XIV. CHAP. Word in this Tribe 137. This land, I am sorry to learn, has since been appropriated to other purposes; but its donor has not been forgotten. The name of Copeland, Mr. Darrell informs me, is retained, as a Christian Name, by several families in the Islands to the present time; and thus the memory of that faithful and devoted minister of Christ who,—whilst he was returning from India, on board the vessel of which he was chaplain,-formed his first plans for the evangelization of the Western hemisphere, is still, after an interval of more than two hundred years, cherished, with pious gratitude, in these distant Islands of the Atlantic. 137 No. 6699. I find also, upon a closer examination of this document, the following passage: 'two shares of land given to the ffree schooll by Mr. ffarrar, in Pembroke Tribe :-a remarkable illustration of the affectionate and devoted spirit by which, in my first Volume, I have shown that these holy men, Copeland and Ferrar, were animated; and to the efforts which they both made to promote the welfare of our Colonies. For the names, &c., of the eight Tribes into which the Bermudas has been divided during Tuckar's government, see Vol. i. c. xi. in loc. CHAPTER XV. WEST INDIES, AFRICA, INDIA, AND THE LEVANT, IN A. D. 1625-1660. WEST INDIES-Nevis, Barbuda, Bahamas, Montserrat, Antigua, acquired by the English, under Charles the First-Featly's Farewell Sermon to the West India Company, 1629-Hindrances in the way of his appeal-Especially in Barbados-The first planting of the Church in that Island-Governor Bell-Acts relating to Public Worship-Reflections thereon-Ligon's History-His character of the Planters-Disgraceful treatment of servants-And of slaves—Barbados yields to the Commonwealth, 1651—Jamaica taken, 1655-Reasons inducing Cromwell to this act.-Jamaica during the Commonwealth-Guiana under Charles the First-Sentiments of those who promoted its plantation-Slavery-AFRICA— The English sometimes enslaved by the Moors-Remedial measures -Fitz-Geffry's Sermons-The Second African Company, 1631INDIA-Second East India Company, 1637-St. Helena acquired, 1651-Conflicting claims of the English and Dutch in India reconciled, 1654-Causes why no systematic effort was then made to evangelize India-Evils thereof-Wood's Holy Meditation for Seamen, chiefly those who sailed to India-Terry's Thanksgiving Sermon before the East India Company-Reynold's Sermon before the same-Evelyn's notice of it-The LEVANT COMPANY-Pocock, the Orientalist, their Chaplain, 1629—Appointed Laudian Professor of Arabic, 1636-Visits Constantinople-Returns to England, 1640-1-His duties-His trials-The benefit of his and kindred labours-Notice of Isaac Basire-Concluding reflections. XV. THE history of the New England Colonies, in the CHAP. time of Charles the First and the Commonwealth, presents to our view a series of events as closely XV. CHAP. connected with each other as those which we have attempted to trace in the last chapter, during the same period, in connexion with Virginia and Maryland. It is also identified with the history of the mother country throughout the same epoch. I have thought it better, therefore, to defer the notice of all those Colonies, until I am able to give it in a connected form, which I propose doing in the course of the next chapter. In the present, I wish to direct the attention of the reader to those different regions of the West and East, in which the energies of the English nation were at this time employed, for the purposes either of colonization or trade; to mark, in each separate field of enterprise, the manner in which the Church of England remembered, and strove to fulfil, the duties which, we have said, were incumbent upon her by virtue of this enlargement of her sphere of operation'; and to recount the difficulties which, under one or another shape, hindered her in the discharge of these responsibilities. WEST INDIES. And, first, let us turn to the West Indies. I have already described, as briefly as I could, the circumstances under which the earliest possessions of the English were acquired in that quarter of the globe. The first was the Island of St. Christopher, or St. Kitt's, in which Warner had made a settlement towards the end of James the First's reign; and the proprietorship of which, and of the rest of 1 See Vol. i. c. vi. ad fin. Ibid. c. xii. in loc. XV. the Caribbee Islands, had been conferred, in the CHAP. first year of Charles the First, upon James Hay, the Earl of Carlisle, who assisted Warner in his enterprize. The second was Barbados, upon which an English crew is said to have landed as early as the year 1605; but the formal settlement of which was not made until the last year of James the First's reign, when, by virtue of a grant conferred by that monarch upon Lord Ley, afterwards Earl of Marlborough, a band of colonists laid the foundations of James Town in the Island. Ley soon afterwards consented to waive his patent in favour of Carlisle, upon the payment of a sum of money; so that the entire jurisdiction and proprietorship of the only English possessions in the West Indies, at the beginning of Charles the First's reign, were vested wholly in the latter nobleman. buda, Baha serrat, An quired by lish, under Many more possessions were acquired by the Nevis, BarEnglish in the West Indies, during the period which mas, Montis now passing in review before us. The first move- tigua, acment was made from St. Kitt's, under the direction the Engof Warner, who, in 1628, passed thence to the Charles the small Island of Nevis, about half a league distant, and began a plantation upon it. This was followed, in the same year, by the settlement of Barbuda,— a larger Island situated to the north-east,—which 3 Some Frenchmen took joint possession of St. Kitt's, on the same day with Warner, and his English followers, upon his return thither in 1625; and the object of both was to have a place of safe retreat for the reception of the ships of both nations at any time bound for 355. First. XV. CHAP. Warner also conducted; and it is said that another party of English began, about the same time, to plant the Island of Providence, the chief of the Bahamas. In reward for these services, Warner received the honour of knighthood; and, in 1632, extended still further the limits of the government assigned to him under the Earl of Carlisle, by planting the Island of Montserrat. Some few English families also, under the command of Warner's son, ventured to settle at the same time in Antigua; but little progress was then made towards any extensive colonization of the Island. In 1639, the Island of St. Lucia was added to the English possessions; but only for a time, and with disastrous consequences; for, two years afterwards, the English governor, and most of his followers, were murdered by the Carib natives, who thus took vengeance upon the English, for the grievous and cruel injuries which they had inflicted upon so many of their countrymen'. 5 Ibid. 356. 6 Ibid. 361. In the first commission granted for the government of Barbados and the Leeward Islands, Warner is designated a Gentleman.' (Appendix to Antigua and the Antiguans,' ii. 306.) Pére Du Tertre, in his History of the Antilles, speaks of him as un Capitaine Anglois, nommé Waërnard;' and, in 1632, he is described as General Sir Thomas Warner, Antigua,' &c. i. 44. The name of the Island is said to have been given to it by Columbus, from St. Mary of An tigua at Seville,-when he discovered and abandoned it in 1493. Ibid. i. 3. 7 Anderson, ut sup. ii. 408; Account of the European Settlements in America, ii. 86. The particulars of the atrocities inflicted upon the Caribs, by both French and Engglish settlers, are described by the French ecclesiastic, whose historical work is cited in the above note, with a composure which certainly does not indicate any strong sense, in his own mind, of the shameful wrong. |