CROMWELL’S COLONIAL POLICY
Cromwell was the first English ruler who systematically employed the
power of the government to increase and extend the colonial possessions
of England. His colonial policy was not a subordinate part of his
foreign policy, but an independent scheme of action, based on definite
principles and persistently pursued. As we have seen, it was his
extra-European policy which ultimately determined his part in the great
European struggle of his days.
All the English colonies had grown up during Cromwell’s lifetime. When
he was born England had none. He was seven years old when James I.
granted a charter to the Virginian Company, and married in the year when
the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in the _Mayflower_. It is probable that at
one time he thought of emigrating himself, and it is certain that he
felt the keenest interest in the Puritan settlers in New England. Ever
since 1643, the Protector had been officially connected with the
government of the colonies. He was one of the commissioners for the
government of the plantations in America and the West Indies whom
Parliament appointed in November, 1643, and was reappointed in 1646.
But, in spite of their high title, these commissioners had little real
power. Their authority might be obeyed in the islands, but on the
continent of America it was hardly felt at all. The Civil War tended to
loosen the tie which bound the colonies to the mother country. In May,
1643, soon after it began, the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth,
Connecticut, and New Haven had formed themselves into a confederation,
under the name of “The United Colonies of New England.” Strong enough to
defend themselves without the aid of the mother country, they were
little minded to submit to her control. When malcontents appealed from
the courts of Massachusetts to the Parliament, parliamentary orders in
their favour were disregarded, and the appellants were punished. At the
same time, however, the New England colonies heartily sympathised with
the Parliament in its struggle with the King. These outposts of
Puritanism across the Atlantic sent many volunteers to the Puritan
armies, more than one of whom did distinguished service and rose to high
command. Still more important was the influence which the example and
the ideas of New England exercised on the development of Democracy and
Independency in England. At the time when the Commonwealth was
established, the political tie between the English Government and the
New England colonies was little more than nominal, but the intellectual
sympathy of the two was never stronger.
In the islands, and in the southern colonies, exactly the opposite
process took place. There the general feeling was hostile to the
Puritans and favourable to the King. When the war ended, fugitive
Royalists flocked to Barbadoes and Virginia, just as exiled Puritans had
once sought refuge in New England. After the death of Charles I.,
Virginia, under the government of Sir William Berkeley, proclaimed
Charles II., and made it penal to justify his father’s execution.
Instigated by Lord Willoughby, Barbadoes refused to acknowledge the
Republic, suppressed conventicles, banished Roundheads, laid claim to
freedom of trade with all nations, and seemed about to declare its
independence.
But the statesmen who had made three kingdoms into one Commonwealth by
force of arms were not the men to suffer the colonies to shake off their
allegiance. In the autumn of 1651, Sir George Ayscue, with a British
fleet, was sent to reduce Barbadoes and Virginia to obedience, while at
the same time the passing of the Navigation Act proved that the
republicans meant to strengthen—not to relax—the hold of the mother land
on the colonies. That act bound the colonies to England by ensuring
their commercial dependence upon her, and increased the maritime power
of England by enriching its shipowners and merchants. But it was not
simply the result of the jealousy of English against Dutch merchants,
and it was something more than a sign of the rising power of the
commercial classes. It was the first attempt on the part of England to
legislate for the colonies as a whole, and to treat them as integral
parts of one political system. By it the statesmen of the Republic
declared that England was to be henceforth regarded not simply as a
European power, but as the centre of a world-wide empire.
It is often said that the zeal for maritime and colonial dominion which
marked the policy of Cromwell and of the Commonwealth was inspired by
Elizabethan traditions, and to a certain extent it is true. But with
statesmen and thinkers, this zeal for the expansion of England was also
the result of a definite political theory. A stationary state, argued
Harrington (and he expressed the views of his contemporaries), was a
state doomed to weakness. The policy of the Republic must aim at
increase and not merely at preservation. If it was to be lasting, it
must lay great bases for eternity. If it was to be strong, it must have
room to grow. “You cannot plant an oak in a flower pot,” said
Harrington; “she must have earth for her roots, and heaven for her
branches.”
The imperial purpose which had inspired the colonial policy of the
Commonwealth found its fullest expression in the actions of the
Protector. When Cromwell became Protector, the sovereignty of the
English Government was everywhere acknowledged, but it could scarcely be
said that it had been cordially accepted. In the southern colonies,
there prevailed a strong anti-Puritan feeling; in New England, a growing
spirit of independence; while in continent and islands, alike, there was
general aversion to the restrictions which the Navigation Act had
imposed on colonial trade. Under that act the products of a colony could
not be imported to England except in English or colonial ships, and no
foreign ships might import to the colonies anything but the products of
their own country. From Virginia came loud complaints that the law was
“the ruin of the poor planters.” In Barbadoes, where the Dutch had
carried on a considerable trade, the hostility to the law was still
stronger. “It is strange to see how they generally dote upon the Dutch
trade,” wrote Winslow in 1655. Undeterred, the Protector continued to
enforce the act by confiscating Dutch ships caught trading in prohibited
commodities to the islands or the southern colonies, though in the New
England colonies the non-observance of the act seems to have been
tacitly permitted. As a compensation to the colonists, the growing of
tobacco in England, where its production was beginning to obtain
considerable success, was rigidly suppressed, and some attempt was made
to develop a trade in shipping materials with the northern colonies.
In the internal affairs of the colonies, or their relations with each
other, Cromwell interfered very little. He protected the Puritan party
in the islands, and appointed or removed governors. He endeavoured to
arbitrate on the boundary disputes between Maryland and Virginia, and to
settle the internal divisions of the Marylanders. In New England, he
sought to mediate between Rhode Island and the other colonies, ordering
them to give the Rhode Islanders seasonable notice of any wars with the
Indians, and to permit them to trade freely. “To maintain a loving and
friendly correspondence in all things that may contribute to the common
advantage and benefit of the whole,” was his advice to the New
Englanders about their dealings with Rhode Island, and it aptly defines
the aims of the Protector’s own policy towards the colonies in general.
The corner-stone of his policy was the maintenance of good relations
between New England and the Home Government. The New Englanders
constituted, as it were, the Puritan garrison in America, and there were
weighty political reasons for conciliating them. Apart from this,
Cromwell’s feeling towards them as brethren in the faith was peculiarly
warm, and warmly reciprocated. In 1651, Massachusetts thanked the Lord
General for the “tender care and undeserved respect” he had on all
occasions manifested towards it, and wished him prosperity in his “great
and godly undertakings.” When he became Protector, it congratulated him
on his being called by the Lord to supreme authority, “Whereat we
rejoice, and shall pray for the continuance of your happy government,
that under your shadow not only ourselves but all the churches may find
rest and peace.” Recognising the sensitiveness with which Massachusetts
feared any encroachment upon its right of self-government, Cromwell
invited rather than commanded it to support his policy, and treated its
remonstrances against his proposals with respect. Yet he was not jealous
of its growing strength, made no attempt to prevent its coining money,
and even favoured its extension over the smaller settlements on its
northern border. Citizens of Massachusetts and New Englanders in general
were freely employed by him, both in Great Britain and in the colonies
themselves. “The great privileges belonging to New England,” wrote a
Massachusetts agent, were “matter of envy, as of some in other
plantations, so of divers in England who trade to those places,” but the
Protector and many of his Council were “their very cordial friends.”
When Cromwell died, he was characterised in the diary of a Bostonian as
“a man of excellent worth,” and one “that sought the good of New
England, though he seemed to be wanting in a thorough testimony against
the blasphemers of our days.”
As characteristic of Cromwell’s policy as his love for New England was
his zeal for the extension of England’s colonial possessions. When he
became Protector, the war with the Dutch and the hostile relations
existing with France supplied him with an opportunity which he was not
slow to seize. At the beginning of the Dutch war, the Long Parliament
had called on the New England colonies to attack the Dutch possessions
in America, but the New England Confederation was divided, and remained
inactive. Massachusetts, partly from conscientious objections to
attacking neighbours with whom it had no sufficient ground of quarrel,
partly no doubt from political motives, stubbornly opposed the war.
Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth, whose interests were more directly
concerned, were eager to act, but unable to move without the support of
their great associate. The confederation seemed threatened with
disruption. To some of the colonists, the whole future of New England
seemed to depend on the result.
“Our cure is desperate if the Dutch are not removed,” wrote William
Hooke of New Haven to Cromwell. “They lie close upon our frontiers
westward, as the French do on the east, interdicting the enlargement
of our borders any farther that way, so that we and our posterity
(now almost prepared to swarm forth plenteously) are confined and
straitened, the sea lying before us, and a rocky rude desert, unfit
for cultivation and destitute of commodity, behind our backs, all
convenient places upon the seacoast being already possessed and
planted.”
Cromwell answered the appeal without a moment’s delay. In February,
1654, he despatched three ships and a few soldiers to New England with
instructions to capture the Dutch settlements “in the Manhattoes” and on
the Hudson. The expedition was commanded by Major Robert Sedgwick of
Massachusetts, with whom was associated Captain John Leverett of the
same colony—once a captain in the army of the Eastern Association, and
to be in future years governor of Massachusetts. Cromwell’s letter to
the colonial governments told them that he would not enquire why they
had not hitherto taken action, but he saw no consideration which should
prevent any colony from co-operating with the rest in this work, which
concerned their common welfare. When the expedition arrived, even
Massachusetts yielded so far as to permit the levy of five hundred
volunteers, while the other three colonies were zealous in raising men
“to extirpate the Dutch.” But before they could march, news came of the
conclusion of peace with the Dutch, and the design had to be abandoned
(June, 1654).
On this, Sedgwick and his fleet, according to their instructions, made
sail for the coast of Acadia to take whatever French ships or
settlements they could come across. Old complaints of their aggressions
and the state of hostility which existed between France and England in
Europe were held to justify the attack. Moreover, this “deluding crew,”
as Leverett called the French settlers, “had given it out amongst the
Indians, that the English were so and so valiant against the Dutch at
sea; but that one Frenchman could beat ten Englishmen ashore.”
“Wherein,” he adds, “the Lord hath most obviously befooled them,” for
Sedgwick with but 130 men took first the Fort of St. John’s, next Port
Royal (now Annapolis), and finally their strong fort on the Penobscot
River. So the whole territory from the Penobscot to the mouth of the St.
Lawrence passed under English dominion, and remained in English hands
till it was given up by Charles II. in 1668.
After the French and the Dutch, came the turn of the Spaniards. There
were grievances more than enough to justify hostilities, and all the
diplomatic representations of the Long Parliament had failed to procure
their redress. England and Spain had been at peace in Europe ever since
1630, but that peace had never been observed in the western hemisphere.
Spain still claimed, by virtue of the Pope’s donation, exclusive
dominion over islands it left unoccupied, and attacked all foreigners
who attempted to colonise them. In 1634, the Spaniards drove out the
English settlers from Tortuga; in 1641, a fleet from Cartagena captured
and expelled the English colonists of New Providence on the Mosquito
coast; in 1651, Santa Cruz was surprised, a hundred English inhabitants
killed, and the rest forced to fly from the island. If an English ship
sailing to an English colony met a Spanish fleet anywhere in western
waters, it was likely to be attacked and plundered. If chance or storm
drove an English ship on the coast of Cuba or Central America, the ship
was confiscated, and the crew set to work as convicts.
Mixed with the desire to exact satisfaction for these injuries were
other motives. Cromwell was bent on conquest for both religious and
economic reasons. The islands Spain held in the West Indies were large
and thinly populated, whilst the islands England possessed were small,
and filled to overflowing with people. Hispaniola was fertile; “a
country beyond compare,” people said. Its conquest would provide a vent
for the surplus population of the English settlements, for the unruly
Highlanders of Scotland, and for the vagrants and criminals of England.
Added to this, every piece of territory won from Spain was so much
rescued from Catholicism and gained for Protestantism.
In August, 1654, therefore, Cromwell made up his mind to send an
expedition to attack the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. General
Venables, who was chosen to command it, showed scruples about the
justice of attacking the Spaniards. He was told, “that if we had no
peace with the Spaniards, then this could be no breach of the peace; if
we had peace with them, they had broken it, and then it was but just for
the English to seek reparation.”
Cromwell did not believe that war with Spain in the West Indies would
necessarily lead to war with Spain in Europe. There were many precedents
and the practice of the Spaniards themselves to the contrary. The old
Elizabethan maxim, “No peace beyond the line,” seemed still to hold
good. Still more powerful was the recollection of the treasures which
the Elizabethan sailors had brought home. What if Spain did declare war?
It would be easy to intercept the galleons which brought the silver of
Peru from Porto Bello to Havana, and from Havana to Spain. A war with
Spain was the most profitable of all wars, and at the worst the profits
of the captures would defray the cost of the expedition.
In December, 1654, a fleet of thirty-eight ships, commanded by Admiral
Penn, sailed from Portsmouth, bearing General Venables and twenty-five
hundred soldiers. With them also went Edward Winslow, once governor of
Plymouth Colony, now one of the commissioners appointed to assist
Venables in the conduct of the expedition. As the New England colonies
had been called on to contribute to the conquest of the Dutch, so the
West Indian islands were expected to co-operate in the enterprise
against the Spaniards. Nor were Cromwell’s expectations disappointed. At
Barbadoes and elsewhere, Venables enlisted enough to raise his army to
seven thousand men. Some took service in hopes of plunder, expecting to
gain “mountains of gold.” With others, the desire for new lands was the
chief incentive. St. Kitts, “an island almost worn out by reason of the
multitudes that live upon it,” furnished eight hundred men. But, though
the army was large, it was of bad material, badly armed, half drilled,
and with very little discipline. The officers knew little of their men,
and the old soldiers, drafted from the different regiments in England to
form the nucleus of the force, were not enough to leaven the lump. In
April, Venables effected a landing on Hispaniola, and marched through
the woods to attack its capital, San Domingo. The Spaniards had stopped
up the wells, and the soldiers, who had no water-bottles, were worn out
by thirst and fatigue before they came in sight of the town. Twice they
fell into ambuscades, and were shamefully repulsed by a handful of
Spaniards. In the second defeat, they lost eight colours and four
hundred men, while Major-General Heane, disdaining to fly, fell pierced
by a dozen Spanish lances as he strove to rally his broken regiment.
Heavy rains and bad food completed the disorganisation of the troops.
“Never did my eyes see men more discouraged,” wrote Venables, and when a
third attempt was proposed, the officers declined to lead their men, but
offered to try to take the town without them.
Hoping for better fortune elsewhere, Venables embarked his forces and
sailed to attack Jamaica. Winslow died on the voyage, saying that the
disgrace of the defeat had broken his heart. On May 10, 1655, the army
landed at Jamaica, occupied its capital, St. Jago de la Vega, without
much resistance, and drove the Spaniards to fly to the mountains or to
embark for Cuba. But now the troubles of the expedition began again. It
was the rainy season, and the army, ill supplied with provisions, tools,
and other necessaries, was decimated by sickness. Hundreds died of
fevers and dysentery. Venables himself was so ill that his life was
despaired of, and he was reported to be dead. In June, Penn with the
bulk of the fleet sailed for England, and Venables followed a few days
later. Each laid the blame of the failure on the other, and Cromwell,
knowing how much their mutual quarrels had contributed to it, sent both
to the Tower. They were soon released, but neither was ever employed
again.
The Protector was deeply mortified by the result of the expedition. “The
Lord,” said he, “hath greatly humbled us”: but nevertheless he persisted
in his projects. Jamaica, he was told by men who knew it, was a better
country than Hispaniola, more fertile, more healthful, better situated
either for trade or for war, so he resolved to hold it, and to make it
the corner-stone of British power in the West Indies. To Major-General
Fortescue, whom Venables had left in command, Cromwell promised ample
supplies and reinforcements. “We think,” he added, “and it is much
designed amongst us to strive with the Spaniard for the mastery of all
those seas.” Writing to Vice-Admiral Goodson, Fortescue’s colleague, he
reminded him that the war was a war not for dominion only, but for
religion.
“Set up your banners in the name of Christ, for undoubtedly it is
his cause. And let the reproach and shame that hath been for your
sins, and through the misguidance of some, lift up your hearts to
confidence in the Lord, and for the redemption of his honour from
men who attribute their success to their idols, the work of their
own hands.... The Lord himself hath a controversy with your enemies;
even with that Roman Babylon of which the Spaniard is the great
underpropper. In this respect we fight the Lord’s battles.”
The battle was long and hard. At the end of 1655, when Robert Sedgwick,
the conqueror of Acadia, arrived at Jamaica with the first
reinforcements, he found Fortescue dying, and the army
“in as sad and deplorable and distracted a condition as can be
thought. The soldiery many dead, their carcases lying unburied in
the highways and among bushes; many of them that were alive walked
about like ghosts or dead men, who, as I walked through the town,
lay groaning and crying out, ‘Bread, for the Lord’s sake!’”
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.
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