For the first two generations of
Anguillians, war and the threat of attack, was a regular feature of life. In Europe, the English were continually at
war with the Dutch and the French. These
wars lasted to the end of the century.
Economic issues determined the official attitude to the miniscule
colony. As the island produced so little
wealth, and contributed so little revenue to the central coffers, the official
attitude was not encouraging. Governor
Henry Lord Willoughby's casual dismissal in 1668 describing Anguilla as “Not worth keeping”, was not an isolated remark.[1]
The Governors in Chief wrote a stream of
disparaging dispatches about the island back to London. They regularly commented on the failure of
the colony to contribute anything to the royal revenue. The Navigation Acts passed by the
British Parliament commencing in the year 1650, and the mercantilist policy
espoused by the Lord Protector Thomas Cromwell and his successors, both had the
same aim. They were designed to ensure
that the profits of the colonies were enjoyed by English merchants and traders,
as well as the English exchequer or treasury, not by foreigners. At the time, the Dutch were the principal
traders in the Caribbean. Official
policy was to make it illegal for English citizens to trade with them. The Navigation Acts tied the colonists
to English ships, English merchants and the home markets. From 1660, by what was called the
‘enumeration clause’, all colonial produce of cotton, sugar, tobacco, indigo,
etc, was obliged to be exported to England or another English colony, and in
English ships. Export to a foreign port
or trading with a foreign ship was illegal.
In the same year, the Royal African Company, previously known as the ‘Company
of Royal Adventurers into Africa’ was given a monopoly over the English slave
trade by its charter.[2] These mercantilist measures naturally led to
conflict with the Dutch, especially during the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of
1652-1654, 1665-1667, and 1672-1674.
Then, there were the wars with the
French. The Anglo-French Wars ravaged
the islands of the West Indies, and Anguilla did not escape. These took place mainly when the French
declared war on England in support of the United Provinces in the Second
Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), and the Nine Years' War (1689-1697), also known as
the War of the League of Augsburg or the War of the Grand Alliance or King
William’s War.
Insofar as the islands were affected,
these wars were fought not over territory but over markets. The conflicts were very destructive to the
Caribbean. The aim of the combatants was
to damage enemy property rather than to appropriate it. Officially sanctioned fleets of English,
French, Dutch, Spanish, and later US, privateers cruised the Caribbean during
these wars. They did more damage than buccaneers
and pirates. Privateers, ie, private
men-of-war, were merchant ships and pirates commissioned by the various sides
to seize ships of the enemy. French and
English expeditions repeatedly raided each other's islands. They carried off slaves and equipment, burned
plantations, and seized shipping.
The first raid on Anguilla since the
Indian attack of 1656 came exactly ten years later at the commencement of the
First Anglo-Dutch War. Francis Sampson
of St Christopher, or St Kitts, wrote to his brother John Sampson in England to
advise on the death of lieutenant governor Watts.[3] He reported that the French from St Kitts landed
300 men on Anguilla. Faced with such a
huge force, he wrote, the inhabitants had no alternative but to put their
houses to the flame and to take to the woods for refuge. At this early time, it is likely that the
woods of Anguilla were extensive enough for concealment.
Pere
du Tertre writing later gives us little more detail.[4] In 1666, the Sieur des Roses was the governor
of the French part of St Martin. Du
Tertre described him as one of the bravest of the French in the Americas. It was Des Roses, he wrote, who took three
hundred men on board the Harmonie, the Concorde, and three
smaller vessels, to attack Anguilla. The
Anguillians did not put up any resistance.
At the sight of the French ships, they abandoned their property. They set fire to their canoes and fled to the
woods and mountains. Du Tertre claimed
that they really did more damage to themselves than the French intended to
do. As the orders of the French were not
to do more damage to the Anguillians than that they did to themselves, the
French returned to St Martin with two prisoners and three pieces of cannon.[5]
England being at war with the Dutch, the
French seized the opportunity to attack the English colonies. In the same year, 1666, they also took the
English part of St Kitts, and occupied Antigua, from both of which islands
refugees fled to Anguilla. The Irish
Catholics in Montserrat welcomed their arrival, and many of the men joined the
French forces. The peace established by
the Treaty of Breda in 1667 lasted for only a decade, but Anguilla was not
attacked again until the Nine Years War.[6]
The Spanish were by this time the sick man
of the Caribbean. War in Europe and
repeated assaults on their monopoly in the West Indies seriously weakened
them. This did not stop them from
bringing their share of grief to the Anguillians. Their privateers preyed on shipping. Their forces on at least one occasion landed
on the island taking prisoners.
In 1686, Peter Battery was a passenger on
a sloop bound from Nevis to Anguilla. He
subsequently swore a deposition in which he described what happened to the
vessel he was in. Off the neighbouring
island of St Martin, they were stopped by a ship flying the French flag. Perceiving her to be Spanish, he and three
others took to the sloop's dinghy. Being
close to land they managed to make the shore without being captured. The others were taken prisoner. Another Englishman who escaped from the
Spaniards told him that the ship contained one hundred and fifty Spanish
creoles and between twenty and thirty cannon.
The report does not reveal what was the fate of the sloop and her
passengers after she was stopped and boarded by the Spanish ship. A marauding vessel of this size would have
terrorized the little island. Several of
the prisoners mentioned were likely Anguillians.
Two years later, in 1688, the Spaniards
attacked Anguilla. They also assaulted the
Anguillians on Crab Island. We will look
at the attack on Crab Island in a separate chapter.[7] Suffice it to say that at the time of the
Spanish assault on Anguilla, the Anguillian forces were split. Half their number was absent with William
Pellet and his Scotsmen on Crab Island. Abraham
Howell remained behind in Anguilla with his depleted forces. We have his written description[8]
of the engagement. He wrote,
May it please Your Excellency,
After my humble service, these few lines are to acquaint you that
on the 21st instant, our island was attacked by a sort of people under the
notion of Spaniards, but there were with them English, Irish, some Turk
mulattoes, Negroes, and others. It was
said by some, as one did inform me, having been their prisoner, that Captain
Bear was with them, whatever truth or not I cannot tell.
They came to a vacant part of our island which had few inhabitants
and there landed in the night, took a man and his wife prisoner who they did
force to pilot them to a place called the Road, where they about two hours
before day took some prisoners and wounded two men, who broke through them and
escaped. They also took a woman and she
being in their custody one held her by her hands and called her by her name,
and asked the way and how far it was to my house, naming my name unto her. And, whilst he was examining her, a mulatto
shot her in the belly with a load of carbine bullets. The woman I have now in care and the danger,
I hope, is passed. This being done about
four miles from my house.
About 8 in the morning, I met them with a small number of men and
put a stop to their further progress; so they retreated and went to their ships
and embarked leaving what prisoners they had of ours on shore with ten French
prisoners which they had taken in sundry places, which I have since taken care
of and have sent them to St Martins, one of which prisoners doth speak good
Spanish and did inform me that he did hear the Spanish Commander say that he
did intend for Spanish Town and Tortola, so to Porto Rico, and take in new men
and go to Crab Island and destroy it and not give any quarter to any.
Our great want is a small frigate in these parts. I am informed by our people that they did rob
them of the value of fifteen hundred pounds current money. They were two ships, one brigantine and one
sloop. Their number of men was two
hundred and fifty. One of their ships
was of 26 guns, the other, 16. That is
what I am informed by the French prisoners.
Our men are few and we have [ . . . ] none, which is a great
expense of powder. Wherefore, my humble
request to your Excellency is that you be pleased to furnish me with one barrel
of powder for my guns when I plant in breastworks. I hope in case they come again to give them a
better welcome.
They robbed the people of, as they informed me, to the value of
fifteen hundred pounds current money and two negroes. The Commander in Chief did say he sent them
on land not for such plunder, but for negroes and to take me. But, they went away with more expense of blood
than they spilled of ours.
This is a true and just account of what hath passed, though in
plain words. I humbly beg pardon for my
rudeness and subscribe my salutations, your Excellency’s most humble servant to
be commanded.
(sd)
Abraham Howell
From this dispatch, we learn that on the
night of 21 December 1688, approximately 250 Spaniards, accompanied by some
English and Irish renegades, landed at a deserted beach on Anguilla. They took a man and his wife prisoner and
forced them to guide them to Road Bay.
There, about two hours before daybreak, they took some prisoners and
wounded two men, who managed to escape into the bush. They tortured one of the women to find out
the location of Howell's house. One of
the Spaniards shot her in her stomach while she was being tortured. Fortunately, she survived. We learn that Howell’s house was about four
miles away from Sandy Ground, but he does not say in which direction. The likelihood is, from the title deeds we
looked at earlier, that his home was at Valentine Blake’s Plantation in the
Valley. It is the right distance or four
miles from Sandy Ground. At about eight
that morning, Howell and the men of his militia met up with the marauders and
put them to flight. The Spanish
retreated on board their boats so precipitously, he writes, that they left on
the shore all their Anguillian prisoners and ten French from other islands.
It seems that the Spaniards knew their target
on Anguilla. They demanded of their
prisoners the way to Howell's home. They
were overheard by one of the French prisoners planning their next target,
namely the new settlement on Crab Island.
Information from the rescued prisoners was that the Spaniards were in
two ships, a brigantine and a sloop. The
brig carried 26 cannon and the sloop 16 cannon.
Howell's one plea to the Governor in Chief in Antigua was for a barrel
of powder for his guns. These, he hoped
soon to be able to obtain and to erect on the breastwork he was planning. This, he says, would allow him to give the
Spanish a better welcome if they visited again.
In his dispatch to the Lords of Trade, Governor Sir Nathaniel Johnson
commended the bravery of the Anguillians in clearing the vastly superior
Spanish forces from their island. He
remarked at the modesty with which Howell described the way he and his men handled
the incident.
We learn a few more details of the Spanish
engagement from another dispatch.[9] The following year, Sir Francis Watson
reported that he sent HMS Drake to the Spanish Governor in Santo Domingo
to claim the prisoners brought from Anguilla and Crab. He wrote that one Captain Bear, an Englishman
who enjoyed the protection of the Spaniards, led the expedition against both Crab
and Anguilla. He did not record if he was
successful in obtaining the release of the Anguillians.
Though in 1688 the islands were at war,
Anguilla was not protected by any warship or troops, as one would expect. There were no cannon, and no gunpowder even
if there were cannon. For the protection
of Anguilla, there was only the lightly armed local militia. We know how many men there were. At the beginning of the Third Anglo-Dutch War
in 1672 Governor Sir William Stapleton reported that in Anguilla there were
available two companies of fifty men each.[10] Those were probably all the men of fighting
age available in Anguilla at that time.
For a while, the island was fortified and boasted cannon installed on
it. But, once war came, the government
of the Leeward Islands decided that the island was not worth defending, and in
1673, the cannon were removed to St Kitts.
The Minutes of the Council of St Kitts of 8 March 1673
record the
decision that the Anguilla cannon be brought by Captain John Jones to St Kitts from
Anguilla. They should be landed at or
near Cleverly Hill for the defence of that island. If the cannon were retained in Anguilla, and
the island's defences maintained, the islanders would have been better equipped
to defend themselves in 1688 against both the French and Spanish attacks.
From the English point of view, there was
no point in spending money on the defence of Anguilla as they did for New York
or Antigua. The island was more of a
nuisance than anything else. Throughout
the Leeward Islands, the planters and merchants were attempting to evade the Navigation
Acts, and to trade with the Dutch.
Trading with the Dutch was attractive.
They gave better prices for local produce than English ships. They carried European manufactured articles
for trade at better prices. It was
doubly difficult to enforce the Acts in relation to Anguilla. That island was surrounded by the Dutch
trading depots of St Martin and Statia, and the Danish free ports of St Thomas
and St John. Governor Stapleton was even
more emphatic in a 1680 dispatch to the Committee for Trade than Governor Willoughby
was.[11] He wrote, “It were to be wished that St Eustatius, Saba and Anguilla were as much
under water as above it.” In 1683 he
wrote again of Anguilla that, “Anguilla
is fit for little or nothing but goats.”[12] Throughout the seventeenth century, Anguilla
being so poor, it was viewed by all the authorities as more of a nuisance than any
benefit to the Colony of the Leeward Islands.
The revolution of 1688 against the Stuarts
in England gave the French another opportunity to harass the English in the
Caribbean. Holland, King William's
mother country, allied itself this time with England. King William’s War was to last from 1689 to
1697. Once King William III and Queen
Mary II were declared king and queen in 1689, Louis XIV of France declared war
on both England and Spain. The result
was more suffering for the Anguillians.
In 1688, the French on St Kitts were Roman
Catholics, as were the Irish, while the English were Protestants. The Irish Catholics supported the Catholic
Stuarts against both the protestant Lord Protector, Thomas Cromwell, in the
1650s and the protestant prince, William of Orange, brought in to replace the
Roman Catholic Stuart dynasty in 1688.
Numbers of Irish were deported to the colonies by the English. Irish merchants and traders also sent
colonists to the islands. Many of these
Irish sought refuge in the French quarter of St Kitts. From there, they assisted the French in their
attacks on the English. Thomas Warner set
aside Montserrat for the Irish Catholics.
There was little opportunity for them in that small island, and they
tended to immigrate to the richer islands.
The census records of the period show that large numbers of Irish were
in Nevis and in St Kitts where they were treated with suspicion. They were viewed by the protestant English as
natural allies of the Catholic French, and supporters of the deposed King James II of England.
Fighting broke out in the Caribbean
between the French and the English a year before there was any formal
declaration of war in Europe. Thomas
Southey recorded that in 1688 a party of ‘Wild Irish’ landed on Anguilla and “treated the defenceless inhabitants more
barbarously than any of the French pirates who had attacked them before”.[13]
What would one not give for a little more information on that nugget
tucked away in the quotation? Which
French pirates? Which attacks? Perhaps he is referring to the attack by the
300 men under the Sieur des Rose ten years before, but those men were not
pirates. Governor Codrington describes
the attack on Anguilla differently. He writes
that the attack was carried out by the French from St Martin and St
Bartholomew. The French commander in
chief installed an Irishman as governor of Anguilla with a commission to
protect the French interest. However, as
soon as he heard of the attack, Codrington sent three requisitioned vessels to
retake the island from the French. They captured
the Irish governor and brought him back to Antigua where he was placed in
custody. We do not know what became of
him, but he is not likely to have survived long.
In 1689, acting on instructions from
Codrington, Lieutenant Edward Thorne evacuated to Antigua all the surviving population
of Anguilla. Codrington reported to the
Committee that on 30 September all the rest of the inhabitants of Anguilla who survived
the Irish attack were brought over from Anguilla to Antigua by sloops.[14] He ordered their evacuation because their
defences were too weak to resist another attack by the French. He expressed the view that not only would
they be safer in Antigua, but he could let them have enough land to cultivate
for their own benefit and to increase the King's revenue.
Governor Codrington's plans for the Anguillians
in Antigua were frustrated. Most of them
either returned to Anguilla or their places were taken by new settlers. The jealousy of the Nevis planters towards
the Antiguans no doubt assisted the Anguillians in returning to Anguilla. They complained against Governor Codrington
for having brought the Anguillians to Antigua.
They wanted the Anguillians to be employed on their own plantations in
Nevis. As Governor Codrington reported,
the Nevisians censured him as partial and unjust because he ordered the people
of Anguilla to be transported to his own island of Antigua rather than to
Nevis. He claimed he had a good reason
for his choice of Antigua. The
Anguillians could never earn their bread in Nevis as well as they could on
Antigua. Antigua, he pointed out, was
four times as big as Nevis, and yet did not have a third of Nevis'
population. This was not the last time
that the authorities were to have designs on the persons of the Anguillians, as
we shall see in a later Chapter.
Edward Thorne of the Anguilla evacuation
turned up again in the Anguilla Archives, as we saw, as a landowner.[15] He was given a patent to land, probably by
Governor Codrington in compensation for his expenses during the war in
1689. In 1691 he submitted a petition to
the King.[16] A copy of it is preserved in the Colonial
Office records. It gives a different
perspective on the evacuation of Anguilla.
To the King's most Excellent
Majesty.
Sheweth
That in the year 1689 your
Petitioner having considerable quantities of arms and ammunition by him in the
island of Antigua, and there being then a great appearance of a war with France
and that St Christophers in all probability would be the first place attacked
by the enemy, your Petitioner out of zeal to your Majesty's service did go down
to St Christophers and supply the garrisons and inhabitants thereof with about
£500 worth of his said arms and ammunition; soon after which the French and
Irish joining together against the English, your Petitioner with Major Joseph
Crisp were sent to Barbados to desire aid against them where they procured a
Regiment of 700 men under the command of Sir Timothy Thornhill, of which your
Petitioner at his own charge raised a company; but before they could get to St
Christophers that island was lost, and another island called Anguilla was also
taken by the French, to reduce which your Petitioner was sent with 100 men and
succeeded therein; and afterwards was at the taking of St Bartholomews, St
Martins, St Christophers and St Eustatia, for all which, although there were
great riches taken from the enemy, and your Petitioner received many fair
promises of reward from General Codrington yet the General keeping all the
plunder to himself except some small matter given to the inhabitants of his own
government.
That after your Petitioner was
discharged by the General and going home to Barbados with his soldiers in your
Majesty's ship the Hampshire, he was commanded on shore by the said
General and confined 19 days, and then discharged without letting your
Petitioner know for what he confined although often demanded, by which he lost
his passage in the Man of War, and hiring a Sloop to carry him and his effects
to Barbados was on the way taken by the French to his damage and loss of £1,000
besides two months imprisonment.
Wherefore your Petitioner most
humbly prays your Majesty would be graciously pleased to give strict orders to
the said General Codrington to make your Petitioner satisfaction for his
aforesaid goods, losses and services and not let him be ruined for his zeal to
your Majesty's service
AND HE SHALL PRAY ETC
Edward Thorne
Thorne clearly felt hurt that Codrington had
not sufficiently compensated him for his exertions in Anguilla in 1689. His version has his mission to Anguilla much
more heroic than Codrington’s version.
He claimed that Anguilla was taken by French forces. What in fact the French did was to set their
Wild Irish allies on the inhabitants. They
never took the island in the sense of capturing it for France. Thorne states that Codrington sent him with
100 men to overcome the French, and that he managed to accomplish this. In fact, the French had set the Wild Irish on
the island and departed shortly after. He
complained that he sought compensation for the losses he suffered during the
war, but that General Codrington refused him.
There can be no doubt that it must have been expensive for him to bring
his militia troupe from Barbados and to house and provision them in Antigua.
Thorne was exaggerating the significance
of his mission in Anguilla. Southey has
confirmed Codrington's version.[17] He
described the action as one in which Codrington sent three sloops with 80
soldiers under Thorne’s command to fetch off the inhabitants with their goods
and livestock from Anguilla. It was a
total, though temporary, evacuation. The
Anguillians left their island temporarily abandoned. Thorne was not required to overcome any
French force. Contrary to the
literature, the French did not take possession of the island. Nor was it returned by the Treaty of
Breda. It was much too poor a place for
the French to want to hold on to it.
In November 1689, Governor Codrington
reported that on the 29 and 30 of October he held court sessions in Antigua,
the seat of his government.[18] Amongst those tried for various offices were
three Irish men brought from Anguilla where they were captured. They were tried for rebellion and treason,
convicted and executed. It seems clear
that most of the Irish who settled in Anguilla were not prosecuted in this
way. Just what was the special crime of
these three men, to justify their execution, is not clear from the records.
By 1700, the half-forgotten little
settlement was now fifty years old. The
second generation of Anguillians were coming of age. The authorities in London and Antigua showed
no greater concern than earlier for the protection of the inhabitants. The disparagements of Anguilla continued. Colonel Edward Fox of Antigua was a senior member of
the Antigua Council. He acted as Governor
of the Leeward Islands in 1700, while Governor Christopher Codrington Jr was
delayed in London negotiating the terms of his salary. At the trial of deputy governor Norton of St
Kitts in 1701, Governor Codrington lists Fox in the transcript as ‘Lieutenant
governor of the Leeward Islands’. That
year, Fox wrote a
dispatch to the Lords of Trade making a military evaluation of the various
islands. Anguilla and Virgin Gorda, he wrote, possessed “so few inhabitants, and most of them so poor, that whichever nation
should have those islands would be little better off for them” (see illus
1).[19]
1. Edward Fox on the value of Anguilla:
CO.152/4. (UK National Archives®)
This dismissive reference to the small
number of people on Anguilla, and their poverty, sets the background for the continuing
lack of either concern or activity on the part of the colonial power.
John Oldmixon was an English poet,
historian and hack writer. His British
Empire in America[20]
was highly inaccurate but written in an engaging style and became very popular. It was the first description in English of
the British colonies in America. It greatly
influenced public opinion for a long time after it was written. This is what he wrote of Anguilla in 1708,
Anguis Insula or Snake Island,
so called from its figure, being a long tract of earth, but narrow, winding
almost about near St. Martin: from whence it may easily be seen. It lies in 18 degrees, 21 minutes.
The country is level and woody,
the soil fruitful, and the tobacco that grew there formerly was reckoned very
good in its kind. There's not a mountain
in it. Where 'tis broadest there's a
pond, about which the English settled in the year 1650. Their business, like the inhabitants of
Anguilla, was to plant corn, and breed tame cattle; for which purpose they
brought stock with them. They were poor
and continue so to this day, being perhaps the laziest creatures in the
world. Some people have gone from
Barbados, and the other English Charibbee Islands, thither, and there they live
like the first race of men, without government or religion, having no minister
nor governor, no magistrates, no law, and no property worth keeping, if a
French author is to be believed: ‘L'isle
n'est pas estimee valoir la peine qu'on la guarde ny qu'on la cultive.’ The island is not thought worth the trouble
of defending or cultivating it: In which
perhaps the Frenchman is out; for the soil being good, if an industrious people
were in possession of it, they would soon make it worth defending.
The way of the present
inhabitants is to take no care for anything but food and rayment [clothing] which
are both ordinary enough, tho' of the two their food is best. They generally marry here, and are given in
marriage, after the good old fashion.
They have no lawyers to put them to the expense of jointures; nor priests,
to pluck money out of their pockets for licences; they trust to honour, and it
being difficult for any man or woman here to make their condition better or
worse by change, there are seldom any divorces:
and if there is any reason for them, the people have good nature enough
to put it up, every man being his own master, at least every master of a
family. This is a sort of primitive
society where no man's power exceeded the bounds of his household.
One would think such a poor
people as this should live quietly, and that no enemy would pretend to invade
them; indeed 'twas worth no nation's while, but the Wild Irish, we call them so
to distinguish them from the English of Ireland; and these wretches thinking
'twas impossible for any man to be poorer than themselves, landed in the last
war, and took away from the inhabitants of Anguilla the little they had. In the year 1689 the French put them ashore,
and they not only robb'd, but abus'd, and barbarously treated the English.
Sir Timothy Thornhill, who was
then at Antego, hearing of it, sent Captain Edward Thorn, with 80 men, to bring
off the English that were on the island, to prevent their being so insulted
again.
Whether they remov'd or not, we
have not learnt, but 'tis certain, there are now 150 families upon it, and 8 or
900 souls, who live poorly, and we might say miserably if they were not
contented; and considering they desire
no more, and that they want nothing necessary for life, why are they not as
happy as the inhabitants of Peru and Mexico?
Contrary to Oldmixon’s sarcastic dismissal
of the efforts and achievements of the Anguillians, in the first fifty years of
settlement, the Anguillian colonists were attacked in turn by Indians, French,
Spanish and the Wild Irish. Their houses
were repeatedly burned, the men killed, and the women seized. On one occasion, the survivors were evacuated
to Antigua for a period of weeks if not months together with all their
possessions. Anguillian sloops plying
between the Virgin Islands, where valuable dyewood and building timber grew,
and the already overpopulated and deforested islands of St Kitts and Nevis,
were at the mercy of the larger vessels of the French and Spanish and of the
pirates of all nations. Long years of
drought added to their misery. It will
not surprise us to learn that the more enterprising Anguillians sought to
emigrate to more attractive islands. We
shall deal with the various efforts of the Anguillians to find greener pastures
in a later chapter.
Next: Chapter 7 – The
Leeward Islands [Part 1]
[1] CO.1/23, No 103, folio 212: The memorandum is
unattributed, but it is cited in the Calendars of State Papers,
paragraph 1781, as “Willoughby to the
Board of Trade”.
[2] In
1698 it lost its monopoly though it continued trading in slaves until 1731 when
it abandoned slaving in favour of ivory and gold. It was set up by and was headed by James,
Duke of York, and brother of King Charles II, whom he succeeded in 1685
becoming King James II.
[4] Jean Baptiste du Tertre, Histoire
Generalle des Antilles habitees par les Francois, tome 4, p.59.
[6] Much of the tourist literature, and even
some academic websites, say that Anguilla was returned to the English by the
1667 Treaty. St Kitts, Antigua and
Montserrat were. But, the French never
took Anguilla, they merely set the Irish on her. Many of them stayed and were subsequently
assimilated into the local population.
No foreign flag ever flew over Anguilla.
The island was too poor to be of interest to any other nation.
[7] Chapter 9: The Lure of Crab.
[8] CO.152/37, No 5: Johnson to the Committee on 20 April
1689, enclosure 5: Howell to Johnson on 31 December 1688. [The copy in the National Archives in London
appears to be the original written in Howell’s own hand. This is unusual as
copies of enclosures to London were normally prepared by the Governor’s
secretary, so that all enclosures are usually written in the same handwriting.
This one is different.]
[10] CO.1/29, No 14, folio 22: Stapleton to the Committee
on 17 July 1672, enclosure 1: Answers to the Several Enquiries of the Sundry
Councils.
[13] Thomas Southey, A Chronological History
of the West Indies (3 vols, 1827) Vol 2, p.145.
[15] Chapter 5: The Second Generation.
[16] CO.152/1, No 3, folio 5: Thorne’s undated
petition.
[17] Southey op cit, Vol 2, p.149.
[20] John Oldmixon, The British Empire in
America (1708), Vol 2, p.264.
