illiam Povey
in Barbadoes, brothers of Thomas Povey, had for a time charge of his
plantations in those islands. Noell indirectly played no small part in
politics, particularly of Barbadoes, where Governor Searle held office
largely through his influence. Besides his Jamaica holdings he had
estates at Wexford in Ireland, and in April, 1658, wrote to Henry
Cromwell that he had "transplanted much of his interest and affairs
and relations" to that country, seeming to indicate thereby that his
colonial ventures were not prospering satisfactorily. Noell was a
politic man, shrewd and diplomatic, asserting his loyalty to the house
of Cromwell, yet becoming a trusty subject of King Charles, from whom
he afterward received knighthood.[1]

Thomas Povey was born probably about 1615, son of Justinian Povey,
auditor of the exchequer and one of the commissioners of the Caribbee
Islands in 1637. He was one of a large family of children, nine at
least, Justinian, John, Francis, William, Richard, Thomas, Mrs.
Blathwayt (afterward Mrs. Thomas Vivian), Mrs. Barrow, and Sarah Povey,
and he spent his early years at the family home in Hounslow. In 1633 he
entered Gray's Inn and in 1647 became a member of the Long Parliament.
"Purged" with the other Presbyterian members in 1648, he did not return
to Parliament until the restoration of those members in 1659. He was
evidently inclined at first to go into law and politics, but for reasons
unnamed, possibly the slenderness of his fortune, which he says was
hardly sufficient to support him, he turned, about 1654, to trade,
and was thus brought into close relations with Martin Noell. Of his
activities until 1657 we hear very little, though it is evident that
from 1654 to 1657 he lived in Gray's Inn, engaging in many trading
ventures in the West Indies and elsewhere, was on terms of intimacy
with Noell and frequently at his house, and showed himself fertile of
suggestions, as always, regarding the improvement of trade and the
care and supply of men, provisions, and intelligence. In 1657 he lost
by death his brothers John and Francis, and his mother, who died at
Hounslow. As two of his brothers had gone to the West Indies with the
expedition of 1654 and the remainer of the family was scattered, he
decided to marry, and settled down in a house in Lincoln's Inn Fields
next the Earl of Northampton, with a widow without children, but
possessed "of a fortune capable of giving a reasonable assistance to
mi