As early as the year 1649 a plot for a general rising in Barbados was discovered through the information of a bond-servant. All the whites were to have been murdered, but fortunately the ringleaders were arrested before the time fixed and eight of them condemned to death. Then in 1676, under the leadership of a Coromantee, it was arranged that on a certain fixed day, at a signal to be given by blowing shells, all the cane-fields should be set on fire, the white men killed, and their women retained by the negroes as their wives. This also was frustrated by information received from a house negress. Hearing two men talking of the matter, she made inquiries, and learnt of the plot in time to inform her master. Six of the prisoners were burnt alive and eleven beheaded, while five committed suicide by hanging themselves before the trial. The story was told in a pamphlet entitled, "Great Newes from the Barbados, or a true and faithful account of the great conspiracy." Yet again in 1693, after a fearful epidemic had much reduced the number of the whites, a third conspiracy was set on foot. The Governor was to have been killed, the magazine seized, and the forts surprised and taken. When the plot was nearly ripe two of the leaders were overheard conversing about it and instantly arrested. They were hung in chains for four days without food or drink, promises of pardon being made if they revealed their accomplices, which they did at the end of that time, with the result that some were executed and others cruelly tortured. We might go on to tell also of the abortive insurrection of 1702 and several others, but as there were never any very serious risings in Barbados, we must proceed to other colonies.
In Jamaica several abortive attempts at general insurrections were made, some of them assisted by the maroons, who continually received accessions to their numbers from desertion. These people also made incursions on their own account, which led the Government to offer £5 a head for every one killed, the reward being payable on the production of his ears. In 1734 they destroyed several plantations and killed a hundred and fifty white men, which led to an attempt at suppressing them altogether. Captain Stoddart therefore took a detachment of soldiers into the mountains to the maroon town of Nanny. Arriving at night he planted a battery of swivel guns on a height that commanded the collection of huts, before the negroes were aware of his coming. They were rudely awakened from their sleep to find the place surrounded, and in alarm many flung themselves over precipices in their hurry to escape. Some were killed, a few captured, and the town utterly destroyed. About the same time a party of maroons from another place were so bold as to attack the barracks at Spanish Town.