”. A month later Colonel D’Oyley, later to be first Governor of the island, reported that “it hath pleased God to give us some success against the Negroes. A plantation of theirs being found out, we fell on them, slew some and totally spoiled one of their chief quarters”. Now Thurloe greeted the Irish plan with some excitement, as he wrote: “Concerning the young women, although we must use force in taking them up, yet it being so much for their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, this must be done.” It was left to the more sensitive and kind-hearted Henry Cromwell to worry over the clothing and transportation of these unfortunate girls. In the event however the sc
heme seems to have fallen through, and there is no evidence that this piece of enforced emigration was ever completed.21

  The subsequent handling of the colony from the English angle was not much better thought out than the Western Design itself. From 1654 until 1660, colonial matters were chiefly dealt with by the Council of State, but in July 1656, after many complaints from merchants such as Martin Noell and Thomas Povey, a standing committee was set up consisting of soldiers and merchants, for the affairs of “his Highness in Jamaica and West Indies”. Both Noell and Povey were included. But confusions, delays and muddles continued, and the stream of petitions from merchants to the Protector showed how jerkily the system worked, with many a stoppage and hindrance. Nevertheless both Noell and Povey were men of substance and influence in the society of the Protectorate, and Noell in particular could exert much influence on Cromwell when he chose. This “exotic and mysterious figure” from humble origins in Stafford rose to become a great capitalist. An Alderman of London by 1651, and a member of the East India Company, his West Indian connexions were many; also he was first heard of trading with Monserrat and Nevis in 1650. He acted as contractor for the Jamaican expedition, an agent for the army out there, and received a large grant of land in the island; he was also a member of the Trade Committee of 1655. His brother Thomas Noell was prominent in both Surinam and Barbados. Colonial contacts were at least equalled by his position at home where Noell had the fortunate chance of being Thurloe’s brother-in-law; he was MP for Stafford from 1656 to 1658, and described as a “kinglet” in Parliament. Generally he flourished in the concerns of the Interregnum whether as shipowner, importer, landowner (from the West Indies to Wexford), merchant, contractor or just moneylender.22