Thomas Modyford

Colonel Sir Thomas Modyford, 1st Baronet (c. 1620 – 1 September 1679) was a planter of Barbados and Governor of Jamaica from 1664 to 1671.[1]

Thomas Modyford
Governor of Jamaica
In office February 1664 – 1 July 1671
Preceded by	Edward Morgan
Succeeded by	Thomas Lynch
Personal details
Born	1620 England
Died	1 September 1679 Spanish Town, Jamaica
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Palmer 1640 - 1668

Early life

Modyford was the son of a mayor of Exeter with family connections to the Duke of Albemarle, who emigrated to Barbados as a young man with other family members in 1647, in the opening stages of the English Civil War. He had £1,000 for a down payment on a plantation and £6,000 to commit in the next three years. Modyford soon was dominant in Barbados island politics, rising to be speaker of the house of assembly in Barbados during the reign of King Charles II, and factor for the Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, who had a monopoly in the slave trade to the islands.[2]

He negotiated with the Commissioners of the Commonwealth to be governor of Barbados, which put him in an awkward position with the Restoration of the English monarchy.

Jamaica

1671 map by Richard Bloome, completed on the instructions of Modyford

Sir Thomas Modyford was appointed Governor of Jamaica, by commission dated 15 February 1664 and made a Baronet.[3] He arrived in Jamaica 4 June 1664, with seven hundred planters and their slaves, marking the wholesale introduction of a slavery-based plantation economy in Jamaica.[4] The move was marked by tragedy for Modyford however, whose eldest son John was lost at sea when returning for his mother in Barbados.[5]

But it wasn't long before Modyford took tight control of the Jamaican government by culling the council and filling it with his own supporters, including his brother, Col. Sir James Modyford,[6] who he made Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, Governor of the Town and Castle of Port Royal and sole judge of the Admiralty and Customs.[7][8] Thomas Modyford remained a factor for the Royal Adventurers until 1669, overseeing their plantation in Jamaica[9] whilst Sir James was granted a royal licence in November to ship convicted felons from England to his brother in Jamaica. In Jamaica Sir Thomas used a labor force of twenty-eight indentured servants from England.[10] It was also under Thomas Modyford that the island was first divided into parishes. His own cacao plantation at Sixteen Mile Walk was located in St. Katherine's parish.[11]

In the second half of the 1660s, Modyford waged war against the Karmahaly Maroons, led by Juan de Serras, but the governor failed to subdue this community of runaway slaves.[12]

In 1670 he was "Governor of His Majesty's Island of Jamaica Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesties Forces within the said Island and in the Islands adjacent Vice-Admiral to His Royal Highness the Duke of York in the American Seas", according to the commission to Henry Morgan to make war upon the Spanish.[13] The issuance of the aforementioned privateer commission to Morgan, who used it to attack and plunder the Spanish possession of Panama, resulted in revocation of Modyford's governorship and arrest in 1671. King Charles II of England, in desperate need of Spain as an ally in an impending war with the Dutch, had ordered the arrest and revocation merely to appease a Spanish Crown, furious over the destruction of their prize city. Though charges were never preferred, and no trial was ever held, Modyford spent two years in the Tower of London. He was released in 1674, and returned to Jamaica in 1675.[14]

Death

Modyford died on 1 September 1679. He was buried the next day at the cathedral in Spanish Town, Jamaica alongside his wife Elizabeth.[15]

References

1. Earle, Peter (1981). The Sack of Panama. Jill Norman & Hobhouse. pp. 247–248. ISBN 0-906908-65-5.
2. Sir Thomas Modyford
3. Rayment, Leigh. "Leigh Rayment's list of baronets". Archived from the original on 24 October 2019. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
4. Jamaica Gleaner "Jamaica and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Part II)" Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine 26 March 2006
5. "The British Empire, Imperialism, Colonialism, Colonies". britishempire.co.uk. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
6. W. A. Feurtado, Official and Other personages of Jamaica from 1655 to 1790 (Kingston) 1896
7. Earle, Peter (1981). The Sack of Panama. Jill Norman & Hobhouse. p. 103. ISBN 0-906908-65-5.
8. Thornton, A.P. (1952). The Modyfords and Morgan. pp. 45, 52.
9. George F. Zook, "The Royal Adventurers and the Plantations" The Journal of Negro History 4.2 (April 1919), pp. 206-231.
10. Hilary McD. Beckles, "Plantation Production and White "Proto-Slavery": White Indentured Servants and the Colonization of the English West Indies, 1624-1645" The Americas 41.3 (January 1985), pp. 21-45.
11. J. Harry Bennett, "Cary Helyar, Merchant and Planter of Seventeenth-Century Jamaica" The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., Vol. 21.1 (January 1964), pp. 53-76.
12. Mavis Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796: a History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1988), pp. 25-32.
13. On-line text.
14. Marley, David. Pirates of the Americas, Volume 1. p. 247.
15. "The British Empire, Imperialism, Colonialism, Colonies". britishempire.co.uk. Retrieved 5 December 2020.