While the small remnant of the king's naval forces was pursuing a course of adventures which hovered between piracy and privateering, the Council of State was making vigorous use of its navy for the purpose of stamping out what resistance to its authority still lingered on in outlying territories. In 1651 it armed, in addition to the Home Guards and the squadrons of Penn and Hall, a further squadron under the command of Sir George Ayscue. His mission was to reduce the royal garrison at Barbadoes, and to receive the submission of the plantations of North America. Barbadoes had passed into our hands by occupation as far back as the reign of Elizabeth. It had never been held by the Spaniards, who probably neglected it because it lay well out in the Atlantic to the eastward of the Antilles. Although of little direct value to them, its position made it desirable to a Power which wished to be able to attack the Spanish Indies. Being to windward, it supplied an excellent starting-point for a squadron intending to assail the Antilles. It has a good harbour and fertile soil. The early history of our settlement in Barbadoes is peaceful and obscure. The settlers appear to have included an exceptional number of capitalists, and few among them belonged to that class of emigrants who left England for religious reasons during the reign of Charles I. By the middle of the century it is said to have contained fifty thousand inhabitants, over and above the black slaves and the remnant of the native Indian population. In the desperate state to which the king's fortunes were reduced, his desire to retain so valuable a fragment of his dominions was very natural. He could do little to defend it in the way of supplying men or money. It was, however, in his power to appoint a resolute governor; and this he did. The Lord Willoughby of Parham, who had been named Vice-Admiral by Charles at Helvoetsluys in 1648, had been displaced by the mutiny of his men when the squadron returned from its unsuccessful cruise into the Thames, was sent as governor to Barbadoes, and was well received by the planters. So long as they were not called upon to fight or suffer for the royal cause, these persons were perfectly prepared to recognise the king's authority. They had a militia apparently well armed, and forts in the principal settlement at Carlisle Bay, but the reality of strength was not in proportion to the show.