The English Caribbees in the Period of the Civil War, 1642-1646

Abstract

W T T ITH the opening of the Long Parliament in London in May i640, the English colonies felt the first of the successive shocks of the Puritan Revolution. Even before the Civil War began in England, the colonists of Barbados and the Leeward IslandsSt. Christopher (St. Kitts), Antigua, Nevis, Montserrat, Santa Cruz, Barbuda-challenged the proprietary authority of Carlisle Province, or Carliola, which held sway over the Leeward Islands, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, and Barbados. An armed but short-lived struggle in the Leeward Islands was accompanied by a more prolonged political revolution in Barbados. By the close of the Civil War in England Barbados had attained a precarious independence from proprietary control, while the Leeward Islands were divided between rival claimants to the proprietorship. The end result was the fatal weakening of the proprietary power in Carlisle Province, opening the way to royal government in the West Indies after the Restoration of Charles II. Ill-prepared from the outset for years of crisis, the Carliolan proprietorship was a divided force. James Hay, second Earl of Carlisle and the nominal proprietor after the death of his father in i636, found himself bound by his father's deed of trust which vested the rights of the proprietorship in trustees pending satisfaction of the first Earl's creditors. Hopeful of breaking the trust, the young Carlisle moved in i639 to name two new governors of his own choice for Barbados and Antigua. The trustees, Sir James Hay and Archibald Hay, agreed to accept the Earl's appointments provided he did nothing to interfere with their collection of the proprietary revenues. This truce did not put an end to the competition for power between Carlisle and the trustees, however. Some of the Carliolan governors, like Sir Thomas Warner of St. Christopher, remained friendly to the interest of the trustees, while others, like Henry Ashton of