Home / Browse / Autographs & Signed Books / Marriage settlement relating to Thomas Gunstone of the parish of St. Georges, Barbados, planter, and his wife Ursula.
(BARBADOS, SUGAR & SLAVERY)
Marriage settlement relating to Thomas Gunstone of the parish of St. Georges, Barbados, planter, and his wife Ursula.
The settlement between Gunstone and Major Rowland Bulkeley, Captain John Cousins, Richard Forde and Henry Byrch, all of Barbados.
Barbados was first settled by the English in 1627. By 1638 it was a tobacco plantation economy, in depression because of over-production in Virginia and the West Indies. Soon after sugar production commenced it was boosted by rising sugar prices in Europe caused by dislocation in Portuguese Brazil, which had up till then been the major source. By the early 1650s Barbados could be described as the richest spot in the New World, and had left Hispaniola behind as the sugar centre of the Caribbean. This "Sugar Revolution" in Barbados and the Leeward Islands led to major changes in economic organization. Sugar production needed land both for growing cane and for the associated industrial works, mills, boiling-houses etc., so there was a move towards large plantation units, and the heavy, severe labour needs greatly accelerated the slave trade. In 1645 Barbados had less than 6,000 slaves and in 1698, 42,000. The census of property owners in Barbados compiled in 1679 shows that in the parish of St. George, the parish of Thomas Gunstone, there were 29 landowners with over 100 acres. Of these, 8 had no servants and averaged 59 slaves each, the other 21 averaged 5 servants and 77 slaves, so, with 58 slaves excluding children, and 3 indentured servants, this was probably one of the smallest plantations with servants. The Schedule details the coppers and stills of the processing plant, as also the domestic possessions - "three feather beds with bedsteads, 24 cane chairs, 2 cedar tables..." - and livestock - "20 Turkeys, 6 Ducks, 12 Dunghill ffowles" - attached to the plantation, together with a list of the slaves with their names, "27 Men Negroes; 31 Women Negroes; 10 Negroe Boyes; 9 Negroe Girls." The provision in the deed for the purchase of five able-bodied slaves each year is a grim reminder of the appalling rate of attrition amongst the slave population. It agrees with the statement of Edward Littleton in 1689 that a master of 100 slaves needed to buy 6 new ones each year. Approximately 131,000 Africans were carried to Barbados 1640-1700, but, as cited above, not very many more than 40,000 were alive in 1698. A fascinating document relating to the coming to prominence of Barbados as the centre of the British sugar trade.
Folio (475 × 325 mm). Three conjoined pieces of paper, including "A List or Schedule of all and every ye Negro-Slaves, Horses, Cattle & Stock, Coppers, Stills & Materialls belonging to ye Plantacion of Capt. Thomas Gunstone..." Slightly browned, some creases from old folds, a number of minor professional repairs to small splits, negligible loss, some staining along the folds, seal tags truncated, about very good.
