Antigua Slave Conspiracy of 1736: 88 Executed After Plot to Blow Up Governor and Massacre White Colonists

In October 1736, white authorities in Antigua uncovered what they described as an island-wide slave conspiracy to massacre the colony's approximately 3,800 white inhabitants. The plot was masterminded by an enslaved Creole man named Court (also called Tackey), enslaved by Thomas Kerby, Speaker of the Assembly. His chief accomplice, Tomboy, a skilled enslaved carpenter, planned to gain access to the ballroom where the annual coronation ball for King George II would be held and plant gunpowder beneath the floor to kill the governor and colonial gentry in a single explosion. Eighty-eight enslaved people were executed, five of them broken on the wheel. Historians remain divided on whether this was a genuine large-scale conspiracy or a morally panicked exaggeration by colonial authorities. The connection to the Royall family of Massachusetts — wealthy slaveholders with Antiguan plantation roots — illustrates the Atlantic world's interconnected slave economy.