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You can find much greater detail for the timeframes 1550-1700 at a new website now almost finished ... THE BUSINESS OF SLAVERY... a website book also designed to bring genealogical studies up-to-date from 1530 to the present-day... as well as questions of merchant lives and activities... Click now to... The Business of Slavery (in English history).

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Merchants and Bankers
1675-1700

Trade - an international perspective

This website, produced by Australian historian Dan Byrnes, is a no-frills, text-based website designed simply to list historical and genealogical information on many notable merchants and traders of what is termed, the Western World.

These pages will be added to and improved in quality as time permits. In time, some essays will appear on these pages

Please use the chooser above for navigating this website on Merchants and Bankers Listings.

It is hoped that these webpages will be of assistance to family historians in the UK, the US and Australasia, by way of providing contexts for further research.

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Further chronology notes for 1675-1700

The Merchant Networks Project

	The history websites on this domain now have a companion website on a new domain, at Merchant Networks Project produced by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens (of London). This website (it is hoped) will become a major exercise in economic and maritime history, with some attention to Sydney, Australia.

1650-1700: Note: One of the most remarkable (and outrageous?) books ever written about English pirates is:
B. R. Burg, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean. New York, New York University Press, 1995.
See also:
W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African-American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, nd-recent/1990s?.

1660: Reference item: For a detailed and more insightful account of the East India Company's activities and relationship with European rivals in Bengal see N.K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal - From Plassey to the Permanent Settlement. (Calcutta, 1956)

1660: Possible origins of The Hope Diamond, which is "possibly cursed". It came from the Golconda region of Andrha Pradesh, southern central India, into the possession of French adventurer, Jean Baptiste Tavernier. It was "bluer in colour", uncut, large and about 112-3/16th old carats, or 110.5 modern carats, about 22.1 grams weight. In 1668 Tavernier was granted an audience with Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, who bought about 1000 gemstones from the adventurer, including what became The Hope Diamond. It was stolen during the French Revolution, but turned up, recut, 20 years and one day after its theft in London, to then be "squabbled over by greedy British aristocrats". At one point it was held by London jeweller Daniel Eliason. In 1824 it was sold to Henry Philip Hope, heir to a banking fortune (from Hopes of Amsterdam, a firm bought out by Barings) who was born in Holland, and who renamed the diamond. His sister-in-law, Louisa Hope, would wear it at soirees she hosted. Hope died in 1839 and left the diamond to his three nephews, one of whom was Henry, a failed politician. In 1861, Henry's daughter Henrietta married the Earl of Lincoln ("he a gambler, and from a family of drunks, drug addicts, layabouts and the odd transvestite"). In 1884 the diamond went to the Earl's second son by Henrietta Hope, Lord Francis Pelham-Clinton Hope, a playboy-peer who by the 1890s was in serious debt. He married music hall actress May Yohe (Madcap May), daughter of a saloon keeper from Pennsylvania. She took up an affair with a US dry-goods millionaire, Putnam Bradlee Strong. Lord Francis's debts reached $5 million, but he had won a right to sell The Hope Diamond. It was bought by Simon Frankel, a New York dealer. Later it was perhaps in the hands of Selim Habib, a Paris dealer, then a French syndicate, then in 1910 it was sold to Parisian jewellers, Cartier Brothers. (May Yohe once starred in a silent movie serial, The Hope Diamond Mystery and produced a book, The Mystery of the Hope Diamond.) Cartiers sold The Hope Diamond to Evalyn Walsh McLean, a daughter of Irish migrants who'd struck it gold-rich in the 1890s Colorado goldfields. She married Ned McLean (d.1941), heir to newspaper, Washington Post, whose debts became so large the newspaper had to be sold. The diamond was found stuck in the back of Evelyn's bedside radio when she died, then stored in a bank vault. In 1949 The Hope Diamond was bought by New York jeweller, Harry Winston, who in 1958 donated it to Smithsonian Institute, which has had care of it ever since. (See recent book, Hope: Adventures of a Diamond. Simon and Schuster, 2003. Several other large and famed diamonds are the Sancy, Koh-i-Noor (Mountain of Light) and Star of Africa.)

1675: More to come

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1676: Time of civil unrest with servants generally in Virginia.

1676: (Penson, Colonial Agents, p.71), Jamaica, records seems confused re agents for Jamaica, annoyingly, but a ref to one John Bindloss agent to Sir Henry Morgan. and in 1677 was appointed Sir John Griffith agent to Jamaica, no details on him, but by 1680 existed a circle of merchants and planters Jamaica in dispute at Lords of Trade with the Royal Africa Co. and by 1682 Jamaica merchants wanted regulation of transportation of servants to the islands.

1676: The Royal Africa Company lists include: Sub-governor, Sir Andrew King, William Allington, Sir Thomas Bludworth, Francis Dashwood, John Gardiner (Gardner?) (William Gardner, separate trader, see Davies); Capt. Abraham Holditch, Sir Benjamin Newland, Sir Henry Tulse, John Morice, Thomas Murthwaite (sic), Sir John Banks, Sir Edward Hopegood, Sir Gabriel Roberts, William Warren, Sir William Turner, John Searle, Tobias Rustat (sic), John Mead, John Bancks. (Davies, RAC).

Merchants and Bankers families - Lists:
From Little London Directory 1677 by J. C. Hutton, reprinted in The Handbook of London Bankers F. G. Hilton-Price, 1876
Goldsmiths keeping running cashes in 1677:
John Addis and co, at the Sun Lombard St, London, John Bolitho and Mr Wilson, at The Golden Lion , Lombard St, John Ballard at The Unicorn, Lombard St, Job Bolton at The Bolt and Tun, Lombard St, Robert Blanchard and Child at The Marigold Fleet, St (? Richard Blanchard), Thomas Cook and Nicholas Cary at The Griffin, Exchange Alley, Mr Cuthbert, Cheapside, Mr Coggs, Kings Head, Strand, Mr Churchill, Strand, Charles Duncombe and Richard Kent at The Grasshopper, Lombard St, John Ewing and Benjamin Norrington at the Angel and Crown, Lombard St, Mr East, Strand, Thomas Fowles, Black Lion Fleet St, Joseph and Nath Hornboy the Star, Lombard St, John Hind and Thomas Carwood Exchange Alley, Cornhill, Benjamin Hinton at the Flower de Lys Lombard St, James Herriot, James Hore, James Johnson, Thomas Kiborne and Capill, Kenton, Ketch, Henry Lamb, James Lapley, John Mawson, Henry Nelthorpe, Thomas Price, Peter Percefull and Stephen Evans, Thomas Pardo, Thomas Rowe and Thomas Green, Humph. Stocks, John Sweetaple, John Snell, Michael Shrimpshaw, Richard Stayley, John Temple and John Seale, John Thursby, Bar. Turner and Samuel Tookie, Major Joh. Wallis, Peter Wade, Peter White and Churchill, Thomas White, Thomas Williams, Robert Ward and John Towneley.
From Little London Directory 1677 by J. C. Hutton, reprinted in The Handbook of London Bankers F. G. Hilton-Price, 1876

1677: William of Orange marries Mary.

1677: Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were directed to deliver malefactors to William Freeman, merchant of London for transportation.

1677: Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were directed to deliver malefactors to William Freeman, merchant of London. The next most active merchant involved in convict transportation was Jonathan Forward, from about 1714.

1678: On Nevis by 1678 were planters Sir James Russell and Col. Randolph Russell, each an owner of 150 slaves. The Russells, Pym, Keynall, Winthrops and Baijers (sic) seem, to have arrived in the 1640s and 1650s. The name appears, of William Byam of Surinam, and one suspects Nordhorf and Hall, authors of a book on Bligh and the Bounty of the 1930s, named their character Roger Byam from this family name. (Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 128-130).

1678-1680: Links are forming between merchants who built ships, supplied timber to the navy, the East India Company, and presumably the users of ships for slaving. Many issues arose for discussion. One wood monger was a Westminster JP, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, "not so creditable", a friend of Pepys, who was also friends with another wood monger, Warren. By 1680, Sir Joseph Williamson received mail on a lack of English ships being built; the timber merchant Thomas Papillon claimed ship-users had preferred taking prize ships to using the timber trades. (Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 53; Clark, Later Stuarts, pp. 93-95)

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1678: The Lords of Trade appointed a new governor for Jamaica, the Earl of Carlisle, whose efforts were repelled by powerful planters Samuel Long and William Beeston. One of Carlisle's aides was Major-General Sir Francis-Watson. Opposition on the island was led by Colonel Samuel Long, already from one of the most famous families on Jamaica. In 1679-1680 charges were laid against Long who had to stand before the Lords of Trade. In their politics, the Jamaicans insisted they wanted "the Barbados model". (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 72-73).

1678: New governor of Jamaica is Lord Carlisle, he also had little success with organising the assembly of Jamaica. one of his aides was Major-General Sir Francis-Watson. Opposition on the island led by Colonel Samuel Long, already one of the most famous families on Jamaica, and in 1679-1680 charges were laid against Long, and he had to stand before Lords of Trade. (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp.72-73.) The Jamaicans wanted "the Barbados model".

1678: The Royal Africa Company lists include: Sir Gabriel Roberts; Sir Benjamin Newland, Deputy-Gov. 1678-1679 and Sub-Governor RAfCo. 1680-1681; Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Thomas Belasyse (sic) Viscount Falconberg, Sir Peter Colleton, Lawrence Du Puy (sic), Nicholls or Niccols (sic), John Mead, Sir William Turner, William Warren, Sir Thomas Bludworth, Roger Chappell, William earl of Craven, Edward Rudge, Thomas Vernon also an Benjamin Skutt, Africa company's agent in Barbados; Sir John Banks, Sir Samuel Dashwood, Sir Edward Hopegood, Deputy-Gov. 1674-1675; Sir Andrew King, Sir Peter Proby, Richard Mountney, Nicholas Mead, Sir John Mathews, Peter Joye (sic).

1679: England: Treasury commissioners included Hon Laurence Hyde later earl of Rochester, and Sidney Godolphin.

1679: England is distracted by the Popish plot.

1680: K. G. Davies, The North Atlantic World in the Seventeenth Century. Minneapolis, 1974.

1680: James D. Phillips, Salem in the Seventeenth Century. Salem, 1933* Also, Salem in the Eighteenth Century. Salem, 1937*., and Salem and the Indies. Boston, 1947.*

1680: During the 1680s begins a small Scottish trade with the American tobacco colonies - carried on illegally. (Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 28, Note 1.)

1680: The Royal Africa Co. lists included Sir Benjamin Newland, Deputy-Governor, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Deputy-Gov. RACo., 1680-1681, Court of Assistants to the Royal Africa Co. 1672. Members were John Ashby, William Fawkener (sic), Sir John Verney, James Ward, Apt Francis Wilshaw, Peter Joye (sic), Sir John Mathews, Nicholas Mead, Richard Mountney, Tobias Rustat (sic), John Morgan, William Stevens, Sir Henry Tulse, Lord George Berkeley, John Morice, John Bull, Edward Rudge, Samuel Moyer, Sir Gabriel Roberts, Robert Williamson, William Moyer, Jacob Lucy, (sic), John Cooke. (Davies, RAC).
Between 1680-1688 the Royal African Company supplied 46,396 slaves to the West Indies, about 5155 annually, and at 300 per ship, about 17 ships annually. And between 1680 and 1688 the Royal African Company supplied 46,396 slaves to the West Indies, about 5155 annually, and at 300 per ship, about 17 ships annually. ...Williams p. 99-100 says, "Besides the white indentured servants, convicts and malefactors provided a second source of white labour. If the existence of a contract gave a semblance of legality to the system of white indentured labour, convict labour was also surrounded with the aura of the law by the commutation of sentences involving death or imprisonment to transportation and servitude in the colonies for a term of years. The crime was extended to fit a punishment which contributed to the solution of the colonial labour problem, and a veritable system in this regard was developed in Bristol, where magistrates and judges were connected, directly or indirectly, Williams says, with the Caribbean sugar plantations."

1680: Some Barbados parishes were Bridgetown, Christchurch and Sts Michael, James, Thomas, George, Philip, John, Joseph, Peter, Andrew, Lucy. (Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 88).

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1680: December 16: Some accommodations regarding Jamaican politics were being reached between the Earl of Carlisle, Col. Long, Mr. Beeston and others merchants and planters to Jamaica, [There was a Cool William Beeston also]. Jamaicans wanted an ability to raise money to solicit the affairs of the island. This all received royal assent in October 1682. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 73).

1680 from 1676: (Penson, Colonial Agents, p.71), Jamaica, records seems confused re agents for Jamaica, annoyingly, but a ref to one John Bindloss agent to Sir Henry Morgan. and in 1677 was appointed Sir John Griffith agent to Jamaica, no details on him, but by 1680 existed a circle of merchants and planters Jamaica in dispute at Lords of Trade with the Royal Africa Co. and by 1682 Jamaica merchants wanted regulation of transportation of servants to the islands.

1680: English pirates abused the 1680 Anglo-Spanish treaty and went across Isthmus of Panama to pillage the Pacific coast, returning by Cape Horn in 1682. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 329).
And between 1680 and 1688 the Royal African Company supplied 46,396 slaves to the West Indies, about 5155 annually, and at 300 per ship, about 17 ships annually. ... then Williams pp. 99-100 says, "Besides the white indentured servants, convicts and malefactors provided a second source of white labour. If the existence of a contract gave a semblance of legality to the system of white indentured labour, convict labour was also surrounded with the aura of the law by the commutation of sentences involving death or imprisonment to transportation and servitude in the colonies for a term of years. The crime was extended to fit a punishment which contributed to the solution of the colonial labour problem, and a veritable system in this regard was developed in Bristol, where magistrates and judges were connected, directly or indirectly, Williams says, with the Caribbean sugar plantations."

1680: English apothecary, Thomas Sydenham, introduces Sydenham's Laudanum, a compound of opium, sherry wine and herbs. His pills along with others of the time become popular remedies for numerous ailments.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1680 approx: The Dutch agent-general on Curacao of the asiento is Balthasar Beck, Lt-governor of the island under Stuyvesant. (The Curacao slave market operates under terms set by the Amsterdam Chamber, which made contracts with the asentistas). Goslinga, Dutch in the Caribbean, pp. 353-362. - Asiento chronology -

1680: In Virginia, it is now regarded as a non-felony to kill a Negro. By 1681-1685, slave society in Virginia depends legally on slavery, with slaves regarded differently to indentured servants.

1681: The English Royal Africa Co. lists include: Sir Benjamin Newland, Sub-Governor RAC 1680-1681, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Deputy-Governor RAC 1680-1681, John Cooke, John Ashby, William Fawkener (sic), Sir John Verney, Apt Francis Wilshaw, Richard Mountney, John Mead, Sir William Turner, William Warren, John Morgan, Sir Henry Tulse, Lord George Berkeley, John Morice, Samuel Moyer, Sir Gabriel Roberts, Sir Dudley North, Sir John Lethuillier (sic), Edward Colston, Sir Robert Clayton. (Davies, RAC)

1681-1689: An Englishman Cornelius Hodges tries to explore up the Gambia River, looking for gold-mining areas. The French are now also exploring into Senegal seeking gold. Richard Jobson also sailed up the Gambia on similar mission. (K. G. Davies, RCA, p. 216).

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1681-1682: William Penn, earlier a friend of James II, interested in investing in America, was obliged to discharge a crown debt to his father. Charles II granted him proprietary rights on what became Pennsylvania, capital Philadelphia. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 340). Penn Jnr had inherited a large financial claim against the king, £16,000 sterling. (Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, pp. 117-119).
(Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 340), William Penn earlier a friend of James II, mother a Dutchwoman, interested in investing in America, his father an admiral who commanded in Cromwell's "western design", he dealt early with New Jersey, in 1681-82 Penn had to discharge a crown debt to his father, Charles II granted him what became Pennsylvania, proprietary rights, capital Philadelphia,

1682: Jamaica agents to be Sir Chas Littleton and Cool William Beeston. Beeston may still have been agent in 1687. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 75), supplies for Jamaica now rendered more secure.

1682: (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 336), re [Bermuda] Somers Island Company disbanded in 1682.

1682: The RAC lists include: Sub-governor, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Deputy-Governor, Sir Dudley North, Edward Colston, Sir John Lethuillier (sic), Thomas Belasyse (sic) Viscount Falconberg, Nicholls or Niccols (sic), John Mead, Sir William Turner, William Warren, John Morgan, Sir Benjamin Newland, William Stevens, Sir Henry Tulse, John Bull, William earl of Craven, Thomas Vernon, Benjamin Skutt, and an Africa Company's agent in Barbados; Sir Samuel Dashwood; Sir Gabriel Roberts, Capt Hopefor Bendall. (Davies, RAC).

1682: The agents for Jamaica agents are to be Sir Charles Littleton and Col. William Beeston. Beeston may still have been agent in 1687. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 75). Supplies for Jamaica are now rendered more secure.

1682: 22nd year of reign of Chas II. Contracts were made for the removal of English felons by William Nevett and Thomas Walsh. (Oldham).

1682: August: Jeaffreson left as governor of a Caribbean island to return to his English estates. He attempted to see Blathwayt, secretary to the Lords of Trade, and being delayed and given difficulties he found it necessary with waiting on officials to pay heavy gratuities and fees for anything to be done. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 65).

1682-1687: Jamaica agents are Charles Littleton, William Beeston, Ralph Knight.

1682: Twelve Quakers, including William Penn, bought East Jersey. In 1702, New Jersey united and became a royal colony, by which time Penn had established Pennsylvania. Wm Penn's father was Admiral Sir William Penn, who remained close to the Stuarts even though he'd assisted the Puritans. Penn Jnr inherited a large financial claim against the king, some £16,000 sterling, so he obtained the grant of Pennsylvania, in 1681. In 1682 Penn arrived in America, to found Philadelphia. (Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, pp. 117-119.)

1682: John Scarlett a merchant of the Eastland Co. (Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 399).

An impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor 1683-1684 Sir Henry Tulse,
1. Lord mayor Sir Henry Tulse (c.1683) sp: Elizabeth Notknown
2. Elizabeth (Suicide) Tulse (b.1660/1661;d.25 Nov 1718) sp: Sir Richard Onslow Bart3, MP, Baron1 Onslow (b.23 Jun 1654;d.13 Dec 1717)
3. Thomas Onslow Baron2 Onslow (b.Nov 1679;d.5 Jun 1740) sp: Elizabeth Knight a fortune, of Jamaica (m.17 Nov 1708;d.19 Apr 1731) 4. Richard Onslow Whig MP Baron3 Onslow (b.1713;d.8 Oct 1776) sp: Mary Elwill (m.16 May 1741;d.20 Apr 1812) 3. Elizabeth Onslow sp: Thomas Middleton Of Essex 4. Mary Middleton Of Essex (d.12 Aug 1766) sp: John Molesworth Visc2 Molesworth of Swords (b.4 Dec 1679;m.Sep 1718;d.17 Feb 1725/1726)

1683: The RAC lists include: Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Sir Dudley North, Apt Hopefor Bendall, Edward Colston, Sir John Lethuillier (sic), Peter Joye (sic), Sir John Mathews, Thomas Belasyse (sic) Viscount Falconberg, Sir Peter Colleton, Nicholls or Niccols (sic), John Mead, Sir William Turner, William Warren, Sir Benjamin Newland, William Stevens, John Bull, William earl of Craven, Thomas Vernon, Benjamin Skutt, also an Africa Company's agent in Barbados. Davies; Sir Samuel Dashwood, Stephen Pitts, Sir Peter Paravicini (sic) or Paravisin, William Jarrett, Sir William Hussey, Abraham Hill, Thomas Heatley. (Davies, RAC).

1683: Agents for Jamaica are Beeston and Littleton. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 152).

1683: The directors of the East India Company considered a new charter provided by James II. The directors would soon adopt Keigwin's more aggressive policy for activity in India. (See Clark, Later Stuarts, pp. 350-351, citing Ray and O. Strachey, Keigwin's Rebellion. 1916.
1683: Richard Keigwin for British takes stronger measures to protect EICo outposts, he had re-taken St. Helena, he got aggressive, though the Co. at London wanted economy, not adventures. Keigwin is recalled home, but returned to Bombay, and in 1683 the garrison mutinied against the EICo quietist policy, Keigwin took control of government and wrote the king Chas he was holding Bombay for him. Chas put the matter to the CO, which sent out in 1683 or later some navy plus Co. ships. Keigwin let off. He died in 1690 landing in the West Indies.

1683: (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 152), agents for Jamaica are Beeston and Littleton.

1683: Manchus of China take control of Taiwan-Formosa as a province.

1684: (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 61, Duke of York first Gov. of Royal African Co. and in 1684 bought £3000 of EICo stock. His mistress then wife was Anne Hyde, to horror of her father Clarendon.

1685: France: Repeal of Edict of Nantes (on religious freedom/tolerance in France), inducing Protestants (Huguenots) to flee France.

1685: Navigation: Johannes Loots publishes his Chart of the East Indies with Voyages of Tasman, Pelsaert and de Chaumont.

James III is King of England, deals with The Monmouth Rebellion.

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1685: West African slaving depot Cape Coast Castle is taken over for the English by Capt. Henry Nurse and renamed Fort Royal.

1685: By 1685: Secretary to the Lord of Trade is William Blathwayt (sic) and Barbados men fearful of more duties on sugar. An an agent in London for the Gov. of Barbados is one Thomas Robson. (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 57-58), and some interested merchants in London seem to be Edward Littleton, John Gardner, Sir John Bowden, and these included some of the largest merchants involved to Barbados. Soon, James Kendall to be appointed Gov. of Barbados, the first planter-gov since Modyford.

1684: The RAC lists include: Sub-governor Sir Dudley North, Col. John Pery (sic) also secretary, Thomas Heatley, Abraham Hill, Sir William Hussey, William Jarrett, Sir Peter Paravicini (sic) or Paravisin, Stephen Pitts, Peter Joye (sic), Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Sir Peter Colleton, Nicholls or Niccols (sic), Sir Benjamin Newland, William Stevens, Lord George Berkeley, John Morice, John Bull, William earl of Craven, Thomas Vernon; Benjamin Skutt also an Africa Company's agent in Barbados. Davies; Sir Samuel Dashwood, Sir William Langhorne, Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys, also separate trader p372. Davies; Richard Craddock, Roger Bradyll (sic), George Boun (sic). (Davies, RAC).

1684: The Duke of York, first governor of the Royal African Company, buys £3000 worth of East India Stock in 1684. He also succeeds Prince Rupert as governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 61).

1685: Africa Co. Gov. James II (Duke of York) = Governor of Royal Africa Co. 1672-1688. Davies; Sub-governor / Deputy-Governor / Court of Assistants to the Royal Africa Co. George Boun (sic), Richard Craddock, Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys, Sir William Langhorne, Thomas Heatley, Abraham Hill, Sir William Hussey, William Jarrett, Sir Peter Paravicini (sic) or Paravisin, Stephen Pitts, Sir Dudley North, Peter Joye (sic), Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Sir Peter Colleton, John Morgan, Sir Henry Tulse, Lord George Berkeley, John Morice, Sir Gabriel Roberts, John Short, Sir Jeremy Sambrooke, [See also Samuel Sambrooke. Davies]; William Ivatt (sic), Francis Hopegood,

1685: One of the greatest merchants of his day is James Houblon (sic) From R. Davis, Rise English ship industry, p.130).

1685: Edward Randolph appointed as surveyor of pines and timbers in Maine for naval use, salary of £50, and by 1691 Randolph is surveyor-general, deals with Jahleel (sic) Brenton or Ichabod Plaisted - Plaisted an influential provincial judge timber getting for John Taylor naval mast contractor). by 1700, Gov. of New York Richard Coote Lord Bellomont complaining neither Randolph nor Plaisted done any work of use. John Bridger also worked the colonists, trying to supervise matters and Bridger did much for the "broad arrow policy" to 1696. Albion, Forests and Sea Power, pp. 242-243, p. 260).

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1685: England: Smugglers had begun to feel persecuted. By 1685 the illegal running of goods was already considerable. The forbidding of wool export meant that cloth workers had wool growers at their mercy. In 1717, wool smuggling is made punishable by transportation.

Before 1686: Major William Barnes acts as agent for Antigua, acting in concert with Christopher Jeaffreson. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 68).

1685 - Royal Africa Company associates include: George Boun (sic), Richard Craddock, Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys, Sir William Langhorne, Thomas Heatley, Abraham Hill, Sir William Hussey, William Jarrett, Sir Peter Paravicini (sic) or Paravisin, Stephen Pitts, Sir Dudley North, Peter Joye (sic), Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Sir Peter Colleton, John Morgan, Sir Henry Tulse, Lord George Berkeley, John Morice, Sir Gabriel Roberts, John Short, Sir Jeremy Sambrooke, [See also Samuel Sambrooke. Davies]; William Ivatt (sic), Francis Hopegood. (Davies, RAC).

1685: England has instituted in the New England area its "broad arrow policy", which meant that authorities blazed trees suitable for naval stores, preserving it from other use. (Albion, Forests and Sea Power, pp. 242-243, p. 260).

1685: The secretary to the Lords of Trade was William Blathwayt. Barbados men remained fearful of more duties on sugar. An agent in London for the governor of Barbados was one Thomas Robson. (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 57-58). Some interested merchants in London were Edward Littleton, John Gardner, Sir John Bowden, and these included some of the largest merchants involved to Barbados. Soon, James Kendall would be appointed Gov. of Barbados, the first planter-governor since Modyford.

1686++: (From Lynch on Bourbon Spain): From 1686, European merchants are re-exporting from Spain (Seville/Cadiz), assisted by Spain's own merchants, the French did well out of this.

1686: The English East India Company sends an expedition to take Chittagong and make war on the Mogul emperor. Britain finally took St. Helena, which the crown granted to the Company.

1686 - A French force captures all but one of the Hudson's Bay Company forts. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 341).

1687: Sir William Turner had begun making loans 1672 to 1693. In 1687 he was owed £3700 by Sir Arthur Harris, £3500 by the Earl of Berkeley, £1000 by Lady Williams. Other loans made several thousand pounds, mostly all at six per cent. Turner invested little in ships, no more than 1/30th of his capital. (Davies, RAC, pp. 50-52, citing City of London Guildhall Library, MS 5105).

June 1688: (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 54, p.133, p. 180), Louis of France warned James of his danger, as William corresponding in plain terms with his backers in England such as Arthur Herbert, (Danby was principal minister until 1695), another Russell sailor, Henry Sidney was Lord Romney and backed William, Lumley, the rich Whig Shrewsbury was Charles Talbot, Devonshire, Halifax not for William, the Tory Nottingham not for William. William Russell, Lord Russell.

1687: Newton produces his Principia, a masterwork on mathematics, explaining how gravity works.

1687: Turks defeated by the Russians.

1687: English settlers arrive at Sutanati.

1688: William III brings England its Glorious Revolution.

1688: Ralph Knight acting as an agent for Jamaica. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 127).

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1688: One of Britain's notable exports is ... people, people turned into commodities - units of labour value.. In 1654-1685, it has been estimated, 10,000 indentured servants sailed from Bristol alone to North America and the Caribbean; about half went to Virginia. and E. Williams (p. 137) says that in 1688 it was estimated that Jamaica alone needed about 10,000 slaves annually.

1689: England: Parliament declares that king Charles II has abdicated.

Mid-July 1689: Both William & Mary wish Russell to take command of naval fleet, and their judgement was correct, but Russell reluctant, he was friends with Lord Shrewsbury, the ex-minister, and W&M wanted Haddick, but Russell hated Haddick, Russell refused to take part in two recent naval defeats, he wanted two partners, one Lord Shrewsbury the ex-minister and one an unnamed seaman. Queen did not object to Shrewsbury, but she and William III insisted on Haddick, but Russell hated Haddick, and the lords of admiralty thought fit to oppose the queen on these issues, Sir Thomas Lee a leading admiralty man also hated Haddick, and Russell hated Lee as much as he hated Haddick, so finally the lords admiralty refused to sign a commission for the purpose, and so Carmarthen saw the Queen, he in a rage, and Stricklands feel it odd that Shrewsbury should be wanted by king, as he was not bred to naval profession, and English fleet degraded by "harpies of corruption", civilians concerned in finding stores, ammunition, provision and pay, all pilferings, none of James II;'s naval men wanted to proceed to fight, Mary upset at insolence of Sir Thomas Lee. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p.282-293ff.

1689: The Royal African Company monopoly from 1689 is broken by private traders, who by 1712 gave the Company a 10 per cent commission to help fund the operation of the forts. (Orlando Patterson, pp. 127ff).

1690s - 1750: Peter Du Cane says he is a merchant with most income from land and fund holding, a typical C18th passive investor in shipping, his grand father had made a fortune in financial operations with Wm III's wars, and by 1750, Peter Du Cane was a director of EICo with large investments in EICo stock, he dabbled unsuccessfully in marine insurance in 1740-41. (See E. Ward, The London Spy, Dagmar 3, 1698, edited by R. Straus. 1924. (From R. Davis, Rise English Shipping Industry, p.106.)

After 1688-89: William III's friend Schomberg is made Master of Ordnance, Clark, Later Stuarts, p.180.)

During the 1680s: London has up to 2000 overseas merchants. Several hundred traded independently to America, to Virginia, or New York. By 1690 the leading American merchants formed a core group of nine men, led by Richard Perry, the older Micajah Perry and their partner, Thomas Lane. Chesapeake Merchants gathered about Tower Hill, Pennsylvania around Gracechurch Street, newer Carolina merchants about north and west London. Information on colonial conditions became a tool of politics. (Olson, Making the Empire Work, pp. 27-28, pp. 52-57. Olson cites Perry, p. 209, Notes 19, 25, and p. 220, Note 37; p. 221, Note 41).

1689: 14 November: A merchants' petition to the House of Commons "proved" 100 merchant ships worth 600,000 l were lost for want of convoys, or, by corruption of naval captains. Capt Churchill's conduct was such that he was expelled from the house four days later. (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. 7, p. 300, Note 2).

1689: Mid-July: Both William and Mary wished Russell to take command of the navy. Their judgement was correct but Russell reluctant. A dispute arose over the appointment of Haddick. The English fleet was degraded by "harpies of corruption", civilians concerned in finding stores, ammunition, provision and pay; much pilfering. (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. 7, pp. 282-293ff).

1690: Whaling history: Whaler Ichabod Paddock from Cape Cod moves to Nantucket Island to teach on the techniques of mainland whaling - especially on harpooning .
K. Jack Bauer, A Maritime History of the United States: The Role of America's Seas and Waterways.. University of South Carolina Press, 1988., p. 231.

1690s++: Follows an impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor nd? Sir Francis Child.
Descendants of Clothier Robert Child of Wilts, ... sp: Miss Notknown
2. Goldsmith-Banker, Whig, Sir Francis Child (b.1642;d.4 Oct 1713) sp: Elizabeth Wheeler, cousin (b.1652;m.2 Oct 1671;d.1719)
3. MP, Banker, Samuel Child (b.1684;d.1740) sp: Agatha Edward
4. London banker, Robert Child (b.1739;d.1782) sp: Sarah Jodrell 5. Sarah Anne Child wife1, heiress (b.28 Aug 1764;d.9 Nov 1793) sp: John Fane Earl10 Westmoreland, Privy Seal (b.1 Jan 1759;d.15 Dec 1841) 6. John Fane Earl11 Westmoreland (b.2 Feb 1784;d.16 Oct 1859) sp: Priscilla Anne Wellesley-Pole (m.26 Jun 1811) 7. Ernest Fitzroy Neville Fane Lord Burghersh (b.7 Jan 1824;d.22 Jan 1851) sp: Augusta Selina Locke (b.6 Jun 1833;m.17 Oct 1849;d.4 Nov 1906) 7. Francis William Fane Earl12 Westmoreland (b.19 Nov 1825;d.3 Aug 1891) sp: Adelaide Ida Curzon-Howe (b.12 Jul 1835;m.16 Jul 1857;d.23 Mar 1903) 6. Child's banker, heiress, Sarah Sophia Fane sp: George Villiers Earl5 Jersey (b.19 Aug 1773;d.3 Oct 1859) 7. George Augustus Frederick Child-Villiers Earl6 Jersey (b.4 Apr 1808;d.24 Oct 1859) sp: Julia Peel (m.2 Jul 1841) 6. Lady Maria Fane (b.11 May 1787;d.19 Mar 1834) sp: John William Ponsonby Brn5 Bessborough, Earl4 Bessborough (b.1781;m.16 Nov 1805;d.1847) 7. John George Brabazon Ponsonby Earl5 Bessborough (b.14 Oct 1809;d.28 Jan 1880) sp: Frances Charlotte Lambton wife1 (b.16 Oct 1812;m.8 Sep 1835;d.28 Jan 1880) sp: Caroline Amelia Gordon-Lennox wife2 (b.18 Jun 1819;m.4 Oct 1849;d.30 Apr 1890) 7. Frederick George Brabazon Ponsonby Earl6 Bessbororough (b.11 Sep 1815;d.11 Mar 1895) 7. Walter William Ponsonby Earl7 Bessborough, Baron8 Bessborough (b.13 Aug 1821;d.24 Feb 1906) sp: Louisa Susan Cornwallis Eliot (b.17 Dec 1825;m.15 Jan 1850;d.15 Jan 1911) 7. Augusta Lavinia Priscilla Ponsonby sp: William Thomas Petty-Fitzmauric Earl Kerry (m.18 Mar 1834) sp: Hon. Charles Alexander Gore 7. Maria Jane Elizabeth Ponsonby sp: Charles Frederick Cooper Ponsonby Brn2 de Mauley 6. Augusta Fane (b.17 May 1786) sp: John Parker Baron2 Boringdon, Earl1 Morley (b.3 May 1772;m.20 Jun 1804;d.14 Mar 1840) sp: Rt Hon. Sir Arthur Paget (b.1771;d.1840) 7. Laura Caroline Paget wife1, cousin (b.24 Oct 1816;d.9 Dec 1871) sp: Henry Spencer Chichester Baron2 T? (b.14 Jun 1821;m.3 Aug 1842;d.10 Jun 1906) sp: MP Francis Reynolds-Moreton, RN, Baron3 Ducie (b.28 Mar 1739;m.10 Oct 1774;d.19 Aug 1808) 4. MP, London banker, Francis Child (b.1735;d.1763/1764) 3. Banker, Alderman, Sir Robert Child (d.1721) 3. London Lord Mayor, Banker, Sir Francis Child (b.1684;d.20 Apr 1740) sp: Miss Notknown 4. Banker Francis Child 3. Banker Stephen Child (d.1762) 3. Elizabeth Child sp: Alderman Tyringham Backwell
4. Banker Barnaby Bank Backwell at Child's Bank 4. Banker William Backwell at Child's Bank

1680s-1690s: A noted slaving merchant is John Cary of Bristol, England.

1690: Ireland, Battle of the Boyne.

1690: King's absence and 3 June, 1690, Queen Mary brought to council, nine privy councillors, appointed by William to assist her, president Danby now Marquess of Carmarthen, who bribed the English senate, with Lord Pembroke, Lord Devonshire, Lord Nottingham, Lord Godolphin, Lord Marlborough, Lord Monmouth, Admiral Russell and Sir John Lowther. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 238, Admiral Russell rough and savage temper, perpetual grasping after money and profit, often taking affront, p. 244.)

After mid-1690: Battle of the Boyne, 1690, (p. 266 William had a troop of 30,000 regular troops, good artillery, Boyne won by a furious charge of cavalry) and Mary had her father's standards carried in triumphant processions and later hung in St. James chapel, her father's old friends were outraged, and later Charles Montague, earl of Halifax, wrote a poem panegyric of William's exploits at this battle, without naming the antagonist, James II. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p.26-2670ff.

1690+: John Prebble, The Darien Disaster. London, Secker and Warburg, 1988.

1690-1692: Job Charnock establishes Calcutta. East India Co. receives English royal charter giving it monopoly of Eastern Trade for 15 years.

1692: India: Calcutta and the death of Job Charnock of English East India Company:

On August 4 2001 (sent to the India Mailing List)
. -----Original Message----- From: achintyarup Ray: aray0@rediffmail.com
To: INDIA-L@rootsweb.com - INDIA-L@rootsweb.com
Date: Saturday, 4 August 2001 3:46 AM
Subject: [India-L] Calcutta History
Dear Listers, Following is a legal story the Hindustan Times is carrying today on the history of Calcutta. Thanks, Achintyarup Ray, Calcutta

PIL filed against Charnok myth
HT Correspondent
Kolkata, August 3

CALCUTTA HIGH Court today admitted a public interest litigation challenging that Job Charnok, agent of East India Company, founded Kolkata about 300 years ago.
A two-judge Bench, headed by Chief Justice Asoke Kumar Mathur, asked the petitioner to serve notice on the State Government and held that the matter would be heard again after a month.
Presently, August 24 is being celebrated as the city's birthday as Charnok is believed to have anchored his boat in the Hooghly off Sutanity on that day in 1690.
The petitioners -- Sabarna Roy Chowdhury Parivar Parishad (SRPP) and some city-based historians -- claimed that Kolkata existed long before Job Charnok arrived in India and the name "Kalkata" may be traced even in books like Manasa Vijay and Ain-e-Akbari, written in 1494 and 1596 respectively.
SRPP, founded by members of Sabarna Roy Chowdhury family, which originally owned Kolkata, said Charnok landed at Sutanuti, a marshy fishing village on the bank of the Hooghly on August 24, 1964 and lived there till he died on January 10, 1692.
"Charnok only concentrated towards some trade and was among hundreds other Europeans and Indians who traded at Sutanuti", said counsel Smarajit Roy Chowdhury, who appeared for SRPP before the Division Bench this afternoon. Roy Chowdhury, who is also a descendant of Sabarna Roy Chowdhury, said it was long after Charnok's death that East India Company obtained the "Right to Rent" of the three villages - Kalkata, Sutanuti and Gobindapur -- on which the city of Kolkata now stands. Charnok died six years before the deal was signed.
The deed, singed at Bangladesh's Barisha, was, however, found to be illegal as two minor of Sabarna family signed it out of a plan, formulated to resist the British, Roy Chowdhury pointed out.
SRPP also said no individual can be regarded as the founder of the city and it was Lakshmikanta, predecessor of Sabarna Roy Chopwdhury, who got the ownership right of eight villages, including the three ones, from the Emperor Akbar as a token of appreciation of his services.
Roy Chowdhury said a copy of the "Right to Rent" also proved that Charnok was founder of the city, August 24 was its birthday.
The case was filed "to set right a wrong fact and reconstruct the history of Kolkata, which is almost unknown to the world".
///////////Ends this item //////////

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Mid-1690, Mary Stuart is worried as expecting a battle between her father and her husband William III forces in Ireland, and wants William's directions for command of the fleet, Lord Monmouth claimed the command, Torrington (a Jacobite) had been deprived of it, Russell refused to take it, so Sir Richard Haddick and Sir John Ashby were proposed by Council, but Haddick wished perhaps Duke of Grafton (soon killed as it happened at siege of Cork), as he'd been brave at Beachy Head, Mary rather thought of Shovel. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p.261ff.

Mid-1690: William III protests that Mary has transferred Admiral Russell from his post in Council to superintend a disabled fleet, an ill success at sea, Lord Torrington to come to trial (for what?, but acquitted and it seems when William III came with ships, Torrington in command of them, ships out of condition, Torrington withdrew in disgrace to obscurity, and when he died, the title of Torrington was given to Admiral Byng, a commander whom James II had drawn from obscurity) Russell seemingly loyal to Torrington. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 256-258.

Mid-1690: English Navy in a poor state, and suspicion of (Herbert) Lord Torrington, Mary desired to interfere in his business as an Admiral, Navy felt want of a royal admiral, corruption in provisioning of the navy, Torrington insecure re his ability to defend England, Lord Monmouth wanting command of a ship of the line, as he had been ok in navy under James II, James had wanted naval men to have had a naval life, Mary did not follow this policy, Monmouth wanted most of the navy, but Mary doubted his fidelity, there are secret letters passed about now to Mary written in lemon juice (Mary later aware this "lemon juice" is disinformation provided by Monmouth's man Major Wildman). (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p.252-255-261.)

1690: (Kel lock's article, pp. 131-132), Lane, Son and Fraser was founded by John Lloyd (1656-1730), of 11 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street. Portugal trade, then with the New East India Company. Friends with one Peter Godfrey. Thomas Lane came into firm in 1735. Lane accumulated debts in America during the Seven Years War. fix After 1690, the firm Lane, Son and Fraser was founded by John Lloyd (1656-1730), of 11 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street. The firm was in the Portugal trade, then with the New East India Company. Peter Godfrey was a friend of the firm. Thomas Lane came into the firm in 1735 and he accumulated debts in America during the Seven Years War. (Katharine A. Kellock, 'London Merchants and the pre-1776 American Debts', Guildhall Studies in London History, Vol. 1, No 3, October 1974., pp. 131-132).

1690: Some Lords Privy Seal were Sir John Knatchbull, Sir William Pulteney, in 1691 Thomas earl of Pembroke, in 1713 William earl of Dartmouth.

1690: Note that penal settlements for convicts were West Indies and North American colonies. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 244.)
See Carl and Robert Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond The Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624-1690. New York, 1972.

1690: On Virginia Merchants: Olson notes that by 1690, leading [London] American merchants had formed a core group of nine men led by Richard Perry, the older Micajah Perry and their partner, Thomas Lane; and probably a younger Micajah Perry. By Walpole's time, one of the Perrys had become "dean of the American lobbyists". Perry the younger finally bankrupted, partly as he spent so much time engaged in mercantile politics. [See Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problems of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926., p. 445; Also, Alison G. Olson, Making the Empire Work, pp. 27-28, pp. 52-53, p. 103]. During the 1680s, London had some 2000 overseas merchants, and several hundred were independently trading to America. Chesapeake Merchants gathered about Tower Hill, Pennsylvania around Gracechurch Street, newer Carolina merchants about north and west London.

1691: Edward Littleton and William Bridges were chosen to transact business for Barbados, John Gardner who had unofficially represented Barbados being overlooked. (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 58).

1691: August. Queen Mary ordered the arrest of Bishop of Ely and Lord Dartmouth. She remained an enemy of William Penn, trying to stop to his philanthropy to Pennsylvania. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. 7, p. 327, pp. 335-336). Admiral lord Dartmouth was committed to the Tower by Queen Mary, later to die of "grief and regret". Mary meanwhile desired to add the French colony of Canada to her domain, and she invaded Quebec, unsuccessfully. France held Canada for another 50 years [See the later careers of Wolf and James Cook].

1691: As Mary and William fought in Flanders they found a great slaughter of English troops, no victory. Corn was at famine prices, the gentry and merchants sank under the weight of taxation never heard of before in Britain. The fleet had returned in disgrace, seamen had "horrible provisions and worthless ammunition" as provided by a corrupt ministry. Lady Russell sought the auditorship of Wales for her son, Mr. Vaughan. Jacobites remained active. (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. 7, pp. 336-337).

1691: Sir Josiah Child (of the East India Company) and seven others owned more than 25 per cent of Royal Africa Company stock, and voted their own way, accordingly. (Davies, RAC, p. 156). It is probable that regular financial linkages were maintained from now between East India Company investors and those with interests in profiting from slaving.

1692: As the outrage over the Campbell massacre at Glencoe persisted, there the Scottish Darien Company which helped lead Scotland to the Union of 1707. In 1654, the Highlanders failed in a rebellion against Cromwell.

Sept 1692: Mary's errors in law, Strickland says her intellect was brilliant, but she had a cannon-fodder view of the populous, temptations of new gin shops, the thief-takers after blood money, executions under the reward-conviction system as supported by Parliament became 40 victims per month in London alone, "murderous traffic of false witnesses", her grievous system lasted till 1816. and here, amazingly, Stricklands, two women writers of 1852 and earlier, here cite Apt Maconochie of Norfolk Island off Australia, his work on "penal science", and regard his views as result of Mary's and her cabinet's bad edict of Sept 13, 1692 Maconochie said, "To set a price on the head of a criminal, or otherwise on a great scale to reward the information of accomplices, is the strongest proof of a weak or unwise government ..... (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 391-392.)

13 September, 1692: Queen Mary issued an edict by proclamation offering 40/- per head for the apprehension and conviction of any burglar or highwaymen. This became known as "blood money", and it got a terrific number of convictions and executions, while the evil(s) Mary wished to end, only increased in number. Many abuses here continued to the reign of Ego I, Strickland says, and all this gave rise to the thief takers, their informers, the gaolers, evils not subdued till the police of 1829 and later, Stricklands writing later after 1829, "a long retrospect of human calamity [was] thus opened up in one terrific error in legislation" from Mary, "a prison discipline formed after the nearest idea of the dread place of future perdition", not likely to cure her people of crime. She did not refer anything here to Parliament. "Much of the crime and sorrow of the present day," writes Strickland, "and, indeed, the greatest national misfortune that ever befell this country, originated from the example given by William III and his Dutch courtiers as imbibers of ardent spirits. In fact, the laws of England, from an early period, sternly prohibited the conversion of malt into alcohol, excepting a small portion for medicinal purposes." .. p. 390 "The consummation of all injury to the people, was the encouragement that King William III was pleased to give to the newly-born manufactories of spirituous liquors." [an earlier English prejudice against gin]. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p.388-389-390.)

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Sept 1692: Mary's errors in law, Strickland says her intellect was brilliant. a cannon fodder view of the populous, temptations of new gin shops, the thief-takers after blood money, executions under the reward-conviction system as supported by parliament became 40 victims per month in London alone, "murderous traffic of false witnesses", her grievous system lasted till 1816. and here, amazingly, Stricklands, two women writers of 1852 and earlier, here cite Apt Maconochie of Norfolk Island off Australia, his work on "penal science", and regard his views as result of Mary's and her cabinet's bad edict of Sept 13, 1692 Maconochie said, "To set a price on the head of a criminal, or otherwise on a great scale to reward the information of accomplices, is the strongest proof of a weak or unwise government ....."Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 391-392.)

1692: Lord Orford as Admiral Russell became victor at Cape La Hogue.

1692: A severe earthquake on Jamaica destroyed the notorious Port Royal. The French continually raked the coast, but the buccaneers were gone.

1692: William Beeston (forced to resign the agency of Jamaica in 1698 with the Free Trade Act) was appointed governor of Jamaica and also agent for the Royal Africa Company. Edwin Stede (much accused after his retirement) was Barbados RAC agent for 20 years. On Barbados he was also provost marshal, deputy secretary, collector of customs, councillor and secretary, and 1685-1690 he was Lt.-Governor, acting governor. A similar situation existed with Hender Molesworth on Jamaica. (Davies, RAC, variously).

1692: September 13: Queen Mary issued an edict by proclamation offering 40/- per head for the apprehension and conviction of any burglar or highwayman. This became known as "blood money", and obtained many convictions and executions, while the evil(s) Mary wished to end only increased in number. (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. 7, pp. 388-390). The reckless bands of well organised smugglers in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire were also products of bad laws, "a vicious system" with its origin with William III's time with its need for revenue. (Teignmouth and Harper, The Smugglers, Vol. 1. 1973. [Orig. 1923]. pp. 11-12).

1692: 1692-1724, (Penson, Colonial Agents, p.226), remarks re West India agents bribing officials for expedition with business!

1692: Charles Montague later Halifax, lord of treasury in 1692, first lord 1697-1699, in 1714 he again became first lord. Charles Montague later Halifax, born 1661, lord of treasury in 1692, first lord 1697-1699, in 1714 he again became first lord. 1692 - Clark, Later Stuarts, p.172, the corsairs of Tripoli had declared war on France and assisted British forces, Orford appeared on the Tripoli coast, a famous French privateer at this time is Jean Bart. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p.133.)

1692, Lord Orford as admiral Russell victor at Cape La Hogue in 1692.

1692: Severe earthquake on Jamaica.

1693: (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp.180ff. as yet, not enough absentee planters from Jamaica to organiser affairs, till a coffee house situation arose near the Royal exchange. Jamaica Coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, from 1674. Jamaica agents, 1693-1704, Bartholomew Gracedieu. Gilbert Heathcote, see Penson.

1693: From 1660, Danby had used cash bribes in the City in various East India Company matters. The Duke of Leeds who had received 5500 guineas was impeached. (Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 85).

1693: William Paterson the later promoter of the Scottish Darien Company (who may have known Dampier in the "silent period" of Paterson's life in the West Indies) appeared before a committee of the House of Commons on behalf of a mercantile group with a scheme for credit on Parliamentary Security. The Bank of England was formed in 1694 on that basis. Paterson resigned from the new bank in 1695. For a time, Paterson was entangled with the City of London orphan's fund. Then he promoted the Darien project with Sir Robert Christie, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and Lord Belhaven. Vast enterprises were envisaged. (John Prebble, The Darien Disaster. London, Secker and Warburg, 1988., pp. 1-3ff, pp. 11-13).

1693: As yet, there were too few absentee planters from Jamaica able to organise affairs, till a coffee house situation arose near the Royal exchange, Jamaica Coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, from 1674. An Act was passed with the agents for Jamaica being three Jamaica merchants, Gilbert Heathcote (1693-1704), Sir Bartholomew Gracedieu MP (1693-1704) and John Tutt. Sir Gilbert Heathcote (1651-1733), a founder of the East India Company in 1693, Lord Mayor 1710-1711. (Melville, South Sea Bubble, p. 123). (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 180ff, p. 75).

1693: Re Jamaica (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 180ff,) an act passed with agents for Jamaica being three Jamaica merchants, Gilbert Heathcote, [Sir] Bartholomew Gracedieu MP and John Tutt. 1693: As yet, not enough absentee planters from Jamaica to organiser affairs, till a coffee house situation arose near the Royal exchange. Jamaica Coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, from 1674.

1693: Ships husband Joseph Herne on June 24, 1693 writes to ships master Mr. Edward Mathews of ship Expedition, re merchant names Heneage Fetherstone, (sic), of Alicante, Mr. John Bancks (sic) of Exon - (R. Davis, Rise English ship industry, p. 169.) Jamaica agents, 1693-1704, Bartholomew Gracedieu. Gilbert Heathcote, see Penson. Melville, South Sea Bubble, p123, Sir Gilbert Heathcote 1651-1733, a founder of the EICo in 1693, Lord Mayor 1710-1711.

1693, Sir John Somers is keeper of the Great Seal.

1693 - Allegations arose of heavy bribery of ministers by the East India Company regarding its new charter. The Duke of Leeds (Danby) was later impeached. There were few Whigs in the Company at the time. By 1695, dissension broke out, which assisted the Scottish Company. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 85, p. 352).

Mid-1690: William III protests that Mary has transferred Admiral Russell from his post in Council to superintend a disabled fleet, an ill success at sea, Lord Torrington to come to trial (for what?, but acquitted and it seems when William III came with ships, Torrington in command of them, ships out of condition, Torrington withdrew in disgrace to obscurity, and when he died, the title of Torrington was given to Admiral Byng, a commander whom James II had drawn from obscurity) Russell seemingly loyal to Torrington. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 256-258.)

1693: Re Jamaica (Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 75), an act passed with agents for Jamaica being three Jamaica merchants, Gilbert Heathcote, [Sir] Bartholomew Gracedieu MP and John Tutt. 1693: (Penson, Colonial Agents, pp.180ff. as yet, not enough absentee planters from Jamaica to organiser affairs, till a coffee house situation arose near the Royal exchange. Jamaica Coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, from 1674.

1693: Jamaica agents, 1693-1704, Bartholomew Gracedieu. Gilbert Heathcote, see Penson.

1693: (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 352), heavy bribery of ministers by EICo re new charter for EICo, Duke of Leeds/Danby later impeached, few Whigs in Co. at time. and by 1695, dissension broke out, which assisted the Scottish co.

1690s: India: Bengal. English East India Company official Job Charnock founds the city of Calcutta (aided by local people), on a swamp by the Hooghly river in Bengal, North-Eastern India.

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1694: Founding of The Bank of England, as suggested by the well-travelled Scotsman William Paterson.

1694: Wm III been detained by the French Fleet, but he arrived at Margate on Nov 12, he opened Parliament next day, voted thanks for Mary's firm administration, Parliament proceeded to impeach her favourite prime minister, then Duke of Leeds, for the "infamous corruption of his government", and the late speaker of the house, Sir John Trevor, for himself receiving bribes, and distributing them in HOC, and some of the Queen's staff were here compromised, and as journals of House of Lords indicates, Sir Thomas Cooke, chairman EICo had sent a bribe from EICo to lord president of Mary's cabinet in council, Carmarthen, by Sir Basil Firebrass. and among people suspected here were Lord Nottingham, the queen's lord chamberlain, one Colonel Fitzpatrick [he soon died] re 1000 guineas a pal of Nottingham, Lady Derby mistress of the robes, Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 431ff.

Mid-1690: English navy in a poor state, and suspicion of (Herbert) Lord Torrington, Mary desired to interfere in his business as an Admiral, Navy felt want of a royal admiral, corruption in provisioning of the navy, Torrington insecure re his ability to defend England, Lord Monmouth wanting command of a ship of the line, as he had been ok in navy under James II, James had wanted naval men to have had a naval life, Mary did not follow this policy, Monmouth wanted most of the navy, but Mary doubted his fidelity, there are secret letters passed about now to Mary written in lemon juice (Mary later aware this "lemon juice" is disinformation provided by Monmouth's man Major Wildman). (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p.252-255-261.

1694: 28 Dec: Queen Mary dies aged 33 having kindly removed her servants from dangerous proximity, having had "dreary hallucinations", with a popish nurse one hallucination, mention of Jacobite DR Radcliffe p 442, did she have scruples re her father James II? day she died, Wm III swooned twice, moves spied on by a ghoulish roaming Jacobite Catholic priest, Lord Jersey a secret Catholic, priest sent messages to James II, a French observer said she was more bitter against her father than her husband Wm III, did Wm III have affair with Elizabeth Villiers? Strickland by way of an amazing demolition job views her as p. 453 as "an unnatural daughter and a cruel sister", she had Greenwich and Virginian endowments. (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, pp. 443-453-454.

1694: John Stevens published a translation of Faria y Sousa's book Asia Portuguese, probably for the first time introducing British to story of how Portuguese discovered the world, dedicated to Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess now Queen of England.

Danby used some cash bribes, Danby or duke of Leeds in 1694 so he was the one bribed by the EICo? (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 85.)

1694: Sir William Trumbull is one of the commissioners of Treasury,

In 1694: is published in England Robinson's book, An Account of Several Late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and the North, in which Tasman's voyage of 1642 was translated. this book helped revive British and Dutch interest in the still-unknown Terra Australis. (Australian Encyclopedia).

1694: (Fox Bourne, English Merchants, pp. 253ff), in 1688 at Amsterdam, then Hamburg, brief interlude with New River Company to get fresh water into London. became a talker on collection and arrangement of public loans, so helped found the Bank of England in 1691, one objection to it being that the monarch could no longer debase the coinage, the Bank was established from 27 July, 1694, then Paterson left the Bank and was entangled for a time with the City of London orphan's fund, then to the Darien project with Sir Robert Christie the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and Lord Belhaven, vast enterprises envisaged, by 1697 had £400,000 subscribed, needed to build ships at Edinburgh and Leith, offices of Co. at Milne Square, Edinburgh, Paterson went off to get stores at Hamburg and Amsterdam, left money with a London merchant James Smith, but £8000 went missing, Paterson took the blame on himself, got references from Edinburgh merchant Robert Blackwood and William Dunlop the Principal of Glasgow College, who was an: eminent scholar, accomplished antiquary, shrewd merchant, brave soldier, able politician, zealous divine and an amiable man". Paterson deposed as Darien manager by July 1698 and then the Darien madness entered in, Paterson tried to correct bad management but failed. [sense the Dariens did not know what they were doing] Expedition one landed on a watery morass, in six months, about 2/3rds of the expedition dead, some 1200 people, Paterson so devastated he sank into a kind of second childhood, or early dotage, but recovered.

1694: The French invaded and almost took Jamaica. London sent 1000 troops at a cost of £50,000. From 1682 to 1702 the governor was Sir William Beeston. It was during Beeston's period that the first Campbells arrived on Jamaica. The military governor of Jamaica 1701-1711 was Thomas Handasyd, an army brigadier, followed by Lord Archibald Hamilton a naval man. Jamaica was now again a garrison colony and soldiers quickly died.

1694: William III had been detained by the French Fleet, but he opened Parliament on 13 November. Parliament proceeded to impeach Mary's prime minister, then Duke of Leeds, for the "infamous corruption of his government"; and the late speaker of the house, Sir John Trevor, for himself receiving bribes, and distributing them in the House of Commons. Some of the Queen's staff were here compromised. Sir Thomas Cooke, chairman of the East India Company had sent a Company bribe to the lord president of Mary's cabinet in council, Carmarthen, by Sir Basil Firebrass. Among people suspected were Lord Nottingham, the queen's lord chamberlain, one Colonel Fitzpatrick [he soon died]. (Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. 7, pp. 431ff).

1694: John Stevens published a translation of Faria y Sousa's book Asia Portuguese, introducing the English to the story of how the Portuguese had discovered the world. Also in 1694 was published in England Robinson's book, An Account of Several Late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and the North, in which Tasman's voyage of 1642 was translated. This book helped revive British and Dutch interest in the still-unknown Terra Australis. (McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 5).

1694: Danby used some cash bribes, Danby or duke of Leeds in 1694 so he was the one bribed by the EICo. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 85.)

1694: Sir William Trumbull was one of the commissioners of Treasury.

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1694: Wm III been detained by the French Fleet, but he arrived at Margate on Nov 12, he opened Parliament next day, voted thanks for Mary's firm administration, Parliament proceeded to impeach her favourite prime minister, then Duke of Leeds, for the "infamous corruption of his government", and the late speaker of the house, Sir John Trevor, for himself receiving bribes, and distributing them in HOC, and some of the Queen's staff were here compromised, and as journals of House of Lords indicates, Sir Thomas Cooke, chairman EICo had sent a bribe from EICo to lord president of Mary's cabinet in council, Carmarthen, by Sir Basil Firebrass. and among people suspected here were Lord Nottingham, the queen's lord chamberlain, one Colonel Fitzpatrick [he soon died] re 1000 guineas a pal of Nottingham, Lady Derby mistress of the robes, (Strickland, Lives of Queens of England, Vol. VII, p. 431ff.

John /Houblon/ Lord Mayor of London Lord Mayor of London 1695 Sir John Houblon elected in 1695.
(Item, per Peter Western)

Follows an impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor of 1695 Sir John Houblon, son of a Flemish merchant dealing to Spain:
2. Gov Bank of England, Lord Mayor London Sir John Houblon (c.1695;d.1724) sp: Miss Notknown
3. Arabella Houblon sp: Richard Mytton
4. Richard Mytton (d.27 Feb 1730) sp: Letitia Owen 5. Anna Maria Mytton (d.Aug 1750) sp: Sir Charles Charlton Leighton, Bart3 (d.5 May 1780) 4. John Mytton sp: Mary Davenport 2. Whig MP, Dir New EICo, James Houblon (c.1695) (with other brothers).

1695: In Queen Anne's reign, fear of the "mob" had arisen. In April 1695 there were riots in London about Tooley, who ran a debtor's prison in Holborn and was suspected of kidnapping recruits for the army.

1695: Established, the Bank of Scotland, with capital of only £100,000 sterling. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 265, p. 284.) Clark says that in 1695, the Darien Co. "infringed" rights of the Bank of Scotland,

1695: French forces sent onto Jamaica but were ejected by settlers. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 330), the British got sent an expedition to Jamaica with two regiments of foot, but it was rendered useful by disease and mismanagement, there was later an outburst of piracy, so home got licensed Apt William Kidd in privateer the Adventure Galley in which some of the leading Whigs were shareholders. Kidd later hanged. Kidd's backers include Bellomont the gov. of NY organises backers for Kidd, including Sir John Somers, Shrewsbury, Russell the First Lord of Admiralty and Earl Orford, and Lord Romney the head of Ordnance. and one Mr. Harrison. All these men are also backers of William III.

1695: William III anticipated action of 1695 Scots Parliament by appointing a regular commission of inquiry. As a result of its excellent report, Dalrymple had to resign and spend the rest of his time in private life. Earl of Breadalbane charged with high treason but never brought to trial. Clark writes, "The general execration of the deed helped to build up the British sense of justice and humanity"...."never again were the worst methods of frontier warfare combined with the worst methods of secret police". That Parliament then went on to the Darien Scheme. (Clark, Later Stuarts, pp. 280-281.

1695: Fear of "the mob" had arisen. In April were riots in London about Tooley, who ran a debtor's prison in Holborn and was suspected of kidnapping recruits for the army.

1695: 26 June: Partly due to William Paterson's efforts, in the Scots Parliament was passed an Act for a Company (The Darien Company) trading to Africa and Indies, wanting a monopoly to trade with Asia and Africa for all time and with America for 31 years. (Some London merchants were Scots, says Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 282) London directors discussed fitting a Scots ship for the East India Company trade, but the Company fought this in London. The Darien Company retreated to Edinburgh. Paterson had obtained an old manuscript copy of Lionel Wafer's journal of travels on Isthmus of Darien. Wafer was a friend of Dampier and both gave advice to the Darien Company.
1690+: See Clennel Wilkinson, William Dampier. London, John Lane, 1929.
Other books on Dampier: W. H. Bonner, Captain William Dampier, buccaneer-author. Standford, 1934. P. K. Kemp and C. Lloyd, The Brethren of the Coast. London, 1960. J. C. Shipman, William Dampier, sea-man scientist. Kansas, 1962.

1695: To prevent frauds in ships, John Bland wrote "Trade Revived" and proposed registration of ownership of shipping. (See Godolphin about 1702) (Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 108).

1695 Circa: The governors of Christ's Hospital included Arthur Baron, Adrian Beyer, Col. James Boddington, Sir William Coles, Sir James Collett, Peter Godfrey, Samuel Jackson, Robert Knight, Thomas Lockington and Micajah Perry; significant merchant names all. (See A. L. Bier and Roger Finlay, London, 1500-1700: The Making of the Metropolis. 1986., p. 276).

1695: An act of 1695 constituted the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, capital at £600,000 sterling, half subscribed in London, half in Scotland. William Paterson the main mover here, he had been in the West Indies, made money in the City of London, had been in at the foundation of the Bank of England, a director for the first year, then sold out. At the time,the stock of the EICo was dropping, it was natural it should protect its monopoly. the shit hit the fan for many reasons, the English subscribers dropped the whole thing. Scotland tried much to help the company, promised £400,00 and raised £200,000 from over 1300 persons. and what Paterson had chosen for a site for operations was the Isthmus of Darien, south of the Mosquito Coast, hence, the Darien Scheme. (Clark, p. 263), "The period which begins with the Restoration has been called the most pitiful in the history of Scotland."

G. Pratt on Darien p89, echo here for Phillip, Darien men reckoned they had found a harbour "capable of containing 10,000 sail of Shipps".

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1695: August: The Russell and Howland families become more interested in the East India Company. In August 1695 a spate of corrupt activities was discovered, such as forgery of banknotes. William Kidd was born in Scotland between 1645 and 1660, and by about 1695, he owned land in New York, including sections of Wall Street, prime property. He had a connection with Mr. Livingston. Kidd as a New Yorker had backed the installation of William III. In 1695, Kidd began seeking a naval position, at a time when Americans are also engaging in Madagascar piracy which was linked to "Red Sea men" which were also harrassing English East India Company ships, annoying London merchants. Various strands of concerns were brought together by Livingston who was promoting Kidd. England needed to suppress American piracy and encountered William III's idea to licence pirates. Bellomont the governor of New York organised backers for Kidd, including Sir John Somers, Shrewsbury, Russell the First Lord of Admiralty, Earl Orford, and Lord Romney the head of Ordnance, plus Mr. Harrison. All these were backers of William III.

1695: A noted Bristol shipowner was John Cary. (BM Add MSS 5540-120, cited in Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 109).

1695: December: After London left the Darien Company alone from December 1695, between February and August 1696 Scotland in an extraordinary effort pledged £400,000, though less than half was ever paid; 1300 persons and more signed their names, many risking all they had. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 282).

1695: French forces sent onto Jamaica were ejected by the occupants. Troops sent by Britain were rendered by disease and mismanagement. There was later an outburst of piracy, so the home government licensed Apt William Kidd of New York as a privateer in Adventure Galley. Some of the leading Whigs were shareholders in the venture. Kidd was later hanged. Bellomont the governor of New York helped organise Kidd's backers, including Sir John Somers, Shrewsbury, Russell the First Lord of Admiralty and Earl Orford, and Lord Romney the head of Ordnance,plus one Mr. Harrison, all of whom were backers of William III. (See Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 330).

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Aug 1695: Russells and Howland families become more interested in EICo. In Aug 1695 a spate of corrupt activities discovered, e.g., forgery of banknotes, William Kidd born in Scotland between 1645 and 1660, about 1695, Kidd owns land in New York, including sections of Wall Street, prime property. He has a connection with Mr. Livingston. Wm Kidd as a New Yorker had backed installation of William III. Livingston wishing to blacken the name of Gov. Fletcher of New York. In 1695, Kidd seeking a naval position, at a time when Americans are also engaging in Madagascar piracy which is linked to "Red Sea men" which are also harassing British EICo ships, so London becomes upset. Various strands of concerns brought together by Livingston who is promoting Kidd. England needs to suppress American piracy and encounters William III's idea to licence pirates.

December 1695 and later: (Clark, Later Stuarts, p.282), when London left the Darien Co. alone from Dec 1695 as the EICo in trouble, between Feb and Aug 1696 Scotland in an extraordinary effort pledged £400,000 though less than half was ever paid. 1300 persons and more signed their names, many risking all they had,

See S. G. Checkland, Scottish Banking, 1695-1973. 1975.

1695: Circa: Carteret - Admiralty family from before 1700, proprietary owners in colonies Carolina, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. During the 1690s, noted mercantile names included Carteret - an Admiralty family from before 1700, proprietary owners in colonies Carolina, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Sir John Lambert, dealt throughout Europe (Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 361). Sir Thomas Gresham was "renowned and philanthropic" but his business methods were none too honourable; there were allegations of fraud, usury and high finance (Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 399). Sir John Eyles, Sir Gregory Page, Sir Nathaniel Mead, the Earl of Tilney (Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 403). "Merchant money was democratizing" the peerage and gentility. (D. W. Jones, 'London Merchants and the Crisis of the 1690s', in Clark and Slack, (Eds.), Crisis and Order).

1695 Circa: Sir John Lambert, nd? dealt all around Europe, see Westerfield, Middlemen, p361. Sir Thomas Gresham, renowned and philanthropic, business methods none too honourable, fraud, usury and high finance. (Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 399.) splendid homes of Sir John Eyles, Sir Gregory Page, Sir Nathaniel Mead, the Earl of Tilney, Westerfield, Middlemen, p403, by way of merchant money democratizing the peerage and gentility.
D. W. Jones, London Merchants and the Crisis of the 1690s, in Clark and Slack, (Eds), Crisis and Order.

1696-1699: English fortify Calcutta.

1697: Bernard and Lotte Bailyn, Massachusetts Shipping, 1697-1714. Cambridge, Mass, 1959.*

1697: Pollexfen in England wrote on colonies: the usefulness of the labour of Blacks and [white] vagrants. (Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, 1985., p. 236).

From 1697: Years after Modyford had died, most English convicts transportable were directed to the West Indies. On July 2, 1697 the Lords Justices ordered 50 convict women sent to the Leeward Islands. [Wilfrid Oldham, Britain's Convicts to the Colonies. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1990., p. 5] There is record of an answer from Micajah Perry of London. [See John M. Hemphill, Virginia and the English Commercial System, 1689-1733, p. 259, citing on Perry, Elizabeth Donnan, "Eighteenth-Century English Merchants: Micajah Perry", Journal of Economic and Business History. Four Vols. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1928-1932. iv 1932., pp. 70-98.] These women must have been conspicuous, as they are also mentioned in Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. London, Penguin Press, 1991., p. 59. See Coldham, Emigrants in Chains, p. 55. Oldham, Britain's Convicts to the Colonies, p. 5 on 50 women convicts.

1696: (G. Pratt on Darien p. 1), in 1696, London agents for Co. of Scotland to Africa/Indies, appoints Messrs James Smith and James Campbell of London their agents, merchants and directors of the Co., plus Alexander Stevenson in Edinburgh and James Gibson in Glasgow. Darien connections p. 4 with Honble John Erskin, son of Lord Cardross the Gov. of Stirling Castle. John Haldan, Baron of Gleneagles, Messrs William Paterson and James Smyth, directors, with Lt. Col. Erskin. deal also with Scots at Hamburg, Rhode Island, Sec of Darien Co. is Trumbull, at Hamburg is a link man Sir Paul Ricaut. p. 48, Whitehall June 30, 1697, meeting of HM Comms for Trade and Plantations, re Scotch EICo, ordered that Mr. [William] Dampier who hath lately printed a book of his voyages - Dampier and Mr. Wafer - re queries on Isthmus of Darien. Dampier and Wafer attended again on July 2, 1697, answering re Spaniards at Panama east to River of Chipelo and an island named Chipelo, follows a description of Darien. part III of book is Wafer's description of Darien, surgeon Lionel Wafer, by now, sec of Darien Co. is Roderick Mackenzie.
G. Pratt on Darien p. 50, Surgeon Lionel Wafer in London met Dampier, met in a London coffee house with agents of the Darien directors and th

1696: (G. Pratt on Darien p. 1, in 1696, London agents for Co. of Scotland to Africa/Indies, appoints Messrs James Smith and James Campbell of London their agents, merchants and directors of the Co., plus Alexander Stevenson in Edinburgh and James Gibson in Glasgow. Darien connections p. 4 with Honble John Erskin, son of Lord Cardross the Gov. of Stirling Castle. John Haldan, Baron of Gleneagles, Messrs William Paterson and James Smyth, directors, with Lt. Col. Erskin. deal also with Scots at Hamburg, Rhode Island; Sec of Darien Co. is Trumbull, at Hamburg is a link man Sir Paul Ricaut. p. 48, Whitehall June 30, 1697, meeting of HM Comms for Trade and Plantations, re Scotch EICo, ordered that Mr. [William] Dampier who hath lately printed a book of his voyages - Dampier and Mr. Wafer - re queries on Isthmus of Darien. Dampier and Wafer attended again on July 2, 1697, answering re Spaniards at Panama east to River of Chipelo and an island named Chipelo, follows a description of Darien. part III of book is Wafer's description of Darien, surgeon Lionel Wafer, by now, sec of Darien Co. is Roderick Mackenzie.

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1696: (Olson, Making the Empire work, p.10), in 1696, William III set up the Board of Trade, and its members obtained information from interest groups, as William's government tightened control on the colonies.

1697AD: Hungary: A final victory of the war, the battle of Zenta in 1697, is followed by the Treaty of Karlovitz [Karlóca] in 1699, which, with the exception of a small region, frees all Hungary from Turkish occupation.

1697: William Dampier in Aust ADB. (1652-1715). published his books in 1697 and 1699, and the admiralty consulted him. so he sailed with the rank of captain in Jan 1699 in HMS Roebuck, and on Aug 6 1699 he anchored at the inlet he named Shark Bay. his 1702 court martial declared him unfit to command a HM ship, in 1708 and 1711 he sailed with Apt Woodes Rogers. In 1707 Dampier published his "unfortunate account" of the 1703 fiasco, Apt Dampier's Vindication of his Voyage to the South Seas in the Ship St. George. (London, 1707). entry concludes, "The discovery and settlement of eastern Australia may be viewed as the indirect but none the less real conclusion of Dampier's work. See also, L. R. Marchant, 'William Dampier', JRWAHS, 6. 1963.

1697: The (Scottish) Darien Company by 1697 had £400,000 subscribed, and needed to build ships at Edinburgh and Leith. Its offices were at Milne Square, Edinburgh, Paterson went off to get stores at Hamburg and Amsterdam, left money with a London merchant James Smith, but £8000 went missing, Paterson took the blame on himself, got references from Edinburgh merchant Robert Blackwood and William Dunlop the Principal of Glasgow College, who was an: eminent scholar, accomplished antiquary, shrewd merchant, brave soldier, able politician, zealous divine and an amiable man". Paterson deposed as Darien manager by July 1698 and then the Darien madness entered in, Paterson tried to correct bad management but failed. [sense the Dariens did not know what they were doing] Expedition one landed on a watery morass, in six months, about 2/3rds of the expedition dead, some 1200 people, Paterson so devastated he sank into a kind of second childhood, or early dotage, but recovered.

From 1697, the main stream of convicts transportable is directed to the West Indies.

1697-1699: Montague at Royal Society had introduced Dampier to Lord Orford, Lord Admiralty, and about now, Dampier had realised possibilities of Australian continent, saw Aust as "a country likely to contain gold". So he put a proposal to Admiralty that a king's ship explore the coast of New Holland, mentions other places to be visited with good advantage, he had been commissioned by as early as spring 1698. deciding to round Cape Horn, go to Australian east coast, to go north to New Guinea, which meant he would have got in before Cook. but delayed till September. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 155-156.

1697: Charles Montague later Halifax, lord of treasury in 1692, first lord 1697-1699, in 1714 he again became first lord. 1697, Pelham one of commissioners of Treasury.

1697, 2 July, Lords Justices orders 50 convict women sent to the Leeward Islands. - (Oldham, British Convicts, p. 5.)

1698: The French develop a new company to trade in the Pacific, Compagnie de la Mer de Sud, sending four vessels by Cape Horn which return in 1701. Callao becomes a favoured port for French trade ships.

1698: 18 Chas. II, c3. Act 22 Chas II c.5 and Act 22 23 Chas II c.7. continued all this, transportation being to America of Northumberland (?). London Guildhall records show that the contract system with merchants transporting convicts is in existence by now.

1698: The scientific movement. 1698 Peter the Great of Russia is at Deptford studying shipbuilding and navigation.

1698: Ideas in English Whig circles to form the New or English East India Company, granted its charter in September 1698.

1697-1699: Montague at The Royal Society had introduced Dampier to Lord Orford, Lord of the Admiralty, and about now, Dampier had realised possibilities of the Australian continent, seeing it as "a country likely to contain gold". He proposed to Admiralty that a king's ship explore the coast of New Holland, and mentioned other places to be visited with good advantage. He was commissioned by as early as spring 1698, deciding to round Cape Horn then visit the Australian east coast, to go north to New Guinea. (Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 148-149, 155-156).

1698: July: Dampier was ordered to appear before the Council of Trade and Plantations to be "examined as to the design of the Scotch East India Company to make a settlement on the Isthmus of Darien" under William Paterson. Lionel Wafer was another witness. Dampier's friends now included Sir Robert Southwell, diplomatist and president of The Royal Society, 1690-1695. and Sir Hans Sloane, patron of men of science and founder of the British Museum, secretary of The Royal Society in 1693 and succeeding Isaac Newton as president in 1727. (Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 150ff).

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1698-1707: The profits of the slave trade. A ship the King Solomon of the Royal Africa Company in 1720 carried a cargo of slaves worth £4252. Some 296 Negroes are sold in St. Kitts for £9228, a profit of 117 per cent. The profit on the company's exports 1698-1707 was about 66 per cent. (Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of The Caribbean, 1492-1969. London, Andre Deutsch, 1970., p. 147).

1698: September: There were ideas in Whig circles to form the New or English East India Company, granted its charter in September 1698. The New EICo would trade normally with India in competition to the already-established EICo, but other schemes such as the Darien scheme of the Company of Scotland and the piratical adventures of Capt. Kidd to Madagascar had provided inspiration. The Darien Company cast of characters included William Dampier as a minor advisor, his two patrons, Lord Charles Montague later Earl of Halifax, Chancellor of Exchqr, and Earl of Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty. Both of these were involved in Darien scheme and Capt. Kidd's piracy to Madagascar, So any later findings by Dampier may have gone to Orford and the New East India Company?

1698: The 10th Earl of Argyll a large subscriber to the Darien Co., subscribed £1500, his brother James put in £700, and 22 gentlemen and merchants of allegiance to Argyll put in a total of £9400. There is mention of more Campbells in Darien Co. pp. 102-103, one Major Thomas Drummond was with the Campbells at the massacre at Glencoe, under command of Rbt Campbell of Glenlyon. so, "the Glencoe gang" - which disappeared into the destructive vortex of Darien events.
List of the principal Darien characters including: Capt. Rbt Alliston was a buccaneer and friend of William Paterson, Argyll 10th Earl, Col. Alexander Campbell of Fonab, Capt. Thos. Drummond of the massacre at Glencoe and brother of ship Capt. Robert Drummond, commander of the ship Caledonia of Darien Expedition 1, later commander of Speedy Return on an African voyage, and sailed to Africa with Robert Drummond. Capt. Thomas Green of Worcester later charged with piracy against the Darien Co's ship Speedy Return, Tweeddales also in Darien Co., Sir Robert Christie the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and Lord Belhaven, needed to build ships at Edinburgh and Leith, offices of Co. at Milne Square, Edinburgh, Paterson went off to get stores at Hamburg and Amsterdam, left money with a London merchant James Smith, but £8000 went missing, Paterson took the blame on himself, got references from Edinburgh merchant Robert Blackwood and William Dunlop the Principal of Glasgow College, Paterson deposed as Darien manager by July 1698 and then the Darien madness entered in, Paterson tried to correct bad management but failed. Col. Alexander Campbell of Fonabb (sic), one of Darien link men re proposed Colony of Caledonia on American continent. In 1696, London agents for Co. of Scotland to Africa/Indies, appoints Messrs James Smith and James Campbell of London their agents, merchants and directors of the Co., plus Alexander Stevenson in Edinburgh and James Gibson in Glasgow. connections with Honble John Erskin, son of Lord Cardross the Gov. of Stirling Castle. John Haldan, Baron of Gleneagles, Messrs William Paterson and James Smyth, directors, with Lt. Col. Erskin. deal also with Scots at Hamburg, Rhode Island, Sec of Darien Co. is Trumbull, at Hamburg is a link man Sir Paul Ricaut. A Darien Co. link man re America is Martin Gregory in Amsterdam. Glasgow merchants Walter and Patrick Buchanan, Dr. John Munro, re medicine, voyage of Capt. Richard Long at time Sir William Beeston is Lt. Gov. of Jamaica, in Dec 1698.
(See Spate Vol. 2, p. 169 re Scots and Darien), first Darien Co. directors were 20, 10 in London and seven in London were Scots, great need for privacy re views of the EICo charter, and secrecy, Darien to be a colony with 2500 people .. ships Caledonia and Unicorn reached New York with Thos. Drummond, losing 275 men on the way, Feb. 1700, Caledonia on Darien saved by the arrival of Campbell of Fonabb, and straight to a fight with the Spanish, p. 178, Rising Sun and her consort later to Charleston in South Carolina, to be overwhelmed by a hurricane, and of 1300 people here, 950 died. nb: Pratt-preserved ledgers mentions perhaps only one merchant of Glasgow named Campbell. ledger mentions goods in 1699 from John Sumervil, [1718 - born Colin Somerville son of John Somerville, a Commissioner of General Assembly. James Somerville was an uncle of young Colin. William Somerville was a provost of Beufrew.] and John Munro, Glasgow merchants Thomas Calder, many merchants mentioned, tho few Campbells. Costs from William Arbuckle merchant of Glasgow, outlaid for Speedy Return Capt. John Baillie, for Caledonia. Arbuckle laid out £1415/14/9 and one-third pennies, on or by 23 Dec., 1699.
Pratt on Darien, Carolina colony originally to be a refuge for Scots. Later sailed the Darien ships Speedwell owned by Robert Blackwood Jnr a merchant of Edinburgh, Capt. Jn Campbell and supercargo Rbt Innes, to Macao. Speedwell left Batavia in July 1701 for Macao. Speedwell later wrecked. Other Darien Co. ships Speedy Return and Caledonian, sent out. In Scotland, a plan to send next ship, the Annandale, which was seized by English revenue men. Another Co. ship Content, Capt. Stewart to India. p. xx, claims re the "legalised murder" of Capt Green of ship Worcester, tensions surrounding helped leading to the Union of 1707, this writer claims. Mr. Alexander Hamilton is link man for Darien Co. interests in American colonies.
Capt Thos. Drummond of the massacre at Glencoe and brother of ship's Capt. Thos. Drummond, commander of Caledonia of Expedition 1, later commander of Speedy Return on an African voyage, and sailed to Africa with Thos. Drummond. Capt Thomas Green of Worcester later charged with piracy against the Darien Co's ship Speedy Return.
Capt. Robert Drummond was later commander of Speedy Return on an African voyage, and sailed to Africa with Thos. Drummond. Capt. Thomas Green of Worcester is later charged with piracy against the Darien Co's ship Speedy Return, and the murder of the Drummonds, hanged on Leith Sands). The first Darien expedition comprised five ships, 1200 men and provisions, in ships including Caledonia, Unicorn, and St. Andrew. About July to November 1698 was made the remark: "This harbour ... capable of containing a thousand sail" (a maritime cliché repeated by Arthur Phillip in 1788 regarding Sydney Harbour). Don Juan Pimienta, Governor of Cartegena, attacked and won the second Darien colony by land and sea. Tweeddales also invested in the Darien Company, Tweeddales also in Darien Co., Sir Robert Christie the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and Lord Belhaven, needed to build ships at Edinburgh and Leith, offices of Co. at Milne Square, Edinburgh, Paterson went off to get stores at Hamburg and Amsterdam, left money with a London merchant James Smith, but £8000 went missing, Paterson took the blame on himself, got references from Edinburgh merchant Robert Blackwood and William Dunlop the Principal of Glasgow College, Paterson deposed as Darien manager by July 1698 and then the Darien madness entered in, Paterson tried to correct bad management but failed. Col. Alexander Campbell of Fonabb (sic), one of Darien link men re proposed Colony of Caledonia on American continent. in 1696, London agents for Co. of Scotland to Africa/Indies, appoints Messrs James Smith and James Campbell of London their agents, merchants and directors of the Co., plus Alexander Stevenson in Edinburgh and James Gibson in Glasgow. connections with Honble John Erskin, son of Lord Cardross the Gov. of Stirling Castle. John Haldan, Baron of Gleneagles, Messrs William Paterson and James Smyth, directors, with Lt. Col. Erskin. deal also with Scots at Hamburg, Rhode Island, Sec of Darien Co. is Trumbull, at Hamburg is a link man Sir Paul Ricaut. a link man re America is Martin Gregory in Amsterdam. fix G. Pratt on Darien p221, Darien Co. trying for Surat and a link man re America is Martin Gregory in Amsterdam. fix Glasgow merchants Walter and Patrick Buchanan, Dr. John Munro, re medicine, voyage of Apt Richard Long at time Sir William Beeston is Lt. Gov. of Jamaica, in Dec. 1698. See Spate Vol. 2, p 169 re Scots and Darien, first Darien Co. directors were 20, 10 in London and seven in London were Scots, great need for privacy re views of the EICo charter, and secrecy, Darien to be a colony with 2500 people .. ships Caledonia and Unicorn reached New York with Thos. Drummond, losing 275 men on the way, Feb 1700, Caledonia on Darien saved by the arrival of Campbell of Fonabb, and straight to a fight with the Spanish,
p. 178 Rising Sun and her consort later to Charleston in South Carolina, to be overwhelmed by a hurricane, and of 1300 people here, 950 died.

1698: 25 March: Dampier is given a silly ship, "Jolly Prize", as Lord Orford pleased with this idea of exploration, but by July 1698 Dampier felt vessel unfit, so Roebuck got up, 12 guns, crew of 50 men and boys, provisioned for 20 months.

July 1698: Dampier continually called to London to advise government, council of trade and plantations wanted to know if he had heard of any proposals or bribes offered to Lionel Wafer by the Scotch East India Co.? Dampier July 1698 replied he had not, adding, Wafer unlikely to be able to offer any great service to Scotch East India Co. [Citing, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies]. Clennell Wilkinson, Dampier, p.156.)

July 1698, Dampier ordered (why ordered?) to appear before Council of Trade and Plantations to be "examined as to the design of the Scotch East India Company to make a settlement on the Isthmus of Darien" under William Paterson. Lionel Wafer another witness. note re fantasies of gold mines as worked by slave labour. but Wilkinson feels Dampier and Wafer can have given Council much encouragement to proceed. Dampier's friends now include Sir Robert Southwell diplomatist and president of Royal Society, 1690-1695. and Sir Hans Sloane, patron of men of science and founder of British Museum, sec of Royal Society in 1693 and succeeded Isaac Newton as president RS in 1727. (Clennell Wilkinson, Dampier, pp.150ff.)
Dampier told Orford he was disappointed at smallness of Roebuck crew, among whom were Jacob Hughes master, Lt. George Fisher a gentleman and an enthusiastic Whig later an enemy of Dampier, Philip Paine gunner, mates were R. Chadwick and John Knight. Doctor was Scot William Borthwick and captains clerk James Brand. (Clennell Wilkinson, Dampier, pp.157-158, p. 247 and Dampier as scientist referred to problems of the variations of the compass.

1698 Circa: (G. Pratt on Darien, p. 107), a Mr. Alexander Hamilton is link man for Darien Co. interests in American colonies. [note, throughout, is constant note in documents, the Darien men did not know what they were doing]. Second Darien expedition, ledger kept at Glasgow by Peter Murdoch re ship's outfitting.
G. Pratt on Darien p. 55, Apt James Gibson in Darien Co. ship, Rising Sun, Mr. Cragg interested in making salt. connections include Mr. Paterson, Mrs. Woodrop and Mr. Rbt Blackwood, a Darien Co. ship also named Dolphin.

1698: (G. Pratt on Darien p. 172), Glasgow merchants Walter and Patrick Buchanan, G. Pratt on Darien, p. 166), one John Campbell of Woodsyde, mention of Dinwidie.
G. Pratt on Darien p. 97), voyage of Apt Richard Long at time Sir William Beeston is Lt. Gov. of Jamaica, in Dec 1698.
G. Pratt on Darien p. 221, Darien Co. trying for Surat and a link man re America is Martin Gregory in Amsterdam.
G. Pratt on Darien p188, Re Alexander Campbell of Fonabb (sic), one of Darien link men re proposed Colony of Caledonia on American continent.

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1698: 25 March: Dampier was provided a ship he found useless, Jolly Prize since Lord Orford was pleased with his ideas for exploration. But by July 1698 Dampier felt the vessel unfit, so Roebuck was provided, 12 guns, crew of 50 men and boys, provisioned for 20 months. Dampier told Orford he was disappointed at the smallness of Roebuck crew, among whom were Jacob Hughes master, Lt. George Fisher a gentleman and an enthusiastic Whig later an enemy of Dampier, Philip Paine gunner, mates were R. Chadwick and John Knight. Doctor was Scot William Borthwick and captains clerk James Brand. and Dampier as scientist referred to problems of the variations of the compass. (Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 157-158, p. 247).

1698: July: Dampier was continually called to London to advise government. The council of trade and plantations wanted to know if he had heard of any proposals or bribes offered to Lionel Wafer by the Scotch East India Company? Dampier in July 1698 replied he had not, adding, Wafer was unlikely to be able to offer any great service to Scotch East India Co. (Wilkinson, Dampier, p. 156, citing, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies).

1698 Circa: (G. Pratt on Darien, p. 107), a Mr. Alexander Hamilton is link man for Darien Co. interests in American colonies. [note, throughout, is constant note in documents, the Darien men did not know what they were doing]. Second Darien expedition, ledger kept at Glasgow by Peter Murdoch re ship's outfitting.

In Amsterdam, a Darien contact is one Martin Gregory, p. 226, his brother is Jonas Gregory. (Spate, Vol. 2, The Pacific Since Magellan. ANU Press, Canberra, 1983 re Monopolists and Freebooters, Dutch, Priests and Pearlers, the Buccaneers, Dampier and Darien p 160ff, Anson sails for British, Manila, Peru and California. p 169 re Scots and Darien, first Darien Co. directors were 20, 10 in London and seven in London were Scots, great need for privacy re views of the EICo charter, and secrecy, Darien to be a colony with 2500 people,
p. 173 better stock of provisions than given to Botany Bay in 1788 . 1200 sailed for Darien on July 14, 1698, St. Andrew landed? in Jamaica, Caledonia and Unicorn reached New York with Thos. Drummond, losing 275 mane on the way, callous leadership, July 1698, Darien expedition 1 with three vessels, gave up within a year, (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 285.)

1698: 27 September: Dampier called again to council of trade and plantations re advising on fitting out a squadron against pirates to east of Cape of Good Hope. ship voyage from Madagascar to England. (Wilkinson, Dampier, p. 156-157).

G. Pratt on Darien p. 62, in 1698, a link man is Lord Ruthven. Ship Rising Sun is part of second Darien expedition. p64, a Darien director is Rt. Hon John Marquess of Tweeddale.

G. Pratt on Darien p57, (Dr. Hill Bunton's Darien Papers. p. 59), a Dr. John Munro, re medicine. p. 61. Early 1698: Principal of College of Glasgow, William Dunlop been contacted to recommend a minister to go out to Darien.
Thomas Calder, Glasgow merchant helping fit out Darien expedition.

1698 Circa: EICo Capt. Thomas Bowrey (died in 1713) came ashore with a few thousand pounds, invested in a china shop and a small group of ships he managed, about 1700 he put these in the temporarily free EICo trade, e.g. Rising Sun, Mary Galley, Macclesfield, Trumball Galley, Horsham, Prosperous, and Rochester. He also was husband for the Worcester re Capt. Green and end of the Darien Co. disasters. see R. C. Temple, The Tragedy of the Worcester. 1930.

1698: The Act 18 Chas. II, c3. Act 22 Chas II c.5 and Act 22 23 Chas II c.7. continued the custom of transportation. London Guildhall records show that the contract system with merchants was in existence by now. (Wilfrid Oldham, p. 4).

1698: The scientific movement: 1698 Peter the Great of Russia was at Deptford studying shipbuilding and navigation. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 372).

1698: 21 Nov.: Dampier wrote to Lord Orford on proposed voyage, he had drawn up his own instructions, now too late to get about Cape Horn (Bligh said the same in late 1787), so he'd have to sail via CGH. wanted a gratuity for his men, aware he is insecure in ways of dealing with superiors. His formal instructions came on Nov. 30. to go to CGH and stretch to New Holland, steer any course, wanting a discovery of value, hoping for advantages to nation. internal squabbles braked the expedition, Lt. George Fisher a regular naval officer had been a leading light re expedition had appeared re the board's deliberations. He was later Dampier's enemy. Fisher kept a note book, in 1689 Fisher had served with distinction on William III's fleet at Londonderry. (Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 158-162).

1698, 25 March: Dampier given a silly ship, Jolly Prize, as Lord Orford is pleased with this idea of exploration, but by July 1698 Dampier felt vessel unfit, so Roebuck got up, 12 guns, crew of 50 men and boys, provisioned for 20 months.

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July 1698, Dampier continually called to London to advise government, council of trade and plantations wanted to know if he had heard of any proposals or bribes offered to Lionel Wafer by the Scotch East India Co.? Dampier July 1698 replied he had not, adding, Wafer unlikely to be able to offer any great service to Scotch East India Co. [Citing, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies]. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, p.156.)

July 1698, Dampier ordered (why ordered?) to appear before Council of Trade and Plantations to be "examined as to the design of the Scotch East India Company to make a settlement on the Isthmus of Darien" under William Paterson. Lionel Wafer another witness. note re fantasies of gold mines as worked by slave labour. but Wilkinson feels Dampier and Wafer can have given Council much encouragement to proceed. Dampier's friends now include Sir Robert Southwell diplomatist and president of Royal Society, 1690-1695. and Sir Hans Sloane, patron of men of science and founder of British Museum, sec of Royal Society in 1693 and succeeded Isaac Newton as president RS in 1727. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, pp.150ff.)

Re Argyll's trading to America, if so by when? One Argyll brother perhaps? There is an Argyll brother mentioned re Darien in The Old Scots Navy (?).

Dampier told Orford he was disappointed at smallness of Roebuck crew, among whom were Jacob Hughes master, Lt. George Fisher a gentleman and an enthusiastic Whig later an enemy of Dampier, Philip Paine gunner, mates were R. Chadwick and John Knight. Doctor was Scot William Borthwick and captains clerk James Brand. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, pp.157-158, p. 247), and Dampier as scientist referred to problems of the variations of the compass.

1698: 27 September: Dampier called again to council of trade and plantations re advising on fitting out a squadron against pirates to east of Cape of Good Hope. ship voyage from Madagascar to England. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 156-157.)

1698: There were ideas in Whig circles to form the New or English East India Company, granted its charter in September 1698.

Jan 1699: Wm sent a circular letter to Govs of English colonies ordering them to refuse all aid or countenance to the Darien colonists. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 284.)

1699: G. Pratt on Darien p. 138, VIP nb: the ledger mentions perhaps only one merchant of Glasgow named Campbell. ledger mentions goods in 1699 from John Sumervil, and John Munro, Glasgow merchants Thomas Calder, many merchants mentioned, no Campbells.
G. Pratt on Darien, p. 89, echo here for Phillip, Darien men reckoned they had found a harbour "capable of containing 10,000 sail of Shipps".
G. Pratt on Darien, p. 193, 20 Oct, 1699, costs from William Arbuckle merchant of Glasgow, outlaid for Speedy Return Capt. John Baillie, for Caledonia. no Campbell's were suppliers, Arbuckle laid out £1415/14/9 and one-third pennies, on or by Dec 23, 1699.

1699: The Tories were impeaching about 1699 the Whigs Somers, Portland, Orford and Halifax. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 186, p.195), Montague as Halifax - member of junto p., 225, 27, 381, info being that 186, in 1697 Montague succeeded Godolphin as First Lord of Treasury.

January 1699: Roebuck ready to sail with Dampier aboard. a king's ship. more Dampier books in hands of the printers. and Dampier wrote from Downs to Lord Orford, First Lord of Admiralty, unable to send Orford a copy of book(s), and this volume the second made Dampier even more famous. [Wilkinson p. 154 complains Dampier is damned with faint praise in British DNB]. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, p.152.)

1699: 14 January: Roebuck sailed from Downs, master Hughes. Met at Tenerife, English Captain Travers of the Experiment. Fisher thinks Dampier has put an assassin aboard to kill Fisher, Fisher put off boat, then for Cape Verde by Feb 11. Aug 6, Dampier sees WA then makes for Timor arriving Sept 22. Wilkinson feels Dampier felt he was making a mistake in leaving. Seeing south coast New Guinea Jan 1, 1700. [Byrnes feels he must have been testing the winds]. Dampier lost his ship off Island of Ascension Feb 22, 1701 by a leak, Dampier lost his papers. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 162-181.)

1699: "The Kidd affair" as it became known. 1699, a ship was sent out to get Kidd but it was driven back by a storm, allegations Kidd's backers wanted plunder at home and abroad, admiralty got a percentage from [licenced] pirates. King's grant (William III) for backers of Kidd, a Royal Patent. with dummy names disguising "great names" i.e. the names of Kidd's backers. 1701, Apt Kidd back in London, a furore on his activities and queries on who were his backers? HOC listens to argument and allegations. If Kidd claims, as he did, he is innocent, then he also exonerates his backers.

December 1699, Lt. Fisher off Dampier's ship long back in England and laying in wait with a prosecution. enemies been busy for some time. (Clen Wilkinson, Dampier, p. 182.)

(G. Pratt on Darien, p. 77, p. 271); Darien Manuscripts in Archives of the Royal Society. Dr. James Wallace sailed with Darien Fleet and gave an almost-official record to the Royal Society, if Capt. Pennycook's voyage, Royal Society printed it in 1700-1701 as part of its transactions.

Sept 1699: Third Darien expedition four ships, even beat of an enemy attack, but gave up when enemy returned with stronger force, and evacuated, not one ship returned home of the four, and Wm found the Scots like "raging madmen". (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 285.)

1699: January: Roebuck ready to sail with Dampier aboard. More books by Dampier were in the hands of printers. (Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 152-154).

1699: January: William II sent a circular letter to the governors of English colonies, ordering them to refuse all aid or countenance to the Darien colonists. (Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 284).

September 1699: Third Scottish Darien expedition, four ships, Scots even beat off an enemy attack, but give up when enemy returns with stronger force, and evacuate; not one ship returned home of the four, and William III found the Scots like "raging madmen".
(Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 285.)

1699: Presidents of Council formerly Thomas earl of Danby till 1698, in 1699 was Thomas earl of Pembroke, in 1708 John Lord Somers, in 1711 John Duke of Buckinghamshire.

About 1700: Some governors of Christ's Hospital in London included Arthur Baron, Adrian Beyer, Col. James Boddington, Sir William Coles, Sir James Collett, Peter Godfrey, Samuel Jackson, Robert Knight, Thomas Lockington and Micajah Perry. (A. L. Bier and Roger Finlay, London, 1500-1700: The Making of the Metropolis. London, Longman, 1986., p. 276.)

After 1700: More so with the advent of the Hanoverians, England produced the stereotyped image of portly John Bull. Insensitive and jingoistic, not bright at all, despising the French and the Irish, wanting "the Scotch" kept under the foot, and the fruits of an expanded empire. Often a Whig.

1700: An associate of the Thomson brothers was an emigrant to Virginia, William Claiborne. Claiborne's son, (or, grandson?) was one Colonel Leonard Claiborne, who had two daughters, one, untraced, ? and another, Catherine, who was of a marriageable age by 1700, died 1735. [I am grateful to Virginian genealogist John Dorman for information on the Claiborne family of Virginia]. Catherine married a Scot who by 1700 had left the second or third unsuccessful expedition of the Scottish Darien Company to the present area of the eastern outlet of the Panama Canal, one John Campbell. John Campbell after his disappointing Darien adventures remained in a state of high dudgeon, declaring he would not return to an England or a Scotland which had sabotaged the Darien Company.

The Asiento:

As American silver flowed to Europe, as Europe learned to cope with inflation due to the intake of Spanish silver, there arose a role for the Asiento, or, a market for silver exchange devoted to slaving business. The question of satisfying the supply of and demand for slaves was plugged irrevocably into international business and commerce of the time.

Supplies of ultra-cheap labour for colonies were guaranteed as luxuries (food spices, sugar, tobacco) become more available to the upper classes, then the middle classes. "Capitalism" was corrupted in respect of many factors; the costs of labour, the elasticity of the supply of labour, the operating costs of plantations, the sale price of the final products; all while the Mercantilist attempted to buy cheap and sell dear as a matter of course.

A commercial role for the romantic figure of Prince Rupert should not be forgotten.
(Prince Rupert Wittlesbach (17 Dec. 1619-29 Nov. 1682), FRS: there is a legend that Rupert invented a gunpowder ten times more powerful than existing supplies.

Rupert's father was Frederick Wittlesbach, his mother was Elizabeth of Bohemia. Rupert was linked romantically with Frances Bard and the actress, Margaret Hughes. Rupert became a patentee of the Royal African Company on 10 January 1663, and got involved in that Company's squabbles with the Dutch. He had planned by August 1664 to take 12 ships to the African coast to harry the Dutch. He was upset in 1665 when command of this fleet went to the Earl of Sandwich (Edward Montagu (1625-1672 and not himself.
(GEC, Peerage, Sandwich, p. 432, Mount Edgecumbe; p. 315.)

By 1668 he had a devised a scheme with Monck, the Duke of Albermarle for discovering a passage from the Great Lakes to the South Sea, In June 1668 two ships went to seek the north-west passage; one of the ships was the Eaglet ketch, loaned by Charles II. The expedition had been proposed by a Frenchman, Groseilliers, and the commander was a man from Boston, Zacariah Guillam. A charter of 2 May, 1670 was given to Rupert and others for the Hudson Bay Company. The third Dutch war broke out in March 1672, and on 15 August, 1672, Rupert was appointed vice-admiral of England. By 1673 Rupert was intimate with Shaftesbury.
[K. H. D. Haley, The First Earl of Shaftesbury. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968., p. 229].)

Rupert became partners with Sir Thomas Cicheley and first Earl Shaftesbury, and they hoped the navy would buy guns they manufactured, but this arrangement went bad and they let their rights to one John Browne of Horsmonden, Kent. But Browne soon died and his widow and one William Dyke soon owed money to Rupert, Earl Shaftesbury and Chicheley.

By 1636 or later Rupert had a wild scheme to colonise Madagascar, of which his mother disapproved; Rupert (and/or Charles) asked the advice of the East India Company. Later, an expedition of Rupert's was commanded by one Sir William Batten. Rupert had old grudges against Lord Colepeper. By 1650 Rupert was operating as a pirate against the English and down to Cartagena, and he wanted to use Barbados as a base. His flagship this time was named Constant Reformation. He once took some prizes from the Gambia. Rupert by 1653 came under the influence of the lord-keeper, Sir Edward Herbert, and Rupert was hand in glove with Lord Jermyn and Lord Gerard (Charles Gerard, (died 1694/95) first Baron Gerard of Brandon, first Earl Macclesfield).
(GEC, Peerage, Macclesfield, pp. 328ff; Hamilton, p. 269). From 1654, Rupert spent six years in Germany. [See DNB entry and Eliot Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers including their private correspondence. Three Vols. London, Richard Bentley, MDCCCXLIX., Vol. 3, p. 489). Rupert bought the house of Sir Nicholas Crisp at Hammersmith, which had cost £25,000 to build. [On Rupert's son, Dudley, see Warburton, Vol. 3, p. 466; also Warburton, p. 461, p. 446. Earl Dartmouth, William Legge was a friend of Rupert by 1660. [Haley, Shaftesbury, p. 231] regarding Rupert and the Hudson's Bay Company, with shareholders including Cooper, also the Earl of Craven, Sir Paul Neile (sic) and his business partners, although Shaftesbury made little profits from Hudson's Bay. [GEC, Peerage, Bellomont, pp. 106ff.].

Rupert dealt with the Earl of Craven (William Craven, (1608-1697, first Earl Craven, a proprietor of Carolina, a son of William Craven, Lord Mayor of London in 1610-1611)) in some business deals.
(GEC, Peerage, Craven, pp. 500-502. Bliss, Revolution and Empire, p. 209. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, p. 441. Haley, Shaftesbury, pp. 158ff and variously.

Shaftesbury's commercial involvements included Dorset estates, mining, money lending, shipping, colonial proprietorship. He joined the Africa Adventurers in 1663-1666, and put dependents into East India Company employ. By 1646 he had a Barbados plantation and a ship Rose regular on the Guinea slave coast. He also dealt with the financier and Caribbean operator, Martin Noell.
(Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, Shaftesbury. Bliss, Revolution and Empire, p. 209 on proprietors of Carolina. Israel, (Ed.), The Anglo-Dutch Moment, variously. J. R. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678-1683. London, Oxford University Press, 1961. Shaftesbury's brother George married a daughter of Oldfield, a London sugar-baker. (Haley, Shaftesbury, p. 64; and on Shaftesbury as a Whig, pp. 234-235). A note is given below on the founder of the Whig Party, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton.)

Rupert was friends with Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-1683), first Earl Shaftesbury, often regarded, incorrectly, as "founder" of the English Whigs.
(Much could be made of Shaftesbury's lineage in terms of themes already outlined here: anti-Spanish feeling, furthering colonisation, family connections with earlier privateers, and interloping against the East India Company. In Shaftesbury's background was MP and secretary at war, Sir Anthony Ashley (1551-1622), who married Dorothy Wroughton (died 1616). She had also married MP Carew Raleigh, a privateer and brother of Sir Walter Raleigh. Shaftesbury's second wife was Frances Cecil, daughter of David Cecil (third Earl Exeter), and Elizabeth Egerton, a daughter of John Egerton, first Earl Bridgwater, by Frances Stanley (1583-1635, daughter of Ferdinando Stanley (1559-1594), fifth Earl Derby; that is, John Egerton otherwise married to Margaret Courteen. Shaftesbury's third wife, married in 1655 was Margaret Spencer, daughter of William Spencer (died 1636), second Baron Spencer of Wormleighton, and Penelope Wriothesley (1598-1667), daughter of Henry Wriothesley (1573-1624), who is more properly viewed as founder of the English Whig party. GEC, Peerage, Spencer of Wormleighton, p. 160, Shaftesbury, p. 646.)
(Henry Wriothesley: Who's Who /Shakespeare, p. 234. GEC, Peerage, Craven of Ryton, p. 507; Drogheda, p. 436; Bedford, pp. 80ff; Southampton, pp. 128ff. Hervey, Arundel, pp. 42ff. Joyce (Ed.), Amazon, p. 204, Note 1. He is known in literature as a patron of Shakespeare. He once went on an expedition to the Azores, and was variously involved with anti-Spanish sentiment, the Virginia Company, the East India Company, Bermuda, the North West Passage Company, New England, the "Sea Plan" of 1622, and he helped govern Ireland under Essex. By 1603 he had a farm of Sweet Wines. He came undone as he aided Essex's "insurrection".

Rupert in older age developed a gunpowder ten times more powerful than anything earlier known! It would be surprising if the revised market for gunpowder did not give a strong filip to the demand for saltpetre from India, carried in East India Company ships. By 1650, Rupert was vigourously pirating against English parliamentary ships, although his own fleet had no more than five ships.

1681, Berkely Castle for English EICo sails homes, reputed the richest ship ever went out on Madras Roads, cargo worth £80,000, half its tonnage being not-so-valuable saltpetre, much bullion.
(Davis, Rise of the English shipping industry, variously. Bal Krishna, Commercial Relations between India and England, 1601-1757. 1924.)

By 1651, Rupert was cruising the Guinea coast. His brother Prince Maurice was destined to be lost in a storm at sea by September 1652. Rupert was interested in Barbados and was there by summer 1652, after Ayscue had returned the island to the obedience of Parliament. Rupert did not bring home great prize money, nor political advantage from his sea war with the Dutch. Soon he came under the influence of Sir Edward Herbert, the lord keeper.
(Herbert: Attorney-General 1641-1645. GEC, Peerage, Portland, p. 587; Torrington, p. 784ff.)

Rupert was also close to Lord Jermyn, and Lord Gerard, who all wished to overthrow Hyde.
(Lord Gerard was lieutenant-general of all the forces in 1678-1679, admiral and a Royalist Whig, Charles Gerard (died 1694/95), first Baron Gerard of Brandon and first Earl Macclesfield. Hibbert, Cavaliers and Roundheads, lists, p. 300. GEC, Peerage, Macclesfield, pp. 328ff; Hamilton, p. 269.)

In search of profit, on 10 January, 1663 Rupert became one of the patentees of the Royal African Company of the day, and there followed disputes with the Dutch. By 1668 with others including the Duke of Albemarle he took up the search for the supposed North-west passage via Canada to the South Sea. (The Hudson's Bay Company was chartered on 2 May, 1670). Rupert was first lord of the admiralty between July 1673 and May 1679. By about 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company set out to exploit several million square miles of Canada, with a capital of only £10,500.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 32.)

About then, princes, ministers and the high of society invested in joint-stock companies. James the Duke of York, lord high admiral, was the first governor of the Royal African Company, he bought £3000 worth of East India Stock in 1684; and he succeeded Prince Rupert as governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.
(Sir George Clark, The Later Stuarts, 1660-1714. Oxford History of England. Vol. 10. Oxford University Press, 1965., p. 61.)

It is not surprising, with such men having such commercial interests, conflict broke out with other cross-channel commercial powers.

There has been insufficient serious study of the Asiento, and if the names of all the merchants involved in it were known, the study of slavery could easily become more specific, especially where English involvement is concerned. In 1663, the Asiento arrangements took the form of a contract to supply the agent of the Asiento with 3500 Negroes a year. This could only be done by starving the English colonies of slaves, and anyway this contract delivered few slaves. It is intriguing to inspect what Prince Rupert might have overseen when he (or anyone else of high rank) took any interest in slaving business.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 43, p. 327.)

By 1663, the English slavers had delivered 3075 slaves to Barbados, but war had fretted the supply and the Barbados colonists were enraged at higher costs and other issues related to the Asiento.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 43., p. 327.)

In 1662, the Asiento was granted to two Genoese merchants, Grillo and Lomelin, who were given permission to sub-contract to any nation friendly to Spain. Grillo and Lomelin were soon talking to the Dutch East India Company and English Royal Adventurers. English dealers would now compete with the Dutch for this Spanish trade in slaves. The English developed absurdly optimistic hopes, reflective of their ignorance, in fact. The Grillo Asiento ended in 1671 - one English participant had been Richard (Ricardo) White.

Soon the Asiento was taken up by Garcia, a Madrid businessman, the Consulado of Seville, and a sub-contractor, Don Juan Barrosso, who relied greatly on the Dutch, by about 1671.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, agents lists.)

Some Englishmen involved included Captain Joseph Bagg, agent-general at Cape Coast Castle, John Balle, agent for the Africa Company in Jamaica, Sir William Beeston, nd, governor of Jamaica, agent for Africa Company, Thomas Belchamber, nd, agent for the Africa Company at Nevis, John Booker, agent in Gambia, Colonel Spencer Boughton, nd, agent-general at Cape Coast Castle, Capt Nathaniel Bradley, nd, agent-general at Cape Coast Castle, (Bradley was an agent at Cape Coast Castle in June 1680). John Chidley (a rogue), was agent in the Gambia. Thomas Corker, nd, was agent of the Africa Company at Sherbro. Thomas Crispe was agent in 1655 and 1665. (He has been treated in some detail earlier.)

Other Asiento agents included: Thomas Crispe (sic) agent or factor on the Gold Coast, Thomas Croaker (sic) agent for Asiento, Howsley Freeman, chief agent and merchant at Cape Coast Castle, John Freeman, slave agent at Sherbro (sic), Stephen Gascoigne, the Royal Africa Company's agent in Barbados, Juan Genes, agent of Asiento, Abraham Gill, agent of Asiento. John Hanbury, agent for slaves in Gambia. Robert Helmes (sic) the Africa Company's agent at Nevis, Giles Heysham, an Africa Company's agent at Barbados.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 40-41, p. 298.)

Also, William Hicks was an agent or chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, Capt Ralph Hodgkins was an agent-general for the Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle. John Chidley, an agent in Gambia. Thomas Corker, nd, agent for the Africa Company at Sherbro. Thomas Croaker (sic) was an agent for the Asiento. Asiento Howsley Freeman, agent or chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, John Freeman, slave agent at Sherbro (sic), Stephen Gascoigne, Royal Africa Company's agent in Barbados, Juan Genes, agent of Asiento, Abraham Gill, agent of Asiento, Henry Greenhill, agent-general at Cape Coast Castle, John Hanbury, agent for slaves in Gambia, Robert Helmes (sic) Africa Company's agent at Nevis, Giles Heysham, Africa Company's agent at Barbados, Joseph Holmes, agent and slaver factor in the Gambia, William Hicks, agent or chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, Captain Ralph Hodgkins, agent-general for the Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle, William Hicks, chief merchant at Cape Coast Castle, Captain Ralph Hodgkins, agent-general Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle, John Kabes agent of Kommenda, John Kastell, agent and slaver for the Africa Company at the Gambia.

Lists can continue. The genealogist will wish to know: were any interesting family names listed here, perhaps also connected with other businesses mentioned by English historians of commerce? Hender Molesworth, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica and Africa Company's agent.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 241ff, pp. 297, 330ff.)

Thomas Mellish, agent-general Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle in 1673; Meulanaer and Magnus, (sic) Africa Company's agents at Amsterdam; John Mildmay (sic) agent factor at Ophra; Alexander Oliver, agent of Asiento, at Ophra (also known as Ardra); Josiah Pearson, factor slaver at Anomabu, also agent or factor at Whydah; Charles Penhallow, Africa Company's agent at Jamaica; Edmund Pierce, slaver agent in Sierra Leone. Nicholas Porcio.

More? Maybe an Asiento agent, Rowland Powell, Africa Company's agent in Jamaica.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 297.)

Zachary Rogers an Africa Company agent at Sherbro and accused of helping interlopers; William Ronan, chief merchant or agent of the Africa Company at Cape Coast Castle and accused of helping interlopers; Walter Ruding, Africa Company's agent in Jamaica. (Note: Sherbro was also known as York Island). Sir Edwin Stede, governor of Barbados. An agent of the Africa Company, John Thurloe at Sekondi (sic). A factor slaver or agent at Sekondi was Thomas Thurloe. An agent slaver in the Gambia, Richard White; agent of Asiento, John Whitfield, factor or agent at Anomabu; Richard Willis, agent or slaver factor at Whydah.

In London, the practice arose of contracting for Negroe slaves, in syndicates, which, as agreed in advance with the Royal Africa Company, bought cargoes or fractions of cargoes at a fixed price payable in London. Syndicates or their representatives then became consignees of such slaves and had disposal of them. This seems to have been the normal way of supplying the colonies before 1672. Then the company encouraged contractors to get the slaves. Fractions might be 1/20th of a cargo. By 1713, England carried out the slave trade by an asiento (ie, a silver exchange)
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 294, p. 328; Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, 1450-1920. London, Verso, 1991., p. 221.)

Some pre-1672 merchant adventurers to Africa were Sir John Lethullier, James and John Banckes, Godfrey Lee, Francis Boynton. Sir William Turner (Lord Mayor, MP for London), paid £325 in 1671 to buy a 32/nd share in an East India Company ship Golden Fleece, which made six voyages to the east. Turner had about 1/20th of his wealth in the Royal Africa Company.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 36, p. 159.)

Godfrey Lee of the Merchant Adventurers and the Royal Africa Company was an importer of copper, as was Thomas Vernon of the same Company. Mildmays is old and famous and illustrious Essex family, which died out by 1796. There was once a Mildmay a slave agent at Ophra, according to K. G. Davies' lists.
(Colley, Britons, p. 157.)

The Royal Africa Company of 1672 and the Asiento:

The African Adventurers Company was ruined by its losses and after 1672 was replaced by the Royal Africa Company, which was even more ambitious, which set up six forts on the Gold Coast and one on the slave coast, while the French built up north of the Gambia in Senegal.
(Clark, The Later Stuarts, pp. 332ff.)

Founded in 1672, the Royal African Company had its monopoly broken from 1689 by private traders; by 1712 the private traders gave the Company a 10 per cent commission to fund operation of the forts
(Orlando Patterson, Sociology, pp. 127ff.)

From 1712, the British slave trade became free, so the Company made only an insignificant supply of slaves. Slackness in the English trade allowed Bristol and Liverpool to become ports heavily dependent on slavery, especially Liverpool. Africa House was in Leadenhall Street, first mentioned by 1677. These premises were taken over by the East India Company and from 1766 the Africa Company offices were in Cooper's Court, and later, Cannon Street. (The charter was recalled in 1821 and the remaining possessions on the West African coast were given to Sierra Leone.)

By 1672 there were 70 sugar works on Jamaica (which is a total of 3,840,000 acres). In 1752, cultivable land was measured at 633,336 acres. In 1754 there were 1620 planters with an average holding of 1000 acres, and much land not used for sugar was left idle, despite the island's potential for greater self-sufficiency in food production and urgings that it become more diversified in production. To keep production down propped up the price, and Williams writes, Jamaica could easily have had three times the number of sugar plantations it did have. Producing 760 tons of sugar, 200,000 acres had been granted to 717 families, which is about 280 acres per family. Sugar islands became increasingly parochial in outlook, and, was this due to monoculturalism? Cultivating one acre of cane in the West Indies required [about] 172 days of human labour.
(Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro, pp. 114-119, p. 127.)

After 1670, in London, wealthy West Indian planters began to meet at a tavern, and by 1674 arose the Jamaican Coffee House. So was aided the institutionalisation of West India absentee landlordism. On 27 September, 1672, the Royal Africa Company charter passed the Great Seal, and now it had legal recognition. It could seize the goods and ships of any who infringed its monopoly, it sought gold, silver and Negroes, could make war and peace with heathen nations, raise troops and execute martial law.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 97.)

But financially, matters were chimerical. On 16 December, 1712, an item in London Gazette noted agreements reached about finalising the Royal Africa Company, which then lapsed into sleepiness, and it appeared that since 1672, an original subscriber with £100 stock would have lost between £253 and £350. Its books at times seem to have been handled with criminal dishonesty, or, problems of ignorance, lack of experience in capital management, though one might well ask, could anything like slavery in fact be managed rationally? Davies writes: "The outrage to morality which the Middle Passage must always be should not obscure the fact that it was also an outrage to sound economics".
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 72, p. 96, p. 294.)

An original subscriber, John Bull, for £500, bought another £400 in 1674 and sold all the next eight months. He bought again in 1675 and 1676 and resold; the same, in 1679 and 1685. Others behaving in this way were the Earl Berkeley, John Cudworth, Nicholas Hayward, Thomas Hall. From 1672, more investors: Benjamin Newland bought goods at the company's sales. John Gourney, Thomas Aldworth, Thomas Nichols and Peter Proby supplied the RAC with goods for export as wholesalers.
(This Peter Proby is difficult to identify. Two men named Peter Proby, one Lord Mayor of London 1622-1623, were presumably dead by this period. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Proby of Elton, p. 429.)

Investors included Sir Humphrey Edwin as a company promoter, Sir John Buckworth a commissioner of the Mint, Sir George Waterman the City Auditor. Sir William Langhorne (ex-India with £19,000 in East India stock and £4000 in RAC stock). Sir Jeremy Sambrooke (ex-India with £18,000 in India Stock and £700 in the RAC). And Streynsham Master, ex-India. Old hands of the former Africa Adventurers were modest investors; Abraham Holditch, Henry Nurse former agents at Cape Coast Castle, and Alexander Cleeve a former agent on the Gambia. So, two-thirds of capital was in the hands of businessmen and most of these were overseas traders. Money was drawn from already-established branches of trade.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 66-69.)

By 1672, some small RAC investors were Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Wardrobe (and benefactor of Jesus College at Cambridge); Lawrence du Puy, keeper of the mall; William Ashburnam, cofferer of the royal household; Matthew Wren, secretary of the Duke of York; and Eusebius Mathews ; a few holders of minor civil service posts, some widows, some country gentlemen, a controller of prizes, a cashier to customs, two revenue officers, country men including Sir John Lowther of Lowther, Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven, Sir Anthony Craven of Buckinghamshire, Broom Whorwood of Oxfordshire, George Garth of Surrey, and Francis Farnaby of Kent. Lawrence du Puy, the King's barber. Dudley North, the noted Turkey merchant. joined the RAC to learn how to manipulate joint-stock, with which he was unfamiliar.

By 1672, the new RAC had a sub-contract with the Asiento and an oblique entry was made possible to Spanish colonial markets; gold and ivory would supplement trade in Negroes, and of course, sugar. The RAC would probably be favoured by Charles II, his court, and the Duke of York (who invested in both the East India Company and the Royal Africa Company), plus several ministers and prominent courtiers. But an accident of finance, a stop on the exchequer, poor national finances, debts to goldsmiths, all immobilized, and those who had left money with goldsmiths (by then lent to the crown?) were held up.

Moreover, with the "secret" treaty of Dover of 1671, Charles had gotten cash from France for an attack on the United Provinces. Since the Dutch were so important on the African coast, this was all important; the second Dutch war had been largely an outcome of rivalry on the African coast, and it was notable that many who knew of the "secret" Dover treaty subscribed to the RAC. Including, Clifford (died 1673 had £400 stock), Arlington (£500 stock), Buckingham (£500 stock died 1687), and Ashley (Shaftesbury); four of the five ministers in the Cabal, plus the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Sir William Coventry and Sir Joseph Williamson (secretary of state, £500 stock, sold out in 1687). Plus, John Locke (philosopher interested in colonisation, £400 stock, sold in 1675). Sir George Carteret (£500 RAC stock - his family had a royal charter for Carolina, he was a Lord Proprietor of Carolina and a member of the committee of trade and plantations).

Sir Peter Colleton (large plantation in Barbados, £1000 RAC stock sold in 1675, down to £400). The Earl of Craven (£600 stock). Merchant Thomas Povey. Sir Edmund Andros (former governor of New York). Ferdinando Gorges (£1000 RAC stock, sold in 1679), whose family had estates in New England. Several such names had been associated with Ashley (Shaftesbury) in his earlier [unnamed] colonial schemes. Others were Lord Hawley, Lawrence du Puy and Matthew Wren, close to the Duke of York. Lord Berkeley had up to £1600 stock in the RAC but sold out in 1688. The king, James II, sold his RAC stock, £3000 on 10 January, 1689; James received in dividends £3480 and sold for £5730, with a total profit of £6210 over seventeen years. The Earl of Craven was not a large investor, nor was Lord Powis (£100 stock) or Lord Falconberg. Royalty and their circles never held more than one quarter of the RAC stock.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 60-67.)

By 1672, the primary problem of any African company was a shortage of liquid capital, and the RAC had raised too little. Turnover was slower due to long credit being extended to slave-buying planters. There was the infrastructure cost of fixing capital in forts, so the Company had to borrow heavily. It traded in gold, ivory, dyewood, hides and waxes for the English market and in buying slaves for the West Indies. The need arose to export English goods worth about £100,000 per year, including goods of non-English origin, such as cheap eastern textiles, Swedish iron, spirits such as French Brandy. Beads for Africa came from Venice. English manufacturers objected as their markets were limited, the sugar islands wanted more slaves than were supplied, free traders objected. K. G. Davies writes, the RAC spent up to £25,000 per year on hired shipping.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 44-46, and p. 175.)

The operation of the Asiento involved international speculators in currency, and Spanish, Flemish, Italian and French markets attracted speculators connected with the Crown by asientos. Silver was placed in the most profitable market.
(Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, p. 152.)

In 1674-1676, England renewed its interest in the Asiento and probably dealt with Garcia at Madrid. In 1674 Francis Millington, and in 1676, Peter Proby and various Royal Africa Company shareholders made overtures, such as with a deal for 250 slaves to be delivered to Cadiz. Apparently, regarding a Spanish ship, the Santo Domingo, Richard White, ex the Grillo Asiento, made overtures which the Royal Africa Company later rejected. (Later, Thomas Croaker went from Cadiz to Barbados in the Caribbean to buy slaves). Then Spanish interest switched to Jamaica, where the Spanish stationed a permanent agent.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 330.)

By October 1683, 336 slaves off Jamaica were sold to Abraham Gill, an agent of the Asiento Porcio, (which was a Spanish Asiento in conflict with the Dutch Coymans' Asiento) to Don Juan Genes and Co., and to Don Juan Espino. Later operating was Don Alexander Oliver, a representative of the Dutch Coymans Asiento. There were no more such sales after 1686. The Jamaicans enjoyed dealing in silver, the Royal Africa Company missed a prime opportunity here, but the Jamaicans were notoriously anti the Royal Africa Company monopoly. And in 1686, Molesworth twice complained about the lawlessness of the South Sea pirates. In June 1689, the former Porcio Asiento agent, Santiago Castille ("Sir James Castille") visited England to arrange a deal with the Royal Africa Company for slaves via Jamaica; this was rather an illegal deal which English authorities decided to overlook. War anyway made the deal impossible. Castille intended to sue; the Royal Africa Company claimed "restraint of princes", the outcome seems unknown. It appears anyway from 1693 that Castille had stung a group of Jamaican merchants for over 86,000 pieces of eight due to them (presumably for supply of slaves to Castille's Asiento agency).
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 334.)

The English on the African Gold Coast:

Thomas Crispe in 1655 and 1665 had disputed with Denmark about land near Cape Coast Castle and later made depositions. Crispe in 1649 had become the chief agent or factor on the Gold Coast for Rowland Wilson, Maurice Thompson, John Wood and Thomas Walter, whom he called The Guinea Company. The original site of Cape Coast Castle had been given to the English, was then re-taken by the Swedes, re-taken by the English, all in Crispe's time on the coast.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 40-41.)

But we do not know how many ships used the location. Interestingly, about 1670, a "slaver", Sir Nicholas Crisp sold his house near Hammersmith to Prince Rupert, for the use of Rupert's lover, a house which had cost £25,000. Crisp was active in the Africa trade from 1625.
(Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, Vol. 3. DNB entries.)

(NB: K. Chaudhuri has noted that Guinea was the long-cloth imported by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from the Coromandel coast to be re-exported for the West Indies and African slave marts. Here, the English East India Company was not keen on business due to the "undeveloped" state of the pre-Restoration English slave trade. Guinea stuff was sold to Guinea Company but with little profit.)
(K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640. London, Frank Cass, 1965., p. 201.)
Meantime, between 1660 and 1685, tempe Charles II, the king generally received more money from each pound of Virginian imported leaf that the planter.
(Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 206.)

In England itself, by 1660, any export of wool from Britain was again forbidden, and in 1662, smuggling wool as export (from Kent, Sussex and Essex), was made punishable by death. By 1671 there was abolition of tunnage and poundage as forms of customs duties, and then the "free traders" were styled as smugglers. The first organised English customs duties seem to stem from 1688, and smugglers began to feel persecuted by 1685, for their illegal running of goods was becoming considerable. "Export smuggling" was in wool, and the forbidding of wool export meant that cloth workers had wool growers at their mercy.
(Teignmouth and Harper, The Smugglers. Vol. 1, 1973. (Orig. 1923)., pp. 9-12, p. 21, p. 28, pp. 46-40.)

By 1717, wool smuggling was punishable by transportation. Further penalties were added in 1746, and Dr Johnson thought customs officers were a lower species than smugglers, By the mid-eighteenth century, bands of smugglers were well-organised in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, and gangs ran such as the Hawkhurst Gang, headed by Arthur Gray, who was said to be worth £10,000, whose residence with sweet irony was a site later built on by Lord Goschen, at one time Chancellor of the Exchequer! Also, smugglers using great numbers of horses, a trade in its own right, but Teignmouth and Harper regard them as products of bad laws, a vicious system with its origin tempe William III. Teignmouth and Harper also suggest, p. 14, pp. 60-61, p. 69, p. 75, on 17 Nov., 1747, the gaol at Maidstone was broken open by 12 men and smugglers were released; "robustious days". By 1749, smugglers were conspiring to kill the turnkey of Newgate. By 1787, there were "1425 articles liable to duty"... "very many of them taxed at several times their market value", bringing in revenue of £6 million per year... "in 1797 the customs laws filled six large folio volumes... a total number of Customs Acts before 1760 was 800, by 1813 there were 1300 more added, till Sir Robert Peel tried to re-order the chaos.)

By 1660, commissioners of the Treasury included Sir Edward Hyde, George Monck later duke of Albermarle, Monck's kinsman Sir William Morice, Lords high admirals, and James, Duke of York. By 1660, England had Caribbean bases on Jamaica and Barbados. England found logwood for dyeing in an area with no fixed government, in the Bay of Honduras and on the Mosquito Coast. The Spanish held St. Eustatius which was becoming an entrepot.
(G. Davies, Early Stuarts, p. 301; Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 325.)

Cromwell and commercial developments:

In all colonial administration, Cromwell was personally influenced by a group of London merchant advisors. He placed them on committees, especially Martin Noell (sic) and Thomas Povey. By about July 1656, there had been many complaints to Cromwell from merchants such as Povey and Noell, and so a standing committee was set up. Noell had much influence on Cromwell. Noell was from humble origins in Stafford, but he became a "great capitalist", an alderman of London by 1651, a member of the East India Company, and he also had many West Indian connections. Noell was first heard of, trading to Monserratt and Nevis, by 1650. He had acted as a contractor for the Western Expedition, and was an agent for the army out there, so he received a large land grant on Jamaica. His brother Thomas was prominent at Surinam and Barbados. Noell flourished as shipowner, importer, a landowner in the West Indies and Wexford, merchant, contractor, money lender.
(Fraser, Cromwell, pp. 533ff.)

To Povey is owed a great deal, for he made the beginnings of a definite colonial policy. English merchants by 1656 had gone a long way with continuing the former anti-Spanish tradition of piracy, and they proposed that parliament incorporate a West India Company to attack Spanish towns, to interrupt the Spanish treasure fleet and to drive Spaniards from control of the West Indies and South America.
(Newton, Colonising Puritans, pp. 325ff. Povey's papers are in the British Museum, E.g., 2395, folios 89-113, and 202-237. Povey's Letter book is: Add. MSS, 11411.)

By 9 December 1654, as the Western Design was firming, Daniel Searle was made governor of Barbados at a council meeting. Venables, Penn, Winslow and Butler were all being named in a commission, but it had not been understood in London that Barbados had developed its own unique way of life (and for example, was developing its own slave code which was later exported to Jamaica, then to Virginia).

About 1654, Jeremy Sambrooke examined the financial behaviour of the East India Company.
(K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600-1640. London, Frank Cass, 1965., p. 208.)

By 1657, the East India Company's directors were seriously considering selling the Company's factories and rights, but the general court (shareholders) overruled them. At this point, Cromwell came down seriously in favour of continuing the Company as a capitalistic enterprise, but oddly enough, no copy of the charter issued by Cromwell in 1657 still exists. The charter which was issued is thought to have resembled the charter of 1609.
(Ian Bruce Watson, Foundation for Empire: English Private Trade in India, 1659-1760. New Delhi, Vikas Pub. House, 1980.)

After 1657, more shareholders were let into the East India Company, and the newly-chartered Company bought all the properties of the Old Company. Dividends would be paid in cash, not in commodities as had earlier been the case. Cromwell's charter was later abridged by a charter Charles II issued in 1661. By 1659 or so, Charles II's new Company charter had five important features; it allowed the company:
(1) to acquire territory;
(2) to coin money;
(3) to command troops and fortresses;
(4) to make alliances (5) to exercise civil and criminal jurisdictions.
(Newton, Colonising Puritans, variously. In 1659 with business bad in the City of London, many merchants were not attending for lack of employment, poor families were in danger of perishing and wards found it difficult to support them with the Poor Rate. Also in 1659, a treaty demonstrated that Spanish power on the wane, leaving some ways open for British adventure.)

The Restoration and commercial developments (not including Barbados):

With the Restoration, West India merchants in London persuaded Charles II to retain Jamaica as a royal colony, and later came the appointment of Sir Thomas Modyford, royal governor of Jamaica 1664-1671. Modyford promoted agricultural development and attacks on the Spanish, which got him personally £1000 per year from buccaneers, and he wanted liberal land grants and Barbadians to join him. Modyford himself had 22 parcels of land in eight parishes.
(Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 154ff.)

By 1660 and later, with the Restoration, some independence was lost on Barbados, with the Navigation Act which tied sugar islands to English interests. Barbados' planters became subject to London's mercantilist policies. Charles agreed to annul the Carlisle claims to the island and confirmed earlier Barbadian land purchases. So in some senses, Charles assumed direct control, following which he sent out Francis Lord Willoughby as first royal governor. Willoughby had already been governor 1650-1652. By 1660, Peter Watson had brought to London the petitions of Modyford and others in the Barbados assembly.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 45-48.)

By 9 July, 1660, once Lord Willoughby was directed by the king to take up as governor of Barbados and other Caribbee islands, respecting his position as lessee of the Earl of Carlisle's rights, of course, the Courteen interest protested, as noted earlier. Lord Willoughby, had cause to refer to the actions of a group of planters and merchants in London who resisted the imposition of proprietary government for [their own] private ends.
(A "governor of the Caribbean" was William Willoughby (1616-1673), sixth Baron Willoughby. Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 32-33. GEC, Peerage, Bellomont, pp. 106ff; Willoughby, p. 709ff.)

By 1667 these men were thought to include Peter Colleton, Peter Leare, Mr. Ferdinando George. These were all absentee planters continuing the work of Kendall and Colleton, and they worked against the development of any agency by Povey.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 26-28, pp. 40-41.)

By 1660, the most influential elements in the West India interest were the merchants whose rise to power had been mainly caused by the share they took in the Cromwell western expedition of 1655, writes Penson. Noell's interest declined. Povey's schemes disappeared with the decline of the Willoughby interest. By September 1665, another pro-Willoughby agent in the wings was John Champante, a clerk in the Grand Excise office.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 38.)

In effect the island was cheated by the king. But the Barbadians shrugged their shoulders, and it was from about now that some Barbadians were knighted, becoming "sugar-coated knights" in partial recognition of their gentry status. These included Sir Thomas Modyford, Sir James Drax, Sir Peter Leare, Sir John Colleton, Sir John Yeamans.
(Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 80.)

Also with Charles II and the Restoration, the East India Company directors gave gifts of their loyalty, and the king gave them a favourable charter and accepted loans over 16 years of £170,000.
(Mukherjee, Rise and Fall, p. 75.)

In a different trading sphere, by about 1660, more than half of the beneficiaries of the capital in the Royal Adventurers to Africa were peers or members of the Royal Family; including the Duke of York, Princesses Maria and Henrietta, Prince Rupert (who withdrew), the dukes of Albemarle and Buckingham, the earls of Bath (who withdrew before capital had been fully paid up), Lord Hawley (who withdrew) Ossory, Pembroke, St Albans and Sandwich. Commoner investors included some of the greatest mercantile figures of Restoration London; Sir Robert Vyner, Edward Backwell, Sir John Robinson (Lord Mayor, London MP, deputy-governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and director, East India Company), Sir Philip Frowd, Sir Andrew Riccard, Sir William Coventry (withdrew).
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 64-65. [See C. T. Carr, Select Charters of Trading Companies. Selden Society. nd.])

By 16 July, 1660, as Penson writes, authorities in London wanted Colonel Modyford installed at Barbados. Modyford's friends in London wanted this outcome. Friends here being led by John Colleton and aided by favour of General Monk, both of whom were relatives of Modyford. The group of friends appears to have been Peter Watson, John Colleton, [Sir] James Drax, Thomas Kendall, Jonathan Andrews, Tobias Frere, Edward Walrond (sic). Given the views of Lord Willoughby, these all remained concerned about their tenures. By 1671, this group would dominate the actions of any agent for Barbados. By 30 August, 1660, as disputes over Barbados continued, a committee had backed a decision of the king, as some rival claimants appeared, the heir of the earl of Carlisle and the representative of an earlier grant, James, Earl of Marlborough, and so Kendall, Colleton et al had again to press their case for a royal government of Barbados, versus, it seems, any proprietary right.

Redevelopment for convict transportation:

By 1660, there arose also a petition stating that the prisons were sanctuaries for the rich and able debtors, but murdering dens of cruelty for the poor. The Fleet debtors' prison then was in use; the warden had to make a living and pay his assistants from extorting the inmates, much as depicted in Henry Fielding's novel, a century later, Amelia. But at least the ordinary criminal was fed. Meantime, the city was full of various kinds of rogues, cheats and con-artists, more so at the end of the civil wars.

During the civil war, Scots, Irish and English enemies of the commonwealth were transported mainly to Barbados and Virginia. And since it was difficult to induce enough emigrants, a regular trade grew up in kidnapped persons. Transportation of the vagrant and the criminal appealed to authorities as an easy way out. (James in 1617 had ordered that notorious malefactors be transported to Virginia, or be put as soldiers into wars.)
(G. Davies, Early Stuarts, p. 321.)

London's poor law administrators were vexed by wanderers from the country, so they promoted an act of 1662 enabling them to remove to their place of origin anyone who became chargeable. This limited the freedom of movement of the poor, and of labourers, as a disciplinary measure, and the law for punishing vagrants was also strengthened. About 1667-1669, Act 18 Car II c. 3 empowered the judges to exile for life the border brigands of Northumberland and Cumberland to any of the American colonies. This act expired in 1673.
(Eris O'Brien, Foundation, p. 124.)

There was an increase in new types of workhouses (factories), houses of correction or bridewells, prisons under another name, but the Quakers set up their own bridewells, such as Clerkenwell in London in 1701; and a poor-law system was set up where corruption could as easily be conducted as genuine charity and helpfulness.
(Clark, The Later Stuarts, pp. 52-53.)

Charles II arrived in London on 29 May, 1660. So arrived the Restoration of the Stuart Family. A new parliament, the Convention Parliament, was royalist, and Charles persuaded on condition that he promised amnesty to former enemies of the House of Stuart. He paid the army arrears and guaranteed religious toleration. Military power went to the Cavaliers and policy arose from the group known as the Cabal (made from their initials). The Cavalier parliament assembled in 1661, restoring a militant Anglicanism, and Charles considered re-asserting absolutism, though the crown remained still dependent on Parliament for revenue.
(Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 107.)

All over Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, autocratic monarchy was receiving resistance from two sectors - aristocracies and privileged corporation. One might wonder, could this in any way by put down to population pressure and economics? Absolute monarchy could not manage a system enabling increasing populations to live at a sufficient standard.

Moves between Barbados and Jamaica:

By December 1660, in London, some members of the Council for Foreign Plantations include Secretaries of State, others of the Privy Council, some experts, Lord Willoughby, the Earl of Marlborough, some west Indian planters and merchants such as, Sir Peter Leare, Sir Andrew Riccard, Sir James Drax, Thomas Povey, John Colleton (a relative of Modyford), Edward Walrond, Martin Noell, Thomas Kendall, Thomas Middleton, William Watts. These latter merchant names all worked together for five years with the board. (Povey seems to have also been linked with events in Virginia and New England). Maybe, Povey had ambitions of becoming an "agent-all-round" ?
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 34-37.)

Earlier, Povey had been more or less recommended by Willoughby to the governors of Montserrat and Nevis, colonels Osborne and Russell respectively, on concerns of the islands. By about 1663, Colonel Philip Froude was secretary of the council for Foreign Plantations, and he had the support of Modyford's party, and Lord Bartlet and others, regarding the antagonist Povey.

By December, 1660, a charter arose for the Royal Adventurers into Africa, which by now had very shaky finances, and in Davies' view was more "an aristocratic treasure-hunt than an organized business". By January 1663 there was a rethink, a revised charter, and specific mention of the slave trade as a company objective. Capital was about £120,000, one seventh of which was never paid, including £6000 promised by the king.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 41.)

With this 1660 founding of The Company of Royal Adventurers to trade to West Africa, there was apparently little no connection with the Caribbean. All this followed the 1588 endeavours of the Senegal Adventurers, which had only eight original members and was not incorporated; they had a monopoly to trade to Senegal and Gambia for ten years. No next development happened until 1618.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 39.)

By 1661 too, the East India Company had a revised charter, which allowed it to maintain forts and raise troops for their defence. So began its new era with paid-up capital of £370,000, permanent joint-stock.
(Mukherjee, Rise and Fall, p. 75.)

In 1665 began a purely commercial war, Anglo-Dutch, which stemmed from conflict on the African west coast. Captain Robert Holmes was aggressive there over the winter of 1663-1664.
(In 1664 Capt. Holme's expedition founded Fort James about 20 miles up the Gambia River, after cleaning out the Dutch, as a new base for English operations. There followed a confusing series of English-Dutch capture and recapture.
(Clark, Oxford, pp. 332ff.)

Holmes took Goree north of the Gambia River and Cape Coast Castle on the Gulf of Guinea. Captain Nicolls took the New Netherlands (New York).
(Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 63. Anglo-Dutch Wars continued, of 1652-1654, 1665-1667 and 1672-1674. Notes, Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 20-22. Anglo-French wars continued of 1666-1667, 1689-1697 and 1702-1713 were very destructive to the Caribbean, more so than North America.)

In 1661, Robert Holmes for the Royal Adventurers into Africa expelled the Courlanders (Latvians) from the mouth of the Gambia River, and James Island was occupied by the English. There was trading to Sherbro and Sierra Leone, but the Dutch placed obstacles, so in 1664 Holmes captured Dutch settlements at Cape Verde. De Ruyter then in 1665 swept out the English from all areas but Cape Coast Castle.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 42.)

The king decided to grant New Netherland to his brother James, the Duke of York, as a proprietary province. James' deputy was Richard Nicholls, who sailed for New Netherland from Boston, and Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered in Sept 1664. New York's trade staple was fur. Part of the New York territory included what would become New Jersey, and James, Duke of York here favoured his friends Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, two defenders of the Stuarts during the Puritan Cromwell period. In 1665 they established a government for the area, but New Yorkers protested at this as it clashed with their own interests. In 1674, Lord Berkeley sold his New Jersey interests to two Quakers, John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge; who later used trustees including William Penn.
(Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, pp. 115-116.)

By 29 March, 1661, Walrond on Barbados had decided Kendall and Colleton were really working for the reinstatement of Modyford on Barbados. Willoughby got himself to Barbados by 1663 and found considerable intrigues there.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 32-33.)

By June 1661, Povey's old friend William Watts was in command of the government of St Christopher. Povey's brother Richard was then on Jamaica, and Jamaica had a new governor, Thomas Lord Windsor.
(Thomas Windsor (Hickman) (1627-1687), seventh Baron Windsor and first Earl Plymouth, appointed governor of Jamaica in 1661. He disbanded the Roundhead army on Jamaica and cancelled commissions to privateers.
(His DNB entry. GEC, Peerage, Plymouth, p. 560; Windsor, p. 800.)

Povey's influences abated however from 1663. In the years after the Restoration, Povey's influence declined as he was linked with Willoughby, and the ruling party on Barbados was anti-Willoughby. About 1664-1666, Povey was surveyor-general of the victualling dept. in London.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 10-13, pp. 35-38.)

English merchant and lawyer Thomas Povey first became active about 1650-1655. By about 1664-1666, Povey was surveyor-general of the Victualling Dept. and dealt with West Indian islands. Maurice Thompson and Martin Noell (sic) were friend of Povey. Thomas Povey, a barrister of Gray's Inn and a merchant with widespread interests, was well-known for exerting his influence; his brother Richard was secretary and commissary general of provisions at Jamaica and another brother was William, provost marshal at Barbados.)

In 1662 the Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa also had one purpose, to oust the Dutch in the slave trade. The East India Company had leased as a calling place, Cormantine (Kormantin), a few miles east from the Dutch Cape Coast Castle. By now this was the third English-Africa Company, and it took over an East India Company factory, Cape Coast Castle, a few miles east of a Dutch station, Elmina, on the Gold Coast. Breda gave Cape Coast Castle back to the English.
(Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 332.)

The Duke of York was apparently involved here, as he put £3600 more into the Africa Company, which surrendered its charter in 1663 and had a new one issued, to The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa. This charter mentioned slaving specifically, the idea being to supply slaves to the West Indies on credit. The new company took over Kormantin and Cape Coast Castle, but was soon troubled by the Dutch (the English ambassador to Holland then was Sir George Downing). A series of wars arose between Britain and Holland.
(Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro, pp. 136-137.)

The deeper interests of the "proprietors of Carolina":

The granting of the "proprietorship of Carolina" south of Virginia, was not simply a sole-colonisation venture. It was one outcome of a large-scale, highly imaginative melding of many diverse strands of economic endeavour, with a view to keeping that endeavour in the hands of organisations bound largely to royal monopolisation. It is very likely that the outbreak of resentment in the 1790s, of merchants "interloping" against the East India Company, in the time of William III, was the expression of a London-based, long-held, Whiggish-minded resentment at what the "proprietorship of Carolina" might have come to, as is easily found from an examination of the interests of the Carolina proprietors. Those interests stretched from eastern Canada, south down the American coast, past Virginia, south to the Caribbean sugar islands, to Surinam, also to the West African coast, and around the Cape of Good Hope to India, via the financial interests of the East India Company, about the time that England gained Bombay. The scope of the interests held was enormous, since it embraced most of the earlier history of English colonisation, plus existing entry points into the Levant trade, as we find...

Carolina was intended to be the next jewel in the crown of colonisation, but its promoters already had extensive interests in all that had gone before... In a sense, Carolina represented a capture of the fruit of colonisation that the Stuarts had previously given too little attention. "The Carolina proprietors" in effect represented the start of a royally-controlled set of trading companies, with, potentially, enormous geographical scope and reach. As such, it embodied most English themes so far expressed in history, including, naturally, the continued occupation of Ireland. A first charter was issued on 24 March, 1663, a second charter in June 1665. (The Royal Africa Company was revivified from 1672.)

A grant had been made respecting the Carolinas as early as 1629, but no serious attempt was made to colonise till 1663, with eight proprietors, who received from Charles II a proprietary grant of Carolina. They were "many wealthy and most influential men in England". Waterhouse imparts in his first chapter, in 1663, the man who had initiated the entire affair, to be joined by the governor of Virginia, was Sir John Colleton, a rich Barbados planter. He was, with Sir William Berkeley and Lord Ashley, a member of the Special Committee for Foreign Plantations. Colleton was a relative of Jamaica's Sir Thomas Modyford.
(Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, pp. 119ff; Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 78, Note 62. Davies, Royal Africa Company, index.)

The Carolina proprietors became:

Sir William Berkeley (1606-1677), governor of Virginia in 1641.
(Bliss, Revolution and Empire, p. 209. Haley, Shaftesbury, pp. 230ff. J. T. Wertenbaker, Virginia Under The Stuarts, 1607-1688. 1914.)

And in the wings, his brother, Lord John Berkeley of Stretton (1602-1678), Commissioner of the Navy and member of the Privy Council. John, a friend of James, Duke of York, was a proprietor of New Jersey, a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. John married Christian Riccard, daughter of Sir Andrew Riccard, some-time governor of the Levant Company and also of the East India Company. Christian Riccard also married Henry Rich, first Viscount Irwin, of the family of the Earls of Warwick.
(Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 72. GEC, Peerage, Berkeley, pp. 147ff; Warwick, p. 416.)

Cromwellian Lieutenant-General, George Monck (1608-1670), first Duke of Albemarle, Captain General.
(Bliss, Revolution and Empire, p. 209. GEC, Peerage, Albemarle, pp. 87-90. George Monck's son Christopher became the heavy-drinking governor of Jamaica known to Sir (Dr) Hans Sloane. Christopher married Elizabeth Cavendish who also married Ralph, first Duke Montagu, as his first wife. Ralph by his second wife had a son John, second Duke Montagu, earlier mentioned as "John the Planter", owner of St Lucia in the Caribbean.)

Edward Hyde (1608-1687), Earl Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, whose son, Lawrence (died 1711), first Earl Rochester, was a partner with Willoughby, the governor of Barbados, who also owned Surinam. Of course, Edward's daughter, Anne, had married the king's brother, James, Duke of York, governor of the Royal Africa Company, of Jersey, of the Hudson's Bay Company. Lawrence Hyde shortly before his death was governor of the Merchant Adventurers in London.
(GEC, Peerage, Clarendon, pp. 265ff; Rochester, pp. 49ff. Of particular interest here is the conjunction of interest possessed by both the Royal Africa Company and the East India Company in the strategic location on the African coast, Kormantin.)

Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl Shaftesbury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had investments in the Guinea Trade and Barbados. He was distrusted by Royalists, so the others "came in to provide needed support".
(On Barbados, Carolina and slavery: Richard Waterhouse, A New World Gentry: The Making of a Merchant and Planter Class in South Carolina, 1670-1770. New York, Garland Publishing Inc., 1989. Especially, Chapter 1.)

Sir George Carteret (died 1679-1680), treasurer of the navy, member of the Board of Trade. He had been with Prince Rupert on Rupert's piratical adventures. Carteret was also a proprietor of New Jersey. His widow sold such rights to William Penn of Pennsylvania.
(Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, Vol. 3.)

William Craven (1608-1697), Earl of Craven, Lord Lt. of Middlesex, member of the Privy Council. At first sight, he does not seem to be anyone who might be involved!
(Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Whitmore. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Bond of Peckham on "colonist", London alderman William Bond; Kemeyes of Kenanmabley. R. G. Lang, `Social Origins and Social Aspirations of Jacobean London Merchants', Economic History Review, 2, V, 27, 1974., pp. 28-47. GEC, Peerage, Craven, pp. 500ff.)

Craven however was Master of the home of navigation, Trinity House; a commissioner of the government of Tangier. He brought in the useful interests of the families of recent Lords Mayor of London. Son of a Lord Mayor, he was also son of a daughter, Elizabeth, of the Lord Mayor in 1631, William Whitmore, Haberdasher. His brother, John (1610-1648), first Baron Craven, by his marriage may have brought in the family interests of the Spencers of Wormleighton/Althorp. So, the name Craven presumably contributed standing City interests, and very strong ones.

The king, it is said, gave the Carolinas to these parties, as in his view, "he could not deny the strength of this coalition".
(Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, p. 120.)

Was he such an unaware businessman, oblivious of such an array of geographically spread and lucrative interests? Most of these proprietors had sustained colonial interests. Colleton was engaged with Barbados, Sir William Berkeley had been a governor of Virginia. Carteret and John Berkeley were involved with New Jersey. Carolina was suitable for "baronial estates". Once the disgruntled Barbadians arrived in Carolina, the system there provided a specialised plantation agriculture, promoted slave labour, and reduced the flexibility of the existing local social system. Articles for the government of Carolina were drawn up by Shaftesbury with the help of the philosopher John Locke, and were based on political ideas "already outmoded" in England itself.
(Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, pp. 119-121.)

That is hardly any wonder. After some 55 years in power, the Scots Stuarts were simply beginning to realise where the future lay! And when they did realise, they overplayed their hand disastrously.

From 1663, when the most active Carolina proprietor was (so it is said) Shaftesbury, Sir Peter Colleton on Barbados, the eldest son of the Carolina proprietor, had joined forces with Sir Thomas Modyford, as some 200 Caribbean men were thinking of going to Carolina. After 1667, the first permanent Carolina settlement was made on the Ashley River, in 1670.

Dunn notes there had been some "aristocratic claptrap", of trappings dreamt up by Shaftesbury and Locke for the government of Carolina; its Fundamental Constitutions.
(Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp. 112-114. Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, speaks of "archaic, mediaeval ideas, outmoded in England itself", p. 121.)

Later, from 1672, into the 1690s, the only revenge a London or outport-based merchant could take on this royally-inspired takeover of up to half-the-known-commercial-world was to engage firstly in "interloping " activity about Africa, against the Royal Africa Company, and when that failed, in the 1690s, to go interloping against the East India Company, east of Africa. It is also hardly any wonder that when the Scottish Darien Company arose in the 1690s, it also tried to fulfill many of the dreams inherent in the model provided by the royally-backed plans of "the Carolina proprietors". And all this is in the late 1690s was where the "Caribbean pirate", William Dampier, a man very familiar with English themes-in-history, gained employment circa 1700 when he sailed by terra australis incognita. blut

A royal slaving company:

In 1663 the new royal slaving company told the king, Charles II, the very being of the plantations depended on supply of Negro slaves. Williams observes acidly, Europe was seldom so unanimous as in its view of its dependence on the value of Negro slave labour. Later, in 1672, the organisation was called The Royal Africa Company, and by 1680, (there was rising the lobbyists' dependence on the impressive statistic as a tool of trade), forts in Africa were estimated to cost £20,000 per year. There was a need certainly for private control of the Company, which like other slaving companies had enemies. In short the Company wanted a monopoly; and in 1671 the West India planters owed the Company £70,000 for slaves, for Jamaica alone.

By May 1671, after debate about failures, the Royal Adventurers were suggesting a new subscription of £100,000 and wanting the existing charter continued, with creditors to get 33 per cent plus old/new stock via a complicated formula. A new book for subscriptions opened on 10 November, 1671, then fresh plans arose, and a new company would buy all the old for £34,000. Between 10 November, 1671 and 11 December 1671, some 200 people underwrote stock to £111,600. Some original subscribers were John Locke and Shaftesbury. There were some delays in getting the capital in, caused by outbreak of a war with the Dutch, although in general the subscribers were keen to place their investment.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 59.)

But in 1698 (while free traders were also again assailing the East India Company in London and about India), the Parliament abrogated the Africa Company's monopoly and threw slaving open to free trade. Although, a duty was applied of ten per cent on all goods exported to Africa for the purchase of slaves. Such goods included woolens (also part of the triangular trade), iron bars, guns and brass goods including pans and kettles. By 1682 Britain exported about 10,000 bars of iron to Africa yearly.

Eric Williams has discussed statistics provided by the pioneer seventeenth century English economist, Charles Davenant, indicating that by about 1700, England's total profit from trade amounted to £2 million, with the plantation trade accounted for £600,000 of this, and the re-export of plantation produce bringing in £120,000. The triangular trade pattern represented 36 per cent of England's commercial profits. About 1700, Davenant added that every individual white or black in the West Indies was seven-times more profitable than an individual at home in England. (And in 1700, Bristol had only 46 ships in the West Indian trade.)

The Royal Africa Company dealt in fabrics, including perpetuanas, lighter than serge, durable, cheap, while serge came from Devonshire. The Company bought goods from an Exeter agent or a London intermediary, one of whom was William Warren, a Company shareholder.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 177-178; p. 183.)

Knives and swords came to Royal Africa Company (RAC) from Samuel Banner of Birmingham (400,000 knives and 7000 swords). Banner had earlier supplied the Hudson's Bay Company. Brokers used in London to deal with RAC imports included the prominent Robert Wooley, who paid the RAC 65,000 in ten years, although the destination of the goods since they left Wooley's hands has never been traced. On the lines of trade went; West India commodities going to London refiners, ivory to cutlers and furniture makers, dyewood to salters.

However, by January 1665 the Royal Adventurers owed £100,000, and supply reverted to private persons. There arose the Gambia Adventurers with a capital of £15,000, its shareholders being the members of the parent body, peers and courtiers, though by 1665 a number of prominent London merchants had entered the Company. It was too late, however, and by 1670 was talk of winding it up.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 43-44.)

The Royal Adventurers sent no slaves to Jamaica after 1665; Jamaica probably sent or used slaves made available by private traders under licence. The RAC did not supply slaves again till 1674 (in which year, William Dampier was about Jamaica!). Jamaica became a strong opponent to monopoly of slave supply.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, pp. 308-310.)

Meantime, themes anti-Spanish were not forgotten. In 1665 with the connivance of the governor of Jamaica, three British captains including Henry Morgan made their way upriver and sacked Granada, capital of Nicaragua, while other parties later pillaged the Pacific coast. In the winter of 1670-1671, Capt. Morgan with 1800 men again took Granada and Porto Bello, and Providence Island, then went across Isthmus and took Panama, Old Panama never rebuilt, the Spanish were never recompensed for these losses. Morgan was later knighted and became Lt-gov of Jamaica.
(Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 328.)

In September 1666 had blazed the Great Fire of London, beginning with an accidental fire on London Bridge. In four days 13,000 houses were destroyed, plus larger buildings in between, all to a property value of £7-10 million. Fire insurance was a thing of the future, and oddly enough, when fire insurance did come, various names in London's sugar business became conspicuous in promoting it. And in the country, there were riots due to unemployment and high taxation.
(For various other trade figures of the time, regarding sugar and tobacco providing employment in the East End and on the south bank, with the East India Company by the 1670s admitting it competed with the Levant Company in silk handling, see pp. 132-138, A. L. Bier and Roger Finlay, (Eds), London, 1500-1700: The Making of the Metropolis. London, Longman, 1986, citing E. S. Morgan, 'The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630', William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 27, 1971. N. Williams, 'England's Tobacco Trade in the Reign of Charles I', Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 65, 1957.)

Neil Hanson: The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London, 1666. Doubleday, 2001.

Iain Gateley, La Diva Nicotina: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced The World. Simon and Schuster, 2001, 403pp.

Progress of the English East India Company: By 1661 and later, with the Restoration, England did not own "one inch" of Indian territory.
(Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 348.)

The East India Company held its factories as tenants to the native rulers, operating mostly at Surat (north of Bombay on India's north west coast), the principal port city on the west coast of India, side by side with the Dutch. (From 1668 the French also had a factory there). On the east coast the chief English factory was Fort St George, at Madras. The English also had some factories on the Coromandel coast, Masulipatam (on the mid-eastern Indian coast), and on the coast, Balasore (south of Calcutta), Orissa, Hughli (south of Calcutta on the west Ganges River delta).

Another East India Company factory was at Bantam in Java, another at Bencoolen in Sumatra. The Company leased some factories on the African West Coast as calling ports, and here lies a problem, since it is difficult to find reports on East India (or "slaving") trading occurring at these ports. Presumably, trade did take place, and if so, yet another nexus was formed enabling "East India" and "slaving" money flows to mingle, with the proceeds naturally amalgamating in London.

Meanwhile, the acquisition of Bombay in full territorial sovereignty from the Spanish as a wedding gift for Charles II provided many new opportunities. When the Duke of Marlborough had come to collect Bombay with five men o' war, the Portuguese governor was unhappy, and difficulties remained till 1665. Charles found Bombay all to expensive and gave it to the East India Company for a quit-rent in 1668. The Company thought well of Bombay and soon transferred their local headquarters to it from Surat.

This coincided with a change in tempo for East India Company activities. Initially, with disorder noted all over India, the Company in London remained quite cautious and unambitious, but on the spot in India, Company staff thought they could only survive by taking strong measures, and so they lead the Company by the nose.
(Clark, The Later Stuarts, p. 350.)

The Company's Indian garrison mutinied against the Company's pussyfooting attitude. (The Company also lost Bantam). Charters granted to the Company in 1661 and 1683 had given it the right to coin money, to exercise jurisdiction over English subjects, to make peace and war, and to enter into alliances with Indian rulers. Under James II the Company directors wanted the condition of a sovereign state in India, so that they would not be at the mercy of local rulers. Initially, the Company enjoyed prosperity under Charles II, but this lapsed, partly as English interlopers had reduced profits. (Those interlopers tend not to be named, unfortunately).

A remarkable interloper was Samuel White, about the time of the operations of the "association" of Sir William Courteen. The East India Company as well as interlopers or free traders were guided chiefly by lust for loot. Samuel White began as a Company employee, as trade was mostly in Indian cotton goods in exchange for cash or English manufactures. However, there was also arising the "country trade", the intra-Asian trade. Interlopers engaged in this enthusiastically, but Company staff did not; at least, "not officially". Country trade became an indirect source of revenue for the Company, and all was countenanced so long as the free traders stayed away from the London markets. This was the situation Samuel White met at Madras when he arrived in 1676. Samuel joined his brother George, already an interloper, at the capital of Siam, at Ayudhya. Samuel worked on Siam royal ships delivering elephants, and trading on his own account. He also found the Siamese preferred dealing with the French, and an idea was to keep English ships out of the Bay of Bengal.

White however was allowed to fit out armed ships, and he entered on piracy against Burma and Golconda, then to Sumatra and the Persian Gulf. In about two years he acquired about £150,000, and finally the Company in London got orders from James II that White be removed from the service of the King of Siam. White remained between a rock and a hard place, and he would not survive the intrigues of Siam. So in 1687 he sailed one of his ships to Madras, escorted by an East India Company ship with Weldon, come to fetch him. White's lies to the king of Siam cost about 80 English lives in the long run, but White arrived home, just as James II had just fled. William III was now on the throne, a time was ripening favourable for White and all interlopers, while misfortunes would settle on the shareholders of the Company. White brazenly decided that the best form of defence is offence, and so he would sue the Company. But he died in 1689 before any case came up.
(Mukherjee, Rise and Fall, pp. 79-83.)

White was not the only English aggressor! In 1686, an East India Company expedition was sent to capture and fortify Chittagong (on the east of the Ganges River delta). It was intended to make war on the King of Siam and to capture an island near Bombay from the Portuguese; but only the Chittagong project came off. The Mogul Indians besieged the English everywhere, and the English retreated down to the site of modern Calcutta (on the west of the Ganges delta, where Job Charnock prevailed). One English response was to blockade the progress of Moslem pilgrims to Mecca, which rather oddly led to an Indian backdown, and also had some bearing on the foundation of Calcutta.

In the later years of Charles II, the Company was troubled, and in 1693 it had to bribe its way with senior ministers for a new charter from the crown. Here, the House of Commons wanted no exclusiveness for any one company to India, and said all subjects had a right to trade to India unless prohibited by Act of Parliament. With such disputes, London Whigs later wanted to examine various accounts in the City, some of them, Company accounts. The bribes of 1693 were discovered, and the Duke of Leeds, who had received 5500 guineas, was impeached.

It appears, that William III simply auctioned the monopoly to the East. The New East India Company offered a loan to government of £2 million at 8 per cent, which was accepted despite a lower interest rate bid from the Old East India Company. So Du Bois of the Old Company bought heavily into the New. It was finally realised that the two companies had to merge. The (Old) Company averaged only 13 ships per year, but despite difficulties the United Company found an annual profit of £300,000 per year during the first four years of its existence. (In 1693 it was estimated that the Old Company spent £170,000 in "secret service money", bribing the Crown or its ministers and parliamentary contacts in return for a favourable new charter.) Later, the Duke of Leeds/Danby was impeached. There were at the time, few Whigs in the Company, and by 1695, dissension broke out, which assisted the Scottish (Darien) company - which will be discussed further in detail.
(Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 328, pp. 352-354. Ian B Watson, Foundation, p. 29.)

Earlier, some of the Eastern interlopers thought they might link with the Scottish Company trading to India, but this came to nothing. There was, however, yet another visitation of old-versus-new. There arose two English East India companies, the Old and the New. This produced intense rivalry in the East itself. The New Company at one point made a handsome loan to the government, the directors of the Old held to what they had, and acquired shares in the New. The New company had less an imperialistic attitude, day-to-day in the east, and by 1702 it only mattered when the New fused with the Old following "wise mediation" by Godolphin. There appeared the United East India Company, a final body which obtained most of the sea-borne trade of India, plus the imperial inheritance of the Mogul emperors.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 43-48.)

The Caribbean: slavery and convict transportation:

In 1664, due to Sir Thomas Modyford, Jamaica lock-stock-and barrel adopted the slave code which had earlier been written on Barbados. With the aid of his kinsman Monck, Duke of Albemarle, Modyford in 1664 became the royal governor of Jamaica, and in 1664 he sold his Barbados property, got 20,000 acres in Jamaica for himself and relatives and soon owned a property, Sixteen Mile Walk, the grandest plantation on the island, with six hundred servants and slaves.
(Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p 82.)

Modyford boasted, he was "a planter become a governor" But Modyford's move to Jamaica did not destroy the anti-Willoughby faction on Barbados that Modyford had built up to hinder first Searle, then Willoughby.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, p. 39.)

To 1668, William Lord Willoughby had been out to the Leeward Islands, and when he got back home to London he was granted a renewal of his commission as governor of all the Caribbean Islands. By 1668, Barbadian agitators with Lord Willoughby had included Sir Paul Painter and Ferdinando Gorges.
(This was probably a merchant of St Bartholomew by the Exchange, active 1674, a colonist, and an investor in the Royal Africa Company according to K. G. Davies' lists; Hasler, History of Parliament, Vol. 2, pp. 206ff. Sir Ferdinando Gorges "the father of American colonisation", was proprietor of Maine in 1639-1647. His own DNB entry. Burke's Landed Gentry for Gorges of Wraxall. GEC, Peerage, Coningsby, p. 395; Southwell, Castle Matress, p. 149.)

A list of those who were restive with Willoughby's privileges begins to look like a list of London's earliest Whigs of the merchant classes; merchants less than enamoured of autocratic royalty.

Which is no accident. From the 1680s, London Whig merchants were to express themselves vigorously about royal monopolies, rights to free trade, new colonies (such as Carolina), and naturally, their financial interests were ranged around Eastern trade and slavery. London's Whig merchants who came to final prominence during the reign of William III only tightened earlier existing financial linkages which made the mutuality of slavery and East India Company business profitable, sophisticated in technique, more free in attitude - and as this happened, further development of the Virginia-London tobacco trade created new sources of profit. Incidentally, by 1681, most of the MP investors in the Royal Africa Company were Tories; between 1681 and 1702, 14 of 16 successful Tory candidates were interested in the Company, which may have reflected the influence of James II in the Company generally.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 104.)

Sir Josiah Child's management of the East India Company:

By 1630, the East India Company had some 12,000 employees in stable employment.
(Olson, Making the Empire work, p.17.)

Sir Josiah Child (died 1699) is regarded as "the father of Mercantilism". He placed his daughters in marriage well, to the Duke of Beaufort, Duke of Chandos, Lord Granville; and his own son became Lord Tilney.
(Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 402. Rudolph Robert, Chartered Companies and Their Role in the Development of Eastern Trade. London, G. Bell and Sons, 1969., treats Sir Josiah Child.)
(Some interesting contemporary and other titles of relevance here include: A. V., An essay for regulating the coin. 2nd Ed. 1696. A. Abram, An Abstract of the Grievances of Trade, etc. London, 1694. A. Abram, An account of some transactions .. relating to the East India Company. London, 1693. R. Allen, An essay on the nature and methods of carrying on a trade to the South Sea. London, 1712 B. E. A new dictionary of terms, ancient and modern, of the canting crew. London, circa 1696. W. R. Bisschop, The Rise of the London Money Market. London, 1910. J. S. Brewer, British Merchant; or, Commerce preserved. (C. Kind, Ed.). 3 Vols. London, 1721. Carry Jr., Case of Messrs. Brooke and Helier, circa 1700. Carry Jr., The Case of Richard Thompson and Company. London, 1678. R. Coke, Collection of the debates and proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695, upon the inquiry into the late briberies and corrupt practices. London, 1695. Thomas Culpepper, Plain English ... concerning the deadness of our markets. London, 1673. (Following up Culpepper's 1641 tract against usury). F. W. Fairholt, Tobacco: its history and associations. London, 1859. W. Forbes, A methodical treatise concerning bills of exchange. 2nd edn. Edinburgh, 1718. E. Halley, Atlas maritimus et commercialis. London, 1727. W. C. Hazlitt, The Livery Companies of the City of London. London, 1892. W. Herbert, The History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London, etc. Two Vols. London, 1837. R. B. Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business: 1660-1760. Newhaven, Connecticut, 1915. [Reprinted, Newton Abbot, 1968]., p. 353, pp. 429 ff.)

Josiah Child as a young man left London for Portsmouth to make his fortune from vittling Cromwell's army. He returned to London in the 1660s and bought a brewery.
(Furber, Rival, p. 97.)

By 1664, Sir Josiah Child was warning that the North American colonies would become "prejudicial" because of their growing maritime strength.
(Albion, Forests and Sea Power, p. 245. Westerfield, Middlemen, p. 406.)

Child was broadly correct. During the 1690s Josiah Child labelled New England as "the most prejudicial Plantation to this Kingdom", and described the inhabitants as "a people whose Frugality, Industry and Temperance, and the happiness of whose laws and institutions, promise to them long life with a wonderful increase of People, Riches and Power."
(Philip S. Haffenden, New England in the English Nation, 1689-1713. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974. Introduction, and p. 54. Also, See Michael G. Hall, et al (Eds.), The Glorious Revolution in America. Chapel Hill, NC, 1964.; Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1955.; Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660-1775. Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1966.; Curtis P. Nettels, Money Supply of the American Colonies. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Wisconsin, 1934.)

By 1673, Child was the largest shareholder in the East India Company, as dissatisfaction was rising with returns from the Company, and interlopers were competing. The Company was split on how to deal with interlopers or not, and there was also debate over whether to exclude the King's brother, James, the Duke of York (later James II) from succession to the crown or not.

The opponents of the interlopers, including Child, were supporters of the King. Many of the pro-interlopers were exclusionists, and a pro-exclusionist was Thomas Papillon, an East India Company director since 1663, a pro-republican with Dutch financial interests. The opposing forces within the Company were matched equally till Child became Governor of the Company and Papillon became deputy-governor in 1681.
(K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge University Press, 1989., p. 87. According to Furber, Rival, Sir Josiah Child was no relation to John Child who worked for the East India Company in India.)

On 11 November, 1681 Papillon moved to wind up the Company's joint stock in three years and open a new joint stock to interlopers. This was defeated. Papillon also wanted more parliamentary liaison for the Company. Later, Papillon and his supporters were ousted, so they sold out of the Company. Child meantime had judiciously distributed "presents". Papillon faced damages of £10,000 and fled to Utrecht. The rebels had to sell out their stock to Du Bois and withdraw to lick their wounds, Papillon was finally fined £10,000 by Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys for sedition and fled overseas. A small clique of about forty men closely connected with the court were left in control of the Company, and stockprices rose.
(Mukherjee, Rise and Fall, pp. 76-77.)

About 1684-85 arose a legal case, the East India Company versus Thomas Sandys. By 1683, a Company interloper, Thomas Sandys, gained a royal prerogative to create a monopoly of the Indian trade. Judge Jeffreys upheld the royal prerogatives but interloping continued. In 1691 the interloping group had a new society meeting at Dowgate, and they got a case to Parliament in 1694. In 1698 the New East India Company was set up. It gave a loan of two million to the state, but the Old Company bought out the new for £3.2 million, just as the Company was feeling greater need for permanence in India.

The king's right to use royal prerogative to create a monopoly whereby the Company could seize interlopers was upheld, and after the accession of James II in 1685, the Company could successfully prosecute interlopers. The Company obtained a new charter in 1686, although Company fortunes fell and, quite outrageously, and partly due to the work of Sir Josiah Child, the Company was waging war on the Mogul emperor, Aurangzeb, just as William III came to the throne in 1688-1689 - and as the pirate Samuel White had come home.

Abroad, Thomas Papillon noted the case of Samuel White, came home, and with others with a fund petitioned Parliament to throw open the Indian trade. A French war delayed matters. Governor of the Old Company, Sir Josiah Child, "father of Mercantilism", fought all this. The Company spent nearly £90,000 in bribes in one year to keep its exclusivity. An inquiry found it was the Company's usual practice to distribute bribes to great men; that in 1693 it had spent about £90,000 on bribery. The Duke of Leeds was charged with accepting a bribe of £5000 and impeached. Great men tried to smother the inquiry. Parliament was prorogued. Some £10,000 was traced to William III.

With William III installed, however, Papillon felt confident in returning from abroad. A war of pamphlets began in London. The interlopers rose again. Whig interests sought a new charter for the Company from William and the fight lasted eight years. Sir Josiah Child possessed enough influence to get bills through favouring the monopoly. Then the Company stupidly failed to pay a new tax and so forfeited its charter. A new charter was written by October 1693, although in 1694 the Parliament resolved that all subjects of England had an equal right to trade to the East unless prohibited by Act of Parliament.

So matters made for a standoff. As William III might have allowed the claims of the private (eastern) traders, then came the threat of the Scottish Darien Company, while in 1697 the weavers attacked East India Company House, and Child's house too. Child finally failed in efforts to restrict the stock ownership of the Company, so much so that he used two brokers to sell shares dear and buy cheap. But now it was Parliament, not the King, which granted charters for trading monopolies.

Sir Josiah Child, "autocrat of the East India Company," remained a favourite at the court of Charles II, since he made Charles many private loans. Charles in gratitude made him baronet. Child was a Whig who rose to Whig governorship of the East India Company. James II hated Child, but Child turned Tory for James, rather aggrandizing himself as part of the exercise.

It was this Toryism which led to revolt by the Company's Papillon faction. As Tory, Child fared badly with 1688 Revolution promoting William III, but power remained covertly in his hands. Child often gave bribes, and bribery and corruption with the Company reached "amazing proportions" from 1688 till later in Walpole's times. "To obtain and maintain the exclusive economic and political privileges in England, it (the East India Company) combined bribery with protestations of honesty, intrigues with outward submission, plunder of foreign lands for the small clique with declarations of serving the British interest of promoting trade, and, later, rapine of India" writes Mukherjee, along with the hypocrisy of the carrying of "the white man's burden".
(Mukherjee, Rise and Fall, p. 47. Maurice Collis, British Merchant Adventurers. London, William Collins, 1942. W. M. Torrens, Empire in Asia: How we came by it: A Book of Confessions. London, Trubner and Co., 1872.)

And in all, it could be said, that as a writer on trade and economics, Child may well have been too busy to notice that slavery existed, and that workers needed living wages. His writings were some of the early formulations which corrupted the heart of the capitalism of his day. There was indeed an ideological battle starting. A lesser-known figure, Sir William Petty, did however write on seamen's wages versus landlubber wages in the early 1670s.
(See: C. H. Hull, (Ed.), Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, as cited by Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 152.)

As for "business styles"... Before 31 July, 1691, stockjobber William Sheppard, the greatest of the stock jobbers of his day, was buying and selling £6000-9000 in Royal Africa Company stock, also dealing in other stocks, including for the Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company. He ended with Company stock lots of £70,000.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 83.)

And in 1691, Sir Josiah Child and seven others owned more than 25 per cent of Royal Africa Company stock, and voted their own way, accordingly.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 156.)

Was it simply racism which made the writers of the day on economic topics overlook the fact that behind sugar and tobacco profits, behind slavery, was a violent, irrational, and institutionalised determination not to pay workers a sensible wage for their labour? If so, then it was partly racism which corrupted "capitalism" at the core, for the oversight affected notions on final sale prices for commodities. This oversight, and its affects in later commentary, helped to lay the basis for discussion on trade and economics. Whereas some historians are more prone to speak merely of the Mercantilists' fondness for "buying cheap and selling dear", or the difficulties of finding sufficient bullion to use in the East. As it was, "buying cheap" could also entail warfare.

The Royal Africa Company as supplier of slaves was also a worry, as it had "narrow interests". "The outrage to morality which the Middle Passage must always be should not obscure the fact that it was also an outrage to sound economics", as Davies writes.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 346.)

Davies calls the entire operation a failure as a capitalist organisation, due to wars, operating on three continents, under-capitalisation, structural defects, slow communications, as well as the inhumanity and immorality of the exercise.
(Davies, Royal Africa Company, p. 294.)

Two men regarded as "political economists", Josiah Child and Dalby Thomas, were investors in Royal Africa Company slaving operations.
(Mintz, Sweetness, p. 155.)

Note: The fortunes of the Childs, the Riders and the Heathcotes might be measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds.
(Davis, Rise of the English shipping industry, p. 95.)

The large London timber merchants drew widely on London business circles to take shares in ships they built.
(Davis, Rise of the English shipping industry, p. 148.)

The usual trading rights for East India Company ships captains made them a fortune in four or five voyages. In the Africa trade, captains always and mates often could carry their own slave cargo separate and freight free.
(R. Davis, Rise of the English shipping industry, p. 87.)

The lists are long: Sir Josiah Child (the greatest shareholder and personality in the East India Company in the 1680s and 1690s); Sir John Moore (director of the Company and Lord Mayor 1681-1682 and MP for London in 1685); Sir Gabriel Roberts (Company director, deputy-governor of the Levant Company); Sir Samuel Dashwood (Company director, Assistant to the Levant Company, MP for London, Commissioner of Excise); Sir Robert Clayton (still in the rise of his fortune-making, "the great scrivener", MP for London, Lord Mayor, director of the Bank of England); Sir William Prichard (Lord Mayor 1682-1683, MP for London, Company director); Sir William Turner.

By 1665-1667, Sir Josiah Child was already eminent with Company as a director. In his view, trade with India was the most beneficial sort of English trade, although requiring over 25 of "the most warlike mercantile ships". In Bengal, the Moguls had resisted the first Portuguese, on the Hugli River.
(The name de Souzas can be found in J. J. A. Campos, History of the Portuguese in Bengal. London/Calcutta, Butterworth and Co., 1919., p. 189, p. 197, p. 157.)

The Portuguese about Bengal fell into piracy. But from about 1665, possibly from Chittagong, it was the Portuguese whose ideas probably gave the English East India Company its ideas when, in 1685, Child waged war on the Mogul emperor, Aurangzeb.
(More merchant names are in Campos, History of the Portuguese in Bengal, pp. 19ff, p. 126.)

"Sir Josiah Child [nd] as chairman of the East India Company Court of Directors writes to Governor of Bombay nd to crush countrymen (English) who had invaded ground of the Company's pretensions in India."

In 1681, Child had become governor of the East India Company. He soon became convinced the Company already had the power to make war on Indian politics, regarding the use of Fort St. George. Child was very concerned with revenue volumes, more so as overheads had to be paid.
(Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 3.)

Child's policies became very aggressive and expansionary, and he wanted to defray the overhead costs of infrastructure, (just as did the Royal Africa Company).
(Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 83.)

About when Child began thinking of making war on the Mogul emperor, Aurangzeb, Sir John Child in India (no relation to Sir Josiah, evidently), was admitting that the Company at Surat owed £281,250 to natives of Surat. It was inconvenient to pay even the interest here, and some way had to be found re such obligations.
(Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India. Vol. 1. New Delhi, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1970., p. 206.)

Mogul reactions were swift and drastic, moving against the English at Surat, Masulipatam, Vizagapatam. Bombay was attacked. The Emperor took English humility, and then came the firman of 1690, on condition the Company paid all dues to Indian merchants, gave compensation for losses inflicted on Empire, and recalled Sir John Child from India. So Bombay was evacuated and permits for trade on Indian west coast and Bengal were restored. Sir John Child, the Company, about 1681 had become exasperated by the behaviour of Mogul officials in Bengal and wanted to chastise Aurangzeb. The Company from London gave Child increased military and commercial powers, the same powers as the Dutchman Van Goens enjoyed at Batavia with VOC.

But the war went badly for Child, the west coast English reluctant to fight. Some Mogul pilgrim ships were seized, English ships brought in prizes, but costs included the imprisonments of some English at Surat and a siege of Bombay. The East India Company directors in January 1686, including Josiah Child had decided on war, but had no local knowledge. Their plan was naïve: to declare war on Aurangzeb from the west, cut off Moghul shipping, while in the east they would take Madras, evacuate Company servants from Bengal, seize Mogul ships as sea, and take Chittagong as a base for moving up the Ganges with forces led by Capt. William Heath, to try to take the Mogul viceroy's capital at Dacca. Only Job Charnock saved this absurd situation from complete disaster, and by-the-by he had established Calcutta by 1692.
(Furber, Rival, pp. 96-97.)

Child evidently brewed Company discontents after 1681 when he became Governor. He heeded Augnier's advice about conducting commerce with sword in hand, so he wanted the Company to save for this purpose, and also develop new sources of revenue at both Bombay and Madras. However, his idea to increase taxes at Bombay contributed to Keigwin's rebellion of 1683. Hearing of Keigwin's actions, such as imprisoning the Company's deputy-governor, Charles II appointed John Child Captain-General of all the Company's forces in West India and sent out a ship ordering Keigwin to surrender. Keigwin surrendered. In 1685, John Child was created Baronet.

Sir Josiah Child, becoming Company governor in 1681, had been slow to persuade, but he finally went for war on Indian polities. The infrastructure matter, the cost of fortifications, was a strong point. And by 1684 the Company wanted to strengthen Fort St. George, wanting like the Dutch to see a fort pay its way.
(Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 48.)

By 1700, Thomas Pitt in India was reporting to Child, about increasing English revenue while not upsetting the local government. The Company wanted to increase its revenues as well as its commercial trade, and relevant ethical questions were not addressed till Clive's time in 1765, when he was given diwani rights.

Memorably, Child once expressed contempt for the laws of England as "compiled by a few ignorant country gentlemen" who hardly knew how to make laws for the good of their private families, let alone regulating companies and foreign commerce. And although this remark of Child's seems contemptuous, an examination of the views of those he criticised here makes one suspect he was correct. Josiah Child helped appoint John Vaux as Governor of Bombay, in which context arose Child';s amazing remark, "the laws of England are a heap of nonsense".
(Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 36, p. 72.)

And Child did want his own increasingly aggressive orders carried out. In 1669, Child in his writings made remarks on the timber trade, at a time when 200 ships sailed for "Eastland", but England he feared was not building enough new ships for that trade. Child, of course, wanted only English ships to be used.
(Albion, Forests and Sea Power, p. 157. Davis, Rise of the English shipping industry, p. 53, p. 160.)

(Before 1713, it became convenient more so for the East India Company shipping interest to become associated with senior Company directors, partly as then, the shipowners could promise themselves that their own ships would be used, and men setting up this modified system included prominent Company members of the Company court such as Sir Josiah Child, Sir Jeremy Sambrooke, Richard Hutchinson and Charles Duncombe.

Endnote: After 1670, the Bahamas were subject of a grant to certain of the Carolina proprietors of 1670, [CSP iii, No. 311, pp. 132-133, 1 Nov., 1670. By 1775-1776, the Royal Governor of South Carolina was Lord William Campbell]. The proprietors of Bahamas made little provision for defence, and in 1704 the Bahamas had become depopulated (about 150 families were there) due to war. Salt was the chief product. The Bahamas became a stronghold of pirates, a situation not addressed again till 1715. By 1707, the collector of customs for 20 years on Bahamas had been John Graves.
(Penson, Colonial Agents, pp. 99-103.)

For years the proprietors of the Bahamas had been resident of England, using an agent to see to their interests in dealings with the Board of Trade, one Thornburgh. By 1706, Graves was telling government that the Bahamas decayed due to neglect by the proprietors.

More on English trade from 1650

The Whiggish context of William Dampier's explorations:

WHEN the Tyrant of Distance who has had such ill effect on the writing of Australian history considered Dampier, he shore Dampier of his links with the Darien Company. So he shore the legend of the discovery of Australia of connections with Scottish Enterprise and/or the English New East India Company.

With reference to Australia per se, the history of Pacific exploration has been cast in terms of three main themes - European rivalries based on treasure lusts-plus-misinformation, versus a purer or more abstract interest in exploration, science and discovery, plus improvement in the arts of navigation. And thirdly, a sense of disappointment that such little of use was found, as with the Dutch ventures on the northern Australian coast. The Dutch ventures had more to do with hopes for an expansion of Mercantilism - and Dampier's voyage, even more so.

But a review of William Dampier's career should be given a preface, about piracy generally...

Where pirates from their own point of view can operate successfully, the waters they use are obviously not being successfully policed by any national power. What can any particular state do about this? If particular states cannot police given waters, the historical record seems to suggests that states react passively by not policing the waters themselves, and also by letting no other state police those waters. In this situation, maritime arenas become decontrolled, and no power can be properly exercised by any particular state. Pirates are virtually given free rein, though they become subject to land-based law if they are captured, or if they land.
(Australian Encyclopedia. In 10 Vols. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1958. Grolier Society. of Australia, 1962. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, cited earlier. G. R. Elton, England Under The Tudors. London, Methuen, 1955. Clennel Wilkinson, William Dampier. London, John Lane, 1929. George Wycherley, Buccaneers of the Pacific: of the bold English buccaneers, pirate privateers & gentleman adventurers, who sailed in peril through the stormy straits or pierced the isthmus jungle, to vex the king of Spain in the South Seas & the Western Pacific, plundering his cities & coasts & preying on his silver fleets & his golden galleons. London, John Long, 1929. (Found in the Bateson Collection of maritime history in the library of the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney.) Margaret Irwin (pseud), The Great Lucifer: A Portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. London, Chatto and Windus, 1966.

Given the anti-Spanish reputation of the British sailor-pirate, it remains to be asked why, after 1788, so few British ships ever bothered the Spanish in the Philippines before, say 1810? However, a colonel of the East India Company army who had commanded artillery for Clive of India at the Battle of Plassey, Robert Barker, visited the Philippines in 1762. (Valentine, British Establishment, Vol. 1, p. 48). In 1779, a Baron of the Scottish Exchequer, Sir John Dalrymple, suggested attacking Spanish colonies from the Cape of Good Hope or New Zealand. (Robert J. King, `"Ports of shelter and refreshment..": Botany Bay and Norfolk Island in British naval strategy, 1786-1808', Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 22, 1986., p. 202. Christopher Hibbert, King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780. London, Longmans Green, 1958., p. 25.) An MP married to one of the New York Loyalist family, Susanna De Lancey, Sir William Draper, died 1787, once a colonel at Madras, led troops to capture Manila, finding a ransom for it of £one million which was never paid. Valentine, British Establishment, Vol. 1, p. 267).

In the 1790s, and by way of fulfilling an old tradition of English prejudices, the Enderby whalers of London wished to conduct punitive expeditions against South American coastal cities using convicts from Sydney. Here, the Enderbys may have had in mind such moves as the 1797 plan to conquer Manila in the Philippines. The expedition assembled at Penang, the later Duke of Wellington having had some hand in planning. The expedition was called off due to the need to fight Tipu Sultan of Mysore.
(This latter material is from the early chapters to D. G. Hall, Henry Burney: A Political Biography. London, Oxford University Press, 1974.)

For a period, as it were, the pirates do the policing. Meanwhile, normal trade becomes difficult or impossible; which suggests that trade routes are either stymied, diverted, created, or, recreated. The uneasy relationship between states, legal merchants and pirates becomes an unstable boundary for the exercise of state power... and this was all the political environment that amused and challenged William Dampier enormously - and a great many other pirates, including William Kidd. And, another pirate working in the East, already mentioned, Samuel White.

In the late 1690s, Dampier was leading up to his second voyage by north-western Australia. Earlier, arising from his first voyage to there, on Capt. Swan's ship Cygnet, in 1667-1668. Cygnet had sailed from Mexico to the Marianas, then to the Philippines, then to north-western Australia (had she sailed west through Torres Strait?), then to Christmas Island, past the Sumatran Coast to the Nicobars. Dampier arrived home from this trip in 1691. Once there, he wrote a negative report which, along with Dutch inability to make successful settlements in Northern Australia, conditioned European views on the usefulness of the Australian land mass till the late 1760s, before Cook sailed. Of the Australian Aboriginals he saw, Dampier wrote, "The miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these." The important word here is "wealth", of which the Aboriginals seemed to know nothing, because what interested Mercantilists was wealth. If inhabitants of Australia had no wealth, no thriving population, this was sufficient reason for Mercantilists to ignore the area. Dampier later tested this view on behalf of notable English Whigs.

As preamble also, two other points should be made. Firstly, from the Indian Ocean, or from South-East Asia, or from the Pacific Ocean north of the Tropic of Capricorn, that is, north east of Australia, maritime approaches to Australia were made difficult by wind patterns.
(Australian Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, pp. 183ff, Grolier edition, 1958. Yet another overview of European interest in Australasia is available in: J. M. R. Cameron, Ambition's Fire: The Agricultural Colonization of Pre-Convict Western Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 1981.)

These wind patterns deflected or deterred European approaches, let alone settlement. Even the Dutch landings made from Indonesia, around the Gulf of Carpentaria and Arnhem Land, where many Dutch place names survive on today's maps, proved relatively fruitless except in navigational terms. That is, navigators had to find a way to avoid such wind patterns; and this was part of Cook's achievement. If Australia's Aboriginal people were so long isolated from the rest of humanity, these wind patterns suggest the most useful explanations why. Asian and Arabic mariners were generally coast huggers. Successful approaches to Australia - and departures from Australia - needed the application of European-style, blue-water, star-gazing navigation techniques (and ship's discipline, which could be brutal).

Secondly, viewing matters retrospectively, from the time of Matthew Flinders' circumnavigation of Australia, we find that Europeans, including the English, took over 207 years to correctly map Australia. It should be recognised that Europeans had little incentive to bother with such expensive work - and Dampier's negative reports on north-western Australia had much to do with intensifying such feeling of disincentive.

As we have seen, Dampier had some influence on the Scottish Darien Company. It is partly in recognition of the maritime difficulties posed by the wind patterns north of Australia, across Torres Strait, that I have developed the following outlook on Dampier's career. He was not merely a buccaneer-navigator - he was a commercial espionage agent who relished operating in the political environments referred to above. It is also difficult to believe that Dampier was unaware of the long career of the second Earl of Warwick in promoting anti-Spanish activism, and colonisation. Dampier once spent time in Virginia; he probably knew a great deal about the influence of the Rich family, alone, in trans-Atlantic trade.

Dampier was romantic, flamboyant, observant, methodical in his movements, and one historian has called him a born travel writer. He had little patience with deliberated literary technique; he wrote more from his eye and his heart. During his time in the Caribbean, Dampier seems a ripe Caribbean pirate, but in that guise, he was often merely acting out English prejudice against the Spanish. Dampier was an action-man, but he was not malicious. We can take it from reports of voyages to the East, and about Australia, that while he was a gifted navigator, he was a poor commander.

If we assume that Dampier was always a poor commander, a new complexion is placed on his time in the Caribbean. He was not leading, nor exactly following: he was scouting. Dampier was a geographer, grasping the outlines and contours of water and land masses in terms of their strategic values in terms of the ambitions of the day. He interpreted the Caribbean, and the area around "Darien", both on its Pacific and Caribbean/Atlantic sides, in terms of the incursions the English might make and keep against Spanish hegemony. The "Darien area" was of supreme strategic value, and it still retains that value - a value the English would capitalise on greatly from the 1650s, after the capture of Jamaica. In advising the Scottish Darien Company, Dampier was giving vent to his observations in terms of those themes. For with the Darien Company - which cannot have escaped Dampier's notice - the Scots were wishing to act out all previously expressed English ambitions, prejudices and dreams in that region - and it cost them dearly. The Scottish Darien Company began to share almost-standard Mercantilist dreams about wealth drawn from the East.
(Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, c.1976. Holden Furber, John Company at Work. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1948. On Dampier and Helyar, see Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, variously.)

Should those dreams of the East bear on interpretations of Dampier's reports on north-western Australia? The English Mercantilist from the 1690s wished and preferred to deal with an already large, industrious population who drew productivity and wealth from their natural resources in a well-organised way, as was the case with the African Gold Coast, India, and later, China. The English Mercantilist's policy was simple - buy cheap at the point of origin and sell dear at the point of sale, the difference going to the expected maritime transport costs, normal profit, and often, quite some greed. But like any state, the Mercantilist state was also vulnerable to piracy. This is partly why the misadventures of Captain William Kidd caused such an uproar with the Old East India Company of the 1690s, not so long after Samuel White's depredations around the Bay of Bengal. Kidd helped to keep the Red Sea region and the western reaches of the Indian Ocean, south to Madagascar, destabilised.
(During the mid-1690s, pirates Thomas Tew and Henry Every kept eastern seas in turmoil as Mogul shipping was attacked; the position of the East India Company further deteriorated in the 1690s. Around 1706-1707 and later, English pirates worked the Red Sea from Red Sea bases or Madagascar. Madras alone lost wealth of about £80,000.)

The Mogul Empire under Aurangzeb, and earlier emperors, was insignificant as a maritime power. The Moguls failed to appreciate the trends implicit in European voyagings from 1600 which were dangerous to them, and they did not react strongly to European piracy in their region until pilgrim ships to Mecca were interfered with. In the way they dealt with Europeans, the Moguls, in brief, made many errors of statecraft, among which were, as a massive mistake of political imagination, never sending any diplomats to inspect the home bases of the Europeans.
(For a list of English East India pirates of the 1690s, see p. 43 of E. Keble Chatterton, Ventures and Voyages. London, Longmans Green, 1928.)

Some notable traders of the day can be grouped into New versus Old East India Company categories. An "Old" Company servant was Thomas Pitt (1653-1716), governor of Madras 1698-1709, MP for Old Sarum, the progenitor of Pitt the Elder and Younger, prime ministers. At Bombay and Surat the New Company governor 1700-1708 was Sir Nicholas Waite, who took advantage of Aurangzeb's exasperation at the Old Company's breakdown of protection of Mogul ships against English pirates (Capt. Kidd?) especially on pilgrimage ships to Mecca.
(Ian B Watson, Foundation, p. 113; Peter Douglas Brown, William Pitt, Earl of Chatam: The Great Commoner. London, Allen and Unwin, 1978. Furber, Rival, p. 352 says the Moghul emperor, Aurangzeb took little note of East India Company servants, even their war, till pilgrim ships were attacked, then he reacted. Sir John Gayer, an Old East India Company governor, was sent to prison by Aurangzeb.)

The career of Capt William Kidd, pirate:

Captain William Kidd had the backing of four powerful men of the English government, plus some backing from William III. So, one wonders, what was the interest they had in destabilising the western Indian Ocean under the guise of attempting to control piracy by employing William Kidd? By setting a thief to catch thieves? During William III's reign in England, Whig energy was given more freedom. William had agreed to curtail the royal prerogative - and this had implications for any royally-chartered company such as the East India Company. From 1688, new traders with eyes on Eastern trade were harassing the Old East India Company. Some of these traders of the New East India Company of the 1690s will soon have to be named, but not before Kidd's backers are named.

Privateer Captain William Kidd was born about 1645 at Greenock, a Scot, and died hanged in May 1701. He has mixed reviews, as a faithful husband, devoted father, a convicted pirate and murderer. His wife was Sarah Oort, who had four husbands in all.
(Douglas Botting (Ed.), and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The Seafarers: The Pirates. Alexandria, Virginia, Time-Life Books, 1978., pp. 100ff on Kidd. On various other backers of pirates, see David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century. University of Exeter Press, Exeter Maritime Studies, No. 4, 1990.)

Kidd comes to notice as a confidant of the governor of New York, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, who was notorious for his dealings with the pirate, Tew. When Bellomont (Richard Coote), became governor of New York he tried to stem piracy from New Jersey to Maine.
(Lord Bellomont, Richard Coote, died 5 March, 1700/01.)

Government hoped to attack pirates in the east; but due to England's war with France, there were few spare ships, so, a "need" arose to employ privateers. Kidd had distinguished himself as a privateer captain in the King's service against the French in the West Indies in 1689, so well, that talk circulated in London, and a plan arose.

In London, Kidd met another New Yorker, Colonel Robert Livingston, who had a "grandiose scheme" for ending Red Sea piracy with profit. Kidd's backers became the new governor of New York, the Earl of Bellomont, who met Kidd in London in 1695, and offered him a privateer's commission to attack Red Sea pirates plus French traders. Powerful backers would stifle any problems.
(Kidd had property on corner of Pearl and Hanover streets in Manhattan, 86-90 and 119-121 Pearl St. and 52-56 Water Street and 25-29 Pine Street. Some property had come from his wife's two earlier marriages. They held a pew at Wall Street's Trinity Episcopal Church. A proportion of his property had been gained due to "normal" success as a merchant captain. Ironically, some of his pirate booty went into buildings now helping comprise the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London.)

Amongst the backers were Richard Coote, governor of New York, the unmarried Whig, Henry Sydney, Earl of Romney (1641-1704), (master general of ordnance, an Admiralty Lord); Admiral Edward Russell (1652-1727). (He was fourth son of the "colonist" Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, and brother of the "republican" executed in 1683, Algernon. Henry was MP for Tamworth and a groom of the royal bedchamber. It has been said, he was "the great wheel" on which rolled the Glorious Revolution.
(GEC, Peerage, Romney, p. 84.)

Lord Orford; the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal;
(Identification of Earl Orford who backed Capt. Kidd and Dampier can be confusing. It is easy to confuse Orford with a contemporary, Lord Oxford. Orford was a Whig, Admiral, and Lord of Admiralty, Edward Russell (1652-1727), second son of his father, Edward Russell and Penelope Hill. Orford married his cousin, Mary Margaret Russell, daughter of William Russell , first Duke of Bedford, but had no children. Orford was second son of Edward Russell, a younger son of William Russell the fifth Earl of Bedford (Baron Howland who helped crown William III) and Anne Carr. Orford was a naval treasurer from 1689, and a commissioner of the navy. He was once accused of wholesale malversation in "conniving at the piracies of Capt. Kidd to whom he gave a commission and since he helped fit out Kidd's ship". He once made a fortune victualling the fleet in the Mediterranean. Orford was one of the seven signatories inviting William III to become King of England. GEC, Peerage, Bedford, pp. 79-80; Willoughby, p. 692; Bathurst of Battlesden, p. 30; Orford, pp. 77-81. Orford should not be confused with first earl Orford, Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), also a Whig and Admiralty figure, son of MP Robert Walpole and Mary Burwell, a First Lord of Admiralty, Paymaster of the forces for George I and known as "Brazen Face" for his dubious business practices.
(GEC, Peerage, Cholmondeley, pp. 203-204; Townshend, p. 805.)

Sir John Somers (1650-1716);
(Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury: Lord Mayor Craven was one of his forebears, via Percy Herbert, second Baron Powis. On his mother's side, some ancestors were Throckmortons. (GEC, Peerage, Shrewsbury, pp. 720ff.)

The backers invested in the venture, the king promised £3000, though he never paid up. In October 1695, Livingston, Bellomont and Kidd signed an Articles of Agreement. Bellomont had to find four-fifths of the costs, that is, £6000 of his own. Kidd and Livingston were to put up other money. The custom was, the first ten per cent went to the crown. If there was no booty, Livingston and Kidd had to pay back all money to their backers.

William III's commission for the venture was dated 1 December, 1695. Adventure Galley 278 tons, with 34 guns and 23 pieces for oars if becalmed, was launched at Deptford on the Thames in December 1695. Nearly all the 70 crew were married men; that is, reliable. Kidd's brother-in-law, Bradley, was also on the voyage. Kidd went out in Adventure Galley, only to be interrupted by a navy ship which took away some of Kidd's crew, leaving Kidd with ragtag men. Later, Kidd made the mistake of taking Quedah Merchant, which had an English captain, Wright, and Armenian owners, but French papers. The East India Company at Surat wrote home to the Lords Justices in England their accusations of piracy. It was decided to give a free pardon to all pirates east of the Cape, except Kidd, Kidd's associate, Avery, and one other pirate, as a means of trying to isolate Kidd. Kidd had for example been blockading both coasts of the Peninsula of India with squadrons, and even been down to Malacca.
(On Kidd: John Bruce, Annals of the Honourable East India Company. London, Court of Directors of the East India Company, 1810. Three Vols. Vol. 3, pp. 269-271, p. 301, regarding pirates on the west coast of India including Adventure Galley, Capt. Kidd, and Quedah Merchant, and p. 301, the establishment of Fort William. P. J. Marshall, East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1974, 1976., p. 61. Daniel Defoe, (Edited by Manuel Schonhorn), A General History of the Pirates. London, Dent and Sons, 1972. Defoe supported William III's foreign policy, in 1706 -1711, and he enlisted public support in Scotland for the Union of the crowns in 1707.)

Kidd was outlawed entirely. When he got back to New York, he had sailed 42,000 miles. By 1699, "the Kidd affair" was being spoken of, and a ship was sent out to get Kidd, but it was driven back by a storm. There were allegations that Kidd's backers wanted plunder at home and abroad, that the admiralty got a percentage from [licenced] pirates. The King's grant for Kidd's backers was thought to be a Royal Patent with dummy names disguising "great names".

Kidd had landed in Boston on 2 July, 1699. He wanted an old friend in New York, lawyer James Emmott, to talk to Bellomont for him. Bellomont had received orders to arrest Kidd; and his own career was in the balance. Kidd's friend the Boston postmaster Duncan Campbell is mentioned as taking a message from Bellomont to Kidd. In typical pirate story ways, treasure was buried in the garden of John Gardiner on Long Island Sound, on Cherry Harbour Beach. Taken to London, Kidd languished in Newgate for a year, from around May 1700 before being interrogated March-May 1701. Kidd's view was that he had become the victim of perjurers; his prosecutors called him "Arch-Pirate and the common Enemy of Mankind".
(Later, his wife Sarah Oort married a prominent politician and lived another 43 years in New Jersey.)

During 1701, furore continued about Kidd's activities, fuelled by queries on who were his backers? The House of Commons listens to argument and allegations. If Kidd claimed, as he did, that he was innocent, then he also exonerated his backers.

Kidd's backers in government included:

(1) John Somers (1650-1716), unmarried, first Baron Somers. He assisted the Union of Scotland and England, was Chancellor 1697-1700 and Lord President of Council 1708-1710; one of the Junto, tempe Queen Anne.

(2) Admiral Edward Russell (1652-1727), Earl Orford, who also backed Dampier's voyage east in Roebuck. Russell had been one of the seven peers putting their signature to an invitation to William to rule England. Naval treasurer, Commissioner of Navy, First Lord Admiralty, Commissioner for the Union with Scotland.

(There is here a variety of Whiggish promotion of interference with the East India Company. Edward Russell (1652-1727), Earl Orford, was a grandson of the fourth Earl of Bedford, Sir William Courteen's patron in the matter of Barbados. Some Russell marriages meant linkages with the family of Henry Wriothesley, founder of the Whig Party. Earl Orford married his cousin, Mary Margaret Russell, daughter of William (1616-1700) the fifth Earl of Bedford. This fifth Earl, who helped crown William III, had married Anne Carr, daughter of Robert Carr (1585-1645), Earl Somerset, a sometime Treasurer of Scotland.)

(3) The first Duke of Shrewsbury, or, 12th Earl Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot (1600-1717/18) was married to Adelaide Paleotti, a lady of a royal bedchamber. Talbot's background is cast in terms of England's sailor-pirate tradition. On his father's side, he had ancestry arising with Lord Mayor William Craven (died 1618), whose son William, Earl Craven (1608-1697), was a Whig and a proprietor of Carolina. The maternal grandfather of Adelaide Paleotti was Carlo Dudley, titular Duke of Northumberland (1614-1686). Carlo's mother was Elizabeth Southwell (1586-1631), daughter of a privateer of Drake's time, vice-admiral Robert Southwell (died 1598)
(Andrews, Elizabethan Privateers, p. 29. Who's Who /Shakespeare, p. 236. GEC, Peerage, Carrick, p. 60; Northumberland, p. 727; Willoughby, p. 692.)

This Talbot/Paleotti background also included Lord Admiral Charles Howard (1536-1624), second Baron Howard of Effingham and first Earl Nottingham, joint commander of the Spanish Armada, who was married to Catherine Carey (d. 16020-1603), daughter of Henry Carey, (1525-1596) first Baron Hunsdon. Henry Carey was a son of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne who had been beheaded by Henry VIII.

(4) The governor of New York, Lord Bellomont, Richard Coote, who died 5 March, 1700/1701, three months before Kidd was hanged after prosecution by the Admiralty Court. His wife was Catherine Nanfan. Bellomont died three months after Kidd. Bellomont was an early backer of William III.

(5) Colonel Robert Livingston, prominent in New York. Livingston with Bellomont inspired the entire scenario behind Kidd's activities. He also had a deal to split booty with Kidd.

And 1701, around the year Kidd was hanged, the names of the backers of Dampier's voyage east arise to also be listed. They included Admiral Edward Russell; and Lord Charles Montague, first Baron Halifax (1661-1715).
(Samuel Bennett, Australian Discovery and Colonisation. Vol. 1, to 1800. Milsons Point, Sydney, The Currawong Press, 1981. [Facsimile of the original edition by Hanson and Bennett, Sydney, 1865].)

Montague's first wife was Anne Yelverton. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer and a promoter of the New East India Company. He was son of Hon. George Montague, married to Elizabeth Irby.
(The New East India Company met at Skinner's Hall. See Bruce, Annals, various vols.) Montague, first Baron Halifax, married as second wife, Mary Lumley (1696-1726); she was daughter of the man said to have captured the rebel Duke of Monmouth, Richard Lumley, first Earl Scarbrough (1650-1721), one of the seven peers inviting William III to the throne of England (GEC, Peerage, Scarbrough, pp. 509ff).

Montague was chancellor of the Exchequer, "an able financier" and involved in confronting the "Old" East India Company with the New.
Montague/Halifax's first wife was Ricarda Saltonstall, but it remains difficult to know whether her family tree is linked with that of an original subscriber to the East India Company, founder of the Spanish Company, governor of the Merchant Adventurers, Lord Mayor of London 1597-1598, Sir Richard Saltonstall (died 1601). Sir Richard here had an interesting grandson, Wye Saltonstall, a witty writer who had some relatives sail in 1630 and later to assist the undertakers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
(Andreades, History of the Bank of England, pp. 104ff. GEC, Peerage, Halifax, p. 245, Manchester, pp. 368-372. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateers, pp. 114ff. Newton, Colonising Puritans, pp. 78ff.)

More on Vulgar Trade - England after 1650

More on the backers of William Dampier:

The backers of both Kidd and Dampier were powerful men who were astute enough to spend resources on assessing the risks of exploiting areas subject at the time to the anarchy of piracy. This, as the Old East India Company was being destabilised by the increasingly concerted activity of new traders, many of them led by Thomas Papillon, a near-republican and a sometime commissioner of the victualling of the navy.
(Papillon (1623-1702), a proponent of the New East India Company, was MP for Dover. Burke's Baronetage and Peerage, for Papillon. Haley, Shaftesbury, p. 405. Bruce, Annals, Vol. 3, pp. 260ff, pp. 290ff. Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 73.)

And this was only a few years after Sir Josiah Child at the Old East India Company had unsuccessfully declared war on the Mogul Emperor, Aurangzeb. The Mercantilist's need to deal with a thriving population is partly why Dampier's first report on north-western Australia was so dismal. Beliefs about the fabled Java-Le-Grande south of South-East Asia were apparently a miserable chimera. That part of that land mass - north western Australia - had no industrious population and no apparently useful resources - a simple sweep of the eye would indicate that. But did any group feel it might be an idea to send Dampier out a second time? What might have been their motives.

Dampier's earlier life:

William Dampier (1651-1715) was born at East Coker, Somersetshire, on 5 September, 1651. Apparently his parents died and he wished to go to sea.
(Entry, Australian Encyclopaedia, 1958 edition.)

He undertook some voyages then joined the Navy in 1672. In 1674 so he said, he left the navy having been offered a position as manager of a plantation in the West Indies, and on the way he wrote a journal.
(Perhaps the best treatment of Dampier's employers on Jamaica, Helyars, is given in Dunn, Sugar and Slaves.)

The plantation was owned by Helyars of Somerset, who were old compatriots of Sir Thomas Modyford. (Incidentally, their plantation was not a long-term success and it ended up in the hands of the Heathcote family). Dampier tired of plantation life in six months, and joined a Jamaica coasting vessel, and in February 1676 sailed for Campeachy Bay in Yucatan and entered the logwood industry, a bay in Spanish territory with entry forbidden. At one time, Dampier spent a going-nowhere period in Virginia. He became a buccaneer, and this eventually took him to the South Seas. In October 1684 the buccaneers were joined by a Capt. Swan in a ship Cygnet (Signet), and in 1685 Dampier joined Swan's ship. Thus, Dampier gained his first impressions of a sector of the Australian land mass.

1697

By August 1697, Montague had arranged for Dampier to be a "land-carriage man" in the Customs. By the spring of 1697, Dampier was dealing with London publisher, James Knapton. The manuscript - A New Voyage Around the World - was submitted to friends for suggestions. Dampier's enemies said he had not written it, but had it ghost written.
(There is however, no remark on who Dampier's enemies were; they were anyway incorrect; Wilkinson also does not name Dampier's friends - and he regards Dampier as a poor controversialist.)

When Dampier's book was published, in 1697 - A New Voyage Round the World, it was immediately successful, and made Dampier famous. And it was dedicated to Charles Montague, ie, Halifax.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 146-149.)

Dampier's friends now included the diplomat Sir Robert Southwell, also president of Royal Society, 1690-1695. And Sir (Dr.) Hans Sloane, Bart, who had earlier been on Jamaica when the hard-drinking Albemarle had been there, about when Dampier had been on Jamaica. Sloane was a patron of scientists, a co-founder of the British Museum, secretary of the Royal Society in 1693, and he succeeded Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society in 1727.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 150-162, p. 247. J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance. New York, Mentor/New American Library, 1963., p. 307. GEC, Peerage, Cadogan, p. 461.)

In brief, Dampier was sent to the East, by Australia, by a group of High Whigs in London who were endeavouring to outmanoeuvre the Old English East India Company. As well, part of the Scottish Darien Company disaster was in losing ships sent to the East. In sending those ships, the Scots Darienites were also modelling their ambitions on what was happening in London. And what was happening in London, in the City, was a concerted revolt against the royal monopoly held by the East India Company whilst William III let out new commercial spirits.

Various New East India Company men in London or in the East included: Thomas Papillon, William Gifford (died 1721 murdered), Gifford had links with Sir Stephen Evance of London, Thomas Papillon, Maurice Thompson of London, Elihu Yale of Madras (later a co-founder of Yale University in America).
(Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 73 and p. 333.)

Sir Streynsham Master: a director of the New East India Company, and an investor in the Royal Africa Company and the East India Company.
(GEC, Peerage, Coventry. K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge University Press, 1989., p. 206. K. G. Davies, Royal Africa Company, lists of investors.)

Also Sir William Norris, the failed emissary of the New East India Company to the Mogul emperor;

Sir Edward Littleton (died 1707); a director of the New East India Company and a "consul" in India at the times of Norris' mission to the Mogul emperor.

John Dubois; Sir Nicholas Waite;

Sir James Bateman the father of William, first Viscount Bateman,
(Lord Mayor of London Sir James Bateman was active by 1702 with the New East India Company union with the Old, as trustee for the New. He was possibly the father of William, first Viscount Bateman married Anne Spencer, daughter of Charles Spencer (1674-1722), third Earl Sunderland, a first lord of Treasury for Geo I; this earl Sunderland had married Anne Churchill (died 1716) amongst whose forebears were George Villiers, an anti-Spanish lord high admiral, first Duke of Buckingham. John, second Viscount Bateman married Elizabeth Sambrooke, a granddaughter of Sir Jeremy Sambrooke and Judith Vanacker.
(GEC, Peerage, Bateman of Shobdon, pp. 13-14. The name Robert Bateman is found as a Chamberlain of London, as a "prominent merchant" involved with the 1620 Amazon adventure, as well as the original East India Company, the Levant Company by 1605, the Spanish Company in 1606, the Virginia Company in 1609, the North West Passage Company of 1612. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 384; Lorimer, (Ed.), Amazon, p. 215, Note 1.)

William Hedges a governor of Bengal and husband of Susanna Vanacker.
(Vanacker: Susan's sister Dorothy Vanacker married Sir Jeremy Sambrooke MP, of the East India Company. Their brothers were Turkey merchants. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Vanacker of London.)

First formlessly, then with more shape, there arose a "new" English East India Company, a loose consortium of interlopers, some of them with interesting family linkages. When Dampier sailed for the regions north of Australia, he sailed for men in government who were willing to assist those interlopers, those non-respectables. What Dampier did was relatively simple, and not really original. He retraced the paths of that earlier English explorer working before the first English East India Company was formed - Ralph Fitch.

And so, it having been suggested to Admiralty that a naval vessel be fitted out to explore the coast of New Holland, the job would be done.

Some of the "High Whigs" in administration, and often of a Royalist persuasion, prior to the late 1690s, were: Sir George Carteret the treasurer of the navy (died 1679);
(Carteret was a favourite of Buckingham, also a deputy-governor of Jersey, a Royalist, member of Privy Council. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, p. 104. There may be some confusion on this person. An investor in the Royal Africa Company, listed thus by Davies, was one proprietor of East Jersey, of a family named on a royal charter for Carolina, a Royalist, a member of the Board of Trade, whose widow sold his interest in Jersey (America) to twelve Quakers including William Penn.)

Lord John Berkeley (1602-1678), Commissioner of Navy and Privy Council;
(First Baron Berkeley, married to Christian Riccard, daughter of Sir Andrew Riccard a governor of the East India Company. (Sir Andrew Riccard was of St. Olave's, Hart Street, noted in Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 72.) But Christian Riccard had also married Henry Rich (died 1659), first Viscount Irving, a descendant of the first Earl of Warwick.
(GEC, Peerage, Warwick, p. 416; Berkeley, p. 148; Holland, p. 548. For his role as a proprietor of Carolina, Bliss, Revolution and Empire, p. 209. He was friends with James, Duke of York, a proprietor of New Jersey and in 1670 one of the Lords Lieutenant of Ireland. GEC, Peerage, Berkeley, pp. 147-148; Warwick; p. 416. Holland, p. 540.)

Sir William Berkeley (died 1677);
(William Berkeley: He was a proprietor of Carolina and a governor of Virginia in 1641 and again in 1660, when he became "a tyrant" and interested in the fur trade. Bliss, Revolution and Empire, p. 209. Haley, Shaftesbury, pp. 230ff. T. J. Wertenbaker, Virginia Under The Stuarts, 1607-1688. 1914.)

Governor of Virginia; Sir John Colleton a rich Barbados planter, and as with Sir William Berkeley and Shaftesbury, a member of the Special Committee for Foreign Plantations. (Major's view is that Dampier was "selected" by "the Earl of Pembroke", who was presumably Thomas Herbert (1656-1732), a Lord of Admiralty. Herbert has no particularly Whiggish connections, although his father, the fifth earl, was a promoter of the Royal Africa Company, and the fourth earl had been the patron of Courteen in wrangles over proprietorship of the Caribbean.

Notions were, the New East India Company would trade with India in competition with the already-established or Old East India Company, but fresh schemes such as the Darien scheme of the Company of Scotland and Kidd's piratical adventures to Madagascar had provided other inspirations. Dampier's two chief patrons were Lord Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Earl of Orford, First Lord of Admiralty?
(Here, we need also to be sure we refer to the Earl of Orford (Admiral Russell 1652-1727) and not the first Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. See McIntyre, Secret Discovery, pp. 72, 191, 195, noting that Robert Harley (died 1724) (not Edward Harley, as McIntyre states), first Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, had supposedly had a copy of the "Dauphin Map", which allegedly was made by 1536. McIntyre makes the point that by the Dampier's voyage, 1700, the long-settled Portuguese of Timor had long known about, and long ignored, the north-west Australian coast and hinterlands. There were no secrets.
(Australian Encyclopaedia.)

In 1724 when Robert Harley died, the Dauphin Map was stolen by one of his servants, and it went underground, amazingly to be later found by Dr. Daniel Solander, friend of Sir Joseph Banks' friend, and so it was acquired by Banks and was with Banks and therefore Cook for the 1768-1770 voyage by the Eastern Australian coast. The map is now in the British Museum.
(McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia.

Robert Harley (died 1724), by 1688 had helped his father raise a horse troop for the "Glorious Revolution. A noted book collector, he was a Whig who became a Tory finally suspected of Jacobitism by the Hanoverians. He was a founder of the ill-fated South Seas Company and an under-treasurer of the Exchequer.
(GEC, Peerage, Oxford and Mortimer, pp. 263ff.)

Which of these men had exerted influence on the Darien scheme, which were involved in what became Capt Kidd's piracy about Madagascar, which were interested in Dampier's voyage? It would appear that William III had been interested in all three matters. Presumably, any findings made by Dampier would have gone to Orford and the New East India Company as well?

By the later 1690s, Dampier had realised the possibilities of an "Australian continent", "a country likely to contain gold".
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 150-156.)

This led him to propose to the Admiralty that a king's ship explore the coast of New Holland. Dampier also mentioned other places to be visited with good advantage. He was commissioned by as early as spring 1698, and he decided to round Cape Horn, visit the Australian east coast, then proceed north to New Guinea, but was delayed till September.

By July 1698, Dampier was also continually being called to London to advise government, (the council of trade and plantations) if he had heard of any proposals or bribes offered to Lionel Wafer, Dampier's old Caribbean associate, by the Scotch East India Company?
(Clark, Later Stuarts, p. 353, p. 408.)

In 1698 the East India Company loaned government two millions, and were incorporated under the name General Society, a regulated Company, members traded individually, interlopers formed their Company, with joint stock company and till about 1708 with wise mediation by Godolphin the Old and New East India companies traded side by side, the old bought now the new. (The second earl Godolphin helped to establish British racing; turf and thoroughbreds.)

Dampier replied (possibly lying) that he had not. He said, Wafer was unlikely to be able to offer any great service to a Scotch East India Company.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 156-157, Citing, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies.)

Little is known of Dampier's moves between 1691-1696. But Dampier's brother George sold a patent medicine, Dampier's Powder, which, curiously enough, by 1697-1698, William Dampier had formally made known to the Royal Society. Between 1697-1699, Montague at the Royal Society had introduced Dampier to Earl Orford, who was of the Russell family, also linked to the East India Company, and the Duke(s) of Bedford. Bedfords were the god-parents of Francis Drake. Walsingham had once proposed to Elizabeth I that terra australis be settled and that Drake be made life governor there. Where Dampier went, were English traditions aplenty.

Having been ordered (why ordered?) to appear before Council of Trade and Plantations to be "examined as to the design of the Scotch East India Company to make a settlement on the Isthmus of Darien" under William Paterson, Dampier found that Lionel Wafer was another witness. (Wilkinson feels Dampier and Wafer could have given Council much encouragement to proceed.) By 27 September, 1698, Dampier was called again to the council of trade and plantations to advice on a squadron being fitted out against pirates operating to the east of the Cape of Good Hope.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 156-157, Citing, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies.)

1697: Dampier's book New Voyage Round the World appears in 1697, and brings matters into the purview of the more scientific speculators such as Campbell, Callender and Dalrymple in Great Britain, de Brosses in France: they all helped systematize existing knowledge.

By 25 March, 1698, Dampier is given a silly ship, Jolly Prize, as Lord Orford was pleased with this idea of exploration, But by July, Dampier felt the vessel was unfit, so Roebuck was got up, with 12 guns and a crew of 50 men and boys provisioned for 20 months. Dampier told Orford he was disappointed at the smallness of Roebuck's crew, among whom were Jacob Hughes master, and Lt. George Fisher, a gentleman and an enthusiastic Whig who later became Dampier's enemy. Plus Philip Paine, gunner, and mates R. Chadwick and John Knight. The ship's doctor was a Scot, William Borthwick and the captain's clerk was James Brand. Dampier as scientist would refer to problems of the variations of the compass.

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About 21 November, 1698 Dampier wrote to Lord Orford on the proposed voyage. He had drawn up his own instructions, but it was now too late to get about Cape Horn. (Bligh on HMAV Bounty had the same problem of timing in late 1787). So, he would have to sail via the Cape of Good Hope. He wanted a gratuity for his men, and was aware he was insecure in the ways of dealing with the kind of superiors he now had. Dampier's formal instructions came on 30 November; he was to go to the Cape of Good Hope and stretch to New Holland, steer any course, wanting a discovery of value, hoping for advantages to the nation, etc. Internal squabbles slowed the expedition. Lt. George Fisher, a regular naval officer had been a leading light regarding the expedition and had appeared for the board's deliberations.

By January 1699, Roebuck was ready to sail with Dampier aboard with the rank of captain, as a king's ship. More manuscript from Dampier was in hands of printers, and Dampier wrote from the Downs to Lord Orford, unable to send Orford any copy of book(s). This second volume was to make Dampier even more famous.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 152-154 complains Dampier is damned with faint praise in the English DNB.)

On 14 January, 1699, Roebuck sailed from Downs, master Hughes. Lt. Fisher began to imagine that Dampier had put an assassin aboard to kill him (Fisher), so Fisher was later put off the ship, at Brazil. Roebuck made for Cape Verde by 11 February. The west coast of New Holland (the north-western coast of Western Australia) was sighted on 30 July, 1699. By 6 August, Dampier was anchoring at Shark Bay. Some islands were named Dampier Archipelago. Dampier then went east, to the present Roebuck Bay, but the country wearied him, the crew had scurvy, so he went to Timor, (22 September), where Roebuck was cleaned. He sailed about Indonesia's coasts for three months, then along the northern coast of New Guinea, rounding New Ireland and New Britain, to discover the strait between the latter and New Guinea. The crew saw the southern coast of New Guinea by 1 January, 1700.

Was Dampier testing the winds in the difficult areas of Torres Strait? Did the English also want to find new ways to vault over the Dutch East India Company? Major's extracts of Dampier's writings informs us: that William III wanted new discoveries. (And here, should it be assumed that William was familiar with existing Dutch information on the region? Or not?). The Earl of Pembroke (specifically) selected Dampier for the voyage.
(R. H. Major, (Ed.), Early Voyages to Terra Australis to the Time of Captain Cook as told in Original Documents. Adelaide, Australian Heritage Press, 1963. The views of William III are given, p. lxvii, the contentious matter of the Dauphin Map is mentioned, p. xvi; otherwise see pp. 101ff.)

Dampier mentions he had touched at Brazil, not intending to go by the Cape of Good Hope, although he did go by the Cape, then set for new Holland, pondering East Indies winds south of the Equator. He pondered Timor, Java, Sumatra, the Straights of Sundy (Sunda) before he arrived on the West Australian coast, and wondered, is there an archipelago of Islands, is there a passage south of New Holland or New Guinea, to or in a great sea westward? He might have returned to New Guinea, but decided against it. He sought water vainly, saw whales, sent men ashore to maybe dig a well, saw 9 or 10 natives, (with their front teeth knocked out), saw few land animals, but did see [the] "largest whales I ever saw". There was little encouragement to go further and with his men scorbutic, he headed for Timor, an old Portuguese colony which had long ignored Australian coastlines. Dampier finally lost his finally leaking ship off Island of Ascension 22 February, 1701, and he also lost his papers.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp.162-181.)

So for the Mercantilist, the best commodity available about Western Australia was whale product. If the English had deciding on whaling, then, that did not necessitate large-scale land settlement.

According to Australian Encyclopedia, Dampier might have sailed on and anticipated Cook's discovery of Eastern Australia, but Roebuck was now leaking and the trade winds made sailing south dangerous. So he went to Batavia, then England, reaching St. Helena on 21 February, 1701, where Roebuck promptly sprang a leak and sank. Dampier when he got home was court-martialled due to manipulations brought about by his enemy-in-waiting, Lt. Fisher, and was found to be unfit for further command.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, p. 182.)

And having retraced many of Ralph Fitch's earlier steps, and gone beyond, Dampier might well have reported to the New East India Company - "I saw nothing new of any use that the Spanish don't already have locked up, militarily speaking, except for whales". Which would have suggested that the New East India Company had better make peace with the Old, because in the East, life was not going to be made easier by the Dutch or the Spanish. The entry on Dampier in the Australian Encyclopedia concludes, "The discovery and settlement of eastern Australia may be viewed as the indirect but none the less real conclusion of Dampier's work".
(Dampier, ADB entry.)

By 29 September, 1701 was an inquiry into Dampier's voyage. No verdict was recorded. Sitting were president of court-martial Sir Clowdisley Shovell, and Vice Admiral Hopson, on HMS Royal Souveraine at Spithead on 8 June, 1702. Later it was reported that Dampier would depart to the West Indies. He kissed a royal hand, was introduced to her royal highness by the Lord High Admiral. The War of the Spanish Succession had broken out, privateers were back in vogue, and the owners of St. George, 120 men, 26 guns, wanted Dampier as commander, official approval forthcoming. Dampier was to go out with the privateer Fame Capt. John Pulling, to war on the French and Spanish. Now, Dampier had a roving commission to do what he liked.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 183-189.)

Dampier's 1702 court martial having declared him unfit to command a king's ship; in 1708 and 1711 he sailed with the policeman of pirates, Capt. Woodes Rogers. In 1707 Dampier published his "unfortunate account" of the 1703 fiasco, Capt Dampier's Vindication of his Voyage to the South Seas in St George. (London, 1707).

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A 1703 fiasco? In 1702, Dampier had teamed with a shipowner named Price and been given command of a privateer, St George, with letters of marque. With St George was the ship Cinque Ports, its mate being Alexander Selkirk. After Selkirk was marooned on the island Juan Fernandez, his adventures later formed the basis of Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. Dampier now ended as a prisoner for a time in a Dutch East India settlements. He got back to England in 1707, to find himself distrusted, his reputation tarnished. In 1708 he embarked as pilot on Capt Woodes Rogers' privateer the Duke, which sailed in company with Duchess. This expedition was successful, went about Cape Horn, rescued Alex Selkirk on Juan Fernandez, raided Spanish towns, captured a vessel from the Philippines, crossed the Pacific to Batavia, went about the Cape of Good Hope and arrived to England by October 1711 with prizes worth £200,000. Dampier received only about £1300.

By 1714, Dampier's health had broken down, by September he was 63, living in the parish of St. Stephens, Coleman Street, near Old Jewry, looked after by his female cousin Grace Mercer one of his main beneficiaries. Some furniture was left with Capt. Richard Newton. Dampier died in early March, 1715.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 239-241.)

He had beforehand published in 1700 A Supplement to the Voyage Round the World, Two Voyages to Campeachy; a discourse on trade winds. In 1703-1709 he published A Voyage to New Holland in the Year 1699. Both books were translated into French and Dutch.
(Ton Vermeulen, `The Dutch entry into the East Indies', pp. 33f, in John Hardy and Alan Frost, (Eds.), European Voyaging Towards Australia. Canberra, Occasional Paper No. 8, Highland Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1990.

The aftermaths of Dampier's voyages:

Did Dampier's voyages help his Whig backers at all?
(After 1700, backers of some of Dampier's voyages included Alderman Batchelor (Master of the Society of Merchant Venturers) of London, Thomas Goldney a Quaker merchant who invested in the St George venture; an ex-Mayor, the incumbent mayor, two future mayors, the London town clerk, James Rumsey/Ramsay.
(Christopher Lloyd, William Dampier. London, Faber and Faber, 1966.)

It seems, very little, except perhaps in a negative sense of indicating that with the exception of China, England's eastern traders could achieve little more than was already being achieved. Between 1700-1701, the Old and New East India companies amalgamated with hubbub and din. "Bribes flowed like water". There was a final amalgamation in 1702. Karl Marx long later wrote about it, bemusedly, that from then, the time of William III, the Whigs farmed the revenues of the British Empire.
(Mukherjee, Rise and Fall, pp. 86-87. Ian B. Watson, Foundation, p. 146.)

Before 1702, while the New East India Company had failed to make its way, their emissary, Sir William Norris, made a fool of himself at the Mogul Court of Aurangzeb, lacking both patience and sophistication, and barely escaped being murdered. The New Company found their employees could not surpass the wider experience of the Old Company's employees (a matter settled while London bubbled with gossip about the winner and losers of the South Sea Bubble - many New East India Company men were directors of the South Sea Company before it collapsed).

Dampier's biographer, Clennel Wilkinson, feels that Dampier's discoveries in Australia were important, "sensational", in 1700, but they did not disclose or solve the important problem, the Continent of Australia. However, one doubts that terra australis incognita was regarded as a pressing topic in England. Tasman had published on his visit to Tasmania in England in 1694.
(Wilkinson, Dampier, pp. 154-155.)

But by the time Dampier died, there was nothing to suggest that whatever land lay south of Indonesia or New Guinea was useful to a Mercantilist from any European nation. That is why the "problem of Australia" was pushed into the realm of cartographic speculation, or "pure navigation, and left there - in the territory of which James Cook would become the master... later to become a home for convicts.

- Dan Byrnes (otherwise indicated in these pages as -Editor)

Note: You will find even greater detail than is given here, for specific periods in American - English - Australian history, with regard to merchants, traders, bankers and financiers, as part of the website, The Blackheath Connection...

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