Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
John Colleton is the mystery man in the list of proprietors of the Carolina land grant. He played only a minor role in the English Civil War, acted as a mediator in the early conflicts on Barbados, and didn’t receive his knighthood until 1661, a year after the more important were granted.
He was not one of the subordinates responsible for executing the policies of Charles II. At most, he was from the city (Exeter) and county (Devon) of one of the more important, George Monck. Some have taken a letter Monck wrote to the governor of Barbados that “his own cousins Modyford and Peter Colleton,” son of John, were going “to promote the Carolina plantation” [1] to mean a kinship relation existed like that between John and William Berkeley. [2]
Neither J. E. Buchanan, a Colleton descendant, [3] nor I have found any evidence of familial ties in the admittedly sparse genealogies that have been posted to the internet. In addition, the men came from different parts of Devon, which, in general, was an area so rugged in places, rivers replaced roads as transportation. [4] This directed communication to the north and south coasts, not between communities. Only the gentry went to London, and they spent more time there than in the Devon. [5]
More important, Monck came from a distinctly different social class than Colleton. His family, then le Moyney, lived on the north side of the county at Potheridge from at least 1287. His father was merchant with investments in land [6] who married the daughter of a wealthy Exeter tin merchant. [7] George Smith may have acquired status, but Monck’s father didn’t see much of the money. By the age of sixteen, Monck was in the army. [8]
Colleton’s father, Peter, established a family pedigree in 1620. [9] Records went back to his great-grandfather who married Margaret Bury of Coleton in 1485. That property, which was owned by the Cole family in the 1370s, had passed to the Burys in the 1390s. [10] It was located on the north-flowing Taw river.
A careful reading suggests that Colleton’s family took their name from the estate where they lived, and rose when Henry Coleton married Margaret Berry. A mysterious illness had killed 443 in Tiverton the previous fall. Tiverton was about twenty miles to the east, but sweating sickness spread when Henry VII’s troops were moving through in 1485 before and after the Battle of Bosworth [11] that ended the War of the Roses. It is only speculation that the possible death of eligible young men led to this marriage.
It is more likely Monck used the term “cousin” to refer to people he knew in the same way Charles II used it to refer to Edward Hyde and Monck in the charter for South Carolina quoted in the post for 26 June 2020. Hyde was an in-law: his daughter Anne was married to Charles’ brother James, [12] but Monck was no relation. It is unlikely Monck even remembered Colleton from the Civil War, although they may have met.
Colleton remained in the hands of the Bury family. [13] It appears Henry’s son, John’s grandfather Thomas, moved to Exeter where John’s father, Peter, was born in 1556. That was the same year the merchant’s guild received its first charter. [14] Peter married the daughter of Henry Hull. [15] Hull was active in the guild, being elected bailiff for the first time in 1581 and mayor in 1605 when Peter was his bailiff. [16]
As mentioned in the post for 3 April 2022, the offices of mayor, sheriff, and bailiff rotated among members of the merchant’s guild. Thomas Modyford’s father was bailiff in 1602 and 1612, Thomas Amy in 1608 and 1616, and Hugh Crocker in 1624. Modyford’s father was sheriff in 1613, Amy in 1617, and Peter Colleton in 1618. [17]
Whatever training John might have enjoyed from this network of merchants ended in 1622 when his father died. He was fourteen years old, and his older brother only fifteen. His maternal grandfather was close to seventy years old; [18] the activities of his mother’s brother are unknown. [19] The oldest man in the family may have been his sister’s husband, Hugh Crocker, who then would have been twenty-six. [20] No one has reported what John was doing in the years when he might have been apprenticed to a merchant to learn the trade.
John became a freeman in Exeter when he was twenty-six years old, and married Katherine Amy the same year, 1634. [21] She probably was the daughter of Thomas Amy. [22] Colleton was acquiring property in Exeter by 1641. [23]
His name first appears in the public record soon after the Civil War began in England when he and Crocker “withdrew from civic life” in August 1642, leaving the city government in the hands of Puritans. [24] Forces supporting Charles I sieged, then conquered the city in September 1643. [25] John Berkeley was appointed governor. [26]
In 1645, Colleton became the first bailiff. [27] In July, Berkeley issued warrants to recruit men for the Royalist army. [28] Colleton would have been responsible for executing them. The blockade of Exeter by the New Model Army began in October, [29] and ended with the city’s surrender in December. The Receiver General, which would have been Colleton, was displaced for loyalty. [30]
The rents from his properties were sequestered. [31] In January 1647, Colleton settled with the House of Commons for 244 pounds, which was 10% of his calculated worth. His annual real estate income was 133 pounds. His personal estate was set at 4,932 pounds, but his debt obligations were 4,164, for a net of 758 pounds. [32] Since the usual fine was the value of three year’s income, [33] a 10% levy implies he was considered a serious offender.
Seven months later, Colleton bought a ninety-acre plantation on the north end of Barbados from a man in Cornwall. Samuel Rolleston apparently managed it for him. [34] A year or so later, in August 1648, he received permission to visit Calais, [35] and in 1650 permission to go to Holland. [36] Soon after he left with his son Peter for Barbados. [37]
As mentioned in the post for 3 April 2022, he arrived on the island at the same time as Francis Willoughby, who had been appointed governor by Charles in his role of presumed heir to the executed Charles I. When Humphrey Walrond took over the island, Colleton joined Thomas Modyford in negotiating a treaty with Cromwell’s representative that expelled Walrond and Willoughby. Daniel Seale became governor. [38]
Oliver Cromwell was head of the Protectorate in England. In 1655, he launched an attack on Spanish interests in the Caribbean. When his fleet arrived in Barbados in January, [39] Robert Venables commissioned Colleton “as Major General of all the Protector’s forces in Barbados, which gave him command of the militia. He also appointed him as Colonel of Regiment of Horse.” He was expected to recruit soldiers from among the freemen. [40]
Seale, who had primary responsibility for defense of Barbados objected, and revoked the commission for Major General. This led to several years of bickering between the governor and Colleton. [41]
Colleton’s primary interest was not politics, and it may not have been sugar. He may have purchased his first plantation to raise money to pay his debts, so he could leave England. In 1653, he had accumulated enough capital to buy a sugar plantation where he established his residence. [42] With the Restoration of Charles II, he joined the remigration of planters back to London, leaving Peter, then 25 years old, to manage his interests on the island.
End Notes
I am using the given names of proprietors, not the changing titles they assumed in their careers.
1. Duke of Albermarle. Letter to Lord Willoughby, 31 Aug 1663. Quoted by M. Alston Read. “Notes on Some Colonial Governors of South Carolina and Their Families.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 11(2):107–122:April 1910. 110. His source was Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series. Volume 5, America and West Indies, 1661-1668, edited by W. Noël Sainsbury. London: published for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1880. 157. Emphasis in the original.
2. Eugene Sirmans described Colleton as a “distant cousin” of “George Monck, Duke of Albermarle” in 1966. [43] In 1944, Alfred Chandler had limited the relationship to “Thomas Modyford and his cousin, Sir John Colleton.” [44] This was repeated in 1974 by Peter Wood: “Peter Colleton (John’s son) and his influential relative, Sir Thomas Modyford.” [45] By 1998, Walter Edgar declared “Colleton turned first to his cousin and his old friend, Lord Berekely.” [46]
3. J. E. Buchanan. “The Colleton Family and the Early History of South Carolina and Barbados 1646-1775.” PhD dissertation. University of Edinburgh, 1989. 43.
4. Mark Stoyle. Loyalty and Locality: Popular Allegiance in Devon during the English Civil War. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1994. 8.
5. Stoyle. 19–20.
6. “Potheridge.” Wikipedia website.
7. “George Smith (MP for Exeter).” Wikipedia website.
8. “George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle.” Wikipedia website.
9. The Visitation of the County of Devon in the Year 1620, edited by Frederic Thomas Colby. London: Taylor and Company, 1872. 66.
10. “Colleton, Chulmleigh.” Wikipedia website.
11. “The mystery illness which killed hundreds in one Devon town - and still baffles doctors to this day.” Devon Online website. Some think the sweating sickness may have been a species of Hantavirus. Death occurred within 24 hours, affected rural areas more than urban ones, and often killed half the population in an area. [47]
12. “Anne Hyde.” Wikipedia website.
13. Wikipedia, Colleton, Chulmleigh
14. Richard Izacke. Antiquities of the City of Exeter. London: E. Tyler and R. Holt, 1677. Excerpts available on Bodleian Library, Oxford University website.
15 Visitation.
16. Izacke.
17. Izacke.
18. Robert A Prusak. “Henry Hull, of Exeter.” Geni website; last updated 29 October 2016.
19. Woodman Mark Lowes Dickinson. “Henry Hull, of Exeter.” Geni website; last updated 29 October 2016.
20. The two genealogies I found differ in key details, although both mention the marriage to Elizabeth Colleton. Holly Pinkley has Crocker born about 1600 and dying in Plymouth Colony.” [48] Richard Williams guesses his birth date as 1591 and doesn’t mention his place of death. [49]
21. Buchanan. 13.
22. “Sir John Colleton, 1st Baronet.” Wikipedia website. Its source is a baptismal record in the St Olave Parish of Exeter for 2 February 1609. Eveline Cruickshanks says Catherine Amy was the daughter of William Amy. [50] The only William Amy I could find was the son of Katherine’s brother Edward. [51]
23. “Grant, cottages in Cowick Street, St Thomas, Exeter, Devon.” Kresen Kernow website, reference number CF/1/2482. The deed transfer was made on 7 August 1641.
24. David Cornforth. “Exeter during the Civil War.” Exeter Memories website, 2007; last updated 22 April 2009.
25. Eugene A. Andriette. Devon and Exeter in the Civil War. Newton Abbot, UK: David and Charles, 1971. 95.
26. Stoyle. 45.
27. Izacke.
28. Andriette. 143.
29. Andriette. 156.
30. Izacke.
31. Wikipedia, John Colleton
32. “Ordinance for granting a Pardon unto John Colleton, of Exeter, Merchant.” Journal of the House of Commons, volume 5, 1646–1648. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1802. 420–421. Posted online by British History website. I can’t replicate the calculation; I think the qualifiers on the types of rents were factors. Some were annual, one was for two thousand years, one for nine hundred years, and one for one life. Many were calculated “in reversion.”
33. “Committee for Compounding with Delinquents.” Wikipedia website.
34. Buchanan. 20.
35. “Draft pass for John Colleton to go to Calais and back.” House of Lords Main Papers for 8 August 1648. National Archives website.
36. Buchanan. 21.
37. Buchanan. 22.
38. Willoughby and Walrond are discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.
39. “Invasion of Jamaica.” Wikipedia website.
40. Buchanan. 34. He cites page 456 of the Calendar of State Papers, 1574-1600. This seems like the wrong volume; the one for 1661 to 1668 is mentioned in the above note 1.
41. Buchanan. 34–35.
42. Buchanan. 32.
43. M. Eugene Sirmans. Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966. 4.
44. Alfred D. Chandler. “The Expansion of Barbados.” The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 8:106+:1946. Reprinted by P. F. Campbell. 61–89 in Chapters in Barbados History. Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986. 77.
45. Peter H. Wood. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974. 14.
46. Walter Edgar. South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. 330.
47. “Sweating Sickness.” Wikipedia website.
48. Holly Pinkley. “Hugh (Crocker) Crooker (abt. 1600 - abt. 1660).” Wiki Tree website, 30 September 2014; last updated 24 September 2021.
49. Richard Williams. “Crocker of Lyneham/Croker of Lyneham.” Genealogy website, 27 May 2011.
50. Eveline Cruickshanks. “Colleton, Sir Peter, 2nd Bt. (1635-94), of Exmouth, Devon and Golden Square, Westminster.” In B. D. Henning. The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690. London: Secker and Warburg, 1983.
51. “Edward Amye.” Geni website; last updated 19 November 2014.
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