George Robertson is the only artist of any importance who has devoted
his pencil to portraying the beauties of Jamaica, a few notes about him
may prove of interest. The facts recorded about him by Redgrave are
somewhat scanty. Born in London, he was the son of a wine merchant, and
was brought up to that business. He studied in Shipley’s school, and in
1761 he gained a Society of Arts premium for his drawings of horses.
This brought him to the notice of William Beckford, with whom he
travelled in Italy, and studied, chiefly at Rome, during several years.
He returned to London about 1770, and although Beckford tried to push
his fortunes for him, he was not very successful, and he was induced to
accompany his patron to Jamaica. He painted views in the island, and,
returning to England, exhibited pictures of Jamaica scenes, twenty-six
in all, with the Incorporated Society of Artists (of which body he was
for some time vice-president) from 1775 to 1778. Most of them appeared
as “A View in Jamaica.” The names given are =Roaring River=, =Fort
William= and =Williamsfield=. These views were admired, and when
engraved created some interest; but he received no better encouragement
than before, and he had to have recourse to teaching and making drawings
for the dealers, to support his wife and children, till a bequest from
an uncle happily relieved him from anxiety. Never of robust health, a
fall from a horse increased his infirmity. He died in 1788, before he
reached his fortieth year. He occasionally painted subject pieces,
aiming at the “grand style,” and his “St. Martin dividing his cloak” is
in Vintners’ Hall, London. But his principal talents lay in the
direction of landscape. “His compositions,” Redgrave says, “were too
scenic, his trees, though spirited, were fanciful and exuberant in their
forms, yet his works are by no means without merit.”
[Illustration:
ROARING RIVER ESTATE IN 1774
From an engraving by Thomas Vivares after a painting by George
Robertson
]
William Beckford also employed in Jamaica the talents of Philip
Wickstead, a portrait painter, a pupil of Zoffany, and distinguished by
his small whole-length portraits, whose acquaintance he had made in Rome
in 1773. He accompanied his patron to Jamaica, and practised his art for
a considerable time in the island. He speculated as a planter, but was
unsuccessful. Losses led to drink, and his life was thereby shortened.
He died before 1790. Beckford said of him, his “powers of painting were
considerably weakened by his natural indolence, and more than all, by a
wonderful eccentricity of character. His colouring was almost equal to
that of any artist of his time, and the freedom and execution of his
pencil were particularly apparent in his representation of negroes of
every character, expression and age.” Unfortunately many of Wickstead’s
drawings perished in the hurricane of 1780.
In biographical dictionaries William Beckford is styled an historian,
and, as we have seen, he wrote part of a History of France, but in his
work on Jamaica he was content to reprint his historical facts from the
“Jamaica Almanack” of the day, and apparently he did not know the year
of the discovery of the island by Columbus, for he twice gives a wrong
date, and his date for the Port Royal earthquake is also wrong. Much may
be excused, however, in an historian who wrote in the Fleet prison.
One trait he had in common with his kinsman and namesake—a true love of
nature and the picturesque. But his description of the natural beauties
of the island is couched in the somewhat high-flown style of the
eighteenth century.
The following is part of his description of the great hurricane which
destroyed Savanna-la-Mar in 1780:
At Savanna-la-Mar, there was not even a vestige of a town (the parts
only of two or three houses having in partial ruin remained, as if to
indicate the situation and extent of the calamity); the very materials
of which it had been composed had been carried away by the resistless
fury of the waves, which finally completed what the wind began. A very
great proportion of the poor inhabitants were crushed to death or
drowned; and in one house alone, it was computed that forty, out of
one and forty souls, unhappily and prematurely perished. The sea drove
with progressive violence for more than a mile into the country; and
carried terror, as it left destruction, wherever it passed. Two large
ships and a schooner were at anchor in the bay, but were driven a
considerable distance from the shore, and totally wrecked among the
mango-trees upon land.
He concludes his description thus:
“Having resided for some time in that delightful country, from which
the most celebrated painters of landscape have made their principal
studies; and having always travelled with those who loved, or were
professors of the Art; and having accompanied the latter in all their
walks, and followed their imitations upon the easel, it is not
unnatural to suppose that I should catch, as it were by reflection, a
small portion of their curiosity, and endeavour to follow, at a
distance, those rays which have warmed, although they have not been
able to illuminate. As one, therefore, who has observed Nature with
more enthusiasm than taste, I must decide in favour of the rich and
magnificent scenery of the West Indies, in preference to any rural
appearances I have observed in other countries; and I should dwell
with more pertinacity upon this opinion, were they, by contrast, more
observed and better known.”
William Beckford was born in Jamaica in 1744.
In 1767 or 1768 he went abroad with “two others” (William Fullerton and
Glover) under the travelling preceptorship of Patrick Brydone, traveller
and author, and made a somewhat extensive tour. Fullerton, after a most
successful career in India, became known, from his conduct of the first
commissionership of the government of Trinidad, as “the persecutor of
Picton.” Beckford spent nearly thirteen years (between 1773 and 1788) in
Jamaica, on his estates, Fort William and Roaring River, near
Savanna-la-Mar, now the property of Miss G. C. Hay. Of the works at
Roaring River almost all that remain are two stones, one of which bears
the date 1737 and the other the Beckford crest, a heron’s head with a
fish in its beak, with the date 1778. On page 392 of his work he says,
“When I left Jamaica in the year 1777.” This is an evident misprint for
1788 or 1789. He also owned Williamsfield, and is said to have owned the
following properties, also in Westmoreland: The Crawl, Hertford Pen,
Hatfield Pen and Smithfield Wharf. During all these years he apparently
never visited the north side of the island. He is mentioned in the
Jamaica Almanacs from 1782 to 1788 (after which date his name
disappears) as a magistrate for Westmoreland. Much as he admired its
scenery, the island of Jamaica evidently had for him unpleasant
memories. He alludes to it as “that spot upon which it was my unhappy
fortune for so many years of my life to reside.” The only records of his
sojourn in Jamaica are Beckford street at Savanna-la-Mar, and Beckford
Lodge, a small holding near that town, and the mark R/WB which is still
used for the rum exported from Roaring River. On his return voyage to
England he passed the Cayman Islands, landing at Grand Cayman. In 1788
he published his “Remarks on the Situation of Negroes in Jamaica.” He
retired to his estate at Somerly in Suffolk, which he had evidently
owned as early as 1773. He then spent, as we have seen, some time, about
1790–91, in the Fleet prison.
[Illustration:
SAVANNA-LA-MAR IN 1840
]
He died on February 4, 1799, of an apoplectic fit at the Earl of
Effingham’s in Wimpole street, London. His pecuniary losses had probably
led him to sell his property in Suffolk, for he is described as “late of
Somerly Hall.” The Earl of Effingham mentioned is Richard the fourth
earl, nephew to Thomas second earl, who had married a sister of Lord
Mayor Beckford in 1744, and brother to the third earl, who died while
Governor of Jamaica. Beckford evidently selected his friends from those
accomplished in literature and the arts. In his writings he refers to
Sir William Hamilton, who was a friend of the author of “Vathek,” to
Brydone, to “my friend Parsons,” the musician, to Charles Burney, nephew
of Dr. Burney and Robertson and Wickstead the artists; and Dr. Burney
has told us that he was the friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Joseph
Banks.
=Negril Harbour= is sometimes called Bloody Bay, said to be due to the
killing of whales there in former times. In it is a tomb of George
Murray (d. 1804), custos, who laid the foundation-stone of the church in
1797. At =Cross Path= is the tomb of Colonel John Guthrie (d. 1739),
custos of the parish and colonel of the militia, who reduced the rebel
negroes who had for many years harassed the island; at =Dryworks= there
is the tomb of Colonel William Williams (d. 1723), custos of the parish,
who had rendered valuable services during the hurricane of 1772, and
William Lewis (d. 1774), grandfather of Matthew Gregory Lewis; On the
roadside near =Kew Park= is a soldier’s tomb with the following
inscription:
In the rear of this stone lie the remains of Obediah Chambers, late a
private of the Light Infantry Company W.I.R. which, on the 5th of
January 1830 fell into an ambush of rebellious slaves, near this spot,
by whom the deceased was cruelly butchered.
A brave man, & valorous in course of life here, who died a Soldier &
an honest man.
This stone is erected by the Officers & N.C. Officers of the 6th
Battn. Coy.
At =Harmony Hall= is the tomb of John Lewis (d. 1820), chief justice and
custos of the parish, and also of Mary Lewis (d. 1813). At =Three-Mile
River= Estate is a mausoleum with a large marble slab “to the memory of
James Graham, late of this island” (d. 1795), erected by his friend John
Wedderburn. =Drummond= and =Indian Head= both have caves with Arawâk
remains.
XIII
ST. ELIZABETH
The parish of St. Elizabeth was probably named in honour of Elizabeth,
Lady Modyford, the daughter of William Palmer, whose tombstone is in the
cathedral. It is one of the largest parishes and one of the most
important. In the parish church at =Black River= are memorial tablets
recalling to the memory of the living the many good qualities of the
departed St. Elizabeth gentry. The handsomest are those on either side
of the chancel to the memory of Caleb Dickenson and Robert Hugh Munro,
founders of the Munro and Dickenson’s trust, which to-day maintains two
of the principal schools in the island. The Maroon township called
Accompong on the northern boundary of the parish has been referred to in
the account of the neighbouring parish of St. James.
Robert Hugh Munro, of the parish of St. Elizabeth, by his will dated
January 21, 1797, and a codicil of May 23, 1797, bequeathed the residue
of his real and personal estate in certain contingencies in trust to his
nephew, Caleb Dickenson, and the churchwardens of the parish of St.
Elizabeth, and their successors, to lay out the same in the endowment of
a school to be erected and maintained in the said parish, for the
education of as many poor children of the parish as the funds might be
sufficient to provide for and maintain, and, if necessary, to apply to
the Legislature for an act for the regulation of the charity and to
carry out his intentions. For years after the death of Dickenson, who
had bequeathed them fully to carry out his uncle’s intentions, the funds
of the Charity were applied to anything but their proper purpose, and at
length in 1825 an Act of the Legislature was passed for regulating the
charity, which recited the history of the trust up to that date, and
propounded a scheme which had been agreed upon for the management of the
trust; but this commendable scheme appears never to have been carried
out, and it was not until 1855 that the Act 18 Victoria, chap. 53, was
passed with the object of rescuing the remains of the charity.
In 1856 a Free School for boys was opened near Black River, and early in
1857 the premises at Potsdam, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, were
purchased and the school was removed thither. The Trust maintains two
schools situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains—that for boys still at
=Potsdam=; that for girls formerly at Mount Zion, now at =Hampton=.
At Lacovia, on the main road from Santa Cruz to Black River, precisely
at its junction with the road from Lacovia to Balaclava, there are two
tombs, side by side; the space between being only six feet. One, built
of large squares of stones or rock commonly used for building purposes,
is in the last stages of decay and ruin, and without any slab or
inscription. The other is a high brick tomb, with a massive white marble
slab on which is the following inscription:
Here lyes interr’d the body of
Thomas Jordan Spencer.
Born Octbr. the 14^{th}, 1723, who departed
this life Sunday morning, September the
17th, 1738.
The _Arms_ are: Quarterly argent and gules, in the second and third
quarters a frette or: over all, on a bend sable, three fleurs-de-lis of
the first. The _Crest_ an esquire’s helmet.
This monument is not mentioned in Lawrence-Archer’s “Monumental
Inscriptions of the British West Indies.” The quartering of the shield
is very much worn owing to the exposed position of the tomb.
Tradition says that at a tavern which formerly stood hard by, a friendly
party was interrupted by angry words which led to a duel, in which both
combatants fell, and that they were buried side by side.
At =Lacovia= estate is the tomb of Barnard Andreiss (d. 1710), custos of
the parish; =Dickenson’s Run= has Jewish tombs with inscriptions in
Hebrew and Portuguese. At =Pedro= is a cave with Arawâk remains, and
also at =Hounslow=. =Hampstead= great house is said to have been the
summer residence of former Jamaica governors.
Some one with classic taste named =Catadupa=, a word originally applied
to the cataracts of the Nile, and once used both in French and English
for a waterfall.
Long, after ridiculing the tale copied by many writers that the
rain-drops which fall at Magotty turn into maggots, goes on to suggest
the derivation of “_maga_ (an enchantress) and _oteo_ (watching on a
high place); alluding probably to the pinnacle of _Monte Diablo_, over
which the thunder clouds so frequently break, as together with its
horrid aspect to make it seem a proper residence for a witch, under
patronage of the devil, to whom the mountain was dedicated.”
=Surinam Quarters=, in St. Elizabeth, were settled in 1675 by planters
from Surinam, when that colony was exchanged with the Dutch for New
York.
=Culloden= and =Auchindown=, in St. Elizabeth, date from the time of the
arrival of the ill-fated Darien refugees.
XIV
MANCHESTER
Manchester was separated from the adjoining parishes of St. Elizabeth,
Clarendon and Vere in 1814, and was named after the Duke of Manchester,
who was Governor of the island at the time; while the chief town,
Mandeville, was named after his eldest son.
The parish is more noted for its agricultural than historic
associations. Mandeville is much frequented by visitors from the United
States and Canada and Great Britain. The court-house is said to have
cost upwards of £20,000. In the churchyard is the tombstone of Sir
William Scarlett, chief justice of the island from 1821 to 1832, who is
referred to in the account of St. James.
Bridges, the historian, was the rector from 1817 to 1823. In that period
he baptized 9547 slaves, and married 2187. In 1823 he published his
“Voice from Jamaica,” written in defence of slave-owners, for which the
Assembly two years later voted him £700. He valued his living at £1118
per annum. The Rev. Samuel Stewart, writing in 1840, says: “Four large
schoolhouses have been erected, one-half of the expense paid by the
Bishop, the other moiety by the Vestry.”
XV
CLARENDON
The parish of Clarendon was named in honour of the celebrated Lord
Chancellor. The parish of Vere, now merged in it, was named after Vere,
daughter of Sir Edward Herbert, Attorney-General to Charles I, and first
wife of Sir Thomas Lynch, who, with her two sons, died on her passage
from England to this island in 1683.
=Carlisle Bay=, the scene of the principal military engagement with a
foreign foe which has taken place in Jamaica during the British
occupation, is on the south-west coast of the old parish of Vere.
Much of the following account is taken from “A Narrative of the Descent
on Jamaica by the French,” by Sir William Beeston, in the MSS.
department of the British Museum. It is printed in “Interesting Tracts
relating to the Island of Jamaica,” published at St. Jago de la Vega in
1800. A letter from the Council in England in answer to Beeston’s
narrative is also in the British Museum, and a contemporary account of
the occurrence sworn to at Bermuda on October 2, 1694, by Benjamin
Thornton, master of the sloop _Content_, is in the Record Office at
Bermuda. Beeston came to the island in 1660, was employed in various
public capacities, and was lieutenant-governor from 1690 to 1700, and
thenceforward Governor till 1702; he is chiefly famous for the defence,
which he made, together with Colonel Long, against the attempt by Lord
Carlisle to assimilate the government of Jamaica to that of Ireland.
For some time prior to the engagement at Carlisle Bay the owners of the
plantations on the sea coast of Jamaica had been much distressed by
descents by French privateers (aided in some cases by disaffected
persons from the island itself who threw in their lot with them) from
San Domingo and the Leeward Islands, who plundered and murdered as
occasion offered.
Captain Du Casse—the Governor of San Domingo, perhaps best known in
England as the opponent to Benbow in the engagement which ended in the
latter’s death—being informed by two renegade Irishmen that the “island
was easily taken; the fortifications at Port Royal were out of order and
few men there, so that two hundred men would take that place, and two
hundred more would march in any part of the country the people were so
thin and so little used to arms,” and, being reinforced by three
men-of-war from France, decided to make a descent on the island. In the
meantime a Captain Elliott, of Jamaica, who had been taken prisoner into
Petit Goave, on the west coast of San Domingo, by French privateers, and
was probably the Captain Stephen Elliott who brought to England the news
of the great earthquake at Port Royal in 1692, managed to escape to
Jamaica in a small canoe, and give timely warning on May 31, 1694, that
Du Casse himself, with twenty sail and 3000 men, was coming to take the
island. For this he was subsequently rewarded by William III with a gold
chain and medal of £100 value and £500 in money.
Upon the receipt of Elliott’s news the House of Assembly, which was then
sitting, was adjourned for one month, a council of war was called
together, martial law proclaimed, and every officer ordered to his post.
Colonel Beckford (grandfather of the celebrated Lord Mayor of London),
who was in command at Port Royal, got Fort Charles into excellent order
and fortified the town. A fort also was built in the Parade at Kingston;
the pass by Rock Fort to the east of Kingston was guarded, and
breastworks were erected at Old Harbour and Carlisle Bay. Beeston,
realising that it was hopeless with the forces at command to try to
protect all his coast-line, decided to defend the strongest parts, and
drew all the forces from the out ports into St. Dorothy (a parish now
merged in St. Catherine), St. Catherine, St. Andrew and Port Royal; and
“some few” were left to defend the breastwork at Carlisle Bay. The
people from St. Thomas and St. David, the most exposed positions, were
called into St. Andrew and Kingston.
At Fort William and Port Morant the guns were spiked, the shot buried,
and the powder brought away.
[Illustration:
CARLISLE BAY
]
The French fleet, consisting of three men-of-war and twenty-three
transports, appeared in the offing on June 17. Rollon, the admiral,
sailed in the _Téméraire_, of fifty-four guns. Eight ships stayed about
Port Morant, but the remainder went into Cow Bay, near Yallahs, where
they laid waste the country, plundered the houses, murdered what
inhabitants they could find, and generally behaved with barbarity.
On July 15 the fleet, having done all the damage it could in the
neighbourhood of Port Morant, set sail, and after reconnoitring Port
Royal, put into Cow Bay the next day. Fearing an attack on Kingston by
land, Beeston sent a hundred men from St. Catherine to reinforce the
troops guarding the Windward road; but on the morning of the 18th he saw
seventeen ships making, as he rightly judged, for Carlisle Bay, thirty
six miles from Spanish Town. He took prompt action. He sent to Carlisle
Bay two troops of horse, and parts of the regiments of St. Catherine,
Clarendon and St. Elizabeth, the foot to be mounted on what horses they
could find. The cavalry and the mounted infantry got there that night,
and those on foot “marched so hard” that they arrived by ten the next
morning. The enemy had anchored in Carlisle Bay on the afternoon of the
18th. The editor of the earliest edition of the “Laws of Jamaica,”
published in 1683, refers to “Carlisle Bay, a safe Road for Shipping,
and there is likewise built a pretty Town of that name, of about 100
Houses which has a fine Trade, that also increases, as the Country does
in Plantations.”
Into the breastwork, which was commanded by Colonel Sutton of Clarendon,
who had constructed it, were packed 250 men, in addition to negroes,
being those of the several regiments that had come in during the night.
Beeston tells us that the fort was ill-made and worse contrived. “On the
south was the sea, on the west a large river [the Rio Minho], and on the
east they had left a wood standing,” which formed a natural covert for
the enemy. They also failed to lay in provisions for either man or
horse.
By daylight on the morning of the 19th the enemy had landed about 1400
or 1500 men about a mile and a half to the east of the breastwork, where
the small guard, after firing on them, retreated to the breastwork,
which the French attacked so hotly that the defenders had to retreat
over the river, not, however, before they had fought bravely and killed
many of the enemy. Just as the French forced the breastwork three or
four companies of the St. Catherine regiment and one of the St.
Elizabeth and some horse came in, weary, footsore and hungry with their
march of about thirty-six miles from Spanish Town. Yet they fell on
bravely on the right of the enemy and charged them so warmly that they
not only prevented them from pursuing the party that had crossed the
river, but made them retire.
Nothing but skirmishes took place till Sunday the 22nd, when the French
marched upwards till they came to the house of a certain Mr. Hubbard,
which was garrisoned with twenty men and well provisioned. Local
tradition says that this stood where Gales, a hamlet now occupied by the
Coolie barracks on Amity Hall estate, now is. Bridges, in his “Annals,”
writing in 1828, said: “The brick house in which so gallant a stand was
made, remains with the shot visible in its walls, and a solitary cotton
tree in the road from the Abbey [_sic_, Alley] to Carlisle Bay still
marks the rallying-point of the English and the grave of many a valiant
soldier.” An attack on this house by the French resulted in the loss of
several of their best officers, as the besieged were aided by a
detachment from the Bay. On hearing that a more determined attack was
intended on the morrow, Major Richard Lloyd, who was chosen to command,
put fifty men into the house and prepared an ambuscade. But the French,
finding that they had lost so many of their officers and men, and that
they could not penetrate further into the country, contented themselves
with firing the small town of Carlisle, spiking the guns and doing what
mischief they could, and then retreated to their ships. On Tuesday,
24th, the whole fleet sailed—Du Casse and two or three ships going
straight back to San Domingo, the rest staying only to put into Port
Morant to wood and water and land prisoners. And thus ended the most
serious attempt at the capture of Jamaica ever made upon its shores
during the English occupation.