Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in Colonial South-East America, 1650–1725

Timothy Paul Grady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317323853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Often played down in favour of the larger competition for empire between England and France, the influence of the Spanish in English Carolina and the English in Spanish Florida created a rivalry that shaped the early history of colonial south-east America. This study is the first to tell the full story of this rivalry.

1 FROM EUROPE TO CHARLESTON: ANGLO-SPANISH RIVALRIES AND THE BEGINNING OF THE COLONIAL SOUTH-EAST

When European eyes turned to the south-east coast of North America, it was the Spanish who were the first to establish a presence in the region. They were not, however, the only Europeans to cast a covetous glance at the thick forests along the coast and the imagined riches of the interior. The French attempted two settlements during the 1560s but were forcibly displaced by the Spanish who established a garrison town at St Augustine in 1565. While the outpost was small and undermanned, the Spanish effectively spread their influence over the next decades from St Augustine using a growing chain of Franciscan missions created among the Indians through much of northern Florida and coastal Georgia.

It was not long, though, before others challenged Spain’s claims on the region. England, in particular, sought to challenge the power of Spain in Europe by attacking its possessions in America. Indeed, early English promoters formed almost all of their early plans for colonization in response to the success of the Spanish in the Americas. These plans were designed both to imitate and to contest Spanish power and the first English colonies proceeded with due attention to possible Spanish objections to their presence. England’s jealous attention to the Spanish presence in the south-east caused the first attack on St Augustine, an attack that had long-lasting consequences on the Spanish colony.

Finally, as Spain’s ability to prevent an English presence on the North American coast waned, English explorers pushed southward from its first permanent colony, Virginia, into territory claimed by Spain as part of Florida. Along the way they encountered signs of Spanish Florida’s hold on the south-east and challenged it ultimately with the establishment of Charleston in 1670. At each step in this overall process, Spain sought to impede the English through every available means, in Europe and without.

As the rivalry developed in this initial period, however, it grew beyond European events. The proximity of Florida and the constant Spanish resistance to the spread of English influence caused a non-stop pressure on Englishmen interested in taking advantage of the territory to counter and attack the influence of the Spanish in order to further their own ends. In Florida, the memory of the early English attack on the colony caused an almost reflexive paranoia over the spread of English influence in the area. This meant that, while Anglo-Spanish interaction in the region was somewhat a by-product of the larger diplomatic relationship that characterized relations between the countries in the period, the interactions between Carolina and Florida afterwards took on a much more local character that often pitted local interests against the demands of international diplomacy. In America, the interaction of the two colonies quickly developed into a rivalry that took on a regional nature as, in the end, the Spanish and English were forced to interact with each other across a region dominated by natives, with each seeking to emerge supreme in the struggle for the North American south-east.

* * *

England’s rivalry with Spain in the North American south-east in the late seventeenth century was the end result of a century of conflicts and tensions between the two nations. The struggles between England and Spain that affected the course of events in the region are relatively well known, but they deserve to be briefly surveyed here if only for the context they provide for the attitude towards Carolina held by most Spanish officials resident in Florida regardless of official Spanish policies in the matter. Florida governors and military commanders lived with a constant wariness towards the English colony to the north with very good reason. The English had affected the course of Spanish Florida history almost from the very outset. Afterwards, Spanish officials paid close attention to anything the English did that might adversely affect Florida.

The first direct interaction of the two nations in the region occurred when the rivalry between Elizabeth I of England and Philip II of Spain spilled over into Florida in 1586. After the settlement of La Florida in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Spanish plans for the area were nothing short of ambitious. At that time, St Augustine was a small military outpost on the north-east coast of the Florida peninsula. It was only a secondary settlement subject to the intended capitol of Spanish Florida located at Santa Elena, on a coastal island in modern-day South Carolina. St Augustine’s short history traced back to 1565 and was a result of another European threat to Spanish claims to the Americas, in this case a small group of French Huguenots that established the small colony called Fort Caroline along the south-eastern coast of North America in 1564.

The Spanish, however, learned of the French plans soon after its founding and, again, determined to expel the French from La Florida and establish a settlement of their own to prevent future threats. In 1565, Philip II of Spain charged Menéndez, the commander of Spain’s Caribbean fleet, with driving the French from Fort Caroline and establishing a Spanish colony in Florida. Menéndez succeeded in destroying the colony and captured some two hundred French colonists, most of whom were executed as heretics and pirates.¹

After the destruction of the French settlement, Menéndez set about fulfilling his obligation to settle towns along the coast to protect Spanish interests. On 8 September 1565 Menéndez took formal possession of Florida at St Augustine. But after he finished his business with the French, he decided to settle his main town farther north at Santa Elena while maintaining a smaller garrison at St Augustine. After exploring the coast south of St Augustine, he set affairs in the town in order and sailed north along the coast where, during the week of Easter in 1566, he settled a second Spanish settlement at Santa Elena, which he intended to be his capital. He hoped one day to add settlements around the east, west and southern coast of the Florida peninsula and, ultimately, to accomplish the long hoped-for linkage of Florida to New Spain overland.²

These grand plans failed to materialize, and with his death in 1574 the plans that had already been scaled back were even further reduced to mere maintenance of the two existing settlements. Though the colony at Santa Elena grew to include some two hundred settlers by 1569, the settlement suffered from disease, starvation and the hostility of the local Indians brought on by abuse and mistreatment. The Santa Elena settlement was abandoned in 1576 and burned by the Indians, though the Spanish reoccupied the site and rebuilt the fort in 1577. Thus, in the mid-1580s both Santa Elena and St Augustine held a few hundred colonists, small garrisons of soldiers and wooden fortifications. The weak defences of St Augustine proved no match for the large English fleet that Sir Francis Drake led against it in June 1586.³

Francis Drake was, perhaps, the most notorious of numerous English privateers that plagued the Spanish colonies throughout the Caribbean during the 1570s and 1580s. As early as 1572, Drake had made a name for himself by sacking the Spanish port of Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic coast of what today is Panamá. A year later, the governor of the town, Pedro de Ortega Valencia, wrote of the danger of English activity along the coast inspiring rebellion against the Spanish, claiming that the entire coast was ‘beset by such bold English corsairs, little afraid of any offense that can be done them from here’. Spanish officials looked at English provocations with increasing anger, but the vagaries of European diplomacy kept Philip from taking overt action.⁴

Encouraged by the response, English ships became more aggressive. Francis Drake followed up on his earlier sacking of Nombre de Dios by leading an expedition in 1578 to circumnavigate the globe. During the voyage Drake and his fleet rounded the tip of South America, sailed up the Pacific coast of South and North America where they sacked Valparaiso, attacked Spanish shipping, and returned to England in 1580 across the Pacific laden with Spanish gold and spices from the Indies. Spanish complaints to Elizabeth were met with counter-complaints of Spanish activities in Ireland and support for Catholics in England against her rule.⁵

By the 1580s, Elizabeth began more aggressively to assault the source of much of Spain’s wealth. In the Spanish West Indies, what had been a cold war of individual attacks on Spanish shipping became a hot war of widespread destruction when Sir Francis Drake, freshly knighted by the Queen for the voyage around the world, staged a large-scale raid of the Spanish West Indies in 1586. Drake’s fleet of twenty-five ships sailed in late 1585 as a response to Philip’s embargo of English shipping and set course for the West Indies. For the rest of 1585, and through the first half of 1586, Drake attacked a series of Spanish cities. In 1585 his fleet sacked Vigo in Spain and sailed to the Cape Verde Islands and took the city of São Tiago. Proceeding to the Caribbean, Drake attacked and sacked Santo Domingo and Cartagena.⁶

After taking Cartagena, Drake’s next target was unknown but the subject of serious speculation on the part of the Spanish who endured his stay. Pedro Fernández de Busto, the governor of Cartagena, wrote to the King in May 1586 of his actions after receiving word from Havana of the loss of Santo Domingo. He observed that, in warnings dispatched to several cities, ‘I sent word of the loss of Santo Domingo and warning that the enemy intended to visit all this coast’.⁷ For all the speculation about new targets in the Spanish Main, Drake surprised many by turning north, towards La Florida, and struck St Augustine. For the first time, the Anglo-Spanish rivalry played a crucial role in events that directly affected the development of the North American south-east.

The Spanish at St Augustine were not unaware of the threat posed by Drake’s fleet. As word spread throughout the Caribbean of the depredations wrought by the English against Santo Domingo, then at Cartagena, most Spanish towns sought to improve their defences in case they were the next target. Under the leadership of the governor, Pedro Menéndez Márques, the nephew of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Spanish took the best possible actions to prepare. Spanish officials testified after the attack that Menéndez Márques ‘built a new fort at harbour mouth, at the bar, at the end of the channel, to protect the entrance’. With this new series of fortifications, Menéndez Márques withdrew all the available artillery and the garrison behind the walls and stored the valuables of the town in this secure location. Despite the losses suffered in the attack, officials believed that considering ‘how quickly it was done and by how few people, and with what scanty materials, the fort was very effective and well situated’.⁸

The governor’s actions were in vain. With a garrison of less than a hundred men and small wooden fortifications, the Spanish were unable to resist the English for long. Menéndez Márques gave a full report to the King. He described Drake’s arrival with a fleet of ‘42 sail’ on 6 June and the next day, he reported, Drake ‘landed 500 men and with seven large pinnaces sought me forthwith in the fort. With 80 I had in the fort I resisted him until nearly midday.’ Faced with stubborn defiance, Drake then ‘landed some 2000 men and planted four pieces of artillery among certain sand dunes near the fort, with which he began to batter it’. Unable to resist such overwhelming force, Menéndez Márques made the decision to withdraw his garrison into the interior along with the women and children, over two hundred persons in total. With the retreat of the Spanish, ‘the enemy took and sacked the town and burned the church with its images and crosses, and cut down the fruit trees, which were numerous and good. He burned the fort and carried off the artillery and munitions and food supplies.’⁹

After the complete destruction of St Augustine, Drake sailed northward in search of Santa Elena with the intention of repeating the destruction he had wrought on its sister city. Word of an impending English attack, however, reached Menéndez Márques’ lieutenant. As Drake’s fleet passed by, firing its cannon along the coast hoping for a response from the Spanish to reveal their location, the residents of Santa Elena extinguished all the lights and remained silent, thus saving their town from certain destruction. The destruction of St Augustine, however, had profound consequences for the future of Florida. The attack forced the Spanish to the realization that they lacked the men and supplies to maintain two far-flung settlements in La Florida. They made the decision to consolidate the resources dedicated to Florida by the Spanish crown in one location and royal officials decided that the greater proximity to Cuba made St Augustine easier to protect and supply. The Spanish abandoned Santa Elena in the summer of 1587 and the garrison and settlers relocated to St Augustine, where the fortress and town were rebuilt and reinforced.¹⁰

From that point on, St Augustine served as the centre of Spanish influence and power in the south-east. The small city became the focus of an intense interaction between the Spanish and Indians spreading out in a series of missions that ultimately extended Spanish influence inland west through Apalachee and northward into Guale along the Georgia coast. In some ways, though, Spanish influence had suffered its first check as, although missionaries routinely visited the Santa Elena region over the next few decades, the town of Santa Elena was never rebuilt.¹¹

In the context of the Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the south-east, the reason for Drake’s attack on La Florida introduces the most lasting avenue of the English assault on Spanish power in North America, an attempt to establish a permanent colony. Drake’s fleet sailed past Florida to secure the colony that Sir Walter Ralegh and the English had established on Roanoke Island the year before in an explicit challenge to Spanish hegemony in the Americas. Drake’s arrival found the English colonists there starving and eager to return home, a wish that he fulfilled though another expedition would attempt a new settlement a year later. Even though the second Roanoke colony would ultimately fail as well, it would only be twenty more years before the English would try again to challenge the Spanish hold on North America by planting a lasting colony at Jamestown. It too would serve as a focus for Anglo-Spanish interaction. The memory of Drake’s calamitous visit to St Augustine ensured that the Spanish, both in Spain and in Florida, were keenly interested to keep tabs on any English activities that might pose a threat to their presence and influence in the American south-east.¹²

* * *

Spain and England’s conflict came to a fairly quick end after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 and the ascension to the throne of James I. The war that had taken on an almost personal nature in the animosity between Philip and Elizabeth was over. Yet the distrust between the nations did not end instantly and Spain’s policy of protecting its claim on the Americas was still in force. This combination ensured that the rivalry continued to influence the course of events in the south-east as the English successfully planted a colony in the Chesapeake at Jamestown. While refusing to recognize the exclusive right of Spain, England moved cautiously in advancing efforts in the first few years to organize a joint-stock company to lead the colonization of Virginia. James actively engaged in diplomatic efforts to improve relations with Spain and did not desire to antagonize Philip III, who succeeded his father to the throne of Spain in 1598. The Americas, however, continued to be a flashpoint for tensions in the relationship between the two countries.

The Spanish, of course, had reason for concern that England was moving forward in her efforts even before the actual Jamestown colony was founded. In March 1605, Spanish officials in St Augustine sent three ships to investigate reports from Guale Indians of a strange ship taking soundings and heading north. The Spanish surprised an English ship hired by the French King, Henry IV, the Castor and Pollux. The Spanish ships captured the intruding vessel and discovered its orders from Henry to explore and trade with the Indians along the coast while searching for the English colony still believed by some to be located in the area. Despite protests from the English ambassador to the Spanish court, the ship was impounded and the crew distributed around the West Indies as slaves.¹³

Another incident in 1606 occurred as the Virginia Company sought to explore the region further. They commissioned the ship Richard under the command of Henry Challons to make the passage to Virginia via the West Indies to explore and trade in the area around the Chesapeake and provided Challons a pass that he could use to justify its voyage if challenged. The pass did nothing when the Richard found itself in the middle of a Spanish fleet in the Florida Straits. After capturing the vessel the Spanish dispersed the captives among the fleet and confiscated the ship. Over the next eighteen months the fate of the Richard and her crew became a diplomatic crisis as the English ambassador protested the harsh treatment of many of the English...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Anglo-Spanish Rivalry and the Emergence of the Colonial South-East
• 1 From Europe to Charleston: Anglo-Spanish Rivalries and the Beginning of the Colonial South-East
• 2 A Three-Sided Struggle: The Florida–Carolina Struggle and Indian Interactions through the 1680s
• 3 An Uneasy Peace: Negotiations and Confrontations across the Carolina–Florida Frontier through 1700
• 4 Carolina’s Ascendancy: The English Invasion and Destruction of Spanish Florida’s Missions, 1700–3
• 5 Fading Power and One Last Gasp: The Waning of Spanish Influence and the Beginnings of English Ascendancy
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index