Pulter and Jamaica
In the headnote to my Amplified Edition of Phalaris and the Brazen Bull115, I suggested that Pulter’s reference to Jamaica seems to originate from a Restoration context. In making this claim, I follow the work of Carla Gardina Pestana who has shown that accounts of royalists shipped off to Jamaica proliferated primarily after the Restoration, when “numerous men claimed to have been royalists driven into the force’s [New Model Army’s] ranks by a ruthless Cromwell” in order to signal their allegiance to the Stuart cause (The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire [Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017], 24). In the years following the civil wars, Cromwell had led England in an active imperial program, beginning with wars to conquer Ireland and Scotland, continuing with on-and-off contests against the Dutch, and culminating in the Western Design—Cromwell’s plan to balance Spanish power in the Caribbean. In December 1654, English vessels attempted to invade Hispaniola. England’s under-prepared forces were quickly rebuffed, and they redirected their efforts to Jamaica, where the Spanish presence was less pronounced. At the time, Jamaica was a backwater of the Spanish empire, known for bugs and diseases, and the English settlement there was very slow to develop (Ronald Hutton, The British Republic, 1649-1660 [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990], 109–11). Nevertheless, as Pestana argues, the English settlement there was a purposeful part of an imperial program that would directly inform later empire-building (English Conquest, 12–15).
At home in Hertfordshire, Pulter would have gotten only a small trickle of printed news concerning events in Jamaica before 1660. In October 1655, Cromwell issued a printed Proclamation encouraging people in England as well as in its other colonies to consider “transplant[ing] themselves to Jamaica” (By the Protector, A Proclamation Giving Encouragement to such as shall transplant themselves to Jamaica [London, 1655]; and Daniel Gookin, To all Persons whom these may Concern, in the Several Townes, and Plantations of the United Colonies in New-England…who shall desire to remove themselves or families into Jamaica in the West-Indies [Boston, 1656]). This proclamation was followed by fanciful news reports and natural histories, like A brief and perfect Journal Of The late Proceedings and Successe of the English Army in the West-Indies (London, 1655); Hypocrisie Discovered: Or, A Further Manifestation of the secret Designe, Practices, and inventions of the Protector, so called, to seat himself in, and be vested with the Power and Office of chief Magistrate in this Nation (London, 1655); Britains Triumphs, Or, A Brief History Of The Warres And Other State-Affairs Of Great Britain. From the Death of the late King, to the third year of the Government of the Lord Protector (London, 1656); and A True Description Of Jamaica With the Fertility, Commodities, and Healthfulness of the place. As also The Towns, Havens, Creeks, Promontories, and the Circuit of the whole Island (London, 1657). But after this initial flurry, the public discourse around the Western Design slowed.
As for the sources of Pulter’s picture of parliamentarians (rather than royalists) forced to emigrate to the Caribbean, there are a few vague or unrealized references to people being sent to Jamaica in the print record from before 1660:
England is now very populous, and the abundance of fruitlesse trees so encumber the vines, that they cannot fructifie; the late Civill war hath yet left some species of malignancy, the sores and corruptions of the Nation are not healed, because not cleansed, for the tincture of ungodliness is yet savoury in their palats; men of desperate fortunes have desperate means of remedy; they subsist not by sweat of their own brow, but reap the fruit of others labors, sowing the seed of sedition, and abominable wickedness in a Land where they have no right inheritance; Can a Christian Common-wealth flourish either in godliness, plenty, or peace, when it abounds with such profane vile caterpillers, and corrupters of all good manners? Is it not justice in God, and wisdome in man to expell such unworthy and unwelcome guests from among his people? Ireland hath already a sufficient share, and Barbadoes, (with the rest of those small Islands, subject to this Dominion, who were wont to be a receptacle for such vermin) are now so filled, that they vomit forth of their superfluities into other places. Could there be a lesse cruel, and more just means used then to imploy such in a Forain War? the Indies are spacious, pleasant and rich, too rich indeed for either the vicious inhabitants, or no lesse vicious invaders. But those whom England sent forth on this first expedition, were not many, their number was compleated elsewhere, and the design being advanced with much secresie (even to the Members of the Army it self) manifestly argueth what they were which were intended for that service; even such who willingly proceeded although they knew not whither.
Well, is this the News and certain, does it so startle you that it makes you look as if you were possessed with Essex, or a Kentish-Ague? It frights you as if you was served with a Warrant for Jamaica or Hispaniola. Come, come, lets passe off the thoughts of it, for it makes you look as if you had the Yellows, or black-Jaundies: Hang’t, it will cause you to fall into a Consumption, and to end your dayes as Judas, in dispair and a halter; for my part, I love no such Purgation, though I confesse there’s many have tauen a turn and one slip out of the world, for lesse Villainies then we are guilty of, for we rob more in our chambers then they do upon the high-way.
Ninthly, that they be men of sound experience in publick affairs and well affected with the worth of our good old cause, and well read in the deceipts of this age, and such of whose faithfulnesse you have had some tryall; seek out we say, dear Christian friends and Countrey-men, for men thus fitted by God for publick trust, and meet and advise together how you may find out men so qualified, and then acquaint each other with your knowledge you have of them, and lend such in your stead to the Grand Assembly, and then pray for them, and stand by them, and take every affront done to them, as done to the whole nation, and to every one of you in particular, and then without doubt (if God shall please to humble the nation for the sins which have brought us under all our miseries) the mighty God will so blesse all those endeavours that tend to the advancing of righteousnesse, truth and justice, that the voice of Tyranny and Oppression will be no more heard amongst us; your liberties will be vindicated, your Grievances and burthens eas’d, the Honour of our Countrey (that now lieth in the dust among all nations) will be again restored; your trades reviv’d, peace and plenty returned, and the Generations yet unborn will have cause to blesse God for such an Assembly: and what shall we say more to you? dear Christians and Countrymen; Do not the teares of the widow, and the cryes of the fatherlesse speak? do not your imprisoned friends speak? do not your banished neighbours speak? do not your infringed rights speak? do not your invaded properties speak? do not your gasping liberties speak? do not your often affronted Representatives, (which have been trod upon with scorn) speak? do not your incumbred estates speak?1. do not the bloud of many thousands speak, some slain with the sword, and others killed with hunger? do not the cries of your poor brethren the honest Sea men, the wall and bulwark of our Nation against forreiners, who have so freely venturd their lives upon all just accounts and calls, and are now most barbarously forced from their wives and children to serve the ambitious, and fruitlesse designes of one man? do not all your ruines at home and abroad, by land and sea speak to you? Surely they have loud voices, surely they do daily cry in your cares, Help, help, or England perishes.
1. Here a printed marginal note reads: “Witnesse Jamaica.”
That divers Souldiers and Seamen pretending to have Order to Impresse persons, went about the Island [of Jersey] and seized upon severall young People of good Families, making them believe they should be sent to Jamaica; but in case they would give them so much money as they demanded (or rather ransomed them at) they would release them: which their Parents and themselves not daring to ask them, by what Order they did such things, lest they should be dealt withall, as the said Maret and others had been: Therefore did choose rather to part with their money to redeem their Children, then to Complain. Which Barbarous and unchristian actions, the said Governour connived act, without inflicting any punishment upon the Offenders, although they knew as well the said evil practises as the former.
This second doctrine of the Levellers, had been fit for all England to have asserted some years since, and then so many Fatherless and Widdows had not now been weeping for their lost Husbands, and Fathers in Jamaica, and other forraign Countries, nor had so many families been ruined, nor England impoverished by the loss of Trades occasioned by the Spanish War, begun and prosecuted upon private interests or fancies, without advice or consent of the People in Parliament.
Political prisoners may have, occasionally, been among the criminals and undesirable people sent to service beyond the seas, along with some 12,000 Irish people (Hutton, British Republic, 48; Pestana, English Conquest, 23–4; Peter Wilson Coldham, Emigrants in Chains: A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-Conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars and Other Undesirables, 1607-1776 [Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co, 1992], 47–9). And there is no question that the sequestration and sale of royalist estates helped fund Cromwell’s Western Design (Hutton, British Republic, 56; Pestana, English Conquest, 17). But forcing disloyal men into service would have been a disastrous move, especially as the Protectorate struggled to maintain enthusiasm for an imperial plan that floundered as it shifted from Hispaniola to Jamaica, from the prospect of Spanish booty to the reality of disease and starvation (Pestana, English Conquest, 24, 165–219).
Not until after 1660 was Cromwell seen as the architect of such a policy, when he was charged, over and over, with sending “men by Thousands into plantations” and “remote Islands”:
Moreover, those his [Cromwell’s] Major Generals have by their Orders attempted to bind the People of this Nation in their Free-holds, Estates, Suits and Actions, Threatning to send them to Jamaica, if they would not observe their Tyrannical Orders, as is notoriously known in most Counties of England. His making an unnecessary and destructive War with Spain, an Ally of this Commonwealth, In which the Lives of many thousands have been lost, and the Dammages, Losse and Expences in the Charge of the several Expeditions made against that Crown, to the losse of about two thousand of Merchants Ships (the decay of Trade thereby, amounting to above sixteen Millions of Money) The patching up a Peace upon dishonourable and disadvantagious tearms with the Dutch, to the great dishonour of the English Nation; The neglect of putting in Execution the Act for the Increase of Navigation and Trade, And erecting by Will and Power several Conventions under the notion of Parliaments, to carry on his arbitrary ambitious designs.
The Rochel Expedition I’m a stranger to; so I suppose are you, that make the Challenge. But if you had told me of Jamaica; or the Sound; I should have understood you.
Would you cast your eye on past miseries, and recollect the manifold intollerable Oppressions of People both in matter of Estate and Conscience, and compare them with the indulgencies at the same time toward Papists, yea and the designs laid to make use of Papists, to destroy both Parliaments and godly people together?
Now you say something, surely The manifold intollerable oppression of People in matter of Estate, and Conscience, &c. This I remember perfectly.
Your Major-General-Archy was an admirable Form of Government: So was your Rump-archy. Clap a man up, and never let him know his crime, nor his Accuser,—declare a Man uncapable of serving in Parliament, for having Bayes in his Windows, or a Minced Pye in Christmas, sequester half the Nation, because they will not swear back and forward; sell Free-born Men by Thousands into Plantations; and in fine, beside Excise and other Impositions Arbitrary, lay on the comfortable Load of 100000l. a Month upon a Begger’d Nation, and at the latter end of the day. (Is this the Oppression your wise Worship intends?)
God at length gives a check to this Tayle of Authority, by the chief Instrument of their own Treachery, and Villany, and sells them, and the Nation, to the greatest Monster of cursed hypocrisie, and damnable rebellion, that ever yet Nature brought forth: Who with reproach turns them out of dores, giving them a serious, but true Reproof, calling them (as they were) a pack of Whoremasters, Drunkards, and base self-seeking Wretches, and having thrown them aside with deserved scorn and contempt, seats himself in the Supremacy, calls and dasheth to pieces at his pleasure, several ridiculous Juntoes or Mock-Parliaments, makes Warre with Spain, to almost the ruine of our Trade, and Peace with France and Holland, &c. only to eject our Hereditary exiled, distressed King from all Protestant supplies, sends away thousands of the English to Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Flanders, which proved a grave to the Men, and a waster of some Millions of Treasure; Orders Nineteen hundred thousand pounds to be setled on him (as an Annual Revenue) which he took by the Sword, and would have had confirmed to him and his Successors, by a Law of his own making and imposing.
The restored Stuart monarchy, for its part, was happy to have negative attention directed at Cromwell and the regicides. As Pestana argues, it silently retained its hold on Jamaica and adopted the imperial policies established by Cromwell in his Western Design (English Conquest, 12–13, 252). Among these policies were new petitions and efforts to send prisoners and non-conformists to Jamaica (Coldham, Emigrants, 50–1; Pestana, English Conquest, 227), some of which were undertaken by Pulter’s nephew James Ley, third earl of Marlborough. In imagining the families of parliamentarians sent to Jamaica, Pulter may have been reversing printed accounts of royalist deportation. But she was also very likely responding to the family news she received about her nephew’s Caribbean ventures in the emerging English empire.