Samuel Vassall

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Bust in King's Chapel, Boston

Samuel Vassall (baptised 1586 – 1667) was an English merchant, politician, and slave trader who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1648. Vassall financed slave ships in the 1640s, and was the majority shareholder of the Guinea Company, founded in 1651 to transport enslaved Africans to European colonies in the Americas. Samuel Vassall was 77 when he left London for Carolina in 1663. He died in the America colonies in 1667.[1][2]

Early life[]

Vassal was the second son of John Vassall and his second wife, Anna Russell, and was baptised at Stepney on 5 June 1586. His father was a Huguenot refugee who travelled to England from Normandy before August 1572 and who fitted out two ships, The Samuel and the Little Toby which he commanded against the Spanish Armada.[citation needed]

Vassal lived for a time at Cockethurst Farmhouse, in what was then, Prittlewell, Essex, at the start of the 1600s. The house remained in the Vassal family until 1808.[3]

Merchant and slave-trading career[]

Vassall launched his career as a merchant for the Levant Company, trading Ottoman goods including rum, spices, opium, cloth, tin, and pewter in Europe. But "by the later 1620s he had formed partnerships to supply provisions to Virginia and Barbados, becoming in the process one of the leading London importers of Chesapeake tobacco."[1] In March 1628, Samuel and his brother William Vassall were among the original "incorporators" of the Massachusetts Bay Company and a patentee of lands in Massachusetts.[4] The Vassalls "afterwards acquired by purchase ... two-twentieths of all Massachusetts in New England."[5]

In September 1628, Vassall was imprisoned and his goods retained when he "refused to pay to the custom-house the tonnage and poundage on a large quantity of currants which he was importing.[5] His activities in 1630 reveal his intercolonial business interests. In April, he joined George, Lord Berkeley and others in an agreement to establish a colonial settlement in Virginia. In June, he again contended against tonnage and poundage requirements, "having brought from Virginia to Tilbury a vessel laden ‘with that drug called tobacco,'" and in September, he advanced £50 to the Massachusetts Bay Company.[5]

Between 1642 and 1645, and again in 1647, Vassall "joined syndicates owning ships trading between the Guinea coast and the Caribbean, supplying Barbados with slaves".[1] In 1651, the Guinea Company was formed to purchase enslave Africans and sell them both to New England and the Caribbean. Historian Hugh Thomas notes in his study of the slave trade that "Not surprisingly, the chief interloper of recent years, Samuel Vassall, was the major shareholder."[2] Both Samuel and his brother William Vassall were "active in nearly all aspects of English Atlantic colonisation during the first half of the 17th century," and slavery formed an "integral part of the Vassalls' colonial operations."[1] From London, Samuel traded goods and enslaved Africans in New England, Virginia, Carolina, and the West Indies, while William moved to Barbados to take advantage of the global "sugar boom and the reality of rapid and immense fortunes to be accrued."[6] For nearly 200 years following William's arrival in Barbados in 1648, "the [Vassall] family built its wealth by running slave-labor plantations in the Caribbean" where they were among the "leading planters."[7][1] During the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act and the subsequent Slave Compensation Act, the Vassalls claimed compensation for the 401 enslaved people on their Friendship, Greenwich, and Sweet River sugar plantations in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica.[8]

Political career[]

In April 1640, Vassall was elected Member of Parliament for City of London in the Short Parliament.[9][10] In June of the same year he was summoned together with Richard Chambers by the council in order to be ‘committed to some prisons in remote parts for seducing the King's people'. In November 1640 he was re-elected MP for the City of London in the Long Parliament and sat until he was excluded in 1648 under Pride's Purge. At this time he was styled clothier or clothworker. On 2 December Vassall "delivered his grievances by word of mouth" to the commons, and a committee was appointed to consider them. On 2 February 1641 the House of Commons ordered the farmers of the customs and imports to restitute to him the tobacco which had been seized. In July the committee meeting in the Star-chamber was still considering "of some fit way for reparation."[citation needed]

Vassall took the ‘protestation’ on 3 May 1641. In 1642 he was one of the commissioners for plantations in the American colonies, and as such in November took part in the appointment of Sir Thomas Warner as governor of the Caribbee Islands. He was one of the commissioners for the incorporation of Providence plantations in the Narraganset Bay in New England in 1643. Vassall took the covenant on 22 September 1643. On 20 February 1645 he was one of the committee for the city of London for raising funds towards the maintenance of the Scottish army, and on 11 July 1646 he was named one of the commissioners for the kingdom of England for the conservation of peace between the two kingdoms. Early in 1650, as a trader to Guinea, he was giving information to the house about disputes between various merchants and the Guinea Company.

With regard to Vassall's attempts to secure compensation for his losses and imprisonment, the matter was referred on 14 June 1644 to the committee for the navy, and on 18 January 1647 the commons voted him £10,445 12s. 2d. He had also advanced money for the parliamentary forces in Ireland, and on 6 May 1647, £2,591 17s. 6d., due to Vassall on this account, was ordered to be made chargeable on the grand excise, "with interest on the same’ payable every six months". Vassall, however, received nothing. On 6 April 1654, in a petition presented to the Protector, he stated that as a result of resisting tonnage and poundage he had lost £15,000, and begged leave to refund himself by means of privileges to import French wines, ship coals and lead, or receive forest land. The debt with interest now amounted to £20,202 7s. 3d. On 6 May 1656 he was granted £150 annually as interest on the debt formerly charged on the excise. On 26 May on the taking of a "Spanish prize" the council issued a warrant to pay him £1,000. He was nevertheless informed on 8 September 1657 that he should make his application for payment to parliament, "as no revenue remains at his highness's disposal to satisfy the said debt." On 18 March 1658 the petition was again read to the council, and again on 3 June 1658, at which time Vassall was a "prisoner in the upper bench." On 1 April 1659 the commons recommended the Protector to grant a privy seal to pay him of £500 as part of the debt and a bill was prepared for signature on 5 April. On 18 August 1660 it was ordered that the remainder of the debt should again be made chargeable on the excise, and "forthwith paid to Mr. Vassall."

Later life[]

In 1663 Vassall was in Carolina making arrangements with the lords proprietors of the colony regarding a claim laid by him for part of a term not yet expired. He probably died in Massachusetts, but the exact time or place is not known. When letters of administration were granted in London to his son Francis on 24 September 1667, it was stated that he died abroad.

Vassall married Frances Cartwright, daughter of Abraham and Joan Cartwright of St. Andrew's Undershaft, London. They had several children.[11]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Smith, S.D. (2006). Slavery, Family, and Gentry in the British Atlantic. Cambridge University Press. p. 23. ISBN 9781139458856.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Thomas, Hugh (2013). The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. Simon & Schuster. p. 585. ISBN 9781476737454.
  3. ^ Historic England. "Cockethurst Farmhouse (1168800)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  4. ^ Calder, Charles Maclear (1921). John Vassall and his Descendants. Hereford, England: S. Austin. p. 6.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c Porter, Bertha. "Vassall, Samuel (1586-1667)," Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, vol. 58, p 156-58.
  6. ^ Games, Alison (1999). Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. Harvard University Press. p. 128. ISBN 9780674573819.
  7. ^ Bell, JL. (2012) "The John Vassall Estate," chapter 1 of George Washington's Headquarters and Home, Cambridge, MA. National Park Service.
  8. ^ Jamaica Westmoreland 27, Sweet River Pen, including Friendship. Claim Details, 5th Dec 1836, 401 Enslaved, £7211 13s 9d. Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College London.
  9. ^ Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. pp. 229–239.
  10. ^ Discussion of Vassall's political career is drawn from Portia, "Vassall, Samuel," Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900.
  11. ^ VASSAL ANNEX Vassal Index

The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: "Vassall, Samuel (DNB00)" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Parliament of England
Preceded by
Parliament suspended since 1629 		Member of Parliament for City of London
1640–1648
With: Thomas Soame
Isaac Penington
Matthew Cradock 1640–1641
John Venn 1641–1648 		Succeeded by
Isaac Penington
John Venn
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