Part 13

He met with considerable opposition from a portion of the Assembly, whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner. That, added to troubles arising from incursions by French cruisers on the seaside plantations—the result of the war—plunderings by the runaway slaves, the original maroons, and an outbreak of slaves in Clarendon, undermined his constitution. Nineteen months of worry were terminated by his death, on Saturday, January 16, 1691–2, “after long indisposition through fever and plague which ended in a flux”; he was buried that night in the parish church at St. Jago de la Vega. Until recently no monument marked the spot. A memorial brass has now, however, been erected in the cathedral by Lord Inchiquin with the following inscription:

IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM O’BRIEN, 2ND EARL OF INCHIQUIN GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA FROM 31ST MAY, 1690, TILL 16TH JANUARY, 1691–2. _When he died of fever at St. Jago de la Vega_, AND WAS BURIED IN THIS CHURCH ERECTED IN 1912 BY LUCIUS W. XVTH BARON INCHIQUIN.

In connection with his governorship of Tangier, Inchiquin has been described as “a well-meaning impulsive man, devoid of discretion,” and this description seems equally applicable to his Jamaica career.

By his first wife, Lady Margaret Boyle, daughter of the first Earl of Orrery, he had three sons, of whom the third, James, was a member of the Council of Jamaica, Captain of Fort Charles, and chief of an expedition that destroyed French settlements in Hispaniola.

James O’Brien returned to England at his father’s death.

For the first thirty-four years of British occupation, the governors of Jamaica lived partly at Spanish Town and partly at Port Royal. In 1675 the Assembly voted £500 to be employed in buying the house Lord Vaughan lived in at Spanish Town “for the Governor’s use for ever.”

On January 13, 1690, however, the President and Council passed an “Order for hiring a house in Port Royal and for provision for the reception of Lord Inchiquin.”

On March 27, 1690, they passed an “Order for King’s House to be made ready for Lord Inchiquin,” but the Order does not state whether Port Royal or St. Jago de la Vega was meant, probably the latter.

On June 18 it was resolved that “Their Majesties’ house at St. Jago de la Vega being extremely out of repair and almost ruinous so it is in no manner fit for the reception of His Excellency, it was decided by the Board if His Excellency would be pleased to let it be ordered, and it is hereby ordered that the rent of the house where His Excellency now lives be paid out of their Majesties’ revenue for the island till the other be so repaired or built, that it may be fit for his reception.”

On December 18, 1690, it was “ordered that £600 be allowed for building an addition to the King’s House on Port Royal to be paid out of their Majesties’ revenue for this island.”

On January 28, 1691–2, just after the death of Lord Inchiquin, the Council wrote home to the Lords of Trade and Plantations: “We beg that the Governor’s residence may be fixed at St. Jago de la Vega, which is the most convenient place.”

At a Council meeting on March 15, 1691–2, it was ordered that £250 be paid to Samuel Bernard for “rent of the house the Earl of Inchiquin, late Governor, lived in at the Towne of St. Jago de la Vega.”

On May 9, 1692, just after the earthquake, the Council made an “Order for agreement as to the goods belonging to the late Governor at King’s House, for the accommodation of the next Governor,” and on June 24, they passed an “Order for material for rebuilding King’s House.” This presumably refers to St. Jago de la Vega.

On July 8 of that year the Lords of Trade and Plantations at a meeting at which Beeston, who was then agent for Jamaica in England, and was soon to be appointed lieutenant-governor, was in attendance, resolved that the “King’s House at St. Jago de la Vega should be sold, and the proceeds devoted to the purchase of another house”—at the very time that it was probably being rebuilt.

On the Earl of Inchiquin’s death, the Government bought of Lady Inchiquin for the use of the Government, goods to the value of £90. These included the “King and Queen’s picture” valued at £20. Where is that picture now?

It is interesting to note that in the contemporary manuscript Council Minutes the name Inchiquin is always spelt phonetically Insiquin.

=Sir Hans Sloane= studied botany, materia medica, and pharmacy, in England and France. It is said that, before consenting to accompany Albemarle, the newly appointed governor, to Jamaica in 1687, he consulted Sydenham on the subject, and that the father of English medicine told him that he had better drown himself in Rosamond’s Pond, a sheet of water in St. James’s Park, which was then a fashionable resort for intending suicides. He, however, decided to come. While in Jamaica he attended, in addition to the duke’s “numerous family,” many people professionally, including the whilom buccaneering governor, Morgan; making in his reports very frank references to their mode of life.

In fifteen months he collected 800 plants, most of which were new specimens; of these he published, in 1696, his “Catalogus Plantarum.” On April 16, 1691, Evelyn writes: “I went to see Dr. Sloane’s curiosities, being a universal collection of the natural productions of Jamaica, consisting of plants, fruits, corals, minerals, stones, earth, shells, animals and insects, collected with great judgement; several folios of dried plants, and one which had about eighty several sorts of ferns and another of grasses; the Jamaica pepper in branch, leaves, flower, fruit, &c. This collection, with his Journal, and other philosophical and natural discourses and observations, indeed very copious and extraordinary, sufficient to furnish a history of that island, to which I encouraged him.” In 1707 and 1725 Sloane issued two large volumes entitled, “A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, St. Christopher and Jamaica, with the Natural History ... of the last of those Islands,” with many engravings from crayon drawings. The work was parodied by the clever but drunken Dr. William King, under the title “The Present State of Physic in the Island of Cajami.”

Sloane’s wife, whom he married in 1695 and who died in 1724, was Elizabeth, daughter of Alderman Langley and widow of Ffulk Rose, of St. Catherine, who from 1675 to 1693 represented first St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, and afterwards St. John, in the House of Assembly.

Soon after the death of his patron, the Duke of Albemarle, Sloane returned to England. In 1693 he was secretary to the Royal Society, of which he edited the transactions for twenty years, contributing twenty-two papers. Of these one was an account of the earthquake of 1692 which destroyed Port Royal, already alluded to. Meantime he practised with great success as a physician. In 1716 he was created a baronet, being the first physician so honoured, and made physician-general to the army; from 1719 to 1735 he was president of the College of Physicians; and in 1727 president of the Royal Society. He bequeathed his books, manuscripts, prints and curiosities (including his Jamaica collections) to the nation, on condition that £20,000 (or less than half of what they had cost him) was paid to his executors. The collection formed the basis of the British Museum. He gave to the Apothecaries Company the freehold of the physic garden at Chelsea, and he assisted to start the Foundling Hospital.

Tradition points to a house (now No. 14), in what has been known as Nugent Street, Spanish Town, for upwards of a century, as the residence of Sloane.

In a MS. scrap book called “The Omnibus, or Jamaica Scrap Book,” in the West India Library of the Institute of Jamaica, dating from about 1840, there is an account of Sir Hans Sloane, wherein it states: “This celebrated naturalist during his stay in Jamaica resided in the old Spanish fronted building which was till about the year 1828 to be discerned in the lane at the back of the King’s House in Spanish Town, and which about that period came by purchase into the hands of a tradesman, who, without any respect to its former possessor, razed it to the ground and erected upon the site a blacksmith’s shop and other tradesmen’s offices, at which period some of his etchings, were discovered in a ruined outhouse.” The present building is of a type that has existed in the colony “from time.”

Previous to the building of a _King’s House_, the governors of Jamaica apparently lived in whatever house they chose. From the following entry in the Council Minutes of June 16, 1684, it would appear that there were in 1683 two King’s Houses, one at Port Royal and one at Spanish Town: “Ordered that His Excellency’s order shall be sufficient warrant for issuing money for the fortifications, repair of the King’s Houses, &c., according to the Act of this country”; and this is confirmed by the accounts of the Receiver-General for 1684–85, which contains references to the “King’s House at Town” [Spanish Town] and the King’s House at Port Royal. In July 1689 it was reported that in the Duke of Albemarle’s time (December 1687 to October 1688) the King’s House at Port Royal had been appointed for a Popish priest, Thomas Churchill, to say Mass in.

In June 1689 Colonel Hender Molesworth, who did not live to take up his position as governor for a second term of office, suggested, in his proposals as to the government of Jamaica, that “it would be well to sell the old King’s House [presumably at Port Royal], and build a new one at Spanish Town”; but in January 1690 it was ordered, as we have seen, that a house should be built in Port Royal, and provision made for the reception of Lord Inchiquin. There was, however, a King’s House at Spanish Town in Beeston’s time. On July 8, 1692, it was decided by the Lords of Trade and Plantations that “the King’s House at St. Jago de la Vega should be sold, and the proceeds devoted to the purchase of another house”; but on July 27, 1693, Beeston wrote home: “I hope also to get them to raise money to put King’s House at St. Jago (where I live) in order, for at present it only protects me from the sun and rain, having no convenience for horses or servants, nor room for but few in a family, and being as common as the highway. Nevertheless, my cost of living, for the honour of the Government, is more than double what I am allowed, nor is there money nor like to be yet awhile, to pay me what I am allowed by their Majesty’s.”

In October 1700 he wrote home: “I am also enlarging to more than double the King’s House, which was too little for any indifferent family, and have taken in all the land belonging to it with a bricke wall, and have made aditions of out houses for the reception of servants and for offices, all which will bee finished in a short time, and will be very comodious and useful, tho’ not so beautyfull, being built not one entire fabricke, but by peices.”

There was a Queen’s House when Lord Archibald Hamilton arrived in 1711, but it was in a “ruinous condition” and “could not be made tenable under £2000,” which was voted. The Duke of Portland (1724–6) expended £1544 0_s._ 1¾_d._ over the £4000 voted on the then King’s House, but this sum was not refunded to his widow although a committee of the Assembly recommended it.

The original residence of the governors consisted partly of the old Spanish edifice and partly of irregular additions made from time to time by Sir William Beeston and other governors. The Spanish hall of audience was demolished in 1761 to make way for the present building. Of it Long says:

Nothing of art or elegance graced the inside of this hall: it was lined throughout with boards, or rather planks, unequally hewn with an adze, none of them appearing to have undergone the embellishment of the plane; these were rudely nailed to upright posts, which supported the roof. The posts were for the most part crooked, not even squared, and many of them had some remnant of their bark, but they retained for the most part their primitive solidity. The whole of the woodwork, indeed, seemed to have passed through no other hands than those of a clumsy ship-carpenter.

This description might almost apply to the dwellings of the native Arawâks.

The former official residence of the governors of Jamaica, or King’s House, as it is called, stands on the west side of the square. The plan was designed by Craskell, the engineer of the island, and approved during the administration of Lieutenant-Governor Henry Moore in 1759–62; but the building was not completed until the arrival of Governor William Henry Lyttelton in 1762.

The expense of building and furnishing amounted to nearly £30,000 currency (or £21,428 sterling), and in Long’s time (_circa_ 1774) it was “thought to be the noblest and best edifice of the kind, either in North America or any of the British colonies in the West Indies.” The façade is about 200 feet long; the freestone used in the construction came from the Hope river course in St. Andrew. The columns supporting the portico are of Portland stone, the pavement of white marble, of which much came out, as ballast, from time to time in the old sugar ships, and is still seen in many a great house and town dwelling. The following is taken from Long’s description of the interior:

Two principal entrances lead through it into the body of the house; the one opens into a lobby, or ante-chamber; the other into the great saloon, or hall of audience, which is well proportioned, the dimensions being about 73 by 30 feet, and the height about 32; from the ceiling, which is coved, hang two brass gilt lustres. A screen of seven large Doric pillars divides the saloon from an upper and lower gallery of communication, which range the whole length on the West side; and the upper one is secured with an elegant entrelas of figured iron work. The East or opposite side of the saloon is finished with Doric pilasters, upon each of which are brass girandoles double-gilt; and between each pilaster, under the windows of the Attic story, are placed, on gilt brackets, the busts of several ancient and modern philosophers and poets, large as life; which being in bronze, the darkness of their complexion naturally suggests the idea of so many Negro Caboceros, exalted to this honourable distinction for some peculiar services rendered to the country. At the North end, over a door which opens into the lobby, is a small moveable orchestra, made to hold a band of music on festive occasions. The furniture below consists of a great number of mahogany chairs and settees, sufficient to accommodate a large company, the room being chiefly used for public audiences, entertainments, balls, and the hearings of chancery and ordinary. At the South end are three folding doors opening into a spacious apartment, in which, by the Governor’s permission, the Council usually meet; whence it has received the name of the Council Chamber....

Monk Lewis, writing in 1834, says: “The Government House is a large clumsy-looking brick building with a portico, the stucco of which has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to architectural beauty.” And with this criticism one must fain agree.

In Long’s time a new governor was usually feasted for three successive days in Spanish Town; after which he was wont to make a kind of public entry into Kingston, where more festivities were got up in his honour—the two towns vying the one with the other; and Lady Nugent, in her Journal, makes many references to gay doings in King’s House, Spanish Town.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, King’s House—in common with its younger rival in the plain of Liguanea—remained King’s House, and did not permanently change its name to Queen’s House, as did the official residences of other British colonies, although in 1840 the House of Assembly alluded to the Queen’s House.

With the removal of the seat of Government the remaining glory departed from Spanish Town. With the exception of the year 1873, when it was utilised for a little more than twelve months by Queen’s College, of which Grant Allen was one of the staff, and the occupation by a temporary tenant of recent years, King’s House has been practically empty.

Jamaica’s former capital is like one of her bridges, which now and again, through the change of a rivercourse, is left to span a dry passage.

In the palmy days of old the lot of a governor and his wife could not have been altogether a happy one. Lady Nugent writes, under date August 3, 1801, soon after their arrival in the island:

Up at six. A grand breakfast at eight and a council at ten. Lord B[alcarres] set off immediately for his country-house, called The Penn. A salute was fired, and all due honours paid to him, as he drove off. General Nugent then walked in procession to the House of Assembly, and was sworn in as Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief. Then another salute was fired, and he came back and held a levee. I remained above stairs until four o’clock, seeing all the proceedings from my windows, or the gallery round the Egyptian Hall. I then went to the drawing-room, and received all the ladies of Spanish Town, &c., the principal officers of the Navy and Army, the members of Council, and a number of the gentlemen of the House of Assembly, who had come to compliment the new Governor and his Lady; bowing, curtseying, and making speeches, till six o’clock. The ladies then dined with me in the Ball-room, and the gentlemen with General N. in the Egyptian Hall. My guests were forty in number, with ten gentlemen to carve for us. General N. had three or four times that number with him; but we should not call them _our_ guests, as these dinners were given to us by the public. I must remark the loads of turtle, turkies, hams, and whole kids, that crowded my table, and increased the heat of the climate. The room, too, was filled with black servants; and all the population, I believe, both white and black, were admitted to walk round the table, and stare at me after dinner. They did General N. the same favour, being, I suppose, very curious to see what sort of looking people we were; but their curiosity added most exceedingly to the heat, and, indeed, I never felt anything like it in all my life. At two o’clock all the ladies took their leave, and some of the gentlemen; but General N. left those that remained to enjoy their bottle, and he and I retired to our own apartment, but not to rest, for the garrison gave us a grand serenade, and the house was a scene of dancing, singing, and merriment almost the whole night.

No wonder she writes on the following day “This day we have kept to ourselves.”

=Rodney=, who was for three and a half years commander-in-chief on the Jamaica station, crowned that service by his ever-memorable victory over De Grasse on April 12, 1782. The early days of that April had been dark indeed for Jamaica. The militia had been called up for the defence of the capital, extra taxation had been imposed to meet the cost of defensive preparations, and the roads had been rendered impassable by the placing of large trees across them. After weeks of doubt and fear, Rodney’s letter, written on the 14th, “between Guadaloupe and Montserrat,” announcing his victory, was received on the 25th, and fear was replaced by rejoicing, which received additional impetus when four days later Rodney himself appeared with his fleet, accompanied by nine prizes, including the famous _Ville de Paris_.

On February 20, 1783, the House of Assembly resolved to write to the agent of the colony in England, Stephen Fuller, desiring him “to apply to the most eminent artist in England, to prepare an elegant marble statue of Lord Rodney, with a handsome pedestal of the same, to be erected in Spanish Town in commemoration of the glorious victory obtained by that gallant commander and the brave officers and seamen serving under him, over the French fleet on April 12, 1782.”

Premiums for designs to be approved by the Royal Academy were to be offered, and the most eminent statuary employed to carry them out.

Instead of an anonymous competition for premiums open to all English sculptors, which would have included the young Flaxman, who had already shown signs of genius, the Council of the Academy directed Bacon, Carlini, Nollekens, Tyler and Wilton to prepare designs. Only Bacon and Tyler sent models, and the work was entrusted to Bacon, who was “at the extraordinary trouble of making two trips to Italy for the purpose of procuring a block of marble large enough for the design.”

We read in Leslie and Taylor’s “Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” that the President, “according to Barry (letter to the Dilettanti Society, 1798), was much disappointed at the poor result, complaining that it in some measure defeated the object of those who intrusted the commission to the Academy.” But inasmuch as Bacon was recognised as the best sculptor of the time, it is a little difficult to understand what Sir Joshua expected.

The House of Assembly voted £1000 sterling for the object, but, as is usually the case in such matters, the monument cost them considerably more before it was completed—£5200 in fact; of which £500 was for freight and erection.

The statue did not arrive until 1790; and in that year the inhabitants of Kingston and Port Royal, having heard with concern a report that it was to be erected in Spanish Town, petitioned the House that it might be placed in the Parade in Kingston. The petition says:

Conscious that such an ornament can only be adapted to decorate a place equally conspicuous in point of situation, and convenient with respect to proximity to those harbours which his victory graced, they have anticipated the public approbation of seeing his statue erected in the centre of the first commercial town in the West Indies, and, solicitous to improve every advantage of position as well as to add every possible embellishment to this testimony of public gratitude, they, some time ago, subscribed a large sum of money for the purpose of conveying water from the Hope River to the Parade of Kingston, by means of which they propose to form a spacious basin to surround the statue, and have lately subscribed a further considerable sum to assist in erecting it, but are penetrated with the greatest concern, to find a report prevails of its being intended to be placed in Spanish Town.

The petition was rejected by the vote only of the speaker _pro tem._ (William Blake), the House dividing equally; and a further sum of £3000 was voted for a “proper building” to contain it, in Spanish Town, making an expenditure of £8200. The total cost of Jamaica’s tribute to the great hero (including the public offices which form wings to the colonnade, and £3650 for the purchase of the necessary land) was £30,918 (currency).