Cromwell and Ludlow.
When Fleetwood left Ireland, Henry Cromwell became President of the Council. The other members were William Steele, Recorder of London, who did not come over till the next year, Richard Pepys, who became Chief Justice, Corbet, Goodwin, and Tomlinson. Hammond had died in 1654, and, five being a quorum, it was necessary that all should be present. To avoid this William Bury, of Grantham, was added in August 1656. The Anabaptist party were very sorry to lose Fleetwood, and rejoiced in a rumour of his probable return, but many superior officers, including Sir Theophilus Jones, Sir Hardress Waller, and Commissary-General Reynolds, circulated a petition to the Protector, suggesting that his son should be Lord Lieutenant. Ludlow had given all the trouble he could, refusing to surrender his commission to any but the Parliament who gave it, and circulating pamphlets against the Protectorate, much to the disgust of Fleetwood. He, however, allowed his commission to be taken from him in an informal way, giving his parole to do nothing against the Government until he came into the Protector’s presence. He then proposed to go to England on urgent private affairs, and gave a second engagement to remain quiet until he had surrendered to the Protector or the Lord Deputy. On this undertaking Fleetwood gave him leave to go, and it was one of his last acts in Ireland. When the Deputy was gone Henry Cromwell opposed Ludlow’s departure, while declining to restrain him forcibly; but he took steps to have him intercepted at Beaumaris until the Protector’s wishes were known, and he was under arrest there for six weeks. Cromwell saw him after his arrival in London, and there was much not altogether unfriendly argument, but Ludlow stoutly refused to acknowledge the Government or to give any security. As a matter of fact he remained quiet while the protectorate lasted, and he was not molested.[280]
Irish girls for Jamaica.
They are not sent.
The infant settlement in Jamaica suffered much from a scarcity of women, and the English Government suggested that Irish girls might be sent out. ‘Concerning the young women,’ wrote Henry Cromwell in reply, ‘though we must use force in taking them up, yet it being so much for their own good, and likely to be of so great advantage to the public, it is not in the least doubted that you may have such numbers of them as you think fit.’ The Committee of Council in England voted that a thousand girls and as many boys should be sent, but there is no evidence that anything was actually done, and the probabilities are the other way. The difficulties in Jamaica were great, and perhaps Cromwell thought that the time for importing settlers had not yet come.[281]
Deportation to the West Indies.
Deportation not confined to the Irish.
Condition of the Irish at Barbadoes.
Considerable numbers were, however, sent from Ireland to the West Indies. They were not slaves, but were forced to work for wages, and could not leave the islands, to which they were sent in the character of masterless men, vagrants, rogues, and vagabonds. This system began in 1653, and continued until the Restoration or later. It was not confined to Ireland, many seditious persons in England having been treated in the same way. James II. continued the practice after Sedgemoor. For white men the climate alone was a terrible punishment. A large number of prisoners were thus treated after Penruddock’s rising. After Dunbar and Worcester English and Scotch captives were sent to New England, and others were ordered to Bermuda. At the beginning of 1655 the governor of Waterford was ordered to ship Morrice Cleere ‘by the first vessel bound for the Barbadoes, there to work for his living.’ About the same time it was ordered that ‘when a peaceable person was murdered’ by any Tory or ‘other Irish in rebellion,’ three or four of the chief Irish neighbours were to be shipped to Barbadoes, ‘and other American plantations,’ unless they could show that they had done their best to apprehend the guilty parties. An Irish priest who visited the West Indies in 1669 enlarges on the state of the Irish sent by Cromwell ‘and other fierce enemies of the Catholic Church and faith.’ They had been forced to work in the fields and ‘treated cruelly and miserably in temporal, and much more in spiritual things,’ being entirely precluded from Catholic worship, and from the ministration of their priests. There were 8000 in Barbadoes, and about 4000 in other settlements. In the French island of Guadeloupe there were 800, who were even worse off than in the English possessions, for they lived in the worst parts of it, and ‘though the island was Catholic they had little advantage by that, on account of the distance, difficult access, and scarcity of priests.’[282]
Henry Cromwell and Dublin University.