350 A. D. 1627. 



or wherher he fold it in parcels to the planters, or if his right was dif- 

 putable, does not clearly appear. In a printed account of his great 

 lolTes fuftained in his trade to the Eaft-Indies, his fon pofitively affirms 

 that his father firfl difcovered, planted, and fortified, the ifland of Bar- 

 bados, and afterward had a grant of it from King Charles I, in the third 

 year of his reign, by a patent ; and that the earl of Carlifle, in virtue 

 of his grant the following year, intruded, and took forcible poffellion 

 thereof; for which injury Sir William's reprefentatives never had any 

 compenfation. Thefe Weft-India iflands, before they fell into the 

 planting of fugar canes, were in thofe early times thought of very 

 little worth, otherwife the grant above-named would not have been fo 

 readily made. The planters, however, went on in improving them 

 during all the civil war and the ufurpation ; but at the reftoration of 

 King Charles II it was determined by the king and council that out of 

 the revenue of Barbados, then greatly improved, the L300 per annum 

 fhould be allowed to the earl of Marlborough for his life ; and that, once 

 for all, Li 000 fhould be paid to the earl of Kinnoul, who claimed under 

 the earl of Carlifle's grant, fo as he furrendered Lord Carlifle's charter : 

 and thus Barbados and all the other Caribbee ifles (Barbuda excepted *) 

 thenceforward came under the immediate government of the crown, as 

 they have ever fince remained. 



This year a iblemn agreement was executed between the Englifh and 

 French planters for dividing the ifland- of St. Chriftcphers between 

 them, and proper boundaries were fixed, which (fays our French author) 

 remain to this day (viz. anno 1658): but there was a fpecial provifo 

 that filhing, hunting, the fait ponds, the moft pretious kind of wood for 

 dyers and joiners work, and the havens and mines, ihould all be com- 

 mon to both nations : they alfo made a mutual covenant for their de- 

 fence againft the common enemy (meaning Spain.) The fame author 

 adds, that a company in London fupplied the Englifli there with every 

 ;thing very well ; and that the Englifli, being better acquainted with 

 the fea and with colonizing, improved their moiety of the ifland much 

 better and quicker than the French did theirs: fo that the Englifli were 

 enabled in the following year, 1628, to go over to the ifle of Nevis, and 

 to plant thereon ; it being but about half a league diftant. 



The two nations lived well enough together till the revolution in 

 England in 1689, when the French, by furprife, and before war was 

 declared in Europe, fell upon the Englifli, at the infligation of the Irifli 

 papifts fettled with them, and maftered them, obliging them to retire to 

 Nevis. And the year following the Englifli, headed by Colonel Cod- 

 drington, ferved the French in the fame manner : yet they were reftor- 

 ,ed by tlie peace of Ryfwick. On the breaking out of the war in 1702^ 



* See below in the year 1628. 



