The Western Design and the Anglo-Spanish Struggle for the Caribbean, 1654-1655 Matthew Craig Harrington
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2004 "The Worke Wee May Doe in the World" the Western Design and the Anglo-Spanish Struggle for the Caribbean, 1654-1655 Matthew Craig Harrington Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES “THE WORKE WEE MAY DOE IN THE WORLD” THE WESTERN DESIGN AND THE ANGLO-SPANISH STRUGGLE FOR THE CARIBBEAN, 1654-1655 By MATTHEW CRAIG HARRINGTON A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2004 The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Matthew Craig Harrington defended on 26 May 2004. Matt D. Childs Professor Directing Thesis Rodney D. Anderson Committee Member Paul Strait Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I express my thanks and love for my wife, Lindsey, for her support throughout my time in graduate school. Without her necessary and cheerful assistance, given while beginning her own thesis research, this project would have never been completed. In the past year, she has exemplified to me the message of the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians. I would like to thank Dr. Matt D. Childs, my major professor, for his untiring and enthusiastic teaching, mentoring, hospitality, and advice. He has taught me valuable lessons in both the historian’s craft and calling, and has worked unstintingly to shape my research and writing; as well as providing numerous spare-time opportunities to debate issues of historiography, politics; and teaching me why Walmart is heralding our civilization’s decline and fall. I would also like to express my appreciation for the teaching and mentoring of Dr. Anderson and Dr. Strait, who have made the study of history at Florida State University a pleasure. Dr. Anderson made it possible for me to complete my research and writing through providing funding for a research assistantship in the best place to work anywhere in any field, Florida State University’s Guadalajara Census Project. I also express appreciation for the help of the late Dr. Richard Greaves, who introduced me to Early Modern British history and provided valuable help and guidance in shaping the first chapter of this thesis. Finally, I wish to thank my mentors at Auburn University, Dr. Joseph Kicklighter and Dr. Emil Kramer, who inspired me to seek an academic calling and instilled me with not only a love of but also a joy in learning. Many colleagues, friends, and family provided help, advice, and opportunities that helped complete this thesis. I would like to express my appreciation for the advice and camaraderie of my colleagues in the Latin American history graduate program, Lindsey Harrington, Sarah Franklin, Monica Hardin, Travis Hyer, Claudia Rivas, Tam Spike, and Andrea Vicente. Robert Ryals gave me valuable assistance with research technology and in understanding Spain’s precarious situation in 1655-56, and Joanna Nielson endured numerous questions about Early iii Modern Britain. Ed Wiser cheerfully gave me assistance in studying the maritime aspects of the Penn and Venables expedition, and my good friend Jonathan Sheppard helped guide me through the military aspects of this study through many stimulating conversations in my grading office and over the Loop’s excellent hamburgers. Bruce Chappell, Richard Phillips, Paul Losch, and the staff of the University of Florida’s Latin American Collection and Special Collection provided immense help and hospitality to us FSU Latin-Americanists conducting research at Gainesville. I would also like to thank Debbie Perry and Chris Pignatiello for all of their help throughout my course of studies at FSU. I wish to thank my own parents, my grandparents, and the Clark and Robertson families for their patience and support through many family visits where I spread my research across their kitchen tables. My grandfather, Charles Bollinger, gave me an early love of history and reading, and my grandmother, Vera Bollinger, inspired me with a love for and interest in England, and it is to them that I dedicate this thesis. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vi INTRODUCTION 1 “160 SHIPS SWIMMINGE”: 20 THE ORIGINS OF THE WESTERN DESIGN, APRIL-DECEMBER 1654 “A MIXTURE OF LITTLE WINE WITH MUCH WATER”: 42 PREPARING FOR WAR IN THE WEST INDIES, AUGUST 1654-MARCH 1655 “JACK SPANYARD WOULD NOT STAND”: 72 THE CAMPAIGN ON HISPANIOLA, 13 APRIL-3 MAY 1655 “FOR FRESH MEAT AND PIECES OF EIGHT”: 90 ESTABLISHING A FOOTHOLD ON JAMAICA, MAY-JULY 1655 “THE OLD GOOD WAY OF SEEKING HIS FACE”: 114 THE AFTERMATH OF THE WESTERN DESIGN, APRIL-DECEMBER 1655 CONCLUSION 135 BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 148 v ABSTRACT In the spring and summer of 1655, Oliver Cromwell, as Lord Protector of England and with the authority of the Council of State, dispatched an English fleet under the command of Sea General William Penn and General Robert Venables to conquer and settle the target of their choosing among Spain’s colonies in the Caribbean. A Spanish defending force of perhaps 400- 600 men, mostly militia, repulsed a landing force of 9,000 men. Demoralized and defeated, the much-reduced force boarded their ships and sailed to the more weakly held island of Jamaica, where the Spanish who chose not to surrender faded into the interior to join their runaway slaves in a guerrilla campaign that would last five years before the English completed their conquest of the island. When Oliver Cromwell heard the news of the defeat at Hispaniola, observers in London reported that he shut himself in his room for an afternoon, before placing Penn and Venables in the Tower of London; but later recovered to call for godly Englishmen to settle the new colony of Jamaica. Few chose to answer, while most followed the example of the New England colonists, who felt they had enough trouble fulfilling God’s mission in the North American wilderness, without sailing through a war zone to an uncertain future in disease and hunger-ridden Jamaica. Meanwhile, the war Cromwell felt he could avoid in Europe broke out with Spain, gaining him Dunkirk but costing money and men. This ambitious and spectacularly unsuccessful project to colonize the Spanish Caribbean has come to be known as the Western Design. The Western Design represents a key turning point in the history of the Caribbean and development of England’s American colonial empire. Through an unprecedented use of state- commissioned force, England struck against a continental enemy across the Atlantic, and added what would become a valuable sugar island and buccaneering base to a growing American empire. The event has long been looked at by historians of Commonwealth England, both in exploring Cromwell’s religious psychology, and in debating its foreign policy. However, with vi the growth of an Atlantic approach to history, new fields have opened within which the Western Design should be considered. One development has been the blurring of the formerly rigid historiographical distinctions of what constituted English, colonial American, and Caribbean history. A growing Atlantic empire including all three areas has begun to be explored, and events in one place have been examined as to how they affected events in the others. One example has been an analysis of the early seventeenth-century Caribbean as a target for Puritan colonization, much as New England has been viewed for decades and even centuries. vii INTRODUCTION In the spring and summer of 1655, Oliver Cromwell, as Lord Protector of England and with the authority of the Council of State, dispatched an English fleet under the command of Sea General William Penn and General Robert Venables to conquer and settle the target of their choosing among Spain’s colonies in the Caribbean. A Spanish defending force of perhaps 400- 600 men, mostly militia, repulsed a landing force of 9,000 men. Demoralized and defeated, the much-reduced force boarded their ships and sailed to the more weakly held island of Jamaica, where the Spanish who chose not to surrender faded into the interior to join their runaway slaves in a guerrilla campaign that would last five years before the English completed their conquest of the island. When Oliver Cromwell heard the news of the defeat at Hispaniola, observers in London reported that he shut himself in his room for an afternoon, before placing Penn and Venables in the Tower of London; but later recovered to call for godly Englishmen to settle the new colony of Jamaica. Few chose to answer, while most followed the example of the New England colonists, who felt they had enough trouble fulfilling God’s mission in the North American wilderness, without sailing through a war zone to an uncertain future in disease and hunger-ridden Jamaica. Meanwhile, the war Cromwell felt he could avoid in Europe broke out with Spain, gaining him Dunkirk but costing money and men. This ambitious and spectacularly unsuccessful project to colonize the Spanish Caribbean has come to be known as the Western Design. The Western Design represents a key turning point in the history of the Caribbean and development of England’s American colonial empire. Through an unprecedented use of state- commissioned force, England struck against a continental enemy across the Atlantic, and added what would become a valuable sugar island and buccaneering base to a growing American empire. The event has long been looked at by historians of Commonwealth England, both in exploring Cromwell’s religious psychology, and in debating its foreign policy. However, with 1 the growth of an Atlantic approach to history, new fields have opened within which the Western Design should be considered.