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Authors: Matthew Parker
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Achilles , from London, carrying Modyford and his immediate retinue and further manpower. The plan was to ship English trade goods to the Canaries and Cape Verde Islands, exchanging them there for horses and cattle. These would be sold in Barbados, then the party would proceed to Antigua to establish a sugar plantation on the plentiful empty acres there.
With Modyford at Exeter, and on his subsequent emigration to Barbados, was Richard Ligon, author of A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados , by far the most vivid, sophisticated and considered contemporary account we have of these crucial, transformatory early years of the Sugar Revolution. Ligon was from a Worcestershire family of respectable name but diluted fortune; he was the fourth son of a third son. He seems to have been university-educated, probably at Balliol College, Oxford, and at some point forged links at court through the wife of James I. From hiswriting, we know he was well versed in architecture, horticulture, music and art. However, by mid-1647, when Ligon was coming up to 60 years old, he was in severe difficulties. Not only was he on the losing side in the Civil War, but he was also penniless and being pursued by his creditors. A large investment in a scheme to drain the Fens had backfired spectacularly, when a ‘Barbrous Riot’ had invaded and taken over his lands.
By the time of the fall of Exeter to the forces of Parliament, Ligon had attached himself to Modyford’s retinue, and in defeat was just as keen to get away. He was now, he wrote, ‘a stranger in my own Countrey’, and, ‘stript and rifled of all I had’, was resolved to ‘famish or fly’. With the approval of Thomas Kendall, for whom Ligon was useful as an understudy should Modyford ‘miscarry in the Voyage’, Ligon joined the party on the Achilles bound for Barbados.
Ligon wrote that he had travelled in his youth, and we know that his eldest brother Thomas migrated to Virginia, establishing the North American Ligon family, but it is very unlikely that Richard had been to the tropics before, as his account shares the sense of wonder and excitement shown by every first-time visitor to the West Indies.
Richard Ligon described himself as a man of ‘age and gravity’, but his boyish enthusiasm when, after a long voyage, the island of Barbados came into view, is plain to read: ‘Being now come in sight of this happy Island, the nearer we came, the more beautiful it appeared to our eyes.’ Soon they could make out ‘the high large and lofty trees, with their spreading branches and flourishing tops’. Ligon pleaded unsuccessfully with the captain to lower some of the sails that were impeding this view, but soon he could see on the rising ground behind the beach ‘the Plantations … one above another: like several stories in stately buildings, which afforded us a large proportion of delight’.
It was not only ‘extreamly beautiful’; it also, for Ligon, held out the promise of a more orderly society than the one he had left behind. Just as the lofty trees they could see from the boat were nourished by the soil and in turn gave it shade, so for ‘perfect Harmony’, he mused, the ‘Mighty men and Rulers of the earth by their prudent and careful protection, secure [the poor] from harms’, receiving, in return, ‘faithful obedience’. Thus, like for many other new arrivals, the island had already come to encapsulate Ligon’s hopes for a better world and a reversal in his fortunes.
At Bridgetown he was impressed to see a large number of storehouses and in Carlisle Bay more than 20 ‘good ships’ with ‘boats plying too and fro … So quick stirring and as numerous, as I have seen it below the bridge at London.’ But it was the strangeness and beauty of the island’s‘infinite varieties’ of unfamiliar tropical vegetation that made the greatest first impression. Best of all was the royal palm, the most ‘magnificent tree growing on the earth, for beauty and
With Modyford at Exeter, and on his subsequent emigration to Barbados, was Richard Ligon, author of A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados , by far the most vivid, sophisticated and considered contemporary account we have of these crucial, transformatory early years of the Sugar Revolution. Ligon was from a Worcestershire family of respectable name but diluted fortune; he was the fourth son of a third son. He seems to have been university-educated, probably at Balliol College, Oxford, and at some point forged links at court through the wife of James I. From hiswriting, we know he was well versed in architecture, horticulture, music and art. However, by mid-1647, when Ligon was coming up to 60 years old, he was in severe difficulties. Not only was he on the losing side in the Civil War, but he was also penniless and being pursued by his creditors. A large investment in a scheme to drain the Fens had backfired spectacularly, when a ‘Barbrous Riot’ had invaded and taken over his lands.
By the time of the fall of Exeter to the forces of Parliament, Ligon had attached himself to Modyford’s retinue, and in defeat was just as keen to get away. He was now, he wrote, ‘a stranger in my own Countrey’, and, ‘stript and rifled of all I had’, was resolved to ‘famish or fly’. With the approval of Thomas Kendall, for whom Ligon was useful as an understudy should Modyford ‘miscarry in the Voyage’, Ligon joined the party on the Achilles bound for Barbados.
Ligon wrote that he had travelled in his youth, and we know that his eldest brother Thomas migrated to Virginia, establishing the North American Ligon family, but it is very unlikely that Richard had been to the tropics before, as his account shares the sense of wonder and excitement shown by every first-time visitor to the West Indies.
Richard Ligon described himself as a man of ‘age and gravity’, but his boyish enthusiasm when, after a long voyage, the island of Barbados came into view, is plain to read: ‘Being now come in sight of this happy Island, the nearer we came, the more beautiful it appeared to our eyes.’ Soon they could make out ‘the high large and lofty trees, with their spreading branches and flourishing tops’. Ligon pleaded unsuccessfully with the captain to lower some of the sails that were impeding this view, but soon he could see on the rising ground behind the beach ‘the Plantations … one above another: like several stories in stately buildings, which afforded us a large proportion of delight’.
It was not only ‘extreamly beautiful’; it also, for Ligon, held out the promise of a more orderly society than the one he had left behind. Just as the lofty trees they could see from the boat were nourished by the soil and in turn gave it shade, so for ‘perfect Harmony’, he mused, the ‘Mighty men and Rulers of the earth by their prudent and careful protection, secure [the poor] from harms’, receiving, in return, ‘faithful obedience’. Thus, like for many other new arrivals, the island had already come to encapsulate Ligon’s hopes for a better world and a reversal in his fortunes.
At Bridgetown he was impressed to see a large number of storehouses and in Carlisle Bay more than 20 ‘good ships’ with ‘boats plying too and fro … So quick stirring and as numerous, as I have seen it below the bridge at London.’ But it was the strangeness and beauty of the island’s‘infinite varieties’ of unfamiliar tropical vegetation that made the greatest first impression. Best of all was the royal palm, the most ‘magnificent tree growing on the earth, for beauty and
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