Part 15
Amongst other monuments in the church are those to the following: Richard Guy, who represented in the Assembly “the North-side” (1671–2), St. Ann and St. James in 1673–74, and St. James from 1675 to 1679. In 1676 he patented 1000 acres of which Latium (not Latimer as Lawrence-Archer and Feurtado—after him—have it) in St. John, formed part: George Modd, who represented St. John in the Assembly in 1718, 1719, and 1722, and St. Catherine in 1721, in which year he was speaker; and Colonel Whitgift Aylmer. The arms on his monument are: a cross between four Cornish choughs close; the crest, a Cornish chough rising out of a ducal coronet. From the title “Honourable” it is possible, Roby points out, that he was custos of the precinct of St. Catherine (which comprehended the parish of St. John with St. Dorothy and St. Thomas-in-the-Vale), as he does not appear to have been a member of the Council; and although from the arms on his monument it may be inferred that he was of the now noble family of Aylmers, of Balrath, Co. Meath, yet that family was not ennobled until 1718, seventeen years after his decease, when Matthew (second son of Sir Christopher Aylmer, who was created a baronet of Ireland in 1682), rear-admiral of the red, was created Baron Aylmer of Balrath.
The family, which had been long settled in Ireland, is said to have been descended from Aylmer, a Saxon duke of Cornwall, and Sir Gerald Alymer, who, 25 Hen. VIII (1533), was a Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, was great-great-grandfather to Sir Christopher, the first baronet before mentioned.
The family gave an archbishop to Canterbury, and Whitgift Aylmer is supposed to have descended from Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury. He was member of Assembly for St. John’s 1673–74, 1677, 1677 again; St. Ann’s 1680–81 and 1687–88; and for St. John’s 1701. The Christian name of his wife was Joyce, as appears from the register of St. Catherine’s, in which parish two of their children were baptized—Mary, June 11, 1669, and John, September 5, 1687. His son was also a member of the Assembly.
The following notice of his election for this parish appears under the date of June 26, 1701.
It appearing by the return of the writs, that Lieutenant-Colonel Whitgift Aylmer was elected for the parish of St. John, and Whitgift Aylmer for the parish of St. James, and it being doubted whether the said Whitgift Aylmer, elected for the parish of St. James, was Colonel Whitgift Aylmer the father or Whitgift Aylmer the son, and a debate thereon, it was put to the vote whether the House understood by the said returns, that Lieutenant-Colonel Whitgift Aylmer or Whitgift Aylmer his son were elected for the parish of St. James.
_Resolved_, that it was understood by the return to be Whitgift Aylmer the son.
The memory of the family still lives in Aylmers estate hard by.
The parish of St. Dorothy, which was formed out of part of Clarendon and part of St. Catherine in 1675, was, on the general reduction of the number of parishes in 1867, merged into St. Catherine.
=Old Harbour= bay was called by Columbus _Puerto de las Vacas_, probably because he saw a number of manatees there when he visited it on his homeward way after he had discovered Jamaica.
Bernaldez tells us that:
Thus sailing in a southerly direction they anchored one evening in a bay in a territory where there were many large villages; and the cacique of a very large village which was above the ships came and brought them a quantity of fresh provisions and the admiral gave some of the things which he had on board to him and his followers, and they were much pleased; and the cacique asked whence they came and what the admiral’s name was, and the admiral answered that he was a vassal of the mighty and illustrious sovereigns the king and queen of Castile, his masters, who had sent him to these parts to learn and discover those lands and to do much honour to good men but to destroy the bad. Now he spoke to them by means of his Indian interpreter and the said cacique was much pleased, and he asked the interpreter at great length about things in Spain, and he told him at great length at which the cacique and the other Indians were much astonished and pleased and they stayed there until night, and then took leave of the admiral. Next day the admiral departed, and as he was sailing with a light wind, the cacique came with three canoes and overtook the admiral coming in an orderly and stately manner; one of the canoes was as large as a sea-going ship and was painted all over: the cacique came and his wife and two daughters and two young lads, his sons and five brothers and others who were followers; one of the daughters was 18 years old, and very beautiful; she was quite naked according to the custom of those parts, the other was younger.
In the prow of the canoe stood the standard-bearer of the cacique clad in a mantle of variegated feathers, with a tuft of gay plumes on his head, and bearing in his hand a fluttering white banner. Two Indians with caps or helmets of feathers of uniform shape and colour and their faces painted in a similar manner, beat upon tabors; two others, with hats curiously wrought of green feathers, held trumpets of a fine black wood, ingeniously carved; there were six others, in large hats of white feathers, who appeared to be guards to the cacique.
Having arrived alongside of the admiral’s ship, the cacique entered on board with all his train. He appeared in full regalia. Around his head was a band of small stones of various colours, but principally green, symmetrically arranged, with large white stones at intervals, and connected in front by a large jewel of gold. Two plates of gold were suspended to his ears by rings of very small green stones. To a necklace of white beads, of a kind deemed precious by them, was suspended a large plate, in the form of a fleur-de-lys, of guanin, an inferior species of gold; and a girdle of variegated stones, similar to those around his head, completed his regal decorations. His wife was adorned in a similar manner, having also a very small apron of cotton, and bands of the same round her arms and legs. The daughters were without ornaments, excepting the eldest and handsomest, who had a girdle of small stones, from which was suspended a tablet, the size of an ivyleaf, composed of various coloured stones embroidered on network of cotton.
When the cacique entered on board the ship he distributed presents of the productions of his island among the officers and men.
Columbus tells us that Old Harbour was inhabited by the most intelligent and most civilized of all the aborigines that he had met in the Antilles. Later it was called Esquivel, after the Spanish governor who established it as a port for ship-building.
The land on which the =Church of St. Dorothy=, commonly called Tamarind-tree church, at Old Harbour, was built, was given as a free gift by Colonel Fuller and his wife Catherine Fuller, and also the land and glebe consisting of about 30 acres of land on which the rectory house was built. Colonel Fuller was among the foremost of the Parliamentary officers who came here with Penn and Venables, and received large grants of land, comprising Fuller’s Pen and Thetford in St. Dorothy, and Fuller’s Pen in St. John’s. At a Council meeting held at St. Jago de la Vega, May 9, 1692,
Thomas Scambler Clerke, Minister and Rector of the Parish of St. Dorothy, being at the Board tendered the oaths appointed by Act of Parliament to be taken instead of the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, and also to repeat and subscribe the Declaration as by the said Act is Required Peremtarily refuse to take the same ordered that he be from henceforth _ipso facto_ deprived of his said benefice as by the said Act is Directed, and that notice thereof be given to the Churchwardens of the said parish.
On May 19, at a meeting of the council, it was
ordered that the Provost Marshall forthwith take into custody the body of Thomas Scambler Clerke, late Minister and Rector of the Parish of St. Dorothy for refusing to take the oaths ... and that the Attorney-General prosecute him thereupon.
Amongst the rectors was the Rev. William Leacock, who was of the Leacock family in Barbados. He gave up the living in 1836–37 and went to America and was the leading divine of the Episcopal church in New Orleans. He was succeeded by the Rev. Charles Hall, the Rev. McAlves, and the Rev. George Wilkinson Rowe, brother of Sir Joshua Rowe, the chief justice of Jamaica, who held the rectory for upwards of 30 years, and the Rev. W. C. McCalla, who commenced the building of the chancel and organ chamber about 1890.
Up to the year 1845–46 the old church was usually called the Old Harbour “barn,” with red brick walls and wooden window shutters. The church was renovated and restored and a belfry was put on the roof by the late Alexander Bravo in the time of the Rev. George W. Rowe.
In the church are monuments to Colonel Thomas Fuller (d. 1690) and John Pusey (d. 1767).
=Colebeck Castle=, which stands on a ridge of land on the west bank of the Colebeck gully, about a mile and a half to the north-west of Old Harbour town, overlooking the bay, probably dates from the end of the seventeenth century. It must have been the most imposing building of the kind erected in Jamaica. It was evidently at one time partially destroyed by fire. It is rectangular in plan, about 114 feet wide and 90 feet deep, consisting of four three-storied, square, tower-like buildings at each corner, rising to a height of about 40 feet, connected by two-storied arched arcades, consisting on two sides of three arches, on the other sides of five arches. The windows on the ground floor are circular. The walls are formed of stone, filled in between with rubble, with brick quoins and window facings, and are about 2 feet 6 inches thick; at every fourth or fifth course is a course of larger sized bricks. The inside walls have been coated with plaster work. Some of the lintels of doors and windows still remain, and are of bully-wood, as good as when they were first put up. A concrete terrace ran around the castle, with steps at front and back.
Parts of a projecting wall—at a distance of about 114 feet from the castle on each side, enclosing a square of about 300 feet—about 12 inches thick, still remain, and show crudely-formed loopholes for firing. In some places there is a drop of from 12 to 20 feet on the outside. At each corner of the outer wall was a substantial building some 60 feet square, and underneath three of them were vaulted dungeons. Two dungeons are no higher than 6 feet, 8 feet wide, and 24 feet long, with only one very small aperture low down at one end. The dungeon at another corner measures 60 feet by 20 feet, and is reached by a flight of twenty steps.
To-day the castle is surrounded by bush, and is the abode of bats and owls. On the surrounding property sugar has given place to tobacco.
From his black marble gravestone on the floor of the south transept in the cathedral, we learn that “Collnel John Colbeck of Colbeck in St. Dorothyes was born ye 30th of May, 1630, and came with ye army that conquered this island ye 10th day of May, 1655, where haveing discharged several honble. offices both civill and military with great applause he departed this life ye 22d day of February 1682.”
He was returned member for Old Harbour in the first Assembly of Jamaica, which met on January 20, 1663–64. In 1664, as Sedgwick had prophesied in a letter to Thurloe, the Maroons proved a thorn in the side of the English settlers. Though the main body under Juan de Bolas had surrendered after the defeat of the Spaniards by Doyley, other parties remained in inaccessible retreats, and, augmented by runaway slaves, gave great trouble by intermittent descents on the planters in the interior. Foremost amongst these were the Vermaholis negroes. After the death, in action, of Juan de Bolas, who on surrendering had been made a colonel of the Black regiment, Captain Colebeck, in March 1664, was employed to endeavour to quell them. “He went,” Long tells us, “by sea to the north side, and having gained some advantages over them, he returned, with one who pretended to treat for the rest. This embassy, however, was only calculated to amuse the whites, and gain some respite; for they no sooner found themselves in a proper condition, and the white inhabitants lulled into security, than they began to renew hostilities.”
In the survey of Jamaica sent home by Modyford in 1670, under St. Katherine’s parish we read: “John Colebeck (812 acres); Capt. Colebeck and inhabitants (1340 acres).”
In the third Assembly, which met on February 1, 1671–72, Colebeck’s name appears among the representatives of St. Catherine as “Major John Colebeck for Bowers,” Bowers being the district in which Colebeck Castle stands. On February 14 following “the Gentlemen of the Assembly in a body came to the Council and informed the Governor [Sir Thomas Lynch, Lieutenant-Governor] of the sickness of their Speaker, Captain Samuel Long, who recommended unto them Major John Colebeck, with whom they went back to their House and immediately returned their thanks to the Governor for his proposing so fit and able a person to be their Speaker.”
Colebeck remained speaker of the Assembly until Samuel Long was re-elected in May 1673; but on Long’s election to the Council, Colebeck was passed over for the speakership, and Beeston was elected.
In the fourth Assembly, May 10, 1673, Colebeck was again returned under the general head of St. Catherine as chosen specially for Bowers. In the next Assembly, which met on February 13, 1673–74, his name appears as one of the three representatives for St. Catherine generally, the return omitting the former distinctions of one member for St. Jago, another for Sixteen Mile Walk, and a third for Bowers. In the sixth Assembly, April 26, 1675, he was elected for the newly formed parish of St. Dorothy, and continued until his death to represent that parish in every successive assembly, viz. on April 9, 1677, when he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel; on September 6, 1677; September 2, 1678; August 19, 1679, when he had attained his colonelcy; and finally on March 19, 1680–81.
In a “Brief Account of the Government of Jamaica,” drawn up in 1680, his name appears fourth on the list of justices of the peace for Precinct IV (St. Catherine’s, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, and St. Dorothy’s), coming after those of Byndloss, Ballard and Long.
In 1679 he was one of a committee of fourteen of the Council and Assembly for the Defence of Jamaica, who signed specific recommendations to the governor for strengthening the breastwork, arming the new works, and providing four fire-ships.
On February 17, 1682, the Lords of Trade and Plantations agreed to recommend, and the King approved, Colonel John Colebeck to be of the Council of Jamaica, in the room of Colonel Whitfield deceased, but he had died before the decision reached Jamaica. His will, dated February 20, was proved on March 15, 1682–83. He does not seem to have had relations for whom he cared, for he named none. He left all his estate, real and personal, to his executors, Hender Molesworth and Samuel Bernard (to each of whom he gave £40), to hold for payment of his just debts and legacies. He bequeathed money to purchase a ring to each of Sir Thomas Lynch, Robert Byndloss and Sir Henry Morgan. He left £20 to Henry Howser, the rector of St. Catherine, to preach his funeral sermon. He left £10 each to Dr. Ross and Edmund Duck, the Attorney-General, and £300 to Mrs. Ann Ash; and to every one of “ye Gentlemen of Councill each a ring of 30/- price. To ye church of St. Dorothy’s ye charge of glassing all ye windows and putting in iron barrs.”
After his death, the name of Colebeck does not appear in Jamaica history. As his arms are not given on his tombstone, there is nothing to show whether he came of the Bedfordshire or the Lincolnshire branch of the family; but there is a tradition in the Colbeck family that a member of the Lincolnshire branch at Louth was transported to the West Indies for cutting down an elm tree; that he acquired a fortune, and that his estate went into Chancery.
The principal reminiscence of the great earthquake of 1692 which overthrew Port Royal is the =Tomb of Lewis Galdy=, which is on the opposite side of Kingston harbour, at Green Bay, where at one time many naval officers were interred. On a brick tomb rests a white marble slab with Galdy’s crest and arms. The arms are a cock, two mullets in chief and a crescent in base. The crest, on an esquire’s helmet, is a plume, and the motto “Dieu sur tout.” The following is the inscription:
Here Lyes the Body of LEWIS GALDY, Esq., who departed this life at _Port Royal_ the 22nd December 1739. Aged 80. He was Born at _Montpelier_ in _France_, but left that Country for his Religion and came to settle in this _Island_, where he was swallowed up in the Great Earthquake in the year 1692 and by the Providence of God was by another Shock thrown into the _Sea_, and miraculously saved by swimming until a boat took him up: He lived many years after in great Reputation, Beloved by all who knew him and much lamented at his death.
Lawrence-Archer, in recording this inscription, adds: “Mr. Galdy probably exaggerated the circumstances of his escape, especially as there was no one left to contradict his statement.” There must have been at the time of his death many persons living who could have borne witness to Galdy’s escape. Galdy probably did not write his own epitaph. Moreover, if Lawrence-Archer had experienced an earthquake himself he would not have been so ready to scoff; and the following contemporary accounts all tend to prove the truth of the monumental inscription. In the earthquake of 1907 there were many escapes almost as miraculous as Galdy’s.
In “The Truest and Largest Account of the Earthquake in Jamaica, June the 7th, 1692, Written by a Reverend Divine there to his friend in London” (London, 1693) it is stated:
You would admire at the Goodness of God in the Preservation of the residue; some were very miraculously delivered from death, swallowed down into the Bowels of the Earth alive and spewed up again, and saved by the violent Eruption of Water through those Gaps; some (as they say themselves, if they were alive at that time to know what was done to them) were swallowed up in one place, and by the rushing of Waters to and fro by reason of the agitation of the Earth at that time, were cast up again by another Chasm at places far distant.
This account is corroborated by the contemporary account given by Captain Crocket, writing from Port Royal on June 30, 1692. He says:
Several People were Swallow’d up of the Earth, when the Sea breaking in before the Earth could Close, were washed up again and Miraculously saved from Perishings; Others the Earth received up to their Necks, and then Closed upon them and squeez’d them to Death; with their Heads above ground, many of which the Dogs Eat; Multitudes of People Floating up and down, having no Burial.
Also in “A full Account of the Late Dreadful Earthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica, Written in two Letters from the Minister of that Place” (London, 1692), we read:
But no place suffered like Port Royal; where whole Streets were swallowed up by the opening Earth, and the Houses and Inhabitants went down together, some of them were driven up again by the Sea, which arose in those breaches and wonderfully escaped; some were swallowed up to the Neck, and then the Earth shut upon them, and squeezed them to death; and in that manner several are left buried with their Heads above ground, and some Heads the Dogs have eaten, others are covered with Dust and Earth by the people which yet remain in the Place to avoid the stench.
Also in a letter, dated Jamaica, September 20, 1692, quoted by Sir Hans Sloane:
The Earth when it opened up and swallowed up people, they rose in other streets, some in the middle of the Harbour, and yet saved; though at the same time I believe there was lost about 2000 Whites and Blacks.
Elsewhere in the same letter it says:
She [the anonymous writer’s wife] told me when she felt the House shake, she run out, and called all within to do the same: She was no sooner out but the Sand lifted up; and her Negro Woman grasping about her, they both dropped into the Earth together; and at the same Instant the Water coming in rowled them over and over, till at length they catched hold of a beam, where they hung, till a Boat came from a Spanish Vessel and took them up.
And again, in a letter of July 3, 1693, “Some were swallowed quite down, and cast up again by great Quantities of Water; others went down and were never more seen. These were the smallest openings: Others that were more large swallowed up great Houses, and out of some gapings would issue great Rivers of Water, spouted up a great height into the Air, which seemed to threaten a Deluge to that part of Port-Royal.”
But the most detailed account of all is given in “A Natural History of Nevis and the rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America. With many other Observations on Nature and Art. In Eleven Letters from the Rev. Mr. Smith, sometime Rector of St. John’s, at Nevis, and now Rector of St. Mary’s in Bedford; to the Rev. Mr. Mason, B.D., Woodwardian Professor, and Fellow of Trinity College, in Cambridge, 1745.”
One Mrs. Akers of Nevis was a native of Port Royal in Jamaica, and lived there in the year of our Lord 1692, when the great earthquake made such a dismal havoc and destruction, as will hardly ever be forgotten by the inhabitants of that Island. She told me, ‘That the earth opened wide, swallowed her with many others, and then immediately closed up again’; she said she was in a state of insensibility during her short stay there. It could not exceed the tenth part of a minute before it opened once more to vomit some of them up again. I asked her what might be her thoughts of the matter just the moment before the Earth swallowed her down; and she answered, that imagining herself upon the brink of a boundless Eternity, she put up a short ejaculation to Almighty God, begging him to pardon her Sins, and to receive her Soul. The Hiatus she fell into was all Water, so that being very wet she received no other harm, excepting in one of her Cheeks, which grated a little against something that did but just draw blood. This water Hiatus closed again the next moment, catching hold of some people by a Leg, of others by the middle of the Body, and of others some by the Arm &c., detaining them in dismal torture, but immovably fixed in the ground, till they, with almost the whole Town besides, sunk under Water; which happen’d within three minutes after she had got safe on board a Ship then riding at anchor in the Harbour.
Galdy was an affluent merchant of Port Royal, churchwarden from 1726, and member of Assembly for St. Mary, 1707; for Port Royal, 1708–09; for St. George, 1711; for Port Royal again, 1716; and for St. Anne, 1718. He enriched himself by the slave trade, as factor for the Assiento.
Until about the middle of the last century various inns and posting-houses, or taverns, as they were generally called, were kept in Jamaica. Some were rendered unnecessary by the advent of the railway, and some were superseded owing to the more rapid travelling rendered possible by better roads.
Of these the =Ferry Inn=, formerly the halfway house between Kingston and Spanish Town, has survived hurricane and earthquake, only to live on its departed glory, and no longer as a tavern.