32 
HISTORY OF THE [book hi. 
my narration, by recording any intermediate events 
of a nature foreign to that subject. Soon after the 
establishment of the commonwealth in England, 
circumstances however arose, respecting this colo¬ 
ny, which have produced such effects on the gene¬ 
ral commerce of Great Britain, as cannot be over¬ 
looked in an historical and commercial survey of 
her West Indian plantations, and of which I shall 
now give some account. 
The reader has been sufficiently apprized of the 
attachment of the Barbadians towards the regal go¬ 
vernment. One of the first acts passed by the as¬ 
sembly, after the arrival of the Lord Willoughby 
for the first time, ( 1647 ), was a declaration of their 
allegiance and fidelity to the unfortunate Charles 
the First, at that time a prisoner to the army; and 
on the death of that monarch, the popular resent¬ 
ment against his persecutors ran so high in this 
island, that the few planters who were suspected 
to be in the interest of the parliament, thought it 
necessary to seek protection in England. 
To punish such stubborn defenders of a ruined 
cause, the parliament resolved, in 1651 , to send a 
powerful armament for the reduction of all the 
English colonies in America and the West Indies; 
but particularly Barbadoes, at that time the most 
important and hostile of them all. 
Many, indeed, were the motives which instiga¬ 
ted the parliament to tfiis determination. From 
