1921 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 375 interesting. 1 Already in 1670 there were a considerable number of gentlemen planters of that island resident in England, and certain of these wrote a letter to the deputy-governor, council, and assembly in December of that year giving an account of some matters in which they had been acting in the interest of the island and suggesting that an agent should be appointed. 2 They recommended that the assembly should allow a Sallary to a person of some quallity who shall constantly attend the general Councelle and from time to time give notice to us what is in agita- tion Relating to Barbados and with our Advice draw up and prepare such things as are necessary, keepe a Register of the Orders drawne upon your treasury for money, and from time to time Remitt Coppyes of them to you. The assembly took the advice, and in April 1671 a letter addressed to the gentlemen planters stated that an agent had been appointed. The first reference to an agent for Jamaica that has been found is dated January 167 6/7, 3 and even then his position is not clear, for it was not until 1682 that the custom of ' raising money for soliciting the affairs of this his majesty's island in England ' commenced. 4 For the Leeward Islands the first trace of the agency appears in the year 1677. 5 The gentlemen planters of Barbados in 1670 said that they advised that the agent should be some one whose interests were in Barbados : and this principle was fairly consistently followed for all the islands. The fact that the agent was so often an absentee planter or a merchant made the consultation by him
- The record of the correspondence here quoted is given in the Journals of the
Assembly of Barbados, Colonial Office Papers 31 (2, 7 March 1670/1 and 20 April 1671). 2 Voluntary action by planters and merchants in London appears in the cases of all the islands to have preceded the appointment of a paid agent. See Act appointing Commissioners and an Agent to Negotiate . . . the Affairs of the Leeward Islands . . . 8 Nov. 1690, Plantation Book, i (1677-1700), 163-5 ; also Colonial Office Papers 391 (1, 13 January 1675). See also Edward Long, History of Jamaica (London, 1774), i. 135-6. It is interesting to note that the merchants and planters of Jamaica in London appear to have suggested in the first instance the instruction to the governor of Jamaica to consent to the raising of money to pay the expenses of soliciting the affairs of the island in England (Colonial Office Papers 391 (3, 16 December 1680)). 3 Colonial Office Papers 391 (1, 31 January 1676/7). Sir John Griffith is the agent referred to. 4 Journal of the Assembly of Jamaica ; Colonial Office Papers 140 (2, 34 Car. II, 4 October 1682). 6 Colonial Office Papers 391 (2, 10 May 1677). An account of the negotiations result- ing in the appointment of an early agent is given in J. C. Jeaffreson, A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1878. The book is compiled from a letter-book of C. J. Jeaffreson, a planter of St. Christopher, who came to England in 1682 and acted as agent for the island. The practice of appointing agents for single members of the Leeward Island group became general later ; for Antigua it begins in 1698 (Plantation Book, ii (1700-2), 13-14). C. J. Jeaffreson was later (in 1690) appointed one of five ' commissioners ' for the Leeward Islands (Plantation Book, i (1677-1700), 163-5).
