Part 19
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.