The word "merchant":

The word "merchant" as used in this item is somewhat indiscriminate. It often refers to importer/wholesalers of bulk commodities. But from 1600, a "merchant" could have been a member of the mercantile classes, a scrivener or goldsmith, a bill-broker, moneylender, a manufacturer (including a shipbuilder), the manager of several self-owned ships, a speculator, or investor. And most notable London alderman were some kind of "merchant". There is no consistent way to be discriminating about what "merchant" meant from era to era.  

       Meanwhile, many historians treatments fail to inform that many merchants had simultaneous interests in several fields of trade, that is, they had multiple roles.  Discussion of the transmission of commodity items to the individual consumer, the retailer, or even the smaller wholesaler, as a topic (or way of life?) is conspicuously absent in English economic history until the early nineteenth century, and English historians have remained curiously uncurious about retailing ([1a]) [This is seen also in Duncan Campbell's own letterbooks, which between 1758 and 1796 provide frustratingly little information on just whom he sold his tobacco or sugars to. So, it remains difficult to examine his commercial networks] The great oddity of this is realised when one sees how, with the history of English contact with the East since 1600, generally, with the import of sugars, spices and tea, overviews of improvements to the English diet are seldom offered. One suspects that the English diet had been horribly drab for most people. However, the handling of commodities-only does suggest that links between merchants and aristocrats were financial, perhaps with the aristocrats providing  more capital for a merchant's handling of bulk commodities than has been thought?

     Here are points also regarding argument on sugar - a great many merchants - including those with slaving interests of various kinds - dealt in several trades, simultaneously - the Levant trade, American trade, Eastern trade. ([2])

     The skilful handling of money, or, capital, was their only means of balancing the contingencies arising from dealing in diverse areas or commodities. Once joint-stock companies began to reliably offer a variety of ways for profit-takers to succeed, including parasitic speculation, the definitions of "merchant" or "businessman" expanded. It was merchant experience with all this in the City of London which has apparently remained partially invisible to historians, but the biographies, the intermarriages, the networks of merchants indicate that there were such repeated flip-flops of capital between slaving interests, and East India Company interests, that it is absurd to speak of one without speaking of the other. And this situation arose partly since investment in the East India Company gradually became reliable for even the most conservative.

    Merchants learned that any capital requiring a rest from risk or speculation had better become shares in the East India Company. In this way, the Company helped shore up slaving interests. Madras traders include Nicholas Morse and William Monson. East India Company servants at Madras might trade to China, Siam, Tonkin, Pegu, Manila (The Spanish Philippines could not conduct trade with Protestants) and Java and Sumatra "most to themselves". Bombay had the Red Sea, Muscat, Persia and Malabar trades. ([3])

Here, seen within "a theory of Mercantilism", follows a basic list of merchants with interests in both the East India Company and matters of slaving would include such names as:

Stage 1: The Hawkins family: the first English promoters of slaving interests:

Linkages between the Hawkins and Gonson families were extensive. Benjamin Gonson  became an "admiralty figure". Men of the Hawkins family initiated the English slave trade, and as mayors of Plymouth are credited with helping their port reach maritime eminence.

John Hawkins of Tavistock had a son William (1495-1553), who married Joan Trelawney; the son of the latter was Sir John Hawkins (1531-1595), a slaving merchant and later Treasurer of the Navy, who married Katherine Gonson (1562-1591) as his first wife. Navy treasurer John's brother William (1519-1589) was a privateer and mayor of Plymouth. Later Hawkins descendants remained merchants. (An Australian reputed to be a Hawkins descendant was Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur , of the noted New South Wales grazing family, Macarthur.)

Routh writes that John Hawkins died 1595 sailed not to "save the cloth trade" but for the Merchants Adventurers Company, which excluded cloth traders and worked to restrict the output of cloth. Slaves were Hawkins' "main merchandise"; his backers included naval treasurer Gonson, Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, William Cecil, Lord Burgheley; and the earls of Leicester and Pembroke. The slaving voyages of Hawkins and others did much to forge other connections between slaver voyages, privateering and ship and naval management, as well as to promote interest in navigation generally. Sir John Hawkins was of the notable London parish, St Dunstan's in the East, where many notable mariners and merchants later lived.

William Hawkins the slaver once had an assistant, Captain Keeling, who is also known in early English East India Company history.

Active after 1580, Levant Company merchant William Towerson, also a Guinea trader.

London Lord Mayor, Sir Edward Osborne (1530-1592), was a co-founder of the Spanish Company and the Levant Company. He was born a first son in 1530, and was commercially active by 1577. His father was Richard Osborne of Kent, spouse of Jane Broughton, and Edward's own spouses were firstly Anne Hewett, and secondly Margaret Chapman (by 15 September 1588). Osborne was a clothworker who became a financier and international merchant, earlier an apprentice of his father-in-law, Lord Mayor Sir William Hewett. ([4]) He traded with Spain and Portugal, also the Levant, and re-exported cloth to the Baltic. In 1575 he and Richard Staper sent agents to Turkey to reconnoiter before signing a treaty. Osborne also became governor of the Levant Company, and he and Richard Staper personally financed the travels of Ralph Fitch and John Newbury to the East when England was first considering developing international trade by sea, not by overland routes.

It has been noted, in the context of Osborne helping to finance Fitch's travels, "It was apparently Fitch's report, on his return, that led the Levant Company merchants to seek the inclusion of the overland route to the East in their renewed monopoly charter of 1592". ([5]) So, by about 1581, England had set up four merchants, only, to trade to Turkey, but soon London saw to the origin of the Levant Company, incorporated in 1592 as the Turkey Company, involving twelve merchants. Meanwhile, Elizabeth I became a leading shareholder of the Venice Company.

Another Lord Mayor (in 1590), and a Puritan, Sir John Hart (died 1604) was a grocer, moneylender, a member of the Levant and Muscovy companies. ([6]) His spouse was Anne Haynes, his father was Ralph Hart. ([7]) Hart was often governor of the Muscovy Company between 1583 and 1600. He was a friend of Humphrey Smith of the Grocer's Company, of which he was a member. As a Puritan, Hart hoped in his will to be "of the elect". By 1602 he was an investor in the East India Company. ([8]) Hart worshipped at St Dionis Backchurch, London. From 1583, he and Richard Staper helped Fitch's travels.  ([9]) In all, the linkages between merchants of the Levant and Muscovy companies were genealogically complex, a factor which flowed into the character of the East India Company from 1600. And so it seems, that the East India Company was greatly influenced by merchants who were already experienced in conducting the international trade of their day. Ralph Fitch's  travels should be seen in this light - he was intended to expand horizons for London's international traders - many of whom were intermarried.

Active by 1600, Levant Co., Abraham Cartwright.

(The English East India Company formed in 1600.)

In 1611-1612, William Paget, Baron5 Paget, married to Lettice Knollys, in 1611 an East India Company investor, and in the Virginia Co. of 1612.

Sir William St. John, active circa 1618, of the Guinea Company.  ([10])

Matters on the West African coast need attention. A name of interest is Sir William St John. ([11]) In 1618, this man and thirty others were incorporated as "a Company of Adventurers of London trading into the ports of Africa". Known as the Guinea Company, they could not raise fresh capital, so they granted licences to private traders, who can be referred to as interlopers. One prominent interloper here was Sir Nicholas Crispe, who is said to have built the first permanent English settlement at Kormantin. (See below)

In 1618 the second Earl of Warwick had become an original member of the Guinea Company, newly-incorporated to engage in profitable trade in Negroes. ([12]) In 1618 the ship Treasurer Capt Daniel Elfrith was fitted with a Savoy Commission as a man-o-war; she carried the first shipment of Negroes ever sold in Virginia, and her arrival provided Warwick's enemies in Virginia with reasons to attack. They accused him of piracy, though Elfrith said the Negroes been obtained properly. ([13]) At the time of the ship money dispute, the value of the Rich navy was so great that Warwick obtained a commission modelled on the lines of Queen Elizabeth's commission to the anti-Spanish privateer, George Clifford (1558-1605), the Lord 13 Clifford, and third Earl of Cumberland , who according to Newton in European Nations in the West Indies had been "more prominent than any other English nobleman as a leader of corsairs; since 1587 he had organised and fitted out at his own expense no less than eleven expeditions against Spanish commerce", with his twelfth attempt being his last.([14])

In 1619, the Earl of Warwick took a prominent part in financing Roger North's Guiana expedition, and in 1620 he was granted a seat on the council of the revived Plymouth Company for New England, and went to its meetings. As to linkages between Puritans, Warwick/Rich was a neighbour of Sir John Bourchier, whose daughter Elizabeth had recently married Oliver Cromwell. Warwick as organiser of the Guiana Company had wanted to settle there some of the separatists of Robinson's congregation at Leyden, but the dissolution of the Guiana Company meant that Company looked to North Virginia instead, hence the sailing of the Mayflower in August 1620. (The captain of the Mayflower seems to have been Capt. Peter Andrews, who engaged in Virginia and West Indies tobacco planting. Andrews was brother-in-law of the ship's owner, Samuel Vassall) ([15])  (It was later, by 13 January, 1630 that Warwick obtained for the Mayflower puritans a grant of the second Plymouth patent.)

Robert Rich, second Earl of Warwick, was the eldest son of Robert (1559/60-1618-19), the first Earl Warwick and third Baron Rich, and great-grandson of Richard, first Baron Rich, chancellor of the Court of Augmentations to Henry VIII, founder of the family fortunes, a Puritan and a contemporary of John Preston. ([16])

The Rich family were anti-Spanish and therefore distasteful to James I. The second Earl of Warwick continued the earlier privateering expeditions of his forebears; in 1614 he became one of the original members of the Somers Isles Company. In 1618 he had 14 shares in the Somers Isle Company and one of the divisions of the Islands was called "Warwick Tribe" (sic, a peculiar appellation).

In 1616 he and his father fitted out two ships with a Savoy Commission to rove in the East Indies. In fact, the second Earl of Warwick, and his commercial associates busily united the themes of anti-Spanish activity, interest in Virginia, and trade in the zones desired by the English East India Company. The anti-Spanish vehemence of Warwick's day lasted long in English cultural life.

In 1620, Sir Allen Apsley, an investor in the Africa Company of 1618, the New England Company of 1620. ([17])

In the 1620s, Lord Mayor Ralph Freeman, East India Company and Russia Trade (0ne of the few Russia merchants who can be associated with slavery). In 1624 of the Virginia Company and the "Rich faction".

In the 1620s, Anthony Pennyston, Levant Company and in 1624 of the Virginia Company "Rich faction". Also in 1624, Levant Company merchant and Virginia Co, Richard Chambers.

In 1623, Lord Mayor of London, Sir Peter Proby.

Active from the 1620s, Maurice Thompson, business manager for the second Earl of Warwick, and Maurice Thompson also answered to Warwick's kinsman, Nathaniel Rich. ([18])

London grocer John Brett. ([19])

1620s, Levant Company and Virginia Company, Edward Bennett, of the "Rich faction".

Andrews in Ships, Money and Politics writes, Warwick was "the only great shipowning aristocrat of his time, patron and chief entrepreneur of westward colonization, especially in the West Indies and the Somers Islands"... Is this remark significant? "The only other peer with a considerable interest in shipping [was] the Earl of Carlisle..." However, it remains difficult to find ship men or traders associating with Carlisle. As he worked to "plant" the Caribees, Carlisle relied even more than Warwick did, on merchant backing. Carlisle's clique of merchants being led by Marmaduke Roydon. ([20])

Later regarding Barbados, the associates of the Earl of Carlisle (family name Hay) were such as Peter Hay, James Holdip. Carlisle's backers included Marmaduke Roydon, William Perkins, Alexander Bannister. The Barbados experience acclimatised English people to managing chattel slavery. ([21]) There seems however to be little evidence that Carlisle was interested in maritime activity before he developed ambitions to dominate the English efforts in the Caribbean. In fact, little is found in books on the merchants Carlisle used, and his  commercial activities, as distinct from his political influences, remain rather blank to the historian. And further, Carlisle's interests cannot be properly understood without reference to Courteen's investments on Barbados - and much else. Perhaps, Carlisle was constrained to use shipping deployed by merchants whose greater loyalty was to the Earl of Warwick?

In 1628 the second Earl of Warwick took over the governership of the Bermuda Company to make it a Puritan project. By 21 June, 1628, Digges and Rich had again put forward a plan for a West Indies company; Rich had a bill pre-written. An associated idea was to "breed up mariners". Similar plans were expressed in late January 1629. (In August 1628 the Dutchman Piet Heyn (sic) reportedly took a Spanish treasure fleet for £1,200,000.) ([22])

When, due to Carlisle's interventions, the proprietorship of Barbados came into dispute, the slowness of Courteen's supply lines threatened famine. ([23]) The island's people however survived, and by 1640, after changing from diversified agriculture to using more rationalized, larger holdings, plantation-style, Barbados was profitably exporting tobacco, cotton and indigo. By 1645, the Barbados settlers would buy 1000 slaves in a year. ([24])

By 1626, Maurice Thomson was a figure in the St. Kitts plantation and tobacco and provisioning trade. Alison Olson sees Thompson as active in the Canadian fur trade, sending provisions to New England, with a monopoly on the Virginia tobacco crop, as an interloper in East India Company trade, and one of the Guinea Company. ([25]) Thompson was quite prepared to leave London on serious business matters. In April 1626 he went to Southampton for about six days, regarding deals regarding St. Kitts, with one Thomas Combes of there, which later went sour.

Combes had a plantation on St. Kitts; having been linked to Capt. Thomas Warner, the "original settler" of St. Kitts. Thomson agreed to put in £4000 capital. In April-May 1626, Thomson and Combes sent three ships with sixty slaves to St. Kitts. A new man joined the syndicate, Thomas Stone, of a Lancaster family, been apprenticed into the Haberdashers, London. He was in Cateaton Street, London, had a nephew in Virginia, one W. Stone, and also had links to Holland. By 1627 Thomson and Stone were re-exporting tobacco to Middleburgh, Flushing and Amsterdam.

Thomas Crisp (Crispe), associated with England's acquisition of Cape Coast Castle for the Guinea Company, and thus an associate of the ubiquitous Maurice Thompson (Thomson) of the Rich faction, that is, the faction managed by the second Earl of Warwick. ([26])By the late 1630s, London customs farmer, Sir Nicholas Crispe (1599-1666), the founder of the English slave depot and refreshment base for East India shipping on the African coast, Kormantin, whose faction sought a royally-backed monopoly on Moroccan trade. ([27]) His faction was resisted by Maurice Thompson (Thomson), who is treated at length in later chapters, as are his probable allies in resisting Crispe, the Anglo-Dutch entrepreneur, Sir William Courteen Snr. (1572-1636) plus Samuel Bonnell. ([28]) 

In 1631, Crispe and his partners were issued with a patent giving them a monopoly for 31 years of trade on the entire west coast of Africa, and prohibiting all others importing Africa goods into England. In 1649 a formal protest was lodged against this company with the Council of State. A need for forts was seen, (infrastructure cost), and a monopoly was renewed till 1651, though limited to about Sierra Leone and Kormantin. Thus, the patentees survived the Puritans. But finances worsened, so in 1657 they sold Kormantin to the East India Company, which was glad of the calling point. ([29])

Crispe had been active in the Africa trade from 1625. On 22 November, 1632, Charles 1 gave Crispe and five others an exclusive right to trade to the Guinea coast, for 31 years patent. Crispe got redwood from Guinea and had a sole importation right. The wealth Crisp got from slaving and other business in 1640 enabled him to contract for two large customs farms, "the great and the petty farm", and on that security he and his backers gave the king use of £253,000. Crispe was knighted on 1 January, 1639-1640. Remaining a loyalist during the civil war, Crispe in that time had fifteen ships at sea. He had a house in Bread Street, many puritan relatives; he again farmed the customs. He advanced £1500 for the re-conquest of Ireland, and welcomed the return of  Charles II. In May 1661 his son obtained post of collector of customs for the port of London. He was notable in developing brick-making. His great-grandson Sir Charles Crisp died in 1740.

Between 1655 and 1665 one Thomas Crispe was in dispute with Denmark over land near Cape Coast Castle. In 1662 the Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa had one determination - to oust the Dutch in the slave trade. ([30]) They were the third English-Africa Company, and they took over a former English East India Company base, Cape Coast Castle, a few miles east of a Dutch station, Elmina, on the Gold Coast. One of Crispe's backers was that powerful and also under-rated commercial name of the seventeenth century - Maurice Thompson. Crispe's depositions stated that in 1649 he was the chief factor on the Gold Coast for Rowland Wilson, Maurice Thompson, John Wood and Thomas Walter, whom he called The Guinea Company (of London).

The original site of Cape Coast Castle, said Crispe, had been given to English, then taken by the Swedes. It was re-taken by the English in Crispe's time on the coast. ([31]) That is, Thomas Crispe claimed he'd established what became the prime English slaving depot. He once deposed that he had bought the site of Cape Coast Castle for goods worth £64 (in the small coastal kingdom of Fetu). That is, he claimed he'd bought freehold. (James Island had been occupied since 1651 by the Courlanders. or, men in service of Duke of Courland. Later it passed into English hands). ([32])

Died 1635, MP Richard Weston, Earl1 Portland, Levant, East India and Virginia trades, in 1624 commissioner of the Virginia Company, about 1620 a Commissioner of the East India Company, and an under-secretary of Treasury.

Active about 1636, James Holdip a member of the Caribbean Carlisle circle.

Died 1636, James Hay Earl1 Carlisle, Caribbean proprietor.

Captain Robert Jenkins, the Jenkins of "the war of Jenkins' ear", an "East India captain" taking slaves from Madagascar to the Malabar Coast of India.

RAC investor, Sir Benjamin Bathurst. ([33])

Matters on Barbados:

Between 1640-1660 the Barbados planters switched from tobacco and cotton to sugar, and from using white servants' labour to black slaves. ([34]) In the 1640s and again in the 1690s, thousands of Barbadians died from yellow fever, called Barbados distemper or bleeding fever. The patient vomited and voided blood. To the 1640s, the Barbadians had been a simple group of peasant farmers on the first port of call for Caribbean-bound ships. The most populous and most successful of islands, it was never invaded by the French or Spanish. ([35]) By 1639 the members of the later Barbados elite included Allyn, Bulkley, Codringtons (who became immensely wealthy). And James Drax, a militia captain with an Anglo-Dutch background, who made the first-ever sugar fortune. ([36]) Drax brought from Holland a model of a sugar mill - a small instance of technological transfer indicating the breadth of Mintz's view on the revising of capitalism, seen as originating in the Caribbean.

By 1680 Drax was said to ship home £5000 worth of sugar. Other notable Barbados names were Frere, Huy, Hothersall, Pears, Yeamans. Dunn notes, many of these names had commercial backgrounds in London. Later came names such Gibbs, Fortescue, Sandiford, Read, Hothersall and Berringer. From about 1640, Barbados people included Edward Cranfield and Edward Shelly, Capt George Martin. ([37])

Capital and technology told. It was similar on Barbados, where the original "peasants" were done for. Dunn lists the newcomers who renovated the Barbados economy, including John Colleton, Samuel Farmer, Thomas Kendall, Peter Leare, Thomas Modyford, Daniel Searle, Constantine Silvester, George Stanfast, Timothy Thornhill, Humphrey Walrond, Francis Lord Willoughby. Here, some names were those of agents, some had links to Dutch merchants, some were eager to harvest sugar business. Some, as Dunn puts it, were the younger sons of English gentry who had fought in the civil wars and now wanted, or rather needed, fresh endeavour.

Dunn lists among the newcomers who renovated the Barbados economy - John Colleton;  James Colleton, Sir Peter, Thomas; James on the Barbados assembly to 1700.) Samuel Farmer, Thomas Kendall, Peter Leare, Thomas Modyford, Daniel Searle, Constantine Silvester, George Stanfast, Timothy Thornhill, Humphrey Walrond, Francis Lord Willoughby. The newcomers quickly helped consolidate "the Barbados aristocracy." ([38])

A noted figure in seventeenth century power struggles over the proprietorship of English Caribbean islands, was Francis Willoughby (1613-1666), fifth Baron Willoughby of Parham, in 1660 a grantee of the "Morocco Company". ([39])

Notes on the genealogy of "Godschalk":

NB: Notes on the probable family background of Joas Godschalk, "a friend of Courteen" and also a connection of Maurice Thompson: Godschalk, or Godschall, is a rare Huguenot name. Godschalls had first come to southern England about 1561.Their family trade was woolens or cloth. No family background can be found for this Joas, who was active about 1640. ([40])

James Godschall (resident in England by 1560-died 1636) son of John (Jan) Godschall (died August 1587 and of a church on Threadneedle Street) and Margaret Unknown, had property in Essex, some land about St Botolph without Bishopsgate (the later site of Bedlam Hospital and also near two theatres used by playwright William Shakespeare et al). It seems John son of Jan also once gave the crown "a large loan". Some descendants of John son of Jan had a house in the parish of St Mary Abchurch in an area once burnt in the Great Fire of London. A draper and Turkey Company merchant, John Godschall married to Bethia Charlton, had a son John (died 1725), a Turkey merchant of St Dunstan's in the East. John Jnr. Went to Antioch, Turkey and Syria on family business, such as buying rugs, and he had a nephew named William Mann Godschall. (William Mann Godschall, an antiquarian and FRS,  in 1787 wrote A General Plan of Parochial and Provincial Police, which plan was unsuccessful.) ([41])

John Jnr. Son of Bethia Charlton had a brother, Nicholas (died 1748, also of St Dunstan's In the East, also in the Turkey Company. Nicholas married in 1727 to Sarah Onley (died 1750, of an Essex family. (See Savile-Onley, Burke's Landed Gentry. Sir Robert Godschall (died 1741), a wine merchant, a Portugal merchant, was son of the same Bethia Charlton and became a Lord Mayor of London by 1741. ([42]) Robert this Lord Mayor married Catherine Tryon, and Miss Lewin, a daughter of London Lord Mayor in 1717, Sir William Lewin. This Lord Mayor Robert of the Ironmongers Company seems also a Tory MP, a director of the Royal Exchange from 1729 till he died, and a brother-in-law of Sir John Barnard. Today, the Godschall-Johnsons have many members in Australia and Canada, as two brothers split the family. One brother, Sir Francis Godschall-Johnson (1817-1894) became Chief Justice of Lower Canada; the other brother, Ralph Edward Godschall-Johnson, (1812)-1876) went to Australia where he became first clerk of the Queensland Parliament. ([43])

These two brothers were sons of a minor diplomat at Antwerp, Captain Godschall II Godschall-Johnson, 1780-1859 of Cavendish Square. It seems a genealogical accident that before 1779, Sir Cecil Bisshopp Bart7 (died 1779) had married Susanna Hedges (died 1791), daughter of an East India Company official, Charles Hedges of Finchley, Middlesex. ([44]) Charles Hedges had married Catherine Tate, daughter of Bartholomew Tate. This Bartholomew Tate happened to be one of the descendants of the Lords Zouche, a line which can be traced (although it had fallen into abeyance) earlier than Alan Zouche (died 1270) husband of Helen or Ellen De Quincy. ([45]) 

Sir Cecil Bisshopp Bart8 (1752-1828), became Lord12 Zouche (he married Harriet Southwell (died 1839). ([46]) In London by the 1780s, the Godschalls, who had lost touch with their kin in Flanders,  had become intermarried with the name Warner, which had Caribbean plantations (Antigua) and the name Johnson. ([47]) It seems by then, some family members had become involved in aspects of the slave business, possibly as dealers in slaves to the Caribbean, or, buyers of slaves. ([48])

From the 1780s, some Godschall-Johnsons lived about the present London borough of Lewisham, and they were on intimate family terms (in terms of god-parentage of various children) with the family of "the father of Lloyd's of London", John Julius Angerstein of Greenwich/Blackheath, who was a personal friend of George III), and also the Temple family (See re Viscount Palmerston). ([49]) Members of the extended family came to Australia in two waves, with the second wave represented by the first clerk of the Queensland Parliament. ([50])

The writer on transported convicts, Coldham, has many anecdotes on transportation to Barbados. On 16 June, 1647 the ship Achilles (Mr. Thomas Crowder) embarked many Bridewell women for Barbados, where there were three classes of men; masters, servants and slaves. Customs were, slaves were treated better than servants. By 1655, ship managers were sending as many convict-fodder people as possible. ([51]) By 1645, Barbadians imported 1000 Negro slaves. Between 1710 and 1810, 250,000 slaves were landed in Barbados alone of Britain's "sugar islands". ([52])  So the English sailor-pirate waxed increasingly fat on servile labour.

In 1647, evidently unsatisfied with other supply lines, the Barbados settlers Thomas Modyford and Richard Ligon had gone out themselves looking for negroes, horses and cattle. (In 1657, Richard Ligon produced a first map of Barbados.) Their ship went to Africa. That is, they were bartering for their own slaves. ([53])

As a seeming mere detail in a scheme to be envisaged, by 1654, James Drax on Barbados had shares in two slave ships. By 1651 the English Navigation Acts had been designed to tie sugar planters to English ships, English merchants and the home market, which might re-export sugar. The revolutionising impact of commodity sugar was growing in power and financial authority. ([54]) Patterns were building and rebuilding.

Between 1647-1656 appeared Povey, a man destined to have great influence on the Caribbean. ([55]) Povey was a member of the 1647 Long Parliament, an intimate friend of Noell, and, finally, another West India magnate. His Letterbook exists; he described the knighting of Col. James Draxe at the instigation of Noell. Noell survived the "holocaust" of the Restoration, Fraser notes, and was knighted by Charles II; but he seems to have died bankrupt. ([56])

Modyford had landed on Barbados as a young man in 1647 with money and connections after losing the fight in the civil war. He could pay £1000 down and pay £6000 in the next three years, operating with his brother-in-law, the London merchant Thomas Kendall. Modyford soon attempted to dominate island politics. ([57])

In other areas... As an innovation, by about 1655, a licence was granted to Sir James Modyford to take all felons convicted on circuits and at the Old Bailey, then reprieved, to Jamaica. ([58]) Thus, one of the major figures in the development of English slave-holding in the Caribbean also helped to formalise convict transportation! ([59]) As well, (1655) during the Protectorate, pardons conditional on transportation appeared, with their use to be continued by succeeding rulers. Such pardons were later granted< /p>

Meantime, some Asiento agents included: ([60]) Thomas Crispe (sic) agent or factor on the Gold Coast, Thomas Croaker (sic) agent for Asiento, Howsley Freeman, chief agent and merchant at Cape Coast Castle, John Freeman, slave agent at Sherbro (sic), Stephen Gascoigne, the RAC's agent in Barbados, Juan Genes, agent of Asiento, Abraham Gill, agent of Asiento. John Hanbury, agent for slaves in Gambia. Robert Helmes (sic) the Africa Company's agent at Nevis, Giles Heysham, an Africa Company's agent at Barbados. ([61]) Also, William Hicks was an agent or chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, Capt Ralph Hodgkins was an agent-general for the Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle. John Chidley, an agent in Gambia. Thomas Corker, nd, agent for the Africa Company at Sherbro. Thomas Croaker (sic) was an agent for the Asiento. Asiento Howsley Freeman, agent or chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, John Freeman, slave agent at Sherbro (sic), Stephen Gascoigne, RAC's agent in Barbados, Juan Genes, agent of Asiento, Abraham Gill, agent of Asiento, Henry Greenhill, agent-general at Cape Coast Castle, John Hanbury, agent for slaves in Gambia, Robert Helmes (sic) Africa Company's agent at Nevis, Giles Heysham, Africa Company's agent at Barbados, Joseph Holmes, agent and slaver factor in the Gambia, William Hicks, agent or chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, Captain Ralph Hodgkins, agent-general for the Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle, William Hicks, chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, Captain Ralph Hodgkins, agent-general Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle, John Kabes agent of Kommenda, John Kastell, agent and slaver for the Africa Company at the Gambia.

Lists can continue. The genealogist will wish to know: were any interesting family names listed here, perhaps also connected with other businesses mentioned by English historians of commerce? Hender Molesworth, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica and an Africa Company agent. ([62]) Thomas Mellish, agent-general Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle in 1673; Meulanaer and Magnus, (sic) Africa Company's agents at Amsterdam; John Mildmay (sic) agent factor at Ophra; Alexander Oliver, agent of Asiento, at Ophra (also known as Ardra); Josiah Pearson, factor slaver at Anomabu, also agent or factor at Whydah; Charles Penhallow, Africa Company's agent at Jamaica; Edmund Pierce, slaver agent in Sierra Leone. Nicholas Porcio.

More? Maybe an Asiento agent, Rowland Powell, Africa Company's agent in Jamaica. ([63]) Zachary Rogers an Africa Company agent at Sherbro and accused of helping interlopers; William Ronan, chief merchant or agent of the Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle and accused of helping interlopers; Walter Ruding, Africa Company's agent in Jamaica. (Note: Sherbro was also known as York Island). Sir Edwin Stede, governor of Barbados. An agent of the Africa Company, John Thurloe at Sekondi (sic). A factor slaver or agent at Sekondi was Thomas Thurloe. An agent slaver in the Gambia, Richard White; agent of Asiento, John Whitfield, factor or agent at Anomabu; Richard Willis, agent or slaver factor at Whydah.

Cromwell and commercial developments:

In all colonial administration, Cromwell was personally influenced by a group of London merchant advisors. He placed them on committees, especially Martin Noell (sic) and Thomas Povey. By about July 1656, there had been many complaints to Cromwell from merchants such as Povey and Noell, and so a standing committee was set up. Noell had much influence on Cromwell. Noell was from humble origins in Stafford, but he became a "great capitalist", an alderman of London by 1651, a member of the East India Company,  and he also had many West Indian connections. Noell was first heard of, trading to Monserratt and Nevis, by 1650. He had acted as a contractor for the Western Expedition, and was an agent for the army out there, so he received a large land grant on Jamaica. His brother Thomas was prominent at Surinam and Barbados. Noell flourished as shipowner, importer, a landowner in the West Indies and Wexford, merchant, contractor, money lender. ([73/64]) To Povey is owed a great deal, for he made the beginnings of a definite colonial policy. English merchants by 1656 had gone a long way with continuing the former anti-Spanish tradition of piracy, and they proposed that parliament incorporate a West India Company to attack Spanish towns, to interrupt the Spanish treasure fleet and to drive Spaniards from control of the West Indies and South America. ([74/65])

By 9 December 1654, as the Western Design was firming, Daniel Searle was made governor of Barbados at a council meeting. Venables, Penn, Winslow and Butler were all being named in a commission, but it had not been understood in London that Barbados had developed its own unique way of life (and for example, was developing its own slave code which was later exported to Jamaica, then to Virginia).

About 1654, Jeremy Sambrooke examined the financial behaviour of the East India Company. ([75/66]) By 1657, the East India Company's directors were seriously considering  selling the Company's factories and rights, but the general court (shareholders) overruled them. At this point, Cromwell came down seriously in favour of continuing the Company as a capitalistic enterprise, but oddly enough, no copy of the charter issued by Cromwell in 1657 still exists. The charter which was issued is thought to have resembled the charter of 1609. ([76/67])

After 1657, more shareholders were let into the East India Company, and the newly-chartered Company bought all the properties of the Old Company. Dividends would be paid in cash, not in commodities as had earlier been the case. Cromwell's charter was later abridged by a charter Charles II issued in 1661. By 1659 or so, Charles II's new Company charter had five important features; it allowed the company: (1) to acquire territory (2) to coin money (3) to command troops and fortresses (4) to make alliances (5) to exercise civil and criminal jurisdictions. ([77/68])

The 1672 Africa Company

The Royal Africa Company of 1672 and the Asiento:

The African Adventurers Company was ruined by its losses and after 1672 was replaced by the Royal Africa Company (RAC), which was even more ambitious, which set up six forts on the Gold Coast and one on the slave coast, while the French built up north of the Gambia in Senegal. ([115/69]) Founded in 1672, the RAC had its monopoly broken from 1689 by private traders; by 1712 the private traders gave the Company a 10 per cent commission to fund operation of the forts ([116/70]) From 1712, the British slave trade became free, so the Company made only an insignificant supply of slaves. Slackness in the English trade allowed Bristol and Liverpool to become ports heavily dependent on slavery, especially Liverpool. Africa House was in Leadenhall Street, first mentioned by 1677. These premises were taken over by the East India Company and from 1766 the Africa Company offices were in Cooper's Court, and later, Cannon Street. (The charter was recalled in 1821 and the remaining possessions on the West African coast were given to Sierra Leone.)

By 1672 there were 70 sugar works on Jamaica (which is a total of 3,840,000 acres). In 1752, cultivable land was measured at 633,336 acres. In 1754 there were 1620 planters with an average holding of 1000 acres, and much land not used for sugar was left idle, despite the island's potential for greater self-sufficiency in food production and urgings that it become more diversified in production. To keep production down propped up the price, and Williams writes, Jamaica could easily have had three times the number of sugar plantations it did have. Producing 760 tons of sugar, 200,000 acres had been granted to 717 families, which is about 280 acres per family. Sugar islands became increasingly parochial in outlook, and, was this due to monoculturalism? Cultivating one acre of cane in the West Indies required [about] 172 days of human labour. ([117/71]) After 1670, in London, wealthy West Indian planters began to meet at a tavern, and by 1674 arose the Jamaican Coffee House. So was aided the institutionalisation of West India absentee landlordism.

On 27 September, 1672, the RAC charter passed the Great Seal, and now it had legal recognition. It could seize the goods and ships of any who infringed its monopoly, it sought gold, silver and negroes, could make war and peace with heathen nations, raise troops and execute martial law. ([118/72])

An original subscriber, John Bull, for £500, bought another £400 in 1674 and sold all the next eight months. He bought again in 1675 and 1676 and resold; the same, in 1679 and 1685. Others behaving in this way were the Earl Berkeley, John Cudworth, Nicholas Hayward, Thomas Hall. From 1672, more investors: Benjamin Newland bought goods at the company's sales. John Gourney, Thomas Aldworth,  Thomas Nichols and Peter Proby supplied the RAC with goods for export as wholesalers. ([119/73]) Investors included Sir Humphrey Edwin as a company promoter, Sir John Buckworth a commissioner of the Mint, Sir George Waterman the City Auditor. Sir William Langhorne (ex-India with £19,000 in East India stock and £4000 in RAC stock). Sir Jeremy Sambrooke (ex-India with £18,000 in India Stock and £700 in the RAC). And Streynsham Master, ex-India.

Old hands of the former Africa Adventurers were modest investors; Abraham Holditch, Henry Nurse former agents at Cape Coast Castle, and Alexander Cleeve a former agent on the Gambia. So, two-thirds  of capital was in the hands of businessmen and most of these were overseas traders. Money was drawn from already-established branches of trade. ([120/74]) By 1672, some small RAC investors were Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Wardrobe (and benefactor of Jesus College at Cambridge); Lawrence du Puy, keeper of the mall; William Ashburnam, cofferer of the royal household; Matthew Wren, secretary of the Duke of York; and Eusebius Mathews ; a few holders of minor civil service posts, some widows, some country gentlemen, a controller of prizes, a cashier to customs, two revenue officers, country men including Sir John Lowther of Lowther, Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven, Sir Anthony Craven of Buckinghamshire, Broom Whorwood of Oxfordshire, George Garth of Surrey, and Francis Farnaby of Kent. Lawrence du Puy, the King's barber. Dudley North, the noted Turkey merchant. joined the RAC to learn how to manipulate joint-stock, with which he was unfamiliar.

By 1672, the new RAC had a sub-contract with the Asiento and an oblique entry was made possible to Spanish colonial markets; gold and ivory would supplement trade in Negroes, and of course, sugar. The RAC would probably be favoured by Charles II, his court, and the Duke of York (who invested in both the East India Company and the RAC), plus several ministers and prominent courtiers. But an accident of finance, a stop on the exchequer, poor national finances, debts to goldsmiths, all  immobilized, and those who had left money with goldsmiths (by then lent to the crown?) were held up.

Moreover, with the "secret" treaty of Dover of 1671, Charles had gotten cash from France for an attack on the United Provinces. Since the Dutch were so important on the African coast, this was all important; the second Dutch war had been largely an outcome of rivalry on the African coast, and it was notable that many who knew of the "secret" Dover treaty subscribed to the RAC. Including, Clifford (died 1673 had £400 stock), Arlington (£500 stock), Buckingham (£500 stock died 1687), and Ashley  (Shaftesbury); four of the five ministers in the Cabal, plus the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Sir William Coventry and Sir Joseph Williamson (secretary of state, £500 stock, sold out in 1687). Plus, John Locke (philosopher interested in colonisation, £400 stock, sold in 1675). Sir George Carteret (£500 RAC stock - his family had a royal charter for Carolina, he was a Lord Proprietor of Carolina and a member of the committee of trade and plantations). Sir Peter Colleton (large plantation in Barbados, £1000 RAC stock sold in 1675, down to £400). The Earl of Craven (£600 stock).

Merchant Thomas Povey. Sir Edmund Andros (former governor of New York). Ferdinando Gorges (£1000 RAC stock, sold in 1679), whose family had estates in New England. Several such names had been associated with Ashley (Shaftesbury) in his earlier [unnamed] colonial schemes. Others were Lord Hawley, Lawrence du Puy and Matthew Wren, close to the Duke of York. Lord Berkeley had up to £1600 stock in the RAC but sold out in 1688. The king, James II, sold his RAC stock, £3000 on 10 January, 1689; James received in dividends £3480 and sold for £5730, with a total profit of £6210 over seventeen years. The Earl of Craven was not a large investor, nor was Lord Powis (£100 pounds stock) or Lord Falconberg.  Royalty and their circles never held more than one quarter of the RAC stock. ([121/75])

By 1672, the primary problem of any African company was a shortage of liquid capital, and the RAC had raised too little. Turnover was slower due to long credit  being extended to slave-buying planters. There was the infrastructure cost of fixing capital in forts, so the Company had to borrow heavily. It traded in gold, ivory, dyewood, hides and waxes for the English market and in buying slaves for the West Indies. The need arose to export English goods worth about £100,000 per year, including goods of non-English origin, such as cheap eastern textiles, Swedish iron, spirits such as French Brandy. Beads for Africa came from Venice. English manufacturers objected as their markets were limited, the sugar islands wanted more slaves than were supplied, free traders objected. ([122/76]) K. G. Davies writes, the RAC spent up to £25,000 per year on hired shipping.

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The operation  of the Asiento involved international speculators in currency, and Spanish, Flemish, Italian and French markets attracted speculators connected with the Crown by asientos. Silver was placed in the most profitable market. ([123/77]) In 1674-1676, England renewed its interest in the Asiento and probably dealt with Garcia at Madrid. In 1674 Francis Millington, and in 1676, Peter Proby and various RAC shareholders made overtures, such as with a deal for 250 slaves to be delivered to Cadiz. Apparently, regarding a Spanish ship, the Santo Domingo, Richard White, ex the Grillo Asiento, made overtures which the RAC later rejected. (Later, Thomas Croaker went from Cadiz to Barbados in the Caribbean to buy slaves). Then Spanish interest switched to Jamaica, where the Spanish stationed a permanent agent. ([124/78])

By October 1683, 336 slaves off Jamaica were sold to Abraham Gill, an agent of the Asiento Porcio, (which was a Spanish Asiento in conflict with the Dutch Coyman's Asiento)  to Don Juan Genes and Co., and to Don Juan Espino. Later operating was Don Alexander Oliver, a representative of the Dutch Coymans Asiento. There were no more such sales after 1686. The Jamaicans enjoyed dealing in silver, the RAC missed a prime opportunity here, but the Jamaicans were notoriously anti the RAC monopoly. And in 1686, Molesworth twice complained about the lawlessness of the South Sea pirates. In June 1689, the former Porcio Asiento agent, Santiago Castille ("Sir James Castille") visited England to arrange a deal with the RAC for slaves via Jamaica; this was rather an illegal deal which English authorities decided to overlook. War anyway made the deal impossible. Castille intended to sue; the RAC claimed "restraint of princes", the outcome seems unknown. It appears anyway from 1693 that Castille had stung a group of Jamaican merchants for over 86,000 pieces of eight due to them (presumably for supply of slaves to Castille's Asiento agency). ([125/79])

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Possibly about 1673, Baron9 Berkeley, George Berkeley (1627-1698), found his name on lists of the RAC; he was governor of the Levant Company 1673-1696, and on a committee of the East India Company 1660-1698-1699 till his death. (A peer who declared for the acceptance of William III).

Died 1675, Sir James Modyford, Jamaica, also an importer of convict labour to there, plus Thomas Modyford governor Jamaica, with Thomas Kendall (also of the Portuguese and East India trades) Peter Watson, Jonathan Andrews, Tobias Frere, Edward Walrond. Thomas Modyford was an old army friend of William Helyar of East Coker, Somerset, who first sent William Dampier to Jamaica.

More on the English on the African Gold Coast from 1645:

Active 1645, William Pennoyer, MP, Levant Company and in the Guinea-Barbados slave trade.

Active 1649 were, Thomas Crispe, Guinea-Barbados slave trade with John Brett, John Ward, Thomas Walter, William Crispe, William Pennoyer, Maurice Thompson, Robert Thompson, Samuel Pennoyer, Rowland Wilson.

Active in the 1640s, customs farmer Sir Nicholas Crispe (1599-1666) also in advanced brick-making. He had puritan relatives, and links with William Cloberry an associate of Maurice Thompson. ([66/80])

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By 1660, Sir William Morice, a commissioner of the Treasury in 1660.

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Thomas Crispe in 1655 and 1665 had disputed with Denmark about land near Cape Coast Castle and later made depositions. Crispe in 1649 had become the chief agent or factor on the Gold Coast for Rowland Wilson, Maurice Thompson, John Wood and Thomas Walter, whom he called The Guinea Company. The original site of Cape Coast Castle had been given to the English, was then re-taken by the Swedes, re-taken by the English, all in Crispe's time on the coast. ([67/81]) But we do not know how many ships used the location. Interestingly, about 1670, a "slaver", Sir Nicholas Crisp sold his house near Hammersmith to Prince Rupert, ([68/82]) for the use of Rupert's lover, a house which had cost £25,000. Crisp was active in the Africa trade from 1625.

(NB: K. Chaudhuri has noted that Guinea was the long-cloth imported by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from the Coromandel coast to be re-exported for the West Indies and African slave marts. Here, the English East India Company was not keen on business due to the "undeveloped" state of the pre-Restoration English slave trade. Guinea stuff was sold to Guinea Company but with little profit.) ([69/83])

Meantime, between 1660 and 1685, tempe Charles II, the king generally received more from each pound of Virginian imported leaf that the planter. ([70/84])

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In England itself, by 1660, any export of wool from Britain was again forbidden, and in 1662, smuggling wool as export (from Kent, Sussex and Essex), was made punishable by death. By 1671 there was abolition of tunnage and poundage as forms of customs duties, and then the "free traders" were styled as smugglers. The first organised English customs duties seem to stem from 1688, and smugglers began to feel persecuted by 1685, for their illegal running of goods was becoming considerable. "Export smuggling" was in wool, and the forbidding of wool export meant that cloth workers had wool growers at their mercy. ([71/85])

By 1660, commissioners of the Treasury included Sir Edward Hyde, George Monck later duke of Albermarle, Monck's kinsman Sir William Morice, Lords high admirals, and James, Duke of York.  By 1660, England had Caribbean bases on Jamaica and Barbados. England found logwood for dyeing in an area with no fixed government, in the Bay of Honduras and on the Mosquito Coast. The Spanish held St. Eustatius which was becoming an entrepot. ([72/86])

The Restoration and commercial developments (not including Barbados):

With the Restoration, West India merchants in London persuaded Charles II to retain Jamaica as a royal colony, and later came the appointment of Sir Thomas Modyford, royal governor of Jamaica 1664-1671. Modyford promoted agricultural development and attacks on the Spanish, which got him personally £1000 per year from buccaneers, and he wanted liberal land grants and Barbadians to join him. Modyford himself had 22 parcels of land in eight parishes. ([78/87])

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By 1660, the most influential elements in the West India interest were the merchants whose rise to power had been mainly caused by the share they took in the Cromwell western expedition of 1655, writes Penson. Noell's interest declined. Povey's schemes disappeared with the decline of the Willoughby interest. By September 1665, another pro-Willoughby agent in the wings was John Champante, a clerk in the Grand Excise office. ([79/88]) In effect the island was cheated by the king. But the Barbadians shrugged their shoulders, and it was from about now that some Barbadians were knighted, becoming "sugar-coated knights" in partial recognition of their gentry status. These included Sir Thomas Modyford, Sir James Drax, Sir Peter Leare, Sir John Colleton, Sir John Yeamans. ([80/89])

Also with Charles II in the Restoration period, the East India Company directors gave gifts of their loyalty, and the king gave them a favourable charter and accepted loans over 16 years of £170,000. ([81/90]) In a different trading sphere, by about 1660, more than half of the beneficiaries of the capital in the Royal Adventurers to Africa were peers or members of the Royal Family; including the Duke of York, Princesses Maria and Henrietta, Prince Rupert (who withdrew), the dukes of Albemarle and Buckingham, the earls of Bath (who withdrew before capital had been fully paid up), Lord Hawley (who withdrew) Ossory, Pembroke, St Albans and Sandwich. Commoner investors included some of the greatest mercantile figures of Restoration London; Sir Robert Vyner, Edward Backwell, Sir John Robinson (Lord Mayor, London MP, deputy-governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and director, East India Company), Sir Philip Frowd, Sir Andrew Riccard, Sir William Coventry (withdrew). ([82/91])

By 16 July, 1660, as Penson writes, authorities in London wanted Colonel Modyford installed at Barbados. Modyford's friends in London wanted this outcome. Friends here being led by John Colleton and aided by favour of General Monk, both of whom were relatives of Modyford. The group of friends appears to have been Peter Watson, John Colleton, [Sir] James Drax, Thomas Kendall, Jonathan Andrews, Tobias Frere, Edward Walrond (sic). Given the views of Lord Willoughby, these all remained concerned about their tenures. By 1671, this group would dominate the actions of any agent for Barbados.  By 30 August, 1660, as disputes over Barbados continued, a committee had backed a decision of the king, as some rival claimants appeared, the heir of the earl of Carlisle and the representative of an earlier grant, James, Earl of Marlborough, and so Kendall, Colleton et al had again to press their case for a royal government of Barbados, versus, it seems, any proprietary right.

By 1661 too, the East India Company had a revised charter, which allowed it to maintain forts and raise troops for their defence. So began its new era with paid-up capital of £370,000, permanent joint-stock. ([83/92]) In 1665 began a purely commercial war, Anglo-Dutch, which stemmed from conflict on the African west coast. Captain Robert Holmes was aggressive there over the winter of 1663-1664. ([84/93]) Holmes took Goree north of the Gambia River and Cape Coast Castle on the Gulf of Guinea. Captain Nicolls took the New Netherlands (New York). ([85/94]) In 1661, Robert Holmes for the Royal Adventurers into Africa expelled the Courlanders (Latvians) from the mouth of the Gambia River, and James Island was occupied by the English. There was trading to Sherbro and Sierra Leone, but the Dutch placed obstacles, so in 1664 Holmes captured Dutch settlements at Cape Verde. De Ruyter then in 1665 swept out the English from all areas but Cape Coast Castle. ([86/95])

The king decided to grant New Netherland to his brother James, the Duke of York, as a proprietary province. James' deputy was Richard Nicholls, who sailed for New Netherland from Boston, and Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered in Sept 1664. New York's trade staple was fur. Part of the New York territory included what would become New Jersey, and James, Duke of York here favoured his friends Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, two defenders of the Stuarts during the Puritan Cromwell period. In 1665 they established a government for the area, but New Yorkers protested at this as it clashed with their own interests. In 1674, Lord Berkeley sold his New Jersey interests to two Quakers, John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge; who later used trustees including William Penn. ([87/96])

By 29 March, 1661, Walrond on Barbados had decided Kendall and Colleton were really working for the reinstatement of Modyford on Barbados. Willoughby got himself to Barbados by 1663 and found considerable intrigues there. ([88/97]) By June 1661, Povey's old friend William Watts was in command of the government of St Christopher. Povey's brother Richard was then on Jamaica, and Jamaica had a new governor, Thomas Lord Windsor. ([89/98]) Povey's influences abated however from 1663. In the years after the Restoration, Povey's influence declined as he was linked with Willoughby, and the ruling party on Barbados was anti-Willoughby. About 1664-1666, Povey was surveyor-general of the victualling dept. in London. ([90/99])

In 1662 the Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa also had one purpose, to oust the Dutch in the slave trade. The East India Company had leased as a calling place, Cormantine (Kormantin), a few miles east from the Dutch Cape Coast Castle. By now this was the third English-Africa Company, and it took over an East India Company factory, Cape Coast Castle, a few miles east of a Dutch station, Elmina, on the Gold Coast. Breda gave Cape Coast Castle back to the English. ([91/100]) The Duke of York was apparently involved here, as he put £3600 more into the Africa Company, which surrendered its charter in 1663 and had a new one issued, to The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa. This charter mentioned slaving specifically, the idea being to supply slaves to the West Indies on credit. The new company took over Kormantin and Cape Coast Castle, but was soon troubled by the Dutch (the English ambassador to Holland then was Sir George Downing). A series of wars arose between Britain and Holland. ([92/101])

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The deeper interests of the "proprietors of Carolina"

The granting of the "proprietorship of Carolina" south of Virginia, was not simply a sole-colonisation venture. It was one outcome of a large-scale, highly imaginative melding of many diverse strands of economic endeavour, with a view to keeping that endeavour in the hands of organisations bound largely to royal monopolisation. It is very likely that the outbreak of resentment in the 1790s, of  merchants "interloping" against the East India Company, in the time of William III, was the expression of a London-based, long-held, Whiggish-minded resentment at what the "proprietorship of Carolina" might have come to, as is easily found from an examination of the interests of the Carolina proprietors. Those interests stretched from eastern Canada, south down the American coast, past Virginia, south to the Caribbean sugar islands, to Surinam, also to the West African coast, and around the Cape of Good Hope to India, via the financial interests of the East India Company, about the time that England gained Bombay. The scope of the interests held was enormous, since it embraced most of the earlier history of English colonisation, plus existing entry points into the Levant trade, as we find...

The Carolina proprietors became:

 Sir William Berkeley (1606-1677), governor of Virginia in 1641. ([93/102]) And in the wings, his brother, Lord John Berkeley of Stretton (1602-1678), Commissioner of the Navy and member of the Privy Council. John, a friend of James, Duke of York, was a proprietor of New Jersey, a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. John married Christian Riccard, daughter of Sir Andrew Riccard, some-time governor of the Levant Company and also of the East India Company. Christian Riccard also married Henry Rich, first Viscount Irwin, of the family of the Earls of Warwick. ([94/103]) 

Cromwellian Lieutenant-General, George Monck (1608-1670), first Duke of Albemarle, Captain General. ([95/104])

Edward Hyde (1608-1687), Earl Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, whose son, Lawrence (died 1711), first Earl Rochester, was a partner with Willoughby, the governor of Barbados, who also owned Surinam. Of course, Edward's daughter, Anne, had married the king's brother, James, Duke of York, governor of the RAC, of Jersey, of the Hudson's Bay Company. Lawrence Hyde shortly before his death was governor of the Merchant Adventurers in London. ([96/105])

Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl Shaftesbury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had investments in the Guinea Trade and Barbados. He was distrusted by Royalists, so the others "came in to provide needed support". ([97/106])

Sir George Carteret (died 1679-1680), treasurer of the navy, member of the Board of Trade. He had been with Prince Rupert on Rupert's piratical adventures. Carteret was also a proprietor of New Jersey. His widow sold such rights to William Penn of Pennsylvania. ([98/107])

William Craven (1608-1697), Earl of Craven, Lord Lt. of Middlesex, member of the Privy Council. At first sight, he does not seem to be anyone who might be involved! ([99/108]) Craven however was Master of the home of navigation, Trinity House; a commissioner of the government of Tangier. He brought in the useful interests of the families of recent Lords Mayor of London. Son of a Lord Mayor, he was also son of a daughter, Elizabeth, of the Lord Mayor in 1631, William Whitmore, Haberdasher. His brother, John (1610-1648), first Baron Craven, by his marriage may have brought in the family interests of the Spencers of Wormleighton/Althorp. So, the name Craven presumably contributed standing City interests, and very strong ones.

The king, it is said, gave the Carolinas to these parties, as in his view, "he could not deny the strength of this coalition". ([100/109]) Was he such an unaware businessman, oblivious of such an array of  geographically spread and lucrative interests? Most of these proprietors had sustained  colonial interests. Colleton was engaged with Barbados, Sir William Berkeley had been a governor of Virginia. Carteret and John Berkeley were involved with New Jersey. Carolina was suitable for "baronial estates". Once the disgruntled Barbadians arrived in Carolina, the system there provided a specialised plantation agriculture, promoted slave labour, and reduced the flexibility of the existing local social system. Articles for the government of Carolina were drawn up by Shaftesbury with the help of the philosopher John Locke, and were based on political ideas "already outmoded" in England itself. ([101/110]) That is hardly any wonder. After some 55 years in power, the Scots Stuarts were simply beginning to realise where the future lay! And when they did realise, they overplayed their hand disastrously.

From 1663, when the most active Carolina proprietor was Shaftesbury (so it is said), Sir Peter Colleton on Barbados, the eldest son of the Carolina proprietor, had joined forces  with Sir Thomas Modyford, as some 200 Caribbean men were thinking of going to Carolina. After 1667, the first permanent Carolina settlement was made on the Ashley River, in 1670.

Dunn notes there had been some "aristocratic claptrap", of trappings dreamt up by Shaftesbury and Locke for the government of Carolina; its Fundamental Constitutions. ([102/111]) Later, from 1672, into the 1690s, the only revenge a London or outport-based merchant could take on this royally-inspired takeover of up to half-the-known-commercial-world was to engage firstly in "interloping " activity about Africa, against the RAC, and when that failed, in the 1690s, to go interloping against the East India Company, east of Africa. It is also hardly any wonder that when the Scottish Darien Company arose in the 1690s, it also tried to fulfill many of the dreams inherent in the model provided by the royally-backed plans of "the Carolina proprietors". And all this is in the late 1690s was where the "Caribbean pirate", William Dampier, a man very familiar with English themes-in-history, gained employment circa 1700 when he sailed by terra australis incognita.

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A royal slaving company?

In 1663 the new royal slaving company told the king, Charles II, the very being of the plantations depended on supply of Negro slaves. Williams observes acidly, Europe was seldom so unanimous as in its view of its dependence on the value of Negro slave labour. Later, in 1672, the organisation was called The Royal Africa Company (RAC), and by 1680, (there was rising the lobbyists' dependence on the impressive statistic as a tool of trade), forts in Africa were estimated to cost £20,000 per year. There was a need certainly for private control of the Company, which like other slaving companies had enemies. In  short the Company wanted a monopoly; and in 1671 the West India planters owed the Company £70,000 for slaves, for Jamaica alone.

By May 1671, after debate about failures, the Royal Adventurers were suggesting a new subscription of £100,000 and wanting the existing charter continued, with creditors to get 33 per cent plus old/new stock via a complicated formula. A new book for subscriptions opened on 10 November, 1671, then fresh plans arose, and a new company would buy all the old for £34,000. Between 10 November, 1671 and 11 December 1671, some 200 people underwrote stock to £111,600. Some original subscribers were John Locke and Shaftesbury. There were some delays in getting the capital in, caused by outbreak of a war with the Dutch, although in general the subscribers were keen to place their investment. ([103/112])

But in 1698 (while free traders were also again assailing the East India Company in London and about India), the Parliament abrogated the Africa Company's monopoly and threw slaving open to free trade. Although, a duty was applied of ten per cent on all goods exported to Africa for the purchase of slaves. Such goods included woolens (also part of the triangular trade), iron bars, guns and brass goods including pans and kettles. By 1682 Britain exported about 10,000 bars of iron to Africa yearly.

Eric Williams has discussed statistics provided by the pioneer seventeenth century English economist, Charles Davenant, indicating that by about 1700, England's total profit from trade amounted to £2 million, with the plantation trade accounted for £600,000 of this, and the re-export of plantation produce bringing in £120,000. The triangular (Atlantic) trade pattern represented 36 per cent of England's commercial profits. About 1700, Davenant added that every individual white or black in the West Indies was seven-times more profitable than an individual at home in England. (And in 1700, Bristol had only 46 ships in the West Indian trade.)

The RAC dealt in fabrics, including perpetuanas, lighter than serge, durable, cheap, while serge came from Devonshire. The Company bought goods from an Exeter agent or a London intermediary, one of whom was William Warren, a Company shareholder. ([104/113]) Knives and swords came to the RAC from Samuel Banner of Birmingham (400,000 knives and 7000 swords). Banner had earlier supplied the Hudson's Bay Company. Brokers used in London to deal with RAC imports included the prominent Robert Wooley, who paid the RAC £65,000 in ten years, although the destination of the goods since they left Wooley's hands has never been traced. On the lines of trade went; West India commodities going to London refiners, ivory to cutlers and furniture makers, dyewood to salters.

However, by January 1665 the Royal Adventurers owed £100,000, and supply reverted to private persons. There arose the Gambia Adventurers with a capital of £15,000, its shareholders being the members of the parent body, peers and courtiers, though by 1665 a number of prominent London merchants had entered the Company. It was too late, however, and by 1670 was talk of winding it up. ([105/114]) The Royal Adventurers sent no slaves to Jamaica after 1665; Jamaica probably sent or used slaves made available by private traders under licence. The RAC did not supply slaves again till 1674 (in which year, William Dampier was about Jamaica!). Jamaica became a strong opponent to monopoly of slave supply. ([106/115])

Meantime, themes anti-Spanish were not forgotten. In 1665 with the connivance of the governor of Jamaica, three British captains including Henry Morgan  made their way upriver and sacked Granada, capital of Nicaragua, while other parties later pillaged the Pacific coast. In the winter of 1670-1671, Capt. Morgan with 1800 men again took Granada and Porto Bello, and Providence Island, then went across Isthmus and took Panama; Old Panama was never rebuilt, the Spanish were never recompensed for these losses. Morgan was later knighted and became Lt-gov of Jamaica. ([107/116])

In 1664, due to Sir Thomas Modyford, Jamaica lock-stock-and- barrel adopted the slave code earlier been written on Barbados. With the aid of his kinsman Monck, Duke of Albemarle, Modyford in 1664 became the royal governor of Jamaica, and in 1664 he sold his Barbados property, got 20,000 acres in Jamaica for himself and relatives and soon owned a property, Sixteen Mile Walk, the grandest plantation on the island, with six hundred servants and slaves. ([108/117]) Modyford boasted, he was "a planter become a governor". But Modyford's move to Jamaica did not destroy the anti-Willoughby faction on Barbados that Modyford had built up to hinder first Searle, then Willoughby. ([109/118]) To 1668, William Lord Willoughby had been out to the Leeward Islands, and when he got back home to London he was granted a renewal of his commission as governor of all the Caribbean Islands. By 1668, Barbadian agitators with Lord Willoughby had included Sir Paul Painter and Ferdinando Gorges. ([110/119]) A list of those who were restive with Willoughby's privileges begins to look like a list of London's earliest Whigs of the merchant classes; merchants less than enamoured of autocratic royalty.

Which is no accident. From the 1680s, London Whig merchants were to express themselves vigorously about royal monopolies, rights to free trade, new colonies (such as Carolina), and naturally, their financial interests were ranged around Eastern trade and slavery. London's Whig merchants who came to final prominence during the reign of William III only tightened earlier existing financial linkages which made the mutuality of slavery and East India Company business profitable, sophisticated in technique, more free in attitude - and as this happened, further development of the Virginia-London tobacco trade created new sources of profit. Incidentally, by 1681, most of the MP investors in the RAC were Tories; between 1681 and 1702, 14 of 16 successful Tory candidates were interested in the RAC, which may have reflected the influence of James II in the RAC generally. ([111/120])

Two men regarded as "political economists", Josiah Child and Dalby Thomas, were investors in RAC slaving operations. ([112/121]) The fortunes of the Childs, the Riders and the Heathcotes might be measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds.([113/122]) The large London timber merchants drew widely on London business circles to take shares in ships they built. ([114/123])

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Active 1679 as Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robert Clayton (known as "extorting Ishban").

London Lord Mayor Sir John Robinson, RAC lists, East India Company director and deputy-governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Active in the 1680s, New England colonist Ferdinando Gorges also a RAC investor.

Died 1684-1685, Charles Howard, Earl1 Carlisle.

Active 1688, London goldsmith-banker Edward Backwell. (See lists in Davies, Royal Africa Company.)

Died 1689, John Belasyse, Lord1 Belasyse.

Active 1695, William Paggen, in the slave trade and also re-exporting tobacco to Holland and Hamburg.

Died 1699, banker Sir John Banks (no relation to the family of Sir Joseph Banks who visited Australia in 1770), of East India trade, and with associates Martin Noell, Maurice Thompson, Visc1 Falconberg (Fauconberg), Thomas Papillon, Sir Gabriel Roberts, Sir Peter Colleton, William Thompson a one-time governor of the East India Company, with links to the name Dethick which also links with Maurice Thompson. Banks here could be seen as an inheritor of the commercial legacy of Maurice Thompson.

The son of Caleb Banks, Sir John Banks (1627-1699), Royal Africa Company investor, married to Elizabeth Dethick. (This family was no relation to the family of Sir Joseph Banks of Lincolnshire, later to be treated in this book.) ([4/124])

Thomas Papillon, New East India Company, (1623-1702) ([5/125])

Sir Jeremy Sambrooke, active in the 1680s, who in 1654 began to examine the financial behaviour of the East India Company. His name is found amongst the genealogical connections of Sir John Banks also in this list. ([6/126])

William Hedges, governor of Bengal, married to Susanna Vanacker. ([7/127])

The Lascelles family, generally, which had various interests in the Caribbean. Daniel Lascelles (1714-1784) MP, was of the East India Company but he inherited West India property. His mother Mary Carter (who married an East India Company director, Henry Lascelles) was from Barbados. Daniel's brother Edwin (1713-1820) became first Baron Harewood.  ([8/128])

Sir Edward Littleton (died 1707), of the New East India Company.

William Proby, active for the New East India Company at Surat. ([9/129])

William Gifford, New East India Company, died 1721.

Humphrey Morice (died 1731), separate trader, a noted dealer in cowrie shells from the Maldives, much used in the slave trade. ([10/130])

Active 1699, a Virginia-London tobacco dealer active from the 1690s, Micajah Perry. His father was "the greatest tobacco merchant in London".

1700, "the first Campbells" on Jamaica following the debacles of the Scottish Darien Company. Of the extended family of Duncan Campbell of London (1726-1803). .

Active 1723, John Montagu, second Duke Montagu. ([126/131]) Owner of all St Lucia in the Caribbean, known as John the Planter. ([127/132])

James Crockat, active about 1760, in Duncan Campbell's time; and Charles also Crockat died 1769

Died 1770, radical MP and Lord Mayor William Beckford, whose wealth from sugar and slavery was enormous.

The Beckford family of Jamaica, and London, circa 1770. ([12/133])

Note: To 1775, Various notable users of slave labour in colonial Virginia are noted in various chapters of "The Blackheath Connection". Of interest are the Tayloe family of Mount Airy. ([128/134])

Active 1776, Francis Abbatt, shipping merchant involved in the slave trade, said to be a founder of the Blackheath Golf Club in London.

Buchanan and Simson, active in the 1780s, slavers, using Liverpool ships captains, dealing in East India Company goods from London. ([13/135]) One of their associates appears to have been Robert Barclay, an English whaler and tobacco trader, and a friend of the American whalers, Rotch. In 1785, this Barclay was a member of the East India Company India Interest group. ([14/136])

Active 1786, Camden Calvert and King, of the Africa Company, London.

1780-1790s, Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), of Blackheath, London, owner of "Saltspring" on Jamaica.

John Julius Angerstein, "the father of Lloyd's of London". Plantation owner.

Sir George Colebrooke, second Baronet (1729-1809). Governor of the East India Company in 1769 and in 1772, whose wife had plantations in Antigua, while he had land on Grenada worth £50,000. By 1766 he was a noted speculator in East India Company stocks. He once tried to corner the world market on alum, and he backed the Vandalia settlement in North America, in the Ohio Valley. He helped back Clive of India while his deputy-chairman of 1772, Laurence Sulivan, became an enemy of Clive. ([15/137]) He helped arrange the first London stock exchange in 1772, but his bank closed in 1773, and he bankrupted. He was probably a victim of the spectacular 1772-1773 London bust  caused mostly by the speculations of the Scot, Alexander Fordyce. ([16/138])

(Ends the lists)

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