Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England

by C. H. Firth

Much of this suffering was due not to hardships or necessity, but to the mismanagement of the commanders and the misconduct of the men. Though they were dying at the rate of a hundred a week, the survivors would do nothing to secure themselves against the climate, or to provide for their future subsistence. “Dig or plant they neither can nor will, but do rather starve than work,” complained Sedgwick. He termed the soldiers a people “so basely unworthy, lazy, and idle, as it cannot enter into the heart of any Englishman that such blood should run in the veins of any born in England.”

The Protector looked to New England and the islands to supply him with the planters and farmers whom the new colony needed. Above all, he desired to obtain as its nucleus a body of industrious, God-fearing Puritans, such as New England alone amongst English colonies seemed able to supply. In 1650, he had asked the New Englanders to help in the recolonisation of Ireland, and, undeterred by his failure, he now invited them to remove to Jamaica. “Our desire is,” said he, “that this place may be inhabited by people who know the Lord and walk in his fear, that by their light they may enlighten the parts about them, which was a chief end of our undertaking this design.” Daniel Gookin of Massachusetts, Cromwell’s agent, was commissioned to make large offers to his fellow citizens to induce them to emigrate. Ships were to be furnished for their transportation; they were to be given lands rent free for seven years, and to be free from all taxes for three; they were to be guaranteed as large privileges and rights of self-government as any English city enjoyed. Cromwell felt confident that many would accept the offer, for, remembering the early hardships of the settlers, he regarded New England as barren and unhealthy, and thought his new conquest a much better country. He made his offer, he declared,

“out of love and affection to themselves, and the fellow-feeling we have always had of the difficulties and necessities they have been put to contest with, ever since they were driven from the land of their nativity into that barren wilderness, for their conscience sake; which we could not but make manifest at this time, when, as we think, an opportunity is offered for their enlargement and removing them out of a barren country into a land of plenty.”

They had “as clear a call,” he told Captain Leverett, to transport themselves from New England to Jamaica, “in order to their bettering their outward condition, as they had had from England to New England.”

But the New Englanders were more prosperous than Cromwell imagined, and at the worst their climate was more healthful than that to which he invited them to remove. New Haven—threatened just then by an Indian war—was the only colony which seriously considered the proposal, and in the end it answered in the negative. In the reply of Massachusetts, “intelligence from Jamaica of the mortality of the English race there,” was the only definite objection mentioned. Its people thanked the Protector for his good intentions with humble and effusive piety, promised him their prayers, and made it quite clear that they meant to stay where they were. Two or three hundred New Englanders accepted the invitation, but that was all.

As little feasible was it to people Jamaica from Scotland or Ireland. Cromwell thought of transporting Lowland vagrants and turbulent Highlanders on a large scale, but was told that any plan for compulsory emigration would set all Scotland in a blaze. There was a scheme discussed for transporting one thousand Irish boys and as many Irish girls to Jamaica, but it came to nothing. Jamaica was colonised by the surplus population of the other West Indian islands. St. Kitts, Barbadoes, and the Bermudas sent numerous settlers, while the island of Nevis furnished seventeen hundred with its governor at their head. By degrees the mortality amongst soldiers and colonists diminished; cultivation spread, and a little trade in colonial products sprang up. Under Sedgwick’s rule, the work of plantation really began. He died in May, 1656, and was succeeded as governor by Major-General William Brayne, an officer who had been serving in Scotland under Monk, and to whose wisdom the pacification of the Western Highlands was chiefly due. Brayne died in September, 1657, “infinitely lamented,” wrote a colonist, “being a wise man, and perfectly qualified for the command and design.” To him succeeded Colonel Edward Doyley, who governed Jamaica till after the restoration of Charles II.

All this time the infant colony was engaged in an active war with the Spaniards, both by sea and land. The fleet lay in wait for the Spanish treasure-ships, or attacked the towns on the Spanish main. In 1655, Goodson took Santa Martha; in 1656, Rio de la Hacha. Sedgwick was much opposed to these buccaneering raids, thinking them not only unprofitable but harmful. “We are not able,” he wrote, “to possess any place we attack, and so in no hope thereby to effect our intention in dispensing anything of the true knowledge of God to the inhabitants.” To the Indians and blacks he added, “we shall make ourselves appear a cruel, bloody, and ruinating people,” which “will cause them, I fear, to think us worse than the Spaniard.” Few shared these conscientious scruples. In 1657, Captain Christopher Mings took Coro and Cumana, in Venezuela, bringing home “more plunder than ever was brought to Jamaica,” and enriching the whole island. The buccaneering spirit, which produced such demoralising results in later years, tainted the colony from its birth.

On their part, the Spaniards made repeated attempts to reconquer Jamaica. Some still lurked in the forests and mountains, and, aided by the mulattoes and negroes, cut off small parties of settlers. Spain sent fresh soldiers to Cuba, and expeditions from Santiago or Havana landed more than once on the northern coast of Jamaica. In 1657, Doyley killed or took a party of three hundred. In 1658, he defeated thirty companies of Spanish foot, who had established themselves near Rio Nova, killing three hundred, taking one hundred prisoners, and storming the fort they had built. He sent ten flags as trophies to Cromwell, but the Protector was dead ere the news of the victory reached him. “So,” writes a colonial historian, “he never had one syllable of anything that was grateful from the vastest expense and the greatest design that was ever made by the English.”

Yet, though to Cromwell himself the history of his West Indian expedition must have seemed a dreary record of failure, it was in reality the most fruitful part of his external policy, and produced the most abiding results. Through it, the Spaniards were forced to refrain from molesting the English colonies in the West Indies, and England obtained, as he desired, “the mastery of those seas.” Unlike other parts of his policy, it was not reversed but maintained at the Restoration. Charles II. kept Jamaica, and forced Spain with a high hand to submit to its retention by England. He succeeded in effecting the conquest of Dutch America, which Cromwell had been so eager to undertake. He ceded Acadia to France, but his successors won it back, and won all Canada too. Under him and under them the power of the Home Government was systematically directed to the defence of existing colonies and the foundation of new ones. Thus the colonial policy which Cromwell and the statesmen of the Republic had initiated became the permanent policy of succeeding rulers, and it became so because it represented not the views of a particular party, but the aspirations and the interests of Englishmen in general.