James Carteret: The Black Sheep

There has recently been an interest in James Carteret because of his part as a slave trader. As Doug Ford notes:

‘The Speedwell, commanded by James Carteret, Sir George’s son, undertook one of the early voyages of the company [Royal African Company]. Leaving London in January 1663, he picked up 302 slaves in the port of Offra in the Bight of Benin and transported them to the West Indies — twenty died on the passage. In February 1664 he sold some of his “cargo” in Barbados and then the following month he sold the rest of the slaves in St Kitts. By the time he left in March 1664, Carteret had sold ‘155 men, 105 women and 22 boys to the eager planters.’

Given his later career, it is not certain why he ended up in charge, but it may well have been that he secured the post because of George Carteret's attempt to do something with a son who was already showing wayward tendencies, and who would be later described as "a weak and dissolute natural son" when he settled in New Jersey.

An indication of his wayward nature earlier is the mention of him owing money. Julien R. Childs writing in “The Naval Career of Joseph West” notes that:

Hitherto unnoticed in this connection are two lists in the Pepysian  Manuscripts according to which James, Duke of York, as high admiral of  England, commissioned one James Carteret captain of the Jersey in 1666 and of the Foresight in 1668, and a Joseph West lieutenant of the  Jersey in 1667 and of the Foresight in 1668.14 This James was the navy treasurer's son, and the lieutenant, beyond reasonable doubt the same Joseph West who asked Sir George in 1671 to "order mee the money  that your sonne James owes me." As the Jersey and the Foresight were  both fourth rates with a small complement of officers, Captain Carteret  was in a position to furnish information on Joseph West in reports available to Sir George through the admiralty.

Here's the account of him in Balleine's Biographical Dictionary of Jersey:

CARTERET, JAMES (d. 1682), New Jersey Rebel. Second son of Sir George Carteret, Treasurer of the Navy (q.v.), and Elizabeth De Carteret, his wife.

Chalmers in his ADD s calls James illegitimate, and other writers have repeated this, but it is incorrect. A Royal Warrant of 11 Feb 1680 grants “to Elizabeth, widow of the late Sir George Carteret, and to his younger son James the same precedence as they would have had, had Sir George been actually created a Baron, he having died before the Patent could be sued out”.

An illegitimate son would have ‘had no precedence. Since his elder brother was born in Oct 1642. James cannot have ‘been born till 1643, and so was still a child in 1651 when, before the surrender of Elizabeth Castle, Lady Carteret sent her children to St. Malo. The boy was brought up in France, and. when old enough, like his father he was sent to sea, probably in a privateer.

In 1664 he was in command of one of the slave-boats of his father's Royal African Company, and a letter from Barbados reported small-pox among the Negroes on his ship (C. P.). In 1665 he entered the Navy. and. no doubt through Sir George's influence, became Lieutenant of the Royal Prince, and is mentioned as convoying a ship from Gothenburg (S. P.) and in the same year was put in command of the Oxford (22 guns). In July 1667 he was acting as Vice-Admiral of the British Fleet operating against the French in the West Indies. He kept Christmas in New Jersey. In 1668 he was in command of the Foresight, end in 1669 of the Jersey (48 guns). Then he left the Navy.

In May 1671 he was appointed by the Lords Proprietors, of whom his father was one, a Landgrave of Carolina with “a Barony of 12,000 acres in a commodious place near the head of Cooper River” (Pipon Papers in S. J. Library). In September he was in New York and in May 1672 in New Jersey, of which his father was also a Lord Proprietor.

He found revolt brewing against his father and Philippe De Carteret (q.v.), a distant cousin, who was Governor. The malcontents, who refused to pay the quit-rents which the Lords Proprietors demanded, called an Assembly at Elizabethtown, and James put himself at their head.

In the Report which the duly constituted officials sent to London they said: — “He gives forth continual threatenings against those that do not obey his orders, and has persons adhering to him that probably will be ready to execute his will, so that they may have the plundering of our estates; and all these proceedings he carries on with the pretence that he hath power sufficient, he being Sir George Carteret's son, and that he himself is Proprietor, and can put out the Governor as he pleases, and that his Father hath given him his part of the Province, though he doth not shew any grant or commission, but saith he scorneth to shew his power to such fellows as we neither need he so doing on his own land” (Whitehead. East Jersey under the Proprietors).

The rebels then deposed Philippe, and made James "President of the Country". He ordered the arrest of all officials who refused to recognize his authority, and the confiscation of their estates.

Philippe sailed -to England to report to the Lords Proprietors. The latter entirely repudiated James and stern letters were sent to New Jersey, not only by the Proprietors but by the King, threatening his “high displeasure” on all who dared to resist the Governor's authority. The revolt then fizzled out, and James disappeared from New Jersey.

In April 1673, before the Kings letter arrived, he had married Frances, daughter of Thomas de la Val. Mayor of New York. On 1 July he and his bride set out for Carolina, but the ship in which he was travelling was captured by the Dutch, and they were set ashore in Virginia. By April 1676 they were back in New York.

Carteret's character now seems to have gone to pieces. We get a glimpse of him in Oct. 1679 in Dankers' Journal. The writer spent a night in a house at Harlem. “filled with people drinking for -the most part execrable rum. Among the crowd was a person of quality, an Englishman named Capn. Carteret, a very profligate person. He married a merchant's daughter here, and has so lived with his wife that her father has been compelled to take her home again. He runs about the farmers, and stays where he can find most drink, and sleeps in barns on the straw. If he conducted himself properly, he could be Governor, for he seems to have been of a good understanding: but that is now all drowned. His father, who will not acknowledge him as his son as before, allows him yearly as much only as is necessary for him to live”.

Sir George died in 1680 a very rich man, and, as his elder brother was dead, James would normally have inherited a large share of the fortune, but his father left him only £100 a year, and that on condition that he renounced all claims to lands in Jersey. He returned however to Jersey, and was buried in St. Peter's Church on 12 Sept. 1682.

The Register records, “He was laid in the earth by De Carterets, three of whom were Knights”.

(These must have been Sir Edward. his uncle, Sir Philippe, his cousin, the Bailiff, and Sir George, his nephew. Two of these however were Baronets).

This shows that. in spite of his past, he was not disowned by his family. Three years later his wife came to Jersey with her two small children. George and Elizabeth. She died in 1688, and the children were put under a guardian.

When George came of age in 1702 he went to New York to try to recover property which her father had settled on his mother at the time of her marriage, but on his return he was killed in an accident in London (Pipon Papers in S. J. Library). Elizabeth married (1) Philippe De Carteret, Seigneur of Rozel, (2) Philippe Pipon (q.v.), Seigneur of Noirmont.