Part 4

In his opening speech to the Assembly Carlisle said that the King looked on Jamaica as “his darling plantation, and has taken more pains to make this island happy than any other of his colonies.” These kind words were, however, nullified by the fact that the new governor had brought with him forty acts which Charles had had drawn up (and to which he had affixed the great seal of England) in lieu of the acts which the Assembly had passed under Vaughan, and that he was instructed to get the House to pass them. This plan had been suggested in a letter written in England by a Mr. Nevil (who was evidently acquainted with Jamaica) to Carlisle just before he started to take up his appointment, and had been adopted because—to quote the words of the Lords of Trade and Plantations to the King in Council—“of the irregular, violent and unwarrantable proceedings of the Assembly.”

The virtual point of difference was this, that under the original constitution the island (through the Governor, Council and Assembly) made its own laws in accordance with what it conceived to be its needs and sent them home for approval, they remaining in force for two years till the royal pleasure was known, while under the new arrangement (based on Poynings’s Law, or the Statutes of Drogheda, in use in Ireland), the laws were to be made in England (on the advice of the Governor and Council), and remitted for the approval of the Assembly. The style of enactment was altered from the “Governor, Council and Assembly, etc.” to the “King, by and with the advice, etc. of the Assembly.”

This proposed change, which had been decided on by the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in opposition to the advice of Lynch, who knew Jamaica well—the Assembly resisted with might and main, but though they were in a very great measure successful, it was not until 1728 that the complete legislative power for which Jamaica contended was granted.

Lynch, when he returned as governor, was able to tell the people of Jamaica, “His Majesty, upon the Assembly’s humble address, was pleased to restore us to our beloved form of making laws, wherein we enjoy beyond dispute all the deliberative powers in our Assembly that the House of Commons enjoy in their House.”

In return for the constitution now conceded the Assembly pledged itself to grant to the King a fixed revenue, which if not perpetual should at least last for seven years. The quarrel, however, with regard to the revenue bills lasted up till 1728; the Crown desiring a perpetual revenue, the Assembly persistently declining to do more than grant bills for a few years’ duration. The Crown on the other hand declined to approve many of their laws. In 1728 the Assembly gave way and settled a permanent revenue in return for the royal confirmation of various acts of importance to the island and a concession as to their past laws which they regarded as “the grand charter of their liberties.”

To return for a moment to the early struggles, we find that under the Duke of Albemarle, a very unwise governor, matters were far from satisfactory. He dissolved the House suddenly because one of the members, John Towers, in a debate repeated the old adage _salus populi suprema lex_, in protesting against the Speaker’s refusal to grant him permission to attend a race meeting. Albemarle had the offender taken in custody and fined £600. In his dispatch on the subject he wrote: “The Assembly have done very little, the major part having made it their business to wrangle and oppose all things that are for the King’s service and the good of the country.” The freedom of election was grossly violated by the duke, who admitted hosts of servants and discharged seamen to the poll at the election, and actually imprisoned many legal voters of wealth and consideration. He imposed fines on the latter to a large amount, and threatened to whip two gentlemen for requesting a habeas corpus for their friends. In spite of this he had the effrontery to write home to the Board of Trade and Plantations: “While the elections were going forward there were unwarrantable oppositions made in most parishes as well as malicious practices to prevent fair election!”

His successor, Inchiquin, met with considerable opposition from a section of the Assembly whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner. That they would not do what he wanted he considered “an indignity and affront to himself and the board.” He finally rejected their address of congratulation, and “then it was thrown to them with some contempt.”

The franchise established by the law of 1681 for appointing the members of the Assembly was still in force in 1812: “Freeholders in the same parish where the election is to be made.” At a by-election in 1804, in St. Andrew, seventy-nine freeholders voted, forty-six for the successful candidate.

The House met usually from October to Christmas, the time of the year when the planters could be absent from their estates with least inconvenience.

The closing scene in the life of the Assembly was acted on December 21, 1865, around amendments to the “Act to alter and amend the Political Constitution of the Island,” and especially to that to the second clause, which ran:

“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty’s Imperial Government to assume the entire management and control of the affairs of this island, and by orders in Council or otherwise, as Her Majesty may be advised, to conduct the affairs of this island as Her Majesty may think fit: and such orders shall have the effect and force of law.”

The Council’s amendment was as follows:

“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen to create and constitute a Government in this island, in such form and with such power as to Her Majesty shall seem fit, and from time to time to alter and amend such Government.”

The Legislative Council had adjourned while their amendments to the Constitution Bill were being discussed by the Assembly, and some of them were in the House during the discussion. So soon as they saw that the amendments had passed, they retired and formed a board, which passed the bill in almost ten minutes after it left the Assembly.

In proroguing the assembly on the following day Governor Eyre said:

“In releasing you from further attendance upon your legislative duties, I cannot lose sight of the probability that you may never be called upon to exercise these duties again, under the existing form of constitution, and that this general sacrifice has been consummated by yourselves from an earnest and sincere desire, regardless of all personal considerations, to benefit the colony.

“On behalf of the colony and of the many interests associated with it, I return you the thanks which are so justly your due. History will record the heroic act, and I trust that history will show from the ameliorated state of the country, and a renewed prosperity, that your noble self devotion has not been in vain.”

In concluding, he said, with reference to the Morant Bay outbreak:

“The session which is now about to terminate has been the most important that has ever taken place since Jamaica became a dependency of the British Crown.

“It is impossible to help regretting the necessity which has enforced the abandonment of institutions so deservedly dear to every British heart, and which, even in this colony, have remained unchanged for a period of 200 years; but it is wiser and better, circumstanced as we are, to give up institutions which are valued rather for the associations which are connected with them, than for any advantages which have resulted to the colony from their existence in Jamaica, and to substitute in their place a perhaps less showy and less time-honoured form of Government, but which is certainly more practicable and better suited to the altered circumstances of our position.

“Well, I think, it is that we have taken warning by the terrible circumstances which have forced upon us the conviction that a Government, to be effective, in times of difficulty and danger, must be a strong and united one; and well will it be if by a voluntary reconstruction, the community may receive some compensation in future good government, for the dreadful calamity with which it has just been afflicted.”

The House took a deep interest from time to time in the barracks for which they voted funds. In 1702 orders were received from home to build barracks to receive 3000 men. Handasyd, the Lieutenant-governor, said that it would cost more than £40,000 “where such buildings are unreasonably dear” to build such as were built in Ireland, but that suitable barracks could be built of wood for £3000.

The following account of the state of the forts and barracks in the island in May 1745, taken from the “Journals of the House of Assembly,” may be fittingly quoted here.

“Then the House resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, upon the report made on Friday last, of the number and condition of the barracks already built, and of such others as were necessary to be provided; and the plans laid before the House, and the said report, being read, is in the words following:

MR. SPEAKER,—Your Committee, appointed to make enquiry into the number and condition of the barracks already built, and what more shall be necessary to be provided, have accordingly done the same; and, by the best information they have been able to get, find to be as follows:

_Port-Morant._ A complete barrack, newly built by the Parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East, framed, boarded, and shingled, in good order, which will contain about sixty men.

_Manchioneal._ A barrack, formerly built by the said parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East, which will contain thirty men; the body built with stone, a framed roof, wants new shingling, and already ordered to be forthwith done, and to be put in good repair.

_Morant-Bay._ A new barrack now building at the expense of the aforesaid parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East for twenty-five men.

_Yallahs Bay._ A large house with proper conveniencies belonging to Mr. Donaldson, already hired for a barrack, to receive twenty-five men.

_Cow-Bay._ A barrack for twenty men going to be built, by Mr. Vallete, in the room of the former barrack destroyed by the hurricane.

_Westmoreland._ A barrack already built, capable of receiving a whole company, situate at Savanna-la-Mar, as informed by Mr. Hall.

_St. Ann’s._ A barrack now building at St. Ann’s Bay, and is calculated to be a crutched house, wattled and plastered, and capable to receive fifty men, as informed by Mr. Whitehorne.

_Moneague._ A barrack which now lodges twenty men, and capable of holding thirty; is at present water-tight, but will soon want new shingling, as informed by lieutenant Troah.

_Vere._ The barrack was blown down in the late hurricane but the parish has agreed with Mr. Pusey for his storehouse in Carlisle Bay, which is boarded, shingled and in good order and capable to receive one hundred men.

_St. Elizabeth._ A barrack situate at Black-River; it being a crutched house, wattled and plastered, injured by the storm, but is now ordered by the parish to be repaired.

_St. James._ A barrack at St. James, of a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, with a stone wall, a framed roof, well shingled, in good order, which will completely contain fifty men as informed by Mr. Hall.

_Hanover._ A barrack situate at Lusea-Fort, which will be capable of receiving fifty men; a crutched house, wattled, plastered and thatched, in good order; and a convenient house for the reception of four officers, well shingled and floored.

_Port Antonio._ A barrack in good order, which now lodges one company, and will soon be in a condition to receive another, by the information of lieutenant Bailey.

_St. Mary’s._ No barrack built in said parish, but as the Committee are informed his excellency intends to send some soldiers for their protection, a barrack is necessary to be forthwith built.

_Old Harbour._ No barrack built, but the parish of St. Dorothy have hired a house for a detachment of thirty soldiers, as informed by Mr. Edmund Pusey.

_Spanish Town._ The barrack-house is in good order, the officers’ cook-room wants repairing, the cook-room for the private men is entirely down, and the palisado enclosure, on the back part of the out-houses, carried away by the late storm; said barrack contains sixty men.

The Committee are informed that his excellency intends four companies of soldiers to be in this town, if proper lodgements were provided for them; and, as the barrack contains so few, it will be necessary either to enlarge the present barrack or to buy such house or houses as may be convenient and sufficient to lodge the aforesaid four companies, as are intended for this town; but as we are informed that the house belonging to the estate of the late Colonel Heywood is as proper and convenient for the purpose aforesaid as any building in this town, and to be sold, we think proper to lay before the house a plan relating thereto, as also a plan of a barrack to be built adjoining to the present barrack, or such other place as shall be judged most convenient; all which is submitted to the consideration of the house.

_Kingston._ No barracks built, and his excellency is willing to let this town have one or more companies of His Majesty’s troops was there proper lodgement to receive them.

_Port Royal._ The barracks in that town being too small for receiving the number of men intended to be quartered there, your Committee are informed that said barracks are to be enlarged for that purpose.

And, after some time spent in the Committee, Mr. Speaker resumed the chair, and Mr. Chief Justice, from a Committee, reported that they had gone through the matter to them referred, and come to several resolutions, which he read in his place, and afterwards delivered them in at the table; where they being again read were agreed unto by the House, and are as follows:

1. _Resolved._ It is the opinion of this Committee, that it be recommended to the House, to appoint a Committee to bring in a bill for obliging the several parishes to repair and keep up the respective barracks already built.

_Ordered._ That Mr. Fuller, Mr. Fearon and Mr. March be a committee for that purpose.

2. _Resolved._ It is the opinion of this Committee, that it be recommended to the House, to appoint a committee to treat with the attornies of Abraham Elton and Mary Heywood for the purchase of a house and footland, late of James Heywood, deceased, for a barrack for the service of the public.

_Ordered._ That Mr. Arcedeckne, Mr. R. Beckford and Mr. Fuller be a committee for that purpose.

3. _Resolved._ It is the opinion of this Committee that a barrack be built at Kingston, at the expense of the parish of Kingston.

4. _Resolved._ It is the opinion of this Committee that the barrack at Port-Royal be enlarged.

_Ordered._ That it be an instruction to the committee appointed to bring in the bill for obliging the several parishes to repair and keep up the respective barracks already built, to insert a clause therein to oblige the parish of Kingston to build a barrack at the expense of the parish.”

We learn from Foster’s “Alumini Oxonienses” that William Dennys, of New College, a chaplain who took his B.A. degree in 1652, obtained leave of absence from the parliamentary visitors, for special service at sea in 1654, and died at Jamaica in 1655. He probably came out with Penn and Venables, and predeceased Thomas Gage who was chaplain to the expedition.

In 1655, the very year in which the English took the island, Admiral William Goodson, one of the Commissioners charged with the conduct of Penn and Venables’s expedition, requested that “some godly ministers with monies for their maintenance” should be sent out. Two years later the want of ministers in Jamaica was referred by the Council of State to the Committee for America for suggestions. It was one of the instructions to Doyley, when he was made governor in 1661, that he should give the best encouragement to ministers “that Christianity and the Protestant religion, according to the profession of the Church of England, may have due reverence amongst them”; and later in the year it was resolved that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London should choose five able ministers to be maintained in Jamaica at the King’s expense for one year, the governor to provide for their maintenance afterwards.

In 1664 Sir Thomas Modyford, the governor, stated that there was “but one church (in the whole island) at St. Katherine’s [at Spanish Town], being a fair Spanish Church ruined by the old soldiers, but lately in some measure repaired by Sir Charles Lyttelton; but they are now levying contributions to raise churches in some of the richest parishes.” There were then five ministers in the island, Henry Howser (a Switzer) being at St. Catherine’s.

In 1671 Sir Thomas Modyford replied to enquiries of His Majesty’s Commissioners that: “Their Lordships will find among the statutes with these presented a law for the maintenance of the ministry; until this His Majesty was piously pleased to pay five ministers £100 each, but since they were left upon the charity of the inhabitants, he has encouraged them to enlarge their payments at St. Katherine’s, where he lives, from £50 to £140, and at Port Royal £200. At St. Katherine’s, Mr. Howser, a Switzer, officiates; at Port Royal, Mr. Maxwell, a Scotchman; at St. John’s, Mr. Lemmings, an Englishman, lately sent by my Lord of London; and in St. Andrew’s, Mr. Zellers, another Switzer; all these are orthodox men, of good life and conversation, live comfortably on their means, and preach every Sunday. Mr. Pickering, of St. Thomas and St. David’s, at Port Morant and Yallows, is lately dead, and they have none to supply his place. But, alas, these five do not preach to one-third of the island, and the plantations are at such distance that it is impossible to make up congregations; but they meet at each others’ houses, as the primitive Christians did, and there pray, read a chapter, sing a psalm, and home again; so that did not the accessors to this island come so well instructed in the article of faith, it might well be feared the Christian religion would be quite forgot. I have, my Lords, and shall use all the persuasive means I can to advance this people’s knowledge of the true God, as also of all Christian and moral virtues.”

In 1675 a Mr. Crandfield reported that there were six churches and four ministers, and two years later there were but three clergy in the island. In a MS., once in the House of Assembly Library, entitled “The State of the Church in His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica,” dated May 1675 (which was allowed to perish after Richard Hill quoted from it in 1864), it was stated, after enumerating the then stipended ministers of religion: “All the other parishes on the northside, and St. Elizabeth’s on the south, are great and ill-settled, without churches, they being almost planted in Sir Thomas Lynch’s time, who ordered Glebe lands to be reserved in two or three places in every parish, that in time may prove convenient.”

In 1677 Howser and Zellers, “His Majesty’s chaplains in Jamaica,” petitioned that they might receive the pay promised to them, and declared that “the island, in regard of its great poverty, is not able to allow maintenance for four chaplains resident there.” In the same year the Bishop of London represented the ill-usage of ministers in the Plantations, and their too great subjection to the vestrymen, especially in Jamaica; and the Lords of Trade and Plantations resolved that the clergy should, in future, “make a part of the vestry in the regulation of all matters, except in the settlement of their maintenance.”

In 1681 an Act was passed for the maintenance of ministers and the poor, and erecting and repairing churches. Ten vestrymen and two churchwardens were yearly elected by the freeholders of each parish. The law provided for the keeping of a register of births, christenings, marriages and burials. Port Royal was to pay £250 to its minister, St. Catherine £120, St. Thomas, St. Andrew and St. John £100, and other parishes £80. These stipends were apparently not sufficient inducement, for in 1706 an Act was passed “for the encouragement of good and able ministers to come to this island.” The salary of St. Catherine was fixed at £150 (or £250 if the vestry wished); for St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Dorothy, Kingston, Vere, and Clarendon, it was £150 (or £200), and for the other parishes (including Port Royal, by reason of its recent disasters) £100 (or £150 if the vestry wished). This system of payment of the rectors by the parishes was continued till late in the eighteenth century, when they were placed on the Island Establishment.

In 1682 Sir Thomas Lynch sent home to the Bishop of London a detailed report of the state of the Church in Jamaica. He says: “At St. Jaga de la Vega the minister is also a Swiss, Mr. Howsyer; he has £140 a year by law, and, since I came, £150. He is a reasonable preacher, a good liver, well esteemed, and very rich. The church is a Spanish church, and the parsonage good. The parish is called St. Catherine’s.”

When, by an Act passed in 1789, burying in churches was prohibited, on penalty of £500 imposed on any rector who permitted it, the rectors received compensation in lieu of fees, the largest amount falling to the rector of Kingston, who received £100 per annum, St. Catherine being next with £70.

As evidence of the relative value of the livings in the island at the time it is interesting to quote from the “Jamaica Magazine” that in November 1814, “The Reverend Alexander Campbell has been translated from the living of Kingston to that of St. Andrew’s, vacant by the death of his father, the reverend John Campbell; the Reverend Isaac Mann to that of Kingston; the Reverend William Vaughan Hamilton from St. Elizabeth’s to St. Catherine’s; and the Reverend William Peat from St. Dorothy’s to St. Elizabeth’s.”

In 1800 Ecclesiastical Commissioners were appointed. But it is evident that they had not been able to effect much by April 1802, when Lady Nugent wrote: “I will conclude my tour through the island with a few remarks. In this country it appears as if everything were bought and sold. Clergymen make no secret of making a traffic of their livings; but General N—— has set his face against such proceedings, and has refused many applications for the purpose. He is determined to do all he can towards the reformation of the Church, and thus rendering it respectable. It is indeed melancholy to see the general disregard of both religion and morality throughout the whole island.”

Matters were much improved when the see of Jamaica, which then included the Bahamas and British Honduras, was formed in 1824; and in 1870, when Disestablishment threw the Church almost entirely on to voluntary resources, it gave to it a new vitality.

Many of the old Baptismal, Marriage and Burial registers are deposited for safe keeping in the Record Office at Spanish Town, where all the old church registers should be, as they would there have a chance of longer life than when exposed to the vicissitudes of local vestries, and would, moreover, be more readily available for research than when scattered throughout the island.

It may be convenient to give here a list of the earliest date of the Baptismal, Marriage and Burial registers for the island, taken from “Sketch Pedigrees of some of the early Settlers in Jamaica. By Noel B. Livingston, Kingston 1909.”

EARLIEST DATE OF PARISH REGISTERS