From Newcastle to Jamaica: Captain Gregory Butler and the Puritan Colonization Network of the Reverend John Oxenbridge, 1635–1660

Abstract Captain Gregory Butler is currently unknown, but he played a leading role in the conquest of Jamaica. Uncovering his identity, the author discovers a network of puritans stretching across from London to Newcastle that promoted the colonization of the Caribbean. The puritan minister John Oxenbridge became Gregory’s link to this network after he married Gregory’s older sister. Another sister married an influential puritan merchant of Newcastle. The biography of him written in the early eighteenth century provides crucial information allowing the author to identify Gregory Butler and outline the extent of Oxenbridge’s involvement with this network. Compiling a sketch of Gregory Butler’s career as a soldier, sailor, and colonizer, one sees the importance of family ties (and especially women) among individuals of the middling sort of social class in promoting the puritan cause in England and the Caribbean in the era of the English Civil Wars and Revolution.