In London, the conversion of the slaves seemed to be self-evidently the right thing to do, and several governors were sent out with instructions to start this process. But although a few planters who returned to London with slaves had them baptised in England, on the islands the planters remained resolutely opposed. In 1680, the ‘Planters’ Committee’ of Barbados told the Lords of Trade and Plantations that ‘the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not only destroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as converted negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of less value for labour and sale’. They went on to argue that ‘The disproportion of the blacks to whites being great, the whites have no greater security than the diversity of the negroes’ languages, which would be destroyed by conversion in that it would be necessary to teach them all English.’
Morgan Godwyn’s book remains a shocking description of the practice of slavery, and its impact is increased by the rarity of its viewpoint at this time. One other seventeenth-century tract, however, was even more vivid. Thomas Tyron was something of an eccentric; he would become rich writing self-help books, and was a great proponent of vegetarianism (and would number among his converts Benjamin Franklin). From a modest background, like Baxter he was a Dissenter, moving from Anabaptism to a more mystical faith based partly on the work of Jacob Boehme. For seven years in the 1660s he lived and worked in Bridgetown as a hat-maker. During this time, he had first-hand experience of slavery, and of its effect on both the slaves and their owners.
Most vividly, he put complaints into the mouth of an enslaved African. Slavery, says the ‘Negro’, is worse than death, starting with the horrors of the ‘Middle Passage’, where there were ‘so many and so close together, that we can hardly breathe, there are we in the hottest of Summer, and under that scorching Climate … suffocated, stewed and parboyled al-together in a Crowd, till we almost rot each other and our selves’. Once on the island, the work was relentless and sometimes fatally dangerous: ‘often-times we are forc’d to work so long at the Wind-Mills, until we become so Weary, Dull, Faint, Heavy and Sleepy, that we are as it were deprived of our natural Senses … we fall into danger, and oft times our Hands and Arms are crusht to pieces, and sometimes most part of our Bodies’. Appeals to the compassion or charity of the masters came to nothing, for ‘Interest has blinded their Eyes and stopt their Ears, and rendered their Hearts harder than Rocks of Adament.’ In turn, slavery had made the masters not only cruel, but corrupted by decadence: ‘our luxurious Masters stretch themselves on their soft Beds and Couches, they drink Wine in overflowing Bowls, and set their Brains a-float without either Rudder or Compass, in an Ocean of other strong and various Drinks, and vomit up their Shame and Filthiness … to gratifie their raging Lusts, sometimes take our Women …’
Tyron’s disgust and his sympathy for the enslaved leap off the page, but yet again, he fell short of calling for slavery itself to be abolished. Instead, like Henry Drax, he sought an improvement in the treatment and care of the slaves, not really for their sake, but for the efficiency of the industry, for the better production of sugar. For, he wrote, ‘there is no one commodity whatever, that doth so much encourage navigation, [and] advance the Kings Customs’. Tyron’s advice was in the end designed to help the planters, whose prosperity, he judged, was the prosperity of England.
Admittedly, a number of the Quakers did inch towards a condemnation of the institution of slavery, even if they never quite got there at this time. John Edmundson, who was with George Fox on his travels in the 1670s, came close, but he ended up more concerned with the morals of the slaves – in particular their polygamy, which was tolerated by the planters. But in 1675 he did issue a warning to Governor Atkins, who had accused him, along with the other Quakers, of encouraging the slaves to revolt: if they did choose to rebel ‘and cut their Throats’, Edmundson replied, the fault was with the masters for ‘keeping them in Ignorance, and under Oppression … and starv[ing] them for want of Meat and Cloathes convenient’. In fact, Atkins was right to be worried: a large number of slaves had already been planning a rebellion for as long as three years. At the time of Atkins’s conversation with Edmundson, it was almost ready to be launched.
The rebellion had been prepared with such secrecy that even the ringleaders’ wives were unaware of it. Nonetheless, just eight days before the ‘damnable design’ was due to begin, the plot was discovered. A domestic slave by the name of Fortuna overhead an 18-year-old Coromantee slave discussing plans for the insurrection. It appears the young man baulked at the plan to kill the ‘Buccararoes or White Folks’. Fortuna, who believed ‘it was a great pity so good people as her Master and Mistress should be destroyed’, persuaded him to go with her to tell Judge Hall. Hall rushed to inform Governor Atkins, who immediately mobilised the militia, declared martial law and arrested the known conspirators.
Precise details are hard to come by: it is possible that Atkins, subsequently reporting the plot to London, may have exaggerated in order to secure help with expanding the militia. But it appears that the plot was communicated through a network of African-born (rather than Creole) Coromantee slaves on a number of plantations, and may have originated in the Speightstown area. The aim had been for ‘trumpets … of elephants teeth and gourdes to be sounded on several hills … in the dead of night … to give notice of their general rising’. Then cane-fields were to be torched, and the slaves were to ‘run in and cut their masters … throats in their respective plantations’. Ultimately all whites were to be killed ‘within a fortnight’, although one report suggested that it was planned to ‘spare the lives of the fairest and handsomest [white] women … to be converted to their own use’. An ‘ancient Gold-Coast Negro’ called Cuffee had been chosen as king, and was to be crowned on 12 June 1675. Already prepared was ‘a chair of state exquisitely wrought and carved after their mode’.
More than 100 slaves were examined by a summary court, and 17 found guilty straight away. Six were burned alive and 11 beheaded, their bodies dragged through the streets of Speightstown and then burned. A report published in London the following year tells of how one of the leaders before he was burnt was called upon to give the names of others involved, which he appeared to be about to do. But another of the conspirators, ‘a sturdy Rogue, a Jew’s Negro’ called Tony, shouted to him, ‘Thou Fool, are there not enough of our Countrymen killed already? Are thou minded to kill them all?’ The slave remained silent, and an onlooker shouted out, ‘Tony, Sirrah, we shall see you fry bravely by and by’, to which Tony replied, ‘If you Roast me to day, you cannot Roast me to morrow.’
A further 25 were subsequently executed, and five hanged themselves in prison. The rest were either deported or sent back to their masters for a savage flogging. Fortuna was given her freedom, and the owners of the rebellious slaves killed were compensated for their ‘loss of property’.
The extensive nature of the plot caused huge alarm amongst the slaveowners of Barbados. The following year, new laws were passed that reinforced the militia, further restricted the movement of slaves, and banned the musical instruments that were to have been used for communication. The Quakers were also blamed for enabling the plotting of slaves from separate plantations, and ‘Negro’ attendance at Quaker meetings was banned.
None of these measures, however, prevented further scares. In 1683, a plot was uncovered that, surprisingly, used notes written in English to spread the word, and three years later, 10 slaves were executed after it emerged that some blacks might have united with Irish indentured servants in an effort to overthrow the planters.
The most carefully planned and widespread plot in the seventeenth century occurred in 1692. It was highly organised and was put together, for the first time, by Creole slaves: those born in Barbados and in theory ‘assimilated’ in the island’s system. Furthermore, the leaders were found to be from the elite, skilled enslaved workers – overseers, carpenters, blacksmiths, boilers27 – whose extra privileges, it had been hoped,
would have divided them from the interest of the majority.
This leadership, which came from 21 different plantations, mainly in the St Michael, Christchurch and St George parishes, succeeded in identifying a moment of great weakness for the whites: the uprising was timed to take place shortly after the departure of much of the militia to Guadeloupe to fight the French. It was also able to achieve the difficult task of persuading the downtrodden blacks of their own strength: plans were in place for the raising of four regiments of foot and two of horse, with officers named, from amongst the slaves. And the aim was more sophisticated than simply murdering all whites. The slaves, having secured their own plantations and, if necessary, helped out on neighbouring ones, were to proceed to Bridgetown to capture the arsenal, where an accomplice would be waiting to give them entry. A band of Irish co-conspirators was lined up to enter the town’s main fort laden with alcohol to get the garrison drunk, whereupon the fort would be stormed, and its guns used to command the harbour and town. Once the island was under their control, the slaves would set up their own government, with their own new governor. ‘The white women’, a report later outlined, ‘they were to make wives of the handsomest, Whores Cooks & Chambermaids of Others.’
It is not recorded who betrayed the plot, but apparently two slaves, Ben and Sambo, had been ‘fully overheard … talking of … their wicked design’ only ten days before the uprising was scheduled to take place. They were arrested and gaoled, and soon afterwards, a third slave, Hammon, broke into the prison to attempt to dissuade the two captives from divulging anything. But Hammon was caught and, in return for his life, implicated both Ben and Sambo, and another slave, Samson. What happened to the latter is unclear, although he was certainly killed. Ben and Sambo were sentenced to be ‘hung in chains on a gibbet until you have starved to death, after which your head to be severed from your body and put on a pole on said gibbet, your body cut in quarters and burned to ashes under said gibbet’. The two slaves are reported to have heard this sentence ‘patiently … without being in any ways moved’. They survived for four days before, their hopes for rescue fading and in an agony of thirst, they named names, in return for their lives, ‘frankly confess[ing] (when it could not be help’d) what their design was’. Sambo, it seems, did not live long enough to enjoy the ‘Governor’s mercy’.
Ultimately, between 200 and 300 were arrested, although only about 30 were identified as ringleaders. ‘Many were hang’d, and a great many burn’d’, a contemporary noted. ‘And (for a terror to the others) there are now seven hanging in chains, alive, and so starving to death.’ One Alice Mills was ultimately paid ten guineas ‘for castrating forty-two Negroes, according to the sentence of the commissioners for trial of rebellious negroes’.
Everyone among the white elite was deeply shaken. Governor James Kendall reported to London that: ‘The conspiracy of our most dangerous enemies, our black slaves … put the inhabitants into so strong a consternation.’ Appealing to London to send a permanent regiment to garrison the island, he wrote that ‘these villains are but too sensible of … our extreme weakness’.
13
THE COUSINS HENRY DRAX AND CHRISTOPHER CODRINGTON
‘All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud.’
Sir Walter Raleigh
Barbados, comparatively long-established and by far the most heavily settled of the English colonies in the West Indies, remained radically precarious and unstable. Yet another war with the Dutch from 1672 to 1674 saw the loss of many valuable cargoes, a hike in shipping costs, and a worrying increase in the public debt. Shortly after the uncovering of the first major slave plot, the island was hit by the worst hurricane in its history. On 31 August 1675, the sky darkened, and strong winds started swirling round, seemingly from all directions. Heavy rain, howling winds and lightning continued through the night. By morning, hardly a building or tree was left standing on the leeward side of the island. Two hundred people were killed, crops torn out of the ground or flattened, and two years’ sugar production lost. The Governor reckoned the damage at more than £200,000 and with the destruction of food crops and shipping, famine was soon widespread. A year later, in 1676, a ferocious smallpox epidemic carried off thousands, particularly from amongst the enslaved Africans and children of all races.
Henry Drax’s workforce seems to have been unaffected by the slave plot of 1675, in spite of the preponderance of Coromantees amongst his African slaves. Clearly, he also remained a very rich man, despite hurricane destruction and the sugar planters’ shrinking margins. But his wealth proved to provide no protection for his own family, who had at least their fair share of Barbados’s appalling mortality from disease. During an 18-month period up to the beginning of 1680, more than twice as many white people were buried than baptised in Barbados. A comparative analysis of households in Bridgetown and a town in Massachusetts from this time shows a mean number of children per family at just under one for Barbados, and more than three for Massachusetts. Furthermore, very few children who survived into adulthood in Barbados still had both parents alive. Sometime in the late 1660s, Henry Drax’s first wife, Frances, died (his younger brother John, still in his twenties, also died in Bridgetown soon after). Desperate to produce an heir to carry the Drax name forward, Henry quickly remarried, while on council business in England in July 1671. It was another good match: his new, 21-year-old wife Dorothy was the daughter of John, second Lord Lovelace. Dorothy produced four children, but all were, as an inscription on her tomb reads, ‘snatched away (alas!) too quickly’. None survived infancy; it is highly likely that at least one succumbed to the smallpox epidemic attacking Barbados at this time.
So, with a heavy heart, Henry Drax wrote his ‘Instructions’ for the running of his Barbados estates, and prepared to leave the island. His reluctance, and attachment to his Barbados home, is shown in his request for regular supplies to be sent to England of his favourite West Indian foods: ‘Jamaca peper welle pickled in good wineger … green ginger and yams’ (export was to be handled ‘with the adwice and Asistnce of my Cozn Ltt. Colonel John Codrington’). On 22 April 1679, a ticket was granted for Henry Drax Esquire to sail for London on the ship ‘Honor, Thomas Warner commander’.
Ironically, the move to healthier climes backfired. No more children were forthcoming, and three years later Henry himself died, aged 41. His will was written only shortly before his death: in it, in an exceedingly rare example of planter philanthropy, he left £2,000 for the establishment of a ‘free school and college’ in St Michael. He had always deplored the practice, since the Restoration, of the rich planters sending their children back to England at the age of 12 to be educated there. Few ever returned, he complained, and those that did were ‘utterly debauched both in Principallls and Morals’. Rich and far from home, it appears that the young Barbadians became loose-living and extravagant, and famous for ‘the gaiety of their dress and equipage’.
Two thousand pounds was a very sizeable amount of money at the time, but nothing came of the school. The bequest was ‘borrowed’ by the hard-pressed assembly, and disappeared.
Henry’s will requested that his funeral be ‘not costly, only decent’ and that he was to be buried with his father in St John of Zachary. Four hundred pounds was allocated to memorials to his mother and father, and a small sum for the poor of the parish. As well as his extended family, his godson Christopher Codrington the third was a beneficiary, as was his cousin William Drax. His wife found herself richer to the tune of a massive £8,000, as well as inheriting valuable property in London.
In the absence of an heir in his line of the family, the Barbados estates were to go to his sister Elizabeth’s son, Thomas Shetterden, but with an important caveat: he had to change his name, ‘and his posterity after him’, to Drax. Should he be reluctant to do this, Henry stipulated, the plantations would go to his younger brother, with the same caveat that he change his name. (This young man already carri
ed the first name ‘Drax’, so would have become Drax Drax.)
Henry’s nephew Thomas duly changed his last name to Drax and lived for a time in Barbados until his death in 1702. His eldest son, Henry Drax, also spent some of his life inhabiting Drax Hall, but passed most of his time in England, where he became an MP for Lyme Regis and Wareham in 1719, in more than slightly dubious circumstances (both his sons would also represent the constituency). Nonetheless, the death of the first Henry, or, more exactly, his quitting Barbados in 1679, marked the end of the family’s direct influence on the affairs of the island, once so crucial to its development.
Henry’s cousin Christopher Codrington would also leave Barbados, but under very different circumstances. Sometime before 1671, when he was 31 years of age, Christopher abandoned his ‘liberal, debonaire humour’ and started gaining a very different reputation. The turning point seems to have been Codrington’s takeover of a plantation called Consetts, situated in a beautiful spot on the east coast of the island in St John’s parish.
This was one of the island’s oldest plantations, established in 1635 by William Consett. It was also one of the most valuable: it had its own freshwater spring and also contained rare clay deposits – essential for making the pots for ‘claying’ sugar. In addition, it boasted a fine sheltered harbour. This allowed the products of the plantation to be carried away by boat, avoiding the difficult 14-mile trek across the island to Bridgetown. By the late 1660s, the next-door plantation was owned by Christopher’s brother John Codrington, and both William Consett and his wife Elizabeth were elderly and frail.
What happened next has been argued over ever since. It has been said that Christopher Codrington won the plantation in a game of cards. In a different, more convincing version of the story, the elderly Consetts made over part or all of their plantation to their friend and next-door neighbour John Codrington and his brother Christopher, to be theirs on their death, in return for a one-off payment to see them to their end of their lives. In another version, the deal was done with Henry Willoughby, son of the governor, or even with a third character known only as Turner. Alternatively, it may have been a combination of Willoughby and the Codring-tons, with the estate lined up to pay Willoughby a large annuity while being inherited by Christopher Codrington. The facts are murky to say the least.
The Sugar Barons Page 21