Chapter XIV: Introduction (5)

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 of 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 there
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 May 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 bases 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.

SPANISH-TOWN CATHEDRAL
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The original church, erected by the English, probably on the foundations and of the materials of the Spanish building, 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: