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Auction: 20041 - The "Dubois" Collection of Jamaica Postal History and Stamps - Part I - conducted behind closed doors
Lot: 4

17th. Century Overseas Ship Letters
1675 (20 May) entire letter from Sir Thomas Modyford, Governor of the Island, to Sir Richard Hopkins in London, headed "Jamayca" and carried courtesy of Capt. Molesworth outside the post. Photo

Note: 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 Charles II, and factor for the Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, who had a monopoly in the slave trade to the islands.
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.
He was appointed Governor of Jamaica, by commission dated 15 February 1664. He arrived in Jamaica on 4 June 1664, with seven hundred planters and their slaves, marking the wholesale introduction of a slavery-based plantation economy in Jamaica. He appointed to his council his brother, Col. Sir James Modyford. Under Modyford the island was first divided into parishes. Modyford remained a factor for the Royal Adventurers until 1669, overseeing their plantation in Jamaica. 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 labour force of twenty-eight indentured servants from England. Sir Thomas had a cacao plantation at Sixteen Mile Walk in St. Katherine's parish. 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. 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. The issuance of the aforementioned privateer commission to Morgan, who used it to attack and plunder the Spanish possession of Panama, resulting 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.
Modyford died in 1679. He was buried at the cathedral in Spanish Town.

provenance:
Bob Swarbrick, September 1995

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