Providence Island Company

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The Providence Company or Providence Island Company was an English

Providence Island in the Caribbean and on the Mosquito Coast of what became Nicaragua.[2]

English settlers were sent to the colonies to run plantations. The colonies also functioned as a base for privateers operating against Spanish ships and settlements in the region. Colonists had to pay one fifth of the plunder to the Company. The colonies were destroyed by the Spanish and Portuguese in 1641.

Background

Providence Island was discovered during 1629 by

Somers Islands; Bell mentioned it to Nathaniel Rich. Rich then involved the Earl of Warwick, his cousin, who called a meeting for 10 November 1629, at Brooke House in Holborn, London. The result was finance, notionally £200 per member, with 20 members, that number being achieved at the start of 1631. Bell accompanied settlers to Providence Island, landed on 24 December of the same year, and became the first governor.[3][4][5]

Participants

Besides Lord Warwick, among the twenty shareholders in the Company were William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and Robert Greville, Lord Brooke. Oliver St John, a Puritan barrister, represented the Providence Company's interests, and the treasurer was John Pym, a squire from the West Country. William Jessop was commissioned as the Company's Secretary.

The Company was granted a royal charter.[6] Of these investors, 12 already were involved with the Somers Isles Company.[7] An official record names 7 for the patent granted 4 December 1630, with others to be added in future.[8] The following are listed as Charter Members:

Member Notes
Gabriel Barber (Barbor) Barber was treasurer to the Somers Isles Company.
Feoffees for Impropriations
; left 1632.
Sir Thomas Barrington, 2nd Baronet Not in the original Charter Member group of November 1630, he was brought in to make up the numbers to 20 in January 1631.[5]
John Dyke Dyke had extensive commercial experience, being from a merchant family, of the
Fishmongers' Company, and an investor in other colonial ventures.[5] Left 1632; ¼ share was taken by John Upton
via Pym.
William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele Peer.
Gregory Gawsell Gawsell worked as an estate manager for Warwick. During the First English Civil War he was treasurer for the Eastern Association.[6]
Gilbert Gerard Member of Parliament, brother-in-law of Sir Thomas Barrington (above) [11]
John Graunt (Grant) A clerk at Whitehall,[12] and colleague of Pym from the Exchequer.[13]
Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke Peer.
John Gurdon Member of Parliament.
Edward Harwood
 Died 1632. His brother George Harwood was a member of the
Feoffees for Impropriations.[14]
Richard Knightley Member of Parliament.
Edmond Moundeford
 Member of Parliament.
John Pym Member of Parliament. Pym was influential in bringing in Graunt, Robartes and St John.[15]
Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland Peer.
Nathaniel Rich Member of Parliament.
Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick Peer.
John Robartes Peer from 1634.
Benjamin Rudyerd Member of Parliament
Oliver St John Member of Parliament
Christopher Sherland Member of Parliament, member of the
Feoffees for Impropriations
; died 1632. A ½ share was taken by William Ball.

Four of them dropped out early, and other investors bought into the Company.

A decade later, the English Civil War made these names famous. John Hampden was also a prominent figure in the events leading up to the English Civil War. He was not a shareholder personally but was a cousin of one, and he did arbitrate between the shareholders and their agents on the island.

A close kinship group linked several charter members of the Company: Lord Warwick's younger brother Henry, recently made Earl of Holland and a favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria; their half-brother, their mother's natural son, Mountjoy Blount, recently made Earl of Newport and, like Holland, a figure at court; their cousin the Earl of Essex and his brother-in-law the Earl of Hertford.[16]

The first

Ship Money, and meeting ostensibly for Company business in Gray's Inn Lane or Brook House, Holborn, or in the country.[17]

Commercial activity

At the start, the company had a twofold interest: to establish a God-fearing population in an ideal commonwealth

C.V. Wedgwood notes.[19]
"The Earl of Warwick and his friends were sincerely trying to create three nests of pirates with the behaviour and morals of a Calvinist theological seminary."

The plantation system required African slaves, which involved the Company in the

privateering, however, under a tacit agreement from the King, whose foreign policy remained officially neutral with regard to Spain, but who agreed, provided that the Company foot any expenses. Prospects for Providence Island brightened at this, sufficiently for the projectors to capitalise the venture with an additional £100,000 in 1637.[20]

From 1631 to 1635, the Company also planted an English colony on

San Domingo
.

Outcome

In 1635 the Spanish raided the settlement on Association Island and destroyed it. In March 1638 several members of the Company were prepared to emigrate to Providence Island: the Earl of Warwick, Lords Saye and Brooke[21] Henry Darley, but nothing came of their petition for leave. In May 1641 the Providence Island Colony was conquered by the Spanish and Portuguese commanded by Adm. Don Francisco Díaz Pimienta.

Political influence

The Providence Company provided support to the

personal rule of Charles I.[22]

References

  1. ^ Warwick's title later gave name to Warwick, Rhode Island which is in the vicinity of another Providence
  2. San Andrés y Providencia Department of Colombia
    .
  3. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/72608. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/71068. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  5. ^
    Arthur Percival Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans; the last phase of the Elizabethan struggle with Spain (1914), pp. 59–63;archive.org
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-52133-8
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  7. ^ Kupperman, pp. 357–60.
  8. ^ Great Britain. Public Record Office (1860). Calendar of State Papers: 9- ] America and West Indies, 1574. Longman. p. 123. Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  9. ISBN 978-1-85984-333-8
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  10. ^ W. Noel Sainsbury, ed. (1860). "America and West Indies: February 1631". Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, Volume 1: 1574-1660. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  11. ^ Collins 1741, p. 70.
  12. ISBN 978-0-674-48425-2
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  13. ISBN 978-1-900934-12-1
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  14. ISBN 978-0-7190-5392-4
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  15. ISBN 978-0-87413-453-7
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.
  16. ^ These relationships are noted in C.V. Wedgwood, The King's Peace, 1637-1641 1955:130f.
  17. ^ Arthur Percival Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans: The Last Phase of the Elizabethan Struggle with Spain, (Yale University Press) 1914, pp 240ff.
  18. ^ The settlers were gathered largely from Bermuda; they were gathered into "families" with common property and group responsibility (Dixon Ryan Fox, "Foundations of West India Policy" Political Science Quarterly 30.4 (December 1915:661-672) p 665).
  19. ^ Wedgwood 1955:131.
  20. ^ Woodward 1955:132, from Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, and Newton 1914.
  21. Saybrook, Connecticut
  22. ISBN 978-0-521-52133-8
    . Retrieved 21 May 2012.

Sources

External links

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