Part 2

1664. Robert Freeman 1664. Sir Thomas Whetstone 1671. Samuel Long 1672–73. Major John Colebeck (_pro tem._) 1673. Samuel Long 1677. Lieut.-Col. William Beeston 1679–88. Samuel Bernard 1688. George Nedham (_pro tem._) 1688. Roger Hope Elletson „ Thomas Rives „ John Peeke 1691–92. Thomas Sutton 1693. Andrew Langley 1694. James Bradshaw 1698. Thomas Sutton 1701. Andrew Langley 1702. Francis Rose 1702–03. Andrew Langley 1704. Edward Stanton 1705. Matthew Gregory 1706. Hugh Totterdale „ John Peeke „ Matthew Gregory 1707–11. Peter Beckford, jun. 1711. William Brodrick „ Samuel Vassall (_pro tem._) 1711–13. Peter Beckford, jun. 1714. Hugh Totterdale 1715. John Blair 1716. Peter Beckford 1718. William Nedham 1719. Edmund Kelly 1721–22. George Modd 1722. William Nedham 1724. John Manley (_pro tem._) 1725. Francis Melling 1727–28. Thomas Beckford 1731. John Stewart 1733. William Nedham 1745. Charles Price [afterwards Sir Charles, Bt.] (_pro tem._) 1747. Richard Beckford (_pro tem._) 1751. „ „ 1755. Edward Manning 1756. Thomas Hibbert 1756. Charles Price 1763. Charles Price, jun. [afterwards 2nd Baronet] 1764. Thomas Fearon (_pro tem._) 1765. Charles Price, jun. 1766. William Nedham 1768. Edward Long „ Phillip Pinnock* 1770. Nicholas Bourke „ Charles Price, jun. 1775. Phillip Pinnock 1776. Sir Charles Price (2nd Baronet) 1778. Jasper Hall* 1778–93. Samuel Williams Haughton 1781. Thomas French (_pro tem._) 1782. William Pusey (_pro tem._) 1787. William Blake (_pro tem._) 1793. William Blake 1797. Donald Campbell 1798. Keane Osborn 1802. Philip Redwood 1809. James Lewis 1821. David Finlayson 1830. Richard Barrett 1832. Robert Allwood 1838. Richard Barrett 1839. Edward Panton 1842. Samuel Jackson Dallas* 1849. Charles McLarty Morales* 1861. Edward Jordon (_pro tem._)* 1864. Charles Hamilton Jackson*

CHIEF JUSTICES OF JAMAICA

1661. Philip Ward „ Samuel Barry 1663. William Mitchell 1664–65. Lynch 1671. John White 1675. Sir Thomas Modyford 1676–79. Samuel Long 1681. Robert Byndloss 1685. Samuel Bernard 1688. Robert Noell 1689. Roger Elletson „ Richard Lloyd 1695–98. Richard Lloyd 1698. Nicholas Lawes 1703. Peter Beckford „ Peter Heywood 1706. John Walters 1714–15. Peter Heywood 1716. Peter Bernard 1724. John Ayscough (_d._ 173 6) Edward Pennant 1733. Richard Mill 1733–35. John Gregory 1735. James Hay 1736–39. George Ellis 1739. John Gregory 1742. Dennis Kelly 1746. William Nedham 1749. John Hudson Guy 1751–56. John Palmer 1756–64. Thomas Fearon 1765. George Ellis 1766. Thomas Beach 1770. Peter Haywood 1776. Edward Webley 1779. Richard Welch 1780–83. Thomas French 1784–91. John Grant 1790. Thomas Harrison (_pro tem._) 1792. William Jackson 1801. John Henckell 1802. John Kirby 1808. John Lewis „ Philip Redwood 1818. Thomas Witter Jackson 1821. Sir William Anglin Scarlett* 1832. Sir Joshua Rowe* 1855. Sir Bryan Edwards* 1869. Sir John Lucie-Smith 1884. Sir Adam Gibb Ellis* 1895. Sir Henry James Burford-Hancock 1896. Sir Fielding Clarke 1910. Sir Anthony Coll

ATTORNEY-GENERALS OF JAMAICA

1671. Edmund Ducke 1688. Sir Richard Dereham 1686–91. Simon Musgrave 1693. William Brodrick 1698. Thomas Barrow 1698. Charles Brodrick 1703. Edward Haskins „ Robert Hotchkyn 1711–15. William Brodrick 1719. Edmund Kelly 1724. William Monk 1732. Alexander Henderson 1732. Thomas Howe 1732–44. Matthew Concanen 1744. Thomas Hill 1744–49. Robert Penny 1754. Henry Morgan Byndloss 1755. Richard Beckford 1760. Gilbert Ford 1760. Edward Penny 1766. Thomas Gordon 1766. Thomas Beach 1769. Thomas Harrison 1784. Robert Sewell 1796. George Crawford Ricketts 1802. William Ross 1806. Thomas Witter Jackson 1807. William Ross 1810. Thomas Witter Jackson 1818. William Burge 1829. Hugo James 1832. Fitz Herbert Batty 1833. Dowell O’Reilly 1857. Alexander Heslop* 1872. E. A. C. Schalch 1876. G. H. Barne 1877. E. L. O’Mally 1881. Sir Henry Hicks Hocking 1896. (Sir) Henry Rawlins Pipon Schooles 1906. Thomas Bancroft Oughton 1910. Ernest St. John Branch

NAVAL COMMANDERS-IN-CHIEF AT JAMAICA

1655. Sir William Penn, Admiral and General-at-sea* 1655–57. Vice-Admiral William Goodsonn 1656–57. Vice-Admiral Christopher Myngs* 1662. Col. Mitchell, chief over the sea-officers 1662–64. Vice-Admiral Christopher Myngs 1663. Sir Thomas Whetstone, commanded a fleet at Jamaica 1669. Henry Morgan, “Commander-in Chief of all the ships of war” of Jamaica (commission from Governor) 1676. The Duke of York was Admiral of Jamaica and all other his Majesty’s Plantations and Dominions [1692. Commodore Wrenn, commanded in the West Indies 1692. Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Wheler, commanded in the West Indies] 1702. Vice-Admiral Benbow* [1703. Vice-Admiral John Graydon, commanded a fleet in the West Indies] 1703–05. Sir William Whetstone, Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies [1706. Commodore William Kerr, commanded a fleet in the West Indies 1706. Sir John Jennings, commanded a fleet in the West Indies] 1707–09. Rear-Admiral Charles Wager* 1710–12. Commodore James Littleton 1712. Rear-Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker 1720. Commodore Vernon, Commander-in-Chief of all his Majesty’s ships in the West Indies* [1726–27. Vice-Admiral Francis Hosier, commanded a squadron in the West Indies] 1727. Commodore Edward St. Lo, in command of West India Station 1728. Vice-Admiral Edward Hopson, in command of West India Station 1728–29. Rear-Admiral Edward St. Lo, in command of West India Station 1729. Commodore William Smith 1730–33. Rear-Admiral the Hon. Charles Stuart, in command of West India Station 1732. Commodore Richard Lestock 1732–39. Commodore Sir Chaloner Ogle* 1736–37. Captain Digby Dent [1739–42. Admiral Edward Vernon, commanded in the West Indies]* 1742–44. Rear-Admiral Sir Chaloner Ogle. [1744. Vice-Admiral Thomas Davers, died at Jamaica] 1746. Captain Cornelius Mitchell 1747. Captain Digby Dent 1747–49. Rear-Admiral Charles Knowles 1749–52. Commodore the Hon. George Townshend 1755–57. Rear-Admiral the Hon. George Townshend 1757. Rear-Admiral Thomas Cotes 1760–61. Rear-Admiral Charles Holmes 1762. Commodore Sir James Douglas [1762. Admiral Sir George Pocock, Commander-in-Chief of expedition against Havana] 1762–64. Rear-Admiral Viscount Keppel 1764–66. Rear-Admiral Sir William Burnaby 1766–69. Rear-Admiral W. Parry 1769–70. Commodore Arthur Forrest* 1771–74. Rear-Admiral Sir George Rodney* 1774–78. Vice-Admiral Clarke Gayton 1778–82. Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Parker* [1779. Captain Horatio Nelson, commanded in Fort Charles, Port Royal]* 1782–83. Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley 1783–84. Vice-Admiral James Gambier 1785. Commodore John Pakenham 1785. Captain Alan Gardner* 1786. Rear-Admiral Alexander Innes 1786–89. Commodore Alan (afterwards Lord) Gardner 1790–93. Rear-Admiral Philip Affleck 1793–95. Rear-Admiral John Ford 1796. Rear-Admiral William Parker 1796. Commodore Richard Rodney Bligh* 1796–1800. Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker* 1800–01. Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour* 1802. Rear-Admiral Robert Montague 1803–04. Vice-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth* 1804–08. Vice-Admiral James Richard Dacres* 1809–11. Vice-Admiral Bartholomew Samuel Rowley* 1811–13. Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Stirling, Bart. 1812. Vice-Admiral James Vashon 1813–14. Rear-Admiral William Brown* 1814–16. Vice-Admiral the Hon. Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane, K.B., Commander-in-Chief on the Jamaica Station, Windward and Leeward Islands, and Coast of North America 1816–17. Rear-Admiral John Erskine Douglas 1817–20. Rear-Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham, K.C.B.* 1820–23. Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Rowley, K.C.B. 1823. Commodore E. W. C. R. Owen 1824–27. Vice-Admiral Sir Lawrence William Halstead, K.C.B. 1828–29. Vice-Admiral the Hon. Charles Elphinstone Fleeming 1829–32. Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Griffith Colpoys, K.C.B. 1833. Commodore Sir Arthur Farquhar, C.B., K.C.H. K.S. 1833–36. Vice-Admiral Sir George Cockburn

COMMODORES ON JAMAICA DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICAN AND WEST INDIAN STATION

1838. Sir John Strutt Peyton, K.C.H. 1839–41. Peter John Douglas 1843. Hon. Henry Dilkes Byng 1844–45. Alexander R. Sharpe, C.B. 1846. Daniel Pring 1849–51. Thomas Bennet 1855. Thomas Henderson 1860. Henry Kellet, C.B. 1861. Hugh Dunlop 1864–65. Peter Cracroft, C.B. 1865. A. M. De Horsey (acting) 1865–68. Sir Francis Leopold M’Clintock* 1869–70. Augustus Phillimore 1871–72. Richard W. Courtenay 1873–75. Algernon F. R. De Horsey 1875–78. Algernon McLennan Lyons 1878–80. William John Ward 1880–82. William S. Brown 1882. Edward White 1883–86. F. M. Prattent 1886–89. Henry Hand 1889–92. Rodney M. Lloyd 1892–95. T. S. Jackson 1895–98. H. W. Dowding 1898–99. William H. Henderson 1900–01. Edward H. M. Davis, C.M.G. 1901–03. D. Mc. N. Riddel 1903–05. (Sir) F. W. Fisher Dockyard close, March 1905

AGENTS FOR JAMAICA IN GREAT BRITAIN

1664–66. Sir James Modyford 1682. { Sir Charles Lyttelton { William Beeston 1688. Ralph Knight 1698–1713. { Sir Gilbert Heathcote { Sir Bartholomew Gracedieu 1714. F. Marsh 1725. Alexander Stephenson 1725–6. Edward Charlton 1728–1733. Charles de la Foy 1733. John Gregory 1733–1757. John Sharpe 1757–1762. Lovel Stanhope 1764–1795. Stephen Fuller 1795–1803. Robert Sewell 1803–1812. Edmund Pusey Lyon 1812–1831. George Hibbert 1831–1845. William Burge 1845, Dec Office abolished 8.

INTRODUCTION

Studies in Jamaica archæology and history naturally fall into three main groups: Aboriginal, Spanish and English.

Though, owing to the high form of civilization there attained, research has in Egypt revealed very full information concerning the condition of life in the Nile valley thousands of years before the Christian era, it has hitherto told us very little about the aborigines who inhabited Jamaica a little more than 400 years ago. How long they had been here when Columbus discovered the island no one can say for certain, though the thickness and extent of their middens, some thirty of which have been opened from time to time, offer evidence of value.

As in Hispaniola, the natives of Jamaica were ruled over by caciques or chieftains. The estimates of historians of the number of inhabitants in the West Indian islands differ widely. Las Casas says that the islands abounded with inhabitants as an ant-hill with ants, and puts them down at 6,000,000. But Peter Martyr gives but 1,200,000 to Hispaniola and, taking this as a guide, there would probably have been about 600,000 in Jamaica—or, roughly speaking, three-quarters of its present population. Not many were left when the English took the island in 1655.

Judged by the English standard, Indians are short in stature. The Arawâks of Guiana to-day are described as being of a red cinnamon in colour. The hair on the scalp is thick, long, very straight and very black. The features of the face are strikingly like those familiarly known as Chinese (Mongolian), and the expression is decidedly gentle. Physically they are weak, and life hardly ever exceeds fifty years. The natives of Jamaica—as a few skulls found from time to time testify—possessed, in common with other West Indian tribes, the peculiarity of tying boards on to the foreheads of their children in such a way that the skulls assumed and permanently retained an extraordinarily flat shape.

Peter Martyr, who heard it spoken, said that the language in the Greater Antilles was “soft and not less liquid than the Latin,” and “rich in vowels and pleasant to the ear.” Of words of West Indian origin, those most frequently in use in the English language are avocado (aguacate) pear, barbecue, buccaneer, canoe, Carib and its derivative cannibal, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, pirogue, potato and tobacco.

Columbus has told us of a cacique of Cuba who believed in a future state dependent on one’s actions in this world, but Sir Everard im Thurn found nothing of the kind amongst the Indians of Guiana, and it is probable that Columbus’s guide from Guanahani (Watling Island) only partially understood the cacique, or that Columbus only partially understood his guide. Their houses were primitive alike in shape and construction. In Jamaica, they were probably circular, and were provided with walls of wattle work plastered with mud, and with a high-pitched roof of palm leaves; they probably had no windows. The Indians slept in hammocks. The weapons of the Arawâks of Jamaica and the other large islands consisted of darts and war clubs; but they apparently did not possess bows and arrows, which were the form of weapons preferred by the Caribs, and the use of which gave them a great advantage over their more peaceful foes.

Ornaments were more worn by the men than the women. Painting was the simplest form of ornamentation; the colours used being blue, black, carmine, white and yellow, derived from plants and earths. They wore necklets of hogs’ teeth and stone beads, crowns of feathers in their heads, aprons of palm-leaves or woven cotton, and bands round their arms and legs. Their chief occupations and means of living were hunting and fishing and agricultural pursuits with, in some cases, a certain amount of trading. As they required nothing more than canoes for travelling on the water, simple houses to live in, baskets for domestic purposes, hammocks for rest, rude weapons of the chase, and implements such as hatchets and chisels, earthen vessels, and a few ornaments and articles of dress, these, with a few crude rock-carvings, formed the sum total of their arts and manufactures.

In common with the other aborigines of the West Indies generally and with the natives of New Zealand and with all the nomad tribes of the new world from Patagonia to the Arctic circle, the Arawâks of Jamaica were, when discovered, without any knowledge of the metals as such. From their kitchen middens we know that they were great fish eaters.

Until 1895, but few remains had been discovered to testify to the existence of a tribe which not so very long ago lived by gathering the fruits of the land and sea of Jamaica. During that and the following years several collections of Indian remains were found.[2] They are scattered fairly throughout the island, except curiously enough, the eastern end, and are thickly grouped in St. Andrew and Vere, in St. Ann, and in the west end of Westmoreland. They all supply objects similar in character and giving evidence of no very high advance in civilization or the arts; being considerably below those of Mexico and Peru. The objects consist for the most part of petaloid or almond-shaped polished celts of metamorphic or igneous rocks, found somewhat abundantly all over the island; circular or oval, shallow, unglazed bowls of baked pottery, with but crude ornamentation, used in the preparation of food, and some as mortuary vessels for the heads of their chiefs—found here and there in the caves and on the sites of dwellings; calcedony beads, hitherto found, curiously enough, only in Vere; stone and wooden images and rock-carvings and the rock-pictures; and a few shell and flint implements and mealing-stones rarely found.

Footnote 2:

For this subject consult “Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica. By J. E. Duerden, A.R.C.Sc., Kingston, Ja., 1897.”

It is to be regretted that many of the objects shown at an exhibition of native remains held at the Institute of Jamaica in 1895, following on the discovery of the Halberstadt cave, as well as others discovered later, should have been allowed to leave the island. Such things once lost can rarely be regained.

Some of the early Spanish historians—putting as they frequently did X for J—wrote the name of the island _Xaymaca_, but it appears in its present form as early as 1511 in Peter Martyr’s “Decades.” He called it _Jamaica_ and _Jamica_. The island is unnamed in Juan de la Cosa’s map of 1500.

Its first appearance in cartography is on the map made by Bartolommeo Colombo, Columbus’s younger brother, to illustrate the admiral’s fourth voyage, where it is spelled _Jamaicha_. In Cantino’s map (1502–04) it appears as _Jamaiqua_: in Caneiro as _Jamaiqua_ and in Waldseemüller’s map of 1507 as _Jamaiana_. In the so-called Admiral’s map of 1507 it appears as _Jamaqua_: the name does not appear in Ruysch’s map of 1508, but in the Ptolemaeus edition, Strasburg 1513, it is given as _Jamaiqua_, and in the Waldseemüller map of 1516 it is also _Jamaiqua_.

In the Maggiolo map of 1519 it is _Jamaica_, but in the Maggiolo map of 1527 it is _Jamaicha_: in Ribero’s “Antilles” of 1529 and in Mercator’s map of 1541 it is _Jamaica_: but in Herrera’s map of 1601, it goes back to the old form _Xamaica_, and as late as 1734 in Charlevoix’s “L’isle Espagnole,” it appears as _Xamayca_. Amongst Englishmen who wrote of it from personal knowledge immediately after the British occupation, Commissioner Butler (1655) wrote it _Gemecoe_ and _Gemegoe_. Daniell (1655) calls it _Jamico_, Gwakin (1657) wrote it _Jammaca_, and General Fleetwood (1658) wrote it _Jamecah_.

Columbus on his return from his first journey was told by the natives when off Tortuga, that if he sailed in a certain direction two days he would arrive at Babeque, where he would find gold. Columbus mentions Babeque many times in his journals, but he never found it, at least under that name. The “Historie,” of 1571, identifies it with Hispaniola but this is doubted. Las Casas thought that it might refer to Jamaica.

In common with most other West Indian native names Jamaica has come to us through a Spanish source; and the native pronunciation was possibly something like Hâmîca. Several derivations have been given of the meaning of the word. The most extraordinary is that which seeks to connect it with James II. On Moll’s map of the island, published early in the eighteenth century, it is stated that it was first called St. Jago by Columbus, who discovered it, but that the name was afterwards changed to Jamaica, after James, Duke of York. In this connection it is somewhat sad to note that not one of the Greater Antilles retained the name given to it by Columbus. Española, Santiago and Juana, went back to their native Hayti, Jamaica and Cuba; and St. Juan Bautista became Porto Rico, but Hispaniola still survives to some extent and is the most convenient name for the island which contains two republics. Of the smaller islands, the names of Trinidad, Antigua, Dominica, Montserrat and Guadeloupe still remind us of their great discoverer.

James Knight, in the rough draft of his history of Jamaica (1742) in the British Museum, gives the following derivation of the word Jamaica: “In the original it was Jamajaco. Jamo in the Indian language is a country, and Jaco is water.”

John Atkins, in his “Voyage to the Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies” (1737), says that “Jamaica was altered by King James, it being a compound of his name and ‘_ca_’ an island.” He was possibly not far wrong in regard to the “island.” The West Indian word for an island, _cai_ (or the Biscayan word cay) is supposed to appear in Lucayos (Bahamas), “Men of the Island”; in the Caicos islands, and also in various cays or keys in the West Indies; albeit modern etymology makes cay or key the same word as the Welsh cae.

Long wrote in 1774 that “it is not improbable that Jamaica is a name of Indian extraction, perhaps derived from Jamacaru, the Brazilian name of the prickly pear, which overspreads the maritime parts of the south side, where the aboriginal Indian discoverers of this island might have first landed,” but this derivation has found no supporters among later writers.

Bryan Edwards, writing in 1793, says: “The early Spanish historians wrote the word _Xaymaca_. It is said to have signified in the language of the natives, a country abounding in springs.”

Bridges, who as a rule displays a more fertile imagination than Long without half his trustworthiness as a historian, says, writing in 1828: “In the speech of Florida, _Chaübaan_ signified water and _makia_ wood (Lescarbot, I.6, c.6). The compound sound would approach to Chab-makia; and, harmonized to the Spanish ear, would be Chamakia, or some such indistinct union of these two significant expressions, denoting a land covered with wood, and therefore watered by shaded rivulets, or, in other words, fertile.” This suggested origin has been usually adopted by later writers. Why Bridges sought in Florida the meaning of words of Jamaica, he does not explain. Carib and Arawâk are probably the only two languages which Columbus heard spoken in the Greater Antilles. Wood, in Arawâk, is _ada_; woods are in Arawâk _konoko_ and in Carib _eotch_; and water is in Arawâk _winiab_ (Hillhouse) or _comiaboo_ (im Thurn), and in Carib _tona_.

Bryan Edwards points out that Fernando Columbus’s “Historie” states that the Indian name of Antigua was Jamaica, and he adds: “It is a singular circumstance that this word which in the language of the larger islands signified a country abounding in springs, should in the dialect of the Charaibs have been applied to an island that has not a single spring or rivulet of fresh water in it.” Until further research proves the contrary Jamaica must remain, what it truly is, the land of woods and streams.

Apart from the name of the island itself, there are few names of native origin left. These will be referred to in the body of the work as they occur.

There is some difficulty in discriminating between the native Indian and Spanish origin of West Indian names: and too great a faith in the laws of philology are apt to lead one astray. Placenames are not infrequently rather evolved in accordance with the rule of phonetics.