Chapter D: O. M (2)

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 portico, 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 gentlemen 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 Rodney, 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 statue 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, it 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:

GEORG. BRYDG. RODNEY
BARON RODNEY
NAVAL. PRAEL. VICTORI
PRID. ID. APRILIS
A.D., MDCCLXXXII.
BRITANN. PACEM REST.
D.D.D. S.P.Q. JAMAICENSIS.

Which may be rendered:

TO GEORGE BRYDGES RODNEY
BARON RODNEY
VICTOR IN A SEA FIGHT
ON THE DAY BEFORE THE IDES OF APRIL
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1782.
HE RESTORED PEACE TO BRITAIN.
THE LEGISLATURE AND THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA
PRESENTED [THIS MEMORIAL].

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_.

THE “LADY JULIANA” IN TOW OF THE “PALLAS” IN 1782

From an aquatint by Robert Dodd
]

In 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 origin. 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 families, 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 probably 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.

O may we then like him resign our breath,
In life his vertues share, and be like him in Death.

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 of 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 of 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 at 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 Parish 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.

Parts 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 whites, 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 justices 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.

COLEBECK CASTLE
]

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 and 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 the 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:

The 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 God, 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 Act, 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.

THE FERRY INN
]

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; and 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....”

To-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.