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From: "Jay & Carol Menges" <>
Subject: [Q-R] Re: Sugar & Slaves, The Rise of the Planter Class in the Eng. W. Indies, 1624-1713
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 10:18:55 -0700


>From chapter three, "Barbados: The Planters in Power," from p. 103 to the
top of p. 107:

*************

At the time of the Barbados census the island colonists were scarcely
noted for their religious zeal. Governor DUTTON complained that "God's
house and worship ... was but too much neglected" when he arrived. The
clergy found it a hard task to stir the people out of their "wretched
Laodicean tepidity" [footnote #25: "Gov. DUTTON to Sec. JENKINS, May 30,
1681, C.O. 29/3/67-68; Francis CROW in Jamaica to Giles FIRMIN, Mar. 7,
1686/7, *Jam. Hist. Rev. [= *Jamaican Historical Review*], III, no. 2
(1959), 56.]. In Barbados eleven Anglican clergymen ministered to twenty
thousand colonists, whereas in England there would have been forty parishes
for a population group this size. During a six-month span in 1683-1684
seven of the ten councillors on the island (including at least two
vestrymen) did not bother to attend church. The Irish Catholic servants
were not allowed to have any priests, and a shoemaker named Joseph SALMON
was chastised by the governor and Council in 1682 for trying to organize an
Anabaptist conventicle [footnote, not cited here]. The only religious
activists in Barbados were the QUAKERS.
QUAKERS first appeared in the Indies in the 1650s, and during the next
four decades they recruited many hundred colonists into their fellowship.
The QUAKER community was probably larger and more active in Barbados than in
the other sugar colonies. George FOX spent three months on the island in
1671, and William EDMUNDSON, the Irish Friend, says he addressed a crowd of
three thousand at Christopher LYNE's plantation in 1675. The Anglican
clergy promptly asked the Barbados government to take action against this
"Base Sort of Phanatick People, commonly termed QUAKERS" [footnote #27:
"Norman PENNEY, ed., *The Journal of George FOX* (London, 1924), 274-281;
William EDMUNDSON, *A Journal of the Life, Travels, Sufferings and Labour of
Love ... of ... William EDMUNDSON* (London, 1774), 81-85; George FOX, *To
the Ministers, Teachers, and Priests, (so called, and Stileing your Selves)
in Barbadoes* (n.p., 1672), 48-49."]. In part they were nettled by the
QUAKER habit of disrupting Anglican services, and the Friends' derisive
comments about the "Periwiggs, Fringes, Paintings, and other wild Attire"
that fashionable ladies and gentlemen liked to wear to church. Governor
ATKINS was determined to stop the QUAKERS from converting Negroes to
Christianity, "of which they can make them understand nothing." The
governor evidently feared that the blacks were learning something; "I shall
leave to you to consider," he told the Assembly, "whether Liberty be a fit
Doctrine for Slaves" [footnote #28. "Besse, *Collection of Sufferings, II,*
320; ATKINS to Barbados Assembly, Mar. 21, 1675/6, C.O. 31/2/207-208."].
The Barbados Assembly accordingly passed a series of laws that fined the
QUAKERS heavily for nonattendance at militia drill and fined them even more
heavily for bringing Negroes to their meetings [footnote #29: "ANTI-QUAKER
legislation of 1675, 1676, 1677, and 1678 is in *Acts of Assembly, Passed in
... Barbadoes, 1648-1718* (London, 1721), 106-107; Journal of Barbados
Assembly, 1670-1683, C.O. 31/2/251-252, 261; Barbados Manuscript Laws,
1645-1682, C.O. 30/2/110-111. Barbados QUAKERS were given some relief by
James II in 1688 and by William III in 1697, though they were still barred
from officeholding. C.O. 29/3/463-464; *Acts of Assembly, Barbados,*
169-170."]. The QUAKER hagiographer Joseph BESSE counted 237 QUAKER
sufferers who were fined or otherwise punished in Barbados between 1658 and
1695 [footnote #30: "See Besse, *Collection of Sufferings, II,* chap. 6.
He found about 200 QUAKER sufferers during this time span in the five
colonies of Nevis, Antigua, Jamaica, Bermuda, and Maryland, and 170 in New
England."]. The high point of persecution came under ATKINS and DUTTON;
these two governors levied about 7,000 [pounds] in fines during one decade.
DUTTON found the Barbadian QUAKERS "very numerous, insolent and rich." He
sentenced on Friend to death for blasphemy and ordered the provost marshal
to pull down all the seats and stalls in the QUAKER Meeting House on Tudor
Street, Bridgetown, and nail up the doors and windows [footnote #31: "Gov.
DUTTON to Sec. JENKINS, May 30, 1681, C.O. 29/3/71; DUTTON to William
BLATHWAYT, Aug. 24 1681, Blathwayt Papers, XXX; Besse, *Collection of
Sufferings, II,* 327-328; Dep. Gov. WILLIAM on the QUAKER Meeting House in
Bridgetown, May 1683, C.O. 1/51/363."].
What does the census of 1680 tell us about this embattled religious
community? The Barbados FRIENDS operated six meetings at this date and had
a membership of several hundred at least [footnote #32: "See Henry J.
CADBURY's two lists of names: "Barbadoes QUAKERS, 1683 to 1761," and "186
Barbados QUAKERESSES in 1677," *Jour. Bar. Mus. Hist. Soc., IX,*
(1941-1942), 29-31, 195-197."]. Richard FORD, the QUAKER mapmaker, shows a
group of "FRIENDS Plantations" near Speightstown. Checking the names of
known QUAKERS against the census lists, I have been able to identify the
property holdings of fifty-eight Barbados QUAKERS in 1680. These people
came from all walks of Barbadian society. No less than nine of them were
big planters, seven were middling planters, seventeen were small planters,
eight were merchants or shopkeepers in Bridgetown, three were physicians,
and three were craftsmen. The most important point, perhaps, is that all
but four of them were slave owners. Collectively they held 1,626 Negroes.
Six of them--Thomas CLARK, Richard FORSTALL, Thomas FOSTER, Henry GALLOP,
John ROUS, and Thomas ROUS--owned more than a hundred slaves apiece.
This is worth remembering when we assess the QUAKERS' role as agitators
for Negro rights in seventeenth-century Barbados. To George FOX, whites,
blacks, and tawnies (Indians) were all God's creatures, and "is not the
Gospel to be preached to all Creatures?" He urged the Barbados planters to
use their slaves gently and to set them free after a term of servitude.
William EDMUNDSON, even more forthrightly, told Governor ATKINS that if the
slaves rebelled it was the masters' fault for "keeping them in Ignorance,
and under Oppression, giving them Liberty to be common with Women (like
Beasts) and on the other Hand starve them for want of Meat and Cloaths
convenient." This was strong language in the seventeenth century. But
EDMUNDSON was noticeably less upset by the institution of chattel slavery
than by the promiscuous sex habits of the Barbadian blacks, the "Filthiness
and Uncleanness committed by the Negroes and others, one Man having several
Women, and one Woman having several Men."
The QUAKER planters in Barbados continued to bring their slaves to
meeting, despite the fines levied by ATKINS and DUTTON, and EDMUNDSON could
report with satisfaction how "many of the Blacks are convinced, and several
of them confess to Truth." But Barbadian FRIENDS by no means repudiated
slavery or taught the Negroes to rebel. As FOX put it, slave rebellion was
"a thing we do utterly *abhor* and detest." The QUAKER message to the
English laboring poor in the next century: they should be sober, fear God,
and love their masters, and then the overseers and masters would love them
[footnote #33: "FOX, *To Ministers, Teachers, and Priests, 5,* 69-70;
PENNEY, ed., *Journal of George FOX,* 277; EDMUNDSON, *Journal,* 85-86,
329."]. Thus the QUAKERS were moral radicals in the context of Barbados
society, and they attacked the supine Anglican establishment head on. But
even QUAKERISM offered no serious challenge to the fundamental social
institutions of the sugar colonies.

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