Description

[Henry FRERE (1733 – 1792)].

London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1768.

This pleasantly readable work provides an intriguing overview of the history of Barbados from its founding by the first English settlers until the 1767, the time of writing. While anonymous, modern scholarship (see Jerome S. Handler, A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, p. 41) has convincingly demonstrated that it was written by Henry Frere, a scion of an old planter family and subsequently a member of the island’s executive council.The work describes Barbados’s early settlers, and its state during the English Civil War, the Cromwellian Era, and the rise of its massively important sugar-slave economy. Particularly interesting is Frere’s treatment of the complex internal political rivalries and debates that buffeted the island and during the 18th century, of which some of these dramas the author was an eyewitness. Frere reveals many sharp opinions in these matters, and seems to have hewed a distinctly Tory line, favouring the supremacy of the British crown over the claimed privileges of partial self-determination advanced by some of the island’s local leaders. Indeed, as the present work was written in the immediate wake of the Stamp Act Crisis in the Thirteen Colonies, one of Frere’s main objectives here was to demonstrate Barbados’s steadfast loyalty to Britain.

There then follows standalone sections on Barbados’s ‘Constitution’ and ‘Trade, Soil and Climate’, which emphasises the sugar-slave plantation economy, while the work concludes with ‘A List of Commanders in Chief of Barbados from its First Settlment’.

Frere’s Tory opinions made him the target of one of his peers, Sir John Gay Alleyne (1724 – 1801), perhaps Barbados’s greatest planter and the Speaker of the House of Assembly. Alleyne believed that members of the island’s Assembly, like members of the British House of Commons possessed 1) freedom from arrest; (2) freedom of speech in the Assembly; and (3) free access to a representative of the Crown.

In the present work (pp. 81-4), Frere opined that Alleyne’s claims of such privileges were utter nonsense. This angered Alleyne so greatly that he published his own work anonymously (although it was always known to have been written by him), Remarks upon a book, intitled, A Short History of Barbados: in which the partial and unfair representations of the author upon the subjects of his history in general, and upon that of the demand of privleges in particular, are detected and exposed (Barbados, re-printed in London for J. Almon, 1768), that accused Frere of profligate plagiarism and for attempting “to inculcate a doctrine of the most abject and undistinguishing submission to our governors, by discouraging every effort of liberty, if it takes the form of opposition, in the representatives of the people.”

An early 19th century historian of Barbados, John Poyer, remarked that the invective of Frere and Alleyne’s books “produced a duel between the two gentlemen; and though it ended without bloodshed, the dispute laid the foundation of an enmity which had a visible influence on the politics of the literary antagonists during their lives.”

In response, Frere quickly published a “A new edition, corrected and enlarged” of the present work, within of Alleyne’s salvos, he retorted that “These remarks contain some assertions that are false, many confutable, and all of them uncandid and ungenerous. They are written with the peevishness of a child whose playthings have been disturbed”.
A more balanced description of Frere’s work was given by Jerome Handler, who called it “A well-known local history designed to show that “Barbados hath always preserved a uniform and steady attachment to Great Britain and therefore is entitled to the affection and indulgence of the mother country”. The early historical sections rely on a variety of sources such as the island’s laws, and there is some useful information on eighteenth-century administrative structure, economy, trade, etc.” (Handler, p. 41).
Frere’s A Short History of Barbados was widely read by statesmen and intellectuals across the British Empire and the United States. Interestingly, the examples owned Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson (both held by the Library of Congress) and John Adams (Boston Public Library) survive today.
While The Bowyer Ledgers record that only 250 examples of the present first edition of Frere’s work was published, today we can trace over a dozen institutional examples. However, the work is quite rare commercially, we can cite only a single other example as having appeared on the market in the last decade.
Henry Frere: Barbadian Statesman, Historian and Art Connoisseur

Henry Frere (1733 – 1792) was one of the most prominent Barbadians of his era. In 1749, he inherited the Kingland Estate from his grandfather, Thomas Applewhaite Frere, making him a very wealthy young man. Frere was a longtime major business partner of the Lascelles Family and acquired several other properties in Barbados. He served as a member of the island’s Council (i.e., the governor’s cabinet), and was its President from 1790 to 1793, in which capacity he was briefly Barbados’s Acting Governor in 1790 and 1791.

As an interesting aside, Frere is well known for having acquired the greatest painting to have ever appeared in Barbados during the 18th century. He bought Benjamin West’s Rise to Power (1786), a monumental painting of Jesus Christ, that had recently been exhibited at London’s Royal Academy. Frere had it shipped to Barbados, where it was displayed in the St. George Parish Church. However, Frere soon removed the painting from the church after having a “falling out” with its rector, the Reverend John Carter. Rise to Power was then kept in an outbuilding of one of the Frere properties, the Lower Estate Plantation, for the next 30 years. In 1820, the painting was returned to the St. George’s Church, where it remains on display to this day.

References: British Library: 978.d.29.; OCLC: 11277429; Jerome S. HANDLER, A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627 – 1834 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), p. 41; MASLEN & LANCASTER (eds.), The Bowyer Ledgers: The Printing Accounts of William Bowyer Father and Son (1991), 4727 [noting 250 examples printed]; RAGATZ, p.182; SABIN, 3288; SOWERBY, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 465.