An Elizabethan Assassin

by John Hall

  Captain John Smith had explored the Caribbean in 1607 and encouraged its settlement. The islands were colonised over much the same period as the American mainland, the first settlers in Barbados arriving in the same kind of numbers as the founding fathers in New England. Puritans and Quakers were prominent in both waves of migration. The Earl of Lincoln’s Arbella, crammed with its Tattershall contingent, sailed for Massachusetts three years after the permanent settlement of Barbados. Inauspiciously, the first settlers’ ship had arrived on the island with an unplanned cargo of ten black slaves from a captured Spanish vessel.

  When James I succeeded to Elizabeth’s throne, a locust-like swarm of Scots had followed him to England. One of these was an early infatuation of the king, a handsome young man named James Hay who was rewarded with money, titles and a rich heiress as his bride. Like Buckingham, he retained the favour of Charles I who advanced him in the peerage as Earl of Carlisle. Extravagant and grasping, the Scot showed an acquisitive interest in the new colonies and in 1627 obtained a grant of all the Caribbean islands including Barbados. The quit-rent demands of this indolent absentee landlord led to constant friction with the pioneer planters, and Carlisle’s death in 1636 left the island in the hands of a governor who squeezed what taxes he could from each inhabitant. A succession of governors struggled to impose rule over a burgeoning population – there were over 10,000 settlers by 1640 – and to cream off what they could from the booming economy.

  The Barbados planters quickly earned a reputation as a dissolute, avaricious and hard-drinking set, short-sightedly cruel in their treatment of slaves and apprentices. One English visitor in 1655 reported: ‘This island is the dunghill whereon England doth cast forth its rubbish. Rogues and whores and suchlike people are those which are generally brought here. A rogue in England will hardly make a cheater here. A bawd brought over puts on a demure comportment, a whore if handsome makes a wife for some rich planter.’69

  Mortality was staggeringly high among the planters, with yellow fever as one of the commonest causes of death. It took the place held by bubonic plague in England. Mosquitos thrived in the enervating humid heat, and once bitten by an infected insect the victim suffered a sudden splitting headache followed by burning fever, jaundice, a failing pulse and nausea, leading to haemorrhages, black vomit and delirium. Six thousand deaths from yellow fever were reported in 1648 alone. Other dreaded maladies were dysentery, leprosy and dropsy, while yaws afflicted its sufferers with hideous ulcers which deformed or destroyed facial features, hands and feet; hookworm larvae burrowed into the foot and passed into the intestines, settling there as blood-sucking adult parasites. The enigmatic dry bellyache, now thought to have been caused by processing rum in lead containers, caused unbearable cramps in the stomach and bowels. The physicians’ remedy for almost every disorder was bleeding, a disastrous treatment given the extreme anaemia characterising most tropical complaints.

  But money was the spur, and the Civil War in England proved a blessing in disguise by heralding an era of free trade. In the early days of the conflict islanders firmly put their business interests first and declared Barbados neutral, but as King Charles’s fortunes waned more royalist sympathisers headed out there. This new wave of immigrants seized power and declared for the king, confiscating the estates of leading supporters of the rebels.

  With the execution of Charles in 1649 a familiar name reappears in the story. The exiled Charles II, continuing his struggle against parliament from Holland, appointed Francis Lord Willoughby as governor of Barbados. This was not the holder of the ancient peerage of Willoughby de Eresby but of the much younger title of Lord Willoughby of Parham, although by many he was regarded as the rightful Eresby. The reason he failed to inherit the barony dating back to 1313 is a complicated story. His forbear William, younger brother of the eleventh Baron Willoughby de Eresby, would in normal circumstances have inherited the title and estates on the death of the peer without a male heir. Controversially, it was the daughter Katherine Willoughby who was recognised as baroness in her own right, but as she was the ward and then wife of the Duke of Suffolk, the bosom friend of Henry VIII, it is little wonder that William’s repeated attempts to claim his rights by law were doomed to failure. The Parham title seems to have been created for him in 1547 as a sort of consolation prize.

  Francis Willoughby reached Barbados in 1650 and sought to reconcile the warring parties. One of his first acts was to overturn the act confiscating the Roundhead supporters’ land. But these developments did not suit the new rulers of England and a Commonwealth fleet blockaded the island the following year and forced the Barbadians to capitulate. The Commonwealth’s terms proved generous, however, and the acquisition of money became once again the main preoccupation of the island.70

  The island’s spectacular growth came with the introduction of sugar cane. Sugar made Barbados the richest English colony with bigger plantation owners making vast fortunes overnight, and its cultivation drove an insatiable demand for African slaves. A family called Balls were listed among these first owners. Three plantations appear under this name in the earliest records, the biggest of 400 acres and named simply the Balls Plantation.71 The first map of the island, printed in 1657, is marked with the names of the principal landowners and shows all three Balls properties.

  The exact relationship of this family to Ferdinand’s mother is unclear. The Victorian historian Dunkin writes that Mary Balls’s father William had an estate in Barbados but quotes no source for the information. This seems highly improbable as the first settlers did not arrive till 1627 and William was pursuing a successful career in Hadleigh way back in the 1570s. However, Mary Balls’s family are repeatedly identified as the Barbados planters by early chroniclers, and Tregelles adds the detail that William’s estate was called Ashford, a name we will come across again. The authors of the Barbados Diocesan History printed in 1925 state that Mary’s father was a landed proprietor in the island, though they wrongly call him John Balls. The Balls of Hadleigh were numerous, however, and it is significant that the name more or less disappears from the parish registers in Suffolk by this time. The Barbados landowners were most likely nephews of William Balls and therefore cousins of Mary.

  Ferdinand became a freeholder some time before 1649, a strong indication of early support from well-off relatives established in the island. His estate was named Clifton Hall. His marriage to Rebecka Pomfrett, the daughter of a landowner, was another step towards acceptance into the ruling elite and 1649 marked an important milestone when he was elected to the vestry of St John’s Parish. Vestrymen were powerful establishment figures in the island in these early days. Contemporary Barbados documents show how Ferdinand gradually added to his holdings in St John’s Parish over the years. A deed for a sale of land to a Captain Thomas Hotherall dated 1658 describes the property as ‘bounded north by Ferdinando Paleologus’; in July 1662 Ferdinand extended his estate by five acres, the purchase grant stating that the land was made over to him by the previous owner in consideration of ‘ten thousand pounds of good muscovado sugar paid to me by Ferdinando Paleologus of ye same parish planter’. Perhaps the most attractive of the early plans of Barbados, Lea’s map of 1685, labels a plantation to the west of St John’s Church as ‘Paleologus and Beal’, the latter having previously been presumed to be Ferdinand’s partner in the business. However, as this date is after Ferdinand’s death there is another explanation we will come to later.

  Like Ligon’s map before it, Lea’s states that ‘every Parish, Plantation, Watermill, Windmill and Cattlemill is described with the name of the Present Possessor and all things else Remarkable’ and is dotted with little vignettes. Above the Paleologus-Beal estate is a drawing of a pineapple and it is an appealing idea that in addition to sugar Ferdinand cultivated what Richard Blorne, one of the earliest historians of the Caribbean, called ‘this rarest fruit of the Indies’. Another commentator pronounced it ‘the prince of all fruits’ and King James himself swore it must be the apple with whi
ch Eve tempted Adam.

  Evidence to support Tregelles’s talk of a Balls estate called Ashford comes in an article on Barbados published in 1843 by the colonial officer Henry Bradfield. He records an interview with an old man, father of the then owner of Clifton Hall, who said the original estate was also known as Ashford. This is a strong indication that at least the nucleus of Ferdinand’s holding was acquired from his maternal family, by gift, purchase or inheritance. The estate grew over the years to nearly 200 acres, but I have found no indication of how many slaves were bought to work on it. Some historians of the slave trade have calculated that one labourer was needed for each acre of sugar cane, though it is clear many highly profitable estates managed with a lower ratio.

  The sugar industry came to depend entirely on the slave trade. After the accidental introduction of the ‘tenn negroes’ taken from a Spanish prize ship, African slaves quickly replaced indentured whites as the main source of labour. The first record of a large-scale sale of slaves comes in 1644, the same date as our first record of Ferdinand in Barbados, when an auction of the cargo from a vessel called the Mary Bonadventure saw slaves sold at an average price of £22 a head. It was immediately recognised that transportation of slaves offered excellent commercial prospects and competition to satisfy the demand grew so quickly that ten years later the average price had dropped to £14 and to £13 the year after. During Ferdinand’s career on Barbados, at least 2,000 slaves were imported each year.

  The St John’s records show Ferdinand steadily consolidating his position in local affairs. On his election as vestryman in 1649 his name appeared in the parish vestry book as William Fernando Paleologus, but this is the single reference giving him the name William. In 1654 he is recorded as a sidesman and lieutenant of the militia; the mapmaker Richard Ligon, who had been a Lincolnshire landowner before setting out on his travels, wrote that despite being outnumbered the white settlers maintained control by intimidating the slaves through regular militia musters where there were impressive displays of firepower.

  In 1655 Ferdinand was churchwarden. Among the churchwarden’s duties was ‘to search Taverns, Ale-houses, Victualling-houses, or other Houses, where they do suspect lewd and debauched Company to frequent’ during the time of church services. Should they discover any people ‘Drinking, Swearing, Gaming, or otherwise misdemeaning themselves’,72 the offenders were to be placed in the stocks for four hours and fined five shillings. Ferdinand was a trustee in 1656 and again in 1660, when he was also surveyor of the highways; the following year he was vestryman again. In January 1670 a recorded absence from a meeting seems to have been caused by ill health, a condition worsening over the following months.

  On 26 September 1670, he made a will which begins:

  In the name of God, Amen. I Ferdinand Paleologus, of the parish of St John’s, being sick in body, but in perfect memory, commit my soul into the hands of Almighty God, my most merciful Creator, and my body to be interred in a Christian burial, there to attend the joyful resurrection of the just to eternal life by Jesus Christ my most blessed Saviour and Redeemer.

  Half his estate was willed to his wife for her life and the other half to his son, the name being oddly spelt as Theodorious. We will call him Theodore III. His inheritance was ‘to be imployed for his maintenance and education, together with the increase of his Estate, until he attains the age of fourteen yeares’. Other bequests were to Ferdinand’s sisters Mary and Dorothy in Cornwall, who were each to receive twenty shillings, godson Ralph Hassall, who was left ‘my stone black colt’, and to Edward Walrond went a grey mare. The Walronds, among the richest families in Barbados and fanatically royalist, had led the uprising against the Commonwealth in 1650. Though there is no direct evidence of Ferdinand being an active supporter of the exiled Charles II, this connection with the Walronds indicates where his sympathies lay.

  On 2 October a codicil was made to the will which provided for Ferdinand’s wife Rebecka to inherit the entire estate if Theodore should die before her without issue. Witnesses to the will were Tobias Bridge, George Hanmer and Thomas Kendall, all men of influence. The same witnesses signed the codicil with the addition of Abraham Pomfrett, brother of Ferdinand’s wife. By the date on the codicil Ferdinand was too ill to sign his name in full and could only write his initials between Ferdinand and Paleologus in someone else’s hand. Will and codicil were proved before Colonel Christopher Codrington, deputy governor and one of the biggest planters.73 Various inaccurate dates for Ferdinand’s death have been given by historians of Barbados, probably caused by misreading the crabbed handwriting on these documents, and this accounts for 1678 being chiselled on his gravestone as the year of death. Thanks to enquiries initiated by Canon Adams, this was shown to be wrong only in recent times. Ferdinand actually died on or soon after 2 October 1670, the date of the codicil. Few planters lived beyond thirty-five, which makes Ferdinand a Methuselah in Barbadian terms. Passing his fiftieth birthday was a feat as remarkable as his father reaching his mid-seventies in England.

  New light was thrown on the Lea map’s label of ‘Paleologus and Beal’ on the St John plantation in 1685 with the discovery of the will of Abraham Pomfrett, Ferdinand’s brother-in-law. Dated 6 July 1672 and proved on 8 August that year, this left legacies of five shillings each to his sister Rebecka Beale and his nephew Theodore Paleologus. So Ferdinand’s wife had remarried sometime between October 1670 and July 1672. Her new husband was almost certainly the Captain Alexander Beale of St John’s who was recorded in the Census Papers of 1679 as the owner of 111 acres of land and seventy slaves. It is unclear whether he was established as a partner in the business in Ferdinand’s lifetime or picked up a handsome estate when he married the widow. In the latter case the Paleologus named on the map would not be Ferdinand but his son Theodore III. The evidence that the second husband was indeed Captain Beale is backed up by Rebecka’s own will in which she leaves to a son called Alexander a silver plate marked with the initials A and R, for herself and her second husband, and with a B above for the surname.

  Beale took over Ferdinand’s church role as well as his wife and plantation. I found his name in the St John’s vestry minutes as sidesman in 1676 and by 1677 he was churchwarden and ‘overseer of ye poore’. Control of the vestry consolidated the power of the magnate families, both economic and political, as indeed did intermarriage. Meanwhile Rebecka continued to play a very active role in the business and was evidently a tough-minded lady with an eye to the main chance. In 1685, after the failure of the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion in England, she purchased as slaves four of seventy-two convicted rebels who were transported to Barbados following the Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys.

  Many of the facts set out above, including the correct year of Ferdinand’s death and the terms of the Pomfrett and Rebecka Beale wills, were teased out of the Barbados archives at Adams’s urging by a fellow soul in the island, Eustace Maxwell Shilstone, who was to become a distinguished historian of Barbados. The two antiquaries struck up a postal friendship in the 1930s which continued throughout the war years and beyond. It was one of the pleasant tasks of researching this book to piece together the two halves of their correspondence from the Adams papers in Cornwall and the files of the Shilstone Memorial Library named after the rector’s pen pal, now housed in the Barbados Museum at Bridgetown.

  An appealing image emerged of these two middle-aged bespectacled scholars as each settled down in the evening to write to a comrade 4,000 miles distant. Picture Mr Shilstone, a neat, portly, white-suited figure at the mahogany desk of his coral island villa, marshalling his thoughts despite the incessant din of cicadas and courting frogs in his garden; picture Canon Adams, a tall, balding figure in his clerical black, in the cold and draughty study of an old Cornish rectory. In letter after letter, at the height of a world war, the pair swop thoughts on the significance of dusty deeds and crumbling vestry books, the exotic ghosts of seventeenth-century Barbados gathered around them. Add to the picture Canon Adams hunched over a
candle, perhaps with a shawl over his shoulders: he was long without electricity after a bomb hit Plymouth’s power station in the freezing mid-January of 1941. But from this dogged long-distance correspondence emerged new truths about Ferdinand and his only son.

  Shilstone, fifty at the outbreak of war, was a successful barrister. His interest in history was originally sparked by moving office to a street opposite Bridgetown’s abandoned Jewish cemetery. There he found some of the island’s earliest tombstones, the subject of his first scholarly book. A prime mover in founding the Barbados Museum – a venture demanding steely resolve to take on obstructive commercial interests in the island – Shilstone earned a reputation for being abrupt and dismissive, his temper impaired by ill-health and failing eyesight. Those who knew him best said that after the event he always regretted seeming rude, while freely confessing he was incapable of suffering fools gladly.

  Now and then the outside world breaks into the correspondence. On 24 March 1941 Mr Shilstone writes: ‘We have nothing but admiration for the stout-hearted English people in their great trial, but are confident that victory will be ours in the end.’

  Adams in the meantime was witnessing the worst privations suffered by Plymouth, a key target for the Nazi war effort because of the royal dockyards, with relentless night attacks by the Luftwaffe. Like the Plymouth folk, he endured the mounting losses of supplies – gas, electricity, coal, milk, newspapers, eventually even water. A direct hit on the power station silenced the sirens and the loss of the water supply rendered the fire engines useless. But Adams knew about hardship. He was seventeen at the outbreak of the Great War and had immediately volunteered for the front as a private.

  On 28 April that year he writes to Shilstone:

  We have been very fortunate so far in our parish. We are only a few miles from Plymouth but so far have escaped unscathed. We have had a few bombs fortunately in fields or in the river mud and have had one dose of some scores or perhaps a hundred incendiaries, but they luckily all fell in fields.