I'm in the middle of the above book, a fascinating narrative of the
history of the Caribbean Islands during the above time period, written by
Richard S. Dunn (pub. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York: 1972,
University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 0-393-00692-1).
CARLISLEs within it are, of course, the earls of CARLISLE--Charles
Howard and James Hay CARLISLE (mostly the latter) and mentions of CARLISLE
Bay in Antigua. I'll post a little from the book regarding these men, the
only CARLISLEs in the index, starting with the first citations of James Hay
CARLISLE:
*************
pp. 49-51, from Chapter 2, "Barbados: The Rise of the Planter Class"
Initially the Barbadians showed little sign of developing a planter
elite. The years from 1627 to 1640 constituted the tobacco age in Barbados.
Caribbee tobacco was of poor quality, and no one made much money from it.
Essentially the Barbados pioneers operated a subsistence economy. Their
mode of life was every bit as homespun and crude as in the early days of
Jamestown and Plymouth.
The colony suffered considerably from initial mismanagement. Sir
William COURTEEN [caps are mine], a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant experience
in the Caribbean trade, organized a syndicate that sponsored the first
settlement in 1627, sending out two shiploads of colonists under the command
of John and Henry POWELL. The COURTEEN syndicate sank about 10,000 [British
pounds] into this venture, hoping for the same sort of returns as the London
merchants who had invested in privateering expeditions to the West Indies in
the 1590s [footnote #9. "N. Darnell DAVIS, ed., "Papers relating to the
early History of Barbados," *Timehri: The Journal of the Royal Agricultural
and Commercial Society of British Guiana,* New Ser., V (1891), 51-60, VI
(1892), 328-329. See also ANDREWS, *Elizabethan Privateering,* chap. 6."].
Unhappily for COURTEEN, the earl of CARLISLE [James Hay CARLISLE], an
influential courtier, soon challenged his control of the island. Both men
obtained royal patents for Barbados. Both dispatched governors, settlers,
and supplies. COURTEEN's and CARLISLE's agents in turn were seized and
banished; one governor was executed. By 1629 CARLISLE obtained the upper
hand. He was recognized as lord proprietor of all the English Caribbees,
the Leeward Islands as well as Barbados. But CARLISLE was an indolent
absentee proprietor, interested only in collecting quitrents, and in 1636 he
died, leaving his estate entangled in debts and his proprietary rights over
Barbados in dispute. Effective management of the island in the 1630s was
wholly relegated to CARLISLE's governor, Henry HAWLEY, who made what profit
he could be levying a poll tax on every inhabitant. The island had no
military defenses, but fortunately the Spanish never attacked. It was
divided into six parishes, each with a vestry, but there were not enough
clergymen to go round. Governor HAWLEY had a Council to advise him, and in
1639 he convened the first Barbados Assembly, but in general he ruled as a
petty despot [footnote #10: "For further details see WILLIAMSON, *Caribbee
Islands,* chaps. 2-3, 5-7; HARLOW, *Barbados,* chap. 1; J. Harry BENNETT,
"Peter Hay, Proprietary Agent in Barbados, 1636-1641," *Jam. Hist. Rev., V
(1964), 9-29. One important effect of CARLISLE's proprietorship was that he
leased 10,000 acres of what turned out to be the best land in Barbados (St.
George's Valley) to a syndicate of London merchants headed by Marmaduke
ROYDON, William PERKINS, and Alexander BANNISTER. See LIGON's map of the
island, fig. 4, p. 63."].
What sort of people came to Barbados in these early years? To start
with, we have the names of a great many colonists who arrived before
1640--four lists totaling nearly 2,000 names [footnote #11: "Seventy-four
passengers to Barbados in 1627 are listed in N. Darnell DAVIS, *Cavaliers
and Roundheads of Barbados, 1650-1652* (Georgetown, Br. Guiana, 1887),
42-43; 985 passengers to Barbados in 1635 are listed in John Damden HOTTEN,
ed., *The Original Lists of Persons of Quality ... and Others Who Went from
Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700* (London, 1874), 33,
145; 113 planters who received Barbados land grants from Gov. HAWLEY,
1637-1639, are listed in Hay of Haystoun Papers relating to Barbados,
Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh (microfilm, J. Harry Bennett Collection,
University of Texas, Austin). Hereafter cited as Hay Papers; 764 names of
persons holding 10 or more acres in Barbados are listed in [William Duke],
*Some Memoirs of the First Settlement of the Island of Barbados* (Barbados,
1741), 51-62 (incorrectly totaled as 766). Of course these lists overlap to
some extent."]. The earliest of these lists records the 74 settlers who
came with Capt. John POWELL in the ship *Peter* in 1627. There were no
women in this party, for Barbados--like Jamestown in 1607 and Providence
Island in 1630--was founded exclusively by males. Clearly most of the
initial settlers did not tarry long in Barbados, for only 6 out of the 74 in
this list can be found among the 764 landholders on the island eleven years
later! One reason, certainly, for their short stay was that Sir William
COURTEEN granted them no land. He paid them wages and expected them to
return all proceeds to his syndicate. Among the first arrivals in 1627 was
Henry WINTHROP, the scape-grace second son of the founder of Massachusetts.
Young WINTHROP says he came to Barbados for a three-year hitch at the
"offer" of 100 [pounds] a year. Whether he was paid this much in wages, or
whether he hoped to make this much from his share of the tobacco crop, is
unclear. Henry wanted to have some servants of his own in order to make an
additional profit, so he asked his father in England to hire and equip ten
servants and have them "bound to searve me in the west indyes sum 3 yere or
5 ... and get them as resonable as you can promysinge them not above 10
pound a yere." The elder WINTHROP was slightly suspicious of this whole
project, especially since the Barbados tobacco Henry sent home proved to be
"verye ill conditioned, fowle, full of stalkes and evill coloured." He
dispatched Henry two boy servants, for "men I could gett none," but by the
time these youths reached Barbados their master was already back in England,
his adventure over [footnote #12: "Allyn B. FORBES, *et al.,* eds.,
*WINTHROP Papers, 1498-1649* (Boston, 1929-1947), I, 356-357, 361-362, II,
66-69. Before leaving Barbados, Henry WINTHROP switched allegiance from
COURTEEN to CARLISLE and became one of the 12 magistrates on the island.
"Ibid.," I 405-406."].
When CARLISLE grabbed control of the island, he reversed COURTEEN's
colonizing policy and distributed land to the settlers, expecting them to
pay their own way and set up for themselves. Nearly forty thousand acres
were allotted to 250 colonists from 1628 to 1630, and some of these grants
were very generous. As immigration continued, Governor HAWLEY issued rather
smaller patents in the 1630s; he seems to have granted each new planter ten
acres for himself plus an additional ten acres for each servant. Before the
end of the decade all the arable land was parceled out. Land grants in
Barbados totaled about eighty-five thousand acres in 1638--practically the
same figure as in 1680. This acreage was distributed quite unequally among
764 planters {footnote #13: "[Duke], *Memoirs,* 7-20, 51-62; PARES,
*Merchants and Planters,* 2-4, 57-58; list of land grants issued by Gov.
HAWLEY, 1637-1639, Hay Papers. The 764 Barbados landholders listed as of
1638 all held at least 10 acres, which raises the possibility that
additional planters held smaller lots. But I doubt that many did. HAWLEY's
grants in 1637-1639 started at 10 acres, and practically all were for at
least 20 acres."]. Some tracts were very sizable, larger than any
plantations on the island a half century later. Edward OISTIN obtained a
thousand acres in 1629 for which he paid 1,000 [British pounds]. William
HILLIARD acquired six hundred acres from CARLISLE in 1637 [footnote #14:
"Edward OISTIN to Archibald HAY, May 29, 1638, William HILLIARD to Archibald
HAY, Dec. 18, 1637, Hay Papers. The fishing village of Oistins in Barbados
is named after Edward OISTIN. HILLIARD still held 500 acres in 1647; he
sold a half share of this estate to Thomas MODYFORD for 7,000 [pounds], as
described in LIGON, *True History of Barbados,* 22."]. On the other hand,
the great majority of patents issued by Governor HAWLEY from 1637 to 1639
fell into the range of thirty to fifty acres. To an English peasant farmer
thirty acres would not seem paltry, for it was a larger tract than most
husbandmen enjoyed at home [footnote #15: "For the size of English
husbandmen's farms, see CHALKIN, *Seventeenth-Century Kent,* 68-70; POWELL,
*Puritan Village,* 173-185; and HOSKINS, *The Midland Peasant,* 201, 215,
311-313."].