with an Account of the Maroon Negroes in the Island of Jamaica, and a
History of the War in the West Indies in 1793 and 1794. By Bryan
Edwards, Esq., Also a Tour through the several Islands of Barbadoes,
St. Vincent, Antigua, Tobago, and Grenada in the years 1791 and 1792
by Sir William Young, Bart. Illustrated with Copper Plates. _London_,
1801. 4to. [Issued also as 1^i. of this list. Each sheet is marked
Vol. iii.]
(_c_) Geschichte des Revolutionskriegs in Sanct Domingo; von Bryan
Edwards, Esq. Aus dem Englischen. [_On title page of Vol. 2_: Nebst
einem schreiben: über Europens Interesse in Beziehung auf die
Wohlfahrt der Colonien in Amerika, von Herrn Malouet, und einer Rede
des Admiral Villaret Joyeuse.] _Leipzig_, 1798. 2 Vols., with map.
8vo.
(_d_) Geschiedkundige Beschouwing van St. Domingo, door Bryan Edwards.
Uit het Engelsch. _Haarlem_, 1802. 8vo.
(_e_) Histoire de l’île Saint-Domingue; extraite de l’Histoire civile
et commerciale des Antilles, de M. Bryan Edwards, et continuée
jusqu’aux derniers événemens. Contenant de nombreux détails sur ce qui
s’est passé dans cette importante colonie pendant la Révolution.
Traduite de l’Anglais par J. B. J. Breton, auteur du _Voyage dans la
Belgique_. Orné d’une carte de Saint Domingue. _Paris_, An. XI., 1802.
12mo.
(_f_) Storia dell’ Isola di S. Domingo ricavata dalla Storia civile e
del commercio delle Antille. Del. Sig. Bryan Edwards, e continuata
sino agli ultimi avvenimenti, che minutamente rappresentano quanto ê
succeduto in quella importante Colonia pendente la rivoluzione.
Tradotta dall’ Inglese da J. B. Breton, autore del Viaggia nel Belgio,
e trasportata dal francese in italiano da Giammichele Briolo.
_Torino._ Anno XI., 1803. 12mo.
(_g_) The History of the Island of St. Domingo. Abridged from the
History of Bryan Edwards, Esq., and continued to the present time.
Illustrated with a Map. _Edinburgh_, 1802. 6mo.
3. (_a_) Proceedings of the Honourable House of Assembly relative to
the Maroons; including the Correspondence between the Right Honourable
Earl Balcarres and the Honourable Major-General Walpole, during the
Maroon Rebellion, with the report of the Joint Special Secret
Committee, to whom those papers were referred. _St. Jago de la Vega_,
1796. 4to.
(_b_) The Proceedings of the Governor and Assembly of Jamaica, in
regard to the Maroon Negroes: Published by order of the Assembly. To
which is prefixed an Introductory Account, containing observations on
the disposition, character, manners, and habits of life, of the
Maroons, and a Detail of the origin, progress and termination of the
late war between those people and the white inhabitants. _London_,
1796. 8vo.
4. (_a_) Thoughts on the late Proceedings of Government respecting the
Trade of the West India Islands with the United States of North
America. By Brian [_sic_] Edwards, Esq. ... _London_, 1784. Small 4to.
(_b_) Thoughts on the late Proceedings of Government respecting the
Trade of the West India Islands with the United States of North
America. The Second Edition, corrected and enlarged. To which is now
first added a Postscript addressed to the Right Honourable Lord
Sheffield. By Bryan Edwards, Esq. _London_, 1784. Small 4to.
5. (_a_) A Speech delivered at a Free Conference between the
Honourable the Council and Assembly of Jamaica, held the 19th
November, 1789, on the subject of Mr. Wilberforce’s propositions in
the House of Commons concerning the Slave Trade. By Bryan Edwards,
Esq., Member of the Assembly of the said Island. _Kingston, Jamaica_,
1789. Small 4to.
(_b_) A Speech ... on the Subject of Mr. Wilberforce’s propositions in
the House of Commons concerning the Slave Trade. _London_, 1790. 8vo.
6. A Vindication of the Conduct and Proceedings of the English
Government towards the Spanish Nation in M.D.C.L.V., in reply to the
Misrepresentations of some late Historians. Also some account of the
State of Jamaica, its inhabitants and productions, on its surrender.
By Bryan Edwards, Esquire. _In_ “An Abridgement of the Laws of
Jamaica.... _St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica_, 1793.” 4to.
7. Poems written chiefly in the West Indies. _Kingston, Jamaica_,
1793. Small 4to.
[Contains a translation of the Second Epode of Horace, by his brother
Nathaniel Bayly Edwards.]
8. Abstract of Mr. Park’s Account of his Travels and Discoveries,
abridged, from his own minutes. By B. Edwards, Esq. _In_ “Proceedings
of the Association for promoting the discovery of the interior parts
of Africa.” Vol. 2, 1798. 4to.
9. Travels in the interior districts of Africa; performed under the
direction and patronage of the African Association in the years 1795,
1796, 1797, with an appendix containing geographical illustrations of
Africa by Major Rennell. Edited by Bryan Edwardes. _London_, 1799.
4to.
His writings evoked the following publications:
10. A letter to Bryan Edwards, Esq., containing Observations on some
passages of his History of the West Indies. By William Preston,
M.R.I.A. _London_, 1795.
11. Lettre à M. Bryan Edwards, membre du parlement d’Angleterre et de
la Société Royale de Londres, colon propriétaire à la Jamaïque, en
réfutation de son ouvrage, intitulé Vues Historiques sur la Colonie
Française de Saint-Domingue, etc., etc., publié en Mars dernier, Par
M. le Colonel Venault de Charmilly, chevalier de l’ordre royal et
militaire de St. Louis, colon propriétaire à St. Domingue, ancien
membre de l’Assemblé générale de cette colonie: chargé par les
Ministres de sa Majesté Britannique, et par les Habitans de la
Grande-Anse de régler, accepter et signer la capitulation pour la
reddition de la partie Française de Saint-Domingue avec M. le
lieutenant-general Adam Williamson, lieutenant-gouverneur de la
Jamaïque, etc., etc. _Londres_, juillet, 1797. Small folio.
(_b_) Answer, by way of letter to Bryan Edwards, Esq., M.P., F.R.S.,
Planter of Jamaica, etc., containing a Refutation of his Historical
Survey of the French Colony of St. Domingo, etc. By Colonel Venault de
Charmilly.... _London_, 1797. Small folio.
12. An Address to Brian [_sic_] Edwards, Esq.; containing remarks on
his Pamphlet entitled “Thoughts on the late Proceedings of Government
respecting the Trade of the West India Islands with the United States
of America.” Also Observations on some parts of a pamphlet, lately
published by the West India Planters and Merchants, entitled
“Considerations on the present State of the Intercourse between His
Majesty’s Sugar Colonies and the Dominions of the United States of
America.” By John Stevenson. _London_, 1784. Small 4to.
In a copy of No. 12 from the library of Lord Sheffield is a note on the
title page in Sheffield’s handwriting:
Is this the John Stevenson who is included in the list of persons
restored to grace and pardon within the State of New York by an Act of
that State passed 12th May, 1784?
At Rio Bueno is =Fort Dundas=, dated 1778 and taken over as an Island
fort in 1800. At =Mayfield= are the tombs of John Spence (d. 1785) and
Anne Blake, the wife of John Hodges (d. 1787); at =Roslyn Castle= tombs
of Minto and Virgo; at =Golden Grove= that of Rebecca, wife of Colonel
Thomas Reid (d. 1747); at =Orange Valley= tombs of Mrs. Ann Jarrett (d.
1769) and of William Rhodes James (d. 1795); at =Weston Favell=, the
tomb of Thomas Harding (d. 1766). In the old slave village on =Hyde
Hall= Estate is the rare example of a monument erected to a slave, rare
at least in Jamaica, though not so rare in the smaller islands. It is
inscribed:—
In memory of
Eve
An honest, obedient and
faithful Slave, by her affectionate
and grateful master,
Henry Shirley
1800.
Tradition has it that Eve was the woman in charge of the children of the
slaves who went out to work during the day, and that she met her death
by being drowned in a pond on Hyde Hall.
Arawâk kitchen middens are to be found at =Stewart Castle=, the locality
being known as Indian Town to this day, and at _Wales_; while at
=Pantrepant= are Arawâk rock-carvings. =Kettering= was named about 1840
by the well-known Baptist missionary William Knibb after his birthplace
in Northamptonshire.
John Kenyon, the poet and philanthropist (1784–1856), was born in
Trelawny, where his father owned extensive sugar plantations. His mother
was a daughter of John Simpson of Bounty Hall in the same parish. Both
died while he was a boy at Fort Bristol School, Bristol. He it was who
first introduced Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, a distant relative and
_soi-disant_ cousin.
To Kenyon Browning dedicated his “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics”; and
Mrs. Browning dedicated to him “Aurora Leigh.”
X
ST. JAMES
The parish of St. James, which was one of the second batch of parishes
formed in Jamaica (the others in the batch being St. George, St. Mary,
St. Ann and St. Elizabeth), was so named by Sir Thomas Modyford in
1664–65, probably after James, Duke of York; and he may at the same time
have intended, as Roby suggests, to perpetuate the memory of his
brother, Sir James Modyford. The parish of Hanover was made out of parts
of Westmoreland and St. James in 1725–26, and Trelawny was made out of
parts of St. Ann and St. James in 1770. In this parish is the site
(probably at Spanish Quarters) of the first town built by the Spaniards
in the island, Melilla; and from this parish, from Cabo del Buen Tempo,
sailed with Columbus the first Jamaican who ever went to Europe—probably
the first willing emigrant from the New World to the Old. The origin of
the name of the chief town, Montego Bay, has been variously ascribed,
firstly to the bay in Portugal into which the Mondego river falls;
secondly to Francisco de Montego (or Montijo), who assisted Grijalva in
his discoveries in New Spain; and thirdly, with the greatest
probability, by Long to _manteca_, the Spanish word for butter. He adds,
“This part abounding formerly with wild hogs, the Spaniards probably
made here what they called hog’s butter (lard) for exportation.”
At the time of the formation of St. James’ parish (1665) the “north
side” was represented in the Assembly by Abraham Rutter and Samuel
Jenks. In 1673, jointly with St. Ann, St. James returned a member,
Captain Richard Guy. In that year, when there were in the twelve
inhabited parishes of Jamaica 17,268 persons, the parish of St. James
had only 146, of whom 22 were negroes. In 1675 St. James returned two
members on its own account, Richard Guy and Samuel Jenks.
Four years later, when the Assembly decided that £1300 should be raised
for the fortifications of the island, St. James was asked to contribute
£5 only. In 1711–12 the parishes of St. James and St. George were exempt
from taxation, “they having no towns, few inhabitants and little
commerce.” In 1724 the first Road Act for the parish was passed, the
road going from The Cave in Westmoreland to the west end of St. James;
and a court of quarter sessions was established four years later.
At =Montego Bay= was printed the third known book printed in Jamaica—an
almanack for the year 1776. St. James remained a poor parish till about
the middle of the eighteenth century, but by 1782 Montego Bay was called
“next to Kingstown the most flourishing town in the island.”
In 1733 a bill was passed “for appointing a proper plan for building a
church.” This church was probably built, but all traces of it are now
lost. In 1738 barracks were built, and were supplied by the
churchwardens with a pack of hounds, to be used in defence and offence
against revolted slaves. In that year Montego Bay was made a free port.
In March 1738–39 articles of pacification were signed at Trelawny Town
by Cudjoe, the Maroon chief.
In 1795 the Legislature passed an Act incorporating a company to be
formed by subscription under the title of “The President, Directors and
Company of the Close Harbour of Montego Bay,” with power to raise
£10,000 capital, and to make a harbour at “Meagre Bay, being a part of
Montego Bay,” for the protection of shipping and to create rules and
regulations for its management; which company, said to have been the
first formed in the West Indies for the execution of any public
undertaking, existed for about half a century, and for a time paid
dividends.
In January 1800 (to quote from the “Columbian Magazine,” Kingston,
1800):
one of those dreadful swells of the sea from the N.W. did much damage,
although the misfortune has been greatly decreased, by the extent of
the Moles erected, yet it has been very considerable.
Of the two channels through the reef, which were intended to be filled
up by the Moles, the largest only is made, and the other is hardly, as
yet, commenced. Vessels lying immediately behind the Mole, and not
near to the Southern channel, which is still open, lie secure and
easy; but the vessels moored near the South channel into which an
immense sea poured, and the small craft near the shore, round which
the waves coming in at the South channel washed, were, and still are
in the greatest danger.
There were twenty-four vessels of all sizes in the Close Harbour; of
these the ship _Clyde_, belonging to Kingston, which was anchored near
the Southern channel, is totally lost; but a brig still nearer,
fortunately escaped the first day, and has since been able to shift to
a safer birth (_sic_). Five small vessels from the great action of the
swell near the shore, or from bad tackling are also lost.
In the Outer Harbour were two vessels, one a Spanish schooner, prise
to the _Experiment_ lugger, is lost; and the other, an American brig,
after losing an anchor, and driving some hundred yards, has got into a
situation where the undertow gives her a more easy birth.
It is certainly a distressing consideration to the community that
after the expense of upwards of 16,000_l._ in building the Moles, so
much damage has happened to the shipping, within them, and this danger
cannot be completely guarded against, so as to protect the whole of
the harbour, until the Southern Mole is finished, or nearly joins to
the shore; but there is this consideration, that a great number of
valuable lives were saved, not a seaman having lost his life, and
upwards of 250 negroes being safely landed on Tuesday evening, from
the Thomas Guineaman.
Reference to the Close Harbour ceases in the Jamaica almanacks after
1848.
In 1798 two thirds of the town of Montego Bay was destroyed by fire, the
loss being estimated at £500,000. And in 1831–32 the parish was the
scene of one of the worst outbreaks of slaves recorded in the island’s
history. On one night sixteen incendiary fires took place, and many
lives were lost in quelling the outbreak. Martial law was declared, and
the commander of the forces, Sir Willoughby Cotton, took the field in
person.
The foundation stone of the present parish =Church of St. James=, was
laid on May 6, 1775, and the building was opened for public worship in
1782. It is Georgian in character, and typical of many churches erected
in the West Indies by those who, probably doing the best they could with
the money and knowledge at their disposal, considered that a building
was rendered ecclesiastical by putting rounded heads to ordinary
domestic windows, and did not hesitate to combine the Classic and Gothic
styles. In this case, however, the building, which is one of the best of
its kind, is helped by a tower, its most pleasing feature. Hakewill
called it the handsomest church in the island. The church is dedicated
to St. James the Great, the patron saint of Spain, whose name was given
to the Spanish capital of the island. The parochial seal, or seal of the
churchwardens, in establishment days, is—Argent, a palmer’s staff erect;
from its rest, dependent by a leathern thong, a gourd bottle, all
proper. On a bordure gules, five pineapples of the second. The
circumscription is “Sigill Aedilium Sancti Jacobi in Jamaica.”
The earliest baptism recorded in the existing register of St. James is
dated January 1, 1771; the earliest marriage, May 5, 1774, and the
earliest burial July 6, 1774.
The rectors have been, so far as they can be traced:
1771–74. Rev. Joseph Stoney.
1774–87. Rev. J. Grignon.
1787–95. Rev. Francis Dauney.
1795–1805. Rev. Francis Rickard.
1805–13. Rev. David Duff.
1814–27. Rev. Henry Jenkins.
1827–47. Rev. John M’Intyre, M.A.
1847–62. Archdeacon Thomas Price Williams, D.D.
1862–81. Rev. David R. Morris.
1881–85. Rev. W. H. Williamson.
1885–87. Rev. George Whyte.
1887–97. Rev. F. H. Sharpe.
1897–1904. Rev. J. W. Austin.
1905. Rev. J. Messiah, B.A.
Of the monuments in the church, the best is that of =Mrs. Rosa Palmer=,
by John Bacon, R.A., of the year 1794. It is, after the Rodney and
Effingham monuments at Spanish Town, the best work by Bacon in Jamaica.
She to whose memory it was erected, the wife of John Palmer, custos of
the parish, died in 1790, aged 72 years. This monument has been for
years connected with the legend of Rose Hall, about ten miles to the
east of Montego Bay. Into this legend, of cruelty to slaves and murder
of her several husbands by a certain Mrs. Palmer, it is not necessary to
enter. Controversies have raged having for their object the identity of
the figure on the monument; some maintaining that it was the good,
others the bad Mrs. Palmer. As a matter of fact it represents neither,
but is merely an emblematic figure, such as Bacon was very fond of
putting into his memorials, and in all probability the head on the vase
represents the features of Rosa Palmer. Mr. Joseph Shore, in his work
“In Old St. James” in 1911, solved the mystery. The good Mrs. Palmer was
Rosa Kelly, daughter of the Reverend John Kelly of St. Elizabeth, who
married John Palmer as her fourth husband, and was his faithful wife for
twenty-three years; her other husbands being Henry Fanning of St.
Catherine, George Ash of St. James, and the Honourable Norwood Witter of
Westmoreland. The wicked Mrs. Palmer was Annie Mary Paterson, who
married in St. James in 1820 John Rose Palmer, grand-nephew and
successor at Rose Hall and Palmyra of John Palmer. She ended her
ill-spent days in 1833.
Other good monuments in the church are to Dr. George Macfarquhar, also
by Bacon (1791), to Dr. William Fowle, an early work of Sir Richard
Westmacott (1796), and to Mrs. Sarah Newton Kerr, by Henry Westmacott
(1814). The works by John Bacon the younger are hardly worthy of
mention.
In 1911 a handsome three-light window by Jones and Willis was erected at
the east end of the church. The centre light represents the Crucifixion,
the side-lights the Resurrection and the Ascension. One of the
side-lights was presented by Mr. W. F. Lawrence, whose family owned
Fairfield and other estates on the north side for many years.
Space will not permit of more than a brief _résumé_ of the history of a
people in Jamaica around whom much romance has sprang up. This romance
is, however, apt to be a little modified by a closer acquaintance, for
the modern representatives show little of that physical enterprise and
endurance for which their ancestors were famous.
[Illustration:
BLOCK HOUSE, MAROON TOWN
]
The term Maroon—said to be a corruption of the Spanish _Cimarron_, wild,
untamed, and applied to those negroes, originally fugitive slaves, who
lived and still live in the mountains and forests of Guiana and the West
Indies—first occurs in the English language in 1628, in “Sir Francis
Drake Revived”: “The Symerons (a blacke people, which about eightie
yeeres past, fled from the Spaniards their Masters).” So, too, in 1655,
when Penn and Venables arrived, the negroes left their masters and
betook themselves to the mountainous parts of the island, with a natural
desire to escape from serving alien owners; and when the Spaniards
vacated the island, assumed to themselves, as they had every right to
do, not the _rôle_ of rebels, but of a people resisting to the utmost of
their power the invasion of the island by the English. And
thenceforward, their forces swelled from time to time by runaway slaves
of the newcomers, they were for many a long year a source of anxiety to
the planters living in their neighbourhood, and, indeed, to the colony
in general. It may be mentioned that Bridges, in his History, gives a
different origin to the Maroons, but he quotes no authority in support
of either of the following statements, and the first is certainly
untrue. He says:
It has been supposed that the present race of Maroons derive their
origin from the Spanish slaves who remained in the fastnesses of the
island after its conquest; but these were all disposed of and
accounted for to a man in less than eight years after that event. The
Maroons of Jamaica owe their peculiarity of feature to the mixture of
the Malay caste, which they derived from the crews of a Madagascar
slave-ship wrecked upon these shores.
That the Maroons of Jamaica were a real menace in the early days is
evident from the fact that General Robert Sedgwick, in writing home to
Thurloe, more than once referred to them with apprehension.