Part 19

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.

[Illustration:

DATE TREE HALL IN 1906 ]

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]

Footnote 5:

How sweet the fruit the hard rind yields.

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 est_[6]

Footnote 6:

Behold! the Cross hath spread its arms into another world, and beareth fruit.

The _Motto_ underneath the Escutcheon is,

_Indus Uterq: serviet uni_[7]

Footnote 7:

The Indians twain shall serve one Lord.

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.”