Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham

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Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham (* around 1614, † July 23, 1666 off Guadeloupe ) was an English peer and colonizer of Suriname .

Live and act

Willoughby was the second eldest son of William Willoughby, 3rd Baron Willoughby of Parham , and Lady Francis Manners, daughter of John Manners, 4th Earl of Rutland . He was baptized in 1614. After his father died in 1617 and his older brother Henry died the following year, he inherited the title of Baron Willoughby of Parham as a minor . In 1624 he was a student at Eton College .

English Civil War

Because of his nobility, he was a member of the upper house of the English Parliament that met again in 1640 after an eleven-year break. In 1642 he was Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire . When the English Civil War broke out between Parliament and King Charles I , he took the side of the parliamentarians and in January 1642 became one of the commanders of the parliamentary army. On July 16, 1643, he stormed the royalist city ​​fortress of Gainsborough in a surprise night attack . Two weeks later he was surrounded by a large royalist army under the Earl of Newcastle in Gainsborough and had to surrender after a three-day siege. In September 1643 he had rejoined the main army of Parliament under Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell , fought at the Battle of Winceby in October and accepted the surrender of Bolingbroke Castle in November . In March 1644 he took part in the attack on Newark-on-Trent with Sir John Meldrum . After its failure, he was accused by the Earl of Manchester of ignoring Meldrum's orders, and he then had to formally apologize to the House of Lords . Oliver Cromwell also complained about the behavior of Willoughby's soldiers.

In the following years Willoughby became the leader of the Presbyterian forces in Parliament, refused the establishment of the New Model Army and was elected Speaker of Parliament in July 1647 . When the New Model Army took London in September 1647 , Willoughby was jailed along with six other peers on suspicion of high treason . After four months he was released without charge and fled to the Netherlands , where he joined the royalists. His lands in England were confiscated.

Barbados, Suriname

In 1647 he leased James Hay, 2nd Earl of Carlisle for 21 years, his possessions in Barbados and the post of lieutenant general of Barbados, in return, half of his income there should go to his creditors. After Charles I was executed by the parliamentarians in 1649, he finally traveled to Barbados in 1650 on behalf of the exiled King Charles II and took over the office of governor there.

Since there was no longer enough land in Barbados for the royalists who had fled there and the power struggle between the two camps continued there, Willoughby fitted out a ship under the direction of Sergeant Major Anthony Rowse in 1650 . The aim and mission of the expedition was to explore the north coast of South America , which is only a few days away, and to find a suitable place for a settlement. Rowse and his crew found this place on what is now the Suriname River . On August 6, 1651 Willoughby wrote enthusiastically to his wife about the expedition: “ Everything went according to plan. We have found the most beautiful place you have ever seen, with the finest rivers and stately trees. Of the 50 men who had been away for almost 5 months, not one had had a headache. They all praised the clear air, and the water was so pure and tasty as they had never seen it before. They ate lots of fish and poultry, countless partridges and pheasants five times a day. There are stately savannahs where you can ride for 40 to 50 miles in a horse-drawn carriage or on horseback . ”He continued about his plans:“ That's why I'm sending a few hundred people there to take possession of it. I have no doubt that thousands will be settling there in a few years . "

In the same year, under the command of Rowse, the first permanent colonization of Suriname began with around 300 emigrants from Barbados. Since many of them already had experience with tropical agriculture, they first grew tobacco and later sugar cane . With the settlers, the first slaves from Africa probably set foot on Surinamese soil. The settlers fortified a trading post they named Fort Willoughby and founded the town of Torarica .

In 1651 he was overthrown in Barbados by Admiral Sir George Ayscue , who conquered the island for the parliamentarians.

Willoughby Land

After the death of Oliver Cromwell and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Willoughby immediately asserted his claims. He got his lands back in England, was reinstated as governor of Barbados in 1663 and Charles II granted him ownership of the province of Willoughby Land , the area between the Coppename and the Marowijne (i.e. a smaller area than the today's basic area of ​​Suriname).

According to a map from 1667, 4,000 settlers including slaves are said to have lived on 175 plantations along the Suriname River by 1663. So Willoughby's prediction had come true.

Georg Warren , who traveled to Suriname in 1667, writes about the then capital Torarica that Torarica consists of about 100 houses with a chapel. In front of the city there is a beautiful bay or port, large and wide enough as a roadstead for 100 ships.

Willoughby himself was only in Willoughby Land twice : in 1652 to organize the defense and in November 1664 as the new notarized owner. He actually ran a sugar cane plantation upstream from Torarica, also on the left bank of the Suriname River, indicated on old maps as Parham Hill.

Marriage and offspring

Around 1629 he had married the Hon. Elizabeth Cecil († 1661), daughter of Edward Cecil, 1st Viscount Wimbledon . With her he had three daughters:

death

Willoughby drowned while traveling from Barbados to St. Kitts in 1666 when his ship got caught in a hurricane off Guadeloupe and sank. He did not live to see the conquest of Willoughby Land in February 1667 by the Zeelandman Abraham Crijnssen in the Second Anglo-Dutch Sea War .

Since he had no sons, his title fell to his younger brother William on his death.

literature

  • CFA Bruijning, J. Voorhoeve (Ed.): Encyclopedie van Suriname . Elsevier, Amsterdam and Brussels 1977, ISBN 90-10-01842-3 , p. 678.
  • GW van der Meiden: Betwist bestuur. Een eeuw strijd om de macht in Suriname 1651–1753 . De Bataafsche Leeuw, Amsterdam 1987, ISBN 90-6707-133-1 .
  • Matthew Parker: Willoughbyland. England's Lost Colony . Hutchinson, London 2015, ISBN 978-0091954093 .
  • George Edward Cokayne (Ed.): The Complete Peerage . Volume 8, George Bell & Sons, London 1898, p. 155.

Web links

Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughy of Parham on thepeerage.com

See also

predecessor Office successor
Henry Willoughby Baron Willoughby of Parham
1618-1666 		William Willoughby
Philip Bell Governor of Barbados
1650–1651 		George Ayscue
Humphrey Walrond
(acting) 		Governor of Barbados
1663–1666 		William Willoughby
personal data
SURNAME Willoughby, Francis, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English colonizer of Suriname
DATE OF BIRTH around 1614
PLACE OF BIRTH Suffolk
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1666
Place of death Caribbean Sea