III Kingston
That there was a collection of houses on or near the spot where Kingston now stands, some years before its formation into a town and parish, is evident, but it is also evident that Gardner’s application of the name to “the little village of Kingston” in 1673 is based on imagination. In the map of Jamaica in “The English Pilot” of 1689 in the inset of “the draft of the Harbor of Port Royal” is marked Liganea, with seven small houses and one larger one where Kingston now is, and one larger one half-way to The Rock.
In the “Present State of Jamaica,” published in 1683, occurs the following description of the village:—“At Liguania, the inside of the harbour, opposite to Port Royal, about two leagues, is several houses, some of them very handsome, and well built, which place in time is like to become a pretty town.”
On the map which accompanies the “State of Jamaica under Sir Thomas Lynch” (included in the “Laws of Jamaica,” published in London in 1684) the place where Kingston now stands is marked “Beeston.” The original owner of the land was Colonel Samuel Barry, who patented it in 1664 and later sold it to (Sir) William Beeston, who, coming to Jamaica in 1660, represented Port Royal in the first House of Assembly, and was lieutenant-governor of the island from 1693 to 1700, and Governor till 1702: but there is on the map a mark for a “towne” on the harbour to the west, between “Beeston” and Hunt’s Bay, where Greenwich now is.
The site of Kingston was not the first chosen by the English for the commercial capital of the island. Port Royal, as we have seen, flourished as such until 1692, in which year occurred the great earthquake which destroyed that place and caused the death of 3000 of its inhabitants. That dealt it a fearful blow.
On June 24, 1692, a little more than a fortnight after the earthquake which destroyed Port Royal, the Council ordered a “survey of 200 acres of Colonel Beeston’s land in St. Andrews where the Council have resolved to build a new town,” and four days later the Council ordered that £1000 should be paid to Beeston, who was at the moment in England, for the 200 acres: but this was apparently ultra vires on the Council’s part, as they had no power to originate money votes. The first traceable reference to the place by name occurs in the Council minutes of July 21, 1692, when regulations for building “the new town of Kingston in St. Andrews” were drawn up, and it was resolved that every purchaser should within three years build a house worth £50 on forfeiture of that sum. Such forfeiture, it was later decided, should go towards founding a hospital.
The following occurs in the Council minutes for August 9, 1692:
Ordered that no freeholder of Port Royall have laid out for him above one lott by the sea side.
Ordered that none of the Inhabitants of Port Royall have laid out for him above one lott.
Ordered that all the freeholders of Port Royall have laid out for them in the said Towne the same quantity they had on Port Royall provided it Exceed not three lotts.
Ordered that all the freeholders that had land bounding upon the North sea side on Port Royall be Preferred to the sea side land and that their lotts be first cast.
Ordered that all the lotts for the Towne of Kingston be cast on once and that if Claimers doe not appear for all the said land that then blankes be cast to Collll Peter Beckford and Collll Nicholas Laws or be disposed of by them to the next Pretenders.
Ordered that for every lott of land there be reserved to their Majties Tenn Shillings a year as an anuall Quitt Rent.
Ordered that the chiefe Justice be desired to order the Drawing of Conveyances for the severall parcells of land laid out in the said Towne.
Ordered that the forfeiture of fifty pounds for not building a house upon the Premises of the Value of fifty Pounds within the time appointed by this Board shall be applied to the building of an Hospital in the said Towne.
Ordered that the Councill meet at the house of Mr. Ann. Lowder in the Towne of Kingston on Tuesday next to Receive the claims of the freeholders and Inhabitants of Pot Royall & all others that are Desireous to Erect and build in the said Towne & that notice be given thereof accordingly.
After the Calamity of the Earthquake we had appointed a place for ye building of a Towne wch we then thought by its Scituation would have been equall if not Exceeding Port Royall where we had ordered all ships and vessells arriveing here to unlade and also ordered the severall offices to settle there for Enterey of the same—
But may it pleas yr Lordships Since to or no small greif we are made sensible of the unhealthyness of the place. By the great Mortality that there happened & finding a Greater difficulty then we Expected in fortifying the harbour Have been forst to order the withdrawing of those offices to the Remains of Port Royall where there is firme Rock enough left for fortifying that neither the Earthquake nor the sea hath distroyed or made Unhabitable.
On August 16 the Council itself met at Kingston. Orders were given for the erection of a market to be held daily, Edward Yeamans to be clerk. Thomas Clarke was provisionally appointed naval officer and collector of customs, and Deodatus Stanley was appointed bellman of Kingston. Kingston was not represented in Sir William Beeston’s first Assembly, which met in 1693; of his second, which met in the following year, the names of the members are not recorded; so it is impossible to give the names of those who probably represented the new town for the first time. But in Beeston’s third Assembly, which met on March 5, 1694–5, Kingston was represented by Josiah Hethcott, James Bradshaw and Samuel Foxley. Of these Bradshaw was a relative (probably son) of the regicide of that name. According to a document in Fulham Palace, recently quoted by Mr. N. Darnell Davis in “Notes and Queries,” “in 1723–4 Bradshaw, the son of President Bradshaw, came frequently to Liguania and received the sacrament there.”
A letter, dated Port Royal, July 3, 1693, quoted by Sir Hans Sloane in his account of the great earthquake already alluded to, contains the following information about Kingston:
Others went to the place called Kingston (or by others Killcown) where from the first clearing of the Ground, and from bad Accommodations, then Hutts built with Boughs, and not sufficient to keep out Rain, which in great and an unusual manner followed the Earthquake, lying wet, and wanting Medicines, and all Conveniences, etc., they died miserably in heaps. Indeed there was a general sickness (supposed to proceed from the hurtful Vapours belch’d from the many openings of the Earth) all over the Island so general that few escaped being sick; and ’tis thought it swept away in all Parts of the Island 3000 Souls; the greatest part from Kingston only, yet an unhealthy Place.
Many people remained at Port Royal, but most of the survivors removed to the lower part of Liguanea. The Council paid Beeston on June 28, £1000. A plan for the town was drawn up by Colonel Christian Lilly, “Her Majesty’s engineer-general,” under the direction of the Government.
In his plan Lilly adopted the chessboard fashion of all Spanish cities in the New World—a plan which is at least as old as the Romans. If one omits the lanes, the plan of Kingston as laid down by Lilly in the seventeenth century is precisely the same as that of the recently unearthed Roman city of Calleva (Silchester) of thirteen centuries earlier, with its insulæ, prototypes of the American blocks. Kingston consisted then of a parallelogram one mile in length from north to south, and half a mile in breadth, regularly traversed by streets and lanes, alternately crossing each other at right angles. When Long wrote it contained “sixteen hundred and fifty-five houses, besides negro houses and warehouses; so that the whole number of its buildings, including every sort, may be computed at between two and three thousand, and thirty-five spacious streets and sixteen lanes.” At present there are in Kingston 171 streets and sixty-nine lanes and about 9000 houses.
Unfortunately Lilly when he planned Kingston, when land was cheap, omitted to leave room for lines of trees down each principal street. Had this been done, shade would have been afforded to drivers and pedestrians alike, and a picturesque feature would have been assured for the town. Moreover, the chessboard plan of laying out a town, naturally from its regularity dear to the heart of an engineer, is fatal in the interests of picturesqueness, however suitable it may be for progression.
There was not at first much progress in its settlement, the recollection of the former wealth and greatness of Port Royal giving the colonists a continued preference for that place; but the fire of 1703 completely destroyed the favourite town, and the disheartened inhabitants went in large numbers to Kingston, which the Assembly caused to be divided into lots and given to those who had lost their houses. A law was also passed directing the slave-owners in the parish of St. Andrew to send one out of every twenty of their slaves to build temporary huts for the refugees, and, as an encouragement for the early settlement of the new town, every house built within the year (1703) was exempted from taxes for seven years. Soon after this another law was passed declaring Kingston to be “the chief seat of trade and head port of entry” of the island.
From this time the prosperity of the town was assured, and in the year 1713 it was declared by law that the place should “for ever be taken and esteemed as an entire and distinct parish, with all the powers of any other parish,” and, further, that it should “have the right of sending three representatives to the Assembly.”
So rapidly had the town grown that in 1716 it was thus described by a historian of the time:
Within the harbour and about six miles from the town of Port Royal lies the town of Kingston, first laid out and partially settled after the great earthquake.... It is now become greatly increased in houses, stores, wharves and other conveniences for trade and business, so that it is by much the largest town in the island; and if the island shall increase in people and new settlements (the consequences of trade and riches) it is likely to be much the fairest town in all the Indies for ’tis most commodiously laid out, happily and beautifully situated, has many spacious houses in it, and more are daily building, is the residence of the greatest merchants and traders, and has resorting to it most of the ships or vessels that come to the island, and in it is managed the greatest part of the trade of Jamaica.
In 1721 an Act was passed empowering the inhabitants to erect a court house and exchange; and for nearly half a century the town continued to grow in size and opulence, and so important had it become in 1755 that the attempt was then made to constitute it the seat of government. The Governor (Admiral Knowles) twice proposed and the Assembly twice rejected a bill for that purpose; but at length the Assembly gave way and a law was passed giving effect to the arrangement. Soon after the public archives were removed to Kingston and the superior courts were established there. But the change was unpopular throughout the island, and numerous petitions against it were sent to the King. On October 3, 1758 (after Knowles had left), the disallowance of the law was proclaimed and the records were returned to Spanish Town, escorted by “a considerable body of military.”
In 1780, and again in 1782, the town was severely stricken by a fire. In the former year the large and closely built portion of the town lying between King and Orange streets was burnt down, the destruction of property being estimated at £30,000. But the town soon recovered from the effects of the conflagrations, and prospered to such an extent that in 1802 it was granted a corporation under the style of “The Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the City and Parish of Kingston.” The Court of Common Council was given a seal and empowered to make and ordain bylaws, ordinances and regulations for the good order of the city, not repugnant to prerogative or to the laws of the island. The following is a description of the city seal: On the obverse the island arms, crest, supporters and mottoes. Legend, Sigi Commune Civit: Kingston in Jamaica. Reverse, Britannia, in the dress of Minerva, holding a trident in one hand, and in the other a mirror, reflecting the rays of the benign influence of Heaven on the produce of the island; behind her the British Lion, supporting her shield, a conch shell at her feet, and at a distance a ship under sail. Legend, Hos fovet, hos curat, servatque, Britannia Mater.
In 1843 another great fire devastated a large portion of the city. It began shortly before 10 A.M. on August 26, in a foundry situated at the east end of Harbour street and extended diagonally across the city until it reached the old Roman Catholic chapel at the corner of Duke street. Many of the best dwellings and much valuable property were consumed, and a large number of persons were left in utter destitution. The sum of £10,149 was distributed among the sufferers, of which £5000 was voted by the House of Assembly. At this period a great deal of the foreign trade of Kingston had disappeared in consequence of the establishing of direct steam communication between the European and Spanish-American states; still Kingston continued an important centre of commerce.
In March 1862, another great fire occurred by which the commercial division of the city was devastated. Nineteen of the principal stores in Harbour and Port Royal streets, three wharves, and the extensive and well-built three-storied house in which the Commercial Hotel was kept, were burnt down at a loss of £30,000. The value of the merchandise, furniture, &c., destroyed was estimated at £60,830, making a total of £90,830. Of this £9400 was covered by insurances, leaving £81,530 as the total loss to the owners of the premises and stock.
Three years afterwards representative government was abandoned in Jamaica, and Kingston ceased to be a corporate city. All the powers and immunities of the common council were transferred to a nominated municipal board created by Law 8 of 1866, the privilege of making ordinances for the regulation of the city being transferred to the Governor in Privy Council. Since 1885 its affairs have been administered by a mayor and city council, elected every three years, similar to the parochial boards of the other parishes.
For many years it had become evident that the convenience of the Government and of the general public would be best served by a transfer of the seat of government from Spanish Town, and in 1872 Sir John Grant, with the approval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, gave effect to the change.
A calamitous fire occurred in Kingston on December 11, 1882, by which a large section of the business portion of the city was destroyed. The total number of houses entirely destroyed was five hundred and seventy-seven, whilst twelve were partially destroyed. These places were inhabited by about six thousand persons. The total loss of house property was estimated at between £150,000 and £220,000.
On January 14, 1907, the city suffered great damage from the disastrous earthquake of that date and from fire. Much the same area as that devastated by fire in 1882 was destroyed in the fire of 1907, in addition to the havoc caused by the earthquake. The loss of life was variously estimated as between 1000 and 1500. The value of property destroyed amounted to between £1,000,000 and £1,500,000. A Mansion House fund for the relief of the sufferers amounted to £55,395, and a free Imperial grant was made by Parliament of £150,000 and a loan of £800,000 was authorised. The relief funds were distributed by a Relief Committee, afterwards the Assistance Committee, constituted by the Assistance Committee Law 20 of 1907. After considerable delay and much negotiations, and on the failure of an appeal in a test case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the insurance companies agreed to pay the claims to the extent of 85 per cent. on the face values of the policies, and the money was distributed in 1909.
The Imperial Loan was administered by a Loan Board created by law. Up to March 31, 1914, loans had been made to the value of £326,000.
A fair number of the streets of Kingston have personal names. Those named after Governors: Beeston street, (Sir William Beeston, 1692–1701); Beckford street (Sir Peter Beckford, 1702); Heywood street (Peter Heywood, 1716–17); Laws (sic) street (Sir Nicholas Lawes, 1718–22); Elletson road (Roger Hope Elletson, 1766–67); Nugent lane (General Nugent, 1801–6); Manchester square (Duke of Manchester, 1808–27); Elgin street and Lord Elgin street (Earl of Elgin, 1842–16); Darling street (Captain Charles Darling, 1857–62); Musgrave avenue (Sir Anthony Musgrave, 1878–83); Norman road, Norman crescent and Norman range (Sir Henry Norman, 1883–89); and Blake road (Sir Henry Blake, 1889–98).
There was a Thomas Allman, clerk to the Agent Victuallers at Jamaica, who was wanted for forgery and embezzling £1283 in 1743: but Allman Town, which came into existence soon after Emancipation, was, so Mr. G. F. Judah stated, named after George Allman, who was either an officer in the army or the son of one.
Barry street reminds us of Colonel Samuel Barry, who was one of the first Council named in 1661, and owned the land on which Kingston was built. The land called Colonel Barry’s Hog Crawle was sold to Beeston, who had it laid out in lots for the building of Kingston. Byndloss lane bears the name of a family which in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries supplied seven members to the Assembly—the earliest being Colonel Robert Byndloss, member for Cagua in 1663. Barnes gully recalls Joseph Barnes, mayor, custos and representative in the Assembly of Kingston, who died in 1829. Bowrey road reminds us of a recent island chemist, from whose property the road was formed. Hibbert street also recalls a family closely connected with Jamaica in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one member of which built Headquarters House, formerly known as Hibbert house. Marescaux road, north of Kingston, reminds us of the late manager of the Colonial Bank. Orange and Hanover streets refer to reigning houses of England.
It is probable that Pechon street was named after Major John Bonnet Pechon, who was assistant engineer on the military staff in 1809, and later island engineer. He died in 1815. Princess street is a corruption of Prince’s street, as it was called in Beeston’s time. It is called Rue du Prince on a French translation of Lilly’s map. Sutton street was probably named after Colonel Thomas Sutton, who was speaker of the Assembly at the time of the earthquake of 1692. Temple lane in Kingston, as well as Temple Hall in St. Andrew, was named after Susanna Temple, the fourth wife of Sir Nicholas Lawes, sister of “la belle Temple” of de Grammont, the wife of Sir Charles Lyttelton. Whence Tower street obtained its name is not known. The following has been suggested as the origin. In the very early days of Kingston the town had a rector but no church. The rector lived in Tower street. It is thought that the rector’s house may have been used as a church and had a tower and bell.
Wildman street is named after James Wildman, a member of the Council in 1786, and later fellow member of Parliament for Hindon with Monk Lewis, another Jamaica proprietor.
Though they omitted for two centuries to dedicate their parish church to a patron saint, the people of Kingston named five of their lanes after the Apostles.
Dr. Samuel Knight, who practised medicine in the island “magna cum laude” for thirty-four years, represented Kingston in the Assembly in 1698 and 1701; he lies buried in the church.
In 1694, when an Act was passed for raising money “to solicit in England the affairs of this Their Majesties’ island,” the parish of St. Andrew was taxed to the extent of £52 17s. 5d., St. Katherine £56 16s. 3d., and others in less amounts; Kingston only being called upon to contribute £19 5s.: but soon after, on another tax being raised, Kingston was regarded as being on a par with Port Royal and St. Jago de la Vega.
It is interesting to note that in 1699 a law was passed uniting the precincts of St. Andrew and Kingston for the purpose of keeping their courts and sessions. This law was repealed in 1704, by which time the new town had become more prosperous.
The church has always been known as Kingston Parish Church, and there is no record of its ever having been dedicated to any saint until, at the time of the recent consecration of the new building (in 1911), it was decided to dedicate it to St. Thomas.
The first traceable documentary reference to the church occurs under date October 1701, when the land was sold to the churchwardens. In March 1702–3 it is recorded in the “Votes” in the house of Assembly, that the commissioners appointed to receive claims and make distributions of the lands, under the Act of that year, “to invest Her Majesty in land in Kingston, for the reception of the sufferers by the late dreadful fire at Port Royal, declaring Kingston to be the chief seat of trade and head port of entry, and fortifying West Chester,” gave notice that they would sit in the church at Kingston. But the Act was disallowed in the following year; and West Chester, wherever it may have been (probably the western part of the town), was never fortified. It is interesting to note that the only serious rival to Kingston in its claim to be made the chief seat of trade was Old Harbour. The use of the parish church for civic purposes was by no means unusual in those days in England: for instance, from 1576 (the date of the town receiving a charter) till 1794 the paroise (or priest’s chamber) over the porch of the parish church of Hythe was used as a town hall.
There were probably in Jamaica nine churches of older foundation than Kingston—those at Spanish Town, Port Royal, Halfway-Tree, St. John’s (in Guanaboa Vale), Port Morant, Yallahs, The Alley, Old Harbour and one other. Kingston, till an earlier year can be assigned, must rest content with 1699, the date of its oldest tomb—that to William Hall, a merchant of Kingston and member of Assembly for St. Andrew from 1694 to 1699 (one of the Halls of Lincolnshire)—although it was possibly erected in or about 1695. On the other hand, if the church was standing in 1701, it is odd that it is not mentioned in the deed conveying the land given by Sir William and Lady Beeston to the churchwardens.
The following is a copy of the register:
| Lib. 33. Fol. 85. | Beeston, Sir William et Ux. |
| Dated 13th October, 1701. | to |
| Enrolled October 28th, 1701. | The Churchwardens of |
| Kingston | |
| Josiah Heathcote and | |
| Peter Caillard. |
All these two lotts or parcells of land with the appurtenance thereunto belonging being part and parcell of the said five hundred and thirty acres of land situate and lying and being in the said Towne of Kingston both the said lots containing one hundred foot to the High Street westward one hundred and fifty foot northward to the Parade one hundred foot East to Temple Lane and one hundred and fifty foot South to the land of the said Sir William Beeston.
It is probable that a temporary building was at first erected, and was served by the rectors of Halfway Tree and Port Royal pending the appointment of a rector; and that the permanent structure of the church was only commenced after the land had been given by Beeston.
In 1703 a sermon was “preached at King’s Town in Jamaica upon June 7, being the Anniversary Fast for that Dreadful Earthquake which happened there in the year 1692, by William Corbin.” This was “printed and sold by William Bradford at the Bible in New York, 1703.”
James Knight, whose manuscript history of Jamaica (dating from 1746) is in the British Museum, thus describes the Kingston of his day, which he represented in the Assembly from 1722 to 1735, with intervals:
“The plan of the town is three-fourths of a mile in length, N. and S., and half a mile in breadth, E. and W. Streets are Broad and are Regularly laid out with a Parade in the centre. The South part is built from one end to the other as high as the Parade and many buildings are scattered in the North part so that there are now 1200 Houses and Storehouses, most of which are handsome Buildings, two stories high besides garrets. They are covered with shingles, sashed and glazed with Piazzas before every house so that a man may walk from one end to the other without going in the sun but in crossing streets. The church, which is a handsome building in form of a cross, is 120 feet in length and stands in the S.E. part of the Parade, the pulpit, pews and wainscote about 8 feet in height are all neatly made with cedar, and it has a very good organ in it. There is also in the town a Quakers’ Meeting House and a Jews’ Synagogue, no other place of Public Worship, though there are grounds to believe some Roman Catholics or disguised Papists and Priests privately assemble and meet together. There is also a very good Town Hall about 80 feet in length and 30 in breadth on the South side and fronting of King Street, with a Piazza round which is made use of as an exchange.... Kingston being the most popular parish in the island, and a great number of strangers resorting to it yearly, the Benefice is estimated at six hundred pounds per annum currency.”
The anonymous author of an undated work, published in London in 1740, entitled “The importance of Jamaica to Great Britain, considered.... In a Letter to a Gentleman,” thus refers to the church:
There is a handsome neat church, which consists of four Isles; the Pulpit-Cloth is red Velvet, with Gold Fringes; the Seats large, uniform and airy; has a good Organ; but the Church has no steeple, there is no Bell hung up in it, but ’tis supplied by a small one set up on a Frame not far from it; a large one lies in readiness to be set up when they think proper, or have a Conveniency to hold it. The Churchyard is wall’d in, which has several Tombs in it; in the Church under the Altar, lies the brave Admiral Bembow (sic); and in another burying-place is a Tomb, which bears the Arms and Name of one of the noble Family of the Talbots.
From this it appears that the tower had probably been erected between 1740 and 1774, for Long, whose history was published in 1774—easily pleased in matters architectural—calls it “a large elegant building, of four aisles, which has a fine organ, a tower and spire, with a large clock. The tower is well-constructed, and a very great ornament to the town.” “The Rector’s stipend,” he adds, “as fixed by Law, is only £250; but the surplice-fees are so large, that his income is supposed at least to be £1000 per annum, Jamaica currency (£715 stirling).” His “four aisles” is a very free use of the term. The church was in his time an aisleless, cruciform building, but Greek rather than Latin in shape, a not uncommon custom in Jamaica in early days.
In 1808 the mayor and commonalty of Kingston petitioned the House of Assembly, inter alia, that “the resort of persons to the parish church of the parish of Kingston for public worship hath of late years so much increased that the said church cannot with convenience accommodate them.”
In the “Jamaica Magazine” for 1813 we read: “An ordinance was passed in Common Council of Kingston, the same day (15th) for punishing all persons conducting themselves in a manner offensive to public decorum in the church. It enacts a punishment on all white and free persons of £100 fine or three months imprisonment for such an offence, and on slaves thirty-nine stripes or three months imprisonment.”
“Monk Lewis,” who saw it in 1816, says:
The church is a large one, but it is going to be still further extended, the negroes in Kingston and neighbourhood being (as the Rector assured me) so anxious to obtain religious instruction, that on Sundays not only the church but the churchyard is so completely thronged with them, as to make it difficult to traverse the crowd; and those who are fortunate enough to obtain seats for the morning service, through fear of being excluded from the evening, never stir out of the church the whole day. They also flock to be baptised in great numbers, and many have lately come to be married; and their burials and christenings are performed with great pomp and solemnity.
James Hakewill, the architect, who was here in 1820, in his “Picturesque Tour,” calls the church truly “a plain, convenient structure, but without any pretensions to architectural beauty.”
The Rev. R. Bickell, who had been naval chaplain at Port Royal and for some time curate of Kingston, wrote in his “West Indies as they are,” in 1825:
In the city and parish of Kingston, there is but one church, which will hold nearly a thousand people; it is thronged every Sunday morning, principally by free people of colour, and free blacks. Indeed, had there been two or three churches more built in this populous city, six or seven years ago, and zealous clergymen appointed to them, I feel confident in saying, they would, ere now, have been equally thronged; but, though there are eight or ten thousand slaves in the place, and a greater number of free people, with several thousand white inhabitants, an island curate has never been appointed there, and consequently a chapel of ease has never been built: on this account, seeing so good an opening, the Dissenters have been very active, and have four or five places of worship, three of them built within the last three years; the Scotch, and other Presbyterians, have a very large kirk (built principally with Episcopalians’ money) which is not half filled; but the Wesleyans have two large chapels, capable of containing more than two thousand persons, and which are well attended (even filled I have been told) morning and evening, chiefly by negroes and people of colour. The Baptists have also a large and handsome chapel well attended by Blacks and Browns, besides a smaller one occasionally opened. There is also a Catholic chapel for the French and other foreigners.
In the “Estimate of Contingencies for the City and Parish of Kingston for the year 1830” occur the following entries:
| Church | £ | s. | d. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rector’s compensation money, 110l.; house-rent, 200l.; burying, 50l. | 360 | 0 | 0 |
| Clerk’s salary, 70l.; taking care of plate, 15l.; palls, 10l. | 95 | 0 | 0 |
| Sexton’s salary, 70l.; digging graves, 25l.; ringing the bell, 25l. | 120 | 0 | 0 |
| Keeper of the town clock salary, 40l.; repairs to organ, 120l. | 160 | 0 | 0 |
| Sundry repairs and alterations for the present year | 200 | 0 | 0 |
| Organist’s salary, 130l.; beadle’s salary, 84l.; lighting up the church, 132l. | 346 | 0 | 0 |
| Amount required for the Chapel of Ease | 300 | 0 | 0 |
| ——— | ——— | ——— | |
| £1581 | 0 | 0 |
This of course does not include the stipends of rector and curate, which were paid by the Government.
N. B. Dennys, who was here in 1861, writing in “An Account of the Cruise of the St. George” (1862), miscalls the church St. Andrews and describes it as a “small building, whose only point of interest seemed to be its extreme old age.”
Of the fabric of the church wrecked by the earthquake of 1907 nothing much need be said. It was a simple brick structure with concrete pillars and round-headed arches and window openings. Cruciform in shape, in accordance with English custom it was oriented with its altar at the east end. The pulpit and reading-desk originally stood, as was the case at Halfway Tree, Port Royal and Montego Bay, at the transept, almost in the centre of the building.
The present building was erected from a design by Mr. B. A. Raves at a cost of £6000, in reinforced concrete on the old foundations, and as nearly as possible similar in design, with the omission of the tower. The window openings differ from those of the old building; two of them being decidedly original in design. The new building was consecrated on January 17, 1911, by the Archbishop of the West Indies, assisted by the Bishops of St. Albans, North Carolina, Honduras and Antigua, the Coadjutor Bishop of Jamaica, and the Assistant Bishop of Toronto.
About the beginning of the nineteenth century, as “Monk Lewis” mentions, the church was extended in length and the renaissance baldachin, which was not replaced after the recent rebuilding, an unusual addition to an Anglican church, was, it is said, added by the then rector, the Rev. Isaac Mann. Some thought they saw in the floral device immediately beneath the crown over the centre of the baldachin, the monogram W.M., which they took to stand for William and Mary, but there are no grounds for the supposition, and the structure was probably of later date.
In Duperly’s view taken in about 1844 the old sash windows appear; and the old curved lead gargoyles, most of which were removed later, are very evident.
In 1883–85, during the incumbency of Archdeacon Downer, who held the living for thirty-five years and took part in the recent consecration service, the church, which in 1873 consisted of nave and transepts without side aisles, was considerably enlarged by G. Messiter, by the addition of two side aisles on each side, giving extra accommodation for 500 persons, making the building available for 1300 in all.
The aisles nearest the nave extended the full length of the fabric, while the exterior ones only ran east of the transepts. This, added to their apsidal form, gave, and gives, the church the appearance of a miniature cathedral in plan. Pieces of the original outside walls could, till the recent reconstruction, be seen in situ in corners of the transept. The original windows were removed to the new outer walls and the mural monuments were taken down and replaced on the new walls, a process which had to be repeated in 1910. When some of the old walls were pulled down many massive beams of timber were found embedded in the masonry, placed in several directions. Some of them were ten or fifteen feet long, many inches in diameter and of bully-wood in perfectly sound condition. Some, including Messiter the architect, thought that these were put in to strengthen the walls in case of a repetition of the Port Royal earthquake of a few years before: and they certainly suggest the method of construction adopted by the Spaniards for that purpose and described in Long’s history. At the same time, when the foundation of the east wall was underpinned, a large vault under the altar was opened; and in it was found a coffin—covered with the remains of velvet and gilt ornaments, apparently of a most expensive character—thought to have been Admiral Benbow’s.
The oldest dated Communion plate is of the year 1707. Two patens were the gift of Mrs. Ann Plowman; and two other pieces, a chalice and flagon, were given by Mr. Elias Nezerau in that year. Mrs. Elizabeth Sillers gave in 1721 a flagon identical with that given by Mr. Nezerau fourteen years earlier. Both flagons bear the maker’s mark.
The clock dates from 1801, the organ from 1878, the lectern from 1886, the bell from 1890, the pulpit (of white stone, with marble columns) from 1891, when it was erected in memory of a former rector, Archdeacon Campbell, his brother Dr. Charles Campbell, and the doctor’s partner, Dr. Bowerbank.
The rose window in the north transept, representing the Good Samaritan, with medallions of St. John, St. Peter, St. Stephen, St. Andrew as deacon, and St. Stephen as martyr, was put up in 1888 to the memory of the Hon. H. F. Colthirst, a churchwarden, and his children. The corresponding window, of 1887, in the south transept, representing, in the centre, the Angel at the Sepulchre, surrounded by cherubs, is a memorial to Mr. C. A. Robinson and children. These two windows gave a good illustration of the manner in which concrete, even before the earthquake of 1907, was made to do duty for stone in Jamaica. Portions of the glass from these windows have, in the recent reconstruction, been scattered throughout various window openings. The window at the east end of the north aisle, heraldic and geometric in character, was erected to the Hon. Dr. Hamilton, District Grand Master of the Freemasons in Jamaica. The east window was erected in 1914 in memory of Archdeacon Downer.
The vestry was built in 1895, and in that year the old brick wall which formerly surrounded the churchyard was replaced by the present railing. The City Council contributed £50 towards the cost of the bell on the condition that it should be rung at nine o’clock every evening—a reminiscence of the English curfew which is still continued.
Beside the west door were hung the old colours of the 2nd Battalion of the West India Regiment, returned to the rebuilt garrison chapel at Up-Park Camp in 1912, and on either side are monumental brasses—one (1896) to the memory of officers and men of the 1st Battalion W.I.R. who fell in West Africa in various expeditions, and another (1898) to officers who died of fever on the West Coast of Africa and in this island; and there are marble tablets to the officers of the 1st and 3rd W.I.R. who died here and elsewhere in the West Indies of yellow fever in 1853.
The following is as perfect a list of the rectors of the parish as it has been found possible to compile:
| 1701–(?) 1714. | Rev. William Collins. |
| 1715————— | Rev. — Skipp. |
| 1722–1754. | Rev. William May, M.A. |
| 1729————— | Rev. Charles Lambe, D.D. |
| 1754–1765. | Rev. Robert Atkins. |
| 1766–1768. | Rev. John Pool. |
| 1768–1776. | Rev. Thomas Coxeter. |
| 1776–1784. | Rev. William Morgan, D.D. |
| 1784–1805. | Rev. Thomas Rees. |
| 1805–1813. | Rev. Alexander Campbell, M.A. |
| 1813–1828. | Rev. Isaac Mann, M.A. |
| 1829–1847. | Ven. Archdeacon Edward Pope, D.D. |
| 1848–1860. | Ven. Archdeacon Thomas Stewart, D.D. |
| 1861–1872. | Ven. Archdeacon Duncan Houston Campbell, M.A. |
| 1873–1908. | Ven. Archdeacon George William Downer. |
| 1908.————— | Rev. R. J. Ripley. |
It is difficult to understand how Lambe came to be rector during May’s tenure of office. It may have been an acting appointment during the incumbent’s illness. The authority for including Lambe in the list of rectors is the following entry in Foster’s “Alumni Oxonienses”:
Lambe, Charles. S. John [Dean of Ely]. Ch. Ch. Matric. 1697, aged 18 [or 13]; B.A. 1701, M.A. from King’s Coll., Cambridge, 1709. D.D. Lambeth, 1722.... Chaplain to the Duke of Portland when Governor of Jamaica, Rector of Kingston, Jamaica, 1729.
The records of the parish church of Kingston extant unfortunately only go as far back as the year 1722, the date of the first “Christening” recorded. The marriages at that time were by licence, or Bannis tribus vicibus promulgatis. By recent legislation one calling of the banns is sufficient. It is curious to note the large number of widows amongst the brides and of mariners amongst the bridegrooms. One of the best kept registers is that of baptisms, commenced in 1785 by the Rev. Thomas Rees. The first entry is:
Joseph Fennell Brookbank, the son of Mary Fennell, a free mulatto woman, by George Brookbank, was born April 12, 1779, Bapt. Jany. 1, 1785.
The next entry, more Jamaicense, records the baptism of “Jamima Beaumont, the daughter of Mary Fennell, by James Beaumont.” Two out of the first seven entries in this register are of children of married women, which unfortunately would not be, according to the Registrar-General’s returns, a bad record even for to-day. On Christmas Day, 1786, the rector baptized twelve of his own slaves en bloc.
Those who were baptized are described as black, or negro; mulatto; sambo; quadroon; mestee, or mustee; brown; of colour; Indian (these were probably from the Mosquito Coast); and slave, or property of; and free. The old African names of Quashie, Quasheba and the like were replaced by ordinary Christian names, with a partiality for Biblical ones, with here and there a classic designation. The names on one page, taken at random, of the register for 1797 are: John, Sarah, Richard, Lucretia, Susanna, Margaret, Hannah, Jeremiah, James, William, Edward, Cilly (sic), Juno, Mary, Eleanor, Joseph. These, in the main, simple names are preferable to the Thomasina, Justina, Rosina, and so on, affected to-day.
In 1745 Cornelius Lilly, “of the parish of Kingston, mariner,” was married to Jane Macky of the same parish. One wonders whether he was a relation of Colonel Christian Lilly who had laid out the town. The first burial recorded is under date March 27, 1741, “Ralph Greathead, belonging to the Sheldon, Capt. Read, Command.” The ship Sheldon possibly belonged to the owner of Sheldon, a property in the Blue Mountains. The baptism in 1797 of “Dorothy Morgan Mahony, a negro woman slave of Thomas Mahony, aged forty years,” recalls Dolly Mahony’s Gap in the St. Andrew Mountains.
The following particulars of the baptisms solemnised in the parish church in the year 1828 may be of interest:
| White | 10 | |
| Coloured | 164 | |
| Black | 54 | |
| No memo made of colour | 53 | |
| ——— | 281 | |
| Slaves—Coloured | 40 | |
| Black | 276 | |
| ——— | 316 | |
| ——— | ||
| 597 |
From its position of principal church in the chief town of the island, Kingston parish church is frequently chosen for the holding of state and other important services rather than the cathedral of Spanish Town, which now finds itself left by the stream of time in a civic backwater.
With the exception of the cathedral at Spanish Town more celebrated personages have been buried within the walls of Kingston parish church than in those of any other church in the island.
Of the memorials, the most interesting is the tomb of Benbow, of dark blue slate, in the chancel, the inscription on which is curiously inaccurate. He was not, we learn in his life in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” an admiral of the white, but vice-admiral of the blue. He was not fifty-one years old at his death, but forty-nine; and the arms carved on it are not his. The arms are: Palewise, two bent bows between two sheaves of arrows; the crest, on an esquire’s helmet, a harpy. The following is the inscription:
Here Lyeth Interred the Body of John Benbow Esq: Admiral of the White: a true Pattern of English Courage who Lost his life In Defence of his Queene & Country, November ye 4th 1702 In the 52nd year of his age by a wound In his Legg, Receeiu’d In an Engagement with Monsr. du Casse, Being Much Lamented.
Of the monuments, there are only four of artistic merit—three by John Bacon, all similar in style, figures carved in high relief against a pyramidal background of marble; and one without the sculptor’s name, in the north wall of the inner north transept, to Edward Maiming. It consists of a bust in mezzo-relievo. If executed shortly after Manning’s death in 1756, it is too early for a work by Bacon. It is a good example of English sculpture of that time, and it is possibly by Roubiliac, by whom there is a monument of the year 1754 to Lieutenant Stapleton in Port Royal church, or more probably by John Cheere (brother of Sir Henry Cheere, Roubiliac’s instructor for some time), by whom there is a monument of the year 1733 to the Hon. James Lawes (eldest son of Sir Nicholas Lawes) in Halfway-Tree church. Cheere’s work resembles more closely the Manning bust than does that of the more florid Roubiliac. As was the case with Bacon, one commission for Jamaica sometimes led to others. The arms on the Manning monument are wrongly blazoned in Lawrence-Archer’s “Monumental Inscriptions of the British Indies.” They are: Gules, a cross fleurie [not moline] or between four [not three] trefoils slipped or.
Of the monuments by Bacon, that to Malcolm Laing and his wife (1794) represents a female figure seated, emblematic of grief; the phœnix, of which Bacon was fond, is introduced in the background.
The monument to Dr. Fortunatus Dwarris, member of the House of Assembly for St. George (which is now merged in Portland), and his stepdaughter (1792), represents a recumbent female figure resting on an urn, gazing at an angel conducting the soul of the departed upwards. In it the poetry on the urn descriptive of the scene represented is hardly equal to Bacon’s art:
Ascend to Bliss ye gentle Spirits
Where yon Angel soars above:
Their Virtue her Reward Inherits
Crowne’d with Heav’n’s eternal love.
Sir Fortunatus William Lilley Dwarris (d. 1860), the lawyer and antiquary, eldest son of William Dwarris, of Warwick, England, and Golden Grove, Jamaica, of which he was a native, was a member of the same family.
The monument to John Wolmer (1789) is on the west wall of the outer north aisle. Of the three monuments by Bacon this is the best. Erected just sixty years after Wolmer’s death, it represents a seated figure of Liberality, carved in high relief, holding a medallion, on which the crest of the school, the sun of Learning breaking through a cloud of Ignorance, is represented. On the supporting brackets are scholastic emblems—a quill pen, a book, parchment, scientific instruments and the like.
Besides the three monuments in this church already mentioned, there is another monument to Mary, daughter of Dawkins Carr (who died in 1798). It is in the usual pyramidal form, and represents a classic urn on a pedestal. It is signed “J. Bacon, sct., London, 1799,” and must have been one of the last works sent out of his studio in his lifetime, for he died in that year.
Some monuments make one wish that the admirers of the worthies represented had followed the Erewhonian plan of paying the sculptor on condition that he did not make the statue, letting into the pavement a small inscription where it would have stood, as was the case in that delectable country. The tribute of respect would have been paid to the deceased, and the rest of the public would have suffered no inconvenience.
Other tombs of interest in the church are those to Smart Pennant (wife of the rector, William May), who “was kill’d in ye 23rd year of her age by ye fall of an house in ye great storm, August ye 28th, A.D. 1722” (when her husband’s leg was also broken; he was commissary to the Bishop of London); to Susanna, wife of Colonel William Gordon (d. 1731), of the family which gave its name to Gordon Town; to Captain Charles Brown (d. 1747), who is evidently the Commodore Brown who was described in a pamphlet published in 1740 as living in Kingston, “and entertain’d the gentlemen and Ladies about Ligunea once a fortnight with an Assembly”; to Captain Samuel Phillips (died in 1757, aged 54), who, as the inscription tells us, “Commanded the Alexander, Private Ship of War, out of Bristoll, and Cut His Majesties Ship Solebay out of St. Martin’s Road the 10th of April, 1746, for which he had the honour to kis His Majesties hand and Received a Gold Medal and Chain. Alexander 140 Men and Solebay 220 men”; to John Jaques (d. 1815), first mayor of Kingston; to Hon. George Kinghorne (1823), custos of Kingston; to Hon. Joseph Barnes (d. 1829), mayor and custos of Kingston, whose memory lives in Barnes Gully; to Virginia Fairfax, wife of Peter Alexander Espeut, and daughter of Colonel Robert Munroe Harrison, consul-general of the United States of America for Jamaica; to Lieut.-Colonel Sir Alexander Leith, Bt.; to William James Stevenson, receiver-general; to Ebenezer Reid (d. 1843), headmaster of Wolmer’s school for twenty-eight years (the monument was erected by his pupils); to William Augustus Hunt (d. 1852), another headmaster of Wolmer’s school, a member of the family of Barbadian Hunts of which Leigh Hunt was one; to Bartholomew Owen Williams (d. 1830), founder of the Sussex Lodge of Freemasons; to Colonel Hill (d. 1819), who took part in the engagements of Vimiera and Vittoria; and to Dr. Edward Nathaniel Bancroft (d. 1842), deputy inspector-general of Army Hospitals.
Of tombs of special biographical interest are those of Benbow, Rowley and Brown, sailors; May, Mann and Humberstone, clergymen; Campbell, an author; Higson, a botanist; Wolmer, a philanthropist; and Manning, Lawrence, Mitchell and Jordan, politicians.
At the principal entrance to the north transept was a large dark blue slate slab, foot-worn, but without an inscription.
“The story is,” says Lawrence-Archer, “that it is turned on its face, to conceal the epitaph of an early Rector of the parish, who was hanged for coining counterfeit doubloons in the vestry. It is said he was discovered in consequence of having issued one from his mint before it was quite cold. The story is most improbable.” In 1885 the slab was raised and turned, when it was found to be to the memory of James Ramadge, a merchant of Kingston, who died in 1755, aged thirty-three years. Why it had ever been placed face downwards is not known. But that there is some reason for the legend is proved by a reference to the “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette” for December 19, 1801, where we read:
A number of counterfeit Doubloons and Eight-Dollar pieces are now in circulation. The inscription on the face is Carol’s 3d., date 1761. The face does not by any means resemble any effigy given of him or any coins issued by Spanish Government during his reign. It is a perfect copy of the head of Ferdinand the 6th, which appears on the doubloons issued by him ten years before the accession of Charles the 3rd to the throne. The pieces now in circulation are said to have been coined by a Reverend Mr. Smith, who suffered for the crime many years ago on the Kingston Parade.
Can this have been the Hadden Smith who was curate of Kingston parish church in 1766?
The death of Peter Wagstaffe (who died in 1759) was curiously enough recorded on two tombstones, both lying in the north aisle.
In the churchyard are three interesting tombstones, those of Janet Scott, sister to Michael Scott (the author of the well-known “Tom Cringle’s Log”), who was two years her brother’s senior, and evidently came out with him and his bride in 1818, when he returned from Glasgow to Jamaica; to Robert Bogle, his brother-in-law, of the firm of Bogle, Harris & Co., of Glasgow; and to Robert Hamilton, who was planting attorney to Sir Edward Hyde East, the owner of Maryland, on which stands Raymond Hall, where “Tom Cringle’s Log” was written. Hamilton was a friend of Scott’s, and was portrayed as Aaron Bang in the Log. The Scotts and the Bogles were evidently old friends. A “Jennet Scott, the daughter of Robert Bogle and Margaret his wife,” was baptized on April 5, 1793. She was probably a sister of the Robert Bogle who was Scott’s brother-in-law. The following are the inscriptions on the three tombs:
Here lies Interr’d the remains of Mr. Robert Bogle, third son of Robert Bogle, Esqr., Merchant, Glasgow, formerly of this city Merchant who departed this life on 21st December 1819 aged 18 years.
Miss Janet Scott, fourth Daughter of Allan Scott, Esq., of Glasgow, departed this life on the 4th January 1819 aged 32 years.
In memory of Robert Hamilton, Esq., of the Parish of St. Andrews, who departed this life on the 30th day of October 1826, aged 68 years. His unbounded Hospitality and goodness of heart endeared him to all who knew him and his worth and amiable qualities will long live in the remembrance of his Family who pay this last tribute due to the Memory of a revered Father.
The Hamilton tomb is close to the south door. The Scott and Bogle tombs are side by side further south.
It is possible that the name of Murray Crymble, who was receiver-general in the middle of the eighteenth century, may have suggested to Scott the somewhat curious name of the hero of his novel. Crymble patented land in Grand Cayman in 1741.
Copies of the inscriptions on all the tombs both in church and churchyard up to the year 1875 will be found in Lawrence-Archer’s “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies” (London, 1875); but many of the tombs mentioned by him as being in the churchyard were, at the enlargement of the church in 1883–85, placed on the floor of the side aisles. During the recent reconstruction of the church, many changes have taken place in the monuments and tombstones.
The following brief biographical notes on some of the principal persons buried in the church and churchyard may have some interest:
William Hall, youngest son of Edmund Hall, of Greatford Hall, Lincolnshire, was born in Lincolnshire in 1656, and was for a time British Consul at Bilbao. In 1687 he accompanied the Duke of Albemarle, as his secretary, when he came out as Governor to Jamaica. In the following year he married Elizabeth, daughter of William Wyatt. He was member of the Assembly for St. Andrew from 1695 till his death, which took place in 1699.
Vice-Admiral John Benbow, the son of a tanner, was born at Shrewsbury in 1653. In 1678 he entered the navy, and served in the Mediterranean, where he did good service against the Algerine corsairs. In 1686 he appears to have owned a ship in the Levant trade. In 1689 he re-entered the navy, and became master attendant at Chatham Dockyard and at Deptford. In 1690–92 he acted as Master of the Fleet; he was present at the engagements of Beachy Head, Barfleur and La Hogue. In 1693–94 he commanded a flotilla of bomb vessels against the French; and, though only a captain, received the pay of rear-admiral, which rank he acquired in 1695; and in 1697 he became Commander-in-Chief of the King’s ships in the West Indies, with especial orders to hunt down the pirates. The help which he rendered to the Scotch colony in Darien was not acceptable to the English government. In 1700 he returned to England, but in the following year he was back in the West Indies, and in 1702 he was stationed at Jamaica. From August 19 to the 24th of that year took place his engagement off Santa Martha with Du Casse, chef d’éscadre in the French navy, and a former governor of San Domingo, which has been called “the most disgraceful event in our naval records.” Owing to the cowardice displayed by some of his captains, Benbow had to abandon pursuit. He court-martialled his captains, of whom two were shot, one cashiered and two suspended. Benbow died of his wounds at Port Royal on November 4, 1702.
John Wolmer, was a goldsmith, to whose benefaction the town of Kingston has for nearly two centuries been indebted for the excellent school bearing his name. Of his life little is known. On July 11, 1705, he married at Halfway Tree Mary Elizabeth Lumbard. From the name of one of the executors of his will (Samuel Kemer Main), as well as from his own, it is possible that he was of German or Swiss extraction. By his will, dated May 21, 1729, he devised, after some small legacies mentioned therein, the rest and residue of his estate for the foundation of a Free School in the parish in which he should happen to die. This amounted to about £2360. He died on June 29, 1729, at Kingston, where he had resided for upwards of twenty years. In 1820 Wolmer’s Pen, adjoining Camp, was purchased by the authorities in order to secure a better water-supply for Camp. Although a bill was brought into the House of Assembly to give effect to the will in June 1731, and the matter was again revived in 1734, it was not till 1736, and then after many amendments and conferences between the Assembly and the Council, that a law was passed and the Trust put upon a firm basis. The marble to his memory in the church was erected “as a monument of public gratitude,” sixty years after his death.
Hon. Edward Pratter, who died in 1735, aged 52, was member of the Assembly for Hanover in 1723–24 (he and John Morant being the first members for that parish) and for Kingston in 1726–27, 1731, and 1732–33. He was receiver-general, and also agent in Jamaica for the South Sea Company. Kingston Gardens, in Kingston, was formerly known as Pratter Pond.
Rev. William May, born at Ash, in Kent, in 1695, was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, was commissary of Jamaica, and for thirty-two years rector of Kingston. He died in January 1753–54. His first wife was Smart Mary, daughter of Edward Pennant, of Clarendon, widow of Thomas Peters, member for Clarendon; his second wife was Bathusa, daughter of Florentius Vassall, of St. Elizabeth. His only surviving son, Rose Herring May, was a member of the Council and custos of Clarendon and Vere.
Edward Manning, who died in 1756, aged 46, was a member of the House of Assembly for Kingston in 1744, 1745–46, 1749 and 1752; and for Portland in 1754–55, in which year he was chosen speaker. He and his partner, James Ord (who also represented Kingston in the Assembly), were considered the principal merchants of the island in their day. In 1756 Manning was made a member of the Council. He was also custos of Kingston. His wife was Elizabeth, the only sister of Henry Moore, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica from 1756 to 1762, when he was created a baronet; he became governor of New York in 1765. Moore’s wife, Catherine Long (sister of the historian), gave her name to Catherine’s Peak, the highest point in St. Andrew, as she was the first lady to ascend it in 1760. Manning’s marriage with Elizabeth Moore was, after the taking of evidence, dissolved in 1739 by an Act of the legislature of the island, the co-respondent being Ballard Beckford (a member of the House of Assembly and a relation of the famous author of “Vathek”). This was the only Divorce Act ever passed in Jamaica, the Assembly being told they were not to pursue the same course again. The inscription on Manning’s monument is given below, as only an abbreviation is given by Lawrence-Archer:
Near this monument
Lies interred the Body of Edward Manning, Esq.
One of the Honourable Privy Council
Speaker of the Assembly
And Custos Rotulorum of this Parish
In which Stations he distinguished himself.
A true patriot to his country, in Private life he was remarkable for Filial Duty Steady Friendship and kind Benevolence to the Distressed which with his affable Disposition gained him the Esteem of all who had the Pleasure of knowing him.
He died greatly lamented December 6th 1756 aged 46 years.
Colonel James Lawrence, the third son of John Lawrence and Susanna Petgrave, belonged to a family which was amongst the earliest and most extensive landed proprietors in the parish of St. James. In 1739 they owned four out of eight sugar estates in the parish. It is said, possibly without reason, that they were descended from Henry Lawrence, President of Cromwell’s Council, to whose son Milton addressed the sonnet, “Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son.” John Lawrence emigrated to Barbados, coming on to Jamaica about 1675. James Lawrence was his grandson. In 1736 he commanded, as captain, a party raised in St. James and St. Ann to suppress rebellious negroes; the House of Assembly voting to “each white shot, twenty shillings; each black shot, ten shillings; and each baggage-negro, five shillings,” as a further encouragement to the party. He subsequently became colonel of the St. James regiment. He represented the parish of St. James in the three Assemblies which were held in Kingston (the only Assemblies ever convened in that town), which met on October 21, 1754, on January 20 and on April 8, 1755, when he supported the governor, Admiral Charles Knowles, in his scheme for the transference of the legislature, courts and public offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. Party feeling ran high. Many of the Spanish Town party rendered the formation of a quorum difficult by withdrawing themselves from meetings—the two Prices, Roger Hope Elletson, William Nedham, Thomas Beach and others, and refused to obey the summons of the Speaker for their attendance. For this seventeen members were expelled the House, but all but two were re-elected by their constituencies. The House sat usually in the court house, but once it met at Wolmer’s school house and at Hibbert house (the present Headquarters house, where the legislative council now sits), and sometimes at Dr. Clarke’s house. In 1755 Lawrence was made custos rotulorum of the parish of St. James, and in that year he erected the square in Montego Bay, which he called Charles Square, in honour of his friend and patron, the governor. His wife, Mary, was daughter of Colonel Richard James, of Hanover, who was the first child born of English parents in Jamaica. Lawrence died at Kingston in 1756, aged forty-six. Lawrence-Archer’s statement to the effect that “he was buried there 16th June” is made in error to appear as though it was part of the inscription.
Archibald Campbell, who died at Kingston on December 16, 1780, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, was the son of a divine of Edinburgh of the same name. A classical scholar, he all his lifetime dabbled in books; but he became purser of a man-of-war and led a wandering and unsettled life. In 1745 William Falconer (author of the “Shipwreck”), who was serving on the same ship, became his servant. About 1760, on a long voyage, Campbell read the “Rambler,” and soon afterwards at Pensacola wrote “Lexiphanes” and the “Sale of Authors.” The former, a dialogue in imitation of Lucian, was published in order to cast ridicule on Dr. Johnson’s style. Issued anonymously in 1767, it was attributed by Sir John Hawkins to Dr. Kenrick. It is not known when or why Campbell came to Jamaica.
Richard Cargill, colonel of the St. Thomas Regiment of Foot Militia, and member for that parish of the House of Assembly, died in 1781, aged thirty-seven years. The first reference to the Cargill family in Jamaica is to “one Cargill,” who is believed to have slain in a duel Thomas, son of Colonel Peter Beckford, in 1731.
Thomas Higson, a merchant of Kingston, who was born in 1773, succeeded Macfadyen as island botanist and curator of the Gardens at Bath in 1828, which post he held till 1832. He presented to the garden a collection of living plants collected by himself in South America. He died in Kingston in 1836, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.
Vice-Admiral Bartholomew Samuel Rowley was the second son of Vice-Admiral Sir Joshua Rowley. He was commander-in-chief at Jamaica from 1809 till 1811, when he died on October 7, aged forty-seven years. He was buried in the churchyard. A monument to him is over the west door.
Rear-Admiral William Brown was a member of an old Leicestershire family. He was made a lieutenant in the Navy in 1788, a commander in 1792, and was raised to post rank in the next year. In 1794 he served in the Channel under Lord Howe. In 1805 he took part in the engagement off Cape Finisterre. He missed being present at Trafalgar by going home to give evidence at Calder’s court-martial. He was afterwards commissioner of the dockyards at Malta and at Sheerness. He attained flag rank in 1812. He was commander-in-chief at Jamaica in 1813–14. He died on September 20 in the latter year, after an illness of five days. He is buried in the churchyard.
Rev. Francis Humberstone was born at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, in 1791, and was trained at Newport-Pagnell college. He came to Jamaica in 1818 as curate of the parish of Kingston, and was appointed chaplain to the Corporation of that town in the following year, at a salary of £420 per annum, and chaplain to the 61st Regiment. He died on August 9 in the same year after only nine months’ residence in the island, in which time he made a reputation as a very fervent and fearless preacher; preaching especially on behalf of the slaves. The tablet to his memory was erected by the Corporation, which also paid £210 to his widow.
Rev. Isaac Mann, M.A., was rector of Kingston from 1813 to 1828. He was chaplain of the Provincial Grand Lodge, and Past Master of the Sussex Lodge, No. 8, in Kingston. He died in 1828, aged fifty-one. A monument was erected to his memory in the churchyard by the Brethren of these Lodges.
Dr. Edward Nathaniel Bancroft was born in London in 1772. He graduated bachelor of medicine at Cambridge in 1794, and was in the following year appointed physician to the Forces. In 1804 he took his degree as M.D., and commenced to practise in London. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1811 he gave up practice in London and resumed his duties as physician of the Forces, and came to Jamaica, where he resided till his death in Kingston in 1842, when he held the post of deputy inspector-general of Army hospitals. The mural tablet was erected to his memory “by the Physicians and Surgeons of Jamaica.” One of his earliest writings was due to conflict with his brother army medical officers—“Exposure of misrepresentations by Dr. McGrigor and Dr. Jackson to the Commissioners of Military Enquiry” (1808); but he is best remembered by his “Essay on the Disease called Yellow Fever, with observations concerning Febrile Contagion, Typhus Fever, Dysentery, and the Plague, partly delivered as the Gulstonian Lectures before the College of Physicians in the years 1806 and 1807” (1811 and 1817). In 1839 he published in Jamaica “A Letter to the Hon. Hector Mitchell on the proposed erection of a new Lunatic Asylum,” and in the following year he issued another “representing the total unfitness of the present Asylum for Lunatics, and the urgent necessity for building a new Lunatic Asylum in a proper situation.”
Hector Mitchell was elected mayor of Kingston in 1833 and held the office till he died, aged eighty-four years, in 1853 at Kingston. His body lay in state in the old court house, and his funeral was attended by most of the prominent men of Jamaica. He was also custos of Kingston. His portrait—a lithograph by A. Maurin, from a daguerreotype by A. Duperly, printed for distribution when he addressed the electors of Kingston in 1848—is in the Jamaica History Gallery in the Institute.
Edward Jordan, C.B., was born in 1800. He devoted himself to journalism in early life, and for many years was connected with the “Watchman” and the “Morning Journal.” While representing Kingston in the House of Assembly he was in 1854 called to the Council, and on that occasion received a testimonial from the inhabitants of the island; but he resigned his seat to seek reelection in the Assembly at the time of the introduction of the new constitution. He was elected, and was furthermore made a member of the Governor’s Executive Committee, which carried with it the leadership of the Assembly. He also acted as Speaker. He represented Kingston till the abolition of the House in 1866. He was appointed custos of Kingston by Sir Charles Grey, and held the post till 1866. Governor Eyre appointed him receiver-general, but he did not hold the post for long; and he was appointed Governor’s Secretary, with which was amalgamated on the death of the Hon. W. G. Stewart the Island Secretaryship. He died in 1869 at his residence, Good Air, in St. Andrew. On the Parade stands a monument of him erected by public subscription. There is also a tablet to his memory in Halfway Tree church. His portrait, an oil painting from life, is in the Jamaica History Gallery in the Institute.
As in Lawrence-Archer many of the coats-of-arms are blazoned wrongly and a few omitted, and as many of the arms on the slabs on the floor of the church were in danger of being completely, as some of them were then partly, effaced, it was thought desirable, some years before the earthquake of 1907, to describe all the armorial bearings in the church; and this was duly done in the “Jamaica Churchman” in 1902, and the descriptions were reprinted in the “West India Committee Circular” for March 26, 1912.
The floor of a church, where they are subjected to the tread of many feet, is not a good position in which to place monuments with a view to their preservation; but it is to be deplored that some other method of rendering the seats stable was not adopted by the architect in charge during the alterations of 1883–85 than fastening them to the pavement by iron clamps, many of which have actually been driven through armorial designs—that of Benbow not excepted.
It has recently been well said that “the village church is the village Westminster Abbey, in which every object commemorating our ancestors ought to be sacred, small as well as great.” This applies with the greater force to the principal church in the chief town of an ancient colony. But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that even the ancient stall-plates of the Knights of the Order of the Garter in St. George’s, Windsor, have not altogether escaped damage at the “restorer’s” hands.
Amongst the coats-of-arms alluded to above occur the following examples of allusive devices—the canting heraldry of England, the armes parlantes of France—the asses of Askew, the bent bows of Benbow, the fern of Ferneley, the hinds of Hinde, and the vessel (both cup and ship) of Vassall; whilst amongst the mottoes we have the “Sanguis et vulnera” of Skinner. It may be of interest to note that the only arms in the church represented with supporters are those of Crawford.
Rubbings of the most interesting of the armorial bearings were made, for preservation in the Library of the Institute of Jamaica, by the Rev. W. B. Atherton, B.A.
Hakewill, writing in 1821, said, “The handsomest building in Kingston is the Scotch Church in Duke street, which was erected about the year 1814 by a public subscription from a plan of Mr. James Delaney.” This church was destroyed by the earthquake of 1907 and subsequently rebuilt on the old foundations.
With the destruction of “Jasper Hall” in the earthquake of 1907, Headquarters House, as it is still called, in Duke street, became possessor of the undisputed title of the finest old house in Kingston. Its history is of interest.
The story goes that in the latter half of the eighteenth century four Kingston merchants with great wealth and equally great ambition as to appearance—Jasper Hall, Thomas Hibbert, John Bull and another, made a heavy bet amongst themselves as to who should build the most magnificent dwelling. This resulted in Jasper Hall, till recently standing in High Holborn street; Headquarters House; Bull House, in North street; and the house to the north of the old “Mico” in Hanover street, once called “Harmony Hall.” The name of the winner of the bet is not recorded. It should have been Jasper Hall.
Jasper Hall, who was receiver-general and speaker of the house of Assembly, died in 1778. As mentioned above, he was in 1774 one of the commissioners for purchasing a pen for an official residence for the admiral on the station. His house, which he named “Constantine House,” bore the date “June 1, 1756”; and not many years ago possessed what was probably the best collection of paintings, engravings and books ever got together by a private individual in Jamaica. Unfortunately at the sale many bibliographical treasures were allowed to leave the colony.
Thomas Hibbert, who arrived in Jamaica in 1734, soon became one of the principal and most opulent merchants in Jamaica. He was member of Assembly for St. George and for Portland, and speaker of the Assembly in 1756. He died in 1780, and was buried at “Agualta Vale” pen in St. Mary. His house was long known as Hibbert’s House.
In November 1755, when the Assembly was sitting in Kingston, it on the 12th adjourned “to the dwelling house of Thomas Hibbert, Esquire, a member of this House, where he and Colonel Lawrence, another member of this House, are indisposed, there to proceed to business,” and the House met there for several days. In December 1814 it was purchased by the War Office of the widow of Dr. Solomon Deleon, of Kingston, and was thenceforward known as General’s House or Headquarters House. Although the governor of the colony has ever held the rank of captain-general of the forces, there has always been a general officer in actual command of the troops; and in former days, and as late as 1895, such general held, ex officio, a commission as lieutenant-governor of the colony, and succeeded to the control of affairs when occasion arose. The house still retains the name of Headquarters House, though it has been the colonial secretary’s office since the government was removed from Spanish Town to Kingston. It was purchased by the Government in 1872 for £5000. It also contains the chamber in which the legislative council sits. The “Hibbert Trust” was founded by a member of this family.
John Bull was the owner of Sheldon coffee estate in the Blue mountains. The name of the builder of the house to the north of the Mico has not been recorded.
Amongst those, many of them lieutenant-governors, who were general officers commanding the forces in Jamaica while the headquarters of the army were in Duke street, Kingston, were Archibald Campbell (1782–84), who controlled military affairs at a troublous time for Jamaica, and by sending troops to act as marines materially assisted Rodney in his victory over de Grasse; Sir Alured Clarke (1785–90), during whose tenure of office there was a succession of severe storms during one of which the barracks at Up-Park Camp were blown down; Sir Adam Williamson (1790–95), who was in 1795 governor-general of that part of St. Domingo which was under the control of Great Britain; the Earl of Balcarres (1796–1801), who is chiefly remembered in connection with the Maroon war; Sir George Nugent (1801–05), whose doings have been fully chronicled by his wife in her Journal; Sir Eyre Coote (1806–09), who had served with distinction under Cornwallis in America, under Grey in the Leeward Islands, and in Egypt; Hugh Carmichael (1809), who had declined to let the House of Assembly interfere with a purely military matter—the mutiny at Port Augusta alluded to in the chapter on St. Catherine—eventually, but by the King’s command, had to appear before that body, which grudgingly accepted the explanation offered; Edward Morrison (1811–14); Francis Fuller (1814–17); Henry Conran (1817–23); Sir John Keane (1823–30), who had served under Wellington in the Peninsula, and while in Jamaica took part in the attack on New Orleans, and later served with distinction in India; Sir Willoughby Cotton (1831–37), who in Bermuda had had Havelock as his aide-de-camp, and in Jamaica suppressed the rebellion in St. James; Sir William Maynard Gomm (1839–42), at one time governor and commander-in-chief of the Windward and Leeward Islands; Sackville Hamilton Berkeley; Samuel Lambert; Thomas Bunbury; Sir Richard Doherty; Edward Wells Bell; Pringle Taylor; Charles Ashmore; and lastly Luke Smythe O’Connor all of whose regimental commissions were in the 1st West India Regiment, and who was in command of the troops during the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865.
The old Mico Institution in Hanover street—now used as a technical school, and for a few years after the earthquake of 1907 used as the supreme court of the colony—was the original home of the Mico College, which is now removed to St. Andrew.
With their destruction by the earthquake in 1907 Kingston lost two important old-time houses in Blundell Hall and Date Tree Hall, at the lower end of East street. Both had been in former days boarding-houses. Latterly the former had served as the home of a part of the Post Office, the latter as that of the Institute of Jamaica, founded in 1879. Blundell Hall was for some years under the proprietorship of Mary Seacole, a native of Jamaica, well known in connection with her kindness to the sick and wounded of the British soldiers in the Crimea, where she filled the position of sutler, having failed to obtain that of nurse. Sir William Russell wrote a preface to her “Adventures,” published in 1857. Seacole Cottage in Duke street was named after her.
The reconstructed Institute of Jamaica possesses several objects of considerable historic interest. Besides the Arawâk pottery and implements and the slave branding-iron alluded to in the Introduction, there is a cage in which criminals were hung to die of starvation, as late as the early days of the nineteenth century. There is also the Chancellor’s purse for holding the official seal of the colony, recalling the days when the governor sat as chancellor, which lasted up to the passing of the judicature law of 1879.
The following—taken from “The State of Jamaica under Sir Thomas Lynch, 1683,” printed in “The Laws of Jamaica” (London, 1684)—is the earliest reference to the Seal of the Island:
The King has been pleased to honour this Island with a large guilt Mace, as a signal Mark of his Favour, and to make the Government appear more great and formal: It’s carried before the Governour and Chancellour on Solemn Occasions.
The King has likewise honoured this Island with Arms, and with a publick Broad Seal; and on one side of it his Majesty is seated on his Throne, with two Indians on their knees, presenting him Fruits, and two Cherubins aloft, supporting a Canopy; underneath his Feet, this Motto:
Duro de Cortice fructus quam Dulces?5
The Inscription about it is, Carolus Secundus Dei gratia, &c. Dominus Jamaicæ; On the other side is an Escutcheon, bearing a Cross charged with five Pines; two Indians for the Supporters and for the Crest an Alligator. The Inscription in the Orle, Inclosing all, is Ecce alium Ramos porrexit in orbem
Nec sterilis crux est6
The Motto underneath the Escutcheon is,
Indus Uterq: serviet uni7
All this, as I have heard, was designed by the present Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, in the year 1661, and the Seal then delivered to Sir Charles Littleton, that came hither Chancellour, for the Chancellours always keep it, and with it Seal all Publick Grants, Commissions, Patents &c.
The King by a Clause in the Commission for the Government, appoints the Governour to be Chancellour, as judging it fittest to entrust him with the Equity, who is to see the Laws executed, and not thinking it for the good of his Subjects to have many great Officers in a young Colony; and that if the Seal were in private hands it would be erected into an Office: Now its worth little or nothing. For the Chancellour has no Fee, only for granting Land and that amounts to very little now....
There is no mention of a purse, but one was probably sent out with the Seal and Counter-Seal.
Lawrence-Archer—misled by Bridges, who, ignoring the “present,” simply says, “This seal was designed by the Archbishop of Canterbury”—says, “At that time (1662) the Metropolitan See was filled by William Juxon.” It is true that Lord Windsor came to Jamaica while Juxon was archbishop of Canterbury (1660 to 1663), but Sancroft occupied the see in 1683, when the sentence quoted from the Records of the house of Assembly was written.
The only Jamaica chancellor’s purse that is known to exist to-day is that which is now in the history gallery of the Institute, whither it was transferred from the supreme court office some years ago.
No mention of the purse has hitherto been found in any of the histories: it is not even mentioned by Lady Nugent, who makes frequent references to her husband, Sir George Nugent, sitting as chancellor. Bryan Edwards says, “The Governor or Commander-in-chief is chancellor of his office, and presides solely in that high department, which is administered with great form and solemnity.”
It would seem evident that a new purse was not supplied each year. In fact there is no evidence that any later purse than this dating from the time of George III has ever been in use in the colony.
In form and character and size it is just like the purses used in England. Like them, it measures 1 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. 4 in., and is made of red velvet. The arms of Jamaica (with the cross gules, be it observed) are in the centre, and are surmounted by the arms of England at the time of George III. At the base are two cornucopias, and on each side is a decorative border of roses and other flowers. It is embroidered with gold and silver thread and coloured silk, ornamented with beads. It has suffered by wear and neglect.
The mace was evidently the property of the governor, and was probably used when the council met.
The council is known to have sat on the fatal June 7, 1692; and in the Journals of the house of Assembly is this entry:
June 7, 1692.—This day happened the great earthquake which destroyed Port Royal, and did great injury throughout the island: The Council had previously met in that town, and it is probable were sitting when it commenced, as no adjournment is entered that day in the Journal.
This is not correct, as the president was with the rector.
The next record we find of a mace is on December 1, 1763, when the house of Assembly resolved: “That the Receiver-General do send to his correspondent in England, to purchase a silver mace gilt, of the same size, for the use of the Speaker of the House, as that used by the Speaker of the House of Commons; and that this or any future Assembly will make the same good.”
The older of the two maces at present in the Institute was possibly imported as the result of this resolution. It is silver-gilt, measures 5 ft. 6 in. high and weighs 297 oz. 5 dwt., and is thus both higher and heavier than the mace of the House of Commons. It is surmounted by a royal crown, on the base of which are the British coat-of-arms as used from 1714 to 1801, and the letters G. R. (Georgius Rex). Round the head, in panels divided by caryatides, are the emblems of England and Scotland, Ireland and France, and the arms of Jamaica. It bears the London hall marks and date letter of the year 1753, and the initials M. F. of the maker, Mordecai Fox of London.
The other mace evidently came as the result of the resolution of the Assembly of December 22, 1786: “That the Receiver-General do immediately remit to the agent the sum of £300 to be by him laid out in the purchase of robes for the Speaker, and a mace.” Four years later they voted £200 for a coach to be obtained from England. The mace is similar in appearance, but of a little later date, measures also 5 ft. 6 in. high, and is also surmounted by a royal crown on the base of which is the same form of the British coat-of-arms; and round the head are the same emblems of England and Scotland, France and Ireland, and the arms of Jamaica. It bears the London hall marks and date letter of the year 1787, and the initials H. G. of the maker, Henry Green of London, whose initials are on a piece bearing the mark of the same year in the hall of the Clothworkers Company, London, and who also made the Grenada mace, which dates from 1781, and which is almost as massive as the Jamaica mace of 1753. The Barbados mace, which dates from 1812, is 4 ft. 4 in. high. The head of the Jamaica 1787 mace has at some time been bent by a blow, and should stand up in the same manner as that of the older one. This is not to be wondered at when we read of the stormy meetings held in the last century by the house of assembly.
These two maces were used, the one at the meetings of the house of Assembly, the other at those of the legislative council. One or other of them was used at the meetings of the privy council until some time in Sir John Peter Grant’s administration, when its use was discontinued. They were both deposited in the Institute of Jamaica in 1879, and were shown at the exhibition in 1891.
Of the public monuments in Kingston the principal is the Statue of Sir Charles Metcalfe.
High on a list of those governors who have left their mark on Jamaica history stands the name of Metcalfe, the only governor to whom the colony has erected a statue. Without seeking it, Metcalfe gained everywhere where his work lay such popular esteem as finds expression in statues and addresses, while he received the sincere regard of those with whom he came in close contact. Coming in September, 1839, when relations between the planters and the British government on the one hand and the emancipated slaves on the other had become very strained over questions arising out of the recent abolition of slavery, he, by the same tactful manner which he had employed in India with marked success, did much to reconcile the differences; and when he left Jamaica three years later it was amidst the genuine regret of all classes of the community.
Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, the son of a major in the Bengal army, who later became a director of the East India company, was born at Calcutta in 1785. He was one of a family of six; the boys all had, in addition to another, the name Theophilus, the girls Theophila. After spending five years at Eton, where he did much “sapping,” he, to his own regret at having to leave, entered the East India service at the early age of fifteen. By the time he was nineteen he was earning £1000 a year; and after working in several important branches of the service as special commissioner, and as president at Delhi, and at Hyderabad, where he incurred the displeasure of the governor-general by his fearless methods of pressing reforms, he became in 1827 a member of the supreme council, on which he sat for nearly seven years. In 1832 he succeeded his brother in the baronetcy which had been bestowed upon his father, and in 1836 he received the Grand Cross of the Bath in reward for his distinguished services. In 1835–36 he held provisionally the post of governor-general of India, at which he had confidently aimed from almost the commencement of his career, and he only lost the actual position, to which he was nominated by the court of directors, because the ministry did not consider it advisable to appoint one so experienced as Metcalfe in Indian affairs to that high office, which they wished to bestow on their own nominee.
Always a Liberal in politics and wide in his sympathies, he during his tenure of office gave offence to the directors of the company by his action in removing the restrictions on the liberty of the press, and this led ultimately to his resignation from the company’s service.
After a period of rest in England from official labours, he was in 1839 made governor of Jamaica, two former governors of which colony—Sir Alured Clarke and Sir George Nugent—he had incidentally met in India. He was made a privy councillor “as a mark of consideration for his past services and a tribute to the importance of the office he was about to assume.”
The sending of an East Indian official as governor to the West Indies was then an unusual occurrence, but the undoubted success achieved by Metcalfe led to greater frequency in the custom. Somewhat tired of administrative work, a lover of a quiet life and with some parliamentary ambition, he only accepted the office because he knew that the affairs of the colony were in disorder, and he looked upon it as a duty to his country to be at the call of the Colonial Office.
The few years that had elapsed since Emancipation had not proved sufficient in Jamaica to efface differences of opinion and produce harmony where conflicting interests were rife. The apprenticeship system had broken down the year before, and total abolition had come into effect. Trouble had arisen between the Assembly and the Home Government. The Assembly considered the passing of the West India Prisons bill an aggression on their rights, and declined to perform any legislative functions not absolutely necessary, until those rights were restored. The British Government retorted by threatening to suspend the constitution of Jamaica, and a measure was ultimately passed which increased the powers possessed by the governor. Metcalfe was selected as a possibly popular governor to tide over a critical period of great anxiety.
On his arrival he saw that the existence of the stipendiary magistrates, which body had been formed with a view to counteracting the alleged lack of justice on the part of the local magistracy composed chiefly of the planters and their attorneys, was a means of keeping alive the ill-will between the planters and the emancipated slaves and their well-wishers; and he therefore decided to let the scheme gradually die out, by abstaining from filling up vacancies as they arose.
In his work of conciliation Metcalfe did not hesitate to controvert the opinions of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and to point out to him the error of his views in certain cases.
He achieved the at that time difficult task of gaining the esteem alike of the white and the black population, and he did much to remove the mutual mistrust existing between them. The only sect in sympathy with whom he found it difficult to work was the Baptist community, who wished him to be hostile to the planters and were displeased by his absolute impartiality.
In November 1841 he considered that the purpose of his visit had been achieved, and he resigned his office. By his honesty of purpose and the conciliatory nature of his methods of work he had endeared himself to almost all.
As his mission had been one of smoothing over difficulties arising from a recent legal and social upheaval, it obviously was not a time for great administrative changes; but while he was in Jamaica the judicial system and the criminal code were amended, the military cantonment at Newcastle was established, and the salary of the governor was put on a more satisfactory and permanent basis.
Metcalfe had his portrait painted twice in Jamaica—once by a Danish artist, a full-size, half-length, which he sent home to his aunt, Mrs. Manson: the other, a full-length, by another artist, “was intended for the town hall of our principal city Kingston.” Where is that portrait now? There is a portrait of him, by a very mediocre painter, in the court house at Old Harbour, and a full-length standing painting, dated 1846, and signed by A. Bradish, in the Town Hall at Falmouth. The portrait of him by F. R. Say in the Oriental Club, a copy of the engraving after which by F. E. Lewis is in the Jamaica history gallery in the Institute, was painted between his return to England from Jamaica and his going to Canada. Another portrait in the same gallery is a mezzotint engraving by William Warner of Philadelphia, after a painting by A. Bradish, executed in 1844, representing him half-length seated. This print, published at Montreal, was dedicated to Sir Robert Peel. It shows the left side of the face, the right having by that time been disfigured by the sad malady which caused his death.
Metcalfe on leaving Jamaica received addresses.
“On May 21, 1842,” says Sir John William Kaye, in his life of Metcalfe, “Sir Charles Metcalfe once again embarked for England. The scene will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. From even the most distant places crowds of people of all classes had come to see for the last time, and to say God-speed to, the Governor whose public and private virtues they so loved and revered. The old island militiamen, who had not been called out for years, volunteered to form his escort. The ‘coloured population knelt to bless him.’ Many present on that occasion, at once so gratifying and so painful to the departing statesman, felt that they had lost a friend who could never be replaced. All classes of society and all sects of Christians sorrowed for his departure; and the Jews set an example of Christian love by praying for him in their synagogues.
“He went—but the statue voted by the Island, and erected in the public square of Spanish Town, is not a more enduring record of his residence in Jamaica than the monument which he has made for himself in the hearts of a grateful people.”
In 1843–45 he was governor-general of Canada, a post of extreme difficulty at that time, and held by him with considerable tact and firmness while he himself was practically dying. He displayed much patience under the greatest provocation. He had there the support of that empire-builder Wakefield, who said of him that God had made him greater than the Colonial Office. In 1845 he was created Baron Metcalfe. In the securing of this honour the valuable services which he rendered in connection with Jamaica played an important part. In fact it may fairly be said that had the Whigs and not the Tories been in power when he left that island the peerage would have been conferred on him then. He never took his seat in the House of Lords, and the title died with him the following year, the baronetcy going to his younger brother. During the latter part of his life he had borne great suffering with heroic patience.
He was short in stature and somewhat homely in appearance; but he had an intelligent countenance and an habitually sweet smile. He was of a most lovable disposition. Though intensely hospitable he really disliked society and preferred the companionship of a few friends, but he lived continually in harness either social or official. He was at all times of his life a poor horseman; he had tried in vain to learn in India, and travelling in the hilly parts of Jamaica must have been a painful task for him. He writes: “I have got some steady horses and ponies which suit me pretty well. Any but steady ones would soon tumble me over a precipice.”
Of his country residence, Highgate, to which he retreated from Spanish Town whenever the calls of office permitted, he wrote, “If climate were everything I should prefer living on this spot to any other that I know in the world.”
Liberal and generous by disposition, he yet succeeded in saving from his official salaries and the interest of his investments a sufficient fortune to have maintained with credit the peerage which had been bestowed upon him.
On his quitting Jamaica the Assembly voted £3000 for the statue, which for many years looked down King street, Kingston, to which spot it had been removed from Spanish Town, where it was originally erected on the site of the present court house, opposite Rodney’s statue. It was originally intended to have a temple and colonnade like Rodney’s, but the funds did not prove sufficient and the scheme was abandoned. In 1898 the statue was removed to make way for a statue of Queen Victoria, when it was placed at the foot of King street, on the pedestal which had for some years supported Bacon’s statue of Rodney during its temporary absence from Spanish Town.
Metcalfe’s statue has proved more enduring than the parish which, formed from parts of St. George and St. Mary and named after him in 1841, was merged into St. Mary in 1867 by Grant’s reduction of the parishes from twenty-two to fourteen. The statue is by Edward Hodges Baily, R.A., a pupil of Flaxman, and a sculptor of high aims and pure ideals, by whom there is also a bust of Metcalfe in the Metcalfe Hall, Calcutta.
He is represented bare-headed, and wearing the insignia of the Bath. The statue on its double pedestal stands too high to be well seen. On the front of the original pedestal is the following inscription, now almost illegible from the ground, partly because of its great height and partly because the painting has worn off the letters:
This Statue
is erected in honor of
The Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, Bart, K.C.B.
Now Baron Metcalfe
By the grateful inhabitants of Jamaica
in commemoration
of the benefits derived from
his wise, just and beneficial administration
of the government of the island
A.D. 1845.
On the west face are the arms of Jamaica (on which the cross is tricked or instead of gules, and the crest is placed on an esquire’s helmet); on the east those of Metcalfe. On the back is an emblematic design with figures of Justice and Mercy on either side of an altar on which rests an anchor.
On the lower pedestal, erected originally to receive Rodney’s statue, is placed an earthenware tablet (similar to those erected by the Royal Society of Arts in London) which was put up by the Institute of Jamaica in 1892 to record the fact that:
12 feet west of the
centre of the pedestal,
Commander Green,
U.S.N. in 1875 erected the
longitude station of
Kingston and found it to be
5h. 7m. 10·65 s. (76° 47′ 39·8″)
West of Greenwich.
I.J.
The great weight of this lower pedestal enabled the statue to stand the earthquake of 1907 unmoved; while every other statue in Kingston was either thrown down or slued round on its base.
“Selections from the Papers of Lord Metcalfe” contain papers from Jamaica, dealing with such divers subjects as the Conditions of the Island; the Social Condition of the People; the Labour Question; the Stipendiary Magistrate; the Governor’s Salary; Reforms of the Judicial System; Advantages of Conciliation; Prison Discipline; the Health of the Troops, and Answers to Addresses from the parishes of St. Catherine, St. Ann and St. Thomas; the Missionary Presbytery and the St. George’s Agricultural Society. The “Addresses” themselves, to the number of thirty-nine from all sections of the community, were published in Jamaica in 1842.
From this volume we learn that the first proposal to erect a statue to Metcalfe in St. Jago de la Vega was made and adopted at a meeting of the inhabitants of St. Catherine held on March 17, 1842, and this was supported by meetings held in many of the parishes. There was, however, a counter proposal to have a statue in Kingston. St. Jago de la Vega won then, but time has brought revenge to Kingston. In 1847 £200 was paid by the Assembly for a temple for the statue of Metcalfe, and they voted “£1500 for its removal and erection” in front of the Assembly Room and Library.
When Colonel Christian Lilly laid out the town of Kingston in 1692, he left in the centre a plaza or square after the Spanish method of colonial town-planning. In the eighteenth century barracks were erected to the north-west corner of this square, and the space to the south was for many years utilised as a parade-ground, as shown in Adolphe Duperly’s view in his “Daguerian Excursions in Jamaica,” published about 1844. Later on the barracks were abandoned by the troops, and they are now utilised for police-court purposes. The ornamental gardens were laid out in 1870 in the centre of the old military parade, whence they became known as the Parade Gardens; a wide space being left as roadway to the south.
At the instance of a Committee appointed to report on the most suitable way to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, £800 was voted by the Legislature in March 1897 for a Statue to Queen Victoria in addition to £700 for local rejoicings.
It was originally intended to place the statue at the front of the block of buildings which was in contemplation; but, as retrenchment then interfered with the project, the statue was erected at the top of King’s street, on the base erected for the statue of Lord Metcalfe when it was removed from Spanish Town. Owing to its small size it is to be regretted that the statue was not placed somewhere indoors, or at all events not on so high a pedestal.
It is a replica of a statue erected in the hall of the Colonial Office at Singapore in connection with the Jubilee of 1887, by E. Edward Geflowski, who exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1867 to 1872.
The statue cost in all about £800. A plaster cast that was used for the unveiling, in connection with the Jubilee rejoicings, is now at King’s House, Spanish Town. Another copy is in the Imperial Institute, London.
In February of 1914 the Victoria League of Jamaica asked the Mayor and Council of Kingston to consider the desirability of re-naming the Parade Gardens the Victoria Park, and suggested that, if they approved, occasion should be taken of the presence of Her Highness Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, on February 4, to ask her Highness to perform the ceremony, as it was felt that it would be well if the memory of Queen Victoria should be perpetuated in the centre of the principal town of the Colony, the more especially as it was in close proximity to the statue of her late Majesty. The Mayor and Council fell in with the suggestion, the consent of the Governor was obtained, and Her Highness the Princess renamed the Gardens on February 4. Although the Gardens have been fittingly named after Queen Victoria, dear to the hearts of all Jamaicans, it is to be hoped the surrounding buildings will still retain the name of Parade, and thus help to recall the days when the central part was made gay by many a military uniform.
On the eastern side of the Gardens stands a full-length statue by R. G. Miller, R.A., of Edward Jordan, C.B., “who through a long series of years and in times of danger, fearlessly stood forward as the champion of Emancipation and for the removal of civil disabilities,” erected by public subscription. The statue of another distinguished Jamaican, Dr. Lewis Quier Bowerbank, was erected in the year 1881, on the northern side, by his numerous friends and admirers; but a third statue, that of Father Dupont, a Roman Catholic priest who for many years laboured among the poor of the city, erected at the north-east corner, was destroyed by the earthquake of 1907.
Other monuments of interest in Kingston are a bust portrait of the Rev. John Radcliffe (preacher and poet), in the Scotch church, by Sir Thomas Brock, R.A., erected by public subscription in 1896, which, though buried under the ruins of the porch, escaped serious injury in the earthquake of 1907, and a memorial tablet to the Rev. William James Gardner (Congregational minister and historian) in the Congregational church, North street, erected after his death, which occurred in 1874.
Amongst disused burial-grounds are the Stranger’s Burial-Ground (earliest tomb is dated 1753) and the Spring Path Burial-Ground, both by the Railway Station (earliest tomb is dated 1794); the Baptist Ground, in the Windward Road (earliest tomb dated 1801); the Wesleyan Methodist Cemetery at the corner of Windward Road and Elletson Road (earliest tomb dated 1791); the Jewish Cemetery in Elletson Road (the earliest tomb dated 1797); the Jewish Cemeteries at the south-east and south-west corners of Church and North streets (in the former the earliest tomb dated 1719), all contain monuments of historic interest.
In view of recent interest evinced in the question of wharf accommodation it may be well to republish a “List and Situation of the Public Wharves in Kingston, running East and West,” which appeared in the “Columbian Magazine” (Kingston) in 1800—one hundred and fifteen years ago.
I. Welsh & Son’s: bottom of John’s Lane.
I. Harriot’s: between John’s Lane and Duke Street.
G. Douglas & Co., and I. Sewell’s: bottom of Duke Street.
John Davidson’s: between Duke Street and Mark Lane.
Donaldson & Heron, and M’Bean & Bagnold’s: bottom of Mark Lane.
Jaques, Laing, & Ewing’s: between Mark Lane and Church Street.
Duncomb & Pownal, and Bogle & Cathcart’s: bottom of Church Street.
Thomas Hyne’s: between Church Street and Temple Lane.
Kinkhead & Sproull; and Hardy, Pennock & Brittan’s: bottom of Temple Lane.
John West & Co.’s: between Temple Lane and King Street.
Willis & Waterhouse; and Bogle, Jopp & Co.’s: bottom of King Street.
Joseph Teasdale; and I. Robertson & Co.’s: bottom of Peter’s Lane.
Burnett, Stirling & Co.; and W. Cleland’s: bottom of Orange Street.
Cowgill & Co.’s; between Orange Street and Luke Lane.
Henry West & Co.; and Donaldson, Forbes, Grant & Stewart’s: bottom of Luke Lane.
Dick, McCall & Co.’s: between Luke Lane and Princess Street.
Shaw, Holy & Co.; and Lindo & Brothers’: bottom of Princess Street.
Ordnance; and R. Sutherland & Co.’s: bottom of Matthew’s Lane.
W. B. Bryan & Co.; and Fairclough & Barnes’s: bottom of West Street.
Dick, McCall & Co.’s Lumber Wharf: next on the Westward; and further on.
Liddle & Rennie’s.
Notes
5. How sweet the fruit the hard rind yields.
6. Behold! the Cross hath spread its arms into another world, and beareth fruit.
7. The Indians twain shall serve one Lord.