James Drax

Colonel Sir James Drax (c. 1609 – c. 1662) was an English planter and military officer. Born in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, Drax migrated to the English colony of Barbados and acquired ownership of several sugar plantations and enslaved people. Drax was expelled from Barbados by Royalists due to being a Parliamentarian, though he returned in 1651 when the island was returned to Parliamentarian control. Drax returned to England where he died in 1662.[1][2] He would go on to establish a dynasty of wealthy slave owning sugar planters.

Early life

James Drax was the son of Mary (née Lapworth) Drax (b. c. 1580) and William Drax (c. 1580–1632), of Finham, in the parish of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire.[3] In 1627, when James was 18 years old, along with Henry Powell, he arrived by ship to Barbados in what is today Holetown.[4]: 14–15 

In the late 1620s, James Drax became one of the earliest English migrants to the island of Barbados. He and his companions arrived and lived for a time in a cave, searching for provisions, hunting turtles and hogs and also clearing land for the planting of tobacco, which soon became the staple crop of the island.[5][4]: 14–15 

Drax later claimed he had arrived with a stock of no more than £300, and that he intended to stay on the island until he had parlayed that initial investment into a landed fortune worth £10,000 a year back home.[6]

Career

By the late 1630s, Drax had accumulated a substantial portion of land on Barbados, together with his brother William Drax. Owing to a slump in tobacco prices, the late 1630s saw considerable economic difficulty in England's fledgling colonies in the Caribbean, and white colonists began to turn to other crops. Drax was not the first to cultivate sugar as a business in Barbados, that honor would belong to Colonel James Holdip. However, Drax was the first planter to successfully cultivate sugar cane on a large scale.[4]: 13 

Drax allegedly relied heavily on Dutch expertise, learning the craft of sugar production and refinement from a Dutch settler, and then importing equipment from Holland.[7] While these reports were recorded much later, and while the contribution of the Dutch is disputed, it is likely that at least some of the capital and techniques of production deployed in the early Barbados sugar trade came from the Dutch, who in turn had acquired their know-how and experience in the trade from Portuguese Brazil (which had been partially colonized by the Dutch in 1630). Sources indicate that the early experiments of Drax and others Barbados settlers began c. 1640, and there was certainly sugar arriving in London from the island by 1643. Barbados quickly became a major supplier for Europe, and by the mid-1650s, sugar production had largely supplanted tobacco and all other crops as the dominant economic activity of the island.[8]

Slavery

Concurrent with the rise of sugar came large-scale and intensive exploitation of slave labor, with Drax being was one of the pioneers of slavery in the Caribbean. Prior to 1640, the primary source of labor in Barbados had been European indentured servants. Although there were enslaved Africans in Barbados before that time, it was only after 1640, and frequently in tandem with the cultivation of sugar, that slave labor began to supplant indentured servitude as the main workforce. By 1641, he had over 400 acres, making him nearly the greatest landowner on the island.[4]: 30 

Just as he was getting involved in sugar, he acquired 22 enslaved Africans in early 1642 at a time when nobody else had even a handful of slaves.[9] In 1644, he purchased another 34 enslaved Africans.[10]

By the early 1650s, his plantation, Drax Hall Estate, was worked by some 200 enslaved Africans.[11] Drax was known by his contemporaries to provide his slaves and servants well, unlike James Holdip who was known to be so cruel and oppressive that his servants burnt his entire plantation to the ground.[4]: 50–51 

Fortune and knighthood

Drax profited spectacularly from his sugar enterprise, allowing him to live “like a prince.”[12] With wealth and power came political controversy. He emerged during the 1640s as a supporter of the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War, and became a colonel in the island's militia. As a result, when a royalist faction seized control of Barbados in 1650, James and William Drax were exiled from the island, along with other prominent parliamentarians. They returned to London, where they lobbied the House of Commons to send an expedition to retake the island. In 1651, Drax sailed in the fleet designed to re-conquer Barbados, and he was part of the delegation that went ashore to negotiate the surrender of the island.[13]

Restored to his estates and power, Drax once again took up a leading role in the governance of the colony. It is thought that Drax Hall, a seventeenth-century manor house in St. George parish Barbados, was ordered to be constructed by him and his brother during the 1650s. He also played a role as patron of explorers of the North American coast, including Robert Sandford.[14] In 1658, Drax was rewarded for his loyalty with a knighthood from the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.[15]

Return to England

By this point, Drax had returned to England, where he acquired a series of estates, pursuing his original ambition of setting himself up as a landed magnate at home, while continuing to profit from his plantations and estates in Barbados. He survived the transition of the Restoration, but died in shortly thereafter in early 1662.[16]

Personal life

In the mid to late 1630s, Drax married Meliora Horton who was from Somerset. Before her death in 1653, they were the parents of the following children, including:[17]

Drax married to Margaret Bamfield, daughter of John Bamfield of Hardington, Somerset. Before his death, they were the parents of four sons, James, Bamfield, Alexander, and Jacob; all of whom died young or unmarried.[22]

Drax died in early 1662 and was buried in the parish of St. John Zachary, London.[16] After his death, his son Henry continued to own and manage the family estate in Barbados.[23]

Descendants

Through his daughter Elizabeth, he was a grandfather to Thomas Shetterden (1660–1702), who changed his surname to Drax to inherit the Drax estates from his uncle. He had a son named Henry Drax (c. 1693–1755).[24] His family was connected to other major slave plantation owners by marriage like the Codringtons.[4]: 38 :1

The Drax descendants were particularly active in the development of Jamaica where there is a Drax Hall Estate in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. His grand-nephew Charles Drax founded Jamaica College.

References
  1. "Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slave-ownership". ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  2. "Drax family tree" (PDF). matthewparker.co.uk. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
  3. George W. Marshall, ed., La Neve’s Pedigrees of the Knights Made by King Charles II., King James II, King William III. and Queen Mary, King William Alone, and Queen Anne. Publications of the Harleian Society, 8 (1873), 76-77; John Mathews and George F. Mathews, eds., Abstract of the Probate Acts in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Year Books of Probates, Vol. 1, Part 2 (London, 1902), p. 145.
  4. Parker, Matthew (13 November 2012). The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. pp. 30, 78. ISBN 978-0-8027-7798-0. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  5. Jerome S. Handler, “Father Antoine Biet’s Visit to Barbados in 1654,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 32 (1967), p. 69
  6. Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657), p. 96.
  7. P.F. Campbell, Some Early Barbadian History (St. Michael, 1993), 239, 248; Thomas Dalby, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Colonies (1690), 13-14
  8. Larry Dale Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 99-112.
  9. Campbell, Some Early Barbadian History, p. 99.
  10. Karl Bridenbaugh and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624-1690 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 78.
  11. Handler, Biet's Visit, 69
  12. Ligon, Barbados, 34.
  13. N. Darnell Davis, The Cavaliers and Roundheads of Barbados, 1650-1652 (Georgetown: Argosy, 1887), pp. 145-149, 178, 190.
  14. Barber, Sarah, "Power in the English Caribbean: the Proprietorship of Lord Willoughby of Parham" in Roper, LH and Van Ruymbeke, B. “Constructing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500-1750, Leiden: Brill 2007 p. 193
  15. Mark Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell, 2 vols. (3d ed., London: Robinson, 1787), 1: 445.
  16. Thomas Allen, A New History of London, Westminster and the Borough of Southwark, (London, 1839), vol. 3, 57; Will of Sir James Drax of the Parish of St John Zachary in London Knight, dated 15 Apr 1659, proved 14 Mar 1661[/2], Prerogative Court of Canterbury 35 Laud.
  17. Zachary (Parish), London (England) St Anne and St Agnes with St John (1925). The Records of Two City Parishes: A Collection of Documents Illustrative of the History of SS. Anne and Agnes, Aldersgate, and St. John Zachary, London, from the Twelfth Century. Hunter & Longhurst. p. 316. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  18. Britain), Royal Archaeological Institute (Great; Ireland, Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and (1848). Memoirs Illustrative of the History and Antiquities of the County and City of York: Communicated to the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Held at York, July, 1846, with a General Report of the Proceedings of the Meeting, and Catalogue of the Museum Formed on that Occasion. J. Murray; (etc., etc.). p. 15. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  19. Vict, Parliament lords, proc (1862). Wentworth peerage ... Case on behalf of ... Ralph Gordon Noel Milbanke ... on his claim to the honour and dignity of lord Wentworth. [With] Supplemental case [and] Minutes of evidence. p. 9. Retrieved 15 December 2022.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. Crisp, Frederick Arthur (1889). Abstracts of Somersetshire Wills, Etc: Copied from the Manuscript Collections of the Late Rev. Frederick Brown. Priv. print. for F. A. Crisp. p. 100. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  21. "John Van Der Vaart (1653-1727), Meliora Gomeldon". www.isherwoodfineart.com. Isherwood Fine Art. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  22. Burke, Bernard (1898). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland. Harrison & Sons. p. 422. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  23. "Henry Drax's Instructions on the Management of a Seventeenth-Century Barbadian Sugar Plantation," William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 66 (2009), 565-604
  24. "Matthew Parker - The official website: The Sugar Barons, Panama Fever". www.matthewparker.co.uk. Retrieved 2022-04-24.
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