In 1650, Mary Browne of Barbados made John Ryland, her kinsman, an overseer of her estate after her death. He would receive two thousand pounds of sugar per year as recompense, “so long as he shall be employed in my affairs.” But Browne also demanded that Ryland be “both mindful and careful of my business and estate.”Footnote 1 Women like Mary Browne, whose wealth and property was tied up in plantations in Barbados were themselves incredibly mindful of their affairs throughout the seventeenth century. Their letters and deeds, made from the 1640s onwards, show that women were independent participants in the early expansion of plantation economies and slavery in Barbados. Through producing goods like sugar and cotton and selling and transferring property, including equipment, land, and enslaved Africans, they were individually invested in the developments sweeping through the Caribbean. They regularly appointed trusted individuals, who were friends, lovers, or members of their extended kinship networks, to manage their diverse economic portfolios, not just in the event of their death, but during their lifetime too. Women who sold, transferred, bought, and inherited property in Barbados were frequently located not within the Caribbean, but in England's port towns and cities, including Bristol and London.Footnote 2 This article provides a first insight into how these women in England, using a range of economic and legal tools and methods, managed wealth and property in Barbados during the seventeenth century.
Being distant from the colony had implications for how women managed their business, as direct oversight was impossible. Instead, they were forced to broker arrangements with agents and overseers who could act on their behalf. We can make sense of how they established these connections through the lens of women's intimate networks, meaning those relationships whose quality was shaped by sexual and romantic attachment, family ties, and friendship. Examining women's economic activity through the lens of their intimate networks, using sources such as notarial records, deeds, and wills, has provided a fresh perspective on the development of colonies in the early modern Atlantic world. In the Dutch colony of New Netherland, for instance, empire-building—through the establishment of households and extension of credit—was undergirded by women's intimate networks in both the metropole and the colony.Footnote 3 Examining women's intimate networks, and the effect they had on inheritance practices, has also extended our understanding of women's role in the development of plantation slavery in the British Empire. In Jamaica, for example, women saw enslaved Africans as a “vital form of property” and thus “deepened the empire's commitment” to slavery.Footnote 4 Whilst our appreciation of how women shaped these developments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has continued to expand, the rate of change has not been as quick for earlier periods.Footnote 5 Scholars of seventeenth-century England have been slow to explore English women's participation in plantation and slavery, but more recent studies point towards the importance of understanding and recognising how metropolitan women's connections with empire were manifest in significant ways.Footnote 6 Women sought to shape colonial policy by petitioning the crown and providing intelligence to government bodies in London; women's interpersonal connections helped to foster interest and participation in the imperial project; and through women's inheritance a new class of heiresses, whose wealth derived from empire, emerged.Footnote 7 Nonetheless, how seventeenth-century English women were involved in empire in the Atlantic world, and the Caribbean in particular, continues to be much less understood.
Overlooking the efforts women made to initiate and sustain plantation economies and slavery has shaped scholarship on seventeenth-century Barbados for decades. In the pioneering work of Richard S. Dunn, for example, even some of the methods deployed (including tracing the surnames of prominent Barbados families across the seventeenth century) exclude and fail to account for the economic participation of women.Footnote 8 Yet, as Cecily Jones has noted, including English women—those in the metropole alongside those on the island—within our frame of analysis is essential if we are to fully understand how social and economic changes were produced in seventeenth-century Barbados.Footnote 9 Attending to the role of English women has broader implications for studies of early modern British society, colonisation, and empire. Firstly, studying how women deployed the knowledge that enabled them to navigate absentee property and slave ownership in seventeenth-century Barbados will allow for fruitful comparisons with what came later, in Jamaica and elsewhere in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Secondly, understanding how women “at home” participated in plantation and slavery in Barbados can, and should, inform how we view developments in England, including enslavement within elite households and investment in the transatlantic slave trade.Footnote 10 Women were, throughout the seventeenth century and across the British Empire, involved in initiating and maintaining such practices.
Women in England were under pressure to manage their property in Barbados from a distance, to ensure that it was safeguarded for their heirs and to guarantee their own continued prosperity. To do so, they adopted various legal and economic tools, including power of attorney, making wills, and deeds of gift. In seeking to successfully manage their property in Barbados whilst resident in England, women demonstrated independence as well as legal competencies, not least by adapting their pre-existing skills to the new transatlantic colonial context.Footnote 11 In the seventeenth century, power of attorney, which meant the authority to act on the behalf of someone else in business and legal affairs, was a relatively new legal tool. It was more commonly used by prosperous families whose economic interests were dispersed across the Atlantic world, with wives, sisters, and daughters often viewed as the most appropriate people to oversee the family enterprise when their male relations were overseas.Footnote 12 In English maritime communities, women were regularly granted the customary right, or power, to act on the behalf of sailors who were sometimes, but not always, their family.Footnote 13 Women who were absentee property owners in Barbados found themselves at the other end of this tool, instead delegating power of attorney to someone else.Footnote 14 But this does not imply that women who appointed attorneys lacked sufficient economic or legal competence themselves. When women could not directly oversee their affairs, they could just as well demonstrate their authority and knowledge of plantation management in the Caribbean by giving careful instructions to their agents.Footnote 15 Seventeenth-century women who were absentee property and slave owners in Barbados activated their intimate networks to similarly deploy agents and attorneys, with the purpose of maintaining control of property, including plantations and enslaved Africans.
The remote management of property required other precise legal arrangements, including deeds, which were instruments in writing between two living people. Deeds bring to light how women managed their assets to increase their wealth, including liquidating goods, collecting debts, and overseeing plantations on the island. Deeds in the Barbados National Archives show women acting both as independent parties and in unison with others. Unlike wills, the deeds usually provide no information about the reasoning behind the transfer or sale of property. But by naming the different parties involved, their relationships to one another, and the property concerned—which included enslaved Africans—it is possible to reconstruct a fuller picture of women's intimate networks and their individual investment in plantation and slavery.
Many women appointed an attorney, who might be a trusted family member, friend, or associate, following the death of their husbands (which was a common occurrence) in order to swiftly and effectively liquidate their property in Barbados.Footnote 16 Elizabeth Hussey, a widow in Bristol, who was the executrix of Captain Steven Hussey, appointed an attorney in 1643. She engaged George Roche to recover her goods, including cotton and tobacco, and also dispose of any land that belonged to her in the Caribbean.Footnote 17 The wording of Hussey's deed suggests that her husband's business interests may have stretched across several Caribbean islands. It is not clear from the deed whether she had a previous relationship with Roche, but other women were clear that they chose to appoint attorneys from among those they were closely connected with, including individuals in their kinship network. In 1645, Elizabeth Ham, a spinster who lived in Bristol, appointed her brother John Ham, also of Bristol, as her attorney in Barbados, “to receive for me and in my name and to my use” debts that were due to her.Footnote 18 As Elizabeth Ham had never been married, we can assume that her brother was recovering debts owed to her through her own business enterprise or debts that she had inherited. In 1645, Mary Ballard, a widow who inherited property in Barbados from her uncle, David Salisbury (who died on the island), also appointed her brother, David Salisbury, to be her attorney. The family hailed from Denbighshire, Wales, and were likely a lesser branch of the prominent Salusbury (rather than Salisbury) family. In the deed, Mary Ballard described herself as a trustee of John Salisbury, but her relationship to him is unclear. He was possibly another brother, and they both might have inherited from their uncle. Mary Ballard's deed illuminates another dimension of women's intimate connections in the Atlantic world, as both her uncle and brother were illegitimate, being her “father's natural brother” and her “natural brother.”Footnote 19 Despite their illegitimacy, Mary and her father before her had clearly established close ties with these family members.
As this suggests, deeds reveal more than just what women chose to do with their property. They are also sources that provide an insight into the intimacy that women established with others, both men and women. In 1648, Ann Ellison, a widow who lived in Southwark, London, acted as the executrix of her late husband's will, but she also appointed a trusted person, her “loving friend” Nathaniel Starkey, a City of London merchant, as her “true and lawful attorney” to recover debts owed to her in Barbados.Footnote 20 Ellison may have formed an intimate relationship with Starkey during her widowhood, but chosen not to remarry. Women formed close bonds with men with whom they were not married, nonetheless making them significant beneficiaries of their property and wealth. Remaining unmarried meant retaining the status of feme sole and also protecting property and wealth from a potentially profligate husband. Establishing connections that were not sanctified by marriage was one option, and not an unusual one, for women who found themselves in this position.Footnote 21
From the vantage point of England, managing affairs in Barbados could seem incredibly risky. In order to ensure the smooth transmission of property, women appointed close family members who were resident in Barbados, sometimes over a prolonged period of time. Elizabeth Rawdon was the widow of Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon, a merchant, plantation owner, and Royalist war hero who died in 1646. They had married in 1611 and Elizabeth, the daughter of Thomas Thorowgood, a London Freeman of the Drapers’ Company, reportedly brought a fortune of £11,000 to their marriage. In 1628, Marmaduke Rawdon and his partners, a syndicate of London merchants, were granted ten thousand acres of land in Barbados. According to his nephew's account, Rawdon himself invested £10,000 in the venture. One of Rawdon's partners was his future son-in-law, Edmond Forster. Following the defeat of the Royalist army in the British Civil Wars (1642-1651), Rawdon's property is said to have been sequestered by the Commonwealth state, but it was recovered, at least in part, by 1653. That year, Elizabeth and her daughter Elizabeth Forster, Edmond's widow, appointed Thomas Rawdon (their son and brother) to oversee their affairs in Barbados.Footnote 22 Since the Royalist defeat, Thomas had lived in Barbados, a haven for supporters of the crown during the Civil Wars. In Barbados, Thomas married Magdalen Crew, with whom he had six children.Footnote 23 Another Rawdon son, Bevill, resided in Surinam.Footnote 24 The Rawdon family tree show connections that stretched from Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (the family property that Elizabeth Rawdon had inherited from her father), across the English Atlantic world.
It was an obvious choice for Elizabeth Rawdon and Elizabeth Forster to appoint Thomas to act on their interests in Barbados. The Rawdons were a large but very tight-knit family and Thomas had already provided financial assistance to Bevill to establish a plantation in Surinam. The mother, daughter, and son agreed to let a plantation in St. Michael, Barbados, to William Mott for a period of twenty-one years for eight hundred pounds of “good dry and well cured muscovado sugar” yearly rent. Mott already inhabited the plantation, and it was further agreed that the sugar should be “delivered to a convenient storehouse at Indian Bridge.”Footnote 25 It is not clear from the deed, but it seems likely that the three of them had inherited this property from Marmaduke Rawdon, Elizabeth's husband and the father of Thomas and Elizabeth. With Thomas in Barbados, his mother and sister could rely upon him to ensure the sugar was delivered, duly sold, and converted into cash that they would use as additional income during their widowhoods.
In 1660, the crowning of Charles II turned the political tide and the Rawdon family's fortunes in turn. Thomas Rawdon, who had effectively been in exile in Barbados, returned to England in 1662 with his family, whilst still maintaining property on the island. Elizabeth Rawdon also maintained connections to Barbados until the end of her life, leaving “all in right debts and interest” on the island to her son Bevill in her will.Footnote 26 Remarkably, the Rawdons had succeeded in safeguarding their property and inheritance in Barbados throughout the turbulence of the Civil Wars. Marmaduke Rawdon had died in the midst of the conflict, whilst his heirs lived to the see the Restoration of the crown in 1660 (his son Thomas died in 1666 and his wife Elizabeth in 1669). Women's intimate connections had ensured that their property in Barbados was not entirely lost during the seismic social and political shifts that occurred in the mid-century English Atlantic world.
Elizabeth Rawdon and Elizabeth Forster might not have been willing to relocate to Barbados alongside Thomas, but by indirectly overseeing plantation management in Barbados and by using the legal instrument of deeds they ensured an income for themselves. As well as managing property to procure an income, women used deeds to simultaneously safeguard property for their heirs. Elizabeth Crotis, a widow who lived in Cornwall, used a deed of gift to assign twenty acres of land in St. Lucy and twelve acres in St. Thomas to her grandson, Edward Gufer, in 1666. Edward was the son of her son, also Edward, and the land would be passed down from Edward to his heirs in perpetuity. Crotis underlined her care and sentiment towards her grandson, adding that her gift was for the “natural love and affection” she bore him. But her gift to Edward came with the condition that during her lifetime she would receive £10 per year towards her maintenance.Footnote 27 By assigning her plantations to Edward during her own lifetime, Elizabeth freed herself of direct responsibility for their management, but expected to reap the rewards of Edward's careful oversight.
Deeds offer a static picture, a snapshot in time only, of women's intended outcomes for their property in Barbados. In the absence of further evidence, such as women's correspondence, it is impossible to know whether their instructions were followed through in the manner they desired. Barbary (sometimes Barbara) Newton's correspondence with her kinsman and plantation manager, Benjamin Cryer, during her widowhood suggests how women's plans could be frustrated and also how partnerships between women and those they charged with overseeing their property could break down.Footnote 28 Newton's husband, Colonel Samuel Newton, died in 1684, and as one of his executors she was tasked with collecting debts that were owed to him, distributing his bequests, and overseeing the continued prosperity of their plantation and property. Until their eldest son, John, reached the age of twenty-four, Barbary Newton was to have oversight of all of their property in England and Barbados, which included goods, land, plantations, and enslaved Africans. When John came of age, she would have “one moiety,” or one-third, of all her husband's property in Barbados and England, “to possess and enjoy during her widowhood and [. . .] dispose of [as] she shall please.” There was, however, a significant caveat attached to Samuel Newton's bequest to his wife: Barbary would inherit her third, “provided always that she [. . .] shall continue a widow to the time of her death.” Samuel Newton's intention was that John and Barbary would manage his estates jointly, without dividing his property, thereby ensuring its inheritance by his heirs.Footnote 29
At the time Samuel Newton penned his will on 12 February 1684, Barbary was already residing in England. But she had, it appears, spent some time on the island of Barbados. Her residence there dated to at least 1670, when her son Edmund was baptised in Christ Church.Footnote 30 But it was from her home in England, at King's Bromley, Staffordshire, that she corresponded with Benjamin Cryer between 1683 and 1689. The Newtons certainly showed affection towards their Cryer kinfolk. It was Isabella Cryer (née Robinson), Benjamin's wife, who was Colonel Newton's kinswoman, receiving a bequest of £50 when he died. Samuel Cryer, Benjamin and Isabella's child, was also Colonel Newton's godson and received £20. Benjamin Cryer was clearly trusted by Samuel Newton; whilst he was not appointed as an executor or trustee of his will, he was named as an individual who could be relied upon, in an unofficial capacity, to help repair any disagreements that might arise between his wife and eldest son.Footnote 31 During a period of time that Barbary Newton had hosted her “cousin” Isabella Cryer, Benjamin Cryer noted that Newton's treatment of his wife was generous, demonstrating the “kindness not of a kinswoman but of a mother.”Footnote 32
It was upon this foundation of mutual affection and trust that Newton tasked Cryer with overseeing her affairs in Barbados. He promised her, “I shall observe your orders and take as much care of your affairs as I possibly can.”Footnote 33 This involved many months of frustrated attempts to collect her debts, often to little avail. Cryer wrote, “I have had very solemn promises of payment from some of your debtors, to which I gave some credit but have been failed.” Going forward, Cryer intended to be less forgiving, pleading “I hope you will pardon my past credulity, and for the future I shall let no time lapse of suing for debts that are due and not paid, and shall remit you the moneys as fast as I can meet with opportunities.”Footnote 34 For Newton, Cryer's swift recovery of money that was owed her was of the upmost importance, so that she could dispense her husband's bequests and also maintain her own independent living in England.
It might have been precisely because he was part of her kinship network that Newton freely expressed her frustration with Cryer, and why he, in turn, may have taken advantage of his position (at least this was what she believed). In October 1686, Newton decided to appoint Thomas Horner, her “very good friend,” as her attorney, who, she wrote to Cryer, “doth well understand the nature of my business.”Footnote 35 She requested Cryer to allow Horner to “have all my books, bonds, bills, and all the whole of papers, that concerns me.”Footnote 36 Newton also demanded that Cryer allow Horner to visit her plantation and inspect her property, including the enslaved Africans. Newton's mistrust of Cryer was not, according to Horner, without foundation. Later, she learned from Horner that Cryer and Beale had recklessly mismanaged her property.Footnote 37
Conclusion
Throughout the seventeenth century, English women directed agents and attorneys to manage their affairs in Barbados. In the period before the role of the attorney was legally formalised, they appointed individuals in their extended networks who were knowledgeable about their business to collect debts, manage, and dispose of their goods and property. Women's correspondence suggests they had a close bond with those they chose to oversee their plantations, and, at the outset at least, their intimate friends and family appear to have been the preferred choice. Women sometimes drafted affective language of close friendship, love, and intimacy into letters and deeds themselves, demonstrating the entanglement of their affection and affinity towards those they appointed with their sense that they were trusted and competent enough to see to their affairs. Trust underlined these relationships and interactions, as women in England had to believe that their agents and attorneys in Barbados would work in their best interests, even whilst they were not under their clients’ watchful eyes. In spite of kinship, if this trust was broken, women might sever ties, as the conflict between Barbary Newton and Benjamin Cryer demonstrates.
Although slavery and colonialism are generally absent from discussions of women, property, inheritance, and wealth in seventeenth-century England, recent scholarship by Hannah Young makes a forceful argument for seeing property in the Caribbean—including those who were enslaved and treated as such—as fully integrated with women's property in the domestic sphere. The “histories of Britain and those of the Caribbean cannot,” Young has argued “be conceived separately or in isolation.”Footnote 38 Further research will bring to light how women's management of Barbados property and wealth in the seventeenth century intersected with and was dependent upon enslavement; and similarly how English women's slave ownership, enjoyment of slave-produced goods, and investment in the slave trade was connected to, and even predicated upon, their absentee property and slave ownership in the Caribbean.
Intimate networks operate as a framework for understanding how some women became property owners in Barbados, through inheritance for instance. But this is not the full picture. Intimate networks are also the lens through which we can understand women's continued involvement in the economies of plantation and slavery, as they leveraged the assistance of individuals in their networks to enable them to manage wealth and property in the colony. Seeing women's intimate networks in operation only at the point at which they became property owners would be to miss the significance of their ongoing participation in systems of colonialism and enslavement, and how they achieved this whilst looking on—an ocean away—in England.
