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Henry Whistler's journal for March 1654/5 records of Barbados, "This Island is inhabited with all sortes: with English, french, Duch, Scotes, Irish, Spaniards thay being lues: with Ingones and miserabell Negors borne to perpetuall slauery."
Civil strife in England brought successive waves of emigrants: discontented Scots under the Stuarts, Cromwell's opponents, Protestants following the bloody Monmouth reprisals, indentured servants, transported "vagrants, rogues and idle persons", and various sorts of opportunists. These brought the white population to over 20,000, where it remained until near the end of the century.
In this, its 'golden age", Barbados became the richest colony in English America-thanks largely to Sephardic Jewish capital, Brazilian Dutch expertise, and a thriving slave trade-and its most populous, except for Massachusetts and Virginia.
Migration from Barbados began in earliest times and continued until the Revolution. The first colonists of Maryland, for example, departed England in the Ark and the Dove on November 22, 1633, and arrived at St Clement's Island in the Potomac by way of Barbados.
According to A. D. Chandler, "In the years 1660 to 1667 some ten thousand people, mainly landless freemen and small farmers, left Barbados, followed in 1668 to 1672 by four to five thousand people, mainly of the planter class, and in 1678 to 1681 by another two thousand planters." ("Expansion of Barbados", in Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society XIII:II4, 124-34.)
The generous provisions of the 'Act to encourage the bringing in of Christian servants to this Island' of June 20, 1696 brought in over 2,O00 white servants. These were expected, at the end of their periods of indenture, to go off "as is customary ... to Pensilvania, Carelena, and other Northern Colonies where provisions are more plenty and weather more temperate." (C.O. 28:6.)
