XII Westmoreland
Westmoreland, which became a parish in 1703, was probably so called because it is the westernmost parish in the colony.
The chief town was formerly called Queen’s Town (now Cross Path) and contained a church and many inhabitants, but in 1730 Savanna-la-Mar (“the plain by the sea”) rose into fame.
Its sad fate in the hurricane of 1744 can never be remembered without horror. “The sea bursting its ancient limits overwhelmed that unhappy town and swept it to instant destruction, leaving not a vestige of man, beast, or habitation behind. So sudden and comprehensive was the stroke,” says Bryan Edwards, “that I think the catastrophe of Savanna-la-Mar was even more terrible, in many respects, than that of Port Royal.”
The “Spanish road from Bluefields Bay to Martha Brae, by the head of the Great River,” as Long wrote, is said to be still in existence.
The old parish Church of Savanna-la-Mar was pulled down in 1904 in order that a new and more suitable building be erected in its place. The old building took the place of what must have been the first parish church erected there late in the seventeenth century or early in the eighteenth century.
The church stood somewhere along the sea beach. It was destroyed in the storm on October 3, 1780. For some years services were held in a temporary building, and in 1797 the foundation-stone of the second church was laid, but it would seem that it was really intended to be a temporary structure. It was opened for divine service in 1799, so considering that it was a wooden building it had done good service. While excavating, the old foundation-stone was discovered, and in it was inlaid a brass plate in a fine state of preservation, bearing the following inscription:
Deo Juvante
Hoc primum Saxum
Templi hujus
Parochiæ Westmoriæ
Jamaicensis
Ornatissimus Georgius Murray, Arm.
Custos Rotulorum
(Attendentibus
Multis Parochianis præclaris)
Collocavit
Die quarto Mensis Junii
Natatis Auspicatissimo
Annoque Regni tricesimo Septimo
Georgii Tertii
Salutis humanæ
1797.
Thoma Stewart, Rectore
Hugone Fraser, Architecto
D. G.
C. L. Robertson, Sculpt.
Which may be thus translated:
Thanks be to God, the Hon. George Murray, Esquire, Custos, in the presence of many distinguished parishioners, laid the foundation-stone of this Church of the Parish of Westmoreland, in Jamaica, on the fourth day of June, on the hallowed birthday and in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of George III, and (in the year) of man’s salvation, 1797. Thomas Stewart, Rector. Hugh Fraser, Architect. To the glory of God.
C. L. Robertson engraved
[this plate].
The accompanying list copied from an old bible once in the possession of a former beadle, W. Robertson, gives the following rectors:
| Rev. John Dickson | From 1739 | Died July 23, 1747 |
| Rev. John Pool | From 1747 | Died Dec. 1766 |
| Rev. Thomas Pollen | From 1767 | Died 1768 |
| Rev. William Bartholomew, A.M. | From July 1768 | Died Sept. 15, 1780 |
| Rev. Hanford | Left Dec. 1793 | |
| Rev. Thomas Stewart | From Dec. 17, 1793 | To Sept. 15, 1815 |
| Rev. Edmund Pope, LL.D. | From Sept. 15, 1815 | To July 9, 1820 |
| Rev. James Dawn, A.M. | From July 16, 1820 | Died Jan. 25, 1822 |
| Rev. W. W. Baynes | Left Jan. 25, 1823 | |
| Rev. John McIntyre | Left Dec. 1, 1827 | |
| Rev. Thos. Stewart, D.D. | Left Dec. 6, 1847 | |
| Rev. Wm. Mayhew, M.A. | Left Nov. 13, 1860 | |
| Rev. Daniel Fidler, B.D. | Died Apr. 11, 1863 | |
| Rev. Josias Cork | Left Sept. 21, 1870 | |
| Rev. Henry Clarke } | To Oct. 1872 | |
| Rev. Edward Clarke } | ||
| Rev. Henry Clarke | Till April 1894 | |
| Archdeacon Henderson | ||
| Davis, F.K.C. | Died Jan. 1915 |
The new building is a stone structure with a clerestory of wood. It is in length 105 ft. 3 in.; width 56 ft., with an apse 13 ft. 6 in. by 23 ft. It is dedicated to St. George. The foundation-stone was laid on St. George’s Day, 1903, and the building was consecrated St. George’s Day, 1904.
Where Bluefields now stands once stood probably the township of Oristan, one of the three principal early “cities” formed by the Spaniards in Jamaica, named after a town in Sardinia when that island was under the crown of Spain. Except for Sevilla (St. Ann’s Bay), Bluefields was the only town mentioned in the description of Jamaica supplied by Gage to Cromwell. It was connected by road with Mellila (near Montego Bay) on the north, and with Esquivel (Old Harbour) to the east. It had been deserted by the founders as a place of settlement prior to 1655, although it was adopted as a temporary place of residence by a number of Spaniards in 1657, before they were finally driven off the island. Of it Blome writes in his “Description of the Island of Jamaica, with other Isles and Territories in America” (1672):—
“Orista reguards the South-Sea, in which are many Rocks, and amongst their Banks, some Isles, as Servavilla, Quitosvena and Serrana, where Augustin Pedro Serrano lost his Vessel, and saved onely himself, and here in a solitary and lone Condition passed away 3 Yeares; at the end of which time he had the company of a Marriner for 4 Years more, that was likewise there Ship-wrackt, and also alone saved himself.”
The Serrano above mentioned was a Spanish hidalgo, a passenger in one of the plate fleets during the reign of Charles V, whose ship was wrecked on the island. When, after his sojourn there, he reached Spain, Serrano was sent into Germany to tell his experiences to the Emperor, who gave him an order on the mines of Peru for four thousand eight hundred ducats, but he died on his way to Panama.
Ruins of Oristan existed when Leslie wrote in 1739. In the Assembly convened in October 1664, Bluefields was represented by James Perkman and Christopher Pinder; but at the next election (January, 1671–72) the district was called St. Elizabeth.
Whether Bluefields owes its name, as does its namesake Blewfields in Nicaragua, to the use made of it by Bleevelt, the buccaneer, is merely conjecture. In the map accompanying Blome’s “Description of Jamaica” it is called Blew Fields.
In later days Bluefields has been chiefly noted as the temporary home of the celebrated naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, well known as the inventor of the marine aquarium, whose writings have done much to bring the charms of Jamaica to the notice of students of natural history. While on the one hand he was, as Huxley called him, an “honest hodman of science,” on the other the unacademic freshness of his early habit of mind, which met with the hearty approval of Darwin and Owen, remained through life, and gave, as his son points out in his Life, its pleasant tincture to all his subsequent works; and this is especially noticeable in his “Naturalist’s Sojourn,” “one of the most valuable and best written of his books.” He was not a true biologist; his real work in life was the practical study of animal forms in detail, and his chief attempts at theorising, “Life” and “Omphalos,” were failures. In these days of nature study it may be interesting to quote the following passage from the preface to the “Naturalist’s Sojourn,” written more than half a century ago:
That alone is worthy to be called Natural History, which investigates and records the condition of living things, of things in a state of nature; if animals, of living animals:—which tells of their “sayings and doings,” their varied notes and utterances, songs and cries; their actions, in ease and under the pressure of circumstances; their affections and passions towards their young, towards each other, towards other animals, towards man; their various arts and devices to protect their progeny, to procure food, to escape from their enemies, to defend themselves from attacks; their ingenious resources for concealment; their stratagems to overcome their victims; their modes of bringing forth, of feeding and of training their offspring; the relations of their structure to their wants and habits; the countries in which they dwell; their connexion with the inanimate world around them, mountain or plain, forest or field, barren heath or bushy dell, open savannah or wild hidden glen, river, lake or sea:—this would be indeed zoology, i.e. the science of living creatures.
Dr. Duerdon, in his article on Gosse, which appeared in the “Journal of the Institute of Jamaica” in 1899, says:
There is no writer who has thrown such a charm around the natural history of Jamaica, or who has contributed in the same degree to make known the various representatives of its topical fauna, as Philip Henry Gosse. Probably no other country possesses such a strictly accurate and entertaining account of the nature and activities of its leading animals, such as they were fifty years ago, as is found in the pages of “A Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica.” With its minute and attractively written observations and descriptions of almost everything which could appeal to the eye of a naturalist, Gosse has accomplished for Jamaica what Gilbert White, in his letters of last century, performed for Selborne.
Born in 1810, Gosse was from 1827 to 1835 in an office in Newfoundland; from 1835 to 1838 in Canada. In 1836 he wrote his “Entomology of Newfoundland” (which still remains unpublished); after a sojourn in Canada and Alabama he returned to England in 1839 and sold the MS. of his “Canadian Naturalist,” which had been written on his homeward voyage. He published his “Introduction of Zoology” in 1843. In 1844 he started for Jamaica, where he remained for eighteen months at Bluefields as the paying guest of a Moravian minister and his wife, and collected and sent home specimens of many rare animals. In 1847 he published his “Birds of Jamaica,” and in 1849 a folio volume of plates in illustration. In 1851 he produced his “Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica,” in which he was much assisted by Richard Hill, one of Jamaica’s most talented sons. Several other works followed and added to his reputation. In 1856 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, to the Transactions of which he contributed numerous papers. He died in 1888, after many years of seclusion, at St. Mary’s Church, Devonshire. Gosse’s main purpose in visiting Jamaica was the collection, for dealers at home, of the animals and plants, particularly in such popular groups as insects, birds, shells and orchids. That he was an eminently successful collector in every department may be gathered from the number of objects which he gives in the “Sojourn,” namely: “Mammalia, 41 specimens; Birds, 1510; Reptiles, 102; Fishes, 94; Nests and Eggs, 34; Shells (marine), 1276; (terrestrial and fluviatile), about 1850; Crustacea, 100; Insects (including Arachnida and Myriapoda), about 7800; Echinodermata, 57; Zoophytes, &c., 42; Sponges, 550; Dried plants, about 5000; Living plants (Orchideæ), about 800; Bulbs and Suckers, 932; Cacti, 32; Ferns, 222; other Living Plants and Young Trees, &c., 117; large Capsules and Seed-vessels, 383; Seeds of Flowering Plants, 170 packets; Palm seeds, 14 boxes; Gums, 24 specimens; Woods, 50 blocks.”
The Bluefields of to-day differs but little from its condition of fifty years ago. The actual property to which the name is applied was in Gosse’s time in a very advanced ruinate condition, having been thrown up as an estate years before. When he was there the prospect of planters was by no means bright. “In 1844,” he says, “the beautiful sugar estates throughout the Island were half desolate, and the planters had either ceased to reside in their mansions or had pitifully retrenched their expenses.”
A tinted lithograph of Bluefields House and its immediate surroundings forms the frontispiece to the “Naturalist’s Sojourn”; but various alterations have been effected in the house since the drawing was made, and the internal re-arrangements have been so numerous that the actual room used by Gosse—a naturalist’s workroom—cannot now be identified. A view of Bluefields, entitled “The Torch was lying in Bluefields Bay,” also forms the frontispiece to one of the many editions of “Tom Cringle’s Log,” i.e. the third volume of “Blackwood’s Standard Novels,” published in 1842. Gosse gave a copy of this work to his young son on his request for information regarding the West Indies. Bluefields River—the “romantic little stream,” as he fondly terms it—still glides and tumbles down to the sea, its waters as pure and fresh as ever and as well stocked with mullet, crayfish, and crabs as when the naturalist wandered along its banks, turned aside its stones or searched its crevices for specimens, or bathed in its enticing pools. The Bluefields hills behind stretch upwards, their sides as thickly wooded as when Gosse first gazed upon them from Bluefields Bay, or, as he himself says of the Peak, “in the rude luxurious wildness that it bore in the days when the glories of those Hesperides first broke upon the astonished eyes of Europeans.”
In August 1694 Sir William Beeston sent home to the Duke of Shrewsbury “A Brief Account of what passed in Jamaica during the preparations and duration of the French attacks on it in 1694.” In it, while telling of the French predatory attacks along the coast before the final landing at Carlisle Bay, he says: “On the Thursday after their arrival at Cow Bay, the wind blew hard and the Admiral’s ship and another were blown off shore to Blackfield Bay at the west end of the Island, where they landed sixty men. Major Andress, who had been left there with a few men, engaged them and there was a small encounter in which we had one man killed and two wounded, and they lost some; but the Admiral firing a gun to recall them they hurried on board, leaving their food and captured cattle behind them, and sailed away.”
Although the word is Bluckfield or Blackfield in the original manuscript (it is printed Blackfield in the “Calendar of State Papers”) there is no doubt that Bluefields is referred to. The Major Andress is evidently identical with Lieutenant-Colonel Barnard Andreiss, who was custos and member of the Assembly for St. Elizabeth, and died at Lacovia in 1710.
Matthew Gregory Lewis—usually known from the title of his most famous work as Monk Lewis—though he only spent a few months in Jamaica, did much for the welfare of the negro population, both by precept and example. On both sides his ancestors had interests in the island. His uncle Robert Sewell died Attorney-General of Jamaica. Another relative and namesake, the Hon. John Lewis, was Chief Justice. The husband of one of his father’s sisters, a Mr. Blake, was a West Indian planter, and his maternal grandmother lies buried in Spanish Town cathedral, while the mausoleum which he mentions as being at Cornwall points to a resident proprietorship. Another aunt, it may be mentioned, was married to the ill-fated General Whitelocke, who, after commanding with distinction in 1793–94 the expedition sent by General Williamson from Jamaica to St. Domingo, and elsewhere, was cashiered in 1808 for cowardice in the Buenos Ayres expedition of the previous year.
Lewis was born in London in 1775. His father was the deputy secretary at war, and his mother the youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Sewell, the Master of the Rolls. Much of his life and his inner thoughts may be gathered from “The Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis,” published anonymously—by Mrs. Margaret Baron-Wilson—in 1839, based in great measure on the letters which he constantly wrote to a mother whom he adored.
A more precocious child than he was it would be almost impossible to conceive; but at the same time, though least like her in outward appearance of all her four children, he inherited much of the temperament of his mother, a timid and sensitive woman, whose constant companion he was in early life.
Young Lewis’s histrionic talents were early developed, and at Westminster he took part in the school plays. Intended by his parents for a diplomatic career, he afterwards went to Oxford, spending his vacations on the continent in the study of modern languages.
When he was nineteen, his father’s influence procured him an attachéship to the British Embassy at the Hague. He stayed but a few months in the Dutch capital, but in that time, in the short space of ten weeks, he wrote a work by the publication of which in 1795 he at once sprang into fame—“Ambrosio, or The Monk.”
The discrepancy to be noticed between the character of Lewis as a man and the opinions expressed in the book are most curious. Mrs. Baron-Wilson, evidently a close friend, says of him: “There is nothing else in English literature so wild, so extravagant, so utterly at variance with all the ordinary and received rules of art and of criticism (not to mention the recognised codes of morals), as the chief writings of ‘Monk’ Lewis. Yet we may tax the whole circle of our biographical literature to show us a man whose personal character and conduct—from his earliest youth to the close of his worldly career—were more strictly and emphatically those which we are accustomed to look for from a plain, right-thinking, commonsense view of human affairs.” Before he had passed his majority by many months, Lewis was elected Member of Parliament for Hindon in Wiltshire, in which borough he succeeded William Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey, another Jamaica proprietor. But his parliamentary career was singularly prosaic; he never addressed the House. Henceforth he devoted himself to literature. From his facile pen flowed contributions to every branch, from vers de société to funeral odes—novels, dramas, lyric poems, Scotch ballads, nautical songs, imitations of classic writers, translations and adaptations from the German, Italian, Spanish and Danish.
As a reviver of old ballads he paved the way for Hogg and for Scott, the latter of whom collaborated with him in his “Tales of Terror” and “Tales of Wonder,” which however were never popular.
The acquisition of wealth and the inheritance of his father’s West Indian estates enabled him to enter on a larger sphere of philanthropic work than he had hitherto been able to undertake. His action in this respect was not a momentary impulse, but a practical outcome of firm conviction, and he took steps to ensure that its effects should endure after his death. His object was the amelioration of the condition of the slaves on his Jamaica properties.
He arrived at Black River on New Year’s Day, 1816, where he found “John Canoe” and all the rest of negro Christmastide festivities in full swing. In his first letter home to his mother he told her he was keeping a regular journal, and this was afterwards published posthumously in 1834, under the title of “The Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept during a residence in the Island of Jamaica,” which Coleridge in his “Table-Talk” denotes “delightful. It is almost the only unaffected book of travels I have read of late years. You have the man himself. It is by far his best work, and will live to be popular.” A new edition appeared in 1861 under the title of “Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies.”
Lewis spent four months in Jamaica, and so much of his time did he give to the amelioration of the condition of his slaves on his estate of Cornwall, within a few miles of Savanna-la-Mar, that he left the island without having visited Hordley, an estate in the Plantain Garden River division of St. Thomas-in-the-East, in which estate he had a share. On Cornwall there were 307 slaves and 287 head of stock, and on Hordley 283 slaves and 130 stock. His friend Lord Holland, it may be mentioned, then owned Friendship and Greenwich, neighbouring estates in Westmoreland.
Lewis’s principal acts were the abolition of the lash, the acceptance of negro evidence at enquiries into offences, &c., and an endeavour to supplement manual labour by mechanical implements and improved stock. He built better hospitals for the sick, granted extra holidays to his negroes, and generally did his best to spoil them—not without success, for he writes: “The negroes certainly are perverse beings. They had been praying for a sight of their master year after year; they were in raptures at my arrival; I have suffered no one to be punished, and shown them every possible indulgence during my residence amongst them, and one and all they declare themselves perfectly happy and well treated. Yet previous to my arrival they made thirty-three hogsheads a week; in a fortnight after my landing their product dwindled to twenty-three; during this last week they have managed to make but thirteen.”
It is curious to read of the author of “The Monk,” a little lion in London society, throwing himself heart and soul into the most minute questions of domestic economy and policy at Cornwall, and adjusting differences between Cubina and Phyllis.
He drew up rules for the better security of justice for his slaves after he had left, and by his kindness he so won their hearts that when he threatened to leave them, they professed to be filled with despair.
So strongly was he impressed with the evil arising from absent landlordism that in a codicil to his will he made it a condition of inheritance that the owner, whoever he or she might be, of his estates should pass three clear calendar months in Jamaica every third year.
He made enemies for himself amongst the local magistrates, by taking upon himself the part of intercessor with their masters for slaves on neighbouring properties.
He made one more visit to Jamaica. In October 1817 accompanied by Tita, an Italian valet, he set out for Jamaica in the same ship and with the same captain as in 1815. He reached Black River in February 1818, and this time he visited Hordley, but, as we have seen in the account of St. Thomas, had hardly sufficient time to effect such drastic changes as he had done at Cornwall.
On his way he stopped at Kingston, where he saw performed at the theatre his own tragedy “Adelgitha,” whom the author meant only to be killed in the last act, but whom the actors murdered in all five.
On May 4, 1818, he left Black River for England, and ten days later he was committed to a watery grave, having succumbed to yellow fever, which had broken out on board the Sir Godfrey Webster. He died in the arms of the faithful Tita who was afterwards present at Byron’s death.
The following is Lewis’s description of Cornwall great house as it then was:
The houses here are generally built and arranged to one and the same model. My own is of wood, partly raised upon pillars; it consists of a single floor: a long gallery, called a piazza, terminated at each end by a square room, runs the whole length of the house. On each side of the piazza is a range of bedrooms, and the porticoes of the two fronts form two more rooms, with balustrades, and flights of steps descending to the lawn. The whole house is virandoed with shifting Venetian blinds to admit air; except that one of the end rooms has sash-windows on account of the rains, which, when they arrive, are so heavy, and shift with the wind so suddenly from the one side to the other, that all the blinds are obliged to be kept closed; consequently the whole house is in total darkness during their continuance, except the single sash-windowed room. There is nothing underneath except a few store-rooms and a kind of waiting-hall; but none of the domestic negroes sleep in the house, all going home at night to their respective cottages and families.
Cornwall House itself stands on a dead flat, and the works are built in its immediate neighbourhood, for the convenience of their being the more under the agent’s personal inspection (a point of material consequence with them all, but more particularly for the hospital). This dead flat is only ornamented with a few scattered bread-fruit and cotton trees, a grove of mangoes, and the branch of a small river, which turns the mill. Several of these buildings are ugly enough; but the shops of the cooper, carpenter and blacksmith, some of the trees in their vicinity, and the negro huts, embowered in shrubberies and groves of oranges, plantains, cocoas and pepper-trees, would be reckoned picturesque in the most ornamented grounds. A large spreading tamarind fronts me at this moment and overshadows the stables, which are formed of open wickerwork; and an orange tree, loaded with fruit, grows against the window at which I am writing.
On three sides of the landscape the prospect is bounded by lofty, purple mountains; and the variety of occupations going on all around me, and at the same time, give an inconceivable air of life and animation to the whole scene, especially as all those occupations look clean—even those which in England look dirty. All the tradespeople are dressed in jackets and trousers, either white or of red and sky-blue stripe. One band of negroes are carrying the ripe canes on their heads to the mill; another set are conveying away the “trash,” after the juice has been extracted; flocks of turkeys are sheltering from the heat under the trees; the river is filled with ducks and geese; the coopers and carpenters are employed about the puncheons; carts drawn some by six, others by eight, oxen, are bringing loads of Indian corn from the fields; the black children are employed in gathering it into the granary, and in quarrelling with pigs as black as themselves, who are equally busy in stealing the corn whenever the children are looking another way: in short, a plantation possesses all the movement and interest of a farm, without its dung and its stench and its dirty accompaniments.
The following inscriptions occur at Cornwall:
Here lieth the Body of
Mrs. Jane Lewis
Late wife of the Honourable William Lewis Esq.
and elder daughter of Matthew Gregory Esq.
who departed this life on the 19th day of February 1765.
Aged 39 years and 10 months.
She was married 22 years and 5 Days During which time
She devoted herself entirely to her God and her Family.
She lived the inimitable Pattern of Conjugal Affection and Goodness, of Filial Love and Duty,
And of Maternal Care and Tenderness.
Oh Death Thou hast Shewn thy Sting
Oh Death Thou hast Obtained thy Victory.
Also the Body of
William Lewis
who died the 27th of April 1774
Aged 53 years
His Remains were brought from England according to His own request and Deposited in this Place near those of his Affectionate and beloved Wife.
For Beckford Town, now little more than a name, the land was given by Richard Beckford, one of the family of that name, which numbered in it some of Jamaica’s most wealthy planters.
Under date January 5, 1660–61, Pepys wrote: “The great Tom Fuller come to me to desire a kindness for a friend of his who hath a mind to go to Jamaica with these two ships that are going, which I promised to do.” The friend, Peter Beckford, quitted England in search of adventures, and settled in Jamaica, where he rose to considerable wealth as a planter. He did not, as Bridges suggests, fly from Cromwell’s tyranny, for the Restoration had taken place before he left England. In 1663 the name of Beckford appears amongst the planters of St.-Thomas-in-the-Vale. Colonel Peter Beckford, a son of the immigrant, was elected member of the Assembly under Lord Carlisle, who must have been—if we are to believe Nichols in his “Herald and Genealogist” and Burke in his “History of the Commoners”—a man of somewhat humble estate in spite of his high ancestry, for they tell us that Sir Thomas Beckford, sheriff of London, and Colonel Peter Beckford, governor of Jamaica, were brothers—both sons of a tailor of Maidenhead. Lord Braybrooke, in his notes to Pepy’s Diary, says that Sir Thomas and Colonel Peter were uncle and nephew, the former being a son of the tailor. Colonel Beckford was elected member for St. Catherine in the Assembly which met on April 26, 1675. He afterwards served in several Assemblies for the parishes of St. James, Clarendon and St. Dorothy. He was then called to the Council and became its president. On the death of the Governor, Major-General Selwyn, on April 5, 1702, when the Legislature was sitting, Colonel Beckford, who had a dormant commission of old date, caused himself to be proclaimed lieutenant-governor. In his speech to the Assembly he said, “I have gone through most of the offices of this Island, though with no great applause, yet without complaint.” The manner of his death has been already narrated in the account of St. Catherine. His personal wealth, which was said to have amounted to £478,000, and his real estate to as much more, gained for him great influence with the planters. This wealth was inherited by his son Peter, the speaker of the Assembly above mentioned. His second son, Thomas, married “en secondes noces” Mary Ballard (apparently a cousin) and had three sons; the eldest, Ballard Beckford, who married a daughter of John Clark, Governor of New York, was expelled from the House “during the continuance of this Assembly” in 1739, for adultery with the wife of another member, Manning, the member for Kingston. At his death his estate was in debt, and an Act was passed to enable certain properties to be sold. The second, Thomas, married a daughter of Robert Byndloss, the brother-in-law of Sir Henry Morgan, of buccaneering fame, and their daughter and sole heiress married firstly John Palmer, and secondly Edward Long, the historian. Thomas Beckford himself, who sat in the Assembly for St. Catherine, and was elected speaker in 1727 and 1728, died in 1731, “slain, it is believed, in an encounter with one Cargill,” probably Captain Richard Cargill, member for Vere.
Peter Beckford, the speaker, married Bathshua, daughter and co-heiress of Colonel Julines Herring, of Jamaica. He was elected member of Assembly for Port Royal in 1704, and in the next Assembly of 1705 was chosen for three parishes, St. James, Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth, but elected to sit for the last named. He continued to serve as a member in every Assembly of the island until his death—in the early part of the time generally for St. Elizabeth, in the later for St. Catherine. As member for the former parish he was five times chosen speaker—in 1707, 1708–9, 1711, 1713, 1716. At this time he applied to be deputy secretary of the island, under a deputation from William Congreve, but the Governor (Lord Archibald Hamilton) refused to accept him on the ground that he was “the chief actor in all the unhappy differences in the country.” He was comptroller of her Majesty’s customs. He died in 1735, aged 61. From the votes of the Assembly we learn that he bequeathed the sum of £1000 to the poor of the parish of St. Catherine. This sum was used in the formation of a school: it is now merged with the Smith bequest in the Beckford and Smith School at Spanish Town. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for December 1735 he is said to have left nearly £300,000. Besides mortgages and similar investments, he had no less than twenty-four plantations and twelve hundred slaves of his own in the island.
He had thirteen children. The eldest, Peter, was member of the Assembly for Westmoreland in 1728, while his father was sitting for St. Catherine, and his uncle for Port Royal. He died unmarried in 1737, aged 31. On his death his fortune went to his brother William, afterwards Lord Mayor of London, whose son was the celebrated William Beckford, of “Vathek” and Fonthill fame.
A younger brother of the Lord Mayor, Richard Beckford, who was M.P. for Bristol, had a natural son, William Beckford, who visited his father’s Jamaica estates. His mother was Elizabeth Hay. He married his cousin, Charlotte Hay, daughter of Thomas Hay, formerly Island Secretary of Jamaica; and he impaled with his father’s arms those of the Hays—on a field argent, three escutcheons gules: but in preference to the bend sinister, the usual mark of illegitimacy, he added the less-known badge, the fimbria or border. Richard Beckford by his will trusted to the justice of his brother Julines to convey—to trustees in trust for his reputed son William—Roaring River and such other estates in Jamaica as had come into Julines’ possession by virtue of an agreement between them, and accordingly he bequeathed these properties to his reputed son William, who, on his coming of age, executed a deed in 1765, which was registered at Spanish Town in 1766, a deed to bar the entail in favour of another, who, however, subsequently re-conveyed it to him. He is therein described as “of Balls, in the County of Hartford (sic), Esq.” In a later deed, recorded in 1773, he is described as late of Balls, but now of Summerley (sic) Hall.
One of his earliest works was “Remarks on the Situation of Negroes in Jamaica,” 1788; and he published in 1794 a “History of France from the most early records to the death of Louis XVI,” the early part of which is by Beckford, and the more modern by an anonymous Englishman who had been some time resident in Paris. But the work by which he is best known is “A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica; with remarks upon the cultivation of the Sugar-cane, throughout the different seasons of the year, and chiefly considered in a picturesque point of view; also observations and reflections upon what would probably be the consequences of an abolition of the slave-trade and of the emancipation of the Slaves,” published in two volumes in London in 1790. The title fully describes the contents. It is a work of no considerable merit, and displaying none of the genius which might have been expected of a near relative of the author of “Vathek.” From the dedication we learn that the author enjoyed the friendship of the Duke of Dorset, to whom it is addressed, and from the preface that the work was written in the Fleet prison—a strange residence for one who would claim kinship with the owner of Fonthill. His position was, he says, the consequence of “imprudences which I might have prevented, and of misfortunes which I could not foresee”—a subject which is constantly referred to throughout the book. Besides suffering from the great hurricane of 1780, he was evidently deceived by some friend for whom he had become security.
He intended to illustrate his work with engravings from “some particular views of the island that were taken on the spot” by George Robertson, but pecuniary reasons obliged him to desist. He devotes several pages to the praises of this artist’s work, comparing him—with an enthusiasm which does more credit to his kindness of heart than to his faculties as an art critic—to Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Poussin and Salvator Rosa, and he concludes: “It is a pity that more of his drawings are not engraved; of the numerous and interesting views he took in Jamaica, only six have met the public eye, although there are many that richly deserve to be removed from dust and oblivion. The names of Robertson and Earlom, to the same plate, could not fail to render them immortal.”
In 1778 John Boydell published a series of six engravings from paintings by George Robertson, by Thomas Vivares, James Mason and David Lerpiniere. They are all dedicated to William Beckford, Esq. They represent: (1) Part of the Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town; (ii) Roaring River Estate; (iii) Fort William Estate, with part of Roaring River belonging to William Beckford, Esq., near Savanna-la-Mar; (iv) Bridge crossing Cabarita River; (v) The Spring Head of Roaring River on the Estate of William Beckford, Esq.; (vi) The Bridge crossing the Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town.
Two of the original paintings are in the possession of Mrs. C. E. de Mercado, of Kingston.
As, with the exception of Hakewill and John Bartholomew Kidd, R.S.A., 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.”
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.
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.