The Empire Reformed. Owen Stanwood
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some tension. Burghill’s letters to his Bermudian allies reeked of condescension and frustration. He berated them for failing to send enough money or sufficient evidence to prosecute the case against the Company, and he also chided them for their dedication to Whig political principles at a time when these ideas had little purchase in the Stuart court. On one occasion, the Bermudians requested that the king give them complete control of the island’s judiciary, a request Burghill considered to be a major affront to the king’s authority. “Is it reasonable,” Burghill asked, “to thinke the Kinge willbe Setting up Comon welthes in any of his Dominions at this tyme of Day?” Such rhetoric was bound to strengthen the hand of the Company, who could easily paint Bermudians as disloyal subjects. On the island, meanwhile, Company advocates also attempted to use Whig, anti-Catholic rhetoric to urge people to resist royal government, claiming that the end of Company rule would lead to “Loss of their Landes, Poperey & voyalence.”35
The breaking of the Company led to a period of profound chaos in Bermuda. It is easy to read these events, like those in New England, as disputes between local interest groups and overbearing outsiders, but in fact such an interpretation would be too simple. Bermudians had successfully worked with metropolitan agents—including some with very different political principles—in their efforts to break the Company, and the issues of dispute were even clearer than in New Hampshire. A sympathetic royal governor could have easily brought the island to an accommodation with the new imperial system, merely by opening up the island’s trade and giving leading inhabitants a modest voice in local affairs. After all, most people had earnestly desired royal governance, even if they had little sense of what it entailed. As it happened, though, Bermudian politics fell victim to the same process that struck New Hampshire—people began to view local events in global terms, as manifestations of a larger battle between cosmic forces intent on world domination. And as in New England, the Bermudian political nation polarized into two hostile factions.
The Bermudian crisis was driven by two sets of international events. The first centered on the Caribbean islands and especially the Bahamas, a true periphery of the empire that had longstanding connections to Bermuda. Throughout the early 1680s, English and Spanish mariners menaced each other in spite of official peace between the two kingdoms, usually justifying their conduct by claiming that the other side violated international law by engaging in piracy. The struggle culminated in two Spanish strikes, the first devastating New Providence Island in 1684, the second destroying the Scottish Covenanter community at Stuart’s Town, South Carolina, in 1686. In both cases, the Spanish claimed to be retaliating against piratical assaults on St. Augustine and surrounding Indian missions, and English officials forbade their own subjects from fighting back. Nonetheless, word of these incidents spread alarm across the English Atlantic, as refugees dispersed as far away as New England. In a conspiratorial time, such attacks could only feed into fears of a generalized popish conspiracy against Protestantism, especially when so many of the victims were dissenters. Bermuda welcomed many survivors from these assaults, and the close proximity of the incidents combined with Protestant zeal only increased the fear of an imminent Spanish invasion.36
The second outside influence came from the uncertain state of English politics around the time of the fall of the Bermuda Company. In February 1685 Charles II died, leaving the throne to his Catholic brother James. Most subjects accepted the succession with little apparent alarm, but a minority of radical Protestants in both England and Scotland refused to countenance the accession of a popish monarch. During the summer of 1685 two prominent nobles—the duke of Monmouth in England and the duke of Argyll in Scotland—led expeditions aiming to overthrow the new king. Both rebellions failed miserably, and the two ringleaders died as traitors within months. In the American colonies, however, where European news was often out of date and unreliable, the rebellions caused a minor crisis, as many people came to believe—by a combination of wishful thinking and inaccurate news—that Monmouth and Argyll had succeeded and that the King James set to take the throne was the Protestant Monmouth rather than the Catholic York.37
Monmouth’s level of support in the colonies is difficult to ascertain. No one openly admitted favoring the duke’s cause, and the writers who claimed widespread support for Monmouth in America were all imperial officials attempting to blacken the colonists’ reputations and underscore their own loyalty. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the rebellions caused a great deal of confusion and excitement. In Boston, according to one report, Congregationalists welcomed the news of the victory of the “Protestant Prince,” calling it “an answer of their prayers.” In Virginia—not usually considered a center of radical Whig thought—the news of the invasion “so farr Imboldened” the people “that their Tongues runn at Large and Demonstrated the wickedness of their harts.” The governor responded by issuing a proclamation against the spreading of rumors. In Bermuda, speculation about Monmouth combined with fear of the Spanish and local political uncertainty to inspire a true rebellion, a temporary chaos that again revealed the limits of imperial policies.38
The crisis in Bermuda owed much to the policies and personality of the island’s governor, Richard Coney. While his initial commission came from the Bermuda Company, Coney owed his appointment to the king, who essentially forced the Company to appoint him, and his political predilections reflected the high Tory ideals of the royal court rather than the moderate Whiggism of his original superiors. Indeed, Coney’s wife and children were Catholic—a fact never publicly mentioned by Bermudians, but one that could not have escaped their notice. Coney secured a royal commission after the Company’s fall, overcoming Francis Burghill’s attempts at the office. The fact that the last Company governor stayed on as the first royal governor only exacerbated the crisis, as some Bermudians questioned the validity of Coney’s commission. More than that, Coney seemed to inspire great passions in people. Even before the royal commission arrived, he faced an armed mob in front of his house, narrowly escaping death, or so he claimed, by the heroic appearance of one of his slaves.39
As Bermudians simultaneously learned of unrest at home and the dissolution of the Bermuda Company, they challenged the governor over the issue of defense. As for many English plantations, Bermuda’s defenses consisted of a few aging fortifications and a small cache of arms and ammunition, and when word of the Company’s demise reached the island the governor and his enemies began to argue about who controlled these resources. Local militia officers claimed they did, and proved willing to support their claims with force, occupying the forts and demanding that Coney give up any pretensions to control the colony’s stores of arms. In the meantime, Coney set out to strengthen the fortifications on his own, actions that he assumed to be prudent, but that worried his opponents, who believed Coney to be an illegitimate governor with Spanish sympathies. One Bermudian suggested that it was “treason” to build fortifications without the king’s direct order. Over the course of 1685, further rumors of Coney’s treasonous nature circulated, mostly reports that the governor intended to “betraye the Island” to Spain.40
The tension led to a confrontation between the governor and militia leaders in October 1685. Seven leading officials appeared before the governor demanding powder from the governor’s store, noting “The nakedness, distres, & necessity of that Country, for want of arms & ammunition.” He refused, leading to a sustained argument, as the militia leaders complained that Coney had turned out qualified militia officers and claimed supplies that rightfully belonged to “the Country.” In the heat of argument, two of the officers said, “clapping their hands uppon their brests, That they believ’d in their conscious, That the Govor intended to betray the Island.” They added that if Coney did not name them to his council, they would refuse to recognize his authority—leading to a constitutional crisis on the island not unlike the one that Cranfield faced in New Hampshire.41
In Coney’s view, the rebellion he faced in 1685 was just like the one at home—a treasonous combination of preachers and other radicals intent on subverting the king’s authority and ultimately handing Bermuda to England’s enemies. The governor and his few allies—almost exclusively ship captains passing through Bermuda—made great note of the timing of the Bermudians’ actions, just as news of Monmouth’s rising reached the island, and of the Whig, anti-Catholic rhetoric they used to justify their actions. Coney noted that one opponent claimed he had “noe power to Governe but by the Duke of Yorke