Rudyerd spoke strongly in its favour and claimed that it was the best way 'to cut the King of Spain at the root and seek to impeach or supplant him in the West Indies....This will be a means not only to save but to fill his Majesty's coffers,...for the sea-war will chiefly be made at the charge of the subject".1 The idea of a joint association had few attractions, however, for the dissensions between the rival Dutch and English East India Companies were notorious; the Dutch seemed to get the better of every bargain, and the news of their evil usage of their English competitors in the "massacre" of Amboyna in February 1623 had lately arrived in England, where it was long to be remembered. However, in September 1625 an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded "for the purpose of attacking the King of Spain in open war in all his realms...in all places, on this side and beyond the line, by land and sea". Trade with the Spanish dominions was forbidden, and detailed provisions were laid down concerning contraband and the taking of prizes.2 French, English and Dutch privateers were once more let loose against the commerce and oversea possessions of Spain and her Portuguese dependency, with small effects on European politics, it is true, but with lasting results in the West Indies. The opportunities for profitable war on the Elizabethan scale were over, for the Spaniards had learned how to defend their occupied territories on the mainland and in the larger islands against any attacks not on a large scale. Even the Dutch with their powerful organised Company could get no permanent footing in Brazil where they made their greatest efforts, and the English Government had its hands too full elsewhere to undertake any operations in the Caribbean. The war therefore dwindled into an affair of sporadic privateering, and the "gentlemen of fortune" of Drake's day were succeeded by rough "buccaneers" who led a precarious, roving life and were a terror to honest mariners of all nations alike.

Though privateering was no longer profitable, a new era of tropical exploitation began with the Guiana attempts. North and the other founders of the Amazons Company in 1619 emphasised the planting of crops as their main purpose, and not the search for gold mines or the conquest of rich kingdoms. Practical men who knew the Indies realised that, if they were to make profits, they must raise marketable products by their own exertions. Since Indian labour in any of the unoccupied regions was unreliable and difficult to obtain, the planting must be carried on by imported labourers. The most easily raised crop was tobacco, as the Virginians had found; the planters on the Amazon and in Guiana, both Dutch and English, had worked hard at it for

1A Speech concerning a West India Association by Sir B. Rudyerd (Lond. 1641). Extracts in Stock, L. F., Proc. and Debs. in Parliament, 1, 61-2.

2 Davenport, pp. 290–9.

3 I.e. those who prepared boucan, the dried meat of wild cattle.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF ST CHRISTOPHER 143

some ten or twelve years before the war, and with the change of circumstances they sought fresh opportunities. The suppression of the Amazons Company in 1620 did not bring the enterprise of its obscurer promoters to an end; they continued their efforts clandestinely and concealed them, so far as they could, both from the English officials and from the spies of the Spanish ambassador.1 The number of English, Irish and Dutch Plantations in the delta had become so large in 1623 that the Spanish Government gave urgent orders for their suppression. None of the settlements was strong enough to offer much resistance, and the planters were either scattered or killed or carried off to Pará as prisoners.2 The survivors determined to try elsewhere, more out of the way of their enemy's arms, and among them was Thomas Warner, the first pioneer of English colonisation in the West Indian islands. Before we consider his work, we must refer briefly to Roger North's later attempts in Guiana.

The plans to seize Spanish territory that had been prohibited under James I appeared under his son as commendable efforts against the enemy. Robert Harcourt and Roger North joined forces for a new venture, and in 1627 they were granted a new patent of incorporation for a "Company for the Plantation of Guiana" under the governorship of the Duke of Buckingham himself. But the merchants for the most part stood aside, and from the beginning the Company suffered from a lack of funds. The planters in the delta had to face repeated attacks from the Portuguese, while the colonists on the Wiapoco fell victims to the unhealthy climate. After 1631 English activities in Guiana came to an end, though the Company apparently still lingered on in 1638.3

These unsuccessful Guiana adventures are worthy of remembrance mainly because they led to the beginnings of the first English colonies in the Caribbees. Thomas Warner, a Suffolk man, had gone out to Guiana with North's colonists in 1620 to begin planting, but found the conditions so disturbed and precarious that he stayed only for two seasons. On his way back to England he explored the possibilities of some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles and fixed upon the island of St Christopher among the Leeward Islands as best suited for his purpose. It had never been occupied by the Spaniards and was not easily approachable from the centres of their power in the Caribbean owing to the steady trade wind from the north-east. Warner managed to obtain financial backing from certain London merchants of the lesser sort, and returned to St Christopher to settle in 1623. The island proved well suited for the raising of tobacco, and natural foodstuffs were so abundant that the settlers were not much troubled with the initial difficulties of the first settlers in Virginia. Shortly after

1 Cal. St. Pap. Venetian, 1622-3, P. 425.

2 See Williamson, J. A., The English in Guiana, pp. 99–106.
3 Ibid. chaps. v and vi.

Warner's expulsion of the natives a party of French privateers under D'Esnambuc arrived, and the parties joined forces for safety against an expected Carib raid. After some difficulties the island was parcelled out between the English and the French, and their respective leaders returned home for further support.1

Meanwhile another pioneer, Sir William Courteen, was taking action in the West Indian field. As a partner in the great AngloDutch trading firm of Courteen Brothers of Middelburg and London he had taken a share in Dutch mercantile and planting ventures in South America. Immediately after the accession of Charles I he made application for a grant of all the undiscovered "lands in the south parts of the world called Terra australis incognita extending eastwards and westwards from the Straits of Le Maire", the passage to the south of Tierra del Fuego discovered by the Dutch a few years before. But Courteen did not proceed with this application, for he found a more promising field of operations. One of his captains, John Powell, returning from a trading voyage to Brazil in 1624 had touched at a beautiful island lying to the east of the general chain of the Windward Islands which he found unoccupied and very suitable for planting. Barbados, as we now call it, was comparatively little known and was sometimes confused by geographers with the islands of the Windward Group or with legendary islands of the Atlantic that had no real existence. Powell landed and took formal possession of the island in the name of "James, King of England and this Island”. On his way home he called at St Christopher, and there his sailors incautiously spoke of their find to Warner's colonists. The sequel was a dispute that caused trouble for many years. Courteen at once took up the idea of planting Barbados in earnest, and provided the funds by a small syndicate. Before the close of 1628 some sixteen hundred colonists had been sent out and about £10,000 had been expended. Houses and a fort were built and planting began in such systematic fashion that large cargoes of tobacco were sent home.

Others were at work in a different way. Warner returned to England from St Christopher in the late summer of 1625 in order to obtain official recognition of what he had done in an island that the Spaniards certainly considered as belonging to them. When he first settled there he held no commission, and he and his colonists were legally pirates. He wanted to safeguard himself, but he probably had also some notion of forestalling Courteen in Barbados. He and his merchant backers therefore tried to get the patronage at court that was necessary if anything was to be done, and they obtained it from the King's favourite courtier, James Hay, Earl of Carlisle. In September 1625 a commission was granted to Warner taking his Plantation under 1 See Williamson, J. A., The Caribbee Islands under the Proprietary Patents. 2 St. Pap. Dom., Chas. I, XIV, no. 33.

Newton, A. P., The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans, pp. 132-4.

CONFLICTING GRANTS OF BARBADOS

145

the royal protection and naming him governor for the King in the four islands of St Christopher, Nevis, "Barbados" and Montserrat. No proprietary rights were granted, but the position of the colonists was properly established upon a legal basis. There was later much dispute as to whether the terms of this original grant referred to the island of Barbuda near St Christopher in the Leeward Islands or to the real Barbados, but when Courteen's settlers had shown the worth of the latter island, there was no hesitation on Carlisle's part in backing Warner's contention that they were trespassers without rights.

The Lord Proprietor took little personal part in the schemes that were carried on in his name, but looked upon them merely as an additional means of finding money. The real movers were the London financiers who were familiar with the method of working under the shadow of some person with court influence, for it was constantly employed in dealing with profitable royal grants. The proprietary system of colonisation in the West Indies in fact derived its motivepower from the merchant class that was so potent in the foundation of Virginia and Bermuda. Carlisle was the patron of two syndicates, the one operating in St Christopher and the Leeward Islands and the other in Barbados.

Acting on Warner's information, the Carlisle syndicates obtained from the Crown in July 1627 a grant of letters patent making the earl proprietor of all the islands commonly called "Caribees Islands" lying between 10 degrees and 20 degrees north latitude.1 The principal of them, beginning with St Christopher, were enumerated in rough order from Grenada northwards to Sombrero, and they included both "Barbidas" and "Barbado". Courteen was also taking steps to procure a court patron for his enterprise, and in February 1628 on the consideration that he had expended money in transporting men to the islands, there was issued to Philip, Earl of Montgomery, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, a grant of Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados and "Fonseca alias St Bernard" lying between 8 and 13 degrees of north latitude to be called "Provincia Montgomeria". The two grants overlapped and Barbados was granted in both, but as soon as Carlisle and his backers learned of the issue of the Montgomery patent, they hastened to press the King for its cancellation as far as Barbados was concerned. Their efforts succeeded, and on 7 April 1628 a fresh patent3 was issued to the earl reciting his previous grant and bestowing the Caribbee Islands on him in such a detailed way as to preclude all doubt. Barbados was mentioned with four aliases and Barbuda with three, so that the claims of Courteen and Montgomery were unmistakably set aside, and Carlisle was fully recognised as Lord Proprietor. As the steps he took to establish his 2 Pat. Roll,. 3 Car. I, p. 30, no. 1.

1 Pat. Roll, 3 Car. I, p. 31, no. 15.

Pat. Roll, 4 Car. I, p. 6, no. 4.

CHBE I

10

control belong to the second part of our period, they will be considered later.

3

In 1629 a Spanish fleet cleared out the colonists from Nevis and St Christopher, but they returned as soon as it sailed. The war lingered on indecisively from 1626 to 1629, but Spain was exhausted and had long been anxious to make peace. Negotiations were attempted as early as 1627 without success owing to Charles's unacceptable demands; by 1629 he was ready to agree to any terms he could get, even though they involved a disgraceful alliance against the Dutch with whom we had been associated for seventy years. The public treaty was concluded at Madrid on 5/15 November 1630,1 and the secret anti-Dutch alliance on 12 January 1631,2 but the negotiations had been so involved and so mixed with verbal assurances and reservations on both sides, that the words of the agreed articles really meant very little. The provisions of the Treaty of Madrid did little more than revive those of the Treaty of London of 1604, the Spaniards merely restoring the freedom of English commerce with their dominions as stipulated in that treaty. But the Spanish commissioners avowed that they did not intend to question the English navigation to the East Indies, and promised that if Charles would agree not to trade in certain specified harbours possessed by the Portuguese, they would "capitulate a free navigation not only into those seas but to the coast of America also, particularly allowing the plantations of Virginia and others". Their design was to induce the English to act against the Dutch colony of New Netherland, but Charles was too weak for that or any other warlike enterprise. The English negotiators abandoned their old contention that there was "no peace beyond the line", and for the first time they agreed to an article extending the peace to the regions beyond the "lines of amity" after an interval of nine months to permit of the proclamation of the treaty.5 In 1629-30 the long struggle for oceanic power seemed in fact to have petered out. England and Spain, once the principal combatants, were too completely exhausted to fight any longer. Only France and the Dutch were the gainers, for the one was rapidly acceding to Spain's former position of pre-eminence among the Powers, while the other had won the carrying trade of the world and a seemingly unchallengeable mastery of colonial markets.

English colonial enterprise in North America was not, as in the West Indies, directly affected by the war with Spain, but it was profoundly influenced by the increasingly bitter disputes and struggles of the last years of James I. We saw in an earlier chapter that Guy's Newfoundland Company met with devastating opposition from the fishermen and that in 1618 petitions were presented to the Privy

2 Clarendon State Papers, 1, 49, 50.

1 Davenport, pp. 308-14. See Art. 7 reviving Art. 9 of the Treaty of London, and Cal. St. Pap. Venetian, XXII, 448. • Cottington to the King, 17 Nov. 1630, quoted in Davenport, p. 307.

Art. 2.