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 all 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.
[Illustration:
KING’S HOUSE
]
[Illustration:
COURT HOUSE
]
[Illustration:
RODNEY MEMORIAL
]
[Illustration:
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
]
THE SQUARE, SPANISH TOWN
The 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 wont 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 front
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_; but 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 to 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 arbitrary 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 MEMORY OF
WILLIAM O’BRIEN, 2ND EARL OF INCHIQUIN
GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA
FROM 31ST MAY, 1690, TILL 16TH JANUARY, 1691–2.
_When he died of fever at St. Jago de la Vega_,
AND WAS BURIED IN THIS CHURCH
ERECTED IN 1912 BY LUCIUS W. XVTH BARON INCHIQUIN.
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.”
On 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.
On 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 crayon 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 and 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.