Until the year 1825 the deputy governor of
Anguilla and his Council acted as Executive, Legislature and Judiciary of
Anguilla. They were not a properly
constituted Assembly and enacted no real laws.
They were a court without a legislature to enact any statutes for them
to apply. The Governor in Chief never
empowered them to deal with serious cases.
Only a few of the Council records from our period survive in the
Anguillian Archives. Those that do are
not complete. Many of the pages are
torn. They lie in their brown paper
wrapping on a shelf in the Registry of Deeds.
The pages are as disorganised as a shuffled pack of playing cards. They offer us only brief and broken glimpses
at the Council's activities. We are
given tantalising snapshots of the problems the Council faced and dealt with. For all the documents' shortcomings, they are
a major resource. It pays to take a
careful look at them. They are our
principal source of information on the daily lives of the first Anguillians.
From the start, Anguilla was treated
differently from the other Leeward Islands by the Governors in Chief. It was not viewed as a separate colony nor
formally a part of the Virgin Islands or of any other territory in the Leeward
Islands. It was left for centuries
without any organised form of government.
Between 1650 and its absorption into St Kitts in 1825 it possessed no
elected Assembly. No locally made
statutes could be made to regulate the life of the community. There was no financial assistance offered
from outside. There was no law by which
any local tax could be imposed, even assuming the people could pay it. For many years, the citizens could muster
only a rump of an informal Council for their governance. The main reason for the island's neglect by
the colonial authorities was that it was too poor to be bothered with. The Anguillians were always viewed as causing
more problems than they were worth.
From about 1711 Anguilla’s status changed
in the Governor in Chief’s statistical reports to London. He began including Anguilla in his reports on
the Virgin Islands, without any explanation.
There was never any formal connection between Anguilla and the Virgin
Islands. The linkage was only a matter
of convenience for the Governor’s reporting.
It merely avoided his having to make a separate column in the report for
such a poor and unproductive island. This
informal grouping continued in the Colonial Office records for a period of
about twenty-five years, and then ended.
There was much in common between the
Virgin Islands and Anguilla. They were
equally unprofitable to the Crown. Their
economies were continuously depressed.
Social life and culture there were inferior to Antigua and St
Kitts. They lay geographically relatively
close to each other. They were easy
enough to access from government headquarters in Antigua, as they lay directly
downwind. A small sailing boat could do
the trip from Anguilla to Tortola in half a day. Their families and enterprises were closely
intertwined. It was only the return trip
that was uncomfortable. It was a long
haul for a schooner having to tack upwind sailing from the Virgin Islands to
Antigua. If the Governor sailed from
Antigua to Anguilla, there would be no suitable accommodation for the overnight
stop. Dignitaries must spend the night
in great discomfort on board deck in Road Bay harbour. Not only was it difficult to sail back to
Antigua or St Kitts from Anguilla but tacking against the wind only prolonged
the discomfort of seasickness suffered by the colonial administrators. One was also obliged to sail at great
personal risk through unfriendly seas.
The Dutch and French islands of Saba, Statia, St Barths and St Martin/St
Maarten lay between the Virgin Islands and Antigua and the rest of the
Leewards. They formed effective
psychological and geographic barriers to Antigua and St Kitts. All these were valid geo-political factors
for including Anguilla with the Virgins.
In 1724, the relationship between Anguilla
and the Virgin Islands was semi-formalized.
In that year, Governor John Hart described Anguilla as being[1]
a very barren place, and has
never yet been surveyed, and the few inhabitants that have any grants from my
predecessors or myself hold them by the same tenure as the people of Antigua.
As part of Governor Hart’s attempt to improve
government in Anguilla, he appointed Col Francis Phips, a St Kitts planter, to
be lieutenant governor of all the Virgin Islands. He was to supervise the deputy governors of
Anguilla, Virgin Gorda and Tortola. Col
Phips earned a reputation for integrity and service. His appointment was accepted by the people of
the islands. He visited Anguilla once or
twice a year to administer the government.
It is unlikely he received any profit or reward from this duty. There was certainly no public payment due him
for his service.
By this time, Leonard held the office of
deputy governor for some thirty years since retiring as a sloop captain. With increasing age and absenteeism, not to
mention the long drought of 1680-1725 that reduced many of the islanders to
near starvation, his influence and power over the Anguillians entirely declined.
In addition to attempting to stiffen the
government by putting Col Phips in overall charge, Governor Hart also appointed
the island's first Council to assist in government. He appointed each of the six members of
Council to be a Justice of the Peace. He
also appointed a deputy Provost Marshal to enforce the precepts of the Council
and a deputy secretary to keep records.
Phips was to be assisted by the deputy governor and Council of each of
the three main islands, Anguilla, Tortola and Virgin Gorda.[2] This quasi-official federation was
short-lived. It broke down sometime in
1729 when Phips resigned in a pique over the Committee siding with his opponent
in a controversy over a matter of seniority between him and Joseph Estridge,
another member of the St Kitts Council.[3]
No Anguillian records survive from this
period. We do not know who were
appointed to the Council, or to what extent these appointments helped the people
to conduct either their private or their public business. From 1729 onwards, Anguilla regained her own
separate identity within the Colony of the Leeward Islands. Her statistics were once again separately
given in the Governor in Chief’s reports back to London. For the next century she kept her status as a
separate unit until 1825 when her self-government collapsed, and she came under
the administration of St Kitts.
The background to this collapse lay in the
consequences of the American Revolution of 1776. War between Britain and the rebelling
colonials and their allies broke out in the West Indies. From 1781 the Royal Navy under Admiral Rodney
blockaded all trade between the loyalist colonies in the south and the
rebelling ones in the north. Anguilla’s
struggling sugar economy was devastated during this war. Most of her planters emigrated. She could no longer maintain a pretence of a
Council. The remaining inhabitants
consented to the abolition of their Council.
In 1825 they agreed that in future the Assembly of St Kitts should make
laws to apply in Anguilla. She then lost
the right to have her own deputy governor.
From then on, until the Anguilla Revolution of 1967, her officials were
appointed from St Kitts.
The Governors in Chief of the Leeward
Islands during the eighteenth century were:[4]
1701
|
Colonel Edward Fox (acting)
|
1702
|
Sir William Mathew (c.1675-1704, acting)
|
Feb-July 1704
|
Colonel John Johnson (acting)
|
July-Dec 1704
|
Sir William Mathew (dies 1704)
|
Dec 1704-July 1706
|
Colonel John Johnson (acting on Mathew’s death)
|
July 1706-Dec 1710
|
Colonel Daniel Parke
|
Dec 1710-1711
|
General Walter Hamilton (acting)
|
1711-1714
|
Major Walter Douglas (acting)
|
1714
|
William Codrington (acting)
|
1714-1715
|
Colonel William Mathew Jr (1684-1752, deputy governor of St
Kitts from 1715, acting Governor from time to time)
|
1715-1721
|
General Walter Hamilton
|
1720
|
Lord Viscount Lowther
|
1721-1728
|
Col John Hart
|
1727
|
William Mathew Jr
(acting)
|
1728-Sept 1729
|
Thomas Pitt, Earl of Londonderry
|
1729
|
Hon John Forbes (did not accept)
|
1729
|
William Cosby
|
1729-1733
|
Lieut Gen William Mathew Jr (acting)
|
1731
|
General William Crosbie (did not accept)
|
1733-1752
|
William Mathew Jr
|
1750
|
Lieut Col Gilbert Fleming (acting)
|
1753-1766
|
Sir George Thomas
|
1766-1768
|
James Verchild
|
1768-1771
|
William Woodley
|
1770
|
Richard Hackshaw Losack (acting)
|
1771-1776
|
Sir Ralph Payne, first tour
|
1775
|
Craister Greathead
|
1776-1781
|
William Mathew Burt
|
1781
|
Anthony Johnson (acting)
|
1781-1788
|
Maj Gen Sir Thomas Shirley
|
1788-1790
|
John Nugent
|
1790-Aug 1791
|
Thomas Shirley
|
Aug 1791-1795
|
William Woodley
|
1793
|
John Stanley (acting)
|
1795-1799
|
Maj Gen Charles Leigh
|
1796
|
John S Thomas (acting)
|
1797
|
Robert Thompson (acting)
|
1799-1807
|
Lord Lavington (Sir Ralph Payne, second tour)
|
Table 1: Governors in Chief of
the Leeward Islands during the eighteenth century
Governor Christopher Codrington Jr
straddled the turn of the new century.
In earlier chapters we have looked at his interaction with
Anguilla. John Johnson acted in his
place between February and July 1704 during his illness. Then, in July, Sir William Mathew, deputy
governor of St Kitts, was appointed as the new Governor in Chief.
On Mathew’s death in December of the same
year, John Johnson again acted as Governor until his replacement arrived. The principle that governed here was that the
most senior member of any one of the Councils of the main islands of the Colony
would act as Governor until the Governor in Chief appointed by the Privy
Council in London arrived to take up his position. Johnson was not a planter, but an English
military officer in the service of the army.
He arrived in Nevis in 1701 as a captain in the Inniskilling Regiment of
Foot. He rose to be deputy governor of
Nevis before becoming Governor of the Leeward Islands.
In 1706, the notorious Virginian planter
Colonel Daniel Parke arrived in Antigua to succeed Mathew. In his earlier positions in Virginia, he was
accused of maladministration. He made
his money from tobacco. He went to
England, bought a country estate, and won a seat in Parliament through
bribery. When the corruption was
discovered, he was expelled from Parliament.
He then served as a volunteer with the British army in Flanders during
the War of the Spanish Succession. He
successfully ingratiated himself at Court, where he redeemed his reputation by
bringing Queen Anne the news of John Churchill’s, 1st Duke of Marlborough,
victory at Blenheim in August 1704.
On Mathew’s death in 1704, the Queen
offered Parke the position of Governor of the Leeward Islands. His administration was not popular in
Antigua. We saw his description of the
poor living conditions in Anguilla during the period he served Governor in
Chief.[5]
On Parke's murder in St John’s by the
irate Antiguan populace in 1710, local planters acted temporarily as Governor
until John Hart arrived in 1721. Hart was
born in Ireland and went to Maryland in 1714.
He served as governor there until 1720, when he was appointed to the
Leeward Islands. There he served until
1728, when he was recalled in disgrace. We
saw at Chapter 5 his 1724 description of Anguilla as a poor and barren place. The inhabitants, he wrote, bore all the signs
of poverty in the quality of their houses, clothing and food. They scratched the ground for a miserable
subsistence. In Anguilla Governor Hart
set up a Council of six to assist the deputy governor and to act as Justices of
the Peace. We are not sure of the names
of all of them. Two of them we know from
the records were Bezaliel Rogers
and Thomas Howell.
If only other Governors in Chief showed
half as much interest in the welfare of the Anguillians as Governor Hart did in
1724, the development of the island might well have progressed quite differently. No other Governor in Chief was to visit the
island again in the period before the American Revolution. William Woodley replaced Sir George Thomas as
Governor in 1768. His record in relation
to Anguilla is typical. In 1769, he
reported in a dispatch that he visited all the islands of his colony, except
for Anguilla and the Virgin Islands.[6] He returned to England in 1771 because of
the ill health of his wife and was replaced by Sir Ralph Payne. Payne did no better by Anguilla. He also reported in a dispatch to London that
he visited all his islands, except Anguilla and the Virgin Islands.[7] He acknowledged that neither of these were
visited by a Governor for fifty years.
He made no effort to remedy this defect.
William Mathew Jr inherited his father’s
St Kitts estates and became a prominent member of the St Kitts Assembly,
serving as deputy governor of that island for many years. From time to time between 1714 and 1733,
during the absence of the substantive Governor in Chief of the Leeward Islands,
he filled the post in an acting capacity.
He eventually received a Commission as Governor in Chief in 1733 and
filled the post until his death in 1752.
He was impressed by the need to improve the system of government in
Anguilla. Ten years later, in 1734, he
repeated the 1724 recommendation of Governor Hart.[8] Poor as the people of Anguilla were, he
wrote, there were continuous property disputes between them. In the absence of any court system, in any
dispute over land the stronger party had the better title. Some sort of court system was required for
citizens to have a fair hearing and a remedy against wrongs done to them. There was no provision for the trial of
criminal cases. Offenders could not be
prosecuted. As an example of the defect
in government in Anguilla, he wrote that in one case an accused person was
brought from the Virgin Islands to St Kitts.
There, he was tried and convicted for murder. When he broke out of jail, he could not be
re-arrested. The Governor was advised by
his Attorney General that his trial at St Kitts for an offence committed in the
Virgin Islands was illegal.
This was the crux of the problem of
government in Anguilla. The issue, as
the lawyers say, was one of ‘jurisdiction’.
Each island in the Colony of the Leeward Islands formed a separate legal
jurisdiction. The laws made by the
Legislature of one island did not apply in any other island. Only laws passed by the General Assembly of
the Leeward Islands applied to all the Leeward Islands. However, the General Assembly met very
infrequently and passed few laws.
Anguilla never sent any elected representative to any of the General
Assemblies. It is unlikely that they or anyone
else considered that any law enacted by the General Assembly applied to them. A person who committed an offence in one
island was required to be tried by a judge in that island, and according to the
laws passed by the Assembly of that island.
The courts of other islands had no jurisdiction to try him. Justices of the Peace possessed authority to
try only summary offences. Their ad-hoc appointment
as in the case of Anguilla was no solution to the absence of courts properly
constituted by an island legislature.
Until there was a properly constituted Legislative Assembly in Anguilla
with power to make laws, and properly commissioned judges empowered to try
major offences, the deputy governor and his Council must rely for authority to
govern on the fact that they were the richest and most powerful men on the
island. The personal authority and
standing in the community of the deputy governor of Anguilla was not always
enough to maintain good government. We saw
Governor Mathew's June 1734 dispatch where he describes the Anguillians as
living “like so many bandits in open
defiance of the laws of God and of man.”[9]
The deputy governor, he wrote, had no more authority over them but what
he was able to enforce with a cudgel.
This is a fair assessment of Anguilla’s social organisation through the
entire period of Anguilla’s history prior to its association with St Kitts and
perhaps afterwards.
By 1734, Leonard was still nominally
deputy governor of Anguilla. But he was
well advanced in years. He resided in
Antigua, probably for the better part of each year, over the previous sixteen
years. The following year, 1735, he
seems to have died. He was replaced as
deputy governor of Anguilla by the younger John Richardson. With Richardson's appointment, the era of
tobacco and cotton was over. The third
generation came to maturity. The
short-lived reign of sugar in Anguilla began.
Governor Mathew's recommendation that
Anguilla be given some form of judicature in order to establish law and order,
did not bear any fruit. No judge was to
visit Anguilla on circuit until the year 1825.
From that year a judge from St Kitts began to visit Anguilla and hold
circuits for the trial of felonies. By
that time, the Anguilla Council was abolished, and the island placed under
direct rule from St Kitts. One
representative for Anguilla was sent from that time to the St Kitts Legislative
Assembly. This Assembly made laws for St
Kitts and Anguilla.
The elected representatives of St Kitts
had absolutely no interest in Anguilla. As
the minutes of the St Kitts Council and show, they agreed to accept responsibility
of making laws for Anguilla only on condition that not one penny of St Kitts
revenue was required to be spent in Anguilla.
This unsatisfactory form of government lasted until the Anguilla
Revolution of 1967. In that year, Anguilla
broke from the State of St Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla and began the era of rapid
and steady growth that was to characterise the last quarter of the twentieth
century.
As we have seen, Governor Mathew
recommended in June 1734 that Anguilla and the Virgin Islands be given some
sort of legislative assembly to make laws for their own government. The Committee did not reply to him until
August of the following year.[10] Then, they merely asked him a number of
questions. They enquired whether he
proposed that Anguilla and the Virgins should form one government. Or, did he propose to have a legislature on
each of the three islands? They reminded
him that, though his commission empowered him to appoint deputy governors, it
was the prerogative of the Crown to appoint a legislature.
This information came as a shock to
Governor Mathew. He realised he jumped
the gun in his enthusiasm for good government.
He misunderstood the power given to him by his Commission. Months before the above dispatch arrived, he
established Assemblies in Anguilla, Virgin Gorda and Tortola. The exact date of the appointment of
Anguilla’s first, unauthorised Assembly is not clear. It was probably done in July or August 1735.
He wrote again in September 1735, before
he received the August dispatch from the Committee.[11] He proudly explained that he was successful in
introducing a legislature in each of Anguilla, Virgin Gorda, and Tortola. In both Virgin Gorda and Tortola, the
Assemblies and Councils were preparing laws based on models from other islands
that he furnished them with. From this
information, the Assembly of Anguilla was not actually functioning by September
1735. When, in November of the same
year, the August dispatch from the Committee alerting him to his lack of power
to appoint legislatures arrived in St Kitts, Mathew realized that he acted
precipitately. He immediately halted all
work begun by the newly created Assemblies.
In November, he wrote to the Committee
apologising for his haste in establishing Legislative Assemblies in Anguilla
and the Virgin Islands.[12] He explained he was misled by the words in
his commission empowering him to call General Assemblies. He was under the impression that this gave
him the authority to issue Writs for the calling of elections for local
Assemblies. He explained again that for
the past forty years at least Anguilla and the Virgin Islands were each governed
by a deputy governor assisted by six of the principal planters as a
Council. These Councils, he explained, passed
laws and raised taxes. Sometimes these
laws were obeyed, and the taxes paid.
Sometimes, however, the citizens mutinied and, “sometimes Mr Governor and his Council have been well thrashed for their
acts of government.” Because of the
lack of legislative authority to back up the actions of the deputy governor and
his Council, it was difficult to enforce good government in Anguilla and the
Virgin Islands. It was for this reason,
he wrote, that he encouraged the inhabitants of Tortola, Virgin Gorda and
Anguilla to elect representatives to Assemblies. He encouraged them to look at the legal
models or precedents that he provided, with a view to enacting the first laws
of these islands. However, he now
realised that he acted hastily. He
undertook to restrain the islanders from taking any further steps to set up
Assemblies until he received instructions from London. No such instructions ever arrived.
When the Colonial Office did eventually try
to improve government in the Virgin Islands, the result was a fiasco. Nearly fifty years after Mathew’s abortive
attempt to provide Anguilla and the Virgin Islands with the trappings of
government, George Suckling arrived in Road Town with the title of Chief
Justice. He was
a British barrister, first Attorney-General of Quebec, and was sent out by the
Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations to be Chief-Justice of the BVI in
1778. In Tortola, he found that there was no properly
appointed Assembly. The result was that
there was no authority for him to administer any law in the islands.
As we have seen, without proper laws
enacted by a legally constituted parliament, no modern court is able to
function. Suckling returned to England
after four frustrating months, his attempt to
establish a court of justice obstructed by a well-orchestrated conspiracy of several
affluent planters headed by deputy governor John Nugent. He applied to be refunded his
expenses. He received no satisfaction
from the Board of Trade. London had no
intention of paying his bills, which in the view of the Committee were properly
to be paid by the colony in question.
Local legislatures were expected to arrange for the payment of their
judges.
In 1780, back in England, he published a bitter
indictment of the Colonial Office.[13] He called it an historical account of the
Virgin Islands, but he had little space in it to include any history. The book
mainly concerns the author’s grievances against the Colonial Office. He devoted most of it to an explanation of
the circumstances surrounding his wasted trip to the Virgin Islands. He set out his inability to hold court as no
Assembly was yet appointed to pass law.
He related at great length his efforts to get repaid his expenses, which
he bore himself in travelling to the Virgin Islands. The constitutional and legal situation that
he described in the Virgin Islands was identical to that in Anguilla.
After Governor Mathew put a stop to the
activities of the newly appointed Assemblies, a desultory and inconclusive
correspondence ensued between him and the Committee. In April 1736, not yet receiving any reply to
his long letter of 14 November 1735, he wrote again pleading that Anguilla,
Virgin Gorda and Tortola be allowed the privilege of having their own
Assemblies to make laws for governing themselves.[14] When, nearly two months later, he still received
no reply he wrote again to complain that he was unable to give any directions
for the trial of a man who killed another some three weeks previously in
Tortola.[15] It was nearly a year before he got a
response.
In October 1736 the Committee replied.[16] The problem, they explained, was that as he did
not answer in sufficient detail the questions raised in their earlier dispatch
of August 1735, they could not give him any specific instructions. They needed the number and names of, and
character references for, the proposed members of the Councils of these
islands. They wanted to know how exactly
he proposed that members should be elected to the Assemblies and what numbers
there should be for each island. As they
assumed only freeholders of land could vote, they also required to know what
land was held by the inhabitants of each island, and by what sort of
title. In short, they wrote, before they
could consider the question of an Assembly for Anguilla, they required full
knowledge of the inhabitants of the island and the system by which they held
title to their lands. If they were mere
lessees or held short-term grants, then under the English franchise laws of that
time, they would be unable to vote.
There was no universal franchise in those days either in Britain or in
the colonies. The right to vote for
representatives to Parliament in England or for a Legislative Assembly in the
colonies was limited to male persons holding good title to over 100 acres of
land.[17]
This response was not any help to Governor
Mathew. It was a haughty and unhelpful
dispatch and showed a wilful ignorance of the lack of any law or legal system
in the Virgin Islands. The members of
the Committee were displeased with Mathew.
Governors were not expected to present the Privy Council with problems
to solve. They were supposed to report
on their successes in dealing with local problems. The job of a colonial governor was to
implement the instructions of the Committee, not to present the Committee with
problems that they were required to work on.
This 1736 dispatch marks the last of any
interest shown by the Committee towards the question of the provision of laws
and a judiciary for Anguilla and the Virgin Islands during our period. It is doubtful whether Governor Mathew had
access to the information they required.
After eighty-five years of neglect and mal-administration of Anguilla by
previous Governors in Chief, the short visit he paid to Anguilla in 1735 to
install deputy governor John Richardson and his Council would not have given
him enough time to unravel the answers to these questions.
In February 1737, having received the
above dispatch, Governor Mathew replied deferentially that he intended his
dispatch of 14 November 1735 to be a full answer to their questions of 13
August.[18] He realised now, he wrote, that he did not
deal with their question about the form of government that he recommended for
Anguilla and the other Virgin Islands.
He confirmed that he could think of no better form of administration
than to have a deputy governor with a Council of six in each island and a
Lieutenant Governor over the whole of the Virgin Islands. In addition, there should be an Assembly
chosen in each island. He then made a
radical proposal to widen the franchise.
He suggested that the vote should not be limited to freeholders only. It should extend to tenants. As he now explained, there were so many
doubtful and contested titles to land amongst them, it would be impossible to
know who the freeholders were. He
explained that in Anguilla and the other Virgin Islands, land was from time to
time parcelled out to owners by the deputy governor. These titles were occasionally later
confirmed by patents from the Governors in Chief. Many of the existing titles to land in
Anguilla and the Virgin Islands were unconfirmed and were subject to disputes
and controversies. The Committee does not appear ever to have responded to this
stark and revealing dispatch which made so much nonsense of their questions.
In May 1737, Governor Mathew followed up
his earlier dispatches with additional information.[19] We learn for the first time the names of the
members of the Council he appointed in Anguilla in 1735. John Richardson was deputy governor. Other members of his Council were John
Harrigan, Abraham Chalwell, Richard Richardson and Arthur Hodge. Two of the members of Council were already
dead, namely, Bezaliel Rogers and Thomas Howell. We also learn that the three divisions of the
island were, from west to east, Road Division, Valley Division and Joanshole
Division. The names of these Divisions
of Anguilla are of long standing. The
easternmost Division was originally in the deeds called ‘Spring Division’.[20] Bezaliel Rogers’ patent from Governor
Codrington to his land in the Savanna Bay area describes it as lying in Spring Division.[21]
This name may be a reference to the Big Spring at Island Harbour, which
was presumably also originally called Joan's Hole. Alternatively, it may be a reference to ‘The
Fountain’ at Shoal Bay. Both the Big
Spring and the Fountain Spring were known and used as water sources since the
days of the Amerindians. They were
vitally important features on the arid island, frequently subject to brutally
long droughts that obliged the population to choose between starving and emigrating. The name Joan’s Hole subsequently became
Junks Hole. The name Spring Division also
continued to be used. In later deeds and
documents, the name Junks Hole became restricted to the plantation that takes
up most of the eastern peninsula of the island.
The names of the Road Division and Valley Division remain unchanged to
this day.
From the lack of any positive response to
the recommendations of the various Governors in Chief that steps be taken to
improve government in Anguilla, it appears that the Committee in London did not
understand the nature of the problem.
Alternatively, it is possible that they understood the problem only too
well. If the Virgin Islands and Anguilla
were as poor as was represented to them, then any improvement in government
would be at the cost of the taxpayer of the United Kingdom. It was as unacceptable to London as it was
for St Kitts and Antigua that they should have to fund any part of the public
expenses of Anguilla. The colonial and
imperial attitude probably was that if the Anguillians could not develop their
economy to the extent that they could establish their own legislature and
executive council, then they would just have to do without.
There is no further mention in the
Colonial Office records after 1737 of any proposal to establish an Assembly for
Anguilla capable of passing laws for the better government of the little
community. When the archives of the
Anguilla Council begin in 1750, there is no suggestion that an Assembly ever
functioned. We may safely assume, bearing
in mind also Chief Justice Suckling's tribulations in Tortola, that this 1735 Anguilla
Assembly, not being properly constituted, was short-lived and never met to
conduct any business. Anguilla was not
to have her own legally constituted, representative, law-making body until the
year 1976, when by Order in Council she was granted a Constitution establishing
an elected House of Assembly authorised for the first time to pass laws for the
island.
Next: Chapter 17 -
[1] CO.152/14, folio 325: Hart to the
Committee on 10 July 1724. Replies to Quaries.
[2] Then more usually referred to in official
documents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as ‘Spanish Town’, the
name of the main town on the island. For
consistency and to avoid confusion ‘Virgin Gorda’ only is used in this work.
[3] CO.152/18, folio 7: Mathew to the
Committee on 24 September 1729.
[4] For those of the seventeenth century, see
Chapter 7: The Leeward Islands.
[5] In Chapter 5.
[6] CO.152/31: Woodley to the Committee.
[7] CO.152/32: Payne to the Committee on 10
June 1773.
[8] CO.152/21: Mathew to the Committee.
[9] Chapter 7: The Leeward Islands.
[10] CO.153/16, folio 10: Committee to Mathew on
13 August 1735.
[11] CO.152/22, No 15, folio 36: Mathew to the
Committee on 14 September 1735.
[12] CO.152/22, No 32, folio 74: Mathew to the
Committee on 14 November 1735.
[13] George Suckling, An Historical Account
of the Virgin Islands (1780).
[14] CO.152/22, No 41, folio 108: Mathew to the
Committee on 9 April 1736.
[15] CO.152/22, folio 121: Mathew to the
Committee on 31 May 1736.
[16] CO.153/16, folio 45: Committee to Mathew on
8 October 1736.
[17] This
system of partial democracy did not end in the Leeward Islands until the universal
franchise was granted after the Second World War.
[18] CO.152/22, folio 325: Mathew to the
Committee on 5 February 1737.
[19] CO.152/23, folio 6: Mathew to the Committee
on 11 May 1737.
[20] Chapter 5: The Second Generation.
Edward Lake’s 1704 patent.
[21] Chapter 5: The Second Generation.
Bezaliel Rogers’ 1704 patent.
