Robert Sedgwick (colonist)

[2] In 1653, Sedgwick was in England, and Cromwell selected him to command an expedition intended to drive the Dutch from New Netherland, giving him the rank of major in the army.

He raised, in spite of various obstructions, a few hundred men in the New England colonies, and was about to set out against the Dutch (June 1654), when news of the peace with Holland put a stop to his proceedings.

In October 1655, when Sedgwick arrived at Jamaica, he found the troops dying fast, everything in disorder, and necessaries of every kind wanting.

"You must in a manner begin the work over again" was his message to Cromwell; but, though inwardly desponding of the future of the colony, he kept a brave front to the public, and under his energetic and judicious administration things slowly mended.

[2] But Sedgwick never took up the command, died on 24 May 1656, and was buried halfway up the canyon to Spanish Town from Ocho Rios in a small Christopher Wren-styled chapel.

The secretary describes Sedgwick as being 'generally beloved and esteemed by all sorts of people,' and Carlyle characterises him as 'a very brave, zealous, and pious man, whose letters in Thurloe are, of all others, the best worth reading on this subject.