William Sayle
William Sayle | |
|---|---|
| 1st Governor of South Carolina | |
| In office 15 March 1670 – 4 March 1671 | |
| Monarchs | |
| Preceded by | Office Established |
| Succeeded by | Joseph West |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. 1590 |
| Died | 1671 (aged c. 81) |
| Occupation | Explorer, colonial administrator |
Captain William Sayle[a] (c. 1590 – 1671) was a prominent English landholder who was Governor of Bermuda in 1643 and again in 1658. As an Independent in religion and politics, and an adherent of Oliver Cromwell, he was dissatisfied with life in Bermuda, and so founded the company of the Eleutheran Adventurers who became the first European settlers of the Bahamas between 1646 and 1648. He later became the first governor of colonial South Carolina from 1670 to 1671.[1]
Life in Bermuda
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Bermuda, or the "Somers Isles", was settled by Europeans in 1609 as a result of the wrecking of the Sea Venture, the flagship of the Virginia Company. Although most of the passengers and crew continued to Jamestown, Virginia, the following year on two Bermuda-built ships, the Royal Charter of the company and the boundaries of Virginia were extended to include Bermuda in 1612, when the first governor (at the time, actually the lieutenant-governor) and sixty colonists joined the three men who had remained behind from the Sea Venture. Bermuda's 21 square miles were subdivided into nine parishes (at first called "tribes"). The easternmost, St. George's (where St. George's town was established), was designated "common" or "Crown" land, but the remainder were further subdivided into "shares", each equivalent to a specific share held in the company. The parishes (other than St. George's) were each named for a major shareholder (or "adventurer") in the company. Administration was handed to the crown in 1614, and then in 1615 transferred to a spin-off of the Virginia Company called the Somers Isles Company. The Company appointed a governor, who from 1620 oversaw a House of Assembly that differed from the House of Commons in having no property qualification (due to most land in Bermuda being then owned by absentee landlords). As the House of Assembly consequently governed for the benefit of Bermuda's landless men, a Council made-up of prominent local men appointed by the company was introduced as a combination of upper house and cabinet. This was intended to ensure the balance of power remained with the company, rather than the settlers, but with no other group from which to appoint its members, the council quickly became dominated by men from the same prominent local families that filled the Assembly, and political power rested firmly with this emerging local elite and their descendants until the introduction of universal adult suffrage and party politics in the 1960s.
Although Bermuda quickly became a thriving colony, the growth of tobacco as a cash crop that was the basis of the economy under company administration became unprofitable from the 1620s as Virginia became stable and self-sufficient and England established newer and larger colonies, all of which emulated Bermuda's economy, flooding the English market with cheap tobacco. Few shareholders in the company actually settled in Bermuda, and the land was occupied and worked by tenants and by indentured servants who repaid the cost of their transport to Bermuda with seven years' labour. The more successful settlers (whether they arrived as shareholders or tenants at their own expense or as indentured servants) increased their landholdings by purchasing shares from adventurers who were finding them ever less profitable. Whereas absentee landowners primarily relied on tobacco exports, residents began to switch to maritime trades, replanting the fields that had been cleared from the forest with Bermuda cedar, which was vital to shipbuilding and more valuable than cash crops like tobacco. They also grew food crops and raised livestock for their own consumption, and exported their excess production aboard their new ships for sale in other colonies. This put them at odds with the company, which only earned profits from the tobacco grown for export. This contest between the settlers and the company would end when the settlers took their complaint to the Crown and the company's Royal Charter was revoked in 1684.
