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A Darien Epilogue: Robert Allen in Spanish America, 1698-1707

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

J. D. Alsop
J. D. Alsop*
Affiliation:
McMaster Universíty, Hamilton, Ontario
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Extract

Amanuscript account by a Scots merchant, Robert Allen, of his life in New Spain from 1698 until 1707 has recently come to light. In 1708 Allen sent the three-page memorial to the British secretary of state for the south, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, outlining his experiences over the preceding decade with the view towards securing employment under the crown in the Americas. Allen began with the year 1698 when he left the Scottish colony at Darien to work for Jamaican merchants on trading voyages in the Spanish West Indies. In 1701 he returned to the coast of Darien in search of Nicaragua wood and, by chance, began six years of residence on the continent. Surviving one Indian massacre, he lived among friendly natives, joined the Jamaican expedition of 1702 which raided the Isthmus of Panama, escaped a second Indian and Spanish massacre, and was taken as a prisoner to Quito where in 1704 he secured appointment as secretary to the fiscal of the audiencia and surveyor general of the province of Quito. When this official was promoted to the Council of the Indies in 1707, Allen accompanied him on the journey to Spain. However, their ship was one of those attacked and sunk by Admiral Wager, who in turn persuaded Allen to return to England and approach the government.

Type
Documents
Information
The Americas , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , October 1986 , pp. 197 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1986

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References

1 The manuscript, with most office correspondence, was removed from the secretary of state’s department when Sunderland resigned in 1710 and was eventually deposited among his voluminous miscellaneous “projects and proposals” correspondence at Blenheim Palace (former reference C 1/41). It was excluded from the calendars of colonial state papers, and was not mentioned in the published guide to the Blenheim archive: Calendar of Stale Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1706–1708, June, June, 1708–1709, ed. Headlam, Cecil (London, 1916–22)Google Scholar; Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1881), appendix, pp. 1–60. It was also overlooked by Walne, Peter (ed.), a Guide to Manuscript Sources for the History of Latin America and the Caribbean in the British Isles (Oxford, 1973), p. 295 Google Scholar. The Blenheim manuscripts have recently been acquired by the British Library, and Allen’s memorial is now Add. Ms. 61,644, fos. 78–9. It is published here with the kind permission of the British Library.

2 From this it would appear that Allen was a member of the first Scots expedition which arrived at Darien in early November 1698. He must have left soon afterwards, presumably because of the extremely difficult conditions facing the early colonists: Prebble, John The Darien Disaster (London, 1968), pp. 143–61Google Scholar. Allen is not mentioned in the published accounts or papers of the Darien colony.

3 This is the only portion of Allen’s account which has independent verification. Governor Peter Beckford and Arnold Browne of Jamaica related how on 13 August 1702 either 400 or 530 men landed on the isthmus and met 50 French who had lived amongst the Indians and 70 or 80 natives, joined later by 150 more (or alternatively the probably exaggerated total of 800 Indians). They took the town of St. Crux and the adjoining mines with little difficulty, but sickness prevented the majority from attempting Panama: Calendar of State Papers, Colonial …, Jan. 1702-Dec. 1, 1702, ed. Headlam, Cecil (London, 1912)Google Scholar, nos. 1056, 1062, Dec. 1, 1702–1703, ed. Cecil Headlam (London, 1913), no.22. However, little gold was actually obtained, and this presumably was the reason why Allen and a minority of the original contingent went on the second fateful expedition: ibid.; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial … , 1706–1708, June, no. 1473.

4 For a general discussion of colonial administration see: Phelan, John L. The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeeth Century (Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1967), passim.Google Scholar

5 Churchill, Winston S. Marlborough, His Life and Times, 4 vols. (London, 1967), III, 285–7Google Scholar; Sachse, William L. Lord Somers (Manchester, 1975), pp. 255–7Google Scholar. For general British involvement in Spanish America in this era see Nettels, Curtis “England and the Spanish American Trade, 1680–1715,” Journal of Modern History 3 (1931), 1–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, Glyndwr ‘The Inexhaustable Fountain of Gold’: English Projects and Ventures in the South Seas, 1670–1750,” in Perspectives of Empire, ed. Flint, John E. and Williams, Glyndwr (London, 1973), pp. 34–5Google Scholar; Crowhurst, Patrick The Defence of British Trade, 1689–1815 (Folkestone, 1977).Google Scholar

6 British Library, Add. Mss. 61, 644, fos. 34–7, 42–7, 42–3, 54–9, 61, 596, fos. 130–v.

7 British Library, Add. Ms. 61,600.

8 The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, Henry L. 3 vols. (Oxford, 1975), pp. 1093 Google Scholar, 1095, 1346, 1355, 1484–5. For American initiatives in general in 1708 see Alsop, J.D. “Samuel Vetch’s ‘Canada Survey’d’: A Study in the Formation of a Colonial Strategy, 1706–10,” Acadiensis (forthcoming).Google Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Addison, Joseph The Present State Of the War and the Necessity of an Augmentation, Considered in The Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Addison, ed. Guthkelch, A.C. 2 vols. (London, 1914), II, 249.Google Scholar

11 Alsop, op. cit.; Waller, George M. Samuel Vetch, Colonial Enterpriser (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1960).Google Scholar