The feud that raged over the religious instruction of the negroes makes
a curious piece of Jamaican history.
“The imported Africans were wild, savage and barbarous in the extreme;
their untractable passions and ferocious temperament rendered severity
necessary. They provoked the iron rule of harsh authority; and the
earliest laws, constructed to restrain their unexampled atrocities, were
rigid and inclement. They exhibited, in fact, such depravity of nature
and deformity of mind as gave colour to the prevailing belief in a
natural inferiority of intellect; so that the colonist conceived it to
be a crime of no greater moral magnitude to kill a negro than to destroy
a monkey; however rare their interest in them, as valuable property,
rendered such a lamentable test of conscience.”
Thus the Rev. George William Bridges on the negroes when their spiritual
state was exercising the minds of all the religious teachers. This
particular shepherd was wroth because he objected to the sectarians,
that is Quakers, Methodists and Baptists, taking upon themselves any
interest in the souls of the slaves. “The country already pays,” he
remarks, “near £40,000 per annum for their religious instruction.”
I don't know if I shall be called libellous, but it does seem to me that
the Church was decidedly slack in dispensing that instruction for which
she was so highly paid. She administered religion in the impersonal and
dignified manner that was her wont, and the slaves might be christened
if they so desired. Of course they had to get their master's consent,
for it was not likely the parson was going to do it for nothing, and
at the end of the eighteenth century it cost four bits a head, that is
about 2s. 6d. But the clergyman was sometimes open to a bargain, and
would do the whole estate for a fixed sum--about half the usual cost
per head. And sometimes a whole estate would clamour to be christened.
Sometimes they did it as a safeguard against some feared Obeah man, and
sometimes simply to have names like the buckra. After their new name
they added that of their master for a surname, and reserved the old name
for common use. And then came trouble for the overseer or book-keeper,
for the new Christians while exceedingly proud of being Christians like
the buckras, were apt to forget their new names, and were always teasing
to be told them, for, of course, they were recorded in the estate book.
As late as the end of the eighteenth century no one bothered about the
naming of the slaves, and we find them entered in the Worthy Park estate
book as Villian and Mutton, Baddo, Woman and Whore, but towards the end
of the first quarter of the nineteenth, when Lewis writes, we find that
even the Rose Hall slaves, and Rose Hall slaves were backward, had been
christened, most of them.
Hannibal, a Creole, that is a slave born in the island, aged 54, of good
disposition, appears to have been content with his old slave name; but
Ulysses, of the same age, and also a Creole of good disposition, becomes
Henry and adds Palmer because that was the name of his owner. Shemonth
and Adonis, both Creoles of 42 and 39, make no change, perhaps the owner
would not pay for their christening, neither does Aaron, an African of
44, though how they knew the age of an African unless he had been bought
as a baby I do not know. Out of fifty male negroes nearly half changed
their names, but some who did not were children, so perhaps they were
christened in the ordinary way; The names they chose seem to have been
singularly commonplace. Why should Adam, aged 6, become William Bennett?
Or Othello, who was older, J. Fletcher? Why should Robert, a quadroon 3
years old, become Lawrence Low, and why should Isaac, 12, become simple
J. James?
Out of sixty women and girls only six of mature age neglected to change
their names. None of the older women are married, but some of the
younger ones add their married names. Still, matrimony was not much in
favour, either with slave or free. Lady % Nugent, twenty years before
this book was entered up, is always worrying about it.
“See Martin's daughter soon after breakfast. It is a sad thing to see
this good, kind woman, in other respects so easy, on the subject of what
a decent kind of woman in England would be ashamed of and shocked at.
She told me of all her children by different fathers with the greatest
sangfroid. The mother is quite looked up to at Port Royal, and yet her
life has been most profligate as we should think at least in England.”
And so, I suppose, these slave women who were entered in the book about
twenty years after Lady Nugent left the island, Cecelia and Amelia and
Maph and Cowslip, who was christened Mary Paton, and May who became
Hannah Palmer, never bothered about matrimony. What made Sussanah
Johnston become Elizabeth Palmer I wonder, and why did Kate become
Annie Brindley, and why was Frankie, who was only 32, and valued at
£90, neither christened nor married? I don't know that Sabina isn't a
prettier name than Eliza, but a Creole negro slave of a hundred years
ago evidently didn't agree with me. Eve aged 9 became Ellen, and to
change a negro Venus to Eliza Stennet is bathos indeed.
“Baptism,” says Lewis, “was in high vogue, and whenever one of them told
me a monstrous lie--and they told me whole dozens--he never failed
to conclude his story by saying, 'Now, massa, you know I've been
christened, and if you do not believe what I say I'm ready to buss
the book to the truth of it.' I am assured that unless a negro has
an interest in telling the truth, he always lies in order to keep his
tongue in practice.”
The question Lewis did not ask himself was whether a white man in like
circumstances would have behaved any better.
It may be that the planters were--some of them--brutal men, but I know
that had I lived in those times I should probably, like the planters,
have regarded the ministers of the other denominations outside the
Church of England as most offensively officious. The planters as was not
unnatural regarded their slaves as their property, property for which
they had paid very heavily, and even though they allowed them many
privileges they desired it to be clearly understood that these were
privileges given of their own goodwill, and by no means to be considered
as rights. The Baptists and Methodists preached what the planters
considered sedition. Even tolerant Lewis forbade the Methodists on
Cornwall and Hordly, though he allowed any other denomination to preach
to the slaves, and much as I dislike the Church of England parson
Bridges, I dislike still more the Rev. H. Bleby. He and his confrères
must have been a most pernicious lot. Evidently on their own showing
they were not men of education. They took the Bible as their guide,
quoting it in season and out of season. This is of course not a crime,
but even nowadays it grates on the average man. In those days the
insistence that the negro was a man and a brother when his master
declared him a chattel was extremely offensive.
Besides the doctrine of equality was considered dangerous. It was
dangerous.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century the talk of freedom was in
the air. It was the burning question of the day in Jamaica. The
planters discussed it openly at their tables, so did the overseers and
book-keepers, and the listening slaves waiting round the table carried
all the gossip to the slave quarters, for then as now the black people
went back to their quarters once the day's work was done. The tinder was
more than dry when the spark fell.
The former revolts in Jamaica had frankly been outbreaks of savages,
dimly conscious of wrong, trying to regain their freedom, but the
revolt of 1831-32 was a revolt into which religion entered largely.
The planters declared openly it was engineered by the Baptists, and
the slaves themselves called it the “Baptist War” and the “Black Family
War,” the Baptists being styled in slave parlance the “Black Family.”
Bleby discussing this last of the slave revolts which raged through
Hanover, Westmoreland, St James and Trelawny, declares it started
because a certain Mr Grignon, the Attorney of Salt Springs near Montego
Bay, going out there one day close to Christmas met a woman with a
piece of sugarcane in her hand--not a very desperate offence one would
think--and concluding it had been stolen from Salt Springs--it probably
had--not only punished her on the spot but took her back to the
plantation and called upon the head driver to strip and flog her. She
happened to be this man's wife, so he refused, and the second driver was
called upon and he too refused, and all the people taking their cue
from their headmen defended her. The Attorney could not get that woman
flogged, and becoming alarmed at the attitude of the people he called
out the constabulary to arrest the offenders. But the whole body of the
slaves menaced the constables, and the principal offenders made their
escape to the woods. And the woods round Montego Bay, woods that clothe
all the hills that the Maroons held so long, are particularly suited for
such guerilla warfare.
[Illustration: 0273]
Kensington, a place high in the mountains, was the first place burned,
and presently the night was lighted by properties burning in all
directions. Down the steep hills from Kempshot, down through the dense
jungle from Retirement, from Montpelier and from Salt Springs, came
the white people flocking to Montego Bay. We can understand the
consternation that prevailed in the town. We can imagine the unbridled
delight of the slaves as Great House after Great House was abandoned and
went up in flames. Those flames spelled to them freedom, and they were
sure that the whole island was given over to them. It was not. And in
this revolt there was a peculiar character that we find in no other.
Many of the slaves were partly civilised now. It was twenty years since
any had been imported from Africa; many were acquiring a little property
and had some small stake in the land, and must have felt the futility
of the uprising. And on these the consequences of the revolt pressed
heaviest. Which side were they to take? As plantation after plantation
went up in flames, doubtless they were inclined to believe what the
insurgent leaders told them, that the country--the country they loved,
their country--had been abandoned by the white men. The position of the
faithful slaves was difficult.
Bleby says, and a certain Mr Beaumont, who certainly was not prejudiced
in favour of the slaves, says that many of them were more afraid of the
insurgents than they were of the free inhabitants, and many were carried
off by the insurgents and forced to accompany them.
But this did not save them once the whites got the upper hand. The
planters put every slave in the same category and hanged ruthlessly,
asking no questions, believing no assertions of innocence. They had been
badly frightened, and they took vengeance like frightened men.
About the revolt Bleby gives us more information than perhaps he
intended. He is delightful--unconsciously.
“Information reached the Commanding Officer,” he says, “that it was the
intention of the insurgents to attack and pillage the town; and as the
number of men was inadequate to the purpose, he required all who
were capable of bearing arms to enrol themselves for its defence”
(it certainly seems to me a very natural desire on the part of the
Commanding Officer), “myself, a Scotch missionary and a curate included,
the rector and another curate having already presented themselves as
volunteers. I was far from yielding a cordial consent to this demand
upon my services,” how they must have loved him. “He gave promise that
we should not be required to leave the town, and should only be called
upon to act if the safety of the place should be menaced.”
And now, listen to the sufferings of this noble gentleman. One day they
were asked to go a little way into the country and to return in the
evening, but when they had been gone some distance he found they had
no intention of returning for several days. I can see the Commanding
Officer smiling secretly over the discomfiture of his valuable recruit.
Incredible as it seems, considering the country was in the throes of a
slave revolt, with all its possible horrors, this gentleman can actually
write that they were “harassed by journeys day after day amongst the
woods and mountains, often riding for eight or ten hours in succession
beneath a scorching sun, and sleeping without pillow, sheet or mat, or
any other accommodation on the boarded or earthen floor of the house
where we might happen to stop for the night.”
Truly a very gallant gentleman! I quite feel for the pleasure the
Commanding Officer must have got out of making him as uncomfortable
as he possibly could. Doubtless he would have joyfully put him in the
forefront of the battle had there been a battle, but there wasn't one.
After the first riotous outburst, when the whites were taken by
surprise, there seems to have been no hope for the wretched slaves.
The militia was composed naturally of planters, the officers being in
many instances men whose property had been destroyed by the insurgents,
and who regarded themselves as ruined or reduced to the verge of ruin by
the revolted negroes. We cannot but agree with Bleby that these were
the last men who should have tried them, but try them they did, and the
reprisals were terrible. As in the old days the Romans in Sicily, if I
remember rightly, crucified their rebellious slaves along the sea-shore,
so these Jamaican planters hanged and shot the deluded people without
finding out whether they were guilty or not. After six weeks of trials,
one of the newspapers at Montego Bay gravely announced: “The executions
during the week have been considerably diminished, being in number only
fourteen.”
They hanged them by twos and threes in the public market-place and left
them hanging there till another lot were due, when they cut down the
bodies and left them lying on the ground till the workhouse negroes came
out with carts in the evening and took them away, to cast them into a
pit dug for the purpose a little distance from the town.
When the tropical day drew swiftly to its ending, and the sun sank
gorgeous into the sea, when the purple and gold changed to bands of
seashell pink and delicate nile green, and the shadows swept up and the
stars, gleaming crystals, came out in a sky of velvet, then for me those
dead-and-gone slaves, trapped in a web of circumstance, rose from
their graves and walked along the shore. Ignorant, toil-worn, insolent,
cringing by turns, with all the vices of their unwilling servitude upon
them, they cry to high heaven for vengeance. And avenged they have been,
for surely Jamaica is the land of wasted opportunities.
There is an old house high on the hills above Montego Bay. It is
beautifully situated, looking away over the hills and over the lovely
bay. It has two-foot thick stone walls built by slave labour, the
pillars that uphold the verandah are of solid mahogany--painted white by
some Goth--and the windows are heavily shuttered.
It is haunted, they say.
“Knock, knock, knock!” comes a sound against the shutters of one room
every night, a passionately appealing knock that will not be stayed.
Only some people can hear it, but when they do, it wrings their hearts,
so importunate is it. One man I know of sitting there reading at night,
used every prayer and exhortation he could think of to still that uneasy
ghost--he was a priest of the Church of Rome--but it would not be
stilled, and at last he--practical, middle-aged man as he was, fled away
from the sound of it to some friends who lived the other side of the
town, and refused ever to come back to that haunted house. Was it some
unhappy woman begging and praying her master who had been her lover to
intercede for her son caught in the slave revolt? Whoever it was prayed
there, prayed in vain, and now sensitive souls hear the knock, knock,
knock, “for God's sake have pity and help me!”
Oh, most of the houses of the old slave town could tell pitiful stories.
Bleby tells ghastly ones of what happened to the unfortunate slaves when
the whites had recovered themselves and got the upper hand. In reading
them, we must always remember that this is always the case when a
handful of people holding a very much larger class by fear has been
thoroughly frightened itself.
There was a negro named Bailey who had hidden his master's silver for
safety in a cave, and after the rebellion was over he took one of the
women belonging to the estate and went to the cave to bring back to the
house the property which he had hidden. He sent off the woman with a
load upon her head, and remained behind to get out the rest. A company
of militia came upon him thus engaged. They paid no heed to his
explanations, and when the woman returned for another load he had been
hanged as a man taken red-handed!
But the case that Bleby dilates upon is that of a negro named Henry
Williams. Now Henry Williams appears to have been a very decent,
respectable man, far advanced from the wild savage who was his
progenitor. He was wickedly treated, but I do not think he was exactly
the martyr Bleby makes out.
“He was a respected and useful class leader in the Wesleyan Society at
Beechamville,” says Bleby. Can't we imagine him? He was a driver when he
wasn't in religion, a slave on Rural Retreat, and the adjoining estate
belonged to our friend the Rev. George William Bridges. This was
extremely unlucky for Henry, for evidently the attorney who managed
Rural Retreat and Mr Bridges got talking together, and doubtless
agreed on the unfortunately growing tendency of the slaves to think for
themselves. More particularly did they object to this chapel-going, and
the attorney of Rural Retreat instanced Henry as a particularly virulent
specimen of the genus Black Baptist. They concocted a plan which holds
them both up to contempt. The manager of Rural Retreat sent for Henry,
and though he was not in the habit of going to any place of worship,
told him that he was going to church at Mr Bridges' house and desired
the attendance of all the slaves on Rural Retreat. None were to go to
Bellemont chapel, which appears to have been the place they affected.
But none came to Mr Bridges' house save and except Henry. Even his wife
and children had gone to Bellemont as usual. On his master asking him
why he had not obeyed his order and brought the people to service, he
answered meekly enough that the people were not under his direction on
Sunday.
“But have I not told you,” said his master, “that you and the people
are not to go to Bellemont chapel preaching and praying? How dare you go
when I tell you not and encourage the people to disobey my orders?
I'll teach you to disobey my orders. You shall not go to Bellemont for
nothing!”
And he actually sent the unfortunate man to the Rodney Hall Workhouse,
the most dreaded workhouse in the whole island--this man who was a class
leader and a man of standing among his own people--with his hands tied
behind his back and in charge of other slaves like a common criminal,
though they knew perfectly well that he would have gone and delivered
himself up to receive what was coming to him.
“I have no mind,” said his master, “that you should go there as a
gentleman, as if you were going on your own business.”
“Excessive labour, miserable diet, chains and the whip, soon brought
down his strength,” writes Bleby, and he goes on to tell at length of
his suffering. His leg was so diseased that he could not put it to the
ground, he had been thrashed till his back was one unspeakable sore,
so pestiferous that the prisoners in the same cell complained that the
stench proceeding from his wounds was too great to be endured. At last
he was released. And I suppose for want of any other place to go to,
made his way back to his own people.
And his master made him the text of his discourse to his slaves.
“Do you see that man,” he said. “There is a man that wears as good a
coat as I do, and can be trusted with anything about the property, but
because he will go to that---------- preaching place, you see what a
tremendous punishment I have laid upon him; and if I will serve that man
so, what won't I do to the rest of you if you disobey my orders and go
to Bellemont chapel.”
Undoubtedly Williams could have induced the people on the estate to go
to church, and undoubtedly he encouraged them to disobey their master.
It shows a great step upwards in the status of the slave, and it shows
us clearly the cruelty of slavery. Why should not a man worship where he
pleased? But it was for disobedience that Williams was punished. Bleby
talks about him as we should of a saint and martyr. He may have been,
but in the eyes of his master he was merely a very disobedient slave
whom he had to break lest the disaffection spread.
Bleby is an amusing person, though he does not intend it. He finds
in the end that all those who had ill-treated the slaves suffered
punishment at the hands of God. Most of them were cut off in their
prime, by accident or suicide, all but Mr Bridges the rector, who had
his deserts in a different manner.
“One morning, having breakfasted on board a ship in the harbour with his
four youthful and lovely daughters, who were but too fondly beloved, and
several other ladies and gentlemen, the whole party went out for a short
excursion in the ship's boats. While they were thus pleasurably engaged
a squall arose, unobserved by the party in the boats, and swept suddenly
across the bay ['beautiful Kingston Harbour'), when the boat containing
the four young ladies and two or three other persons was capsized,
and the sisters all disappeared, to be seen no more. The agony of the
bereaved parent while he gazed from the other boat upon the spot where
his children had been swallowed up in a moment, may be more easily
conceived than described. He was stricken to the dust. The towering
pride which was characteristic of the man gave way when he thus felt the
hand of God upon him.”
It was men like Bleby who took the religious training of the slaves in
hand. And they succeeded in gaining their confidence, not because they
were the best people to have their minds and morals in charge, but for
the very same reason that such Nonconformists succeeded in England. They
saw how cruelly, heavily, the established rules pressed upon those in
the lower social stratum, and they not only sympathised with them but
promised reparation in another life.
Feeling ran very high in Jamaica in those times. The Colonial Church
Union was formed, and the members behaved in a manner that would have
been unseemly in a collection of drunken pugilists, let alone people
declaring themselves supporters of the Established Church of the realm.
Up and down the land they waged war against the “sectarians,” they
visited the houses of these preachers, and on more than one occasion
tarred and feathered those they particularly disliked. On one occasion
they even wreaked their wrath on Bleby himself. Now I do not think any
man should be tarred and feathered, but if any man was going to be, I am
really glad it was Bleby. There is something about his book which makes
me--who would like to be an impartial historian--thoroughly dislike him.
I can quite appreciate the effect he had upon his compeers.
The editor of the _Courant_, a paper which appears to have been
published at Montego Bay, wrote: “The bills against the painters of
parson B-------- have all been thrown out, and the chapel razers have
not been recognised; so they are all a party of ignoramuses! I have only
to say for myself, that if a mad dog was passing my way, I would have no
hesitation in shooting him; and if I found a furious animal on two legs
teaching a parcel of poor ignorant beings to cut my------------- or to
fire my dwelling, my conscience would not trouble me one bit more for
destroying him, than it would for the destruction of a mad dog.”
There we have the feelings of the two classes in a nut-shell, as quoted
by that pestilential person Bleby himself. The planters were very sure
that the dissenters by their teaching were inciting the negroes to
rebellion, and having read Bleby carefully, I can quite understand how
the teaching of men like him undoubtedly widened the breach there must
always have been between master and slave.
Most dissenters I fancy came under suspicion. There was a young man
called Whiteley, a relation of the absentee proprietor of an estate
called New Ground, who had been sent out by his relation with letters
to the manager, and a suggestion that he should be given work on the
estate. But what he saw there he did not like. He spoke openly of his
dislike and incurred the displeasure of the St Ann's Colonial Church
Union, and they sent him a deputation of two of their number, stating:--
“1st. That they had heard he had been leading the minds of the
slaves astray by holding forth doctrines of a tendency to make them
discontented with their present condition.
“2ndly. That he was a Methodist.
“3rdly. That they had a barrel of tar down on the bay to tar and feather
him, as he well deserved, and that they would do so by G------!”
Now his offences appear very mild, and hardly deserve such drastic
treatment, though I think the young man was a little smug.
Here are the offences:--
1st. He acknowledged he had written a letter to the Rev. Thomas
Pinnock, a Wesleyan missionary, asking him to help him in getting other
employment away from the estate. Surely quite the proper thing to do,
since he did not like the way the estate was conducted.
2ndly. In a letter written to the attorney of New Ground, he had said,
“The Lord reward you for the kindness you have shown me, and grant you
in health and wealth long to live!”
I really can't see that that called for tar and feathers.
3rdly. That he had said to a slave who had opened a gate for him at a
certain place, “The Lord bless you!”
4thly. That he had asked the drivers of the workhouse gang questions
respecting the offences of negroes of that gang. And surely _that_ was
harmless enough.
5thly. That he had made private remarks about the manner in which he had
seen Mr M'Lean the overseer treat the slaves.
Here one of the deputation, Dicken, who was overseer at Windsor, a
neighbouring estate, told him that he had two negroes at that moment in
the stocks; and added with a brutal oath, if he would come over in the
morning he would let him see them properly flogged.
I wonder how many unfortunates got an extra flogging, not because they
deserved it, but just to show those who were bent on helping the negro
that the other side, who were pledged to slavery and things as they
were, defied them and all their works.
The last accusation the young man declared had not a particle of truth
in it. He had never preached to 150 slaves at one time, though to all
the other offences he pleaded guilty.
It shows how high party spirit ran, how the planting class objected
to raising the status of the slave, when we find that these planters
managed to get that dangerous young man banished the island before he
had been there fourteen weeks. He was sowing the seeds of disaffection
in a soil already ripe.
“These extracts,” says Bleby, “show... the almost rabid hostility of
the planters to everything, and to every person who had the most distant
connection with the religious instruction of their slaves.”
Again and again the Colonial Church Union shut up the chapels, razed
them to the ground, and drove out and often tarred and feathered the
preachers. Their very lives according to Bleby were in danger. At
last these doings attracted the attention of the Governor, the Earl of
Mulgrave, afterwards the Marquess of Normanby, and he took the strong
measure of dismissing from his regiment Colonel Hilton of St Ann's
Western Regiment, not exactly for being a member and leading spirit in
the Colonial Church Union, but because he, the colonel of a regiment of
militia, had dared to put his name to resolutions censuring the conduct
of the Captain-General--the Earl of Mulgrave--upon a most important
point of military discipline. “He has no choice,” wrote the Governor's
secretary, “but to remove you from the command of the St Ann's Western
Regiment; and I have therefore received his commands to notify you that
your commission is accordingly cancelled.” And the letter is addressed
“James L. Hilton, Esq., St Ann's.”
We can imagine the slap in the face this must have been to the planters.
The Governor himself, who should have upheld the ruling classes in
everything, actually ranging himself with dissenters, dissenting parsons
and slaves! That is what James Hilton and men of his ilk doubtless said
to each other over their rum punch, when a royal proclamation was issued
declaring the Colonial Church Union to be an illegal association.
But the Governor stuck to his point, a circular was addressed to the
_custodes_, the chief magistrates of each parish, calling upon them to
do their duty, and he expressed his determination to deprive those who
continued to adhere to the Union of all appointments they might hold
under the Crown; also declaring that neither actual violence towards
missionaries, nor a repetition of illegal threats would be allowed to
pass unpunished.
But the Colonial Church Union had many friends. I can quite see those
planters meeting and cursing the foolishness of the Governor, who
actually interfered on behalf of these unspeakable dissenting parsons.
They said he could not possibly understand in what manner the chapel
preachers upset the negroes. The man who took the command of the St
Ann's Regiment in place of Mr Hilton, a Mr Hamilton Brown, at the first
muster declared in emphatic language he was in entire agreement with
their late colonel. He was sure that not only the regiment, but everyone
in the island whose opinion was worth having would be with him.
He reckoned without his host.
“Lieut.-Col. Brown was on the ground at the head of his regiment,” says
Madden, writing of the Colonial Church Union--and Madden was one of the
special magistrates sent out at the Abolition, a particularly fair and
farseeing man, “when the Governor, Lord Mulgrave arrived. His Lordship
addressed the regiment, and Lieut.-Col. Brown was ordered by him to
sheath his sword and consider himself removed from the regiment. Upon
his dismissal three-fourths of the regiment broke and quitted the ranks;
some of the officers tore off their epaulets and trampled on them; the
men were however re-collected in the ranks and marched past in review
order under the command of the officer next in rank not, however,
without every attempt, by persuasion and abuse alternately from the
mutinous officers, to induce the men to refuse to perform their duty. A
stone of large size was thrown at the Governor, which fortunately fell
short of his person; the officer, however, who was charged with
this disgraceful outrage denied having committed it, and no further
investigation took place. Thus ended the memorable review at Huntly
Pastures.”
It was not only the officers of the St Ann's Regiment who were in
agreement with the Colonial Church Union, for they say that actually
eleven magistrates were dismissed before its power was broken.
I suppose they held the last redoubt in the cause of slavery. And
Jamaica must have been rather an exciting place to live in while that
last defence was held. The slave-holders were all the more bitter that
their power was slipping from them, and it was some little time before
the dissenting ministers were allowed to preach as they wished and
without interference. Some of the _custodes_ had a hard time protecting
them. Many of them asked for trouble.
A Mr Greenwood applied at the Quarter Sessions of the Parish of St Ann
to take the oaths. The custos was S. M. Barrett, and there was a big
assembly in the Courthouse, a large number of persons being connected
with the former Church Union. No sooner did Mr Greenwood make his
appearance in the Court than there was a loud uproar. These angry
gentlemen vented their wrath upon him.
“Methodist parson among us!” they shouted. “Turn him out! Turn him out!
We will have no Methodists here!” They were on their own ground. One
magistrate shouted: “I protected one of the wretches before at the
hazard of my life! I will not protect this one!” And Mr Hamilton Brown,
his dismissal from his regiment still rankling, called upon the custos
“to order Mr Greenwood out of the Courthouse forthwith! Forthwith!”
But the custos was made of sterner stuff. Though without sympathy for
the preacher, he declared he was going to administer the law without
respect of persons.
“So long as a doubt remained as to what law or laws were in force
here affecting dissenters, I have allowed all the advantages of that
uncertainty to popular prejudice; but now that it has been shown and
decided that the Toleration Act is in force in this island, I am bound,
it is imperative on me, to admit Mr Greenwood to qualify and take the
oaths.”
But his listeners would not believe him.
They shouted, “It has never been decided.” In fact they didn't like the
Methodists, and finally, each one feeling the support of his fellows, it
came to “We set the law at defiance!”
At the hazard of his own life that custos defended the parson of whom
he disapproved highly, and finally, getting open the door of the room
of the grand jury, he advised the minister to escape through the window,
for he could no longer defend him!
I like this story. It must have been such a stirring scene. It is told
by Bleby to illustrate the brutality of the planters. We of another age
can look on with a smile, as elders smile at and enjoy the fallings out
of children. The riot was brought to the notice of the Governor, who
promptly ordered an investigation, which led to a prosecution of Messrs
Brown and Rose, two of the principal leaders, a prosecution and a
triumph; for the grand jury acquitted them I doubt not as planters who
had upheld waning rights and were worthy of all the honour their fellows
could give them. I expect they all thought things would be better in the
future, and their sons would see their actions justified.
But things were nearing the end. The long, long martyrdom of slavery was
drawing to a close. In a few short months came Abolition, and the slave
was free to worship when and where he chose.