The first permanent English settlement in
the Leeward Islands, we recall, was that established in St Christopher, or St
Kitts, by Thomas Warner in the year 1623.
In 1625, having been knighted by King Charles, he returned to St Kitts
from England as Sir Thomas, with provisions and additional settlers. He also brought with him a commission in
which the islands of St Kitts, Nevis, Barbuda, Montserrat and Antigua were
taken under royal protection and given over to his custody as the King's
lieutenant. These islands, together with
Anguilla and Sombrero, were later included in the Carlisle Grant of 1627, but
Warner was confirmed as deputy governor of St Kitts.[1] The Earl of Carlisle did not himself live in
the West Indies. The central government
of the English Caribbean was established under his deputy at Barbados where it
remained until 1671.
Thomas
Cromwell's Colonial Board of forty-three members implemented his policies in
the West Indies during the Commonwealth period.
It and its Royal successors appointed Governors and gave them their
instructions. London expected the
Governors to send detailed reports on the conditions of the islands, the state
of the islands' defences, enforcement of the Navigation Acts, estimates
of population, statistics of shipping, and accounts of revenue. They were expected to report on all other
matters that might affect revenue or foreign policy.
With the
restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Board was superseded by separate
Committees for Trade and for Foreign Plantations. These two Committees worked together. Each consisted of twenty-eight members who
were Privy Councillors. They included
ex-officials of the colonies, planters and merchants. Their function was mainly advisory. They heard evidence and made reports for the
guidance of the Privy Council. In 1675,
after numerous changes in the form and title of the English governing body, a
more enduring arrangement was arrived at.
The Privy Council Committee dealing with the colonies received a
permanent secretary with a proper clerical staff and facilities for preserving
archives. This Committee, styled the
Lords of Trade, operated for twenty years.
It laid the foundation for what was eventually to become the Colonial
Office.
Shortly
after the Treaty of Breda, St Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua "and all the other Leeward Islands"
were separated from Barbados. The
description 'leeward' and 'windward' derive from the days of sailing
ships. The origin is ultimately Spanish. They divided the islands of the West Indies
into ‘las islas barlovento’ and ‘las islas sotovento’, or those to windward and
those to leeward of Hispaniola, their seat of government. The trade winds blow all year long from the
east, varying only to arrive from the south-east in the summer and from the
north-east during the winter months.
Cuba and Jamaica lay to the west of Hispaniola, or down-wind, while
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands lay to the east of Hispaniola, or
upwind. The Spaniards named them
accordingly. The English adopted the method
of description. With their seat of
colonial government in Barbados, English ships entering the Caribbean Sea, usually
at Dominica, tacked to windward to arrive at Barbados. St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada, lying
between Dominica and Barbados, naturally became known to the English as the
‘Windward Islands’. If, when the English
fleet crossed the Atlantic, they turned to the north to St Kitts, they sailed
with the wind and therefore to the lee.
They naturally described the islands that stretched from Dominica to the
Virgin Islands as the ‘Leeward Islands’, following the style of the Spanish
maps which they stole and adapted. The
Dutch also adopted the same system. Their
seat of government lay in Curacao. That
island, together with Aruba and Bonaire, lies to the lee for Dutch sailing
ships entering the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. The Dutch named the so-called ABC Islands the
Dutch Leeward Islands. By contrast, St
Maarten, Saba, and St Eustatius lie to the east or windward of Curacao. They became known to the Dutch as the Dutch
or Netherlands Antilles Windward Islands.
Hence it is that the Dutch Windward Islands lie in the middle of the
English Leeward Islands. The French
first ceded Dominica to the British by the Treaty of Paris of 1763. After several contests in the intervening
years, it was confirmed as British by the 1783 Treaty of Versailles. It formally joined the Leeward Caribbee
Islands Government in 1833. That relationship
lasted for over one hundred years. In
1940, for administrative convenience, Dominica withdrew from the Leeward
Islands and joined the Windward Islands administration.
King
Charles II recognised that the Leeward colonists needed to be separated from
Barbados and to have their own administration.
From 1670, the Leeward Islands became a separate government with their
own Governor. In that year, the King
commissioned Sir Charles Wheeler[2]
as the first Captain General and Governor in Chief of His Majesty's Leeward
Caribbee Islands.[3] Wheeler possessed much the same powers over
the new colony of the Leeward Islands as those previously granted to Lord
Willoughby for the whole of the Caribbean.
In addition, he could call on two companies of soldiers, to be paid out
of a four and a half percent duty levied on the produce of the islands. He held a further commission authorizing him
to appoint deputy governors for each of the islands. He was to appoint for each island a Council
of twelve of its principal inhabitants. His
instructions were to proceed to Nevis, then the richest island in the
colony. There he was to fill up the
Council with ‘men of good estate’, and to return to London an annual census and
a copy of all the laws in force, and all that might be enacted in the future by
the islands' councils, as well as complete lists of imports and exports, and
detailed accounts of the King's revenue.
In May
1671, Wheeler set sail to assume the government. After a brief administration, he incurred the
displeasure of the Council for Foreign Plantations and was recalled in December
without having visited Anguilla, far less appointed a Council for its
government. The main complaint against
him was the dilatory and disadvantageous way he reclaimed the English part of
St Kitts from the French pursuant to the terms of the Treaty of Breda. He agreed to time limits and other conditions
unfavourable to the English. There were
other complaints against him that did not help his cause. One of them with a direct connection with
Anguilla is dealt with in the chapter on piracy.[4]
In
1672, the Committee for Foreign Plantations chose Colonel William Stapleton to
succeed Wheeler. Stapleton was an Irish
Catholic soldier of fortune who came to the West Indies during the 1666-1667
Second Anglo-Dutch War and settled in Montserrat. He led the troops in a failed attack on the
French in St Kitts, after which he was appointed deputy governor of
Montserrat. He was a fiery and quick-tempered
man. He once drew his sword on one of
his deputy governors and thrust at him several times. He wrote another man who accused him of lies
and injustice, “Were I near you, I would
dash your teeth and your words down your throat.”[5] His instructions were to live in St Kitts,
but he did not find conditions in that island congenial. He married into the Russell family, the
wealthiest in Nevis, and made that island his home and headquarters. He acquired large properties in the four main
islands of the Colony and was knighted in 1679.
As Governor, he worked energetically to build up the sugar industry in
the four islands. Under his management,
the Leeward Islands planters quickly recouped their wartime losses.
Several of the other Governors-in-Chief of
the Leeward Islands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were
equally colourful men. There were nine
of them during the seventeenth century (see table 1):[6]
1660-1666
|
Francis Lord Willoughby
|
1667-1668
|
Henry Lord Willoughby
|
1670–1671
|
Sir Charles Wheeler
|
1672-1685
|
Sir William Stapleton
|
1685-1689
|
Sir Nathaniel Johnson
|
1689-1698
|
Christopher Codrington Sr
|
1698
|
William Burt (acting)
|
1698-1699
|
Edward Fox (acting)
|
1699-1704
|
Christopher Codrington Jr
|
Table 1:
Governors-in-Chief of the Leeward Islands during the seventeenth century.
When Stapleton died in 1685, James II
shook the Leeward Island gentry by appointing an outsider, Sir Nathaniel
Johnson to be Governor in Chief.[7] Johnson was a home-bred civil servant. He was sent out to enforce the King's orders
and to break down the powerful colonial cliques that developed under
Stapleton. He moved his seat of power
from Nevis to Antigua. There, he soon
established a large sugar estate. He did
not join the Leeward Islands planter class.
Instead, he invited the discontented small farmers to help him overthrow
the large planter class from their accustomed positions of power in the local
Councils and Assemblies. He challenged the
validity of existing land titles. He
proposed to issue new patents that required the payment of a quit-rent to the
King.[8] After the Glorious Revolution of 1689 in
England, he continued to support the Jacobites and as a result was forced to
resign.
In 1689, General Christopher Codrington Sr
was appointed in his place. Codrington
was a seasoned planter/politician of Antigua and a spirited but autocratic
leader. His government occurred at a
time of much disturbance and disquiet throughout the Leeward Islands. The Nine Years War broke out in 1689 and
lasted until 1697. Codrington was so
rich that he subsidized military campaigns out of his own pocket. He failed in his plans to conquer Guadeloupe
and Martinique and to resettle the whole of St Kitts, mainly due to the
jealousy and opposition of his colleagues.
When he died in 1698, he was succeeded by
his son, Christopher Codrington Jr, an Oxford scholar and London
socialite. He governed during the period
1700 to 1704. His departure from
England, where he was serving in the army as a lieutenant-colonel, was delayed
for two years while his salary was being discussed. He finally arrived in September 1700.
One of the powers of the Governor in Chief,
as we have seen, was to appoint deputy governors in each of the islands. Anguilla as Southey wrote was not colonized
under any public encouragement. By this
he means that neither the King nor the Governor in Chief commissioned anyone to
take possession of the island of Anguilla for the English Crown. Once the island was settled, and the colony
recovered from the Indian attack of 1656, some attempt was made to govern it. The first settlers on Anguilla having come
from St Kitts, the island was at first governed, if only nominally, from that
island.
In
1660, only four years after the Carib raid, Francis Lord Willoughby of Parham
was Lieutenant General and Governor of the Caribbee Islands. He appointed Colonel William Watts of St Kitts
to be deputy governor of the islands of St Kitts and Anguilla. By his Commission, Watts specifically had
power to choose councillors and to convene Assemblies.[9] He appointed no Council for Anguilla that we
know of. Watts was killed in St Kitts
fighting the French in 1667. His
successor was commissioned deputy governor of St Kitts, but not of Anguilla. By that date, the settlers elected Abraham
Howell to be deputy governor in Anguilla. That first experiment at appointing a
Christophonian, as they were called at the time, or a Kittitian as we say
today, to be lieutenant governor of Anguilla was not repeated until 1727.
Anguilla
was served by only two resident deputy governors during the long period of 1650
to 1735: Abraham Howell and George
Leonard. In a document now lost, but
quoted by Dr Samuel B Jones, Howell
recorded that he was elected in 1666 "by
the inhabitants to be the deputy governor until some lawfully constituted
authority should take the burden of office."[10] He claimed in his 1673 patent to Ensign Thomas
Romney that he was more formally appointed deputy governor by Governor
Stapleton sometime in 1672.[11] Howell’s name repeatedly crops up in the
Governors' reports to the Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations as deputy
governor of Anguilla until about the year 1689, after which he appears in the
surviving documents only as a private citizen.
Howell’s commission was probably revoked by Governor Codrington in 1689,
when he appointed George Leonard to be deputy governor of Anguilla in his
place.
Codrington may have removed Howell’s
appointment as deputy governor of Anguilla because of Howell’s stubborn and
repeated efforts starting in 1683 to remove the Anguillians to the greener
pastures of Crab Island when their lands in Anguilla were devastated by
drought. We shall see more of this
exploit when we come to look at Anguilla and its relationship with Crab Island.[12]
Alternatively,
Governor Codrington’s displeasure with Abraham Howell might relate to the 1688
attack by the Wild Irish and the subsequent short evacuation of the entire
Anguillian population to Antigua. As we saw
in the chapter dealing with the effect of war on the Anguillian settlers,
Codrington attempted to persuade the Anguillians to abandon their island and to
remain permanently settled in Antigua.[13] He claimed to be acting out of concern for
the safety of the Anguillians. His
stated reason was that they were too few to resist any invasion of the French
if they remained in Anguilla.
His
real plan was to increase the population of Antigua and to strengthen its
defences by adding the population of Anguilla to its numbers. The Anguillians refused to give in to this
pressure. When they felt that conditions
were safe, the vast majority left Antigua and returned to live in
Anguilla. Abraham Howell was their
leader. He may have displeased
Codrington by refusing to keep his people in Antigua and paid the price for the
stubbornness of the Anguillians in returning to their island. George Leonard was more amenable to Governor
Codrington. He did not return to live in
Anguilla permanently, although we see that he was on the island, respected by
his people, on the occasions of the visits of the Quaker missionary Thomas Chalkley. Leonard found conditions in Antigua more
congenial than those in Anguilla, and he lived in Antigua for long periods of
time working his cotton plantation there while officially the deputy governor
of Anguilla. Indeed, the title of
'deputy governor of Anguilla' appears to be his reward for complying with
Codrington’s wishes. He continued to be
officially recognised as Anguilla’s deputy governor right up to his death in
1735. Howell also continued to be
described intermittently in the surviving Anguillian documents as deputy
governor right up to the year 1695.
After his official removal in the year 1688, this was no more than a
courtesy title extended to him by grateful Anguillians despite Governor
Codrington’s displeasure. Perhaps also,
he continued to be looked to for leadership in Leonard’s long absences from the
island.
Eleven
years after Willoughby’s appointment of Watts to be lieutenant governor of
Anguilla, Wheeler's dispatch of 1671 to the Committee for Foreign Plantations
reflected a view of the necessity for government in Anguilla similar to that of
Stapleton.[14] In every island under his government, he
wrote, there was a Council, which he would complete to a full complement of
twelve counsellors, except Anguilla and Barbuda.
Five
years later, in 1676, Stapleton reported that there was nominally a Council of
twelve in each island.[15] Only in Nevis was the population large enough
to provide such a number of suitable councillors. From this remark, it is apparent that it was
not only Anguilla and Barbuda that had trouble finding a full complement of
councillors. The correspondence from the
various deputy governors in other islands over the years is full of excuses for
not being able to fill up the Council.
Two years later, in 1678, Stapleton reported that in Anguilla, Statia,
Saba and Tortola there were no councillors at all, only the deputy governor in
Anguilla.[16] In a dispatch of 1680, he amplified on the
position in Anguilla.[17] He listed the public officers of the islands
in his colony of the Leeward Islands.
Howell, he wrote, was deputy governor, judge, and justice of the peace
in Anguilla. There were no other members
of Council. The secretary was Thomas
Bushell. The provost marshal was anyone appointed by the deputy governor to
carry out his orders which were very few, there being little business on the
island.
Conditions
in Anguilla were particularly dangerous during the seventeenth century. John Oldmixon, in referring to the Wild Irish
attack of 1688, repeated the old adage that one would think that such a poor
people as this should be safe from attack, as it would not be worth anyone's
while to attack them.[18] He concluded that the Wild Irish, in
attacking the Anguillians and taking away the little they possessed, must have
thought that it was impossible for anyone else to be poorer than they themselves
were. This analysis we have seen set the
foundation for the attitude of the British authorities to any question of
government for Anguilla for the next two hundred and fifty years.
The dispatches from Governors Hart, Mathew
and Stapleton quoted above describe quite well the lack of organised government
in Anguilla during the seventeenth century.
With drought in the 1680s, and settlers emigrating to the Virgin
Islands, and with the Nine Years' War in the 1690s, government did not improve
from the conditions described. Anguilla
remained without any institutions of government until well into the next
century. It is arguable that the failure
to establish any form of civil government until after the Anguilla Revolution
of 1967 and the long history of living without any form of public
administration until the 1970s ensures that Anguilla is still a frontier society
to this day.
The
common law of England was brought into effect in the Colony of the Leeward
Islands only in 1705. The General
Assembly of the Leeward Islands sitting in that year passed as one of its
first Acts one declaring the common law of England part of the law of the
Leeward Islands.[19] It came into force on 20 June 1705. Each Island sent elected representatives to
this General Assembly which was summoned by the Governor in Chief under
instructions from London to pass harmonising legislation for all the Leeward
Islands. The General Assembly met for
the first time in 1684 and irregularly thereafter until 1711. There is no indication in the records that
any representative of Anguilla attended any of these law-making General
Assemblies.
In British
constitutional theory then as now, laws made by Assemblies in other island
colonies did not apply to Anguilla. The
Council of Anguilla, when it was eventually constituted in the next century,
acted as legislature, judiciary and executive, a situation to the advantage of
the senior planters and merchants and no-one else. It was in the 1730's and 40's that deputy
governor John Richardson and his
successors, Arthur Hodge and John Welch, presided over the dawning of
Anguilla's golden age. This came in the
second half of the eighteenth century, when a combination of improved weather,
sugarcane and cotton cultivation, inter-island trade, privateering and
smuggling, produced enough wealth to support a Council and courts. With a Council and courts came customs duties
and bailiffs that were absent during the previous century. However, neither during the seventeenth nor
the eighteenth century did Anguilla have an Assembly to enact local laws.
Between 1667 and 1727, the deputy governor
of Anguilla reported directly to the Governor in Chief in Antigua. In 1727, the deputy governors of Anguilla and
the Virgin Islands were both placed by Governor Hart under the supervision of Francis
Phips. Phips was a public-spirited
planter in St Christopher or St Kitts, as it was called by then.[20] With the resignation of Phips from the St
Kitts Council, the experiment came to an end.
It was not to be revived until the collapse of the Anguilla Council in 1825
and the replacement of direct rule from St Kitts.[21] After 1825 with an Anguillian representative
present in the St Kitts and Anguilla Assembly the existing laws of St Kitts
were gradually extended to Anguilla.
[2] Spelled “Wheler” in the official correspondence.
[4] Chapter 8: Pirates.
[5] Calendars of State Papers, 1681-1685,
p.581.
[6] For a list of the Governors-in-Chief of
the eighteenth century, see Chapter 16: Government Comes to Anguilla.
[7] I am indebted for much of the general
background on the history of the Leeward Islands to the historiography of
Professor Richard Dunn in his Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of a Planter Class
in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (1972).
[8] A ‘quit-rent’ was a small rent paid by a freeholder or
copyholder in lieu of services which might be required of them.
[9] Calendars of State Papers, 1660, para 490: Watts
Commission from Lord Willoughby dated 27 October 1660.
[10] Samuel B Jones, Annals of Anguilla
(1936).
[12] Chapter 9: The Lure of Crab.
[13] Chapter 6: War and the Settlers.
[15] CO 153/2, folio 139: Stapleton to the Committee on 22
November 1676: Answers to the Enquiries of the Committee.
[16] CO 153/2, folio 265: Stapleton to the Committee on 24
January 1678: State of the Leeward Islands.
[17] CO.1/45, No 33: Stapleton to the Committee
on 18 May 1680. See Chapter 4: The
First Generation.
[18] As we have seen in Chapter 6.
[19] It was initially entitled An Act for
Preventing Tedious and Chargeable Law Suits, and for Declaring the Rights of
Particular Tenants. In time, as most
of its provisions were repealed, leaving only section 2 remaining, it came to
be re-named The Common Law (Declaration of Reception) Act. This Act can still be found under that title
in any good collection of laws of any of the Leeward Islands.
[20] Kit is the nickname for Christopher. It is sometimes said that St Christopher
became known as St Kitts after the Christopher Codringtons, father and son, who
were apparently both familiarly referred to as ‘Kit’. However, as we see from the letter from
Francis Sampson to his brother John, the nickname had already taken as early as
1666. Both names are correct, and then
as now are used interchangeably to describe the island.
