will never know how many there were because even sincere converts hid their Jewish roots behind a mask of hyper-religious piety. As the next chapter demonstrates, as long as their skills were needed, the Crown not only turned a blind eye to their presence, but actively recruited them.
Following a time line, then, we come to 1534, a year when disparate events came together in ways that broke with the past and shifted the century forward to new beginnings. In matters of faith, the Reformation was kick-started when a renegade monk published the Bible in German, and a lustful king became the Supreme Head of the Church of England. In the New World, an illiterate pig herder conquered the gold kingdom of Peru, and in Brazil, a group of exiled Jews from a little island off the Guinea coast introduced an agricultural industry that would prove more valuable than gold and silver. Meanwhile, warring infidels led by one who styled himself “the Magnificent” invaded Hungary. And the Most Catholic Defender of the True Faith, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, authorized the first documented Jewish settlement in the New World on the island of Jamaica.
Chapter Three
THE KING’S ESSENTIAL HERETICS
W hen the bad news from Jamaica reached Spain, Charles V, the Lord of Half the World, was not surprised. It seemed that every time he put his crown on in 1534, there was trouble in his kingdom. Even his vaunted title, Holy Roman Emperor, didn’t carry the same weight as it had when his grandfather Maximilian wore the crown. So when he read that most of his Jamaican colonists were dead and the rest wanted out, Charles was not unduly grieved. He had seen it coming.
In the nineteen years that he had been ruling the New World, Jamaica had always been more of a problem than the “fairest isle” Columbus thought it to be. New Seville of Gold was now known simply as New Seville. The anticipated flow of the precious metal turned out to be a trickle, and most of the sixty thousand Indians who had greeted Columbus were dead. Aside from a small productive settlement of conversos on the south coast, the colony was going under. Why remain in Jamaica when neighboring Hispaniola and Cuba offered a regal style of life said to rival that of Spain? Why settle Jamaica when the nearby Main offered the promise of Aztec and Inca gold?
The communiqué was desperate: Conditions at New Seville had “turned out so badly that no citizen has prospered nor kept his health for a day.” To salvage the colony, his treasurer Pedro de Manzuelo proposed removing the settlement “to the south side of the island where the land is plentiful in bread and beef…with very good ports suitable for navigation to the provinces of Santa Marta, Cartagena, and the mainland…There is great disposition to settle there because no ship in this trade comes to the north coast but all load on the south.” 1
Manzuelo concluded his report with a seemingly odd request. To pioneer the south coast settlement, he recommended the king send an additional thirty Portuguese families to join with the twenty already there. Together they would be put to work on his sugar estate. Manzuelo’s request was couched in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. The king had made growing sugarcane in the Indies a priority and had been subsidizing planters in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Mexico with land grants, duty waivers, and loans. Years earlier, Jamaica’s sugar mill in New Seville had shown the island’s potential for growing the sweetener, and it made sense to recruit more workers to increase the island’s production. 2 But why Portuguese? Portugal was then attracting settlers to its colonies with the promise of riches, so where would the king find Portuguese families in his realm willing to settle a poor Spanish island?
The fact is, he didn’t have to. Manzuelo’s directive was aimed at enlisting neither sugar workers nor Portuguese natives. In Crown correspondence, reference to Portuguese
Following a time line, then, we come to 1534, a year when disparate events came together in ways that broke with the past and shifted the century forward to new beginnings. In matters of faith, the Reformation was kick-started when a renegade monk published the Bible in German, and a lustful king became the Supreme Head of the Church of England. In the New World, an illiterate pig herder conquered the gold kingdom of Peru, and in Brazil, a group of exiled Jews from a little island off the Guinea coast introduced an agricultural industry that would prove more valuable than gold and silver. Meanwhile, warring infidels led by one who styled himself “the Magnificent” invaded Hungary. And the Most Catholic Defender of the True Faith, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, authorized the first documented Jewish settlement in the New World on the island of Jamaica.
Chapter Three
THE KING’S ESSENTIAL HERETICS
W hen the bad news from Jamaica reached Spain, Charles V, the Lord of Half the World, was not surprised. It seemed that every time he put his crown on in 1534, there was trouble in his kingdom. Even his vaunted title, Holy Roman Emperor, didn’t carry the same weight as it had when his grandfather Maximilian wore the crown. So when he read that most of his Jamaican colonists were dead and the rest wanted out, Charles was not unduly grieved. He had seen it coming.
In the nineteen years that he had been ruling the New World, Jamaica had always been more of a problem than the “fairest isle” Columbus thought it to be. New Seville of Gold was now known simply as New Seville. The anticipated flow of the precious metal turned out to be a trickle, and most of the sixty thousand Indians who had greeted Columbus were dead. Aside from a small productive settlement of conversos on the south coast, the colony was going under. Why remain in Jamaica when neighboring Hispaniola and Cuba offered a regal style of life said to rival that of Spain? Why settle Jamaica when the nearby Main offered the promise of Aztec and Inca gold?
The communiqué was desperate: Conditions at New Seville had “turned out so badly that no citizen has prospered nor kept his health for a day.” To salvage the colony, his treasurer Pedro de Manzuelo proposed removing the settlement “to the south side of the island where the land is plentiful in bread and beef…with very good ports suitable for navigation to the provinces of Santa Marta, Cartagena, and the mainland…There is great disposition to settle there because no ship in this trade comes to the north coast but all load on the south.” 1
Manzuelo concluded his report with a seemingly odd request. To pioneer the south coast settlement, he recommended the king send an additional thirty Portuguese families to join with the twenty already there. Together they would be put to work on his sugar estate. Manzuelo’s request was couched in such a way as not to arouse suspicion. The king had made growing sugarcane in the Indies a priority and had been subsidizing planters in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Mexico with land grants, duty waivers, and loans. Years earlier, Jamaica’s sugar mill in New Seville had shown the island’s potential for growing the sweetener, and it made sense to recruit more workers to increase the island’s production. 2 But why Portuguese? Portugal was then attracting settlers to its colonies with the promise of riches, so where would the king find Portuguese families in his realm willing to settle a poor Spanish island?
The fact is, he didn’t have to. Manzuelo’s directive was aimed at enlisting neither sugar workers nor Portuguese natives. In Crown correspondence, reference to Portuguese
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