Is it nature or by the error of fantasie that the seeing of places we know to have been frequented or inhabited by men whose memory is esteemed or mentioned in Stories, doth in some sort move and stirre us up as much or more than the hearing of their noble deeds or reading of their compositions?

The care which a nation devotes to the preservation of the monuments of its past may serve as a true measure of the degree of civilization to which it has attained.

In the year 1900 the present writer published a small volume entitled “Studies in Jamaica History,” giving the records of certain historic sites in the colony.

In its issue of October 27, 1908, the Editor of the “West India Committee Circular,” commenting on the appointment of a Royal Commission to enumerate and report upon the historical monuments in England, drew attention to the need for the preservation of historic sites and buildings in the West Indies, and stated that a letter on the subject had been addressed by the West India Committee to the Colonial Office. On November 24 he was able to state that the Secretary of State for the Colonies (the Earl of Crewe) sympathised with the object of the West India Committee and had forwarded their representations to the governors of the various West Indian colonies, recommending them to their consideration.

In Jamaica the present writer, at the request of the Governor (Sir Sydney Olivier) and with the consent of the Board of Governors of the Institute of Jamaica, undertook to prepare a list, parish by parish, of historic sites, buildings and monuments, stating in each case the nature of its interest and the name of its owner. This list was published as a special supplement to the “Jamaica Gazette” on December 23, 1909; and in November 1912 it was reprinted as part of a report relating to the preservation of historic visites and ancient monuments and buildings in the West Indian colonies presented to Parliament.

In the meantime the present writer had commenced a series of articles in the “West India Committee Circular” dealing with historic sites and monuments in Jamaica, which appeared from October 1909 till October 1914.

At the suggestion of various persons interested in the subject it was decided to reprint these articles. In doing this it has been thought well to arrange them parish by parish and to add a few words of general history, taken in part from the writer’s contributions to the “Handbook of Jamaica,” and of descriptions of sites and monuments which have not been treated of individually.

It is hoped that the following notes may not only serve the double purpose of evoking interest in the history of the colony in the minds of its inhabitants and proving a source of information to visitors, but may be the means of steps being taken to preserve old buildings and other monuments alike from decay and the hand of man.

A list of works consulted in the compilation of the notes embodied in this volume would comprise almost all the books in the Jamaica section of the West India Library of the Institute of Jamaica, some 1400 in number.

My thanks are due to Mrs. Lionel Lee for making the illustrations and to Mr. Algernon E. Aspinall for kind assistance in seeing the work through the press.

The following tables are inserted for reference. The list of Governors is complete. The others are as complete as it has hitherto been found possible to make them. There are portraits in Jamaica History Gallery in the Institute of Jamaica of those to whom an * is suffixed.

Studies in Jamaica archæology and history naturally fall into three main groups: Aboriginal, Spanish and English.

Though, owing to the high form of civilization there attained, research has in Egypt revealed very full information concerning the condition of life in the Nile valley thousands of years before the Christian era, it has hitherto told us very little about the aborigines who inhabited Jamaica a little more than 400 years ago. How long they had been here when Columbus discovered the island no one can say for certain, though the thickness and extent of their middens, some thirty of which have been opened from time to time, offer evidence of value.

As in Hispaniola, the natives of Jamaica were ruled over by caciques or chieftains. The estimates of historians of the number of inhabitants in the West Indian islands differ widely. Las Casas says that the islands abounded with inhabitants as an ant-hill with ants, and puts them down at 6,000,000. But Peter Martyr gives but 1,200,000 to Hispaniola and, taking this as a guide, there would probably have been about 600,000 in Jamaica—or, roughly speaking, three-quarters of its present population. Not many were left when the English took the island in 1655.

Judged by the English standard, Indians are short in stature. The Arawâks of Guiana to-day are described as being of a red cinnamon in colour. The hair on the scalp is thick, long, very straight and very black. The features of the face are strikingly like those familiarly known as Chinese (Mongolian), and the expression is decidedly gentle. Physically they are weak, and life hardly ever exceeds fifty years. The natives of Jamaica—as a few skulls found from time to time testify—possessed, in common with other West Indian tribes, the peculiarity of tying boards on to the foreheads 2of their children in such a way that the skulls assumed and permanently retained an extraordinarily flat shape.

Peter Martyr, who heard it spoken, said that the language in the Greater Antilles was “soft and not less liquid than the Latin,” and “rich in vowels and pleasant to the ear.” Of words of West Indian origin, those most frequently in use in the English language are avocado (aguacate) pear, barbecue, buccaneer, canoe, Carib and its derivative cannibal, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, pirogue, potato and tobacco.

Columbus has told us of a cacique of Cuba who believed in a future state dependent on one’s actions in this world, but Sir Everard im Thurn found nothing of the kind amongst the Indians of Guiana, and it is probable that Columbus’s guide from Guanahani (Watling Island) only partially understood the cacique, or that Columbus only partially understood his guide. Their houses were primitive alike in shape and construction. In Jamaica, they were probably circular, and were provided with walls of wattle work plastered with mud, and with a high-pitched roof of palm leaves; they probably had no windows. The Indians slept in hammocks. The weapons of the Arawâks of Jamaica and the other large islands consisted of darts and war clubs; but they apparently did not possess bows and arrows, which were the form of weapons preferred by the Caribs, and the use of which gave them a great advantage over their more peaceful foes.

Ornaments were more worn by the men than the women. Painting was the simplest form of ornamentation; the colours used being blue, black, carmine, white and yellow, derived from plants and earths. They wore necklets of hogs’ teeth and stone beads, crowns of feathers in their heads, aprons of palm-leaves or woven cotton, and bands round their arms and legs. Their chief occupations and means of living were hunting and fishing and agricultural pursuits with, in some cases, a certain amount of trading. As they required nothing more than canoes for travelling on the water, simple houses to live in, baskets for domestic purposes, hammocks for rest, rude weapons of the chase, and implements such as hatchets and chisels, earthen vessels, and a few ornaments and articles of dress, these, with a few crude rock-carvings, formed the sum total of their arts and manufactures.

In common with the other aborigines of the West Indies generally 3and with the natives of New Zealand and with all the nomad tribes of the new world from Patagonia to the Arctic circle, the Arawâks of Jamaica were, when discovered, without any knowledge of the metals as such. From their kitchen middens we know that they were great fish eaters.

Until 1895, but few remains had been discovered to testify to the existence of a tribe which not so very long ago lived by gathering the fruits of the land and sea of Jamaica. During that and the following years several collections of Indian remains were found.^[2] They are scattered fairly throughout the island, except curiously enough, the eastern end, and are thickly grouped in St. Andrew and Vere, in St. Ann, and in the west end of Westmoreland. They all supply objects similar in character and giving evidence of no very high advance in civilization or the arts; being considerably below those of Mexico and Peru. The objects consist for the most part of petaloid or almond-shaped polished celts of metamorphic or igneous rocks, found somewhat abundantly all over the island; circular or oval, shallow, unglazed bowls of baked pottery, with but crude ornamentation, used in the preparation of food, and some as mortuary vessels for the heads of their chiefs—found here and there in the caves and on the sites of dwellings; calcedony beads, hitherto found, curiously enough, only in Vere; stone and wooden images and rock-carvings and the rock-pictures; and a few shell and flint implements and mealing-stones rarely found.

It is to be regretted that many of the objects shown at an exhibition of native remains held at the Institute of Jamaica in 1895, following on the discovery of the Halberstadt cave, as well as others discovered later, should have been allowed to leave the island. Such things once lost can rarely be regained.

Some of the early Spanish historians—putting as they frequently did X for J—wrote the name of the island Xaymaca, but it appears in its present form as early as 1511 in Peter Martyr’s “Decades.” He called it Jamaica and Jamica. The island is unnamed in Juan de la Cosa’s map of 1500.

Its first appearance in cartography is on the map made by Bartolommeo Colombo, Columbus’s younger brother, to illustrate the admiral’s fourth voyage, where it is spelled Jamaicha. In 4Cantino’s map (1502–04) it appears as Jamaiqua: in Caneiro as Jamaiqua and in Waldseemüller’s map of 1507 as Jamaiana. In the so-called Admiral’s map of 1507 it appears as Jamaqua: the name does not appear in Ruysch’s map of 1508, but in the Ptolemaeus edition, Strasburg 1513, it is given as Jamaiqua, and in the Waldseemüller map of 1516 it is also Jamaiqua.

In the Maggiolo map of 1519 it is Jamaica, but in the Maggiolo map of 1527 it is Jamaicha: in Ribero’s “Antilles” of 1529 and in Mercator’s map of 1541 it is Jamaica: but in Herrera’s map of 1601, it goes back to the old form Xamaica, and as late as 1734 in Charlevoix’s “L’isle Espagnole,” it appears as Xamayca. Amongst Englishmen who wrote of it from personal knowledge immediately after the British occupation, Commissioner Butler (1655) wrote it Gemecoe and Gemegoe. Daniell (1655) calls it Jamico, Gwakin (1657) wrote it Jammaca, and General Fleetwood (1658) wrote it Jamecah.

Columbus on his return from his first journey was told by the natives when off Tortuga, that if he sailed in a certain direction two days he would arrive at Babeque, where he would find gold. Columbus mentions Babeque many times in his journals, but he never found it, at least under that name. The “Historie,” of 1571, identifies it with Hispaniola but this is doubted. Las Casas thought that it might refer to Jamaica.

In common with most other West Indian native names Jamaica has come to us through a Spanish source; and the native pronunciation was possibly something like Hâmîca. Several derivations have been given of the meaning of the word. The most extraordinary is that which seeks to connect it with James II. On Moll’s map of the island, published early in the eighteenth century, it is stated that it was first called St. Jago by Columbus, who discovered it, but that the name was afterwards changed to Jamaica, after James, Duke of York. In this connection it is somewhat sad to note that not one of the Greater Antilles retained the name given to it by Columbus. Española, Santiago and Juana, went back to their native Hayti, Jamaica and Cuba; and St. Juan Bautista became Porto Rico, but Hispaniola still survives to some extent and is the most convenient name for the island which contains two republics. Of the smaller islands, the names of Trinidad, Antigua, Dominica, Montserrat and Guadeloupe still remind us of their great discoverer.

James Knight, in the rough draft of his history of Jamaica (1742) in the British Museum, gives the following derivation of the word Jamaica: “In the original it was Jamajaco. Jamo in the Indian language is a country, and Jaco is water.”

John Atkins, in his “Voyage to the Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies” (1737), says that “Jamaica was altered by King James, it being a compound of his name and ‘ca’ an island.” He was possibly not far wrong in regard to the “island.” The West 5Indian word for an island, cai (or the Biscayan word cay) is supposed to appear in Lucayos (Bahamas), “Men of the Island”; in the Caicos islands, and also in various cays or keys in the West Indies; albeit modern etymology makes cay or key the same word as the Welsh cae.

Long wrote in 1774 that “it is not improbable that Jamaica is a name of Indian extraction, perhaps derived from Jamacaru, the Brazilian name of the prickly pear, which overspreads the maritime parts of the south side, where the aboriginal Indian discoverers of this island might have first landed,” but this derivation has found no supporters among later writers.

Bryan Edwards, writing in 1793, says: “The early Spanish historians wrote the word Xaymaca. It is said to have signified in the language of the natives, a country abounding in springs.”

Bridges, who as a rule displays a more fertile imagination than Long without half his trustworthiness as a historian, says, writing in 1828: “In the speech of Florida, Chaübaan signified water and makia wood (Lescarbot, I.6, c.6). The compound sound would approach to Chab-makia; and, harmonized to the Spanish ear, would be Chamakia, or some such indistinct union of these two significant expressions, denoting a land covered with wood, and therefore watered by shaded rivulets, or, in other words, fertile.” This suggested origin has been usually adopted by later writers. Why Bridges sought in Florida the meaning of words of Jamaica, he does not explain. Carib and Arawâk are probably the only two languages which Columbus heard spoken in the Greater Antilles. Wood, in Arawâk, is ada; woods are in Arawâk konoko and in Carib eotch; and water is in Arawâk winiab (Hillhouse) or comiaboo (im Thurn), and in Carib tona.

Bryan Edwards points out that Fernando Columbus’s “Historie” states that the Indian name of Antigua was Jamaica, and he adds: “It is a singular circumstance that this word which in the language of the larger islands signified a country abounding in springs, should in the dialect of the Charaibs have been applied to an island that has not a single spring or rivulet of fresh water in it.” Until further research proves the contrary Jamaica must remain, what it truly is, the land of woods and streams.

Apart from the name of the island itself, there are few names of native origin left. These will be referred to in the body of the work as they occur.

There is some difficulty in discriminating between the native Indian and Spanish origin of West Indian names: and too great a faith in the laws of philology are apt to lead one astray. Placenames are not infrequently rather evolved in accordance with the rule of phonetics.

On this subject Long wrote: “From the resemblance which the language of these islanders bears in some respects to the Spanish, I am apt to suspect that many of their words have been altered 6by the Spanish mode of pronunciation, and the difficulty which the discoverers found in articulating and accenting them without some intermixture of their own patronymic. In some this is exceedingly obvious, where the letter b is used indiscriminately for v, agreeably to their idiom. This perversion may easily lead us to ascribe a Spanish or Moorish origin to the names of places, such as rivers, mountains, headlands, &c., which in fact are of Indian derivation. Thus the article gua, so commonly met with both in these islands and on the Southern continent, was often prefixed or appended to the Indian names of places and things; and even of their provincial caciques. Of the latter were Gua-rionexius, Gua-canarillus, Gua-naboa, and others. Of the former a vast multitude occurs, as Gua-nama, Xa-gua, Gua-há-gua, Camayá-gua, Aicayazá-gua, Má-gua, Nicará-gua, Verá-gua, Xará-guo, Gua-ríco, Ni-gua (Chigger), etc., which may seem to confound them with derivatives from the Spanish or Moorish word agua (water). So the terminations, ao, ana, coa, and boa or voa, as Manabax-ao, Cib-ao, Gu-ana, Magu-ana, Yagu-ana, Ligu-ana, Zav-ana (Savannah), Furac-ana (Hurricane), Caym-ana, Guaiac-ana (Guiacum), Haba-coa, Cuana-boa, and so forth. The names therefore occurring in our island of Liguana, Cagua, Tilboa, Guanaboa, Guadibocoa, and others of similar finals are with more propriety to be traced from the Indian than the Spanish dialect.”

With regard to the Spanish occupation of the island both history and archæology are almost as scantily supplied as in the case of the Arawâks.

It is estimated that when Jamaica fell into the hands of the English the population of the capital was half Spanish and Portuguese or their descendants and half slaves; but it is a curious fact that a negro is mentioned as holding the position of priest of the Roman Catholic church.

The more important islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, to say nothing of the rich mines of South America, offered greater attractions to the Spaniards than did Jamaica, where—then, as now—the field had to be ploughed before the harvest could be reaped. They utilized for their hatos, or pastures, the low-lying lands on the sea-coast, which had formerly been used by the native Arawâks for the cultivation of Indian corn and cassava.

Of these hatos the principal were, going from east to west, Morante (the name of which still lives in Morant Bay), Ayala (Yallahs), Lezama (where Mona now is), Liguanea (Lower St. Andrew), Guanaboa (the name of which still exists), Guatabaco (about Old Harbour), Yama (in Vere), Pereda (Pedro Plains), El Eado (behind Bluefields) and Cabonico (near Savanna-la-Mar).

8They had settlements at St. Jago de la Vega (the present Spanish town, established in 1520), Puerto de Esquivella (Old Harbour, named after the first governor about 1501), Parattee (still bearing the same name), Oristan (Bluefield, named after a town in Sardinia then subject to the crown of Spain), Savanna-la-Mar, Melilla (in the north-west corner of St. James, named after a town on the coast of Barbary, then in the possession of Spain), Sevilla Nueva (St. Ann’s Bay), Chireras (Ocho Rios), Rio Nuevo and Hibanal (somewhere near Buff Bay).

Roads ran from Puerto Antonio westerly along the coast to Punta Negrilla, connecting their townships of Santa Anna, Melilla and Manteca. From Manteca a road ran southerly to where Savanna-la-Mar now is, and thence easterly to Old Harbour, and thence northerly to Santa Anna.

There are but scanty remains of Spanish masonry in the island; none of great importance. The “Columbian Magazine” in 1796 recorded that an old Spanish tavern, with laths of bamboo, was taken down to make way for Rodney’s statue, and the adjacent buildings, but there is, of course, no certain proof that this was Spanish work. The only known relic of Spanish Jamaica is the church bell from Port Royal now in the Institute of Jamaica.

Of their buildings in general, Sir Hans Sloane, who was here in 1687–88, only thirty-three years after the conquest, says that they were “usually one storey high, having a porch, parlour, and at each end a room, with small ones behind. They built with posts put deep in the ground; on the sides their houses were plastered up with clay or reeds, or made of the split trunks of cabbage trees nailed close to one another and covered with tiles or palmetto thatch. The lowness, as well as fixing the posts deep in the earth, was for fear their houses should be ruined by earthquakes, as well as for coolness.” It seems strange, according to modern ideas, to build a house one storey only for coolness; although one might do so for fear of earthquakes.

Long tells us that “a certain number of posts of the hardest timber, generally lignum vitæ, brazilletto, or fustick, of about 18 feet in length and 6 to 8 inches in diameter, being first well-seasoned and hardened in smoke, were fixed at proper distances to the depth of 2 or 3 feet in the ground; then a wall of brick, enclosing these posts, was carried up with very strong mortar to the plate, which was pinned with wooden spikes to the tops of the posts. The main rafters were small, but being of the like hard wood, and perfectly well-seasoned, were sufficiently strong; these were likewise pinned upon each other, and at their angle of intersection at top formed a crutch to receive the ridge pole. The smaller rafters were of the lesser ebony trees, stripped of their bark, hardened in smoke, notched at bottom, and being placed at the distance of about 18 inches from each other, were pinned to the plate. Athwart these on all rafters a stratum of the wild cane (Arundo Indica, bamboo species), previously smoked, was tied on by way of wattling with straps made of the bark of mahoe or 9mangrove trees. Upon these wattles some mortar was laid, to the thickness of about 4 inches; and the whole covered with large pantiles, well bedded in. The thickness of these roofs, from the outward shell or tile-covering to the ceiling within, was about 8 or 10 inches. A canopy of so solid a texture was certainly well contrived to shelter the inhabitants from the disagreeable effects of a vertical sun,” and accordingly it is found by experience that these old Spanish houses are much cooler than our modern ones covered with shingles. After regretting the failure to establish a manufacture of tiles, and the importation of North American shingles, Long goes on to say: “The chief error the Spaniards committed in their buildings was the placing their ground floors too low; these were nearly on a level with the surface of the earth out of doors, or at most raised only a few inches higher.” In his time there were, he tells us, upwards of fifty Spanish houses remaining in Spanish Town “very little the worse for time or weather.”

Of Spanish names given to towns and villages, St. Jago de la Vega (St. James of the plain) still survives in custom, although supplanted officially by Spanish Town. So also do Ocho Rios, Savanna-la-Mar (the plain by the sea) and Oracabessa; Esquivel became Old Harbour soon after the British occupation.

Of the Spanish names of rivers, many survive; the principal being Rio Alto (deep river), Rio Cobre (copper river), Rio Grande, Rio Minho, Rio Bueno (the good river), Rio Magno (the great river), Rio Novo (new river), Rio d’oro (golden river), Rio Pedro (Peter’s river). It is thought that Rio Pedro may be a corruption of Rio Piedra (stony river). The Rio Minho is said to have been named after a river in Portugal or, as Long says in another place, after some mine in the neighbourhood. It is thought by some that it should be Rio Mina, (the river by the mine). Others are named after rivers in Spain.

Amongst districts we have Santa Cruz (Holy Cross); as well as Pedro both in St. Ann and in St. Elizabeth. The former is said to have been named after Pedro Esquivel, the Spanish governor.

The following derivations of Spanish names in Jamaica are given by Long. Notes by the present writer are added between square brackets:

Auracabeza. Aura, air or breeze; Cabeza, head or high land. [This is now Ora Cabessa in St. Mary. Others derive it from Oro Cabeza, the golden head.]

Alta Mela. Deep Gap. (Alta Mela, Savannah, St. James.)

Agua Alta Bahia. Deep water Bay, corruptly Wag-Water. [Still known as Wag Water.]

Los Angelos. The Angels. [Angels in St. Catherine was the first terminus of the railway.]

Rio Bonito. The Pretty River.

10Cabo Bonito. The Pretty Cape. [In St. Catherine.]

Cabarita Punta. Kid or Goat Point. [In Westmoreland, where there is a river of the same name; there is another Cabaritta Point in Old Harbour Bay, and a Cabaritta Island in Port Maria Harbour.]

Rio de Camarones. Perhaps from Gambaro, a crab, from the abundance of black crabs hereabouts.

Cobre Rio. Copper River, or Cobra Port, Snake River. [Still known as Rio Cobre.]

Caborido. Quasi Caba Arido, the dry or withered cape (part of Healthshire highlands.)

Carvil or Caravel Bahia. Caravela signifies a light round kind of a ship formerly used by the Spaniards.

Diablo Monte. Devil’s Mount. [Now called Mount Diavolo.]

Escondido Puerto. The hidden harbour. [In Portland; now called Turtle Crawle Harbour.]

Flora Ria. Flower River.

Fortaleza Punta. Fort Point. [On Blome’s map there are two in St. Ann.]

Gallina Punta. Hen Point. [Galina Point is in St. Mary.]

Guada Bocca. Guada, brook of water; boca, mouth.

Hoja Rio. River of leaves, now corruptly Riho Hoa. [Now called Rio Hoe.]

Jarisse Punta. Cross-bow or arrow, probably refers to some action with the Indians.

Javareen. Rustic expression, signifying a wild boar.

Lacovia. Quasi Lago-via, or the way by the lake. [A village in St. Elizabeth. Elsewhere Long suggests it may be a corruption of La agua via, the watery way. It was once in the possession of the Gladstone family.]

Liguanea. Lia-withe-guana, the name of an animal, probably one frequent in that part of the island. [That part of Lower St. Andrew, bordered by the Long Mountain, the St. Andrew Mountains and the Red Hills.]

Moneque or Monesca Savannah. Savannah of monkeys. [Now confined to the village of Moneague.]

Mari bona. Maria-buena, Mary the Good. [Maria Buena Bay is in Trelawny.]

Multi-bezon Rio. Multi, many; buzon, conduit.

Macari Bahia. Macari, a tile, such as is made for floors, which the Spaniards universally used here and probably manufactured them near this bay, the soil being proper for that purpose.
[Long adds as a footnote to Macari: “Or perhaps it may derive more properly from the Indian word Macarij (which signifies bitter), and allude to the tree commonly called the Majoe, or Macary-bitter which grows in great abundance along this part of the coast, and with whose leaves, bark and root, which are all of them extremely bitter, some very notable cures in 11cases of inveterate ulcers, the yaws, and venereal distempers, were some years ago performed by an old negress named Majoe, in commemoration of whom it took its name.” Macary Bay is in Vere. Majoe Bitter, or Macary Bitter (Picramnia Antidesnia Sus.) is a shrub about 8 feet high, with small whitish green flowers, and berries first scarlet, then black.]

Mantica Bahia. Butter (now Montego Bay). This part abounding formerly with wild hogs, the Spaniards probably made here what they called hog’s butter (lard) for exportation. [In a very old deed of conveyance of land in St. James a road is marked as leading to Lard Bay.]

Ocho Rios said to mean eight rivers. [In St. Ann. It was more commonly called Chareiras in Long’s time; and indeed as late as 1841, William Rob wrote “Ocho Rios, called to this day by the old inhabitants ‘Cheireras,’ its early and appropriate name ‘the Bay of the Water-Falls,’ but has now gone back to Ocho Rios.” It is not unlikely that the present form Ocho Rios and the derivation from eight rivers is wrong, and that the real name is Chorréra, a spout. There is a Chorréra River in Cuba, near Havannah.]

Perexil Insula. Samphire Island.

Sombrio Rio. Shady river. [Now called the Sambre.]

Yalos. Frosts (whence, perhaps corruptly, Yallahs), the high white cliffs having the appearance of a frosty covering. [Now called Yallahs. Long was probably wrong in connecting Yallahs with Yalos. The Hatô de Ayala extended from Bull Bay nearly to Morant Bay, and the name is probably a personal one. Pedro Lopez de Ayala was a celebrated poet and politician in the fourteenth century; Pedro de Ayala was Spanish envoy to the Court of St. James in 1498; and, curiously, a recent Spanish representative at Havana bore the name de Ayala. There was a Captain Yhallahs, a privateer who flourished in Jamaica in and about 1671, and the locality may have been named after him.]

Luidas. Perhaps from Luzida; gay, fine. [Lluidas Vale is in St. Catherine.]

Martha Brea. Martha, a woman’s name; Brea, tar; perhaps a nickname of some Spanish sailor’s Dulcinea like the English vulgar appellation Jack Tar. [Martha Brea village and river are in Trelawny. The name is a corruption of Rio Matibereon.]

No traces are to be found to-day of the following: Alta Mela, Rio de Camarones, Caborida, Carvil Bahia, Guada Bocca, Jarisse Punta, Javareen, Multi Bezon Rio, Perexil Insula.

Of corruptions of Spanish names the best known are: Agualta (Agua Alta, the deep river); Bog Walk (Boca d’Agua, water’s mouth); and Mount Diablo. Cagua became with the English Caguay, then Cagway when it was renamed Port Royal.

12Those who see in Porus a survival of the name of Columbus’s companion, Porras, are probably drawing on a fertile imagination. Columbus and his companions saw little of the interior of the island. It is more probably called after some well sunk there, or from the porous nature of the soil, “pitted with holes.” In the English edition of Ferdinand Columbus’s “Historie,” we read that the Morant Cays were called by Columbus Los Poros because “not finding water in them they dug pits in the sand”; but in the Italian edition (Venice, 1571) they are called “le pozzi” (the pits), and in the Spanish edition of 1749 they are called “Las Poças” (the pits). It is possible that in the case of Porus, as in that of the Morant Cays, there has been a confusion between Poros and Pocas; and that the town in Manchester should be called Poças. The Spaniards called the Black River, el Caovana (the Mahogany River).

In the English section of Jamaica history for the two centuries from 1655 to 1855, there is a wide field of exploration.

What with earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, the march of time, and rebuilding, the typical old-time planter’s houses are getting scarcer. Then, again, there are the monuments and gravestones which contribute to our knowledge of Jamaica genealogy and history. Captain Lawrence-Archer, in the middle of the last century, did much in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” to put this information in a handy form, but his work, which is often inaccurate, by no means covers the whole field. Something of late years has been done in that direction by Mr. Oliver in “Caribbeana.”

Although Jamaica is probably no worse than other countries in its disregard for ancient monuments, that there is need for improvement cannot be denied by those who have looked into the matter. The Spanish invaders burned the Arawâk huts; the old-time English planters despoiled Spanish buildings to find material for their sugar works; and in our own day a ruined seventeenth-century building which withstood the recent earthquake was later pulled down by peasants for the sake of its stones. When Lawrence-Archer wrote less than fifty years ago, he recorded a statue by Bacon to Richard Batty in the cathedral. Only a fragment of it remains to-day. The author of his epitaph little thought that the literal truth of part of it would be so early established when he wrote in 1796:

The most strongly constructed building will wear out with time and, in the tropics especially, vegetation is apt to interfere with monuments and gravestones; but a little care without much expense should be all that is needed to render unnecessary an 13expensive restoration, which many individuals and bodies find themselves unprepared to meet and which, after all, can never take the place of preservation.

In 1672 Port Royal contained 800 well-built houses, “as dear rented,” Blome tells us, “as if they stood in well-traded streets in London.” Twenty years later, when it was at its zenith, the number was 2000, “the greatest number of which were of brick, several storeys in height.” In 1692, as is well known, a large part of the town perished by an earthquake, and from that event Kingston dates its origin, Port Royal being partially destroyed again, by fire, in 1703 and by hurricane in 1722.

Charles Leslie, writing in 1739, says of Jamaica: “One is not to look for the beauties of architecture here; the public buildings are neat but not fine. The churches in the town are generally in form of a cross, with a small cupola a-top, built high in the walls, paved within, and adorned with no manner of finery.” The churches, he says, except those at Spanish Town and Halfway-Tree, are “decent small houses, scarce to be known for such,” and he adds, “the clergy trouble them little, and their doors are seldom open,” in marked contrast to the present state of affairs. “The gentlemen’s houses,” he says, “are generally built low, of one storey, consisting of five or six handsome apartments, beautifully lined and floored with mahogany.... In the towns there are several houses which are two storeys, but that way of building is disapproved of because they seldom are known to stand the shock of an earthquake or the fury of a storm.”

On Craskell and Simpson’s large map of Surrey, of the year 1763, is shown a view of a presumably typical Jamaica house, two storeys high, with an open veranda in front only. It is evident from what Long says that, at all events for the first century of the island’s occupation by the British, not much attention was paid to domestic architecture by the planters of the island. “It is,” he says, “but of late that the planters have paid much attention to elegance in their habitations; their general rule was to build what they called a makeshift; so that it was not unusual to see a plantation adorned with a very expensive set of works, of brick or stone, well executed, and the owner residing in a miserable thatched hovel, hastily put together with wattles and plaster, damp, unwholesome, and infested with every species of vermin. But the houses in general, as well in the country parts as in the towns, have been greatly improved within these last twenty years.”

In this connection mention may be made of the aqueducts on some of the sugar estates, which are amongst the best pieces of architectural work in the island. They and some of the old stone bridges compare more than favourably with the modern bridges, many of which—excellent monuments of engineering skill as they 14may be—their best friends would never venture to call works of art. Moreover the stone bridges will probably be standing when the iron ones have perished by decay.

Peter Marsden, writing a little later (1788), says: “Except a few excellent houses which have lately been built of brick and two or three of stone, after the English fashion, by rich merchants, the houses are in general of wood, very often mahogany, which is plentiful in this island. They consist but of a room or two below stairs, with piazzas all round and a storey above.” Stewart, whose account of the island was published in 1808, gives much the same account of the domestic houses, but goes on to say: “As for bridges and other public structures of the kind, in this part of the world there are few that deserve mention, except a neat cast-iron bridge imported from Great Britain and some years ago thrown across the Rio Cobra. There is, indeed, often a marked deficiency here of public spirit in undertakings of this sort.”

Many of the houses on the sea-coast were, in the eighteenth century, made defensible with loopholes and fortified by guns, so as to guard against the attacks in war time of the enemy’s privateers. In other cases a like precaution was taken against the risings of slaves; houses in some instances being supplied with towers at the corners, each of which commanded two sides of the building.

Of direct records of slavery days there are not many prominent relics.

Here and there a punishment cell is found, with indications of the fixing of shackles; but of stocks and such-like implements no traces remain. A few examples of branding-irons exist. In this connection it may be of interest to quote Bryan Edwards’s account of the method adopted in branding slaves:

“A gentleman of my acquaintance, who had purchased at the same time ten Koromantyn boys and the like number of Eboes (the eldest of the whole apparently not more than thirteen years of age) caused them all to be collected and brought before him in my presence, to be marked on the breast. This operation is performed by heating a small silver brand composed of one or two letters, in the flame of spirits of wine, and applying it to the skin, which is previously anointed with sweet oil. The application is instantaneous and the pain momentary. Nevertheless, it may be easily supposed that the apparatus must have a frightful appearance to a child. Accordingly when the first boy, who happened to be one of the Eboes, and the stoutest of the whole, was led forward to receive the mark, he screamed dreadfully, while his companions of the same nation manifested strong emotions of sympathetic terror. The gentleman stopt his hand, but the Koromantyn boys, laughing aloud, and, immediately coming forward of their own accord, offered their bosoms undauntedly 15to the brand, and receiving its impression without flinching in the least, snapt their fingers in exultation over the poor Eboes.”

A branding-iron such as that mentioned above, in the Institute of Jamaica, is shown in the accompanying illustration. It is 6⅞ inches in length.

Doyley’s Council had been elected by the people, and so, in a sense, was a forerunner of the Assembly. But the first regular Assembly was summoned by Lyttelton and met at Spanish Town on January 20, 1664, and from that day until the Assembly of the time resigned its powers to the Crown on December 21, 1865, the political destiny of the colony is to be read in the pages of its Journal and its Votes.

The first Assembly chose as its speaker Robert Freeman, who represented Morant, one of the then twelve districts that returned members.

The troubles which Doyley, the first governor, had had in inducing adventure-loving soldiers to become planters had given place to a more settled state of affairs, and when the House rose on February 12, 1664, it “parted with all kindness and feastings, having passed as good a body of laws as could be expected from such young statesmen.” But this peaceful condition was not destined to last. Familiarity with legislative functions bred contempt for the opinions of others, and unreasonable demands on the part of these young statesmen were met by high-handed actions on the part of the Crown.

In his opening speech to the Assembly Carlisle said that the King looked on Jamaica as “his darling plantation, and has taken more pains to make this island happy than any other of his colonies.” These kind words were, however, nullified by the fact that the new governor had brought with him forty acts which Charles had had drawn up (and to which he had affixed the great seal of England) in lieu of the acts which the Assembly had passed under Vaughan, and that he was instructed to get the House to pass them. This 16plan had been suggested in a letter written in England by a Mr. Nevil (who was evidently acquainted with Jamaica) to Carlisle just before he started to take up his appointment, and had been adopted because—to quote the words of the Lords of Trade and Plantations to the King in Council—“of the irregular, violent and unwarrantable proceedings of the Assembly.”

The virtual point of difference was this, that under the original constitution the island (through the Governor, Council and Assembly) made its own laws in accordance with what it conceived to be its needs and sent them home for approval, they remaining in force for two years till the royal pleasure was known, while under the new arrangement (based on Poynings’s Law, or the Statutes of Drogheda, in use in Ireland), the laws were to be made in England (on the advice of the Governor and Council), and remitted for the approval of the Assembly. The style of enactment was altered from the “Governor, Council and Assembly, etc.” to the “King, by and with the advice, etc. of the Assembly.”

This proposed change, which had been decided on by the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in opposition to the advice of Lynch, who knew Jamaica well—the Assembly resisted with might and main, but though they were in a very great measure successful, it was not until 1728 that the complete legislative power for which Jamaica contended was granted.

Lynch, when he returned as governor, was able to tell the people of Jamaica, “His Majesty, upon the Assembly’s humble address, was pleased to restore us to our beloved form of making laws, wherein we enjoy beyond dispute all the deliberative powers in our Assembly that the House of Commons enjoy in their House.”

In return for the constitution now conceded the Assembly pledged itself to grant to the King a fixed revenue, which if not perpetual should at least last for seven years. The quarrel, however, with regard to the revenue bills lasted up till 1728; the Crown desiring a perpetual revenue, the Assembly persistently declining to do more than grant bills for a few years’ duration. The Crown on the other hand declined to approve many of their laws. In 1728 the Assembly gave way and settled a permanent revenue in return for the royal confirmation of various acts of importance to the island and a concession as to their past laws which they regarded as “the grand charter of their liberties.”

To return for a moment to the early struggles, we find that under the Duke of Albemarle, a very unwise governor, matters were far from satisfactory. He dissolved the House suddenly because one of the members, John Towers, in a debate repeated the old adage salus populi suprema lex, in protesting against the Speaker’s refusal to grant him permission to attend a race meeting. Albemarle had the offender taken in custody and fined £600. In his dispatch on the subject he wrote: “The Assembly have done very little, the major part having made it their business to wrangle and oppose 17all things that are for the King’s service and the good of the country.” The freedom of election was grossly violated by the duke, who admitted hosts of servants and discharged seamen to the poll at the election, and actually imprisoned many legal voters of wealth and consideration. He imposed fines on the latter to a large amount, and threatened to whip two gentlemen for requesting a habeas corpus for their friends. In spite of this he had the effrontery to write home to the Board of Trade and Plantations: “While the elections were going forward there were unwarrantable oppositions made in most parishes as well as malicious practices to prevent fair election!”

His successor, Inchiquin, met with considerable opposition from a section of the Assembly whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner. That they would not do what he wanted he considered “an indignity and affront to himself and the board.” He finally rejected their address of congratulation, and “then it was thrown to them with some contempt.”

The franchise established by the law of 1681 for appointing the members of the Assembly was still in force in 1812: “Freeholders in the same parish where the election is to be made.” At a by-election in 1804, in St. Andrew, seventy-nine freeholders voted, forty-six for the successful candidate.

The House met usually from October to Christmas, the time of the year when the planters could be absent from their estates with least inconvenience.

The closing scene in the life of the Assembly was acted on December 21, 1865, around amendments to the “Act to alter and amend the Political Constitution of the Island,” and especially to that to the second clause, which ran:

“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty’s Imperial Government to assume the entire management and control of the affairs of this island, and by orders in Council or otherwise, as Her Majesty may be advised, to conduct the affairs of this island as Her Majesty may think fit: and such orders shall have the effect and force of law.”

The Council’s amendment was as follows:

“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen to create and constitute a Government in this island, in such form and with such power as to Her Majesty shall seem fit, and from time to time to alter and amend such Government.”

The Legislative Council had adjourned while their amendments to the Constitution Bill were being discussed by the Assembly, and some of them were in the House during the discussion. So soon as they saw that the amendments had passed, they retired and formed a board, which passed the bill in almost ten minutes after it left the Assembly.

18In proroguing the assembly on the following day Governor Eyre said:

“In releasing you from further attendance upon your legislative duties, I cannot lose sight of the probability that you may never be called upon to exercise these duties again, under the existing form of constitution, and that this general sacrifice has been consummated by yourselves from an earnest and sincere desire, regardless of all personal considerations, to benefit the colony.

“On behalf of the colony and of the many interests associated with it, I return you the thanks which are so justly your due. History will record the heroic act, and I trust that history will show from the ameliorated state of the country, and a renewed prosperity, that your noble self devotion has not been in vain.”

In concluding, he said, with reference to the Morant Bay outbreak:

“The session which is now about to terminate has been the most important that has ever taken place since Jamaica became a dependency of the British Crown.

“It is impossible to help regretting the necessity which has enforced the abandonment of institutions so deservedly dear to every British heart, and which, even in this colony, have remained unchanged for a period of 200 years; but it is wiser and better, circumstanced as we are, to give up institutions which are valued rather for the associations which are connected with them, than for any advantages which have resulted to the colony from their existence in Jamaica, and to substitute in their place a perhaps less showy and less time-honoured form of Government, but which is certainly more practicable and better suited to the altered circumstances of our position.

“Well, I think, it is that we have taken warning by the terrible circumstances which have forced upon us the conviction that a Government, to be effective, in times of difficulty and danger, must be a strong and united one; and well will it be if by a voluntary reconstruction, the community may receive some compensation in future good government, for the dreadful calamity with which it has just been afflicted.”

The House took a deep interest from time to time in the barracks for which they voted funds. In 1702 orders were received from home to build barracks to receive 3000 men. Handasyd, the Lieutenant-governor, said that it would cost more than £40,000 “where such buildings are unreasonably dear” to build such as were built in Ireland, but that suitable barracks could be built of wood for £3000.

The following account of the state of the forts and barracks in the island in May 1745, taken from the “Journals of the House of Assembly,” may be fittingly quoted here.

19“Then the House resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, upon the report made on Friday last, of the number and condition of the barracks already built, and of such others as were necessary to be provided; and the plans laid before the House, and the said report, being read, is in the words following:

Mr. Speaker,—Your Committee, appointed to make enquiry into the number and condition of the barracks already built, and what more shall be necessary to be provided, have accordingly done the same; and, by the best information they have been able to get, find to be as follows:

Port-Morant. A complete barrack, newly built by the Parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East, framed, boarded, and shingled, in good order, which will contain about sixty men.

Manchioneal. A barrack, formerly built by the said parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East, which will contain thirty men; the body built with stone, a framed roof, wants new shingling, and already ordered to be forthwith done, and to be put in good repair.

Morant-Bay. A new barrack now building at the expense of the aforesaid parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East for twenty-five men.

Yallahs Bay. A large house with proper conveniencies belonging to Mr. Donaldson, already hired for a barrack, to receive twenty-five men.

Cow-Bay. A barrack for twenty men going to be built, by Mr. Vallete, in the room of the former barrack destroyed by the hurricane.

Westmoreland. A barrack already built, capable of receiving a whole company, situate at Savanna-la-Mar, as informed by Mr. Hall.

St. Ann’s. A barrack now building at St. Ann’s Bay, and is calculated to be a crutched house, wattled and plastered, and capable to receive fifty men, as informed by Mr. Whitehorne.

Moneague. A barrack which now lodges twenty men, and capable of holding thirty; is at present water-tight, but will soon want new shingling, as informed by lieutenant Troah.

Vere. The barrack was blown down in the late hurricane but the parish has agreed with Mr. Pusey for his storehouse in Carlisle Bay, which is boarded, shingled and in good order and capable to receive one hundred men.

St. Elizabeth. A barrack situate at Black-River; it being a crutched house, wattled and plastered, injured by the storm, but is now ordered by the parish to be repaired.

St. James. A barrack at St. James, of a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, with a stone wall, a framed roof, well shingled, in good order, which will completely contain fifty men as informed by Mr. Hall.

Hanover. A barrack situate at Lusea-Fort, which will be capable of receiving fifty men; a crutched house, wattled, plastered and thatched, in good order; and a convenient house for the reception of four officers, well shingled and floored.

20Port Antonio. A barrack in good order, which now lodges one company, and will soon be in a condition to receive another, by the information of lieutenant Bailey.

St. Mary’s. No barrack built in said parish, but as the Committee are informed his excellency intends to send some soldiers for their protection, a barrack is necessary to be forthwith built.

Old Harbour. No barrack built, but the parish of St. Dorothy have hired a house for a detachment of thirty soldiers, as informed by Mr. Edmund Pusey.

Spanish Town. The barrack-house is in good order, the officers’ cook-room wants repairing, the cook-room for the private men is entirely down, and the palisado enclosure, on the back part of the out-houses, carried away by the late storm; said barrack contains sixty men.

The Committee are informed that his excellency intends four companies of soldiers to be in this town, if proper lodgements were provided for them; and, as the barrack contains so few, it will be necessary either to enlarge the present barrack or to buy such house or houses as may be convenient and sufficient to lodge the aforesaid four companies, as are intended for this town; but as we are informed that the house belonging to the estate of the late Colonel Heywood is as proper and convenient for the purpose aforesaid as any building in this town, and to be sold, we think proper to lay before the house a plan relating thereto, as also a plan of a barrack to be built adjoining to the present barrack, or such other place as shall be judged most convenient; all which is submitted to the consideration of the house.

Kingston. No barracks built, and his excellency is willing to let this town have one or more companies of His Majesty’s troops was there proper lodgement to receive them.

Port Royal. The barracks in that town being too small for receiving the number of men intended to be quartered there, your Committee are informed that said barracks are to be enlarged for that purpose.

And, after some time spent in the Committee, Mr. Speaker resumed the chair, and Mr. Chief Justice, from a Committee, reported that they had gone through the matter to them referred, and come to several resolutions, which he read in his place, and afterwards delivered them in at the table; where they being again read were agreed unto by the House, and are as follows:

1. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee, that it be recommended to the House, to appoint a Committee to bring in a bill for obliging the several parishes to repair and keep up the respective barracks already built.

Ordered. That Mr. Fuller, Mr. Fearon and Mr. March be a committee for that purpose.

2. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee, that it be 21recommended to the House, to appoint a committee to treat with the attornies of Abraham Elton and Mary Heywood for the purchase of a house and footland, late of James Heywood, deceased, for a barrack for the service of the public.

Ordered. That Mr. Arcedeckne, Mr. R. Beckford and Mr. Fuller be a committee for that purpose.

3. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee that a barrack be built at Kingston, at the expense of the parish of Kingston.

4. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee that the barrack at Port-Royal be enlarged.

Ordered. That it be an instruction to the committee appointed to bring in the bill for obliging the several parishes to repair and keep up the respective barracks already built, to insert a clause therein to oblige the parish of Kingston to build a barrack at the expense of the parish.”

We learn from Foster’s “Alumini Oxonienses” that William Dennys, of New College, a chaplain who took his B.A. degree in 1652, obtained leave of absence from the parliamentary visitors, for special service at sea in 1654, and died at Jamaica in 1655. He probably came out with Penn and Venables, and predeceased Thomas Gage who was chaplain to the expedition.

In 1655, the very year in which the English took the island, Admiral William Goodson, one of the Commissioners charged with the conduct of Penn and Venables’s expedition, requested that “some godly ministers with monies for their maintenance” should be sent out. Two years later the want of ministers in Jamaica was referred by the Council of State to the Committee for America for suggestions. It was one of the instructions to Doyley, when he was made governor in 1661, that he should give the best encouragement to ministers “that Christianity and the Protestant religion, according to the profession of the Church of England, may have due reverence amongst them”; and later in the year it was resolved that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London should choose five able ministers to be maintained in Jamaica at the King’s expense for one year, the governor to provide for their maintenance afterwards.

In 1664 Sir Thomas Modyford, the governor, stated that there was “but one church (in the whole island) at St. Katherine’s [at Spanish Town], being a fair Spanish Church ruined by the old soldiers, but lately in some measure repaired by Sir Charles Lyttelton; but they are now levying contributions to raise churches in some of the richest parishes.” There were then five ministers in the island, Henry Howser (a Switzer) being at St. Catherine’s.

In 1671 Sir Thomas Modyford replied to enquiries of His Majesty’s Commissioners that: “Their Lordships will find among the statutes with these presented a law for the maintenance of the ministry; until this His Majesty was piously pleased to pay five ministers 22£100 each, but since they were left upon the charity of the inhabitants, he has encouraged them to enlarge their payments at St. Katherine’s, where he lives, from £50 to £140, and at Port Royal £200. At St. Katherine’s, Mr. Howser, a Switzer, officiates; at Port Royal, Mr. Maxwell, a Scotchman; at St. John’s, Mr. Lemmings, an Englishman, lately sent by my Lord of London; and in St. Andrew’s, Mr. Zellers, another Switzer; all these are orthodox men, of good life and conversation, live comfortably on their means, and preach every Sunday. Mr. Pickering, of St. Thomas and St. David’s, at Port Morant and Yallows, is lately dead, and they have none to supply his place. But, alas, these five do not preach to one-third of the island, and the plantations are at such distance that it is impossible to make up congregations; but they meet at each others’ houses, as the primitive Christians did, and there pray, read a chapter, sing a psalm, and home again; so that did not the accessors to this island come so well instructed in the article of faith, it might well be feared the Christian religion would be quite forgot. I have, my Lords, and shall use all the persuasive means I can to advance this people’s knowledge of the true God, as also of all Christian and moral virtues.”

In 1675 a Mr. Crandfield reported that there were six churches and four ministers, and two years later there were but three clergy in the island. In a MS., once in the House of Assembly Library, entitled “The State of the Church in His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica,” dated May 1675 (which was allowed to perish after Richard Hill quoted from it in 1864), it was stated, after enumerating the then stipended ministers of religion: “All the other parishes on the northside, and St. Elizabeth’s on the south, are great and ill-settled, without churches, they being almost planted in Sir Thomas Lynch’s time, who ordered Glebe lands to be reserved in two or three places in every parish, that in time may prove convenient.”

In 1677 Howser and Zellers, “His Majesty’s chaplains in Jamaica,” petitioned that they might receive the pay promised to them, and declared that “the island, in regard of its great poverty, is not able to allow maintenance for four chaplains resident there.” In the same year the Bishop of London represented the ill-usage of ministers in the Plantations, and their too great subjection to the vestrymen, especially in Jamaica; and the Lords of Trade and Plantations resolved that the clergy should, in future, “make a part of the vestry in the regulation of all matters, except in the settlement of their maintenance.”

In 1681 an Act was passed for the maintenance of ministers and the poor, and erecting and repairing churches. Ten vestrymen and two churchwardens were yearly elected by the freeholders of each parish. The law provided for the keeping of a register of births, christenings, marriages and burials. Port Royal was to pay £250 to its minister, St. Catherine £120, St. Thomas, St. Andrew 23and St. John £100, and other parishes £80. These stipends were apparently not sufficient inducement, for in 1706 an Act was passed “for the encouragement of good and able ministers to come to this island.” The salary of St. Catherine was fixed at £150 (or £250 if the vestry wished); for St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Dorothy, Kingston, Vere, and Clarendon, it was £150 (or £200), and for the other parishes (including Port Royal, by reason of its recent disasters) £100 (or £150 if the vestry wished). This system of payment of the rectors by the parishes was continued till late in the eighteenth century, when they were placed on the Island Establishment.

In 1682 Sir Thomas Lynch sent home to the Bishop of London a detailed report of the state of the Church in Jamaica. He says: “At St. Jaga de la Vega the minister is also a Swiss, Mr. Howsyer; he has £140 a year by law, and, since I came, £150. He is a reasonable preacher, a good liver, well esteemed, and very rich. The church is a Spanish church, and the parsonage good. The parish is called St. Catherine’s.”

When, by an Act passed in 1789, burying in churches was prohibited, on penalty of £500 imposed on any rector who permitted it, the rectors received compensation in lieu of fees, the largest amount falling to the rector of Kingston, who received £100 per annum, St. Catherine being next with £70.

As evidence of the relative value of the livings in the island at the time it is interesting to quote from the “Jamaica Magazine” that in November 1814, “The Reverend Alexander Campbell has been translated from the living of Kingston to that of St. Andrew’s, vacant by the death of his father, the reverend John Campbell; the Reverend Isaac Mann to that of Kingston; the Reverend William Vaughan Hamilton from St. Elizabeth’s to St. Catherine’s; and the Reverend William Peat from St. Dorothy’s to St. Elizabeth’s.”

In 1800 Ecclesiastical Commissioners were appointed. But it is evident that they had not been able to effect much by April 1802, when Lady Nugent wrote: “I will conclude my tour through the island with a few remarks. In this country it appears as if everything were bought and sold. Clergymen make no secret of making a traffic of their livings; but General N—— has set his face against such proceedings, and has refused many applications for the purpose. He is determined to do all he can towards the reformation of the Church, and thus rendering it respectable. It is indeed melancholy to see the general disregard of both religion and morality throughout the whole island.”

Matters were much improved when the see of Jamaica, which then included the Bahamas and British Honduras, was formed in 1824; and in 1870, when Disestablishment threw the Church almost entirely on to voluntary resources, it gave to it a new vitality.

Many of the old Baptismal, Marriage and Burial registers are deposited for safe keeping in the Record Office at Spanish Town, 24where all the old church registers should be, as they would there have a chance of longer life than when exposed to the vicissitudes of local vestries, and would, moreover, be more readily available for research than when scattered throughout the island.

It may be convenient to give here a list of the earliest date of the Baptismal, Marriage and Burial registers for the island, taken from “Sketch Pedigrees of some of the early Settlers in Jamaica. By Noel B. Livingston, Kingston 1909.”

John Roby, Jamaica’s most celebrated antiquary, published (from notes made in 1824) in 1831, at Montego Bay, where he was then collector of customs, “Monuments of the Cathedral Church and Parish of St. Catherine.” The information therein given was included and supplemented by Lawrence-Archer in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” published in 1875: and annotations to Lawrence-Archer’s account, by the present writer and Mr. N. B. Livingston, were published in “Caribbeana” for January and April 1910. A full account of the history of the Church of England in Jamaica may be gathered from the work of the Rev. J. B. Ellis, published in 1913, “The Diocese of Jamaica.”

The history of the Department of Public Gardens and Plantations, now known as the Agricultural Department, is intimately connected 25with the various vicissitudes through which the island has passed. The following particulars have been taken in great measure from the account in the “Handbook of Jamaica for 1900.”

Directly and indirectly during the last hundred years and more the Department has been the means of introducing and propagating some of the most valuable plants, now the sources of the staple products of the island.

It is a striking fact that with the exception of pimento and a few others of comparatively little value, most of the staple products of the island are derived from exotics or plants introduced from other parts of the globe, either by accident or by direct intention.

The sugar-cane, though here in the time of the Spaniards, was first cultivated by the English, by Sir Thomas Modyford, in 1660; but its most valuable varieties, the Otaheite and Bourbon canes, were introduced in His Majesty’s ships by Captain Bligh as late as 1796. Coffee was introduced by Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes in 1718. The mango, brought by Captain Marshall of Rodney’s squadron in 1782, was first planted in Hinton East’s botanic garden, in Liguanea, and is now one of the commonest trees in the island. The plentiful and free-growing logwood was introduced from Honduras by Dr. Barham, the author of “Hortus Americanus,” in 1715. The beautiful akee was obtained by Dr. Thomas Clarke, first Island Botanist, from a West African slave ship in 1778. The cinnamon came with the mango in Captain Marshall’s ship in 1782, and was distributed from the Bath Garden by Dr. Dancer. The ubiquitous but graceful bamboo is also an exotic and owes its introduction to M. Wallen, who brought it from Hispaniola and first planted it in the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East. To Wallen, formerly owner of Cold Spring and Wallenford, the friend of Swartz and a successful botanist, we are no doubt indebted for the first plants of the watercress, chickweed, wild pansy, groundsel, dead nettles, dandelion, common honeysuckle, black-berried elder, evening primrose, nasturtium, common myrtle, the English oak, white clover, and the sweet violet, now common on the Port Royal and Blue Mountains, being possibly escapes from his garden at Cold Spring, which even in 1793 was well stocked with choice selections of introduced flowers and European trees and shrubs. For the cherimoyer we are indebted to Hinton East, who introduced if from South America in 1786; to East and his magnificent garden we also owe the jasmines and many species of lilies, many convolvuli, the oleander, the horse-radish tree, numerous roses, the trumpet-flower, monkey-bread, the camellia, Calla æthiopica, the weeping willow, the mulberry tree, the Arbor vitæ, and the sweet-scented mimosa. Dr. Clarke, on his arrival as Island Botanist in 1777, brought with him the jujube tree, and the litchi, the purple dracæna, the sago palm, and the valuable camphor tree; at the same time there came the now common “almond tree,” the tea tree, and the “sunn” hemp plant. The wanglo, or zezegary, 26was sent by Sir Simon Haughton Clarke in 1801. The nutmeg tree, first brought by Rodney in 1782, was reintroduced by Dr. Marter in 1788, together with the clove and black pepper, for which he received the thanks of the House of Assembly and an honorarium of £1000. The seeds of the valuable and now indispensable Guineagrass were accidentally introduced from the West Coast of Africa as bird food in 1745. Scotch grass received its name from having been first brought from Scotland to Barbados.

Pindars were brought to Hinton East from South America; the afou, the acorn and Guinea yam, and indeed all but one of the cultivated yams, are from the coast of Africa or East Indies. The seeds of the guango were brought over from the mainland by Spanish cattle. Cacao is indigenous to Central America. The shaddock was brought to the West Indies from China by Captain Shaddock, hence its name. The genip was brought to Jamaica from Surinam by one Guaf, a Jew. The ginger is a native of the East Indies, introduced to Jamaica by a Spaniard, Francisco de Mendiza. The locust tree and blimbling were brought to Jamaica from the South Seas in H.M.S. Providence in the year 1793. The orange, both sweet and Seville, the lime, the lemon and citron, were brought hither by the Spaniards. The Jerusalem thorn is from the Spanish main. The prickly pear is a Mexican plant.

It appears that the first public garden established in the island was the old Botanic Garden at Bath; and in the Journals of the House of Assembly mention is made of Dr. Thomas Clarke, “Practitioner in Physic and Surgery,” who came to the island in 1777, at the particular instance and request of Sir Basil Keith, to superintend two botanic gardens, then intended to be established in the island. One was to be a European Garden, which however was not established till long after, at Cinchona, and the other was the Tropical Garden at Bath.

A private garden possessing many rare and valuable plants had already been formed by Hinton East in Liguanea (Gordon Town), which, on the death of the founder, became the property of his nephew, E. H. East, “who with great generosity offered it to the Assembly of Jamaica for the use of the public at their own price.”

Bryan Edwards remarks that “the Assembly of Jamaica, cooperating with the benevolent intentions of His Majesty (to introduce valuable exotics and productions of the most distant regions to the West Indies) purchased in 1792–93 the magnificent Botanical Garden of Mr. East and placed it on the public establishment, under the care of skilful gardeners, one of whom, Mr. James Wiles, had circumnavigated the globe with Captain Bligh.”

An interesting catalogue of the plants in this garden, at the time of East’s decease, was prepared by Dr. A. Broughton, and forms an appendix under the title of “Hortus Eastensis” to Bryan Edwards’s “History of the British West Indies.”

27From a letter addressed to Sir Joseph Banks by the Botanic Gardener, Jamaica, 1793, we gather that the bread-fruit trees “were upwards of 11 feet high, with leaves 36 inches long, and the success in cultivating them has exceeded the most sanguine expectations; the cinnamon tree is become very common, and mangoes are in such plenty as to be planted in the negro grounds. There are, also, several bearing trees of the jack or bastard bread-fruit ... and we have one nutmeg plant.” For his services in introducing the bread-fruit tree, 1000 guineas were granted in 1793 to Captain Bligh and 500 guineas to Lieutenant Portlock.

The Botanic Garden at Liguanea continued to be under Wiles’s care (superintended by a Committee of the House of Assembly) for many years, while that at Bath was entrusted to Dr. Dancer as Island Botanist. The allowance for the two gardens was fixed at £800. The duties of the Island Botanist were defined as follows: “To collect, class and describe the native plants of the island; to use his endeavours to find out their medicinal virtues; to discover if they possess any qualities useful to the arts, and annually to furnish the House with a correct list of such plants as are in the Botanic Gardens, together with such information as he may have acquired relative to their uses and virtues.”

For the purpose of distributing the bread-fruit and other valuable plants from the Botanic Garden the Committee of the House “appointed several Committees for each county, to receive and distribute the allotments destined for them,” and, according as sufficient numbers were prepared for propagation, the Chairmen of the County Committees were apprised and their respective proportions delivered and distributed, “by which means,” it is quaintly remarked, “the public has derived all the advantages to be expected from these establishments.”

During the years 1791–1807 the Committee in charge of the Botanic Gardens, with Shirley as Chairman, greatly developed and improved them. Enquiries were made everywhere for new products; thanks and gratuities were voted for the introduction of valuable plants, and these were cultivated and distributed with great assiduity and care. In order to make the islands less dependent on America for supplies every encouragement was given to the cultivation of yams, cocoas, maize, plantain, and such products as the bread-fruit, zezegary or wanglo, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, pindars and coffee, it being believed that the “cultivation of these valuable exotics will without doubt in a course of years lessen the dependence of the Sugar Islands on North America for food and necessaries; and not only supply subsistence for future generations, but probably furnish fresh incitements to industry, new improvements in the arts, and new subjects of commerce.”

These beneficial efforts, long and successfully maintained, were however greatly relaxed after the year 1807, and under the influence of domestic troubles, want of due appreciation of the value and 28nature of botanic gardens, or the need of strict economy, a bill was introduced into the House of Assembly in 1810 “for vesting the Botanic Garden in Liguanea in the Commissioners of the Board of Works, to be sold and the money to be brought to the credit of the public.” This bill was finally passed December 1810, and, the garden passing to private hands, many of the valuable plants contained in it, and collected with so much care and industry, were entirely lost.

The garden at Bath was however maintained, though in a very reduced state. Dr. Stewart West acted for some time as Island Botanist, and was engaged in collecting the plants that had been lost from the gardens, for the purpose of propagating and distributing them.

The first record to be found of any agricultural society in Jamaica occurs in 1807. The society, which had evidently been in existence for some little time, belonged to Cornwall. As it was called the Agricultural Society it was presumably the only one of its kind in existence. In 1825 a Jamaica Horticultural Society was formed at Kingston, which two years later became the Jamaica Society for the Cultivation of Agriculture and other Arts and Sciences, which did good work till it ceased to exist in 1850.

In the year 1824 an effort was made to restore the value and usefulness of the botanic gardens, and Sir M. B. Clare, from the Committee appointed to enquire into the state of the Botanic Garden, reported: “That the Botanic Garden in St.-Thomas-in-the-East, established more than fifty years ago, has during that period received and transmitted for propagation throughout the island many valuable plants. That the royal munificence of his late Majesty promoted the object of this institution by vessels of war employed to collect plants in the settlements of the east and south seas, some of which are now naturalized in this island, and more might be added, greatly to the advantage of its inhabitants. Your Committee therefore recommend that proper care may be taken to preserve the valuable plants which the Garden now contains. That in addition to the above considerations, Your Committee are of opinion that one object of this institution of chief importance has never been properly attended to, namely, the investigation of the many unknown native plants of this island, which, from the properties of those already known, it is reasonable to infer would prove highly beneficial in augmenting our internal resources, by supplying various articles either for food, for medicine, or for manufactures, to be cultivated, prepared and exported as staple commodities, by which great commercial advantages might be obtained; among others the various vegetable dyes claim particular attention as promising a fruitful field for discovery. That it appears to your Committee that the person fit for undertaking such enquiries ought to be a well-educated and scientific man, combining with his botanical knowledge sufficient information in experimental chemistry 29to enable him to discover the useful qualities of such indigenous plants, and improve the productions of those already known; but at the same time your Committee strongly recommend that such person should not be a medical man, as his whole time and attention ought to be applied to promote the above objects. Your Committee recommends to the House to instruct the Commissioners of Correspondence to direct the Agent to apply for such a person to the President of the Linnean Society in London.” As a result of this proposal James Macfadyen was selected and approved of as a botanist, and arrived in the island in 1825.

At the same time it was felt that the botanic garden at Bath was too distant from Kingston and the seat of government to answer the intention proposed, and it was recommended that a bill be brought in for purchasing a proper place for such a garden in the vicinity of Kingston and Spanish Town.

This proposal was, however, never carried into execution, and the garden at Bath on the removal and death of Macfadyen, “fast falling to decay,” was placed in charge of Thomas Higson; and his petitions addressed to the House of Assembly during 1830–32 show that the allowances made were not sufficient for the maintenance of the garden even in its reduced state, and that no remuneration had been made to him for its superintendence.

In 1833, in another fit of economy, owing to domestic troubles and the need for retrenchment, a Committee was appointed to “report on the best means of diminishing the contingencies and expenditure of the island and to consider whether the Botanic Gardens at Bath could be sold for the benefit of the public.” The report was made at the close of the year and ordered to lie on the table. Nothing further, however, appears to have been done for the garden till 1840, when the sum of £300 was “voted for the improvement of the Garden at Bath and for the services of a Botanist.” This sum, afterwards reduced to £200, was placed in the hands of the members of St. Thomas-in-the-East, Portland and St. David, by whom it appears to have been administered down to the year 1852, when the garden was transferred to the Board of Directors of the Bath of St. Thomas the Apostle. Nathaniel Wilson was appointed Curator of the Garden in 1847, and devoted many years, often labouring under great discouragements, in maintaining and improving the garden and introducing new plants. His yearly reports contain sufficient evidence of the value of the garden, small as it was, to an island entirely dependent for its prosperity on its agricultural interest; and, assisted and encouraged by the Rev. Thomas Wharton, Wilson laboured most successfully in the propagation and distribution of valuable plants, and especially in developing the “fibre” resources of the colony.

In 1842 we find there were local agricultural societies in St. Dorothy, St. John, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Thomas-in-the-East, St. Catherine, St. Andrew, St. James and Trelawny. In 30the following year a general Agricultural Society was established, with the governor as patron, with eighteen vice-patrons, and local committees in each of the parishes. In 1845 this society became the Royal Agricultural Society of Jamaica. In 1854 a Jamaica Society of Arts was established, which two years later became the Royal Society of Arts of Jamaica. This in 1864 was amalgamated with the Royal Agricultural Society—the two becoming the Royal Society of Arts and Agriculture, but it ceased after about 1873: the present Jamaica Agricultural Society being established in 1895.

In 1857 a grant was passed by the Legislature for purchasing land and for a botanic garden at Castleton, in the parish of St. Mary, nineteen miles from Kingston, and steps were at once taken to establish the garden and remove such plants as could be spared from Bath.

Writing in 1861 Wilson referred to the successful introduction of seeds of the valuable cinchona tree to Jamaica, through the liberality of the British Government and recommendation of Sir W. J. Hooker of Kew. By the month of October 1861 Wilson reported that he had over four hundred healthy plants quite ready for planting out. As the climate of Bath was unsuitable for the successful growth of cinchona, by the kindness of Dr. Hamilton, they were tried at Cold Spring coffee plantation in St. Andrew, at an elevation of 4000 feet. Here Wilson found “the climate and soil to be all he could desire,” and as it afforded every facility for carrying out so valuable an experiment he at once availed himself of it, and planted out in the coffee fields, November 1861, several plants of each species.

The garden at Castleton was then finally established, and ultimately the government Cinchona plantations were opened in 1868, and placed under the management of Robert Thompson, who on Wilson’s retirement had been appointed superintendent of the Botanic Gardens. The cinchona trees flourished, but the industry was killed by the cheaper production of bark from India.

Thompson retired in 1878, and was succeeded by Mr. (now Sir) Daniel Morris till 1886, then Mr. William Fawcett till 1908, when the Department was changed into an agricultural Department, with Mr. H. H. Cousins as Director and a Farm School and Stock Farm were added to the Hope establishment. At the same time the Government Laboratory, originated in 1870 as a separate department, and in 1901 brought into direct connexion with agricultural work, was amalgamated with it.

The Palisadoes plantation of coco-nuts, which in 1884 had some 23,000 palms in bearing, was while in the care of lessee later attacked by disease.

Mining operations have been carried on with more or less success in Jamaica from time to time. In 1857 there were four mining companies operating: the Clarendon Consolidated Copper Mining 31Company in Clarendon, where mining has recently been reintroduced; the Wheal-Jamaica, with a capital of £100,000; the Ellerslie and Bardowie Copper Mines (capital £50,000) in St. Andrew; and the Rio Grande Copper Mine (capital £60,000) in Portland.

The earliest reference to Education in the history of Jamaica occurs under date February 23, 1663, when a warrant was issued to prepare a bill for the king’s signature authorizing the treasurer of the exchequer to pay the sum of £500 yearly to Thomas Povey to be by him transmitted and equally distributed to five ministers serving in Jamaica or to four ministers and a schoolmaster as shall seem fit to the governor.

Jamaica then apparently preferred preaching to teaching—there being at the time obviously few children of a teachable age—for there is no further reference to the schoolmaster.

In 1671 the last of twenty-four enquiries sent to the governor, Sir Thomas Modyford, was “what provision for instructing the people in the Christian religion and for paying the ministry?”; but there was no mention made of secular education.

In 1675 Sir Thomas Lynch reported that “Mr. Lemon, a sobergoing man and a very good preacher, is minister of Guinaboa, St. John’s parish; he has £100 per annum from the parish, and about as much from Colonel Coape for keeping a free school he has erected.” To John Coape, who was a member of the first Council, Custos of Precinct VII (consisting of the parishes of St. John, St. Ann, St. George and St. Mary) and a Quaker, is due the honour of having spent the first money recorded in the cause of education in Jamaica.

The art of self-defence was not neglected. Sara Lyssons, of St. Thomas, employed John Lookmore, “a master of the noble science of defence,” to teach her sons, in 1678.

Till the end of the seventeenth century the safety of trade and commerce, the means of defence against Spanish or French invasion, the encouragement of immigration, government, and legislation, formed the subjects of discussion with the home government, and the comparatively newly formed colony was too unsettled to think of imparting knowledge to the rising generation.

The only reference to education found in the legislation of the century is in an “Act for Confirmation of Pious, Charitable and Public Gifts and Grants,” to “erecting or maintaining of Churches, Chappels, Schools, Universities, Colledges, or other places for education of Youth or maintenance of men of Learning, or any Alms-houses or Hospitals, or any other uses whatsoever, heretofore made, and hereafter to be made within the time aforesaid.” But it was long ere “Colledges” came into being, and the Universities are as yet in the future.

In the year 1688, Sir Henry Morgan, of buccaneering fame, gave £100 to aid the bequest of £100 sterling by Joachim Hane to found 32a school in St. Mary, but nothing was rendered available to the establishment of such a school.

Bridges tells us that “in the year 1695 Sir Nicolas Lawes bequeathed his estate, in default of heirs, to found a free school for the benefit of the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew. A school was consequently incorporated, with a seal, bearing the founder’s arms, but it failed for want of sufficient means, and the land was attached to the rectory. Twelve years afterwards Zacariah Gaulton left £80 per annum to pay a master and £500 to build a schoolhouse, and in 1721 Benjamin Cotman bequeathed his estate for the same purpose.” As a matter of fact Sir Nicholas Lawes’s will is dated August 21, 1730, and the bequest was not to establish a school, but “unto the Governors of the Free School of St. Andrews in the Island of Jamaica for the time being, and in case there be no Governors at that time as the Law directs then to such Governors as the Chancellor or Commander-in-Chief of the said Island shall direct and appoint Governors of the said Free School then I say I give to such Governors of the said Free School and their successors for ever the estate and premisses aforesaid for and towards the maintenance of the Masters Teachers and other Officers of the said Free School the repairing and making new Buildings more fitt and comodious large house or houses on the land at Halfway Tree which I formerly gave for that use finishing and furnishing the same and for and towards the maintenance support education and learning of so many Scholars (native youths of Jamaica) as the said Governors of the said School or the major part of them shall from time to time think fitt to admit to that benefit and the said bequest can support and maintain.”

But this bequest never took effect, for all his children who were living when he made his will—his sons James and Temple and his daughter Judith Maria—survived him.

Roger Elletson, Speaker of the House of Assembly, and Chief Justice, in the year 1690 gave £20 towards the foundation of a school in St. Andrew. Edward Harrison, in 1695, and Charles Delacree, in the succeeding year, each bequeathed £10 per annum for the same purpose. The bequests, however, were allowed to lie dormant until the year 1789, when the principal and interest were estimated at £14,710, no part of which was, however, recovered.

John Mills, in 1711, after several entails, left money to establish a free school in St. Elizabeth, but no such institution ever existed.

In the year 1736, Edward Pennant left £200 for a school and books, in Clarendon; and a school was founded in Old Woman’s Savannah, aided by subscriptions to the amount of £2000. It flourished about the year 1758, when, by some ill-management, it failed; the premises were vested in trustees for sale, and the institution vanished.

By the end of the seventeenth century the need of education for the sons and daughters of the colonists must have become pressing. 33The plan usually adopted by those who could afford it was to send their children (often the illegitimate as well as the legitimate) home; and so it continued in the main till the end of the following century, and indeed far into the nineteenth. Many a son of Jamaica acquired a good education in England, and not a few graduated at the universities. A manuscript “Catalogue of Men born in the Island of Jamaica who matriculated at Oxford 1689–1885 extracted from Alumni Oxonienses. (To which I have added a few stray names of men connected with the island.) By William Cowper, M.A.,” in the Library of the Institute of Jamaica, contains 268 names of men known to have matriculated at Oxford. Peter Beckford, who matriculated in 1688, and afterwards became lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, is the first on the list which includes other well-known names, such as Garbrand, Dawkins, Nedham, Ellis, Price, Gale, Gregory, Haughton, Morant, Barham, Lawrence, Lewis, Clarke, Barrett, East, Dallas, Dwarris and Scarlett.

A review of the state of education in the middle of the eighteenth century is given by Leslie in his “New History of Jamaica” (1740). He says:

“Learning is here at the lowest Ebb; there is no publick School in the whole Island, neither do they seem fond of the thing; several large Donations have been made for such Uses, but have never taken Effect. The Office of a Teacher is looked upon as contemptible and no Gentleman keeps Company with one of that Character; to read, write and cast Accounts, is all the Education they desire, and even these are but scurvily taught. A Man of any Parts or Learning, that would employ himself in that Business, would be despised and starve. The Gentlemen whose Fortunes can allow it, send their Children to Great Britain, where they have the Advantage of a polite generous Education; but others are spoil’d, and make such an inconsiderable Figure ever after, that they are the common Butt in every Conversation. Mr. Beckford^[3] has lately bequeathed £2000 sterling, for a Free-School: It is doubtful whether this Gentleman’s Intentions will be answered by the Managers; for by their way of proceeding there is small Appearance they design to encourage Men of Merit to take upon them such an Office. Several have lately offered themselves who were every way qualified for the Undertaking; and some promised themselves Success, from the good Disposition they perceived in many to encourage their Design; but after a Trial were of Necessity obliged to quit it. ’Tis Pity, in a Place like this, where the Means could be so easily afforded, something of a publick Nature should not be done for the Advantage of Posterity; but when such a Spirit will appear, is hard to determine. There are indeed several 34Gentlemen who are well acquainted with Learning, in some of its most valuable Branches: but these are few; and the Generality seem to have a greater Affection for the moodish Vice of Gaming than the Belles Lettres, and love a Pack of Cards better than the Bible. To talk of a Homer, or a Virgil, of a Tully, or a Demosthenes, is quite unpolite; and it cannot be otherwise; for a Boy, till the Age of Seven or Eight, diverts himself with the Negroes, acquires their broken way of talking, their Manners of Behaviour, and all the Vices which these unthinking Creatures can teach: Then perhaps he goes to School; but young Master must not be corrected; if he learns, ’tis well; if not, it can’t be helped. After a little Knowledge of reading, he goes to the Dancing-school, and commences Beau, learns the common Topicks of Discourse, and visits and rakes with his Equals. This is their Method; and how can it be supposed one of such a Turn can entertain any generous Notions, distinguish the Beauties of Virtue, act for the Good of his Country, or appear in any Station of Life, so as to deserve Applause? Some of the Ladies read, they all dance a great deal, coquet much, dress for Admirers; and at last, for the most part, run away with the most insignificant of their humble Servants. Their Education consists intirely in acquiring these little Arts. ’Tis a thousand Pities they do not improve their Minds, as well as their Bodies; they would then be charming Creatures indeed.”

That the object of those few who, amongst a community indifferent to such matters, wished to benefit education in Jamaica, had been in the main disregarded during the eighteenth century, is evident from a report of a Committee of the Assembly presented in November 1791 by Bryan Edwards, the historian. The Committee had been appointed to “enquire into and prepare an account of the several charities and donations that have been made and devised from time to time, by well disposed persons for the establishment of free-schools in the different parts of this Island, and which have not been carried into effect agreeably to the intention of the donors; and further to report a state of the landed and other real property, funds, and securities for money, which, in the judgment of the Committee, are at this time subject and liable to such donations; and their opinion what steps are proper to be taken for the recovery and establishment thereof for the purposes intended.”

They reported “that the committee, limiting their enquiries to such charities or donations only, in the recovery whereof there appears at this time any visible property to which resort can be had, confine themselves to the several Parishes of St. Ann, St. Andrew, Vere, and Westmoreland: In each of these parishes donations have been made for the purpose in the resolution of the House mentioned; some of which donations have not been carried into full effect, and others have remained wholly unapplied and 35unaccounted for by the several devisees, executors, purchasers, or possessors, under the original granters or donors of such estates or properties as were specially charged with such donations.”

That matters had not much improved by the beginning of the nineteenth century is evident from “An Account of Jamaica and its Inhabitants,” published in 1808. “Literature,” the author says, “is little cultivated in Jamaica, nor is reading a very favorite amusement. There is a circulating Library in Kingston, and, in one or two other places a paltry attempt at such a thing, these collections of books not being of that choice and miscellaneous nature which they ought to be, but usually composed of a few good novels mixed with a much larger proportion of these ephemeral ones which are daily springing up, and which are a disgrace to literature, and an insult to common sense.”

John Rippingham, the author of “Jamaica considered in its Present State, Political, Financial, and Philosophical” (1817), presented a memorial to the Assembly, setting forth that “there is no establishment provided by this Island for the education of sons of gentlemen, that he had had considerable experience in the higher departments of education, and had published several works upon intellectual improvement, and that he offered his abilities, acquirements, and assiduity to supply the deficiency and craved the aid of the house.” The matter was referred to a Committee and the House agreed, on their report, that they did not consider it expedient to adopt any measure on the subject. Whether the House thought higher education was not necessary or doubted Rippingham’s ability to give it, is not stated.

Bridges, writing in his “Annals,” gives some account of the educational efforts of the past. He reports “no endowments of any kind” in the parishes of Trelawny, Manchester, St. Dorothy (now part of St. Catherine), St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, and St. Thomas-in-the-East or in St. James, although the Legislature had early in the eighteenth century appropriated £1400 per annum for the purpose.

In 1843 the Charity Commissioners of England reported on the schools of Jamaica:

“With this view, then, we may be permitted to observe that almost all the schools in question have been greatly modified by, and that many owe their very existence, or their increased income to, acts of the Legislature. The original bequest to the Jamaica Free School would probably have been lost to that institution, but for the interference of the Legislature, and a great part of its present funds was derived from a grant of the Crown. So at Vere, the Act 2 Geo. 4, c. 19, recites that the school was failing for want of scholars, and its original constitution was accordingly varied, by throwing it open for the reception of children from the adjoining 36and other parishes. Grants have, from time to time, been made to each of these schools for temporary purposes, e.g. repairs, etc., and a permanent rate of interest amounting to no less than 8 per cent. is paid by the Receiver General to both. It is not, therefore, we think, too much to say that the Legislature has thus acquired (even if it did not necessarily possess it) a right to deal with the funds of these institutions, in such manner as it may deem expedient. Least of all can this be denied where the object is not to divert them from, but to apply them more usefully to the great purpose of education, for which they were originally intended. More especially does this remark apply to the Jamaica Free School, which appears by the Act 18, Geo. 3, c. 25, s. 5, to have been expressly intended to fulfil this end, and was even permitted to incorporate with its own funds those of any other charitable institution, which were either unappropriated, or which parties were willing to transfer to it, with a view to carry out this very object.”

Of the condition of education in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gardner, in his “History” (1873), states:

“Another Commission, first appointed in 1843, was also discharging the duty of enquiring into the extent and management of the different charities of the island, and quietly preparing the way for some wholesome reforms. Many painful facts were brought to light relative to the culpable alienation of benevolent bequests from their intended purpose; and other facts equally discreditable, in reference to the mode in which existing charities were managed.”

Robson, in “The Story of our Jamaica Mission” (1894), says:

“In 1855 the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, in a despatch to the Colonial Secretary, said: ‘By far the most creditable institution in the island is the Presbyterian Academy, principally intended for training young men of the ministry or the scholastic profession. It still held a foremost place and was accomplishing excellent work; there were twenty-four missionary students and fifty-six public scholars in attendance. But the expense to the Home Church, amounting to nearly £500 a year, appeared to call for some more economical scheme.’”

In a chapter in his “History” devoted to “Religion, Education, and Social Progress, from 1839 to 1865,” Gardner makes no reference to Secondary Education, unless the foundation of Calabar College in 1843 for the training of a native Baptist Ministry can be so considered.

In 1865 an Act (28 Vic., c. 23) was passed by which the Government appropriated the sums of money deposited from time to time in the Public Treasury by various charities and institutions at varying rates of interest, and became responsible for the payment 37of perpetual annuities in lieu thereof, thereby preventing for the future so far as those funds were concerned any of that misapplication alluded to in the reports of the Committee of 1791.

Under that able organizer, Sir John Peter Grant (1866–1874), elementary education was put on a sound basis of encouragement and support; by him was also founded the too ambitious and short-lived College at Spanish Town which aimed at providing a university education for a community that was not yet ready for it.

During the governorship of Sir Anthony Musgrave the needs of Secondary Education—which was defined as being the encouragement of education of a higher grade “among those classes of the community who would value it, if placed within their reach, but whose means do not enable them to send their children to Europe for the purpose of obtaining it”—received full consideration.

By the creation in 1879 of the Jamaica Schools Commission, which exercises over endowed schools in Jamaica the same sort of supervision formerly exercised by the Charity Commissioners in England over English schools, means were afforded for placing the old endowed schools of the island under suitable management. The Jamaica High School was established, the Jamaica Scholarship was started, and the Cambridge Local Examinations were held for the first time in 1882; and later in 1891 the University of London was induced to hold its examinations in the colony.

The Wesleyan Church started their High School at York Castle, in St. Ann, in 1876; and the Institute of Jamaica for the encouragement of Literature, Science and Art was founded by the Government in 1879.

In 1892 a Secondary Education Law (32 of 1892) was passed, empowering the Governor in Privy Council on the recommendation of the Board of Education—a Board formed with the main object of advising on elementary education—to declare any important centre of population to be without adequate provision for secondary education and to establish a school there, to be managed by a local committee of management under the supervision of the Board. A subsequent act of the Legislature transferred the duty of supervision of all such schools from the Board of Education to the Jamaica Schools Commission. In 1911 the secondary schools of the island were first inspected and reported on by an English school inspector.

Taverns must have existed in Jamaica from early times. They are mentioned in the Deficiency law, by which one white hired or indentured servant had to be kept for every tavern or retail shop; and White’s Tavern in Kingston is referred to in the Journals of the Assembly in 1730. That there was a tavern at Dry Harbour in 1769 is evident from a rare view published in that year entitled “Dry Harbour in the Parish of St. Ann’s, Jamaica, taken from the West end of the Tavern, with the Fort and Barracks, now in Ruins.”

But when one considers the large amount of travelling by road 38that was done in Jamaica in the past, there were, comparatively speaking, few taverns or posting houses, the truth being that planters and even strangers relied in the main on the proverbial hospitality of the inhabitants. Of “the Permanent natives, or Creole men,” Long tells us in his history (written in 1774), “their hospitality is unlimited; they having lodging and entertainment always at the service of transient strangers and travellers; and receive in the most friendly manner those, with whose character and circumstances they are often utterly unacquainted.” And he adds as a footnote: “One obvious proof of this is, that there is scarcely one tolerable inn throughout the whole Island, except at a great distance from any settlement.” He refers to Knockpatrick, now in Manchester, and “two good taverns” at Lacovia in St. Elizabeth. He says: “The Tavern at Knockpatrick (belonging also to Mr. W—stn—y), the next settlement we come to, stands very commodiously, and enjoys a most excellent climate. The English beans, pease, and other culinary vegetables of Europe grow here in most seasons of the year, to the utmost perfection. A gentleman who supped here could not help remarking, that the victuals were literally brought smoaking-hot to table, a phenomenon seldom observed in the low lands, where the air is so much more rarefied.” Elsewhere he states that “Mr. W—stn—y” is said to be a natural son of the late “Duke of L—ds.”

Bryan Edwards in 1806 says: “As Mr. Long has remarked, there is not one tolerable inn throughout all the West Indies.” He then goes on to contrast the general plenty and magnificence of the Jamaica planter’s table and the meanness of their houses and apartments: “it being no uncommon thing to find, at the country habitations of the planters, a splendid sideboard loaded with plate and the choicest wines, a table covered with the finest damask, and a dinner of perhaps sixteen or twenty covers; and all this in a hovel not superior to an English barn.”

Monk Lewis, writing on his visits to the Island in 1816 and 1818, in his “Journal of a West India Proprietor,” alluded to a “solitary tavern called Blackheath” near Claremont, and to a lodging-house in St. Ann’s Bay where he found “an excellent breakfast at an inn quite in the English fashion;” to the “Wellington Hotel” at Rio Bueno in Trelawny; to “Judy James’s” in Montego Bay, in St. James; to “Miss Hetley’s” inn at Yallahs in St.-Thomas-in-the-East; to a “solitary tavern” at Bluefields in Westmoreland, where he met “the handsomest creole that I have ever seen,” Antonietta by name, of Spanish-African parentage; and to “West Tavern,” which must have been somewhere near Ewarton, as it was nineteen miles from Spanish Town on the north road. He also alludes to “The Gutturs” in St. Elizabeth, where they found “everything that travellers could wish.”

Lewis says: “All the inns upon this road [the western half of the north side] are excellent, with the solitary exception of the 39Blackheath Tavern, which I stopped at by mistake instead of that at Montague [an obvious misprint for Moneague].” While elsewhere he says: “Inns would be bowers of Paradise if they were all rented by mulatto ladies like Judy James.”

A strangely long time was allowed to elapse after the settling of the various islands in the West Indies before printing presses were established. Perhaps some of the governors thought like Berkeley of Virginia, who, in his report to the Lords of Trade in 1671, wrote: “But I thank God, there are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best of government. God keep us from both.”

The earliest printing press in America was set up in Mexico before the middle of the sixteenth century.

The first printing press in English Colonies was set up in Massachusetts in 1638. In Jamaica it was established in 1721, sixty-six years after the acquisition of the colony by the British. The first almanac printed in the colonies was produced at Cambridge in 1639. Unfortunately no copy is known to exist: the earliest existing being one issued at Cambridge in 1646 in private possession. Printing was practised at Havanna, in Cuba, as early as 1729, and in Martinique as early as 1727; a Royal printing house was established in St. Domingo in 1750. The “Barbados Gazette,” published weekly, has been called the earliest British West Indian newspaper. Its first issue appeared on May 18, 1731, but Isaiah Thomas, in his “History of Printing,” says that the “Weekly Jamaica Courant” was published at Kingston as early as 1722.

The first Jamaica wall almanac and the earliest piece of Jamaica printing known to be extant dates from 1734, a copy of which is in the Library of the Institute of Jamaica. The earliest Jamaica-printed book known is the “Merchant’s Pocket Companion,” printed in Kingston—be it observed, not in Spanish Town, the then capital of the island—in 1751. The next oldest Jamaica-printed book known is a volume of Love Elegies by Peter Pindar of the year 1773. A copy of each is in the Institute Library. The best known of the early Jamaica newspapers was the “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette.” There may be early volumes of the “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette” (founded in 1756) in existence, but the earliest in the Institute Library bears date 1791, and the earliest of the “Royal Gazette” (founded in 1779) there bears date 1780. The earliest example of a Jamaica newspaper in the Library is an issue of “The St. Jago Intelligencer” of Kingston of the year 1757, possibly the earliest copy of a Jamaica newspaper extant.

In Hickeringill’s “Jamaica View’d,” published in the year 1661, appears what is probably the oldest English map of the island. With the exception of Guanaboa, The Seven Plantations, The 40Angels, and St. Jago de la Vega, only towns on the sea-board are mentioned in it, and there is no attempt to divide the island into parishes.

In a census taken in 1662 the Island was divided into ten districts, as follows: the Precincts of Port Moranto; Morant; Yealoth; and Legene; the town of Saint Angelo Delvega [St. Jago de la Vega]; Between Black River, Bower Savanna and thereabouts; In the Angles Quarter; In the Seven Plantations, Macaria, Quathebeca; In the Quarters Quanaboa and Quardelena; and Point Caugway.

Sir Thomas Modyford, in his “View of the Condition of Jamaica, the 1st of October, 1664,” reprinted in the appendix to the first volume of the “Journals of the House of Assembly” ([Spanish Town] 1811), says “there is in the said island but seven established parishes: videlicet, the town and parish of St. Katherine’s, St. John’s, the town and parish of Port Royal, Clarendon, St. David’s, St. Andrew’s, and St. Thomas, which are very large, and in them all but one church, that at St. Katherine’s.”

The parish of St. David was part of the precinct of St. Thomas-in-the-East, and St. George was part of the precinct of St. Mary.

As a result of the survey ordered by Sir Thomas Modyford, and made by “Serjeant-Major John Man, Surveyor-General for His Majesty,” who calculated that the island comprised seven millions of acres, a map was prepared by Man and copied by “Mr. Innians, the surveyor,” and published in Blome’s “Description of the Island of Jamaica” in 1671. There are included on this map, in addition to two unnamed precincts occupying approximately the positions of the present Hanover and Manchester, the precincts of St. Catherine, St. Andrew, Port Royal, St. David, St. Thomas, St. George, St. Mary, St. John, St. Ann, St. James, St. Elizabeth and Clarendon.

In the year 1673, Vere was formed by cutting off a portion of Clarendon, but it still remained part of the precinct of Clarendon; and in 1675 when an Act was passed for dividing His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica into several parishes and precincts, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale was taken from St. Catherine; and Clarendon lost another piece out of which was formed St. Dorothy, which parish became part of the precinct of St. Catherine.

In “The State of Jamaica under Sir Thomas Lynch, His Majesty’s present Captain-General and Chief Governour, September 20th, 1683,” prefixed to the “Laws of Jamaica” (London 1684), it states “since that time (1661) it has been divided into Fifteen Parishes and they into eight Provinces or Precincts.”

42The first act on record having reference to the parishes of the island was read on the 11th of May, 1675, by the Council, and sent to the Assembly with this amendment, that the Magotty be annexed to the sixteen-mile-walk, but continue still to pay all parochial duties to St. John’s except to the repairing of the highways, until a church be built and a parish settled in the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. A law was passed in 1677. The law itself had not been preserved, but it is recited in a law passed in 1681 (33 Car. 2), “An Act for the maintenance of Ministers and the Poor, and erecting and Repairing of churches.” (“The Laws of Jamaica,” London 1684): “and whereas this Island, in the twenty-ninth year of His Majesty’s reign, by an Act of this Country, was divided into fifteen parishes, which were called, distinguished and known, by the several names hereafter mentioned, that is to say, St. Thomas, St. Davids, Port Royal, St. Andrews, St. Katherines, St. Dorothys, St. Thomas in the Valley, Clarendon, Vere, St. Johns, St. Georges, St. Maries, St. Anns, St. James, and St. Elizabeths; Be it therefore enacted and ordained by the Authority aforesaid, That all and every of the said Parishes, rest, remain, and for ever hereafter be distinguished and known by the aforesaid respective Names, and by no other whatsoever, anything in this or any other Law to the contrary notwithstanding.”

In 1692, on the destruction of the greater part of Port Royal by earthquake, most of the inhabitants that survived settled in hastily erected buildings in St. Andrew, on the harbour, and in the following year the parish of Kingston was formed.

In 1703 Westmoreland was formed out of a portion of St. Elizabeth. In 1723 Portland was formed, the land being taken partly from St. Thomas-in-the-East, and partly from St. George (by 10 Geo. 1); and Hanover was formed out of part of Westmoreland. In 1739 (12 Geo. 2, ch. 6) parts of the Carpenters Mountains, heretofore esteemed part of St. Elizabeth and Clarendon, were transferred to Vere.

In 1758 the three counties of Surrey, Middlesex and Cornwall were created (by 31 Geo. 2, ch. 15) with a view to the more convenient holding of courts of justice. The middle county was appropriately called Middlesex; the westernmost was named after the most western county in England, Cornwall; and the eastern division was called Surrey, probably because, like Surrey in England, its principal town was Kingston.

Kingston was declared the county town of Surrey; St. Jago de la Vega, that of Middlesex; and Savanna-la-Mar, that of Cornwall. In the first-named were the seven parishes of Port Royal, Kingston, St. Andrew, St. David, Portland, St. George and St. Thomas-in-the-East; Middlesex comprised St. Catherine, St. John, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Dorothy, Clarendon, Vere, St. Ann, and St. Mary; while Cornwall had but four parishes, St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover and St. James. The next change was in 1770, when Trelawny was formed out of a portion of St. James. In 1814 Manchester was created by taking parts from Clarendon, Vere and St. Elizabeth, thus transferring a portion of Cornwall to Middlesex.

In many old maps of the island, notably James Robertson’s (published in 1804) the names of the owners are given rather than the names of properties, and in many instances these proper names 43exist to this day; and to-day the negro peasantry are often able to tell one the name of the owner when they are ignorant of the name of the estate or house.

In 1809 a law was passed (50 Geo. 3) for fixing the boundaries of the several counties and parishes of this island, by which the extent and boundaries of the counties and parishes as laid down and delineated in the three maps of the counties and the general map of the island, made and published by Robertson, were taken as the bounds of the counties and parishes, and printed copies of the maps were recognized as evidence in all courts of justice in the island.

In 1831 McGeachy and Smith, surveyors, proposed to publish by subscription maps of the three counties at £20 apiece. They received the names of eighty-six subscribers, but the maps were never published, as we learn by “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette” for February 12, 1831.

In 1841 the last parish to be created in the history of Jamaica, Metcalfe, was formed out of the parishes of St. Mary and St. George, whereby Middlesex again gained land, this time at the expense of Surrey. The parishes then numbered twenty-two. In 1844 an Act (8 Vic. c. 39) was passed defining the boundaries of Kingston Harbour.

In 1867, as part of the reformation scheme of Sir John Peter Grant, was passed the law for the reduction of the number of parishes. In Surrey, Kingston, was increased by taking part of St. Andrew, a part of the parish and the whole town of Port Royal. St. Andrew took the remaining part of Port Royal parish; and St. David was merged into St. Thomas-in-the-East, and St. George into Portland, which also took the Manchioneal district of St. Thomas-in-the-East.

In Middlesex the recently created parish of Metcalfe was merged into the parish of St. Mary. St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. John, and St. Dorothy were all merged into St. Catherine, and Vere again became part of Clarendon; St. Ann and Manchester remaining as they were. In Cornwall there was no alteration, the five parishes remaining as they were.

In 1900 Port Royal was made a separate parish for municipal purposes, remaining still part of the electoral district of Kingston.

Of names given owing to natural features, there are numbers in Jamaica—the Blue Mountains; the Red Hills; the Great, White, Swift, Dry, and Milk Rivers; Green Island; Dry Harbour; Dry Mountains; the Round Hill (in Vere), and so on.

The Y. S. River (pronounced Wyers) is, Long tells us, so called from the Gallic word Y. S., which signifies crooked or winding. Another authority says the name of the property was Wyess, and its commercial mark for shipping purposes was Y. S.

Labour-in-vain Savannah in St. Elizabeth is a name perfectly descriptive of its nature. So, too, is Burnt Savannah.

44The struggle for and the success of emancipation have left their names on many a free negro settlement; some of which, it is to be feared, have not realized their early promise: Clarkson Ville, Sturge Town, Wilberforce, Buxton, Liberty Hill and others.

Some names are typical of the simple faith and language of the negro, such as Wait-a-bit and Come-see. Me-no-sen-you-no-come, in Trelawny, must have been named by folk of recluse habits. Others are not euphonious—Fat Hog Quarter, Running Gut (which Lawrence Archer, in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” thinks may probably be a corruption by some seafaring man of Harangutta, a branch of the Ganges), Starve Gut Bay; and one rather wonders whether they are not vulgar corruptions of different designations. We find, however, similar names in the other islands: Dos d’Ane in Dominica, and Mal d’Estomac in Trinidad. On the other hand Kick-em-Jenny, the rock between St. Vincent and Grenada, is said to have been originally called Cay qu’on gêne—the islet that bothers one, from the roughness of the neighbouring sea.

Many names of townships and properties have been translated from the old country—Oxford, Ipswich, Cambridge, Newmarket and the like—and the number of Bellevues, Belvideres, Contents, speak little for the inventive faculties of those who named them.

Of its trade with the outside world Jamaica has evidences in Jamaica Bay, in Acklin’s Island, Bahamas; in Jamaica (as old at least as 1699), Long Island; in Jamaica Plain near Boston; in Jamaica Street in Glasgow; in Jamaica Street in Greenock; and formerly in the Jamaica coffee house in London.

The Jamaica coffee house was in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, which runs out of Cornhill to the west of St. Michael’s church. This alley is famous as having contained the first coffee house established in London. The Jamaica coffee house is kept in memory there by the Jamaica wine house which adjoins the office of a wine merchant (E. J. Rose & Co.) and by Jamaica buildings. Like all city alleys, the place has been entirely rebuilt.

Jamaica Street, one of the busiest streets in Glasgow, leading to Jamaica Bridge over the Clyde, was named in 1763, and its name was doubtless suggested by the business connexion. There are other evidences in Glasgow of West Indian trade in St. Vincent Street, Tobago Street, and the “Havannah” (Street); but the name of Kingston Dock has no connection with Kingston, Jamaica.

There is a Jamaica Road in Bermondsey and a Jamaica Street in Shadwell.

The chief interest of Port Royal lies rather in the silent witness which through two and a half centuries she has borne to the naval activities of the island of Jamaica, and in a measure to those of the British fleets which have from time to time visited these waters, than in any part which she has played in the internal domestic development of the colony, although she has now and again sent to the Assembly such notable members as William Beeston, Samuel Long, Marmaduke Freeman, Peter Beckford, Matthew Concanen, Roger Hope Elletson and Samuel Jackson Dallas. The three last, however, were connected, not with “the Point,” but with that portion of the old parish of Port Royal which now forms part of St. Andrew and is known to-day as the Port Royal Mountains.

In these days of pageants, Port Royal would fittingly make either background or proscenium to many a stirring episode illustrative of the island’s history.

Though Jamaica since its occupation by the English has escaped the capture and recapture which was the fate of many of the smaller West Indian islands which are now British, and its forts have never had to face besieging ships, the vessels sent out from its harbour from that date till the early years of the last century played no insignificant part in the sum total of Britannia’s naval history; and Port Royal was a toll-gate on Britain’s path of Admiralty at which many heavy tolls were paid.

From the Swiftsure, Admiral Penn’s flagship in the expedition which gained the island for England, to the Suffolk and Sydney, many of the finest ships in the British Navy 46have sailed or steamed past Port Royal’s shores; and the flags of not a few of England’s most celebrated seamen have waved near its walls—Myngs, Morgan (who was buried there), Nevell, Benbow (who died there), Vernon, Hosier, Ogle, Keppel, Rodney, Peter Parker, Nelson, Joshua Rowley, McClintock, and lastly Admiral Lloyd.

Columbus, who was intimately acquainted with the north side of Jamaica, probably only saw Port Royal from the Niña’s deck as he, after discovering the island on his second voyage, in 1494, beat slowly homeward along the south side, after having exchanged courtesies with the caciques in Old Harbour bay, putting in here and there for shelter from the contrary wind.

During the Spanish occupation the Point remained unoccupied and the harbour of Kingston was disregarded till 1520, when the Spaniards removed their northside capital to St. Jago de la Vega.

In January 1596–97, the inhabitants of Port Royal, had there been any, would have seen that adventurous soldier of fortune, Sir Anthony Shirley, sail up the harbour, whence he plundered the island and burnt St. Jago; in March 1643, the buccaneering hero Captain William Jackson, with his marauding company of three ships sent out from England by the Earl of Warwick, recruited at Barbados and St. Kitts, again insulted the powerless or supine Spaniards, passing Port Royal, which was then an island; and in May 1655, the inhabitants fell an easy prey to a ragamuffin army of 8000 troops contained in thirty-eight ships under Penn and Venables, who tried to atone thereby for their ineffectual attempt on Hispaniola. This was probably the largest fleet which up to that moment had entered Kingston harbour.

The English conquerors soon saw the strategic advantage of Cagua (which they corrupted into Cagway), or the Point, as they called it, as a protection to the harbour and the capital at St. Jago de la Vega.

The earliest act of this motley crew, when they tired of killing the cattle which the Spaniards had been at great pains to breed on the sea-washed savannahs on the south 47side, was to erect a fort at Cagway under Sedgwick in March 1656. At the Restoration it not unnaturally received the name of Fort Charles, and the collection of houses that grew up around it was called Port Royal, at the dictates of loyalty or sycophancy, according to the political creed of the members of the new colony. But the governor and council had often great difficulty in persuading the Assembly to vote the funds necessary for its upkeep and improvement. A writer during Sir Charles Lyttelton’s governorship, 1662–1664, says it was called Port Royal from the excellency of the harbour; but it was apparently not till February 1674 that that became its official name, when the Assembly voted “Point Conway (an obvious misprint for Cagway) to be called Port Royal.” In addition to Fort Charles there were three other principal forts called James, Carlisle and Rupert.

For a time Port Royal was the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor, while the Governor’s official residence was at Spanish Town. In November 1661, it was ordered “that no person remain on Point Cagua without giving security to a Justice of the Peace not to be chargeable to the inhabitants for more than one month. Any waterman bringing a person likely to be chargeable to pay a piece of eight and carry him back again.” In 1664 the Assembly desired and advised the Council that the Court of Common Pleas should be held constantly “in St. Jago de la Vego and no more at Port Royal,” and the Council agreed. In March 1674–5 Peter Beckford wrote home:

Lord Vaughan arrived on the 13th inst. at night and landed at Port Royal; next day his commission was read, and he was entertained as well as the island could afford; 15th, he remained on Port Royal, viewing the fortifications; came next day to St. Jago, being received at the seaside [at Passage Fort, probably] by 150 horse and a company of foot, besides the gentlemen of the country and seven coaches, all which attended him to the town, where he was received with two companies of foot, and dined with Sir Thos. Modyford.

By 1675, residence by the Governor at Port Royal had gone out of favour. In that year was passed a resolution 48to the effect that—the “Captain-General’s salary to be £2000 per annum, residing usually at St. Jago, his residence at Port Royal to be omitted.”

In 1680, the custos of Port Royal was Sir Henry Morgan, J.P. The judges of court of common pleas were William Beeston, Reginald Wilson and Anthony Swimmer. The justices of the peace were, besides the judges, John White, Theodore Cary, Prichard Herne and Harbottle Wingfield.

Sir Thomas Lynch wrote, in 1682, to the Bishop of London, of Beeston: “You may be disposed to credit him as Dr. Beeston’s brother, and a very ingenious man, to whose skill and zeal we owe the building of our church at Port Royal, the handsomest in America....” This church, called Christchurch, perished in the earthquake. The present building, erected in 1725–26, contains monuments to many of those who succumbed to yellow fever. Its most notable monument is that to Lieutenant Stapleton (d. 1754) by Roubiliac. Of the rest the most interesting is that to Captain de Crespigny (d. 1825), who had served under St. Vincent, Nelson and Collingwood, and during his career saved no less than sixteen lives. The carved organ loft was erected in 1743.

In the Council minutes for June 1685, occurs the valuation of two parcels of land taken for the public use. One “contiguous to the breast work” (probably identical with the “Redoute” in Lilly’s plan) was valued at £125.

As early as 1661 there were in Fort Charles “some as good cannon planted as the Tower of London would afford,” but it was not ever thus. The fort was “not shook down, but much shattered” by the earthquake of 1692. Seven or eight years later it was reconstructed by Colonel Christian Lilly, an engineer officer of considerable ability, who had laid out the town of Kingston in 1694, and who, in 1734, was captain of the fort. He was probably the author of “An Account of Commodore Wilmot’s Expedition to Hispaniola” of the year 1696, in which occurs a very caustic description of the “small fort” at Port Royal, which he regarded as

49Of little significance in case of an attack. It is something like a square redoubt of forty or fifty paces to a side with two small bastions towards the town, but nothing towards the sea but a small semi-circular advance in the middle of that side, capable of containing three or four pieces of cannon. The walls are built after the ancient way of fortifications and are not cannon-proof. The embrasures are arched over, and so large as to be more like gates for the enemy to enter at than port-holes. There is not so much as a trench or palisade round it, and I believe not six pieces of cannon that can bear at one time upon a ship when opposite to it. Outside this fort, when I was there, there was a long line of cannon; but so extremely exposed to the enemy’s fire that it would be hard matter for any one to use them in case of an attack, and they are of no use at all in case an enemy gets into the harbour, for they can then be taken in reverse. This is the chief artificial fortification of Port Royal, and the natural fortification is not much except that it is now an island, for the town is all open to the harbour and partly to the sea. In my opinion, therefore, there would be no difficulty for a small fleet to master it, and less risk than in encountering two stout men-of-war, were it not for our own ships in the harbour, as I can explain if required. This place, being the bulwark and gate to the conquest of the island, should be better secured. The side of the fort towards the sea, already falling down, should be rebuilt in some figure better suited for its defence, and the whole should be surrounded by a good deep ditch and a row or two of strong palisades. The embrasures should be lessened to two feet at most to protect the gunners at their guns. The battery on the east side should be made defencible and cannon-proof. The plot of land to north-west of the fort should be taken into a horn-work and fitted for several guns, to defend it against attack in reverse. To eastward of the town a work should be thrown up to cover it against the isthmus, and to guard against surprise by boats on that side. These fortifications could also be built of earth and wood; which would save much expense and would suffice if they lasted to the end of the war.

This account tallies with a description of Port Royal, dated October 25, 1699, signed by Lilly himself.

Sir William Beeston, writing to the Council of Trade and Plantations in February 1700, said—with all the self-sufficiency of one in authority:

The storehouses are finished and of great use, and so is Fort Charles with all the advantage the ground will afford. Captain Lilly would have had it built in another figure, but that was more to show his desire it might be done by his directions than of any 50use, for, as he proposed, there would have been much less room, and the spurs were not capacious enough to contain any guns. I had the approbation of all people in the figure I proposed, and it’s not only very useful but very beautiful also. The next public work we go about is to lay a line of thirty or forty guns in good stone work to the eastward of Fort Charles, which guns will be right up the channel where all ships come in, and make the place not easy to be attempted by sea.

From the earliest times the members of the House of Assembly, ever ready to insist on their rights, were admitted to view the forts and fortifications, and a joint committee of the Assembly and Council used to report annually on Fort Charles. After pointing out various defects for thirty or forty years, the committee in 1736 got angry, and complained “that the present state and condition of the fortifications in Port Royal, which is very defenceless, require the immediate consideration of the Legislature, as they are the strength and security of the island,” and that “little or no notice had been taken to remedy the grievances complained of.”

Towards the close of the eighteenth century there were thirty forts and batteries in the island. At present there are but three worthy of the name—Fort Nugent at Harbour Head, Fort Clarence, opposite Port Royal, and Rocky Point, on the Palisadoes.

As the island became more settled under the British colonists, vessels which had at first been equipped for home defence began to assume the position of private men-of-war, or privateers, and to bring into Port Royal, sometimes with the warrant of the governor, sometimes without, spoils from the Spaniards. When it suited the home programme the local Governor was praised for zeal in Imperial service. When the complaints of the Spanish court became too insistent, he was made a scapegoat and recalled. But the habit of plundering the hated Spaniard had got into the blood of men who were ill-fitted to lead a sedentary life, and the steps from authorized privateersmen, first to unauthorized buccaneer, and then to pirate and murderer, were easy. And no close scrutiny was placed upon the origin of the wealth poured into Port 51Royal, which its owners squandered in drinking and gaming as quickly as they had gained it. Port Royal was then the centre of much debauchery.

Modyford, the governor, wrote home, “The Spaniards wondered much at the sickness of our people, until they knew of the strength of their drinks, but then they wondered more that they were not all dead.” The buccaneers, another writer tells us, “have been known to spend 2000 or 3000 pieces of eight in one night.”

The memory of the wild deeds done by those who put off from Port Royal’s shore is kept alive in the name of Gallows Point, where many notorious pirates were, when condemned, hung up, and where the last of those executions, of which one is graphically described by Michael Scott in “Tom Cringle’s Log,” took place in 1831. Rackham, another pirate, was executed on the cay which still bears his name.

The following interesting account of Port Royal is given, in Francis Hanson’s account of Jamaica, written in 1682, appended to the first printed edition of the “Laws of Jamaica”:

The Town of Port Royal, being as it were the Store House or Treasury of the West Indies, is always like a continual Mart or Fair, where all sorts of choice Merchandizes are daily imported, not only to furnish the Island, but vast quantities are thence again transported to supply the Spaniards, Indians, and other Nations, who in exchange return us bars and cakes of Gold, wedges and pigs of Silver, Pistoles, Pieces of Eight and several other Coyns of both Mettles, with store of wrought Plate, Jewels, rich Pearl Necklaces, and of Pearl unsorted or undrill’d several Bushels; besides which, we are furnished with the purest and most fine sorts of Dust Gold from Guiney, by the Negroe Ships, who first come to Jamaica to deliver their Blacks, and there usually refit and stay to reload three or four Months; in which time (though the Companies Gold may be partly sent home) yet the Merchants, Masters of Ships, and almost every Mariner (having private Cargoes) take occasion to sell or exchange great quantities; some of which our Goldsmiths there work up, who being yet but few grow very wealthy, for almost every House hath a rich Cupboard of Plate, which they carelessly expose, scarce shutting their doors in the night, being in no apprehension of Thieves for want of receivers as aforesaid. And whereas most other Plantations ever did and now do keep their accounts in Sugar, or the proper Commodities 52of the place, for want of Money, it is otherwise in Jamaica, for in Port-Royal there is more plenty of running Cash (proportionably to the number of its inhabitants) than is in London....

One of the earliest to bring lustre to the crown of Port Royal was Admiral Myngs, by his capture in 1662 of St. Jago de Cuba, and other naval exploits.

Then came Sir Henry Morgan, the conqueror of Panama, whose deeds of undoubted valour were smirched by cowardly conduct towards priests and defenceless women. In later life he turned respectable, even to the extent of persecuting his former comrades, when he acted as lieutenant-governor. But the old spirit died hard, and we are not surprised when we read that the governor, Lord Vaughan, complained that Morgan made himself “so cheap at the port drinking and gaming at the taverns” that he intended to remove thither himself, from Spanish Town, for the credit of the island. In justice to Morgan’s memory it may be said that some historians hold that Oexmelin’s account of the buccaneers is a libel on Morgan, and that he was not nearly so black as he has been painted: and when we find his methods of warfare, and worse, adopted by a nation that has hitherto claimed to be in the forefront of civilization we are tempted to forgive Morgan much. As admiral of the Jamaica fleet, Morgan at the time commanded twenty-eight English-built ships and eight taken from the French—thirty-six in all, with a tonnage of 1585, the size of a small passenger steamer of to-day.

The Council was sitting at Port Royal on June 7, 1692, when by the ever memorable earthquake of that day many important colonists lost their lives. Houses, said to have been as good as many in the city of London, were destroyed; and the part of the town bordering on the sea entirely disappeared, owing to insecure foundations. A century later remains of these houses were still visible. Lewis Galdy, a French immigrant, was swallowed and cast up again, and lived many years. He will be referred to in the chapter on St. Catherine. The mace brought out by Lord Windsor in 1662 (erroneously supposed to have been the bauble which Cromwell ordered out of the House of 53Commons), was damaged at the time of the earthquake, and repaired after it; but it has since disappeared. The two maces in the Institute of Jamaica are of later date.

The principal authorities usually quoted on the earthquake of 1692 are Sir Hans Sloane’s account in the “Philosophical Transactions”; the description given by Long, in his History of Jamaica; and a letter by the rector of the parish which appeared in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1750, and was reprinted by Bridges—all of which information was epitomized by Gardner in his history.

In addition to these is available a broadside in the British Museum, a copy of which is in the Institute of Jamaica. The key and letter which form part of the broadside appeared in the “Journal of the Institute of Jamaica,” in 1892.

The following accounts of the earthquake have also been printed in the “Journal of the Institute of Jamaica”:

(1) Sir Hans Sloane’s account consisting of (a) “An account ... which I wrote myself being present in it.” (b) “Extract from a letter from one in Jamaica who was in the terrible earthquake.” (c) “Extract of a letter ... giving an account of the sickness that followed the earthquake.” (d) “Part of a letter ... giving a further account from another hand.” (e) “Part of another from the same hand.” (f) “Part of a letter from a gentleman in Jamaica ... not being present in the earthquake ... very curious.” (2) Notes by Mr. Maxwell Hall on an article by Colonel A. B. Ellis in “Popular Science Monthly” for 1892. (3) “A full account of the late dreadful earthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica written in two letters from the minister of the place [Dr. Heath],” which is copied incompletely and incorrectly by Bridges. (4) An account by Mrs. Akers of Nevis, printed in a “Natural History of Nevis ... by the Rev. Mr. Smith ... 1745.” (5) “The Truest and Largest account of the earthquake in Jamaica ... written by a Reverend Divine there to his friend in London ... 1693,” a copy of which is in the West India Library in the Institute. The letter is dated “Withy Wood in the parish of Vere,” and it is possible that the “Reverend Divine” was Thomas Hardwicke, who was appointed Rector of Vere by the Earl of Carlisle. (6) “A letter to a friend from Jamaica, Spanish Town, the 29th of June, 1692,” by John Pike, printed in a pamphlet, a copy of which is in the British Museum.

There were also two letters dated from Port Royal on June 20 and June 28, 1692, given in “Earthquakes 54explained and Practically Improved ... by Thomas Doolittle, M.A., Jamaica’s Miseries show London Mercies ... London, 1693.”

In addition to all these there is a letter sent home by the Council to the Lords of Plantations, which is given in an abbreviated form in the “Calendar of State Papers (Colonial Series)—America and West Indies—1689–1692.” The following is copied in extenso from the manuscript Council minutes in the Colonial Secretary’s office, Jamaica, a manuscript copy of which is in the Library of the Institute:

A letter from the President and Council of Jamaica to Lords of Trade and Plantations of the date June 20 from on board the Richard and Sarah, Jamaica. May it please Your Lordships on the seventh instant it pleased God to afflict this whole island with an earthquake, the dreadfullness whereof will sensibly enough appear in acquainting Your Lordships that in the space of two minutes [the “Calendar of State Papers” has ten] all the churches, the dwelling houses and sugar works of the whole island were thrown down: two-thirds of Port Royal swallowed up by sea, all its forts and fortifications demolished and a great part of its inhabitants miserably either knockt o’th head or drowned. As we are become by this an instance of God Almighty’s severe judgment, so we hope we shall be of Your Lordships compassion. We have in the midst of this confusion applied ourselves with all vigour to the restoring of things. We have taken into Their Majesties’ service the Richard and Sarah, a merchantship, where though to a great loss in the neglect of our own private affairs, we sit de die in diem in Council; protecting the merchants in their fishing on the ruins of their own houses; preventing robbery and stealing amongst the ruins; deciding controversies and punishing quarrels too frequently arising from the uncertain right of things. In sinking floating carcasses, taking care of the sick and wounded; lastly, in feeding and sustaining the necessitous which must now be done out of the Country stock, all kinde of stores being lost in the ruin of Port Royall. We have sett the masters of ships to the sounding a channell leading further up into this harbour, where we are like to have a scituation equal to Port Royall in everything and exceeding it in its being capable of relieving the country or being on any invasion relieved by it. This may it please Your Lordships we doe in all humble confidence hoping Your Lordships will consider us as we are all open and exposed to the attempts of enemyes by sea as well as by land. At land at this instant we are contending against a party of French who have been for some time ravageing the north side of the island, and though we have sent a proportionable force against them 55both by sea and land, yet by reason of the violent rains and earthquakes at land and blowing weather at sea it has not pleased God as yet to make us able to give much account of them as we still hope to doe. Among other accidents of the earthquake, their Majesties ship the Swan, which was lying at the wharves for careening, was suckt among the houses of Port Royall, has lost her guns, rigging, cables, and anchors, and her keel damaged, and is on survey cast, and we must inform Your Lordships that could repeated persuasions or even threats have prevailed on Captain Nevill to any degree of diligence, the Swan had either been out of harbour or rid out of danger. Many of the guns of the fortifications are two fathoms under water, and are in danger of being lost. The small arms of the country are generally broke by the fall of the houses, which gives us apprehensions from the slaves. This being the true state of our condition we must humbly beseech Your Lordships effectually to intercede with their most gracious Majesties that we may have a proportionable reliefe in time, and in all humility we think till we shall be able to fortify it cannot be less than three fifth Rates with one or two good fourth Rates for a battery, together with four or five hundred land soldiers and all sorts of arms and ammunition (great shot excepted), and that Your Lordships would procure us such a Governor whose generous care and charity may be equall to the needs of this distressed place, and we humbly take leave to inform Your Lordships that a tollerable choice may be made from amongst ourselves till, by the blessing of God and the just and equal administration of the Government, it may again grow to be fitt reward for greater persons. We humbly beg that this advice sloop may be speedily returned and the master and men protected. All which is humbly submitted. We are, may it please your honours, Your Lordships most humble servants, John White, P.C., John Bourden, Peter Heywood, Samuell Bernard, John Towers, Nicholas Laws, Francis Blackmore, Charles Knight, Thomas Sutton.

Postscript—Since the foregoing their Majesties’ ship Guernsey with the sloop which we sent out against the French that had landed on the north side of this island are come into port and have had good success, having burnt the enemy’s ship and taken and destroyed all the men both by land and sea, except eighteen which escaped in a sloop.

In all humility we are your Lordships most humble and obedient servants.

Jamaica. From on board the Richard and Sarah, June the 20th, 1692.

The old bell in the Institute of Jamaica, is said to have been sunk originally by the great earthquake, and to have been recovered during some dredging operations off Port 56Royal. Tradition said that it was given to the old Spanish church at Port Royal, by a convent in Spain, but this is obviously incorrect as the Spaniards had no church, or in fact, any building at the Point. It is, of course, possible that the early English settlers took it from the ruins of some Spanish Town church, for use in the church they built at the Point, or it may have been taken to Port Royal at a later date. In any case it is curious that the only Spanish bell known in Jamaica should have been discovered at Port Royal and not at Spanish Town or at St. Ann’s Bay, where the first Spanish settlement stood.

Either in the ordinary course of events by the continual beating of the clapper, or through a flaw in the metal, or through its fall at the time of the earthquake or at some other time, the bell was cracked; but after its recovery the crack was stayed by a drill hole, and the bell is said to have been hung in the new church which had been built at Port Royal in 1725.

In 1855, as the crack had extended in two directions and rendered the bell useless, the “whitewash and plaster” churchwardens of the day sold it for old metal. During the administration of Sir John Peter Grant it was pointed out to the Government that it was lying in an old curiosity shop in Kingston, in imminent danger of being melted down; and it was purchased by the Government and deposited at the Ordnance Wharf, whence it found its way to the Institute of Jamaica. It is 2 feet 1¾ inch in height 57and 6 feet 7 inches in circumference at the base. Round the edge runs the following inscription:

Ihesv Maria et Verbum Caro Factum Est et Abita.

In the Vulgate, the 14th verse of the 1st chapter of St. John’s Epistle commences thus: “Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis.”

The bell also bears a cross made of a series of stars, and two small designs in relief placed in duplicate on opposite sides, representing the one the Virgin and Child, and the other, a saint, probably St. George or St. Michael.

The bell, in the opinion of an expert to whom a photograph was sent, is certainly Spanish; the cross and letter are from fifteenth-century moulds, but the small designs are later, probably sixteenth century. In casting, old moulds were frequently used. The cross is decidedly Spanish.

In September 1692, the Council wrote home, “Port Royal which was our chief stay and where we could muster two thousand effective men is, since the earthquake, reduced to about two hundred men.”

The old plan of Port Royal which was reproduced on page 442 of the “West India Committee Circular” of September 23, 1913, was formerly in the Dockyard there, having been presented to that office by Commodore the Hon. W. J. Ward, in August 1880. It was handed over to the Institute of Jamaica by the last commodore after the dockyard was given up. It is obviously a copy of an older plan in the Colonial Secretary’s office. In mistake it is stated on it that the original plan was surveyed in June 1857. It should have been 1827.

The wording on the original plan is as follows: “A general plan of the town, forts and fortifications, etc., of Port Royal, performed by an order from His Grace William, Duke of Manchester, Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica and the territories thereon depending in America, Chancellor and Vice-Admiral of the same. Surveyed in June 1827 by Philip A. Morris, Crown Surveyor.”

On the original plan are the following notes: “All 58within the yellow lines is Crown property.” “The blue lines represent the town of Port Royal before the great earthquake of 1692.” “The red line is what remained of the town after the earthquake.” “The ochre colouring represents the town as it now stands.” “True copy from Morris, original Survey. The blue, red and yellow lines added by me.” (Signed) Thos. Harrison, Govt. Surveyor, 20th September, 1870; (Signed) J. R. Mann, D. of Rds. and Surveyor-General, 24th October, 1870.

The following interesting experience of a diver during his visit to submerged Port Royal, appeared in the “Falmouth Post,” of October 7, 1859.

Sir,—Being aware that many erroneous statements regarding my explorations of old Port Royal have been circulated, I beg to offer the public, through the medium of your valuable journal, the following statement, should you deem it worthy a place in your columns.

I first went down on the remains of the old Port Royal on the 29th August, and found that what I had heard with regard to some of the buildings being seen when the water was clear was correct. I landed among the remains of ten or more houses, the walls of which were from 3 to 10 feet above the sand. The day was rather cloudy and I could only get a view of a small portion at a time.

After repairing H.M. Ship Valorous, I went down again on the 9th instant, at what is called at Port Royal, “The Church Buoy,” but which ought to be called the “Fort Buoy,” it being placed on the remains of old Fort James; but the day was unfavourable, the water being muddy—so that I could not see much; and being impressed with the idea that it must have been the remains of the church on which I was, my explorations that day were not satisfactory. About 12 o’clock (being then down four hours) the water cleared a little, and getting a better view I concluded that the ruins which I was on must have been those of a fort. But soon after I found a large granite stone somewhat the shape and size of a tombstone, which was covered with a coral formation, so that I could not tell whether it had an inscription or not. Fancying this stone to have been a tombstone, thereby indicating the vicinity of a churchyard, I was not satisfied what the character of the building could have been. I came to the surface about 1 o’clock determined to wait a more favourable day. In the meantime Mr. de Pass was so good as to obtain for me, from the collection of Henry Hutchings, Esq., a map of the old town as it stood before the earthquake, by which I learnt that the ruins, of the nature of which I had all along my doubts, were in fact the 59ruins of old Fort James, and that the Church stood about the east end of the present dockyard.

Monday, the 19th instant, being a very clear day, I went down about 2 o’clock, and had a very good view of the Fort. At times I could see objects 100 feet each away from me. The Fort forms an obtuse angle to the west, on a line with the north end of the hospital—the wall of the angle runs in a N.E. direction, the other in a S.S.E. The walls are built of brick, and are as solid as so much rock. I have traced and examined several of the embrasures and have no doubt but that the guns in them are covered with coral; that known as “brain stone,” being large and numerous on the fort. After being down about two hours, I found an iron gun in one of the embrasures almost covered in the ruins, with a heavy copper chain to the breech. After sending up the gun next day, I found the end of another chain not far from where the gun lay. On heaving it out of the sand and mud, I found it was attached to a granite stone similar to the one I had seen before. I have no doubt these stones were part of the embrasures and that the copper chains were used for slinging the guns. The gun which I found had no trunnions to it, and therefore could not have been used on a carriage.

I am of opinion, from what I have seen of old Port Royal, that many of the houses remained perfect after the earthquake, though sunk in the water, and that the sand has been thrown up, and the mud settled around and in them from time to time, until all the largest buildings are covered over, so that the remains of the houses which I have seen may have been the top part of the highest buildings; which is apparently the case from the irregularity of the heights.

I intend paying another visit to the ill-fated town, in a week or two; and I will take the first opportunity of informing you, and through you the public, of anything new that may come to my notice.

It would be interesting to know what became of the gun referred to.

Port Royal as a town, never recovered from the effects of the earthquake of June 17, 1692.

Shortly after, the town of Kingston rose on the mainland across the harbour, and thither much of the wealth of Port Royal went, and the principal commercial and shipping street was not unnaturally called Port Royal Street.

In August 1702, brave old Benbow sailed into Port Royal 60after his fight with Du Casse off Santa Marta, extending over five days (a fight which, thanks to his cowardly captains, was one of the darkest blots on Britannia’s shield) only to die here of his wounds two months later.... He was buried in Kingston parish church.

In 1703 arrived from Massachusetts one good foot company of volunteers, “the first men in armes that ever went out of this Province, or from the Shoar of America”: they were intended for a further expedition.

In January 1703–04, a fire destroyed that part of Port Royal which the earthquake had spared. The occurrence is thus described by Christian Lilly: “Between 11 and 12 of the clock in the morning a fire hapn’d thro carelessness to break out in a warehouse at Port Royall which before night consumed all ye Town, and left not one house of it standing, by which meanes a great many people, especially merchants are ruin’d. For this Town being scituated upon a small Cay, now, of about Thirty Acres of Land surrounded with the sea, and the whole place taken up with houses and the streets and lanes extreamly narrow, the poor people had not that conveniency of saving their goods as might have been expected in a place where they might have been more at large.”

In 1708, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, commander-in-chief of Jamaica, met and conquered a Spanish treasure ship, and though, owing to the cowardice of two of his captains, much of the treasure (said to have been worth from four to ten millions) was lost, Wager became a wealthy man. During his command (1707–9), a greater number of prizes were taken than at any former period of like duration.

On March 23, 1692–93, Beeston, in writing home, had said: “But there is little of Port Royal left, being now a perfect island of about twenty-five acres and too small to hold the trade and people.” After the fire a bill was passed in the Assembly to prevent the re-settling of the town, but this was warmly opposed and in October 1703 another bill was passed entitled “an Act for making the Key, whereon Fort Charles and Fort William are erected, a port of entry”; and in a letter written from Jamaica in 1712, 61Port Royal is referred to as a “small island about fourteen miles from Spanish Town”: In 1716, William Wood, in his preface to “The Laws of Jamaica” says, “The Town of Port Royal, formerly much larger and very populous, is built on a key, which before the great earthquake, joyned to an Isthmus of Land that divides the sea and the Harbour of Kingston,” and there is additional evidence that, at various stages in the history of the Palisadoes, channels were formed by the sea across what is, after all, nothing but a string of islands more or less closely connected by drifted sand and stone. And an engraving, in Long’s History, as late as 1774, shows it as an island.

A manuscript chart, in the Institute of Jamaica, entitled “A plan of the Harbour of Port Royal in Jamaica, survey’d in the year 1724, and carefully examin’d in the year 1728, by Capt. John Gascoigne,” tells of the severe shocks which the town and harbour have received within historic times. As we see by the map, the hurricane of 1722 once more cut it off from the isthmus to which it is now connected, if, indeed, the passage existing ten years before had silted up.

Professor Robert T. Hill, in “The Geology and Physical Geography of Jamaica,” writes:

The Kingston formation is the oldest of the formations of old gravel and other alluvium occurring upon the plains of the Liguanea type. This is the formation upon which the city of Kingston and suburbs are built, including the strip of land known as the Palisades, and the plain extending back of Kingston to the foot of the mountains. The material consists of boulders, gravel, and pebble of varying sizes, usually very angular, and representing every known material of the Blue Mountain series. These are embedded in a matrix of dull red arenaceous clay, producing a chocolate soil and derived from the Minho beds so completely exposed in situ in the mountains north of Kingston.

With reference to the chart, Mr. Charlton Thompson, R.N., the harbour master, wrote in 1907 as follows:

“I have always been of opinion that the Palisadoes were originally coral cays joined gradually by sand-spits. To my knowledge of Port Royal Point (thirty-one years), I am sure it had grown out about 50 feet during that time, which portion sank during the last earthquake; and the depressions or subsidences which took 62place then were all made-up land. There were also subsidences in the Palisadoes.”

The following account of the hurricane of 1722 above referred to is from “A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West Indies; in His Majesty’s ships the Swallow and Weymouth” by John Atkins, a naval surgeon (2nd edition, London, 1737).

The present hurricane was a week after our arrival; began at eight in the morning, two days before the change of the moon, gave at least forty-eight hours notice, by a noisy breaking of the waves upon the kays, very disproportioned to the breeze, a continued swell, without reflux of the water; and the two nights preceding, prodigious lightnings and thunder; which all the old experienced men foretold would be a hurricane; or that one already had happened at no great distance. I was ashore at Port Royal and found all the pilots returned from the windward part of the island, (where they customarily attend the coming down of ships,) and observing upon the unusual intumescence of the water, so great the day before, and beat so high, that our boats could not possibly put on shore at Gun Kay to take the men off that were set there, to the number of twenty, for trimming up our cask; themselves making signals not to attempt it. Betimes next morning, the wind began in flurrys at N.E. and flew quickly round to S.E. and S.S.E. where it continued the stress of the storm, bringing such quantities of water, that our little island was overflowed 4 foot at least; so that what with the fierce driving of shingles (wooden staves used instead of tiling upon their houses) about our ears, and the water floating their boats, empty hogheads, and lumber about the streets, those without doors were every moment in danger of being knocked on the head, or carried away by the stream. Within it was worse, for the waters sapping the foundations, gave continual and just apprehensions of the houses falling, as in effect half of them did, and buried their inhabitants! Nor indeed after the storm had began, was it safe to open a door, especially such as faced the wind, lest it should carry the roofs off; and escaping thence, there was no place of retreat, we remaining in a very melancholly scituation, both from wind and water. The perils of false brethren was nothing to it. It may be worth notice, what became of the purser in this common danger; I was regardless at first, as suspecting more of timidity in the people, till finding myself left alone proprietor of a shaking old house, the streets full of water and drift, with shingles flying about like arrows; I began to meditate a little more seriously upon my safety, and would have compounded all my credit in the victualling, my hoops, and bags, for one acre (as Gonzalo says in the Tempest) of barren ground, long heath, or brown furze, to have trod dry upon. Our neighbours 63had retreated towards the church, as the strongest building, and highest ground, which I was luckily too late to recover; but endeavouring to stem upwards for a safer station, was taken into a house in the lower street, with an old woman wading in the same manner from her ruined habitation. We were no sooner in, but new fears of this also falling, thrust us into the yard (the water then at eleven o’clock, breast high) where we helped one another upon a low brick-built outhouse, that being more out of the wind, and surrounded with others, kept the water still. The unhappiness of those who suffered in stronger, was their facing the wind, which brought the sea upon them with violence. A platform of one and twenty guns and mortars were drove some of them to the market-place; the two lines of houses next the sea, with the church, was undermined and levelled with the torrent, and in their ruin was our safety; for altho’ we had a greater depth, they were by such a bank made motionless. The whole rise of the water was computed at 16 or 18 foot, very admirable at a place where it is not ordinarily observed to flow above one or two. At 5 in the evening the waters abated, and with so quick a retreat as to leave the streets dry before 6; when every one was congratulating his own safety in condolancies upon the loss of their friends. Of 50 sail in this harbour, only four men-of-war and 2 merchant ships rid it out, but with all their masts and booms blown away. All the men we left at Gun Kay were washed off and perished, except one Indian that drove into harbour upon a broken gallows that had been there erected. Wrecks and drowned men were everywhere seen along shore; general complaints of loss at land (least at St. Jago) which made it a melancholy scene, and to finish the misfortune, the slackness of the sea-breezes, calms, and lightning, stagnating waters, broods of insects thence, and a shock or two of earthquake that succeeded to the hurricane, combined to spread a baneful influence, and brought on a contagious distemper, fatal for some months through the island. There being no volcanos, the earthquakes felt here are always after great rains, on a parched earth that admits their penetration; and possibly nigher the coast, as at Port Royal, may be from the sea in a long process of time undermining in some manner a loose earth, or finding in its deep recesses new caverns; or subterranean heats working towards them, the dreadful contest shocks.

The hurricane occurred on the tenth anniversary of one that visited Jamaica on August 28, 1712. In it about four hundred persons perished, and August 28 was appointed by the House of Assembly as a “perpetual anniversary fast.”

At this time it was “ordered that all masters of sloops and vessels employed as sugar-drogers in and about this 64island, shall before they are permitted to pass His Majesty’s fort at Port Royal, be obliged to bring one load of stones each, in order to repair the damages done to the fortifications by the late hurricane.” The Marquis Duquesne got into trouble with the assembly owing to the manner in which he enforced the order, and generally in his duties as captain of the fort, and had to vindicate his position, in “The Marquis Duquesne vindicated in a letter to a noble lord,” published in 1728.

In a petition presented by the garrison of Fort Charles to a committee of the Assembly that was inspecting the fort in September 1725, the following representations occur:

That abundance of us from time to time have been swept away into our graves; besides several of us, by reson of divers sorts of lingering distempers, are rendered incapable of doing further service:

“... You are sensible, sirs, our beds are the hard stones, our covering nothing but the expanded canopy of the heavens! This certainly is very grievous, especially when we see the company at Spanish-Town lie in beds, and having barracks fit for men of their function. Are they more loyal subjects, or more dutiful soldiers, than we are? Be it far from us to reflect on them or their happiness! but with sorrow and regret we behold our own misfortunes.

In 1733 Fort Charles was considered not sufficient protection to Kingston Harbour and a fort at Mosquito Point was suggested; this was the origin of Fort Augusta.

In 1734 was passed an act to vest Lands in Port Royal in His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors for the use of His ships of war. The property consisted of “Lands, tenements, hereditaments or shoal water.” The act, in the edition of 1738, is accompanied by a plan of land proposed to be acquired to the north-east of Port Royal. From this it appears that there was at the time a town wall on the sea front.

In the first half of the eighteenth century smuggling was prevalent in the British colonies, and subject to violent repression on the part of Spain. The well-known case in 1731 of Robert Jenkins, master of the brig Rebecca, who lost his ear on his way from Jamaica to London was not unique. Rear-Admiral Stewart, who then commanded on the 65Jamaica station, saw that the fault lay largely with the Jamaica merchants, but the English merchants made their wrongs felt in the House of Parliament, and Vernon was amongst their warmest supporters. He pleaded for the destruction of Porto Bello (where the Spanish guardacostas fitted out), and offered to effect it with six ships; which he did to his own renown and the gratification of the English nation in general and the Jamaica merchants in particular. While in command on the Jamaica station, Vernon issued an order, which was quickly adopted by the Admiralty, and made marked improvement in the discipline and efficiency of the British navy, and enriched the English language with the word grog. The order was to the effect that the sailors should qualify their rum with water—a quart of water to half a pint of rum. The sailors did not like their “grog,” as they nicknamed the new drink, adopting the nickname of Vernon, derived, it is said, from his using a grogram boat cloak.

Writing about 1740, Leslie, in his “New and Exact Account of Jamaica,” says:—“Port Royal was once the fairest seaport in America, it flowed in Riches and Trade, now it is only a small place, but yet it consists of three handsome streets, several cross lanes and a fine Church. They have a Hospital for sick or disabled Sailors, and there is lately built a Yard for the King’s Naval Stores and conveniency of Workmen employed about His Majesty’s Ships of War.”

Although doubt had been expressed as to the wisdom of appointing Port Royal as a rendezvous, “for fear of the soldiers staying too long there, and getting sickness, by drinking too much rum, as has usually been the case,” on January 17, 1740–41, by far the largest force that ever assembled in Jamaica waters was gathered together. On that day twenty-four ships of the line under Sir Chaloner Ogle, with nine thousand soldiers under Brigadier Wentworth, reached Port Royal as a reinforcement for Vernon’s fleet. The attempt on Cartagena was a miserable failure, owing to divided command, lack of ability on Wentworth’s part, disease caused by the rainy season, and general mismanagement, 66which was exposed by Smollett, the novelist, who was surgeon’s mate on one of Ogle’s vessels. He married a Jamaica lady (the original of Narcissa in “Roderick Random”) and lived for a time in Jamaica.

Ill-feeling also between Vernon and Wentworth was responsible for the lack of success which attended the attack on St. Jago de Cuba.

During a storm in 1744 the larger part of the fleet was luckily at sea under Sir Chaloner Ogle, but there were in the harbour nine men-of-war and ninety-six merchant-ships. One hundred and four were stranded, wrecked or foundered, so that only the Rippon rode it out with the loss of her masts. A great number of marines perished.

We learn from a petition from the inhabitants of Port Royal to the Assembly, in October 1751, that during the hurricane of that year, the sea “by forcing up the sand to a level with the wall, has rendered it quite unserviceable, as it gained, by that means, a free and easy passage into the town, and filled the greatest part of it with such a quantity of water, that many of the inhabitants, in the extremity of the weather, were obliged to abandon their houses, and fly for shelter to places of greater safety.” It then appeared that the law of 1717 arranging for the repairing of the wall had been a dead letter since 1737.

When Rodney assumed command in 1771, he found that apartments only were provided for the admiral at Port Royal, and it was doubtless due to his action that “Admiral’s Pen” near Kingston (the present poor-house), was purchased just before he left in 1774. One of the chief objects to which he devoted his attention while on this station was the watering of the fleet—the water having hitherto been purchased by the naval authorities; and he, after investigation at Kingston and the Rio Cobre, decided on Rock Fort, Vernon’s old spot, at Harbour Head as a source of supply. The sailors, when they found themselves spared the task of rolling heavy water casks long distances in the hot sun, said “God bless the Admiral,” but when they realized that improved methods of watering 67meant shorter leave on shore, they changed their tune and said, “The devil take the Admiral.”

Till about the year 1902, when pipes were laid along the Palisadoes to Port Royal, that town had its water conveyed to it, from Rodney’s source at Rock Fort, in a sailing ship fitted for the purpose.

Rodney, in order to get timely notice of the approach of foreign ships, had a look-out erected on the top of the Healthshire Hills on the opposite side of the harbour from Port Royal; and on the site of Rodney’s Look-out there is still a mark for navigation.

It is quite likely that during the voyage which Nelson made to the West Indies in 1771–72 in a merchant ship he visited Jamaica, as the ship belonged to a Jamaica firm; but no such visit has been recorded.

On September 19, 1771, Rodney wrote from Port Royal:

Since my letter to their Lordships [of the Admiralty] of the 4th instant, giving their Lordships an account of the violent earthquake which happened the day before, which has been attended with frequent shocks till within these few days and, in the opinion of the inhabitants, done more damage than any since the great one in 1692, particularly in the towns of Port Royal and Kingston, in the former of which there is not a single house that has not been damaged, I find His Majesty’s dockyard has suffered considerably. The pitch-house is split up the middle of the arch, the chimney thrown down, the coppers and chimney where the people cook while at the wharf are rendered useless; the smith’s shop split in several places, and so shaken as to be quite unserviceable. The foundations of the capstern and mast-houses have likewise received much damage.

His Majesty’s hospital at Port Royal seems to have suffered more than any other building, the chimneys shaken down, the walls shattered; the partition walls and gable end of the northern wing, and a southern wall next the dispensary greatly damaged.

As the sick men were very much alarmed, and really in danger, I found it necessary to order the surgeon and agent to repair it with all possible despatch. There have been nine shocks since the first, but as each has appeared weaker, I hope we shall experience no more of them.

The most brilliant period of Port Royal’s glory was perhaps the command of Sir Peter Parker, from 1778–1782.

68Of all the forts which have been erected from time to time round the coast of Jamaica for its protection the oldest, and most important from an historic standpoint, is undoubtedly Fort Charles at Port Royal. It was not the first fort built at The Point, for Sedgwick writing home in November 1655, to the Commissioners of the Admiralty, said, “Are building a fort at the harbour’s mouth, and 9 or 10 guns are mounted.”

The construction of Fort Charles, named after Charles II, was commenced in the reign of that monarch. When originally built it was washed by the sea on two sides. In course of time Chocalatta Hole became silted up, and is now the parade-ground. It is thus referred to in a “Journal Kept by Colonel William Beeston from his first coming to Jamaica,” in connection with a fear that the Spaniards, enraged by the loss of St. Jago de Cuba, might meditate revenge, and make some attempt on the island:

“Therefore what money was due to the King was called in, and in November [1662] about forty men hired to work on the fort, which is now called Fort Charles, with intent to finish it, which hitherto lay open, with only a round tour of stone and banks of board and sand towards the sea....”

69And on May 29, 1678, he writes: “Being the King’s birthday, and all the flags abroad upon all the forts, the great flag of Fort Charles blew down, which we doubted was ominous, being so noted a day and on the most noted Fort....”

The fort was “not shook down, but much shattered” by the earthquake of 1692. It was subsequently reconstructed in 1699 by Colonel Christian Lilley, who had laid out the city of Kingston four years earlier, and who in 1734 was captain of the fort.

From the earliest times the members of the House of Assembly were admitted to view the forts and fortifications, and a joint committee of the Assembly and Council used to report annually on Fort Charles.

Long, writing in 1774, says: “The Captain of the fort [Fort Charles] has of late years been appointed by the Governor’s warrant, upon the nomination of his Ministry. His salary is only £109 10s. per annum, but the profits of this post make it far more considerable.”

In June 1779, war was declared with Spain, and on the 11th of that month Nelson was promoted to the command of the Hinchinbrook, thus becoming a post-captain while yet four months under twenty-one years of age. The ship was then at sea, and had not returned by July 28, when Nelson wrote from Port Royal to his friend Captain Locker, and she apparently did not return till September 1. During this period Nelson was in command of the batteries at Port Charles, as he twice mentions in his published correspondence—once when writing under date August 12, 1779, to Locker, and once in the “Sketch of My Life,” written twenty years later. At this time Jamaica was, to use Nelson’s own words, “turned upside down” by fear of capture of a French fleet. In his own letter to Locker he says, speaking of the measures of defence taken:

Five thousand men were encamped between the Ferry and Kingston, 1000 at Fort Augusta, 300 at the Apostles’ Battery, and we expect to have 500 in Fort Charles, where I am to command. Lion, Salisbury, Charon, and Janus in a line from the Point to the outer shoal; Ruby and Bristol in the narrows going to Kingston, 70to rake any ships that may attack Fort Augusta; Pomona and Speke Indiaman above Rock Fort, and Lowestoffe at the end of the dock wall.... I have fairly stated our situation, and I leave you in England to judge what stand we shall make; I think you must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak French.

In his sketch of his life, Nelson tells us:

In this critical state [i.e. fear of invasion] I was by both Admiral and General entrusted with the command of the Batteries at Port Royal, and I need not say, as the defence of this place was the key to the port of the whole naval force, the town of Kingston, and Spanish Town, it was the most important place in the whole island.

The admiral was Sir Peter Parker, Nelson’s lifelong friend and patron; the general was the Governor, Dalling.

This was Nelson’s first actual command after he was posted, though it lasted probably but three or four weeks, and gave him no opportunity of showing what he could do in that capacity.

Nelson’s reputation still survives in Port Charles itself, and there still exists his wooden “quarter-deck” from which he could, while pacing up and down, command a view to windward.

There is also an inscription to his memory in gilt letters on a white marble tablet fixed into the brickwork of the west wall of Port Charles. In size the tablet is 2½ feet by 1½ feet, and the following is a copy of the inscription:

Nelson’s memory was kept green in Jamaica for many years. Monk Lewis saw, at Black River, at New Year, 1816, a “Nelson’s Car” with “Trafalgar” written on it, which formed part of the procession of Blue Girls in the John Canoe festivities. But there is no monument to the great hero in Jamaica as there is at Barbados; and yet the larger island owes just as much to Nelson as does the smaller.

The following, amongst others, commanded at Fort Charles: Major Man (1661–64), Major Byndloss (1664–65), Sir James Modyford (1667), Col. Theodore Cary (1675), Col. Charles Morgan (1682), Col. Molesworth (1683), Col. James O’Brien (1691–92), Peter Beckford (1692), Col. Knight (1703), Major Howard (1713), Col. Joseph Delawnay (1715), Gabriel, Marquis Duquesne (1723–25), Captain Dalrymple (1730–33), Col. Christian Lilly (1733–35), Captain Charles Knowles (1734), Col. Philips (1737), Captain Newton (1742), Captain Hamilton (1743), Lieut.-Col. Spragge (1753), Captain Trower (1762), Exelbee Lawford (1776), John Dalling (1776–77), Horatio Nelson (1777), Edward FitzGerald (1777–79), Montgomery Mathan (1779–80), Hans Carsden (1780).

A portrait bust in wood, which formed the figurehead of the Aboukir, port guardship from 1862 to 1877, and now rests in the dockyard (alongside the figureheads of the Imaum, the port guardship from 1856 to 1862; the Argent, the port guardship from 1877 to 1903, and the Megaera, wrecked on Bare Bush Cay in 1843), was until quite lately thought to represent Nelson; but recent investigation has tended to prove that it is a portrait of the celebrated general Sir Ralph Abercromby, who received his death wound in the hour of victory at the battle of Alexandria, on August 1, 721801 (when he was conveyed to Nelson’s old flagship, the Foudroyant): the blind eye of the soi-disant Nelson has been removed, and the figure painted to represent Abercromby. If this be the true version, one rather wonders what wag had the audacity to transform it into a Nelson.

After a cruise of a few months in his ship, the Hinchinbrook, Nelson wrote to Locker from Port Royal on January 23, 1780, “Our mess is broken up. Captain Cornwallis and myself live together.... I have been twice given over since you left this country with that cursed disorder, the gout.” Early in 1780, Nelson went on that ill-fated expedition to Nicaragua, originated by Dalling, the governor, in which Dr. Dancer, the island botanist, and the unfortunate Colonel Despard took part.

This expedition, while it laid the foundation of his subsequent fame, nearly cost Nelson his life. On his return to Port Royal he was suffering so much from fever and dysentery that he had to be carried ashore in his cot to the lodging-house of his former black nurse, Couba Cornwallis, a favourite nurse with naval officers. From Couba’s hands Nelson passed under the care of Sir Peter and Lady Parker, who first nursed him at Admiral’s Pen, and afterwards sent him to Admiral’s Mountain^[4] (as the Admiral’s hill residence was named) to recuperate; but there he missed their kind attention, and wished himself back with Couba. While at Jamaica Nelson made many friends—in addition to his naval companions, Parker, Prince William, Locker and Collingwood—such as Simon Taylor, a wealthy sugar planter and Hercules Ross, the Navy agent, to whose son Horatio, afterwards a celebrated sportsman, Nelson stood godfather. A portrait of Charles II (said to have been painted in 1679 and to have been in the possession of Bishop Falconer), presented by Hercules Ross, for many years hung in the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers’ mess at Fort Charles, and now adorns the former residence of the commodores, now used as the mess room.

Towards the close of Parker’s service at Jamaica, Rodney 73gained his celebrated victory over the brave De Grasse off Dominica, on April 12, 1782. De Grasse after fighting hard all day till only himself and two men remained unwounded, at the setting of the sun and the arrival of the Barfleur fresh to the fray, lowered with his own hands his flag on his ship the Ville de Paris, the gay Lutetia’s present to Louis XV, and thus completed the British victory which had commenced the moment that Rodney’s flagship the Formidable had broken the French line.

On April 24, news reached Jamaica from St. Lucia, that both French and English fleets had sailed. The worst was feared, and the suspense was intense; but on the morrow arrived the joyful news from Rodney that Jamaica was saved from invasion.

On the morning of Monday, April 29, Rodney’s fleet with nine prizes was seen approaching, and though it was evident that it would be near sunset before the ships could be moored we can imagine that that would not have restrained many from starting off from Kingston to Port Royal to witness the triumphal entry.

Those, however, who remained behind and lined every vantage spot of view and every housetop, witnessed a goodly sight, for a long line of tall ships, on the tallest of which flew the lilies of France with the Red Cross of St. George of England surmounting it, followed by ship after ship each bearing similar signs of subjugation, and attended by a brave show of their captors, swept in slow but stately array past the Palisadoes with the last of the sea breeze, and rounding the point brought up in good order, their enormous wooden anchor stocks causing such a splash as they fell from their bows as to be visible by help of a good glass from Kingston Church tower.

The Ville de Paris, was, it is said, the first first-rate man-of-war ever taken and carried into port by any commander of any nation. A painting by Pine, of Rodney in action aboard the Formidable, attended by his principal officers, is, with a volume of charts taken from De Grasse’s cabin, and a series of prints illustrating the engagement, in the Institute of Jamaica. The prizes were sent home under convoy, which was of course a special one. In those days the planters, merchants and others interested 74were wont to meet and settle the rates of freight to be paid by the fleet of merchantmen which went home four times a year, under the convoy of a man-of-war. In war time the rates were nearly three times as high as in peace. The merchantmen were then wont to assemble at Bluefields in order to await their convoy for England.

The Ville de Paris and the other prizes encountered a hurricane on their way to England on September 16; and being hove to on the wrong tack, and perhaps overladen with the captured battering train and other stores, besides being weakened by the heavy fire to which they had been exposed, they with the exception of the Ardent foundered with 1200 men; several ships of the convoy also sank.

A series of four aquatints by Robert Dodd, published in 1783, illustrates the fate of this convoy with special reference to the Lady Juliana.

It is worthy of record that two sons of Flora Macdonald went down in the late flagship of the Comte De Grasse.

In this connection the following extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of the West India Merchants—now the West India Committee—held on January 29, 1782, Mr. Long presiding, may be of interest:

The following letter from the Chairman, and Deputy Chairman, to Mr. Stephens, was read.

Sir,—We take the Liberty of desiring you to submit to the Lords of the Admiralty, to recommend to their Commander in Chief, the request we made at the Board some time ago, of having early and frequent Convoys home, both from Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, instead of the Ships being sent home in such large and delayed Fleets, which in the present Situation of Affairs, is found to be attended with great Inconveniences, and very severe losses, besides, a greater Object of Attention to the Enemy.—Early Convoys are particularly desirable, from the Produce being extremely wanted, on account of its scarcity, and coming home in a favourable season for safe Passages, the Strength of the Convoys may be regulated by the number of the Trade in each.

We decline naming the Times of the Appointment of the Convoys (as has been usually done) in order to prevent their expected arrival in Europe being known to our Enemies.

75From 1796 to 1800, Sir Hyde Parker was commander-in-chief of Jamaica, and the cruising ships as stationed by him were exceptionally fortunate, and brought into Port Royal a great many prizes, merchantmen, privateers and ships of war, “by which both himself and his country were materially benefited.”

From October 1782 to July 1783, Nelson was cruising under Hood in West Indian waters, and more than once put into Port Royal.

In 1783, William IV, as a midshipman on the celebrated Barfleur, came into Port Royal, the first prince of the blood royal of England to put foot on Jamaica’s shore. He then made the acquaintance of Couba Cornwallis, the chère amie of the admiral of that name and the kindly nurse of Nelson, who lived till 1848.

Lady Nugent in her voluminous Journal, does not make much reference to Port Royal. On their arrival in July 1801, she records:

It is now seven o’clock in the evening and we have only just anchored in Port Royal Harbour. An express is just sent off to the Governor at Spanish Town. Colonel Ramsay of the Artillery, and Captain Coates of the 69th Regiment, with a Navy officer from Lord Hugh Seymour, came on board immediately. I am disappointed. I hoped to have landed instantly, but there is so much etiquette about it, that it is settled we are not to stir till to-morrow morning.

29th [July]. General N. landed at six o’clock under salutes from the forts and all the ships of war in the harbour. The Ambuscade fired on his leaving the deck, and I lay down to my cot, with a pillow over my ears, the noise was so stunning.

All this is in marked contrast to the simpler landing of a governor in these days—even on his first arrival.

In March 1804, Lady Nugent records:

Dress by candle-light, and our whole party proceeded to Port Royal where the Admiral gave us a grand breakfast on board the Hercules.... The lion for the morning for the gentlemen was a large cannon, taken from the French, but I own it did not interest me much.

This was probably one of those cannons which were removed to the present King’s House on the shutting up of the dockyard.

76In 1806, Port Royal saw the victorious Duckworth bring in three French ships taken off Santo Domingo after what was called, before the days of Togo, “one of the completest victories on record.”

In the memorable year 1805, Dacres was commander-in-chief of Jamaica, and he detained at Port Royal for the protection of the island four of the six ships (of Cochrane’s squadron), which had come out in chase of Missiessy, and Nelson had hoped would reach him at Barbados, when he sailed in pursuit of the French fleet under Villeneuve, immediately before Trafalgar.

With Trafalgar, Port Royal’s chief importance as a naval station may be said to have ended. Nothing of great moment, except the almost complete destruction of the town by fire in 1815, occurred afterwards, although Jamaica remained as a separate station for some twenty years more.

Monk Lewis writes in February 1816:

The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of them at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal, which, last year, was destroyed by fire: some of the houses were rebuilding; but it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of the half-burnt buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined inhabitants.

Bleby records in his “Scenes in the Caribbean Sea” (1854) having seen as he entered the harbour in 1831, several slavers captured by British cruisers and sent in here to be condemned and broken up.

In “The Wanderings of a Marine,” a series of letters to a friend comprising descriptive sketches at sea and on shore, at home and abroad, written in 1831—a manuscript volume in the West India Library of the Institute of Jamaica, we read:

As we approached Port Royal Bay a novel and pleasing sight was again displayed to our view. The hills now gradually gave place to gentle slopes and green knolls till towards the entrance the land became perfectly level. Still advancing, we found ourselves in a narrow channel between the projecting headlands beautifully ornamented with cocoanut trees and separated from each other by a very small distance, scarcely sufficient to permit 77two large vessels to pass. At the extremity of these headlands, where the bay begins to sweep, there are placed two very strong forts, and there is a third at the opposite side so that no enemy can force an entrance if a good outlook is kept. The water in this channel is remarkably clear, and exhibits with great distinctness the tops and chimneys of houses at the bottom. It is now many years since a dreadful earthquake destroyed great part of the town of Port Royal and covered it with the sea, by which means the site of the harbour was completely changed, and what was formerly dry land, on which stood the town, became part of the entrance of the bay.

In the “Statistical Report of the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding Among the Troops in the West Indies,” published as a Parliamentary paper in 1838, the following is the account given of Port Royal:

... The barracks stand at the very extremity of the peninsula on which the town is built, only three feet above the level of the sea, and frequently at high water a great portion of the parade-ground is inundated by the tide. The hospital is in a narrow street leading from the town to the barracks, and consists of a ground floor and upper storey, divided into six wards, with balconies in front and rear....

... During the above period [1817–1836] the average mortality has been about 113 per thousand of the strength annually, but it exhibits remarkable variations at different periods. Last year it was less than 1 per cent., while in 1825 about a third part of the force was cut off; thus demonstrating how difficult it is to form any fair estimate of the influence of these climates, except on the average of a long series of years. This station suffered very severely from the epidemic fevers which raged throughout the island in 1819, 1822, and 1825. A large proportion of the force also was cut off in 1821, when most of the other stations were comparatively healthy....

On comparing the ratio of deaths by each of the above classes of diseases with that which has prevailed generally throughout the island, there appears little difference in any except fevers, which have been rather under the average, particularly since 1830; and so irregular has been their operation that, though in 1819 and 1825, they cut off a third part of the force; in 1831 not a death took place from them.

On visiting Jamaica in 1844, while the captain and the other passengers of the ship, which was bound for Savanna-la-Mar, went up the harbour, to see Kingston, Gosse spent his time in examining the fauna and flora of the Palisadoes.

78It is true there was little of the luxuriance or beauty that we associate with tropical scenery here. It is a low land of sand nearly nine miles in length; but scarcely anywhere more than a few hundred yards in breadth, forming a natural breakwater that separates the broad lake-like harbour of Kingston from the Caribbean Sea. I found it barren enough; but it was all strange, and to feet which for nearly two months had not felt the firm earth, even a run along the beach was exhilarating. The graceful cocoanut palm sprang up in groups from the water’s edge, waving its feathery fronds over the rippling waters that dashed about its fibrous foot. Great bushes of prickly-pear and other Cacti were growing on the low summit of the bank, covering large spaces of ground, with their impenetrable masses, presenting a formidable array of spines: as did also a species of Acacia that grew in thickets and single trees. All along the line of high water lay heaps of seaweeds drying in the sun, among which was particularly abundant a species of Padina, closely resembling the pretty “Peacock’s tail” of our own shores, though less regularly beautiful. Sponges of various forms, and large Fan-corals with the gelatinous flesh dried on the horny skeleton, were also thrown up on the higher beach; and I found in some abundance, a Coralline, of a soft consistence, and of a bright grass green hue, each branch of which was terminated by a radiating tuft of slender filaments.

Shells were very scarce on the sea beach; but on the harbour side many species were found in the crevices and pools of the low rocks, and just within the margin of the water. All were small, and few presented any facts worthy of being noticed: they were chiefly of the genera Turbo, Phasianella, Planaxis, Buccinum, Vermetus, and Fusus; the bivalves Ostrea, Anomia, Spondylus, Avicula, Arca, Cardium, Venus, and Pholas. Several specimens of a brilliant little Choetodon were swimming and darting about the narrow, but deep pools; they were not more than an inch in length, marked with alternate bands of black and golden yellow. In the vertical position in which they swim, with the eye of the observer looking down upon them, they appear to bear the slender proportions of ordinary fishes; and it is only by accident as in turning, or on capturing one, that we detect the peculiar form, high and vertically flattened, of this curious genus.

For the naturalist there is a work of lasting interest in the form of a small rare volume published in 1855, by Richard Hill, the friend and collaborator of Gosse, entitled “A Week at Port Royal.” Even in his day it was “a place for the memory.”

One passage records that:

Admiral Sir Charles Hamilton related that in 1780 the submerged houses were plainly discernible between the town as it now 79stands and the usual anchorage of vessels of war. Bryan Edwards says, in 1793, the ruins were visible in clear weather from the boats which sailed over them; and Lieutenant B. Jeffrey, of the Royal Navy, states that when engaged in the surveys made between the years 1824 and 1835, he repeatedly traced sites of buildings where the depth of the water is from four to six fathoms. When there was little wind, he perceived traces of houses, especially distinct when he used the instrument called “the diver’s eye” let down below the ripple of the wave.

A later work, published in 1893 by Major M. M[artin] and others, entitled “Port Royal and its Harbour,” is of more general interest.

In 1891, at the time of the exhibition, Jamaica was visited by the present King and his elder brother, and Port Royal was not overlooked; nor was it when Prince Albert visited Jamaica in the spring of 1913.

In 1894, experimental borings were made by the military authorities with a view to obtaining a supply of fresh water, but these were abandoned when a depth of 270 feet had been reached.

By the irony of fate, the impetus given a few years since to British naval development was destined to result not in the increase in importance, but in the withdrawal of the remnants of the faded glory, of a fort which was formerly one of the principal advance guards of Britannia’s realm.

A shadow of coming events was cast in 1903 by the sale of the old depot ship, the Urgent, which for many years, after serving as a troop ship, had swung to the tide at the entrance to the harbour, which before the days of monster vessels boasted that it could hold the navies of the world. By a special order in council the commodore then flew for a short time his broad pennant in the dockyard instead of in the Urgent, which was destined to spend her last days in the inglorious capacity of a coal hulk in Boston harbour. Then the edict went forth that the office of commodore, which in 1838 replaced that of admiral, when Jamaica ceased to be an independent command, was to be abolished, and on March 31, 1905, Commodore Fisher struck his flag.

Of later years Port Royal has become most important as a military fort; if that glory were taken from it, it would 80sink almost into the insignificance of its neighbour Port Henderson, across the harbour’s mouth—where the old Aboukir, rebuilt, does duty as a storehouse, and where memory still lingers of the days when it formed a seaside resort for the gay folk of St. Jago de la Vega—and it would be without Port Henderson’s importance as a banana port.

Its ancient glory was recalled on September 10, 1914, when a large crowd assembled to see H.M.S. Essex bring in as prize the Hamburg-Amerika line steamer Bethania with five hundred naval reservists on board.

It is to be hoped that the completion of the Panama Canal may give to Port Royal a new era of commercial prosperity, unaccompanied by the drawbacks which attended its acquisition of wealth in the seventeenth century.

The parish of St. Catherine derived its name from the queen of Charles II., who was king of England when the parish was formed. In the first act in which it is mentioned it is correctly spelled Katharine. It consists of what before the passing of law 20 of 1867 constituted the parishes of St. Catherine, St. Dorothy, St. John and St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. St. Thomas-in-the-Vale was probably named after Sir Thomas Lynch. St. Dorothy, Roby, in his “Memorials of the Cathedral Church and Parish of St. Catherine” (1831), conjectures, received its name in compliment to Dorthy Wale, who had probably a large estate there.

Passage Fort, at first known as The Passage, probably so called by the Spaniards as being their place of embarkation from St. Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), situated at the west end of Kingston harbour, first appears in the annals of Jamaica as the landing-place of a predatory expedition fitted out chiefly in Barbados and St. Kitts in 1642 by a certain Captain William Jackson, of whom little is known but of whose expedition a graphic account is given in a manuscript in the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum entitled: “CXVIII—Mercurius Americanus—A Briefe Journall, or a succinct and true relation of the most Remarkable Passages observed in the Voyage undertaken by Captain William Jackson to the West Indies or Continent of America. Anno Domini, 1642, September 27,” reprinted in “The West India Committee Circular,” May 9, 1911—January 16, 1912. The date, September 27, 1642, it may be mentioned, is the date of sailing, not of the writing of the account.

82Richard Norwood, who was a minister of religion and a school teacher, writing under date May 14, 1645, from Somers Islands, now known as Bermuda, to the Governor and Company of Adventurers to the Somers Islands, alluded to the time when of late the valiant and victorious General Capt. Jackson arrived after his voyage through the West Indies, and added “it was doubtful how things would go.”

After attempts more or less successful on various islands and the Spanish main, Jackson, in the Charles, accompanied by the Dolphin and the Valentine, put into Port Royal harbour on March 25, 1643. After trying the west coast of the harbour, where they perceived “noe passage,” they interrogated some prisoners and were led to Passage Fort “at a place where we found an Old Trench and a storehouse of Timber, lately sett by but not fully finished,” where, after a skirmish with both horse and foot of the enemy, they took the fort and marched past “divers workes,” one of which they dismantled, into Spanish Town. Jackson’s men were so pleased that they wished “to sett by their stacon here”; but the general, bent on robbing the Spaniards, had no taste for bucolic simplicity and gave up the town for “200 Beaves and 10,000 weight of cassavi bread for ye victualling of our ships, besides 20 Beaves every day for ye general expense till our departure and 7,000 pieces of Eight.” After spending sixteen days in “salting up our Beaves” Jackson and his men sailed away, but a few days later took a Spanish frigate “in an Harbour next to that where wee had formerly ridd at ankor,” probably Old Harbour.

The most important event, however, in the history of Passage Fort is the taking of Jamaica by the English in 1655. After an inexcusable failure on Hispaniola (or, to give it its original name, Haiti), due in some measure to silly jealousy between the naval and military authorities, when, to use Venables’s own words, passion usurped the seat of reason, and also to want of care—one might almost say of honesty—on the part of those responsible for the organization of the expedition, Penn and Venables, joint 83commanders of an expedition intended “to assault the Spaniard in the West Indies,” entered what we now call Kingston harbour on May 10, 1655, and anchored at about 11 A.M. On nearing the island it had been proclaimed to the whole army, as a result of the cowardice displayed in the attack on Hispaniola, that whoever should be found to turn his back on the enemy and run away, the next officer (that brought up the rear of that division) should immediately run him through, on penalty of death if he failed to do it.

There were thirty-eight ships in the three squadrons, and about seven thousand troops, without counting the sea regiment, who numbered nearly one thousand more.

A few shots fired into the fort from the Martin (one of the smallest of the fleet, carrying but twelve guns and sixty men), which was run ashore as near the fort as possible, and the landing of the troops, seemed to have sufficed to disperse the Spaniards, whose best soldier, a major, had been disabled by a shot. They left three guns mounted in the fort.

Thus Jamaica was captured by a wretched army without the loss of a man. Colonel Clarke, who had died at sea on the 9th from wounds received at Hispaniola, was buried at Passage Fort on May 11.

84The following account, signed W.B., and written probably by William Burrows, who was Sir William Penn’s chief clerk in the Navy Office after the Restoration, is taken from the journal of the Swiftsure:

The landing-places are two, and are only banks supported with stakes, a matter of twenty yards long towards the water; all the rest being trees and bushes, among which can be no good going ashore. At the more eastward, where we landed, we saw the ordnance the Spaniards left; the army having landed at the other, within that to the westward. A pretty parcel of ground is cleared within the landing-places. About a furlong and a half thence, the way leads into the wood, which continues till within a quarter of a mile of the town; all the way being even, without hills, and a fair path for eight to march abreast. At the issuing out of the wood begins the Savanna, which stretches about, and is very fair and plain to the westward of the town; so that I deemed there might be room enough for 50,000 men to draw up in battalia.

The Rio Cobre has, since the conquest of the island, brought down so much sand and deposited it at its mouth that the site of Passage Fort is now some four or five hundred yards off the sea. In dry weather, it now meanders through a new course which it cut for itself in 1838, across the beach to the harbour, giving no idea of the power which it acquires in the rainy season. Here, as of old, is there “no good going ashore,” the slope of the beach being very gradual.

In “The Present State of Jamaica” (1683) we read: “Going from Port Royal to St. Jago de la Vega, people land at Passage, where a fort was in Col. Doyly’s time, and there is about thirty houses that are storehouses, alehouses, and horse keepers, and hackney coaches; this being the greatest passage in the island, it is two leagues from Port Royal by sea, and six miles from St. Jago by land.”

Totally destroyed by the earthquake of 1692, the village was but partially rebuilt, and was, when Long wrote his history (1774), of small importance, consisting of about fifteen houses, chiefly inhabited by wharfingers, warehouse keepers and the masters of wherries and hackney chaises, which plied with passengers to and from Port Royal and Spanish Town. Large ships could not lie alongside as 85there was not sufficient depth of water; and for this reason it was in a measure superseded by Port Henderson, where the depth of water is greater; but, with the abandonment of Spanish Town as the seat of government, both villages gradually diminished, and Passage Fort is to-day a mere fishing hamlet.

Richard Hill, in his “A Week at Port Royal” (1855), says:

The early maps of Saint Catherine’s show that there have occurred deviations in the course of the Rio Cobre, that are not easily to be reconciled by abundant rains. Antecedent to the discovery of the West Indies, the embouchure of the river was perceptively in the ponds, shut in by the narrow belt of land on which Fort Augusta stands, the river having been at that time more of a surface stream, and striking to the sea due south; the outlet curving northward, and embaying Passage Fort. At the time of the conquest of the island by the English the river flowed in an opposite direction due north, coursing the foot of the Caymanas Mountains, and making the present lagoons in the upper part of that plain its channel, seeking the sea southward, through what is now an independent stream, called the Ferry River (Fresh River). In 1722, in the midst of an extraordinary rain-storm, this channel was suddenly quitted, and a straight line made eastward. The settling waters, as they reached the Harbour of Kingston, impeded by the easterly winds, regurgitated through the lakelet into which they gathered themselves, and digging out the soil at the foot of the mountains, made the present lagoons, increasing the sea-board lands of Hunt’s Bay 3000 feet (three thousand).

In Spanish Town, the ancient capital, although there is nothing to speak to us of the native Arawâk, we can perhaps, better than anywhere else in the island, picture to ourselves the deeds of the Spaniards in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century; and especially the long struggles between the people’s or rather planters’ representatives and the government in the House of Assembly for a century and a half; together with the political and social entertainments at King’s House, as narrated for one short period in the graphic pages of Lady Nugent’s Journal, until, with the removal of the government to Kingston by Sir John Peter Grant, Spanish Town was shorn of its grandeur, to be only revived at rare intervals by such episodes as the consecration of the Bishop of Antigua in 1911.

86Jackson gives the following account of the town in 1643.

The fame of our proceedings in other places had arrived here eight days before us, so that they had time enough to convey all their best household stuff away, leaving nothing behinde them of any value, but onely ye possession of empty houses, with some few chaires, bedsteads, jarres of Mountego, and ye like poore materialls. However, we feasted ourselves this night with Hoggs, Henns, and other good provisions, which wee found in and about ye Towne. This place is called by ye inhabitants Sant Jago de la Vega, being a faire Town, consisting of four or five hundred houses, built for ye most part with canes, overcast with morter and lime, and covered with Tyle. It is beautiful with five or six stately churches and chapples, and one Monastery of Franciscan Fryers, and situated upon descent of a delectable and spacious plaine, on ye North West whereof runneth a pleasant River, whose streame doth empty itself into ye Harbour, distant from hence about four miles Eastward, where our Fleet lay at ankor.

The houses, unlesse it bee in ye Markitt Place, stand somewhat separated one from another, by which means it taketh up farr more roome than thrice ye number of our comparted building in Europe.

The churches and houses of the Spaniards were for the most part destroyed by the Venables’s soldiery in sheer wantonness. But when they began to settle the island, they repaired those which were worth repairing. It is doubtful, however, if much Spanish work exists to-day.

The foundations of St. Jago de la Vega were probably laid by the then viceroy, Diego Columbus, about the year 1523. His son Lewis, created Duke of Veragua, had for a second title Marquis de la Vega, after this town. Hickeringill (writing in 1661) tells us that when the English took the island it contained 2000 houses, sixteen churches and chapels and one abbey, and that of these the English soldiery left but two churches and 500 houses undemolished, but it is thought by Long that this was an exaggeration.

In April 1755 when the penkeepers of St. Catherine, St. John, St. Dorothy and St. Thomas-in-the-Vale petitioned the Assembly against the proposed removal of the courts of justice and public offices to Kingston (the assembly itself being then sitting there) they stated that St. Jago de la Vega then consisted of 499 houses, of a rental value of nearly £20,000, and 866 settled white inhabitants exclusive 87of visitors, and 405 mulattoes and negroes: that there were 472 pens and provision plantations in the neighbourhood, and there were 24,000 inhabitants in the parishes named.

When Doyley, on the death of Brayne in September 1657, found himself in supreme command in the newly acquired island of Jamaica, he set himself resolutely to work to establish the colony on a firm basis. After having successfully repelled three attempts made by Sasi, the last Spanish governor, to retake the island from Hispaniola, he, in August 1660, was met by internal rebellion, got up by Colonel Raymond, who persuaded Colonel Tyson, the gallant commander of the English troops in the last defeat of Sasi a few months earlier, to participate in it.

Of Raymond little is known beyond that Beeston calls him “a discontented reformed officer,” and Long “a factious officer.” Tyson, we know, was not one of those who came out with Venables, but arrived a year later. Leslie tells us that they were “two gentlemen who adhered to the Protector and had a mighty influence on the soldiers.”

In the face of contradictory evidence it is a little difficult to discover the real origin of the outbreak. An interesting contemporary account of it is given by Colonel (afterwards Sir) William Beeston, in a journal kept by him “from his first coming to Jamaica,” and printed from the MSS. now in the British Museum, in “Interesting Tracts relating to the Island of Jamaica ... St. Jago de la Vega, 1800.” He says:

April 27, 1660. At my arrival the people were still as an Army, but without pay, commanded by General Doyley, under whom, as chief ministers, were Major Fairfax and Captain Burroughs; the government was only by a court-martial held once a month at St. Jago, and what disputes General Doyley [gap in the print here] self, who lived very near and private, did not by any means love planting, but hindered those that were willing to plant, by telling them they would be all called off. The people were now healthful, and provisions began to be plenty, and trade to increase; the privateering was carried on, and good prizes often brought in by them....

About this time the rump parliament being again up in England no recruits came for the Army, and they had no pay which made the soldiers deem themselves neglected, and a general expectation 88there was that all would be called off, and the island deserted, there being no news of His Majesty’s happy restoration; this gave occasion to one of the Regiments at Guanaboe, and formerly commanded by Colonel Barrington, but now by Lieutenant-Colonel Tyson, who being set on by a discontented reformed officer called Lieutenant-Colonel Raymond, who lived near him, began to mutiny and set up for themselves, saying, they would live no more as an Army. And accordingly, August 2, they declared they would have the Island settled in Colonies, and make constables and civil officers. These, General Doyley not being able to appease with words, drew some forces to St. Jago to appease them, but was cautious, not being certain but that those he brought if it came to the push, would fail him, and be of the mind of the others; and, therefore, he ordered a ship of Southampton, called the Mary, Captain Richard Tylar, Commander, to lay ready without the fort that if he saw things grow desperate he might embark and leave them; but by sending several messengers to them, and at length Major Richard Hope, of the Liguanea Regiment, he so prevailed with them, telling them the danger if they persisted, and, on the contrary, that if they delivered up the two Lieutenant-Colonels they should all be pardoned, that they promised the next morning to deliver up their officers. Accordingly, in the morning, the soldiers brought down the two Lieutenant-Colonels, and delivered them up; on whom there presently sat a Court-Martial who adjudged them worthy of death, and accordingly, in a very short time, in sight of both parties, they were shot to death. Then the soldiers were all ordered to their several quarters, but were grown so insolent, that the General was forced to give them leave to plunder the houses of Tyson and Raymond in St. Jago, which flushed them to plunder more, even any that they could pretend had any correspondence with those men; and yet after all this, and all the fair words that were given them, it was as much as the General and their Officers could do to keep them from mutinying and to get them to return to their precincts.

Tyson and Raymond were shot on August 3, 1660, tradition says, under the large tamarind tree which still stands in Spanish Town, in Mulberry Garden, now used as a poor-house. August 2 is the date usually given, but Beeston’s account makes it clear that they were shot on “the next morning,” i.e. the 3rd.

Leslie, without giving the source of his information, adds, “Raymond expressed no concern, but died with a haughty kind of Resolution. Tyson behaved in a manner more becoming, and seemed penitent for the part he had acted.” We learn from the “Calendar of State Papers,” that in 89May 1660 an Order in Council was made “To permit Mary Tyson to repair to her husband, Lieut.-Col. Edward Tyson, in Jamaica, in the ship Bear, now bound thither, with accommodation for two maid-servants and one manservant.” Her arrival must have been a sad one. She found her gallant but misguided husband laid in a rebel’s grave.

Long says that Raymond was probably encouraged in his attempt by the knowledge that Doyley was not armed with any express commission or power to punish such offence capitally; and Gardner, thus fortified, says that Doyley’s action was illegal. But Beeston tells us that “the government was only by court-martial,” and this surely implied the right to shoot a rebel. The news of the Restoration reached Jamaica twelve days after the affair, but Doyley did not receive his commission to act as a constitutional governor until February 8, 1661.

Leslie makes the outbreak a Cavalier and Roundhead affair, and Bridges and Hill concur in that view. Gardner, following Beeston, thinks it was mainly due to a desire for a simple civil life. Long says, “Raymond’s object, it has been supposed, was to seize the Government himself; but the real design is not certainly known.” In contradistinction to Beeston, Long tells us that Doyley was “a steady advocate for pursuing the cultivation of the island, to which most of the private men were disinclined.”

The outbreak was probably just as much due to a desire for a more civil form of government than that favoured by Doyley as to any feeling of loyalty to the Stuarts; and the fact that Doyley felt compelled to take precautions for his personal safety in case of defeat may have been dictated as much by fear of the soldiers’ dislike for him as a martinet, as of the antipathy of the Roundhead portion of them to him as a cavalier.

Of the ecclesiastical buildings at St. Jago de la Vega trustworthy records exist only of an abbey, and a chapel of the red cross and a chapel of the white cross. The present Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in the British colonies, stands on the site of the red cross chapel. The 90bases of two piers (Long calls them columns) 8 feet square, part of the entrance to the abbey (which stood to the south of the present parade), were, in Long’s time, standing near the south end of the public offices. They were of brickwork, strongly cemented. He says: “I have seen in this town a great many large stone mouldings for the bases and other parts of columns, which, as well as the sculptures dug out of the ruins of Sevilla Nueva, in St. Ann’s, appeared to have been executed by no mean artist. The Spanish ecclesiastics ... must be allowed some merit in having cultivated the elegances of architecture in these remote parts of the world. Some of their public structures at St. Domingo, the Havannah, La Vera Cruz, Carthagena, Panama, &c., would make a noble figure even in European cities.” Unfortunately it would seem that, judging from his comments on buildings still standing, art criticism was not one of Long’s strong points.

The original church, erected by the English, probably on the foundations and of the materials of the Spanish 91building, as the parish church of St. Catherine, was thrown down by the hurricane of 1712, and was rebuilt of red brick in 1714, as is stated on a tablet over the entrance door in the tower at the west end:

D. O. M.

This Church Dedicated to ye Service of Almighty God was thrown downe by ye dreadfull Hurricane of August ye 28th Anno Domini MDCCXII., and was by ye Divine Assistance, through ye Piety and at ye expence of ye Parishioners, more beautifully and substantially rebuilt upon its old foundation in ye thirteenth year of ye Reigne of our most gracious Sovereigne Queen Ann and in ye Government of his Excellency the Lord Archibald Hamilton, in the year of our Lord MDCCXIV.

Below this on another marble slab is the following inscription:

When Long published his History in 1774, the church being without a tower, the congregation was “summoned by a small bell hung in a wooden frame erected in the churchyard.”

Hakewill (1821), one of the few artists who have ever seen the cathedral, calls it “an ancient brick structure of no exterior beauty.” In Roby’s time (1831) the walls were wainscoted, and the roof was coved and ornamented with circles, ovals, and lozenges. In 1843 the letters patent creating Aubrey George Spencer second bishop of Jamaica, created the parish church of St. Catherine the cathedral of the diocese. The chancel was restored and extended in 1853. A chapter was formed in 1899.

The church, which had fallen into disrepair, was restored in 1901, as is duly recorded on the tower, “in commemoration of the glorious reign of her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, 1837–1901.” Considerable damage was 92wrought by the earthquake of 1907, and a further restoration was completed during the year 1908.

On state occasions, such as the burial of the governor, the House of Assembly was wont to attend in a body; and the church was, from the taking of the island till the removal of the capital to Kingston in 1866, intimately associated with all the important events in the island’s history, being near both to the House of Assembly and the governor’s residence. Nearly all its celebrated personages were at some time or another within its walls, and many of them are buried within its precincts.

Of its monuments the most important are those to the Earl and Countess of Effingham (d. 1791); the wife of Sir Adam Williamson (d. 1794); and Dr. Brodbelt (d. 1795), all by Bacon; Sir Basil Keith (d. 1777), by J. Wilton, R.A.; the Countess of Elgin (d. 1842), by Sir John Steell; Colonel John Colbeck (d. 1682), who came out with Penn and Venables; William Nedham (d. 1746), four times elected speaker of the Assembly; William Selwyn (d. 1702), governor; Henry Cunningham (d. 1735–6), governor; Sir Thomas Modyford (d. 1679), governor; Elizabeth Modyford (d. 1694), wife successively of Samuel Barry and Sir Nicholas Lawes; Sir Thomas Lynch (d. 1684), governor; Samuel Long (d. 1683), the patriot who, with William Beeston, succeeded in maintaining the privileges of the island as against the restrictions attempted to be imposed by the Earl of Carlisle, acting on instructions from home; Peter Beckford (d. 1710), lieutenant-governor; Major-General James Bannister (d. 1674), at one time governor of Surinam.

When Sir William Trelawny died, the Assembly expended 1000 guineas on his funeral, but no monument or slab marks his last resting-place. Other governors who have died in the island and are without a monument are, the Duke of Albemarle, the Duke of Portland, Sir Nicholas Lawes, General Hunter and General Haldane; the bodies of the two first-named (as was that of Sir Basil Keith) were sent across the Atlantic for interment; but portions of Albemarle’s body were buried under the altar. Inchiquin 93was buried in the church, but there was no memorial of him until the present Lord Inchiquin erected a brass tablet in 1912.

The earliest monument is that to Catherine, wife of Sir Charles Lyttelton (January 1662).

The following plate is in the Cathedral:

Flagon: The Rev. John Lindsay, D.D., Rector; Samuel Howell, James Trowers, Esq., Churchwardens. From the old plate of St. Catherine, Jamaica, 1685. Refashioned 1777. Maker’s name S. W., like that of the maker of a pair of Candlesticks of the year 1759 in Trinity College, Oxford (recorded by Cripps).

2 Patens: On each—The Gift of Susannah Butler, widow, of St. Catherine, Jamaica, 1702. Refashioned 1777. Maker’s name S. W.

2 Patens (Small), with foot. The gift of Mrs. Jane Spencer to the Altar of St. Catherine, Jamaica. Refashioned 1777. Maker’s name S. W.

2 Chalices: On each—The gift of Mrs. Jane Spencer to the Altar of St. Catherine, Jamaica. Refashioned 1777.

Flagon and 2 Cups and 2 Patens: With the year mark 1789. Maker’s name, W. P.

1 Flagon, 2 Chalices and 2 Patens: On each—Presented by Sarah Cole to Trinity Chapel, St. Catherine’s, Jamaica. Christmas, A.D. 1851.

Paten (Small): The gift of Wm. G. Macfarlane, in memory of his sister, Elizabeth E. Jackson, born October 8th, 1819, died Dec. 5th, 1854.

Strainer Spoon: Year mark 1855. Maker’s name G. A.

It is to be regretted that the old plate of 1685 was refashioned in 1777.

The church at Spanish Town is the oldest foundation in the colony, dating from the year of the British occupation, 1655; the next oldest being St. Andrew (Halfway-Tree), dating from 1666, the Alley, 1671, and St. John’s Guanaboa Vale, which dates from 1699.

The Baptismal and Marriage registers date from 1668: the Burial from 1671.

It is interesting to note that one of the earliest bequests recorded in the island was that of Edward Morgan of July 14, 1674, of “his house for a parsonage house” in St. Jago de la Vega.

94In April 1677, the Assembly gave “Thanks to Mr. Howser for his sermon; to be desired to say prayers in the House every morning between six and seven o’clock, who answered that he would give his attendance at that time. Every member not attending prayers to be fined 15d.”

In the following year the Assembly requested Mr. Howser “to say prayers every morning between 6 and 7 o’clock.”

The following is a list of the rectors. Since 1899 they have been ex officio senior canons of the cathedral.

Tabor is referred to in “The Groans of Jamaica.”

Of the Rev. John Venn, Bryan Edwards wrote an epitaph beginning:

and ending:

95Lindsay was ordained in December 1753 in Conduit Street Chapel, Hanover Square, London; he was presented to the rectory of St. Thomas-ye-Vale, Jamaica, in 1768, and was made rector of St. Catherine in 1773; and he was made D.D. by the University of Edinburgh in the same year. He officiated at Spanish Town till his death in 1788. The sermon which he preached at the funeral of Sir Basil Keith, the governor, in 1777, was published. In 1770 he petitioned the House of Assembly to assist him in publishing his collection of “drawings of the most curious and beautiful plants, trees, fruits, birds, insects, fishes,” but received but cold comfort—the House resolving that the drawings “will merit the attention of the curious in natural history.” In 1781 and 1783 he published in “The Gentleman’s Magazine,” “An Examination of the Hypothetical Doctrine of Waterspouts, in Opposition to the Ingenious Speculations of Dr. B. Franklin, of Philadelphia, F.R.S.,” which was reprinted in “The Journal of the Institute of Jamaica,” for December 1897. It is curious that one of his illustrations represents the church of St. Catherine with a tower and spire, for it had not even a tower in 1781. In the Bristol Museum are four volumes of coloured drawings of Jamaica plants and animals made by Lindsay from 1758 to 1771, many of them accompanied by descriptive matter.

The Rev. Robert Stanton Woodham was rector in Nugent’s time, and is frequently mentioned in Lady Nugent’s Journal. She appears to have formed no very high opinion of the clergy of the island.

Dr. Musson, who died in 1857, is the only rector whose resting-place is recorded in the church.

Dr. C. F. Douet was for many years assistant bishop of the diocese—1888–1904. He died in England in 1905. The stained glass window was erected to his memory in 1914, at the same time as the Children’s window over the north door.

After the Rodney memorial, the monument in the cathedral, Spanish Town, erected to the memory of the Earl of Effingham, governor of Jamaica, and his countess, is the most important and the most beautiful 96work by Bacon in Jamaica. It is of marble, and bears the legend “J. Bacon, sculptor, London, 1796.”

On a base stands an urn, decorated with festoons of flowers, and bearing, under an earl’s coronet, the arms of Effingham: Quarterly, 1st gules on a bend between six cross crosslets fitchée argent, an escutcheon or, bearing a demi-lion rampant pierced through the mouth with an arrow within a double tressure flory counterflory of the first. 2nd gules three lions passant guardant in pale or (England) with a label of three points. 3rd checky, or and azure. 4th gules a lion rampant argent. In fess point of the shield a mullet for difference. Supporters two lions rampant. Motto, Virtus mille scuta. Above the urn, hanging on an obelisk which rises from the base of the monument, are represented the Chancellor’s seal, the mace and sword in saltire, and the usual emblematic scales.

On one side of the monument, clasping the urn, is an elegant female figure personifying Jamaica, bearing the crest of the colony, an alligator passant proper, on her zone. On the other side is a lovely boy, his left hand holding an olive branch, resting on a cornucopia full of tropical fruits, and his right hand upon a shield bearing the arms of Jamaica as granted by Charles II, viz,: Argent on a cross gules five pineapples proper. Dexter supporter an Indian female, in her exterior hand a basket of fruit. Sinister, an Indian warrior, in his exterior hand a bow, both plumed, all proper. Crest, an alligator. Motto, Indus uterque serviet uni. The epitaph, written by Bryan Edwards, the historian of the West Indies, and then member of Assembly for Trelawny, is as follows:

To the Memory of

Thomas Earl of Effingham Baron Howard, Captain General and Chief Governor of this Island in the Years 1790 and 1791, and of Catherine his wife. The latter departed this life on the Thirteenth day of October, 1791, in a voyage undertaken for the benefit of her health, in His Majesty’s ship Diana: the former on the 19th of the following month, the third week after the melancholy return of the Diana with the remains of his beloved consort, whom he seemed unwilling to survive, and with whom he was deposited in 97the same grave, thus, united in their lives by the most tender and exalted ties,

To perpetuate the remembrance of so illustrious a pattern of conjugal affection, to manifest the public sense of the many public and private virtues of their respected Governor, and to record for the benefit of posterity the Clearness of that sagacity, the extent of that knowledge, and the purity and firmness of that integrity, which rendered his administration the boast and security of a grateful people; the Assembly of Jamaica, having caused the remains of this noble and lamented pair to be interr’d with funeral honours at the public expense, the whole House attending each procession as mourners, as a further testimony of merited esteem, inscribe this monument.

By an Act passed in 1789, burying in churches had been recently prohibited, and a penalty of £500 imposed on any rector permitting such burial; but two bills, dispensing with that Act and indemnifying the Rev. Robert Stanton Woodham, the then lately appointed rector of St. Catherine, from its penalties in the special cases of the Earl and Countess were introduced in the Assembly by Bryan Edwards and passed unanimously.

On November 19 the House “resolved, nem. con., in order to testify the grateful respect which this House entertain of his late Excellency’s merit and virtues, his firm and independent conduct, and the sense they have of the great and universal satisfaction which his mild and equitable administration, in every department, gave to all ranks of people, and the regret which they feel at his loss, that the funeral of the late Earl of Effingham be conducted at the public expense”; and on December 7, 1791, the Assembly voted £500 sterling toward this monument. The monument, together with the two funerals, which were attended by the members of the Assembly, cost the island £8700.

The Rev. Thomas Warren, rector of St. Elizabeth, and domestic chaplain to the governor—the same Thomas Warren who ten years later disgusted Lady Nugent by his toadyism while conducting the service at Black River-preached 98the funeral sermons, which are given in the “Columbian Magazine or Monthly Miscellany” published in Kingston in June 1797.

The Earl and Countess of Effingham arrived at Port Royal on March 17, 1790, in the ship Catherine Countess of Effingham. During his short period of governorship the condition of Jamaica was the cause of some anxiety owing to the nearness of the republican movement in San Domingo; so much so, that during the Christmas holidays of 1791 two ships of war patrolled round the island. The National Assembly of France passed a decree of thanks to the King of Great Britain, to the English nation, and to Lord Effingham, governor of Jamaica, for his generous conduct in relieving the planters of St. Domingo from the horrors of famine, and in furnishing them with arms and military stores against the rebel negroes. It was during Effingham’s governorship that the bread-fruit and other trees were imported from the south seas, and a collection of Jamaica plants was sent home to Kew Gardens.

The House of Assembly addressed the governor on the subject of proposed additional duties by England on sugar and rum, but to their representations the governor made a diplomatic reply.

The Earl’s mother was daughter of Peter Beckford, speaker of the Assembly, and sister to the celebrated lord mayor of London. His wife, whom he married in 1765, was the daughter of Metcalfe Proctor, of Thorpe, near Leeds. They had no children.

Next to the Effingham monument that to the Countess of Elgin is the most interesting from an art point of view.

In April 1841, Elizabeth Mary, the twenty-year-old daughter of Charles Lennox Cumming Bruce, was married to Lord Bruce, the son of the earl of “Elgin Marbles” fame. He had the year before become heir to the earldom through the death of his elder half-brother; and in the July following he was elected member of Parliament for Southampton, and succeeded to the title in the November of the same year (1841), becoming a peer of Scotland without a seat in the House of Lords. In the April of the following 99year he was made governor of Jamaica at the early age of thirty-one years, and there served his apprenticeship to his greater work as governor-general of Canada and viceroy of India. He experienced a period of depression, owing to the effects of emancipation, and of storms and floods; but in spite of difficulties he endeavoured, not without success, to improve the social conditions and develop the industrial resources of the island. The Royal Agricultural Society of Jamaica (later merged into the Royal Society of Arts and Agriculture of Jamaica) and several parochial agricultural associations were established by him; the first batch of coolies arrived from India in 1845, and the railway was opened for traffic in the same year.

On the death of the countess within less than a twelvemonth of her landing, and after a little more than two years of married life, the House of Assembly voted three hundred guineas for a monument to be erected in the cathedral at Spanish Town. It was carved by Sir John Steell, and is inscribed on the back “Jn. Steell, Sculptor, Edinr., 1849.” He is best known for his statues in Edinburgh of Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Consort, and for his colossal statue of Burns in New York. The first-named is said to have been the first marble statue commissioned in Scotland from a native artist; the second secured him his knighthood. Steell in early life patriotically declined Chantrey’s flattering offer to remove from Edinburgh to London, in order that he might devote himself to the improvement of the art of his native country.

His busts are said to be distinguished by great dignity and refinement. These characteristics are evident in his posthumous portrait of Lady Elgin.

The following is the inscription on the monument:

In memory of

Elizabeth Mary, Countess of Elgin and Kincardine, only child of Charles Lennox Cumming Bruce, Esqr., of Roseisle and Kinnaird in Scotland, Member of Parliament for the Counties of Elgin and Nairn, and of Mary Elizabeth Bruce. granddaughter and representative of the distinguished 100Traveller in Abyssinia. Born on the 13th April, 1821, she was married on the 22nd April, 1841, and having accompanied her Husband, His Excellency James Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, to Jamaica, in April, 1842, she died at Craigton, in the Parish of St. Andrew’s, on the 7th June, 1843: Resting with assured faith on the love of her Redeemer, amidst the unspeakable sorrow of her relatives and friends, and the deep lament of the community that had witnessed the rich promise of her early virtues. This monument was erected by the Legislature of the Colony not as a cold tribute of respect due to exalted rank, but to mark the public regret, for distinguished worth and talent, so early lost to her country and her family.

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”

Craigton, used as a mountain residence by the Earl of Elgin, is in the Blue Mountains, by the fourteenth milestone on the driving road to Newcastle.

The following passage from Professor Wrong’s “Earl of Elgin” tells in a few words the sad cause of Lady Elgin’s death:

In April 1842 Lord Elgin left England for Jamaica. On the way he experienced the dramatic and, for him, tragic consequences of shipwreck; the steamer struck on the coral reefs surrounding Turk’s Island, one of the Bahamas, and became a total wreck. No lives were lost, but Lady Elgin received a shock from which she never recovered. When, in the following summer, she died in Jamaica, Lord Elgin was so prostrated by grief that his recovery seemed doubtful. He was left with one infant daughter. From utter loneliness the society of his own kindred saved him; with him were his sister Charlotte, afterwards Lady Charlotte Locker, and his brother Robert, the latter as his Secretary. Though living chiefly at the country house, Craighton (sic), in the Blue Mountains, he did not neglect holding at Spanish Town, then the capital of Jamaica, the receptions and entertainments which must be a heavy burden upon the time and patience of those in high official position. The life was sufficiently monotonous, and after three years he longed for more active employment.

The immediate cause of Lady Elgin’s death was the birth of an infant daughter, who only lived a few hours. Her only surviving child, Elma, married Baron Thurlow.

With regard to the actual spot where the body is interred, we read in the “Morning Journal” of June 1843:

101His Honour, the Chief Justice, the Custos, and several other officials, then proceeded to the selection of a proper place for the sepulture of her Ladyship. The spot they selected was immediately below the Communion Table, in the Cathedral, and in which the remains of the Earl and Countess of Effingham were interred in 1791. The excavation took place under the superintendence of His Honor the Custos, assisted by Mr. Churchwarden M’Anuff; and about five o’clock on Thursday morning the vaulting and arches were complete.

The funeral was attended by all the high officials, civil, naval and military, and by the members of the House of Assembly.

Though the present House of Assembly probably only dates from about the same period as King’s House (1762) or a little later, the Assembly always met (with a slight diversion, in favour of Kingston, under Admiral Knowles in 1755) in Spanish Town, and the old capital was thus associated with the story of the long series of struggles which took place between the people’s representatives and the Crown.

In 1702 the Assembly met at the Queen’s House and at the Court House. In his speech to the Assembly on September 5, 1706, Handasyd said, “That the public building, I mean the Assembly House, being ready to fall, I don’t doubt but you will give orders for the rebuilding of the same.”

In 1728 the Duchess of Portland, widow of the late Governor, gave a portrait of George I to the Assembly. It was hung over the speaker’s chair. One wonders where it now is.

One of the most dramatic incidents which ever happened during a session of the Assembly is that which caused the death of Peter Beckford, a former lieutenant-governor of the colony, the president of the Council, and the first custos of Kingston.

The incident is thus described by Bridges:

During a warm debate in the Assembly on June 8, 1711, on the right of adjournment for a longer period than de die in diem, Peter Beckford, the Speaker (son of the President), repeatedly called to order; and was at length compelled to enforce it by 102adjournment. But irritation had gone so far that, when he rose to quit the chair, the Members drew their swords and held him there, while the obnoxious questions in debate were put and carried. The doors were barred; the uproar was alarming; and the Speaker’s father heard the disturbance in the Council Chamber. He recognised the voice of his son crying aloud for help, and rushed into the Governor’s apartment. Sir Thomas Handasyde seized his sword, ordered the sentinels to follow him, forced the door of the Court House, and dissolved the Assembly in the Queen’s name. But the fray was fatal to the elder Beckford; in his agitation his foot slipped, and he was precipitated down the staircase, and the effects of terror were deadly to his aged frame.

From this account we incidentally learn that the Assembly then had no House of its own and met in the court house, which probably stood where the present court house stands, at the south side of the square; the House of Assembly being on the east side, the King’s House on the west, and Rodney’s memorial on the north. In 1679 the church was first used as a House of Assembly, and was so used occasionally, as well as the court house, till its destruction by hurricane in 1712.

In “A View of the Proceedings of the Assemblies of Jamaica for some years past,” published in London in 1716, occurs a letter dated from Kingston, December 4, 1715, which begins, “The Grand Court is Sitting, as also the Assembly (who as former Assemblies have done in Court time) Sit in the Great Church [at Spanish Town]....”

The speaker alluded to above, Peter Beckford, held that office no less than four times. He will ever be remembered, in Spanish Town at all events, as the founder of Beckford and Smith’s School.

Space will not permit of any detailed reference to the continual struggles which took place between the Assembly and the Governor in Council, or the Assembly and the Crown, for in some cases the Assembly found governors who from the larger knowledge gained by local experience were in sympathy with many of their claims for equitable treatment. But we may perhaps for a moment try to picture to ourselves the scene at the opening of an assembly a hundred years ago. There were then forty-three members representing twenty constituencies or parishes. Of these 103all but a few came from outside Spanish Town, and had perforce to find temporary homes for themselves, their servants, and their horses: and the old capital must have offered a gay appearance. If the member for noble St. James did not drive his own horses it must have cost him some £8 to £10 to post.

It is true that Feurtado mentions ten lodging-houses and six hotels or taverns as existing at the time of the removal of the Government from Spanish Town to Kingston in 1870; but it is somewhat curious that, though travellers and historians have recorded the names of some ten or twelve taverns throughout the colony in the eighteenth century, no mention is made of any such institution of importance in the old capital.

In 1812 the lieutenant-governor was Lieutenant-General Edward Morrison. His secretary was William Bullock, who later, under the Duke of Manchester, became a great pluralist and wielded much power. The speaker of the Assembly was James Lewis, who represented St. Catherine. John Jacques, the mayor, was one of Kingston’s three representatives. St. Andrew sent as one member a James Stewart, Trelawny sent another James Stewart, and Westmoreland a third—which suggests numerous pitfalls for the unwary student of genealogy—while a fourth Stewart, John by name, sat for St. Ann. John Shand, the custos of St. Catherine, represented St. John. One of Vere’s members was J. P. Edwards, while Robert Allwood came up from St. Elizabeth. Hanover was represented by a Scarlett. Portland sent two Minots. The wealthy and powerful Simon Taylor represented St. Thomas-in-the-East, where most of his property lay.

The officers of the Assembly were: Clerk, F. Smith; Serjeant-at-arms and Librarian, John Clement; Chaplain, Isaac Mann (rector of St. Catherine); Printer, A. Aikman; and Doorkeeper, J. Wintle.

106The president of the Council, which was not infrequently recruited from the Assembly, was John Lewis, the chief justice, a relative of the well-known “Monk” Lewis; and other members (twelve in all) bore the well-known Jamaica names of Broadbelt, Ross, Pinnock, Cuthbert, Scarlett, Nembhardt and Jackson. Its chaplain was the Rev. John Campbell (rector of St. Andrew). Its librarian was Alexander Dallas, a relation of the author of the “History of the Maroons.” The Assembly opened daily with prayer.

Until 1842, when a new judicature law, which transferred to a vice-chancellor the authority of chancellor, came into force, the governor for the time being was ex-officio chancellor of the island, and sat in a Chancellor’s Court which was held in the Egyptian hall of Ring’s House.

At its first session the House was wont to go over “in grand procession”—the speaker preceded by the macebearer with the mace—to King’s House at 4 P.M. to hear the governor read his speech. They then returned and deliberated on the speech, to which they sent a reply. They formally elected a speaker. He was wont to plead his unworthiness but allowed himself to be over-persuaded, and the governor gave his approval. After the passing of many compliments the pendulum not infrequently swung round to the point of contention and bickering, but many of the Assembly honestly did their best in legislating for the well-being of the colony. To do honour to Sir Henry Barkly the Assembly turned their hall into a ballroom, each member subscribing £10 toward the cost of the entertainment.

In 1853 the House committed to jail, where he was kept for upwards of twenty-four hours, one of the judges of the supreme court, William Stevenson (afterwards governor of Mauritius), for an alleged breach of privilege in writing a letter to the public press, in which he accused them of violating public faith and confiscating the property of public men.

An English merchant describing Jamaica in 1726 says, “Nor is the keeping of a coach and six any more credit than keeping a horse in England, it is so common in the lowlands where the roads will admit”; and, even within the memory of those living, members of the Council and Assembly were 107wont to drive into Spanish Town in style. The late Mr. Judah, in “Old St. Jago” (1894), says:

We come to so late as 1848–49 when Sir Charles Grey was Governor. He rode in a State Coach drawn by four horses, and had outriders as part of his equipage. Besides coachman and groom he had two footmen behind his coach holding, in their dignity, their straps in holders; all in splendid livery. When the Honourable James Gayleard was President of the Council, he rode too in State Coach and pair, with coachman and groom on the box and a footman behind standing with strap and holder, all too in livery. Sir Joshua Rowe, Chief Justice, in his stately barouche with liveried servants. The Honourable William Church Macdougall driving in uniform with high-booted postilion. The Honourable Alexandre Bravo, always arriving in town on the first day of the meeting of the Council, of which he was a member, with four in hand, his wife and then young family inside, himself on the driving box with his son Alexandre, afterwards Major and Acting Governor in one of Her Majesty’s Colonies in Africa, seated beside him; while Mr. Moses Bravo followed with his wife, driving a gay and attractive tandem. “Old Saint Jago” has its traditions, and is full of memories of the old past and the greater days of Jamaica. A hundred of these memories as it were pass before my eyes, and I feel a real pleasure in recalling some of them, associated as they are with the days of my boyhood and my early manhood. I well remember the first day of the inauguration of a new Governor, attended at old King’s House by all the heads of departments and highest officials of the colony. The Lieutenant-Governor, who was always then the Major-General commanding the Forces in this island, and his brilliant staff, the Admiral with his staff, the Commodore on the station—the whole in full dress uniform. The Bishop with his mitre on, and his black silk gown with ample lawn sleeves. The three Archdeacons in their full college dress and honours. The Chief Justice and Puisne Judges in their purple robes. The Registrar in Chancery and Clerk of Patents, gowned in black silk and bearing on a scarlet velvet cushion the insignia in gold of Equity and of his office. The Clerk of the Crown and Supreme Court with parchment scroll surmounted by the British Crown in gold. The Military and Navy in full dress uniform. The foreign Consuls also in uniform—those of Spain, France, Austria, and the Mosquito territory being most conspicuous for their splendour. The three members of “the mixed Commission” (for the adjudication of cases arising out of the slave trade treaties) in their peculiar dress of white kerseymeres trimmed in silver, and their silver-sheathed swords suspended in fine silver chains. The military band of music arriving from the barracks, at the head of the regiment, with standards flying and taking up their position in the present garden on the left hand opposite to the 108front of the King’s House. During the administration of the usual oaths to the new Governor the playing of the National Anthem, and this followed by a salvo of fourteen guns from two field pieces positioned in front of Rodney’s statue, then on its original site, under the dome of the colonnade, at the north side of the public square.

Then there was the opening day of the annual meeting of the Legislature, with almost the like pageantry and with the members of the Privy Council in Windsor uniform, and the members of the Legislative Council, attended by “Black Rod” in full Court dress with his chapeau bras. The entrance of the Governor into the Egyptian Hall of King’s House, in full military dress as Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, attended by his Secretary in Windsor uniform, and his aide-de-camp in full military dress. The despatch of “Black Rod” by the Governor, summoning the Assembly to attend him in the Council Chamber. The arrival of “Black Rod” at the bar of the Assembly Hall, delivering the message, and his retiring backways, making his obeisance three times to the Chair while retiring. The attendance of the Speaker and the whole House, headed by the Serjeant-at-Arms carrying, with head covered by his chapeau bras, the large gilt mace of the House, and with his ivory-hilted sword at side, while the band plays the grand and stately “God Save the Queen.” These pageantries followed by a grand dinner at King’s House to the Lieutenant-Governor and staff, Admiral and staff, Chief Justice, Bishop, and the high officials of the day.

The mace mentioned above is now in the history gallery in the Institute of Jamaica.

Tradition has it that the old house known as Eagle House, behind the Public Hospital in King street, Spanish Town, was the residence of William O’Brien, second earl of Inchiquin, who was governor of Jamaica in 1690–91–2. Its local name, from the remaining eagle that surmounts one of the gate-posts, is John Crow House; John Crow being the popular designation of the vulture of Jamaica (Cathartes aura).

A discussion on the subject of this house took place in the “Gleaner” newspaper during August and September 1911, with the result that, though some light was thrown on the subject, nothing was settled for certain. Mr. G. F. Judah, whose antiquarian knowledge of Jamaica was unequalled, informed us that his father told him that when he first visited the house as a boy in 1808–9 both eagles were in situ; 109but that when he went to reside in Spanish Town in 1830–31 only one remained; and further that tradition said that it had once been the residence of Sir James de Castillo, the agent of the Assiento Company.

Mr. Judah seemed to think that “Eagle House” is identical with the “Fort House,” which he told us was granted first in 1662 to Sir Charles Lyttelton, deputy governor to Lord Windsor, being the first of the records of Patents in the island, and dating only seven years after the British occupation. Lyttelton sold it to Charles Brayne, who sold it to Sir Thomas Modyford. Modyford’s nephew succeeded to the baronetcy and his executors sold the “Fort House” in 1715 to John Stewart, president of the Council, who had the title to the house confirmed by a special act of the Legislature in 1733. From an act which was passed in 1736 it appears that the Fort House bounded north-east on a street between a storehouse belonging to John Stewart, Esquire, and the dwelling-house formerly belonging to Arnold Brown, Esquire, deceased, to the Parade; south-east on land belong to William Careless, Esquire, deceased; south-west on the town Savanna; and north-west on the land lately belonging to Ursula Hunt, widow, deceased, by indenture.

It was conveyed to Thomas Brayne, descended to his daughter, Mary Elizabeth, wife of Alexander Henderson. They conveyed it to Walter Thomas, and he and his wife conveyed it to John Stewart. Stewart sold it to Robert Delap (nephew of Francis Delap, provost marshal), and the place subsequently fell into the hands of Bogle & Co., of which firm Michael Scott, the well-known author of “Tom Cringle’s Log,” was a member. It then passed successively into the possession of Alexander Young, William Taylor and Robert Nichol. Mr. Oscar Plummer, quoting from manuscripts in his possession, of which however he gave no details, said that various personages—Robert Russell, Andrew Gregory Johnson, and Richard Hill—in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, gave credence to the legend that Eagle House was the residence of the Earl of Inchiquin, and that some of them alluded 110to Eagle House as the Moat House. In this case, although there is no proof, it is quite likely that the legend that Inchiquin inhabited it is true; but it is not likely that much of the old fabric remains, though the present house is of considerable antiquity. There is nothing in all this to aid in the identification of Eagle House with the residence of Lord Inchiquin; but as the rent for the house he occupied was paid to Samuel Bernard, the chief justice, it was probably not identical with Fort House, which, as we have seen, belonged to the Modyfords.

The early life of the Earl of Inchiquin was spent with his father in foreign military service, during which he lost an eye and suffered imprisonment in Algiers. In 1764 he was appointed captain-general of the King’s forces in Africa, and governor and vice-admiral of the royal citadel of Tangier, ceded by the Portuguese to Britain as part of the marriage portion of Catherine of Braganza. He held the post for six years.

Inchiquin welcomed the Prince of Orange in 1688, and in the following year he and his son were attainted by the Irish Parliament of James II, and their estates were sequestrated. He appealed to arms, but was defeated and fled to England.

After the Revolution he was appointed governor of Jamaica. On going to take up office he was allowed £500 in lieu of fifty tons of baggage, and also passage and victuals for seventy-five menial servants. It is interesting to note that on his journey he drew half-pay salary (i.e. at the rate of £1000 a year).

He, after escaping great dangers by sea and a malignant fever brought on board by the soldiers embarked at Plymouth, arrived at Jamaica, accompanied by Lady Inchiquin, on May 31, 1690, in H.M.S. Swan, “so bad a sailor that she is little better than nothing”—the same ship that was “forced over the tops of many houses” in the earthquake of two years later. Inchiquin was sworn in as governor on the same day.

He met with considerable opposition from a portion of the Assembly, whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s 111arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner. That, added to troubles arising from incursions by French cruisers on the seaside plantations—the result of the war—plunderings by the runaway slaves, the original maroons, and an outbreak of slaves in Clarendon, undermined his constitution. Nineteen months of worry were terminated by his death, on Saturday, January 16, 1691–2, “after long indisposition through fever and plague which ended in a flux”; he was buried that night in the parish church at St. Jago de la Vega. Until recently no monument marked the spot. A memorial brass has now, however, been erected in the cathedral by Lord Inchiquin with the following inscription:

In connection with his governorship of Tangier, Inchiquin has been described as “a well-meaning impulsive man, devoid of discretion,” and this description seems equally applicable to his Jamaica career.

By his first wife, Lady Margaret Boyle, daughter of the first Earl of Orrery, he had three sons, of whom the third, James, was a member of the Council of Jamaica, Captain of Fort Charles, and chief of an expedition that destroyed French settlements in Hispaniola.

James O’Brien returned to England at his father’s death.

For the first thirty-four years of British occupation, the governors of Jamaica lived partly at Spanish Town and partly at Port Royal. In 1675 the Assembly voted £500 to be employed in buying the house Lord Vaughan lived in at Spanish Town “for the Governor’s use for ever.”

On January 13, 1690, however, the President and Council passed an “Order for hiring a house in Port Royal and for provision for the reception of Lord Inchiquin.”

112On March 27, 1690, they passed an “Order for King’s House to be made ready for Lord Inchiquin,” but the Order does not state whether Port Royal or St. Jago de la Vega was meant, probably the latter.

On June 18 it was resolved that “Their Majesties’ house at St. Jago de la Vega being extremely out of repair and almost ruinous so it is in no manner fit for the reception of His Excellency, it was decided by the Board if His Excellency would be pleased to let it be ordered, and it is hereby ordered that the rent of the house where His Excellency now lives be paid out of their Majesties’ revenue for the island till the other be so repaired or built, that it may be fit for his reception.”

On December 18, 1690, it was “ordered that £600 be allowed for building an addition to the King’s House on Port Royal to be paid out of their Majesties’ revenue for this island.”

On January 28, 1691–2, just after the death of Lord Inchiquin, the Council wrote home to the Lords of Trade and Plantations: “We beg that the Governor’s residence may be fixed at St. Jago de la Vega, which is the most convenient place.”

At a Council meeting on March 15, 1691–2, it was ordered that £250 be paid to Samuel Bernard for “rent of the house the Earl of Inchiquin, late Governor, lived in at the Towne of St. Jago de la Vega.”

On May 9, 1692, just after the earthquake, the Council made an “Order for agreement as to the goods belonging to the late Governor at King’s House, for the accommodation of the next Governor,” and on June 24, they passed an “Order for material for rebuilding King’s House.” This presumably refers to St. Jago de la Vega.

On July 8 of that year the Lords of Trade and Plantations at a meeting at which Beeston, who was then agent for Jamaica in England, and was soon to be appointed lieutenant-governor, was in attendance, resolved that the “King’s House at St. Jago de la Vega should be sold, and the proceeds devoted to the purchase of another house”—at the very time that it was probably being rebuilt.

113On the Earl of Inchiquin’s death, the Government bought of Lady Inchiquin for the use of the Government, goods to the value of £90. These included the “King and Queen’s picture” valued at £20. Where is that picture now?

It is interesting to note that in the contemporary manuscript Council Minutes the name Inchiquin is always spelt phonetically Insiquin.

Sir Hans Sloane studied botany, materia medica, and pharmacy, in England and France. It is said that, before consenting to accompany Albemarle, the newly appointed governor, to Jamaica in 1687, he consulted Sydenham on the subject, and that the father of English medicine told him that he had better drown himself in Rosamond’s Pond, a sheet of water in St. James’s Park, which was then a fashionable resort for intending suicides. He, however, decided to come. While in Jamaica he attended, in addition to the duke’s “numerous family,” many people professionally, including the whilom buccaneering governor, Morgan; making in his reports very frank references to their mode of life.

In fifteen months he collected 800 plants, most of which were new specimens; of these he published, in 1696, his “Catalogus Plantarum.” On April 16, 1691, Evelyn writes: “I went to see Dr. Sloane’s curiosities, being a universal collection of the natural productions of Jamaica, consisting of plants, fruits, corals, minerals, stones, earth, shells, animals and insects, collected with great judgement; several folios of dried plants, and one which had about eighty several sorts of ferns and another of grasses; the Jamaica pepper in branch, leaves, flower, fruit, &c. This collection, with his Journal, and other philosophical and natural discourses and observations, indeed very copious and extraordinary, sufficient to furnish a history of that island, to which I encouraged him.” In 1707 and 1725 Sloane issued two large volumes entitled, “A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, St. Christopher and Jamaica, with the Natural History ... of the last of those Islands,” with many engravings from 114crayon drawings. The work was parodied by the clever but drunken Dr. William King, under the title “The Present State of Physic in the Island of Cajami.”

Sloane’s wife, whom he married in 1695 and who died in 1724, was Elizabeth, daughter of Alderman Langley and widow of Ffulk Rose, of St. Catherine, who from 1675 to 1693 represented first St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, and afterwards St. John, in the House of Assembly.

Soon after the death of his patron, the Duke of Albemarle, Sloane returned to England. In 1693 he was secretary to the Royal Society, of which he edited the transactions for twenty years, contributing twenty-two papers. Of these one was an account of the earthquake of 1692 which destroyed Port Royal, already alluded to. Meantime he practised with great success as a physician. In 1716 he was created a baronet, being the first physician so honoured, and made physician-general to the army; from 1719 to 1735 he was president of the College of Physicians; and in 1727 president of the Royal Society. He bequeathed his books, manuscripts, prints and curiosities (including his Jamaica collections) to the nation, on condition that £20,000 (or less than half of what they had cost him) was paid to his executors. The collection formed the basis of the British Museum. He gave to the Apothecaries Company the freehold of the physic garden at Chelsea, and he assisted to start the Foundling Hospital.

Tradition points to a house (now No. 14), in what has been known as Nugent Street, Spanish Town, for upwards of a century, as the residence of Sloane.

In a MS. scrap book called “The Omnibus, or Jamaica Scrap Book,” in the West India Library of the Institute of Jamaica, dating from about 1840, there is an account of Sir Hans Sloane, wherein it states: “This celebrated naturalist during his stay in Jamaica resided in the old Spanish fronted building which was till about the year 1828 to be discerned in the lane at the back of the King’s House in Spanish Town, and which about that period came by purchase into the hands of a tradesman, who, without any respect to its former possessor, razed it to the ground 115and erected upon the site a blacksmith’s shop and other tradesmen’s offices, at which period some of his etchings, were discovered in a ruined outhouse.” The present building is of a type that has existed in the colony “from time.”

Previous to the building of a King’s House, the governors of Jamaica apparently lived in whatever house they chose. From the following entry in the Council Minutes of June 16, 1684, it would appear that there were in 1683 two King’s Houses, one at Port Royal and one at Spanish Town: “Ordered that His Excellency’s order shall be sufficient warrant for issuing money for the fortifications, repair of the King’s Houses, &c., according to the Act of this country”; and this is confirmed by the accounts of the Receiver-General for 1684–85, which contains references to the “King’s House at Town” [Spanish Town] and the King’s House at Port Royal. In July 1689 it was reported that in the Duke of Albemarle’s time (December 1687 to October 1688) the King’s House at Port Royal had been appointed for a Popish priest, Thomas Churchill, to say Mass in.

In June 1689 Colonel Hender Molesworth, who did not live to take up his position as governor for a second term of office, suggested, in his proposals as to the government of Jamaica, that “it would be well to sell the old King’s House [presumably at Port Royal], and build a new one at Spanish Town”; but in January 1690 it was ordered, as we have seen, that a house should be built in Port Royal, and provision made for the reception of Lord Inchiquin. There was, however, a King’s House at Spanish Town in Beeston’s time. On July 8, 1692, it was decided by the Lords of Trade and Plantations that “the King’s House at St. Jago de la Vega should be sold, and the proceeds devoted to the purchase of another house”; but on July 27, 1693, Beeston wrote home: “I hope also to get them to raise money to put King’s House at St. Jago (where I live) in order, for at present it only protects me from the sun and rain, having no convenience for horses or servants, nor room for but few in a family, and being as common as the highway. 116Nevertheless, my cost of living, for the honour of the Government, is more than double what I am allowed, nor is there money nor like to be yet awhile, to pay me what I am allowed by their Majesty’s.”

In October 1700 he wrote home: “I am also enlarging to more than double the King’s House, which was too little for any indifferent family, and have taken in all the land belonging to it with a bricke wall, and have made aditions of out houses for the reception of servants and for offices, all which will bee finished in a short time, and will be very comodious and useful, tho’ not so beautyfull, being built not one entire fabricke, but by peices.”

There was a Queen’s House when Lord Archibald Hamilton arrived in 1711, but it was in a “ruinous condition” and “could not be made tenable under £2000,” which was voted. The Duke of Portland (1724–6) expended £1544 0s. 1¾d. over the £4000 voted on the then King’s House, but this sum was not refunded to his widow although a committee of the Assembly recommended it.

The original residence of the governors consisted partly of the old Spanish edifice and partly of irregular additions made from time to time by Sir William Beeston and other governors. The Spanish hall of audience was demolished in 1761 to make way for the present building. Of it Long says:

Nothing of art or elegance graced the inside of this hall: it was lined throughout with boards, or rather planks, unequally hewn with an adze, none of them appearing to have undergone the embellishment of the plane; these were rudely nailed to upright posts, which supported the roof. The posts were for the most part crooked, not even squared, and many of them had some remnant of their bark, but they retained for the most part their primitive solidity. The whole of the woodwork, indeed, seemed to have passed through no other hands than those of a clumsy ship-carpenter.

This description might almost apply to the dwellings of the native Arawâks.

The former official residence of the governors of Jamaica, or King’s House, as it is called, stands on the west side of the square. The plan was designed by Craskell, the engineer of the island, and approved during the administration 117of Lieutenant-Governor Henry Moore in 1759–62; but the building was not completed until the arrival of Governor William Henry Lyttelton in 1762.

The expense of building and furnishing amounted to nearly £30,000 currency (or £21,428 sterling), and in Long’s time (circa 1774) it was “thought to be the noblest and best edifice of the kind, either in North America or any of the British colonies in the West Indies.” The façade is about 200 feet long; the freestone used in the construction came from the Hope river course in St. Andrew. The columns supporting the portico are of Portland stone, the pavement of white marble, of which much came out, as ballast, from time to time in the old sugar ships, and is still seen in many a great house and town dwelling. The following is taken from Long’s description of the interior:

Two principal entrances lead through it into the body of the house; the one opens into a lobby, or ante-chamber; the other into the great saloon, or hall of audience, which is well proportioned, the dimensions being about 73 by 30 feet, and the height about 32; from the ceiling, which is coved, hang two brass gilt lustres. A screen of seven large Doric pillars divides the saloon from an upper and lower gallery of communication, which range the whole length on the West side; and the upper one is secured with an elegant entrelas of figured iron work. The East or opposite side of the saloon is finished with Doric pilasters, upon each of which are brass girandoles double-gilt; and between each pilaster, under the windows of the Attic story, are placed, on gilt brackets, the busts of several ancient and modern philosophers and poets, large as life; which being in bronze, the darkness of their complexion naturally suggests the idea of so many Negro Caboceros, exalted to this honourable distinction for some peculiar services rendered to the country. At the North end, over a door which opens into the lobby, is a small moveable orchestra, made to hold a band of music on festive occasions. The furniture below consists of a great number of mahogany chairs and settees, sufficient to accommodate a large company, the room being chiefly used for public audiences, entertainments, balls, and the hearings of chancery and ordinary. At the South end are three folding doors opening into a spacious apartment, in which, by the Governor’s permission, the Council usually meet; whence it has received the name of the Council Chamber....

Monk Lewis, writing in 1834, says: “The Government House is a large clumsy-looking brick building with a 118portico, the stucco of which has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to architectural beauty.” And with this criticism one must fain agree.

In Long’s time a new governor was usually feasted for three successive days in Spanish Town; after which he was wont to make a kind of public entry into Kingston, where more festivities were got up in his honour—the two towns vying the one with the other; and Lady Nugent, in her Journal, makes many references to gay doings in King’s House, Spanish Town.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, King’s House—in common with its younger rival in the plain of Liguanea—remained King’s House, and did not permanently change its name to Queen’s House, as did the official residences of other British colonies, although in 1840 the House of Assembly alluded to the Queen’s House.

With the removal of the seat of Government the remaining glory departed from Spanish Town. With the exception of the year 1873, when it was utilised for a little more than twelve months by Queen’s College, of which Grant Allen was one of the staff, and the occupation by a temporary tenant of recent years, King’s House has been practically empty.

Jamaica’s former capital is like one of her bridges, which now and again, through the change of a rivercourse, is left to span a dry passage.

In the palmy days of old the lot of a governor and his wife could not have been altogether a happy one. Lady Nugent writes, under date August 3, 1801, soon after their arrival in the island:

Up at six. A grand breakfast at eight and a council at ten. Lord B[alcarres] set off immediately for his country-house, called The Penn. A salute was fired, and all due honours paid to him, as he drove off. General Nugent then walked in procession to the House of Assembly, and was sworn in as Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief. Then another salute was fired, and he came back and held a levee. I remained above stairs until four o’clock, seeing all the proceedings from my windows, or the gallery round the Egyptian Hall. I then went to the drawing-room, and received all the ladies of Spanish Town, &c., the principal officers of the Navy and Army, the members of Council, and a number of the 119gentlemen of the House of Assembly, who had come to compliment the new Governor and his Lady; bowing, curtseying, and making speeches, till six o’clock. The ladies then dined with me in the Ball-room, and the gentlemen with General N. in the Egyptian Hall. My guests were forty in number, with ten gentlemen to carve for us. General N. had three or four times that number with him; but we should not call them our guests, as these dinners were given to us by the public. I must remark the loads of turtle, turkies, hams, and whole kids, that crowded my table, and increased the heat of the climate. The room, too, was filled with black servants; and all the population, I believe, both white and black, were admitted to walk round the table, and stare at me after dinner. They did General N. the same favour, being, I suppose, very curious to see what sort of looking people we were; but their curiosity added most exceedingly to the heat, and, indeed, I never felt anything like it in all my life. At two o’clock all the ladies took their leave, and some of the gentlemen; but General N. left those that remained to enjoy their bottle, and he and I retired to our own apartment, but not to rest, for the garrison gave us a grand serenade, and the house was a scene of dancing, singing, and merriment almost the whole night.

No wonder she writes on the following day “This day we have kept to ourselves.”

Rodney, who was for three and a half years commander-in-chief on the Jamaica station, crowned that service by his ever-memorable victory over De Grasse on April 12, 1782. The early days of that April had been dark indeed for Jamaica. The militia had been called up for the defence of the capital, extra taxation had been imposed to meet the cost of defensive preparations, and the roads had been rendered impassable by the placing of large trees across them. After weeks of doubt and fear, Rodney’s letter, written on the 14th, “between Guadaloupe and Montserrat,” announcing his victory, was received on the 25th, and fear was replaced by rejoicing, which received additional impetus when four days later Rodney himself appeared with his fleet, accompanied by nine prizes, including the famous Ville de Paris.

On February 20, 1783, the House of Assembly resolved to write to the agent of the colony in England, Stephen Fuller, desiring him “to apply to the most eminent artist in England, to prepare an elegant marble statue of Lord 120Rodney, with a handsome pedestal of the same, to be erected in Spanish Town in commemoration of the glorious victory obtained by that gallant commander and the brave officers and seamen serving under him, over the French fleet on April 12, 1782.”

Premiums for designs to be approved by the Royal Academy were to be offered, and the most eminent statuary employed to carry them out.

Instead of an anonymous competition for premiums open to all English sculptors, which would have included the young Flaxman, who had already shown signs of genius, the Council of the Academy directed Bacon, Carlini, Nollekens, Tyler and Wilton to prepare designs. Only Bacon and Tyler sent models, and the work was entrusted to Bacon, who was “at the extraordinary trouble of making two trips to Italy for the purpose of procuring a block of marble large enough for the design.”

We read in Leslie and Taylor’s “Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” that the President, “according to Barry (letter to the Dilettanti Society, 1798), was much disappointed at the poor result, complaining that it in some measure defeated the object of those who intrusted the commission to the Academy.” But inasmuch as Bacon was recognised as the best sculptor of the time, it is a little difficult to understand what Sir Joshua expected.

The House of Assembly voted £1000 sterling for the object, but, as is usually the case in such matters, the monument cost them considerably more before it was completed—£5200 in fact; of which £500 was for freight and erection.

The statue did not arrive until 1790; and in that year the inhabitants of Kingston and Port Royal, having heard with concern a report that it was to be erected in Spanish Town, petitioned the House that it might be placed in the Parade in Kingston. The petition says:

Conscious that such an ornament can only be adapted to decorate a place equally conspicuous in point of situation, and convenient with respect to proximity to those harbours which his victory graced, they have anticipated the public approbation of seeing his 121statue erected in the centre of the first commercial town in the West Indies, and, solicitous to improve every advantage of position as well as to add every possible embellishment to this testimony of public gratitude, they, some time ago, subscribed a large sum of money for the purpose of conveying water from the Hope River to the Parade of Kingston, by means of which they propose to form a spacious basin to surround the statue, and have lately subscribed a further considerable sum to assist in erecting it, but are penetrated with the greatest concern, to find a report prevails of its being intended to be placed in Spanish Town.

The petition was rejected by the vote only of the speaker pro tem. (William Blake), the House dividing equally; and a further sum of £3000 was voted for a “proper building” to contain it, in Spanish Town, making an expenditure of £8200. The total cost of Jamaica’s tribute to the great hero (including the public offices which form wings to the colonnade, and £3650 for the purchase of the necessary land) was £30,918 (currency).

This grant for a “proper building” was ill-spent. Memorial statues should be erected “plain for all folk to see.” It is difficult to get a good view of Rodney, placed as he is beneath a low-roofed temple which, fitting as it might be for a statue of Jupiter or Venus, ill accords with the breezy life of a sailor; and if the good people of Kingston had been supported by the Assembly, Rodney’s statue would certainly have looked better in the centre of the Parade. When it was in Kingston temporarily from 1872 to 1889 it was on that barest of bare pedestals at the bottom of King street (to which Lord Metcalfe has once more been relegated) and lacked subsidiary adornment altogether.

Although West, in 1771, broke through tradition in painting in the matter of classic costume, and dared, to the great advantage of Art, to represent Wolfe and his soldiers in their own dress; and Pine painted Rodney himself and his officers as they appeared on board the Formidable in the dress they wore, in sculpture the result was slower, and Rodney was clothed by Bacon in the dress of a Roman, as a matter of course; the fondness on the part of sculptors for classic costume dying hard. Gibson, 122it is said, refused in the middle of the nineteenth century to execute his statue of Sir Robert Peel unless he was allowed to clothe him in a toga. In general treatment Rodney’s statue is not unlike the Augustus Cæsar of the Capitol. He is clad in a short-sleeved tunic (of which the part that should cover the body is by artistic licence omitted), and wears his paludamentum (or cloak) over his right arm, He has no greaves, but wears sandals on his feet. From a torques, or necklace (usually worn by Oriental barbarians) is suspended a Medusa’s head. His left hand, holding a sword-hilt, rests on the ordinary oblong shield of the Romans. His right arm is outstretched, and in his hand is a baton.

On the front panel of the pedestal is the following inscription:

Which may be rendered:

On the other three panels are bas-reliefs. On the one side is a representation of Britannia protecting Jamaica, who has a shield bearing the arms of the colony and her foot on a crocodile. The French flag appears to the right. On the other side is a representation of Britannia sitting in her chariot, with her foot on the French flag, in the grasp of a seaman. On her shield is the head of George III. On the back panel is a well-executed bas-relief of the chief feature in the great battle, showing the sterns of the Ville de Paris and the Barfleur.

123In front of the monument, typifying the spoils of war, are two handsome brass cannons, Le Modeste and Le Précipice, founded at Douay in 1748, by Jean Maritz, and bearing the proud legend “Nec pluribus impar”—the motto of Louis XIV.

The initials P. R. and B. E. refer to Philip Redwood (member of the Assembly for St. Catherine, later speaker, and afterwards chief justice), and Bryan Edwards, the historian, who selected the passages from Horace, cut in each side of the pedestal.

Over the front arch of the superstructure is the Rodney coat-of-arms carved in bold relief.

Rodney’s statue is mentioned in Cecil’s “Life of Bacon” as one of his principal works; and it was doubtless through the commission for this work that Bacon gained the orders for the other monuments by him erected in Jamaica—to the Countess of Effingham, Rosa Palmer, Lady Williamson, John Wolmer and others.

In Spanish Town, streets named after governors, are Beckford street, Nugent street, Manchester street, and Conran lane (after General Conran, 1813); the origin of Adelaide street (after the Queen of that name), William street (after the Prince who was later King), Brunswick street (after the Duke of Brunswick), and Nelson lane and Wellington street, are obvious.

Canning lane and Melbourne lane tell of two English prime ministers. In Cochrane lane we have probably a reminiscence of Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was admiral on the Jamaica station in 1814–15. Ellis street tells of the family of Lord Seaford who had properties in the island: the first Lord Seaford having been born in Spanish Town.

Barrett street recalls a family long resident in the island on the North-side.

The parish of St. John, merged in St. Catherine since 1867, dates from the first partition of the island under Modyford in 1664. The old name of Guanaboa is either Arawâk or Spanish, possibly, as Long suggests, a mixture of both, but the prefix gua is suggestive of an aboriginal 124origin. It may perhaps be formed from the Cuban Indian word meaning any kind of palm, or the native Indian word for sour-sop, guabana. Guanaboa occurs as the name of a district in Hayti. The earliest reference to the district in English days is under date July 15, 1661, when the justices of peace of Guanaboa were ordered by the Governor and Council “to nominate a person to sell drink at Cowhides,” and in the map in Hickeringill’s “Jamaica View’d,” published in that year, Guanaboa is one of the four inland names given. In the earlier edition of Slaney’s map of Jamaica of 1678, published by William Berry, there is a church marked at Guanaha, north-west of Spanish-Town, but in the later edition, published by Morden, Guanaha has been erased from the plate. Cowhides is marked on the map which accompanies the “Laws of Jamaica,” of 1684, as a pen for cattle; it probably indicated the place where the skins of the wild cattle were disposed of and possibly survives to-day in Cowpen estate; albeit a spot near Aylmers is still called Cowhide. On August 1 of the same year permission was given to Captain Anthony Collier and Lieutenant Edward Morris “to pen their own with other wild horses for one month, with the assistance of the officers of Guanaboa, to whom half the wild horses are to be delivered.” In 1663–64 to the first Assembly Guanaboa returned two members. One was William Clee, of whom even the erudite Roby has nothing to record. He was not a landowner in 1670. The other was Thomas Freeman, who was later member for St. Thomas-in-the-East, a brother-in-law of Colonel Cope (a member of the Council and colonel of one of the seven regiments, and possibly a kinsman of Colonel Doyley) who lived at Cope Place hard by.

Amongst the representatives whom St. John sent to the Assembly were members of the most noted families in Jamaica history—Aylmer, Beckford, Price, Ayscough, Rose, Brodrick, Kelly, Modd, Fuller, Beach and Shand.

In 1664 when Sir Thomas Modyford wrote home, St. John was one of the seven established parishes. By the survey of the island in 1670, it was shown to have eightythree 125families, and an estimated total population of 996; and a rate of one penny per acre then produced £200 in the parish. The largest landowner was John Styles with 3200 acres. Styles, in a letter to the principal Secretary of State in that year, states that Jamaica “would maintain more people than the whole of England.”

In May 1675 a petition was presented by him “that his land be made a distinct parish under the name of Styles Langley, he having left it by will to Christ Church College, Oxford, from whence he expects it will be supplied with preachers,” and offering to build a church. The petition was refused on the ground that the land, which was at Magatee, was not sufficiently extensive. It was later taken from St. John and made part of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. Research at Christ Church, Oxford, has failed to reveal any trace of Styles’s bequest.

In 1671 of the four clergymen ministering in Jamaica, at St. John’s was “Mr. Lemmings, an Englishman, lately sent by my Lord of London.” In 1675 “Mr. Lemon” (evidently the same man), “a sober young man and very good preacher,” was minister at Guanaboa. “He has £100 per annum for the parish, and about as much from Colonel Coape for keeping a free school he has erected.”

In 1682 we learn from a very interesting account of the state of the Church in Jamaica, sent to the Bishop of London by Sir Thomas Lynch, who took a keen interest in the cause of religion, that “St. John’s parish or Guanaboa is supplied by Mr. Lemon, who has £100 a year by law. He had some advantages by a school built by Colonel Cope, but on the failure of that and on his marriage to a poor gentleman’s widow he has been a little uneasy. However, since I came he has sold some land I gave him for £500, so that he is in a reasonably good condition. For all I have heard he is a very honest, sober, fair-conditioned man, and esteemed the best preacher in the island. I think he has a parsonage, but the church is decayed, and he preaches in the schoolhouse.” This reference to the decayed condition of the church is, curiously enough, the earliest direct evidence of the existence of a church at Guanaboa, though it was 126probably one of the six churches existing in 1675. It was presumably at all events existing when Richard Guy was buried in 1681, the earliest dated tombstone in the church; but it is curious that there is no mark for a church at Guanaboa in the map of 1684 above referred to. The existing register of baptisms, marriages and burials only goes back as far as 1751. Part of the original fabric probably exists in the present building, which only dates from about 1845, the older church having been burnt down shortly before then.

Roby, in his “History of the Parish of St. James” (1849), says, “In a wood near Aylmer’s in St. John’s, is a monument inscribed, under arms (the colours added) sable, a chevron erminois, between three spear-heads argent, embrued at the points, proper. Crest, a dragon’s head vert, erased gules, holding in its mouth a sinister hand, erect, couped, dropping blood from the wrist, all proper.”

Roby gives the inscription with, marvellous to relate, one or two mistakes, e.g. He for Who in the fourth line; High for Hon. in the tenth; and he corrects the Mason’s Pallidæ into Pallida. It runs as follows:

Near to this Mournfull Marble lies Interr’d the Body of the Hon. Coll. Charles Price who was divested of the Robe of Mortality on the 23d day of May, 1730, Aged 52 years.

Who was a Loving Husband, an Indulgent Parent, a peaceable Neighbour, and a faithful Friend; Just, Charitable, Courteous, Affable to his Inferiors, patient of Injuries and Slow to wrath.

A Man of Integrity, and so firm to his word, that he inviolably preserv’d the same even to the strictest Nicety of Honour; meek he was but truly Brave, and every way fited for his Hon. station, and for a Loyalist was second to none.

He was possessed of such a singular ingaging temper and sincerity of mind, which render’d him a very desirable Companion to all, but more especialy to those who had the happyness of being intimately acquainted with him for he knew no guile neither was deceit found in his heart. If he had any Enemies, they must have been the Sons of Envy, and became such not thro’ any real cause by him given, but from some invidious and Malignant seeds planted and foster’d in their own turbulent and uneasie breasts.

To say more of him would be but still to say too little, only that he is now gone to that place which alone knows how to reward those vertues, of which he was here the happy possessor.

Pallidæ [sic] mors æquo pulsat Pede pauperum Tabernas Regumque Turres.

Lawrence-Archer, in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies” (1875), gives the same information as Roby. Nothing is now known of such a tomb near Aylmers, and the tombstone in memory of Price, as quoted by Roby, is now on the floor of the church near the north door; but the tinctures on the arms are quite gone. There is no record of the removal from wood to church. It was evidently subsequent to 1849, but the reference in Lawrence-Archer is no certain proof that it was still in the wood in 1875.

Charles Price was the third son of Francis Price, who came to Jamaica as a captain under Venables. His eldest son, Charles, who achieved much fame in Jamaica and was made a baronet in 1768, and lies buried at Decoy, his estate in St. Mary, will be dealt with under that parish. Charles Price was member for St. John in 1713 and St. James in 1725, but was expelled for non-attendance in the same year. He was custos of St. Catherine. His two sons and six daughters, who all died between 1716 and 1727, lie buried in the church. He left three surviving sons.

Amongst other monuments in the church are those to the following: Richard Guy, who represented in the Assembly “the North-side” (1671–2), St. Ann and St. James in 1673–74, and St. James from 1675 to 1679. In 1676 he patented 1000 acres of which Latium (not Latimer as Lawrence-Archer and Feurtado—after him—have it) in St. John, formed part: George Modd, who represented St. John in the Assembly in 1718, 1719, and 1722, and St. Catherine in 1721, in which year he was speaker; and Colonel Whitgift Aylmer. The arms on his monument are: a cross between four Cornish choughs close; the crest, a Cornish chough rising out of a ducal coronet. From the title “Honourable” it is possible, Roby points out, that he was custos of the precinct of St. Catherine (which comprehended the parish 128of St. John with St. Dorothy and St. Thomas-in-the-Vale), as he does not appear to have been a member of the Council; and although from the arms on his monument it may be inferred that he was of the now noble family of Aylmers, of Balrath, Co. Meath, yet that family was not ennobled until 1718, seventeen years after his decease, when Matthew (second son of Sir Christopher Aylmer, who was created a baronet of Ireland in 1682), rear-admiral of the red, was created Baron Aylmer of Balrath.

The family, which had been long settled in Ireland, is said to have been descended from Aylmer, a Saxon duke of Cornwall, and Sir Gerald Alymer, who, 25 Hen. VIII (1533), was a Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, was great-great-grandfather to Sir Christopher, the first baronet before mentioned.

The family gave an archbishop to Canterbury, and Whitgift Aylmer is supposed to have descended from Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury. He was member of Assembly for St. John’s 1673–74, 1677, 1677 again; St. Ann’s 1680–81 and 1687–88; and for St. John’s 1701. The Christian name of his wife was Joyce, as appears from the register of St. Catherine’s, in which parish two of their children were baptized—Mary, June 11, 1669, and John, September 5, 1687. His son was also a member of the Assembly.

The following notice of his election for this parish appears under the date of June 26, 1701.

It appearing by the return of the writs, that Lieutenant-Colonel Whitgift Aylmer was elected for the parish of St. John, and Whitgift Aylmer for the parish of St. James, and it being doubted whether the said Whitgift Aylmer, elected for the parish of St. James, was Colonel Whitgift Aylmer the father or Whitgift Aylmer the son, and a debate thereon, it was put to the vote whether the House understood by the said returns, that Lieutenant-Colonel Whitgift Aylmer or Whitgift Aylmer his son were elected for the parish of St. James.

Resolved, that it was understood by the return to be Whitgift Aylmer the son.

The memory of the family still lives in Aylmers estate hard by.

The parish of St. Dorothy, which was formed out of part 129of Clarendon and part of St. Catherine in 1675, was, on the general reduction of the number of parishes in 1867, merged into St. Catherine.

Old Harbour bay was called by Columbus Puerto de las Vacas, probably because he saw a number of manatees there when he visited it on his homeward way after he had discovered Jamaica.

Bernaldez tells us that:

Thus sailing in a southerly direction they anchored one evening in a bay in a territory where there were many large villages; and the cacique of a very large village which was above the ships came and brought them a quantity of fresh provisions and the admiral gave some of the things which he had on board to him and his followers, and they were much pleased; and the cacique asked whence they came and what the admiral’s name was, and the admiral answered that he was a vassal of the mighty and illustrious sovereigns the king and queen of Castile, his masters, who had sent him to these parts to learn and discover those lands and to do much honour to good men but to destroy the bad. Now he spoke to them by means of his Indian interpreter and the said cacique was much pleased, and he asked the interpreter at great length about things in Spain, and he told him at great length at which the cacique and the other Indians were much astonished and pleased and they stayed there until night, and then took leave of the admiral. Next day the admiral departed, and as he was sailing with a light wind, the cacique came with three canoes and overtook the admiral coming in an orderly and stately manner; one of the canoes was as large as a sea-going ship and was painted all over: the cacique came and his wife and two daughters and two young lads, his sons and five brothers and others who were followers; one of the daughters was 18 years old, and very beautiful; she was quite naked according to the custom of those parts, the other was younger.

In the prow of the canoe stood the standard-bearer of the cacique clad in a mantle of variegated feathers, with a tuft of gay plumes on his head, and bearing in his hand a fluttering white banner. Two Indians with caps or helmets of feathers of uniform shape and colour and their faces painted in a similar manner, beat upon tabors; two others, with hats curiously wrought of green feathers, held trumpets of a fine black wood, ingeniously carved; there were six others, in large hats of white feathers, who appeared to be guards to the cacique.

Having arrived alongside of the admiral’s ship, the cacique entered on board with all his train. He appeared in full regalia. Around his head was a band of small stones of various colours, but principally green, symmetrically arranged, with large white stones 130at intervals, and connected in front by a large jewel of gold. Two plates of gold were suspended to his ears by rings of very small green stones. To a necklace of white beads, of a kind deemed precious by them, was suspended a large plate, in the form of a fleur-de-lys, of guanin, an inferior species of gold; and a girdle of variegated stones, similar to those around his head, completed his regal decorations. His wife was adorned in a similar manner, having also a very small apron of cotton, and bands of the same round her arms and legs. The daughters were without ornaments, excepting the eldest and handsomest, who had a girdle of small stones, from which was suspended a tablet, the size of an ivyleaf, composed of various coloured stones embroidered on network of cotton.

When the cacique entered on board the ship he distributed presents of the productions of his island among the officers and men.

Columbus tells us that Old Harbour was inhabited by the most intelligent and most civilized of all the aborigines that he had met in the Antilles. Later it was called Esquivel, after the Spanish governor who established it as a port for ship-building.

The land on which the Church of St. Dorothy, commonly called Tamarind-tree church, at Old Harbour, was built, was given as a free gift by Colonel Fuller and his wife Catherine Fuller, and also the land and glebe consisting of about 30 acres of land on which the rectory house was built. Colonel Fuller was among the foremost of the Parliamentary officers who came here with Penn and Venables, and received large grants of land, comprising Fuller’s Pen and Thetford in St. Dorothy, and Fuller’s Pen in St. John’s. At a Council meeting held at St. Jago de la Vega, May 9, 1692,

Thomas Scambler Clerke, Minister and Rector of the Parish of St. Dorothy, being at the Board tendered the oaths appointed by Act of Parliament to be taken instead of the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, and also to repeat and subscribe the Declaration as by the said Act is Required Peremtarily refuse to take the same ordered that he be from henceforth ipso facto deprived of his said benefice as by the said Act is Directed, and that notice thereof be given to the Churchwardens of the said parish.

On May 19, at a meeting of the council, it was

ordered that the Provost Marshall forthwith take into custody the body of Thomas Scambler Clerke, late Minister and Rector of the 131Parish of St. Dorothy for refusing to take the oaths ... and that the Attorney-General prosecute him thereupon.

Amongst the rectors was the Rev. William Leacock, who was of the Leacock family in Barbados. He gave up the living in 1836–37 and went to America and was the leading divine of the Episcopal church in New Orleans. He was succeeded by the Rev. Charles Hall, the Rev. McAlves, and the Rev. George Wilkinson Rowe, brother of Sir Joshua Rowe, the chief justice of Jamaica, who held the rectory for upwards of 30 years, and the Rev. W. C. McCalla, who commenced the building of the chancel and organ chamber about 1890.

Up to the year 1845–46 the old church was usually called the Old Harbour “barn,” with red brick walls and wooden window shutters. The church was renovated and restored and a belfry was put on the roof by the late Alexander Bravo in the time of the Rev. George W. Rowe.

In the church are monuments to Colonel Thomas Fuller (d. 1690) and John Pusey (d. 1767).

Colebeck Castle, which stands on a ridge of land on the west bank of the Colebeck gully, about a mile and a half to the north-west of Old Harbour town, overlooking the bay, probably dates from the end of the seventeenth century. It must have been the most imposing building of the kind erected in Jamaica. It was evidently at one time partially destroyed by fire. It is rectangular in plan, about 114 feet wide and 90 feet deep, consisting of four three-storied, square, tower-like buildings at each corner, rising to a height of about 40 feet, connected by two-storied arched arcades, consisting on two sides of three arches, on the other sides of five arches. The windows on the ground floor are circular. The walls are formed of stone, filled in between with rubble, with brick quoins and window facings, and are about 2 feet 6 inches thick; at every fourth or fifth course is a course of larger sized bricks. The inside walls have been coated with plaster work. Some of the lintels of doors and windows still remain, and are of bully-wood, as good as when they were first put up. A concrete terrace ran around the castle, with steps at front and back.

132Parts of a projecting wall—at a distance of about 114 feet from the castle on each side, enclosing a square of about 300 feet—about 12 inches thick, still remain, and show crudely-formed loopholes for firing. In some places there is a drop of from 12 to 20 feet on the outside. At each corner of the outer wall was a substantial building some 60 feet square, and underneath three of them were vaulted dungeons. Two dungeons are no higher than 6 feet, 8 feet wide, and 24 feet long, with only one very small aperture low down at one end. The dungeon at another corner measures 60 feet by 20 feet, and is reached by a flight of twenty steps.

To-day the castle is surrounded by bush, and is the abode of bats and owls. On the surrounding property sugar has given place to tobacco.

From his black marble gravestone on the floor of the south transept in the cathedral, we learn that “Collnel John Colbeck of Colbeck in St. Dorothyes was born ye 30th of May, 1630, and came with ye army that conquered this island ye 10th day of May, 1655, where haveing discharged several honble. offices both civill and military with great applause he departed this life ye 22d day of February 1682.”

He was returned member for Old Harbour in the first Assembly of Jamaica, which met on January 20, 1663–64. In 1664, as Sedgwick had prophesied in a letter to Thurloe, the Maroons proved a thorn in the side of the English settlers. Though the main body under Juan de Bolas had surrendered after the defeat of the Spaniards by Doyley, other parties remained in inaccessible retreats, and, augmented by runaway slaves, gave great trouble by intermittent descents on the planters in the interior. Foremost amongst these were the Vermaholis negroes. After the death, in action, of Juan de Bolas, who on surrendering had been made a colonel of the Black regiment, Captain Colebeck, in March 1664, was employed to endeavour to quell them. “He went,” Long tells us, “by sea to the north side, and having gained some advantages over them, he returned, with one who pretended to treat for the rest. This embassy, however, was only calculated to amuse the 133whites, and gain some respite; for they no sooner found themselves in a proper condition, and the white inhabitants lulled into security, than they began to renew hostilities.”

In the survey of Jamaica sent home by Modyford in 1670, under St. Katherine’s parish we read: “John Colebeck (812 acres); Capt. Colebeck and inhabitants (1340 acres).”

In the third Assembly, which met on February 1, 1671–72, Colebeck’s name appears among the representatives of St. Catherine as “Major John Colebeck for Bowers,” Bowers being the district in which Colebeck Castle stands. On February 14 following “the Gentlemen of the Assembly in a body came to the Council and informed the Governor [Sir Thomas Lynch, Lieutenant-Governor] of the sickness of their Speaker, Captain Samuel Long, who recommended unto them Major John Colebeck, with whom they went back to their House and immediately returned their thanks to the Governor for his proposing so fit and able a person to be their Speaker.”

Colebeck remained speaker of the Assembly until Samuel Long was re-elected in May 1673; but on Long’s election to the Council, Colebeck was passed over for the speakership, and Beeston was elected.

In the fourth Assembly, May 10, 1673, Colebeck was again returned under the general head of St. Catherine as chosen specially for Bowers. In the next Assembly, which met on February 13, 1673–74, his name appears as one of the three representatives for St. Catherine generally, the return omitting the former distinctions of one member for St. Jago, another for Sixteen Mile Walk, and a third for Bowers. In the sixth Assembly, April 26, 1675, he was elected for the newly formed parish of St. Dorothy, and continued until his death to represent that parish in every successive assembly, viz. on April 9, 1677, when he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel; on September 6, 1677; September 2, 1678; August 19, 1679, when he had attained his colonelcy; and finally on March 19, 1680–81.

In a “Brief Account of the Government of Jamaica,” drawn up in 1680, his name appears fourth on the list of 134justices of the peace for Precinct IV (St. Catherine’s, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, and St. Dorothy’s), coming after those of Byndloss, Ballard and Long.

In 1679 he was one of a committee of fourteen of the Council and Assembly for the Defence of Jamaica, who signed specific recommendations to the governor for strengthening the breastwork, arming the new works, and providing four fire-ships.

On February 17, 1682, the Lords of Trade and Plantations agreed to recommend, and the King approved, Colonel John Colebeck to be of the Council of Jamaica, in the room of Colonel Whitfield deceased, but he had died before the decision reached Jamaica. His will, dated February 20, was proved on March 15, 1682–83. He does not seem to have had relations for whom he cared, for he named none. He left all his estate, real and personal, to his executors, Hender Molesworth and Samuel Bernard (to each of whom he gave £40), to hold for payment of his just debts and legacies. He bequeathed money to purchase a ring to each of Sir Thomas Lynch, Robert Byndloss and Sir Henry Morgan. He left £20 to Henry Howser, the rector of St. Catherine, to preach his funeral sermon. He left £10 each to Dr. Ross 135and Edmund Duck, the Attorney-General, and £300 to Mrs. Ann Ash; and to every one of “ye Gentlemen of Councill each a ring of 30/- price. To ye church of St. Dorothy’s ye charge of glassing all ye windows and putting in iron barrs.”

After his death, the name of Colebeck does not appear in Jamaica history. As his arms are not given on his tombstone, there is nothing to show whether he came of the Bedfordshire or the Lincolnshire branch of the family; but there is a tradition in the Colbeck family that a member of the Lincolnshire branch at Louth was transported to the West Indies for cutting down an elm tree; that he acquired a fortune, and that his estate went into Chancery.

The principal reminiscence of the great earthquake of 1692 which overthrew Port Royal is the Tomb of Lewis Galdy, which is on the opposite side of Kingston harbour, at Green Bay, where at one time many naval officers were interred. On a brick tomb rests a white marble slab with Galdy’s crest and arms. The arms are a cock, two mullets in chief and a crescent in base. The crest, on an esquire’s helmet, is a plume, and the motto “Dieu sur tout.” The following is the inscription:

Here Lyes the Body of Lewis Galdy, Esq., who departed this life at Port Royal the 22nd December 1739. Aged 80. He was Born at Montpelier in France, but left that Country for his Religion and came to settle in this Island, where he was swallowed up in the Great Earthquake in the year 1692 and by the Providence of God was by another Shock thrown into the Sea, and miraculously saved by swimming until a boat took him up: He lived many years after in great Reputation, Beloved by all who knew him and much lamented at his death.

Lawrence-Archer, in recording this inscription, adds: “Mr. Galdy probably exaggerated the circumstances of his escape, especially as there was no one left to contradict his statement.” There must have been at the time of his death many persons living who could have borne witness to Galdy’s escape. Galdy probably did not write his own epitaph. Moreover, if Lawrence-Archer had experienced an earthquake himself he would not have been so ready to scoff; and the following contemporary accounts all tend to prove 136the truth of the monumental inscription. In the earthquake of 1907 there were many escapes almost as miraculous as Galdy’s.

In “The Truest and Largest Account of the Earthquake in Jamaica, June the 7th, 1692, Written by a Reverend Divine there to his friend in London” (London, 1693) it is stated:

You would admire at the Goodness of God in the Preservation of the residue; some were very miraculously delivered from death, swallowed down into the Bowels of the Earth alive and spewed up again, and saved by the violent Eruption of Water through those Gaps; some (as they say themselves, if they were alive at that time to know what was done to them) were swallowed up in one place, and by the rushing of Waters to and fro by reason of the agitation of the Earth at that time, were cast up again by another Chasm at places far distant.

This account is corroborated by the contemporary account given by Captain Crocket, writing from Port Royal on June 30, 1692. He says:

Several People were Swallow’d up of the Earth, when the Sea breaking in before the Earth could Close, were washed up again and Miraculously saved from Perishings; Others the Earth received up to their Necks, and then Closed upon them and squeez’d them to Death; with their Heads above ground, many of which the Dogs Eat; Multitudes of People Floating up and down, having no Burial.

Also in “A full Account of the Late Dreadful Earthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica, Written in two Letters from the Minister of that Place” (London, 1692), we read:

But no place suffered like Port Royal; where whole Streets were swallowed up by the opening Earth, and the Houses and Inhabitants went down together, some of them were driven up again by the Sea, which arose in those breaches and wonderfully escaped; some were swallowed up to the Neck, and then the Earth shut upon them, and squeezed them to death; and in that manner several are left buried with their Heads above ground, and some Heads the Dogs have eaten, others are covered with Dust and Earth by the people which yet remain in the Place to avoid the stench.

Also in a letter, dated Jamaica, September 20, 1692, quoted by Sir Hans Sloane:

137The Earth when it opened up and swallowed up people, they rose in other streets, some in the middle of the Harbour, and yet saved; though at the same time I believe there was lost about 2000 Whites and Blacks.

Elsewhere in the same letter it says:

She [the anonymous writer’s wife] told me when she felt the House shake, she run out, and called all within to do the same: She was no sooner out but the Sand lifted up; and her Negro Woman grasping about her, they both dropped into the Earth together; and at the same Instant the Water coming in rowled them over and over, till at length they catched hold of a beam, where they hung, till a Boat came from a Spanish Vessel and took them up.

And again, in a letter of July 3, 1693, “Some were swallowed quite down, and cast up again by great Quantities of Water; others went down and were never more seen. These were the smallest openings: Others that were more large swallowed up great Houses, and out of some gapings would issue great Rivers of Water, spouted up a great height into the Air, which seemed to threaten a Deluge to that part of Port-Royal.”

But the most detailed account of all is given in “A Natural History of Nevis and the rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America. With many other Observations on Nature and Art. In Eleven Letters from the Rev. Mr. Smith, sometime Rector of St. John’s, at Nevis, and now Rector of St. Mary’s in Bedford; to the Rev. Mr. Mason, B.D., Woodwardian Professor, and Fellow of Trinity College, in Cambridge, 1745.”

One Mrs. Akers of Nevis was a native of Port Royal in Jamaica, and lived there in the year of our Lord 1692, when the great earthquake made such a dismal havoc and destruction, as will hardly ever be forgotten by the inhabitants of that Island. She told me, ‘That the earth opened wide, swallowed her with many others, and then immediately closed up again’; she said she was in a state of insensibility during her short stay there. It could not exceed the tenth part of a minute before it opened once more to vomit some of them up again. I asked her what might be her thoughts of the matter just the moment before the Earth swallowed her down; and she answered, that imagining herself upon the brink of a boundless Eternity, she put up a short ejaculation to Almighty 138God, begging him to pardon her Sins, and to receive her Soul. The Hiatus she fell into was all Water, so that being very wet she received no other harm, excepting in one of her Cheeks, which grated a little against something that did but just draw blood. This water Hiatus closed again the next moment, catching hold of some people by a Leg, of others by the middle of the Body, and of others some by the Arm &c., detaining them in dismal torture, but immovably fixed in the ground, till they, with almost the whole Town besides, sunk under Water; which happen’d within three minutes after she had got safe on board a Ship then riding at anchor in the Harbour.

Galdy was an affluent merchant of Port Royal, churchwarden from 1726, and member of Assembly for St. Mary, 1707; for Port Royal, 1708–09; for St. George, 1711; for Port Royal again, 1716; and for St. Anne, 1718. He enriched himself by the slave trade, as factor for the Assiento.

Until about the middle of the last century various inns and posting-houses, or taverns, as they were generally called, were kept in Jamaica. Some were rendered unnecessary by the advent of the railway, and some were superseded owing to the more rapid travelling rendered possible by better roads.

Of these the Ferry Inn, formerly the halfway house between Kingston and Spanish Town, has survived hurricane and earthquake, only to live on its departed glory, and no longer as a tavern.

In 1677 “An Act for the Ferry between St. Catherines and St. Andrews” was passed, of which the preamble runs:

Whereas William Parker, of the parish of St. Andrews, Esquire, hath at his particular Charge found out and made a very convenient Way between the Salt and Fresh River in the Parish of St. Andrews and St. Catherines, which will be of great use and advantage to the whole Island, in causing a more near and easie Correspondence with the several Precincts and whereas the said William Parker hath likewise set up and erected a Ferry for the better Accommodation of the said Passage, and whereas the same cannot be maintained without great and constant charges....

In return for the right to demand Toll over the Ferry, Parker was bound to “compleat the said Way and Passage within twelve months from and after the making of this 139Act, and that in all places it be not less than eight foot broad.”

This was one of a batch of laws that was not assented to by the King, and included in the laws passed under the Great Seal of England in 1678, and brought out by Carlisle for the Assembly’s acceptance which was refused. It was repeated in an Act of 1683. An Act of 1699, confirmed in 1703, directed the building of a bridge, and the 1683 Act does not appear in subsequent editions of the laws. The Ferry river—once known as the Lagoon river from its source to the Ferry and thence to its junction with the Salt river as the Fresh river—rises at Governor’s Spring in Ellis’s Caymanas and runs into the Salt river; the united stream then runs into the old course of the Rio Cobre just before it enters Hunt’s Bay in Kingston harbour.

By the Act of 1677, “William Parker, his Heirs and Assigns” were “Impowered and Authorized, for the space and term of fourteen years from the making thereof, to ask, demand, sue for, recover, and receive as a Duty and Toll for the Transporting of any Person over the said Ferry, Seven pence half peny; for every Horse and Man, fifteen pence; for every grown Beast that hath no Rider, seven Pence half peny; for every Sheep, Calf, or Hog, sixpence; 140and that the said William Parker, his Heirs and Assigns, may and shall erect a Tavern or Victualling-house near the said Ferry, and shall not be compelled to renew or pay any License Money for the same.”

Lady Nugent, in her Journal, mentions visits to the Ferry Inn on three occasions, all in 1803; on February 10, when the Governor’s party breakfasted there prior to the review of the St. Andrew’s militia by General Nugent; on May 27, when “most of our family dined at the Ferry House, on the Kingston Road, and our dinner party was very small”; and lastly, on June 13, when she writes: “13th—Sent carriages, soon after 5, into Spanish Town, for the Murphy family, who slept there. Soon after breakfast, General N. set off with Mr. M. in the curricle, to visit the estates between this and Kingston called the Camoens [Caymanas]. After second breakfast Mrs. and the Misses Murphy with me in the sociable. The rest of the party in kittareens, phaetons, and on horseback, all proceded to the Ferry Inn to meet the Admiral and a large party at dinner. We had sent on to order the dinner, a few days before, and all that Jamaica produces was ready to be served up. The poor Admiral however, was so overcome with fatigue and the heat of the day, that he was quite ill, and obliged to leave the table. In consequence we all separated early. Mr. and Mrs. M. went with the Admiral, and are to be his guests till Wednesday. I took my seat in the curricle with General N., and all our young people went in the sociable; and really if it had not been for Sir J. T. Duckworth’s illness it would have been a merry party. As it was I was much entertained; for the Inn is situated on the road between Kingston and Spanish Town, and it was very diverting to see the odd figures and extraordinary equipages constantly passing—kittareens, sulkies, mules, and donkies. Then a host of gentlemen, who were taking their sangaree in the Piazza; and their vulgar buckism amused me very much. Some of them got half tipsy; and then began petitioning me for my interest with his Honour—to redress the grievance of one, to give a place to another, and so forth; in short it was a picture of Hogarth....”

141To-day one can drive by the road and meet perhaps only a few drays, laden with wood or guinea-grass for Kingston, or, it may be, bananas or other agricultural produce. Of the “host of gentlemen” one sees nothing. The Ferry was in the early nineteenth century one of the places where tolls were charged. In the “Royal Gazette” for November 17, 1827, the Lease of the Ferry Toll was advertised for tender.

The records of the House of Assembly contain many references to the grants made in aid of roads, their management and the like. It may be interesting to take the history of the Spanish Town road, which until the advent of the railway was the principal, as typical of the rest.

“An Act for the Highways,” passed in 1681 (the third Act passed by the legislature of the colony) provides “That the Highways be sixty foot wide in standing Wood, forty foot where the Wood is only on one side, and twenty-four foot in open ground.”

The early “Act for the Highways” is alluded to in a slightly later Act (passed before 1695): “For making and Clearing a Publick Road from St. Mary’s and St. George’s into the Parish of St. Andrew’s.”

In 1698 Parker was brought before the House for collecting toll at the Ferry although the law had expired. A Committee to whom the matter was referred, reported that they had

examined the business referred to them by the House, concerning the Ferry between St. Catherine’s and St. Andrews and upon perusal of the Patent granted anno 1682, the whole Committee came to this resolution, viz. That the patent was void and the law expired:

Whereupon the said letters patent and the law being read in the house, it was put to the vote, whether the House would concur to the report of the committee of grievances;

Carried in the affirmative.

Michael Holdsworth and John Moone, esquires, ordered to wait on the Governor and acquaint him of the resolution of the House about the ferry, who returning, reported the delivery of the message, and that the Governor said that he hoped the house would take care to make a law that the benefit of the ferry should go to the two parishes, but that he thought it reasonable that the parish of St. 142Andrew shall have somewhat the more of the benefit, in regard that the road on the other side the ferry is to be maintained by them, which will be chargeable.

Whereupon Michael Holdsworth, Usher Tyrrell, John Walters, John Dove, Emanuel Moreton, William Hall, Jervis Sleigh, and John James, esquires, were appointed a committee to bring in a bill for that purpose.

And in the following year an Act was passed “to oblige the parishes of St. Catherine and St. Andrew to build a bridge over the Rio Cobre.” The bridge was to be at least twelve foot wide.

In October 1723 a Committee of the Assembly, appointed to consider the most effectual means for repairing the public roads, reported:

1. That although the road leading from Spanish-Town to the Parish of St. Andrew were repaired according to the Act of this island directing the repairing the public roads, yet it would be of no effect, unless the Rio Cobre were first cleared.

To which the House agreed....

And a committee was appointed to bring in a bill for repairing the road leading from St. Jago de la Vega to the town of Kingston. The committee was, five days later, ordered to insert a clause for cutting a new channel for the Rio Cobre.

By 1745 the road was known as the Ferry Road, and in that year a Committee of the Assembly was appointed to enquire into matters respecting it.

In 1748 the Assembly again considered the state of the Ferry Road, and passed “An Act to empower Commissioners to keep the Ferry, and erect a toll-gate or turnpike, between St. Catherine’s and St. Andrew’s, to commence at the expiration of an Act entitled An Act for empowering William Peete, Esquire to keep the Ferry, and erect a toll-gate or turnpike between St. Catherine’s and St. Andrew’s, and taking up runaway negroes.”

In 1758 an Act was passed for “Vesting in Trustees a toll to keep the ferry, and erect a toll-gate or turnpike between St. Catherine’s and St. Andrew’s ...” and a similar Act was passed in 1761.

143In 1777 a Committee reported:

4. On consideration of the motion for £4000 to be applied towards carrying on the road from the church in Spanish Town to the church in Kingston, it appears to your Committee, from accounts solemnly attested and rendered in, and also from vouchers produced, that the sum of £2000 granted last session of Assembly, for carrying on the new road from the town of St. Jago de la Vega to the Ferry, in the parish of St. Catherine, and of £2000 for carrying on the new road from the Ferry, in the parish of St. Andrew, to the Town of Kingston, have been all expended on the said roads; your Committee were therefore of opinion, the sum of £4000 now applied for, should be granted: Your Committee have come to two resolutions respecting this road:

1st. Resolved: It is the opinion of this Committee that the road between Spanish Town and Kingston is laid out on too large a scale; that therefore, it ought to be contracted that thirty feet in the centre well paved and gravelled (except in the Salina which ought to be paved forty feet) would answer every purpose to the public, and save a considerable expense.

2nd. Resolved: It is the opinion of this Committee that the salaries allowed to the Superintendent, and his assistants, amounting to about £900 per annum, are too large; and that, in future, they ought to be reduced.

In 1778 an Act was passed “for explaining and amending the several Highway Laws now in force, and rendering the said Laws more effectual.” It was repealed and expired by 1792.

In 1799 an Act “for continuing the Act commonly called the Highways Act for a certain time longer,” was passed, but expired in 1812.

In 1801 a Highway law was passed, but was repealed in 1805.

In 1802 a law was passed “for rendering more effectual the several laws relating to the public road from the church in the town of Saint Jago de la Vega to the church in Kingston,” and “the Trustees of the Ferry Road” were thereby appointed.

In 1815 an Act was passed giving “fuller powers to the Trustees of the Ferry Road,” as it was found that “the present state of the Ferry Road requires that their powers shall be extended, and that prompt and efficacious means should be used to repair and keep the same in good order especially by causing it to be frequently examined.”

144The oldest tablet in the Church of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale at Linstead is that of one Elizabeth Burton, who died in 1742. At the time of the threatened invasion by the French in 1805 the Records of the island were removed to this church, and were protected by a militia guard. The said church was blown down by a hurricane in March 1822, and was shortly afterwards rebuilt. A tower was added to the church in 1830.

The church was destroyed by earthquake on January 14, 1907, and was rebuilt of reinforced concrete with eternit roofing at a total cost of £950 and was consecrated in 1911.

Although the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale dates from 1675, when the author of “The Present State of Jamaica” (published in 1683) wrote his work, its church was not one of the seven churches in the island; the nearest church then being St. John’s, Guanaboa Vale, which had been in existence since 1669. The earliest rector recorded was the Rev. Thomas Garbrand, appointed in 1705. In “The Early English Colonies” (1908), by Mr. Sadler Phillips, is given “A List of the Parishes, Churches and Ministers in Jamaica, April 18th, 1715,” in which is included “St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, a church blown down, Mr. Reinolds.” The Rev. James Reynolds had come out in 1709, sent by the Bishop of London, who since 1702 had had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Jamaica. In 1798 the rector was the Rev. William Williamson. In 1820 and for some years after the rector was the Rev. William Buston.

Williamsfield, in St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, on the road between St. Mary and Spanish Town, was first settled by Needham, a large proprietor, but was soon purchased by one Harvey from Barbados, who in turn sold it to Daniel Lascelles, brother to the first Baron Harewood. It remained in the Lascelles’ hands for many years. In 1743, Henry Lascelles went to London from Barbados, and being a wealthy man purchased the Harewood estate, carried on business in London as West India merchants with George Maxwell. His son Edwin was created Baron Harewood in 1790.

145At a Council meeting held on July 11, 1692, at St. Jago de la Vega (the first held there after the earthquake) it was “ordered that the Councill meet on Wednesday next at Musqueto Point to view and consider of a place in order to the Building a fortification for to secure the Channell.”

And on August 8 it was “ordered that a fortification be made at Mosquito Point, of the ground &c. fitt to erect the same and that Charles Bouchier, Esq. goe and veiw the same and draw out Plott thereof and the same Returne to this Board.” This was the origin of Fort Augusta.

Long gives the following account of the fort in his time. He makes a strong attack on the policy of fortifying a place which he designates a “still unfinished battery stuck into a quagmire at the entrance of Kingston Harbour,” and says that the immense charges incurred on its behalf had by 1757 helped to cripple the island financially. He says:

This fort mounts eighty-six large guns, kept in excellent order. It contains a large magazine, a house for the commandant, barracks to contain three hundred soldiers, with all convenient offices, and casemates. It was projected to mount one hundred and sixteen guns; but it is not yet compleated. The walls and bastions are built upon piles of the palmeto or thatch-pole tree, which is endued with the property of lasting in water without being liable to erosion by the worm. These were driven down through the loose land, until they reached a firm bed. If the same precaution had been used in constructing the houses of Port Royal, it is probable that the greater part of the town would have survived the earthquake. This fort contains an hospital, besides habitations for the officers, and is looked upon to be an healthy garrison. The neck of sand which joins it to the main is not above fifty or sixty feet wide in most places, and so low, that an enemy could not carry on approaches, on account of the water rising near the surface; and it is flanked by a lagoon, or inlet of water from the harbour, of some extent; for these reasons, and because the ships, in passing up the channel towards Kingston, must come within point-blank shot of a whole line of guns, a governor of this island pronounced it impregnable both by land and sea.

During a storm in 1744 a new fort begun at Mosquito Point was entirely destroyed.

The present fort was erected on Mosquito Point in Kingston Harbour in 1753. On September 13, 1782, the magazine, with three hundred barrels of powder, blew up. 146Amongst the military tombs is that to Major John Sankey Darley, 2nd W.I.R., who was killed in a mutiny of the West India Regiment there in May 1808. Recruits of the 2nd West India Regiment, Chamba and Koromantyn negroes, mutinied on parade, aided by some of the older men. The Lieutenant and Adjutant Ellis was killed on the spot, and Darley died of the wounds he received. The general officer commanding, Carmichael, got into conflict with the House of Assembly by directing his officers not to answer any questions that that body might put to them with reference to the occurrence. Darley was brother to Alderman Darley of Dublin, of Orange notoriety. Carmichael died in 1813 while governor of British Guiana.

Rodney’s Look-out on the Heathshire Hills was shaken down by the earthquake of 1907. It was erected by Rodney while he was admiral on the Jamaica station, (1771–74), for the purpose of keeping a look-out to windward. Port Henderson hard by, is named after a former owner, John Henderson, colonel of militia, who was presented at Court in February 1784. He died at his estate in Scotland in 1811. It was founded in opposition to Passage Fort, as it afforded better accommodation for ships.

Towards the close of the nineteenth century it was the site of a temporary laboratory of marine zoology for students of the Johns Hopkins University.

Lawrencefield is said to have been the residence of Sir Henry Morgan, governor of Jamaica (1673–82). St. Jago Farm is said to be the site of the residence of Sasi, the last of the Spanish Governors. Government Pen was the residence of former governors, and is frequently mentioned in Lady Nugent’s “Journal.” At Caymanas is an Arawâk kitchen-midden·, at Mountain River, St. John’s, some Arawâk rock-carvings, and at Goat Island (in Old Harbour Bay) is a cave with Arawâk remains. At Point Hill are some old barracks which are now used as a police station.

Keith Hall is probably named after Sir Basil Keath, governor in 1774–77, and Sligoville after Peter, Marquis of Sligo, governor in 1834–36.

That there was a collection of houses on or near the spot where Kingston now stands, some years before its formation into a town and parish, is evident, but it is also evident that Gardner’s application of the name to “the little village of Kingston” in 1673 is based on imagination. In the map of Jamaica in “The English Pilot” of 1689 in the inset of “the draft of the Harbor of Port Royal” is marked Liganea, with seven small houses and one larger one where Kingston now is, and one larger one half-way to The Rock.

In the “Present State of Jamaica,” published in 1683, occurs the following description of the village:—“At Liguania, the inside of the harbour, opposite to Port Royal, about two leagues, is several houses, some of them very handsome, and well built, which place in time is like to become a pretty town.”

On the map which accompanies the “State of Jamaica under Sir Thomas Lynch” (included in the “Laws of Jamaica,” published in London in 1684) the place where Kingston now stands is marked “Beeston.” The original owner of the land was Colonel Samuel Barry, who patented it in 1664 and later sold it to (Sir) William Beeston, who, coming to Jamaica in 1660, represented Port Royal in the first House of Assembly, and was lieutenant-governor of the island from 1693 to 1700, and Governor till 1702: but there is on the map a mark for a “towne” on the harbour to the west, between “Beeston” and Hunt’s Bay, where Greenwich now is.

The site of Kingston was not the first chosen by the English for the commercial capital of the island. Port 148Royal, as we have seen, flourished as such until 1692, in which year occurred the great earthquake which destroyed that place and caused the death of 3000 of its inhabitants. That dealt it a fearful blow.

On June 24, 1692, a little more than a fortnight after the earthquake which destroyed Port Royal, the Council ordered a “survey of 200 acres of Colonel Beeston’s land in St. Andrews where the Council have resolved to build a new town,” and four days later the Council ordered that £1000 should be paid to Beeston, who was at the moment in England, for the 200 acres: but this was apparently ultra vires on the Council’s part, as they had no power to originate money votes. The first traceable reference to the place by name occurs in the Council minutes of July 21, 1692, when regulations for building “the new town of Kingston in St. Andrews” were drawn up, and it was resolved that every purchaser should within three years build a house worth £50 on forfeiture of that sum. Such forfeiture, it was later decided, should go towards founding a hospital.

The following occurs in the Council minutes for August 9, 1692:

Ordered that no freeholder of Port Royall have laid out for him above one lott by the sea side.

Ordered that none of the Inhabitants of Port Royall have laid out for him above one lott.

Ordered that all the freeholders of Port Royall have laid out for them in the said Towne the same quantity they had on Port Royall provided it Exceed not three lotts.

Ordered that all the freeholders that had land bounding upon the North sea side on Port Royall be Preferred to the sea side land and that their lotts be first cast.

Ordered that all the lotts for the Towne of Kingston be cast on once and that if Claimers doe not appear for all the said land that then blankes be cast to Coll^ll Peter Beckford and Coll^ll Nicholas Laws or be disposed of by them to the next Pretenders.

Ordered that for every lott of land there be reserved to their Maj^ties Tenn Shillings a year as an anuall Quitt Rent.

Ordered that the chiefe Justice be desired to order the Drawing of Conveyances for the severall parcells of land laid out in the said Towne.

Ordered that the forfeiture of fifty pounds for not building a house 149upon the Premises of the Value of fifty Pounds within the time appointed by this Board shall be applied to the building of an Hospital in the said Towne.

Ordered that the Councill meet at the house of Mr. Ann. Lowder in the Towne of Kingston on Tuesday next to Receive the claims of the freeholders and Inhabitants of Po^t Royall & all others that are Desireous to Erect and build in the said Towne & that notice be given thereof accordingly.

After the Calamity of the Earthquake we had appointed a place for y^e building of a Towne w^ch we then thought by its Scituation would have been equall if not Exceeding Port Royall where we had ordered all ships and vessells arriveing here to unlade and also ordered the severall offices to settle there for Enterey of the same—

But may it pleas y^r Lordships Since to o^r no small greif we are made sensible of the unhealthyness of the place. By the great Mortality that there happened & finding a Greater difficulty then we Expected in fortifying the harbour Have been forst to order the withdrawing of those offices to the Remains of Port Royall where there is firme Rock enough left for fortifying that neither the Earthquake nor the sea hath distroyed or made Unhabitable.

On August 16 the Council itself met at Kingston. Orders were given for the erection of a market to be held daily, Edward Yeamans to be clerk. Thomas Clarke was provisionally appointed naval officer and collector of customs, and Deodatus Stanley was appointed bellman of Kingston. Kingston was not represented in Sir William Beeston’s first Assembly, which met in 1693; of his second, which met in the following year, the names of the members are not recorded; so it is impossible to give the names of those who probably represented the new town for the first time. But in Beeston’s third Assembly, which met on March 5, 1694–5, Kingston was represented by Josiah Hethcott, James Bradshaw and Samuel Foxley. Of these Bradshaw was a relative (probably son) of the regicide of that name. According to a document in Fulham Palace, recently quoted by Mr. N. Darnell Davis in “Notes and Queries,” “in 1723–4 Bradshaw, the son of President Bradshaw, came frequently to Liguania and received the sacrament there.”

A letter, dated Port Royal, July 3, 1693, quoted by Sir Hans Sloane in his account of the great earthquake already 150alluded to, contains the following information about Kingston:

Others went to the place called Kingston (or by others Killcown) where from the first clearing of the Ground, and from bad Accommodations, then Hutts built with Boughs, and not sufficient to keep out Rain, which in great and an unusual manner followed the Earthquake, lying wet, and wanting Medicines, and all Conveniences, etc., they died miserably in heaps. Indeed there was a general sickness (supposed to proceed from the hurtful Vapours belch’d from the many openings of the Earth) all over the Island so general that few escaped being sick; and ’tis thought it swept away in all Parts of the Island 3000 Souls; the greatest part from Kingston only, yet an unhealthy Place.

Many people remained at Port Royal, but most of the survivors removed to the lower part of Liguanea. The Council paid Beeston on June 28, £1000. A plan for the town was drawn up by Colonel Christian Lilly, “Her Majesty’s engineer-general,” under the direction of the Government.

In his plan Lilly adopted the chessboard fashion of all Spanish cities in the New World—a plan which is at least as old as the Romans. If one omits the lanes, the plan of Kingston as laid down by Lilly in the seventeenth century is precisely the same as that of the recently unearthed Roman city of Calleva (Silchester) of thirteen centuries earlier, with its insulæ, prototypes of the American blocks. Kingston consisted then of a parallelogram one mile in length from north to south, and half a mile in breadth, regularly traversed by streets and lanes, alternately crossing each other at right angles. When Long wrote it contained “sixteen hundred and fifty-five houses, besides negro houses and warehouses; so that the whole number of its buildings, including every sort, may be computed at between two and three thousand, and thirty-five spacious streets and sixteen lanes.” At present there are in Kingston 171 streets and sixty-nine lanes and about 9000 houses.

151Unfortunately Lilly when he planned Kingston, when land was cheap, omitted to leave room for lines of trees down each principal street. Had this been done, shade would have been afforded to drivers and pedestrians alike, and a picturesque feature would have been assured for the town. Moreover, the chessboard plan of laying out a town, naturally from its regularity dear to the heart of an engineer, is fatal in the interests of picturesqueness, however suitable it may be for progression.

There was not at first much progress in its settlement, the recollection of the former wealth and greatness of Port Royal giving the colonists a continued preference for that place; but the fire of 1703 completely destroyed the favourite town, and the disheartened inhabitants went in large numbers to Kingston, which the Assembly caused to be divided into lots and given to those who had lost their houses. A law was also passed directing the slave-owners in the parish of St. Andrew to send one out of every twenty of their slaves to build temporary huts for the refugees, and, as an encouragement for the early settlement of the new town, every house built within the year (1703) was exempted from taxes for seven years. Soon after this another law was passed declaring Kingston to be “the chief seat of trade and head port of entry” of the island.

From this time the prosperity of the town was assured, and in the year 1713 it was declared by law that the place should “for ever be taken and esteemed as an entire and distinct parish, with all the powers of any other parish,” and, further, that it should “have the right of sending three representatives to the Assembly.”

So rapidly had the town grown that in 1716 it was thus described by a historian of the time:

Within the harbour and about six miles from the town of Port Royal lies the town of Kingston, first laid out and partially settled after the great earthquake.... It is now become greatly increased in houses, stores, wharves and other conveniences for trade and business, so that it is by much the largest town in the island; and if the island shall increase in people and new settlements (the consequences of trade and riches) it is likely to be much the fairest town in all the Indies for ’tis most commodiously laid out, happily and beautifully situated, has many spacious houses in it, and more are daily building, is the residence of the greatest merchants and traders, and has resorting to it most of the ships or vessels that come to the island, and in it is managed the greatest part of the trade of Jamaica.

152In 1721 an Act was passed empowering the inhabitants to erect a court house and exchange; and for nearly half a century the town continued to grow in size and opulence, and so important had it become in 1755 that the attempt was then made to constitute it the seat of government. The Governor (Admiral Knowles) twice proposed and the Assembly twice rejected a bill for that purpose; but at length the Assembly gave way and a law was passed giving effect to the arrangement. Soon after the public archives were removed to Kingston and the superior courts were established there. But the change was unpopular throughout the island, and numerous petitions against it were sent to the King. On October 3, 1758 (after Knowles had left), the disallowance of the law was proclaimed and the records were returned to Spanish Town, escorted by “a considerable body of military.”

In 1780, and again in 1782, the town was severely stricken by a fire. In the former year the large and closely built portion of the town lying between King and Orange streets was burnt down, the destruction of property being estimated at £30,000. But the town soon recovered from the effects of the conflagrations, and prospered to such an extent that in 1802 it was granted a corporation under the style of “The Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the City and Parish of Kingston.” The Court of Common Council was given a seal and empowered to make and ordain bylaws, ordinances and regulations for the good order of the city, not repugnant to prerogative or to the laws of the island. The following is a description of the city seal: On the obverse the island arms, crest, supporters and mottoes. Legend, Sigi Commune Civit: Kingston in Jamaica. Reverse, Britannia, in the dress of Minerva, holding a trident in one hand, and in the other a mirror, reflecting the rays of the benign influence of Heaven on the produce of the island; behind her the British Lion, supporting her shield, a conch shell at her feet, and at a distance a ship under sail. Legend, Hos fovet, hos curat, servatque, Britannia Mater.

153In 1843 another great fire devastated a large portion of the city. It began shortly before 10 A.M. on August 26, in a foundry situated at the east end of Harbour street and extended diagonally across the city until it reached the old Roman Catholic chapel at the corner of Duke street. Many of the best dwellings and much valuable property were consumed, and a large number of persons were left in utter destitution. The sum of £10,149 was distributed among the sufferers, of which £5000 was voted by the House of Assembly. At this period a great deal of the foreign trade of Kingston had disappeared in consequence of the establishing of direct steam communication between the European and Spanish-American states; still Kingston continued an important centre of commerce.

In March 1862, another great fire occurred by which the commercial division of the city was devastated. Nineteen of the principal stores in Harbour and Port Royal streets, three wharves, and the extensive and well-built three-storied house in which the Commercial Hotel was kept, were burnt down at a loss of £30,000. The value of the merchandise, furniture, &c., destroyed was estimated at £60,830, making a total of £90,830. Of this £9400 was covered by insurances, leaving £81,530 as the total loss to the owners of the premises and stock.

Three years afterwards representative government was abandoned in Jamaica, and Kingston ceased to be a corporate city. All the powers and immunities of the common council were transferred to a nominated municipal board created by Law 8 of 1866, the privilege of making ordinances for the regulation of the city being transferred to the Governor in Privy Council. Since 1885 its affairs have been administered by a mayor and city council, elected every three years, similar to the parochial boards of the other parishes.

For many years it had become evident that the convenience of the Government and of the general public would be best served by a transfer of the seat of government 154from Spanish Town, and in 1872 Sir John Grant, with the approval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, gave effect to the change.

A calamitous fire occurred in Kingston on December 11, 1882, by which a large section of the business portion of the city was destroyed. The total number of houses entirely destroyed was five hundred and seventy-seven, whilst twelve were partially destroyed. These places were inhabited by about six thousand persons. The total loss of house property was estimated at between £150,000 and £220,000.

On January 14, 1907, the city suffered great damage from the disastrous earthquake of that date and from fire. Much the same area as that devastated by fire in 1882 was destroyed in the fire of 1907, in addition to the havoc caused by the earthquake. The loss of life was variously estimated as between 1000 and 1500. The value of property destroyed amounted to between £1,000,000 and £1,500,000. A Mansion House fund for the relief of the sufferers amounted to £55,395, and a free Imperial grant was made by Parliament of £150,000 and a loan of £800,000 was authorised. The relief funds were distributed by a Relief Committee, afterwards the Assistance Committee, constituted by the Assistance Committee Law 20 of 1907. After considerable delay and much negotiations, and on the failure of an appeal in a test case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the insurance companies agreed to pay the claims to the extent of 85 per cent. on the face values of the policies, and the money was distributed in 1909.

The Imperial Loan was administered by a Loan Board created by law. Up to March 31, 1914, loans had been made to the value of £326,000.

A fair number of the streets of Kingston have personal names. Those named after Governors: Beeston street, (Sir William Beeston, 1692–1701); Beckford street (Sir Peter Beckford, 1702); Heywood street (Peter Heywood, 1716–17); Laws (sic) street (Sir Nicholas Lawes, 1718–22); Elletson road (Roger Hope Elletson, 1766–67); 155Nugent lane (General Nugent, 1801–6); Manchester square (Duke of Manchester, 1808–27); Elgin street and Lord Elgin street (Earl of Elgin, 1842–16); Darling street (Captain Charles Darling, 1857–62); Musgrave avenue (Sir Anthony Musgrave, 1878–83); Norman road, Norman crescent and Norman range (Sir Henry Norman, 1883–89); and Blake road (Sir Henry Blake, 1889–98).

There was a Thomas Allman, clerk to the Agent Victuallers at Jamaica, who was wanted for forgery and embezzling £1283 in 1743: but Allman Town, which came into existence soon after Emancipation, was, so Mr. G. F. Judah stated, named after George Allman, who was either an officer in the army or the son of one.

Barry street reminds us of Colonel Samuel Barry, who was one of the first Council named in 1661, and owned the land on which Kingston was built. The land called Colonel Barry’s Hog Crawle was sold to Beeston, who had it laid out in lots for the building of Kingston. Byndloss lane bears the name of a family which in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries supplied seven members to the Assembly—the earliest being Colonel Robert Byndloss, member for Cagua in 1663. Barnes gully recalls Joseph Barnes, mayor, custos and representative in the Assembly of Kingston, who died in 1829. Bowrey road reminds us of a recent island chemist, from whose property the road was formed. Hibbert street also recalls a family closely connected with Jamaica in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one member of which built Headquarters House, formerly known as Hibbert house. Marescaux road, north of Kingston, reminds us of the late manager of the Colonial Bank. Orange and Hanover streets refer to reigning houses of England.

It is probable that Pechon street was named after Major John Bonnet Pechon, who was assistant engineer on the military staff in 1809, and later island engineer. He died in 1815. Princess street is a corruption of Prince’s street, as it was called in Beeston’s time. It is called Rue du Prince on a French translation of Lilly’s map. 156Sutton street was probably named after Colonel Thomas Sutton, who was speaker of the Assembly at the time of the earthquake of 1692. Temple lane in Kingston, as well as Temple Hall in St. Andrew, was named after Susanna Temple, the fourth wife of Sir Nicholas Lawes, sister of “la belle Temple” of de Grammont, the wife of Sir Charles Lyttelton. Whence Tower street obtained its name is not known. The following has been suggested as the origin. In the very early days of Kingston the town had a rector but no church. The rector lived in Tower street. It is thought that the rector’s house may have been used as a church and had a tower and bell.

Wildman street is named after James Wildman, a member of the Council in 1786, and later fellow member of Parliament for Hindon with Monk Lewis, another Jamaica proprietor.

Though they omitted for two centuries to dedicate their parish church to a patron saint, the people of Kingston named five of their lanes after the Apostles.

Dr. Samuel Knight, who practised medicine in the island “magna cum laude” for thirty-four years, represented Kingston in the Assembly in 1698 and 1701; he lies buried in the church.

In 1694, when an Act was passed for raising money “to solicit in England the affairs of this Their Majesties’ island,” the parish of St. Andrew was taxed to the extent of £52 17s. 5d., St. Katherine £56 16s. 3d., and others in less amounts; Kingston only being called upon to contribute £19 5s.: but soon after, on another tax being raised, Kingston was regarded as being on a par with Port Royal and St. Jago de la Vega.

It is interesting to note that in 1699 a law was passed uniting the precincts of St. Andrew and Kingston for the purpose of keeping their courts and sessions. This law was repealed in 1704, by which time the new town had become more prosperous.

The church has always been known as Kingston Parish Church, and there is no record of its ever having been dedicated to any saint until, at the time of the recent 157consecration of the new building (in 1911), it was decided to dedicate it to St. Thomas.

The first traceable documentary reference to the church occurs under date October 1701, when the land was sold to the churchwardens. In March 1702–3 it is recorded in the “Votes” in the house of Assembly, that the commissioners appointed to receive claims and make distributions of the lands, under the Act of that year, “to invest Her Majesty in land in Kingston, for the reception of the sufferers by the late dreadful fire at Port Royal, declaring Kingston to be the chief seat of trade and head port of entry, and fortifying West Chester,” gave notice that they would sit in the church at Kingston. But the Act was disallowed in the following year; and West Chester, wherever it may have been (probably the western part of the town), was never fortified. It is interesting to note that the only serious rival to Kingston in its claim to be made the chief seat of trade was Old Harbour. The use of the parish church for civic purposes was by no means unusual in those days in England: for instance, from 1576 (the date of the town receiving a charter) till 1794 the paroise 158(or priest’s chamber) over the porch of the parish church of Hythe was used as a town hall.

There were probably in Jamaica nine churches of older foundation than Kingston—those at Spanish Town, Port Royal, Halfway-Tree, St. John’s (in Guanaboa Vale), Port Morant, Yallahs, The Alley, Old Harbour and one other. Kingston, till an earlier year can be assigned, must rest content with 1699, the date of its oldest tomb—that to William Hall, a merchant of Kingston and member of Assembly for St. Andrew from 1694 to 1699 (one of the Halls of Lincolnshire)—although it was possibly erected in or about 1695. On the other hand, if the church was standing in 1701, it is odd that it is not mentioned in the deed conveying the land given by Sir William and Lady Beeston to the churchwardens.

The following is a copy of the register:

All these two lotts or parcells of land with the appurtenance thereunto belonging being part and parcell of the said five hundred and thirty acres of land situate and lying and being in the said Towne of Kingston both the said lots containing one hundred foot to the High Street westward one hundred and fifty foot northward to the Parade one hundred foot East to Temple Lane and one hundred and fifty foot South to the land of the said Sir William Beeston.

It is probable that a temporary building was at first erected, and was served by the rectors of Halfway Tree and Port Royal pending the appointment of a rector; and that the permanent structure of the church was only commenced after the land had been given by Beeston.

In 1703 a sermon was “preached at King’s Town in Jamaica upon June 7, being the Anniversary Fast for that Dreadful Earthquake which happened there in the year 1692, by William Corbin.” This was “printed and sold by William Bradford at the Bible in New York, 1703.”

159James Knight, whose manuscript history of Jamaica (dating from 1746) is in the British Museum, thus describes the Kingston of his day, which he represented in the Assembly from 1722 to 1735, with intervals:

“The plan of the town is three-fourths of a mile in length, N. and S., and half a mile in breadth, E. and W. Streets are Broad and are Regularly laid out with a Parade in the centre. The South part is built from one end to the other as high as the Parade and many buildings are scattered in the North part so that there are now 1200 Houses and Storehouses, most of which are handsome Buildings, two stories high besides garrets. They are covered with shingles, sashed and glazed with Piazzas before every house so that a man may walk from one end to the other without going in the sun but in crossing streets. The church, which is a handsome building in form of a cross, is 120 feet in length and stands in the S.E. part of the Parade, the pulpit, pews and wainscote about 8 feet in height are all neatly made with cedar, and it has a very good organ in it. There is also in the town a Quakers’ Meeting House and a Jews’ Synagogue, no other place of Public Worship, though there are grounds to believe some Roman Catholics or disguised Papists and Priests privately assemble and meet together. There is also a very good Town Hall about 80 feet in length and 30 in breadth on the South side and fronting of King Street, with a Piazza round which is made use of as an exchange.... Kingston being the most popular parish in the island, and a great number of strangers resorting to it yearly, the Benefice is estimated at six hundred pounds per annum currency.”

The anonymous author of an undated work, published in London in 1740, entitled “The importance of Jamaica to Great Britain, considered.... In a Letter to a Gentleman,” thus refers to the church:

There is a handsome neat church, which consists of four Isles; the Pulpit-Cloth is red Velvet, with Gold Fringes; the Seats large, uniform and airy; has a good Organ; but the Church has no steeple, there is no Bell hung up in it, but ’tis supplied by a small one set up on a Frame not far from it; a large one lies in readiness to be set up when they think proper, or have a Conveniency to hold it. The Churchyard is wall’d in, which has several Tombs in it; in the Church under the Altar, lies the brave Admiral Bembow (sic); and in another burying-place is a Tomb, which bears the Arms and Name of one of the noble Family of the Talbots.

From this it appears that the tower had probably been erected between 1740 and 1774, for Long, whose history 160was published in 1774—easily pleased in matters architectural—calls it “a large elegant building, of four aisles, which has a fine organ, a tower and spire, with a large clock. The tower is well-constructed, and a very great ornament to the town.” “The Rector’s stipend,” he adds, “as fixed by Law, is only £250; but the surplice-fees are so large, that his income is supposed at least to be £1000 per annum, Jamaica currency (£715 stirling).” His “four aisles” is a very free use of the term. The church was in his time an aisleless, cruciform building, but Greek rather than Latin in shape, a not uncommon custom in Jamaica in early days.

In 1808 the mayor and commonalty of Kingston petitioned the House of Assembly, inter alia, that “the resort of persons to the parish church of the parish of Kingston for public worship hath of late years so much increased that the said church cannot with convenience accommodate them.”

In the “Jamaica Magazine” for 1813 we read: “An ordinance was passed in Common Council of Kingston, the same day (15th) for punishing all persons conducting themselves in a manner offensive to public decorum in the church. It enacts a punishment on all white and free persons of £100 fine or three months imprisonment for such an offence, and on slaves thirty-nine stripes or three months imprisonment.”

“Monk Lewis,” who saw it in 1816, says:

The church is a large one, but it is going to be still further extended, the negroes in Kingston and neighbourhood being (as the Rector assured me) so anxious to obtain religious instruction, that on Sundays not only the church but the churchyard is so completely thronged with them, as to make it difficult to traverse the crowd; and those who are fortunate enough to obtain seats for the morning service, through fear of being excluded from the evening, never stir out of the church the whole day. They also flock to be baptised in great numbers, and many have lately come to be married; and their burials and christenings are performed with great pomp and solemnity.

James Hakewill, the architect, who was here in 1820, in his “Picturesque Tour,” calls the church truly “a plain, 161convenient structure, but without any pretensions to architectural beauty.”

The Rev. R. Bickell, who had been naval chaplain at Port Royal and for some time curate of Kingston, wrote in his “West Indies as they are,” in 1825:

In the city and parish of Kingston, there is but one church, which will hold nearly a thousand people; it is thronged every Sunday morning, principally by free people of colour, and free blacks. Indeed, had there been two or three churches more built in this populous city, six or seven years ago, and zealous clergymen appointed to them, I feel confident in saying, they would, ere now, have been equally thronged; but, though there are eight or ten thousand slaves in the place, and a greater number of free people, with several thousand white inhabitants, an island curate has never been appointed there, and consequently a chapel of ease has never been built: on this account, seeing so good an opening, the Dissenters have been very active, and have four or five places of worship, three of them built within the last three years; the Scotch, and other Presbyterians, have a very large kirk (built principally with Episcopalians’ money) which is not half filled; but the Wesleyans have two large chapels, capable of containing more than two thousand persons, and which are well attended (even filled I have been told) morning and evening, chiefly by negroes and people of colour. The Baptists have also a large and handsome chapel well attended by Blacks and Browns, besides a smaller one occasionally opened. There is also a Catholic chapel for the French and other foreigners.

In the “Estimate of Contingencies for the City and Parish of Kingston for the year 1830” occur the following entries:

162This of course does not include the stipends of rector and curate, which were paid by the Government.

N. B. Dennys, who was here in 1861, writing in “An Account of the Cruise of the St. George” (1862), miscalls the church St. Andrews and describes it as a “small building, whose only point of interest seemed to be its extreme old age.”

Of the fabric of the church wrecked by the earthquake of 1907 nothing much need be said. It was a simple brick structure with concrete pillars and round-headed arches and window openings. Cruciform in shape, in accordance with English custom it was oriented with its altar at the east end. The pulpit and reading-desk originally stood, as was the case at Halfway Tree, Port Royal and Montego Bay, at the transept, almost in the centre of the building.

The present building was erected from a design by Mr. B. A. Raves at a cost of £6000, in reinforced concrete on the old foundations, and as nearly as possible similar in design, with the omission of the tower. The window openings differ from those of the old building; two of them being decidedly original in design. The new building was consecrated on January 17, 1911, by the Archbishop of the West Indies, assisted by the Bishops of St. Albans, North Carolina, Honduras and Antigua, the Coadjutor Bishop of Jamaica, and the Assistant Bishop of Toronto.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century, as “Monk Lewis” mentions, the church was extended in length and the renaissance baldachin, which was not replaced after the recent rebuilding, an unusual addition to an Anglican church, was, it is said, added by the then rector, the Rev. Isaac Mann. Some thought they saw in the floral device immediately beneath the crown over the centre of the baldachin, the monogram W.M., which they took to stand for William and Mary, but there are no grounds for the supposition, and the structure was probably of later date.

In Duperly’s view taken in about 1844 the old sash 163windows appear; and the old curved lead gargoyles, most of which were removed later, are very evident.

In 1883–85, during the incumbency of Archdeacon Downer, who held the living for thirty-five years and took part in the recent consecration service, the church, which in 1873 consisted of nave and transepts without side aisles, was considerably enlarged by G. Messiter, by the addition of two side aisles on each side, giving extra accommodation for 500 persons, making the building available for 1300 in all.

The aisles nearest the nave extended the full length of the fabric, while the exterior ones only ran east of the transepts. This, added to their apsidal form, gave, and gives, the church the appearance of a miniature cathedral in plan. Pieces of the original outside walls could, till the recent reconstruction, be seen in situ in corners of the transept. The original windows were removed to the new outer walls and the mural monuments were taken down and replaced on the new walls, a process which had to be repeated in 1910. When some of the old walls were pulled down many massive beams of timber were found embedded in the masonry, placed in several directions. Some of them were ten or fifteen feet long, many inches in diameter and of bully-wood in perfectly sound condition. Some, including Messiter the architect, thought that these were put in to strengthen the walls in case of a repetition of the Port Royal earthquake of a few years before: and they certainly suggest the method of construction adopted by the Spaniards for that purpose and described in Long’s history. At the same time, when the foundation of the east wall was underpinned, a large vault under the altar was opened; and in it was found a coffin—covered with the remains of velvet and gilt ornaments, apparently of a most expensive character—thought to have been Admiral Benbow’s.

The oldest dated Communion plate is of the year 1707. Two patens were the gift of Mrs. Ann Plowman; and two other pieces, a chalice and flagon, were given by Mr. Elias Nezerau in that year. Mrs. Elizabeth Sillers gave in 1721 164a flagon identical with that given by Mr. Nezerau fourteen years earlier. Both flagons bear the maker’s mark.

The clock dates from 1801, the organ from 1878, the lectern from 1886, the bell from 1890, the pulpit (of white stone, with marble columns) from 1891, when it was erected in memory of a former rector, Archdeacon Campbell, his brother Dr. Charles Campbell, and the doctor’s partner, Dr. Bowerbank.

The rose window in the north transept, representing the Good Samaritan, with medallions of St. John, St. Peter, St. Stephen, St. Andrew as deacon, and St. Stephen as martyr, was put up in 1888 to the memory of the Hon. H. F. Colthirst, a churchwarden, and his children. The corresponding window, of 1887, in the south transept, representing, in the centre, the Angel at the Sepulchre, surrounded by cherubs, is a memorial to Mr. C. A. Robinson and children. These two windows gave a good illustration of the manner in which concrete, even before the earthquake of 1907, was made to do duty for stone in Jamaica. Portions of the glass from these windows have, in the recent reconstruction, been scattered throughout various window openings. The window at the east end of the north aisle, heraldic and geometric in character, was erected to the Hon. Dr. Hamilton, District Grand Master of the Freemasons in Jamaica. The east window was erected in 1914 in memory of Archdeacon Downer.

The vestry was built in 1895, and in that year the old brick wall which formerly surrounded the churchyard was replaced by the present railing. The City Council contributed £50 towards the cost of the bell on the condition that it should be rung at nine o’clock every evening—a reminiscence of the English curfew which is still continued.

Beside the west door were hung the old colours of the 2nd Battalion of the West India Regiment, returned to the rebuilt garrison chapel at Up-Park Camp in 1912, and on either side are monumental brasses—one (1896) to the memory of officers and men of the 1st Battalion W.I.R. who fell in West Africa in various expeditions, and 165another (1898) to officers who died of fever on the West Coast of Africa and in this island; and there are marble tablets to the officers of the 1st and 3rd W.I.R. who died here and elsewhere in the West Indies of yellow fever in 1853.

The following is as perfect a list of the rectors of the parish as it has been found possible to compile:

It is difficult to understand how Lambe came to be rector during May’s tenure of office. It may have been an acting appointment during the incumbent’s illness. The authority for including Lambe in the list of rectors is the following entry in Foster’s “Alumni Oxonienses”:

Lambe, Charles. S. John [Dean of Ely]. Ch. Ch. Matric. 1697, aged 18 [or 13]; B.A. 1701, M.A. from King’s Coll., Cambridge, 1709. D.D. Lambeth, 1722.... Chaplain to the Duke of Portland when Governor of Jamaica, Rector of Kingston, Jamaica, 1729.

The records of the parish church of Kingston extant unfortunately only go as far back as the year 1722, the date of the first “Christening” recorded. The marriages at that time were by licence, or Bannis tribus vicibus promulgatis. By recent legislation one calling of the banns is sufficient. It is curious to note the large number of widows amongst the brides and of mariners amongst the bridegrooms. One of the best kept registers is that of 166baptisms, commenced in 1785 by the Rev. Thomas Rees. The first entry is:

Joseph Fennell Brookbank, the son of Mary Fennell, a free mulatto woman, by George Brookbank, was born April 12, 1779, Bapt. Jany. 1, 1785.

The next entry, more Jamaicense, records the baptism of “Jamima Beaumont, the daughter of Mary Fennell, by James Beaumont.” Two out of the first seven entries in this register are of children of married women, which unfortunately would not be, according to the Registrar-General’s returns, a bad record even for to-day. On Christmas Day, 1786, the rector baptized twelve of his own slaves en bloc.

Those who were baptized are described as black, or negro; mulatto; sambo; quadroon; mestee, or mustee; brown; of colour; Indian (these were probably from the Mosquito Coast); and slave, or property of; and free. The old African names of Quashie, Quasheba and the like were replaced by ordinary Christian names, with a partiality for Biblical ones, with here and there a classic designation. The names on one page, taken at random, of the register for 1797 are: John, Sarah, Richard, Lucretia, Susanna, Margaret, Hannah, Jeremiah, James, William, Edward, Cilly (sic), Juno, Mary, Eleanor, Joseph. These, in the main, simple names are preferable to the Thomasina, Justina, Rosina, and so on, affected to-day.

In 1745 Cornelius Lilly, “of the parish of Kingston, mariner,” was married to Jane Macky of the same parish. One wonders whether he was a relation of Colonel Christian Lilly who had laid out the town. The first burial recorded is under date March 27, 1741, “Ralph Greathead, belonging to the Sheldon, Capt. Read, Command.” The ship Sheldon possibly belonged to the owner of Sheldon, a property in the Blue Mountains. The baptism in 1797 of “Dorothy Morgan Mahony, a negro woman slave of Thomas Mahony, aged forty years,” recalls Dolly Mahony’s Gap in the St. Andrew Mountains.

The following particulars of the baptisms solemnised in the parish church in the year 1828 may be of interest:

From its position of principal church in the chief town of the island, Kingston parish church is frequently chosen for the holding of state and other important services rather than the cathedral of Spanish Town, which now finds itself left by the stream of time in a civic backwater.

With the exception of the cathedral at Spanish Town more celebrated personages have been buried within the walls of Kingston parish church than in those of any other church in the island.

Of the memorials, the most interesting is the tomb of Benbow, of dark blue slate, in the chancel, the inscription on which is curiously inaccurate. He was not, we learn in his life in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” an admiral of the white, but vice-admiral of the blue. He was not fifty-one years old at his death, but forty-nine; and the arms carved on it are not his. The arms are: Palewise, two bent bows between two sheaves of arrows; the crest, on an esquire’s helmet, a harpy. The following is the inscription:

Here Lyeth Interred the Body of John Benbow Esq: Admiral of the White: a true Pattern of English Courage who Lost his life In Defence of his Queene & Country, November ye 4th 1702 In the 52nd year of his age by a wound In his Legg, Receeiu’d In an Engagement with Monsr. du Casse, Being Much Lamented.

Of the monuments, there are only four of artistic merit—three by John Bacon, all similar in style, figures carved in high relief against a pyramidal background of marble; and one without the sculptor’s name, in the north wall of the inner north transept, to Edward Maiming. It consists of a bust in mezzo-relievo. If executed shortly 168after Manning’s death in 1756, it is too early for a work by Bacon. It is a good example of English sculpture of that time, and it is possibly by Roubiliac, by whom there is a monument of the year 1754 to Lieutenant Stapleton in Port Royal church, or more probably by John Cheere (brother of Sir Henry Cheere, Roubiliac’s instructor for some time), by whom there is a monument of the year 1733 to the Hon. James Lawes (eldest son of Sir Nicholas Lawes) in Halfway-Tree church. Cheere’s work resembles more closely the Manning bust than does that of the more florid Roubiliac. As was the case with Bacon, one commission for Jamaica sometimes led to others. The arms on the Manning monument are wrongly blazoned in Lawrence-Archer’s “Monumental Inscriptions of the British Indies.” They are: Gules, a cross fleurie [not moline] or between four [not three] trefoils slipped or.

Of the monuments by Bacon, that to Malcolm Laing and his wife (1794) represents a female figure seated, emblematic of grief; the phœnix, of which Bacon was fond, is introduced in the background.

The monument to Dr. Fortunatus Dwarris, member of the House of Assembly for St. George (which is now merged in Portland), and his stepdaughter (1792), represents a recumbent female figure resting on an urn, gazing at an angel conducting the soul of the departed upwards. In it the poetry on the urn descriptive of the scene represented is hardly equal to Bacon’s art:

Sir Fortunatus William Lilley Dwarris (d. 1860), the lawyer and antiquary, eldest son of William Dwarris, of Warwick, England, and Golden Grove, Jamaica, of which he was a native, was a member of the same family.

The monument to John Wolmer (1789) is on the west wall of the outer north aisle. Of the three monuments by Bacon this is the best. Erected just sixty years after 169Wolmer’s death, it represents a seated figure of Liberality, carved in high relief, holding a medallion, on which the crest of the school, the sun of Learning breaking through a cloud of Ignorance, is represented. On the supporting brackets are scholastic emblems—a quill pen, a book, parchment, scientific instruments and the like.

Besides the three monuments in this church already mentioned, there is another monument to Mary, daughter of Dawkins Carr (who died in 1798). It is in the usual pyramidal form, and represents a classic urn on a pedestal. It is signed “J. Bacon, sct., London, 1799,” and must have been one of the last works sent out of his studio in his lifetime, for he died in that year.

Some monuments make one wish that the admirers of the worthies represented had followed the Erewhonian plan of paying the sculptor on condition that he did not make the statue, letting into the pavement a small inscription where it would have stood, as was the case in that delectable country. The tribute of respect would have been paid to the deceased, and the rest of the public would have suffered no inconvenience.

Other tombs of interest in the church are those to Smart Pennant (wife of the rector, William May), who “was kill’d in ye 23rd year of her age by ye fall of an house in ye great storm, August ye 28th, A.D. 1722” (when her husband’s leg was also broken; he was commissary to the Bishop of London); to Susanna, wife of Colonel William Gordon (d. 1731), of the family which gave its name to Gordon Town; to Captain Charles Brown (d. 1747), who is evidently the Commodore Brown who was described in a pamphlet published in 1740 as living in Kingston, “and entertain’d the gentlemen and Ladies about Ligunea once a fortnight with an Assembly”; to Captain Samuel Phillips (died in 1757, aged 54), who, as the inscription tells us, “Commanded the Alexander, Private Ship of War, out of Bristoll, and Cut His Majesties Ship Solebay out of St. Martin’s Road the 10th of April, 1746, for which he had the honour to kis His Majesties hand and Received a Gold Medal and Chain. Alexander 140 Men and Solebay 220 170men”; to John Jaques (d. 1815), first mayor of Kingston; to Hon. George Kinghorne (1823), custos of Kingston; to Hon. Joseph Barnes (d. 1829), mayor and custos of Kingston, whose memory lives in Barnes Gully; to Virginia Fairfax, wife of Peter Alexander Espeut, and daughter of Colonel Robert Munroe Harrison, consul-general of the United States of America for Jamaica; to Lieut.-Colonel Sir Alexander Leith, Bt.; to William James Stevenson, receiver-general; to Ebenezer Reid (d. 1843), headmaster of Wolmer’s school for twenty-eight years (the monument was erected by his pupils); to William Augustus Hunt (d. 1852), another headmaster of Wolmer’s school, a member of the family of Barbadian Hunts of which Leigh Hunt was one; to Bartholomew Owen Williams (d. 1830), founder of the Sussex Lodge of Freemasons; to Colonel Hill (d. 1819), who took part in the engagements of Vimiera and Vittoria; and to Dr. Edward Nathaniel Bancroft (d. 1842), deputy inspector-general of Army Hospitals.

Of tombs of special biographical interest are those of Benbow, Rowley and Brown, sailors; May, Mann and Humberstone, clergymen; Campbell, an author; Higson, a botanist; Wolmer, a philanthropist; and Manning, Lawrence, Mitchell and Jordan, politicians.

At the principal entrance to the north transept was a large dark blue slate slab, foot-worn, but without an inscription.

“The story is,” says Lawrence-Archer, “that it is turned on its face, to conceal the epitaph of an early Rector of the parish, who was hanged for coining counterfeit doubloons in the vestry. It is said he was discovered in consequence of having issued one from his mint before it was quite cold. The story is most improbable.” In 1885 the slab was raised and turned, when it was found to be to the memory of James Ramadge, a merchant of Kingston, who died in 1755, aged thirty-three years. Why it had ever been placed face downwards is not known. But that there is some reason for the legend is proved by a reference to the “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette” for December 19, 1801, where we read:

171A number of counterfeit Doubloons and Eight-Dollar pieces are now in circulation. The inscription on the face is Carol’s 3d., date 1761. The face does not by any means resemble any effigy given of him or any coins issued by Spanish Government during his reign. It is a perfect copy of the head of Ferdinand the 6th, which appears on the doubloons issued by him ten years before the accession of Charles the 3rd to the throne. The pieces now in circulation are said to have been coined by a Reverend Mr. Smith, who suffered for the crime many years ago on the Kingston Parade.

Can this have been the Hadden Smith who was curate of Kingston parish church in 1766?

The death of Peter Wagstaffe (who died in 1759) was curiously enough recorded on two tombstones, both lying in the north aisle.

In the churchyard are three interesting tombstones, those of Janet Scott, sister to Michael Scott (the author of the well-known “Tom Cringle’s Log”), who was two years her brother’s senior, and evidently came out with him and his bride in 1818, when he returned from Glasgow to Jamaica; to Robert Bogle, his brother-in-law, of the firm of Bogle, Harris & Co., of Glasgow; and to Robert Hamilton, who was planting attorney to Sir Edward Hyde East, the owner of Maryland, on which stands Raymond Hall, where “Tom Cringle’s Log” was written. Hamilton was a friend of Scott’s, and was portrayed as Aaron Bang in the Log. The Scotts and the Bogles were evidently old friends. A “Jennet Scott, the daughter of Robert Bogle and Margaret his wife,” was baptized on April 5, 1793. She was probably a sister of the Robert Bogle who was Scott’s brother-in-law. The following are the inscriptions on the three tombs:

Here lies Interr’d the remains of Mr. Robert Bogle, third son of Robert Bogle, Esqr., Merchant, Glasgow, formerly of this city Merchant who departed this life on 21st December 1819 aged 18 years.

Miss Janet Scott, fourth Daughter of Allan Scott, Esq., of Glasgow, departed this life on the 4th January 1819 aged 32 years.

In memory of Robert Hamilton, Esq., of the Parish of St. Andrews, who departed this life on the 30th day of October 1826, aged 68 years. His unbounded Hospitality and goodness of heart endeared him to all who knew him and his worth and amiable qualities will 172long live in the remembrance of his Family who pay this last tribute due to the Memory of a revered Father.