English Revolution in The Colonies - Bermuda and The Caribbean

Bermuda and The Caribbean

Bermuda tended towards the Royalist side, but largely escaped the effects of the conflict. After the regicide, Bermuda was the first colony to recognize Charles II. Royalists ousted their governor and elected their leader John Trimingham. Some of the island's defeated Puritans joined the Eleutheran Adventurers in the Bahamas.

Barbados, the second most populous colony, experienced a division between Royalists and Parliamentarians during the civil war. The words "Roundhead" and "Cavalier" were banned to maintain peace. After the regicide, the Royalists gained control of the colonial assembly. Lord Willoughby was appointed Governor of Barbados, by Charles II in May 1650 and he banished the Roundheads. During this time he also sent a small colonizing party to Suriname, which established Fort Willoughby (now Paramaribo) in honor of the governor. The colony, now cut off from England, relied on trading with the Dutch Republic. This became the motivation for the 1651 Navigation Act.

On October 25, 1651, a seven ship force under Commodore George Ayscue arrived off Barbados, demanding that the island submit "for the use of the Parliament of England". Willoughby's reply (tellingly addressed to "His Majesty's ship Rainbow") was unyielding, declaring that he knew "no supreme authority over Englishmen but the King". With some 400 horsemen and 6,000 militia, he was prepared to resist any attempt at coercion.

Over the next month Barbados was blockaded. Dutch ships were seized, an act which would be one of the causes of the First Anglo-Dutch War. In early December, with the Royalist cause defeated in England, Ayscue began a series of raids against fortifications on the island and was reinforced by a group of thirteen ships bound for Virginia. On December 17 a force of more than 1,000 Barbadian militia was defeated by one of Ayscue's detachments. Governor Willoughby attempted to stem the spread of Parliamentary sympathies by hanging two of the returning militia soldiers and prohibiting the reading of documents from the blockading fleet. The Royalists held out for several more weeks until one of Willoughby's own commanders, Sir Thomas Modyford the assembly speaker, declared himself for Parliament. A battle was averted by a week of rain, after which Willoughby, perhaps having seen the hopelessness of his cause, sought negotiations. He was replaced as governor but Barbados and the Royalists there were not punished.

News of the fall of Barbados shocked the other Royalist colonies. Each of the other five soon capitulated without resistance, when Ayscue's fleet arrived to replace their governments. Following Oliver Cromwell's adventures in Ireland, and his attempt to force his protectorship on independent Scotland, Irish prisoners and a smaller number of Scots and English Royalists were sent to the islands as slaves and became known as Redlegs. After the uncovering of a plot for a coup by Irish and Black slaves in 1656, however, the importation of further Irish slaves was banned.

In 1655, Cromwell sealed an alliance with the French against the Spanish. He sent a fleet to the West Indies under Admiral William Penn, with some 3,000 marines under the command of General Robert Venables, which was further reinforced in Barbados, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis. Penn and Venables decided to lay siege to Santo Domingo but failed, because the Spanish had improved their defences in the face of Dutch attacks earlier in the century.

Weakened by fever, the English force then sailed west for Jamaica, the only place where the Spanish did not have new defensive works. In May 1655 they invaded at a place called Santiago de la Vega, now Spanish Town. They came, and they stayed, in the face of prolonged local resistance, reinforced by troops sent from New Spain in the Battle of Ocho Rios (1657) and the Battle of Rio Nuevo (1658). For England, Jamaica was to be the 'dagger pointed at the heart of the Spanish Empire' as it became the base for buccaneers. Cromwell, despite all difficulties, was determined that the presence should remain, sending reinforcements and supplies. Jamaica remained an English colony despite the exiled king's promise to return it to Spain in the event of his Restoration.