;6 BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY
in the time of Charles II. we find Governors who, while they are perfectly loyal to the Home government, make the cause of the communities they govern peculiarly their own. Each studies the interests of his own Colony. When Barbados is required to furnish men for Jamaica, the Governor remarks that Europe is the right magazine for people . 1 “ To plant one colony from another is to take out of the right pocket to put into the left.” It was natural that the brave Lord Willoughby, who had held Barbados for the King, should return as Governor . 2 But it is more surprising to find Modyford, who had been the cause of that island’s capitulation to the Commonwealth, in favour under Charles, and given the government of Jamaica. It is true that his relationship to Monk may have helped him, but the chief cause of his employment seems to have been that he was eminently fitted for the post. More striking still was the case of the younger Lord Willoughby . 3 By his correspondence he is proved to have been a boon companion of Charles, and yet, both as Governor and Admiral, he acquitted himself with great ability and discretion. We may add to these the name of Sir W. Stapleton, the very competent Governor of the Leeward Islands. His character has been drawn for us by Mr Fortescue . 4 “ His troops were unpaid, he himself was the King’s creditor for many years of arrears of pay, for which he pleaded so often in vain that he was obliged at last to give a modest account of his services to show that without vanity he deserved his pay ‘ as much as any one,’ yet he never lost heart, the amount of business which he contrived to transact was enormous ... it is refreshing to encounter at such a time so fine a type of quiet courage, resolution, resource, and devotion, as that presented by William Stapleton.”
How seldom in subsequent times are Colonial Governors found criticising, with such boldness, English legislation. Hear Willoughby on the Navigation Acts 5 —“ Free Trade
1 Francis Lord Willoughby, June 27, 1664. 2 He died at sea in 1666.
* William Lord Willoughby went out as Governor of the Caribee Islands in 1667.
4 Preface to Cal., 1677-1680. 5 Sainsbury Cal., 1660-8.