They had examined witnesses and determined matters of fact without a jury. The sufferer, Barnard Cook, was accused of having spoken scandalous words reflecting on the modesty of two men's wives; and though he was never convicted thereof, nor could be prosecuted criminally for it, the justices sentenced him to be publicly whipt by the common whipper of slaves; and he actually received fourscore lashes, save two, upon his bare back. Cook blamed the governor, Robert Lowther, who "threatened a revenge against him;" but as he brought no proof thereof, his Majesty in council dismissed that part of the accusation. In his petition, Cook stated that the governor's nephew, Mr. John Frere, wrongfully detained his estate from him, notwithstanding a royal letter in his favour. The names of the unjust justices were Guy Ball, Francis Bond, Thomas Maycock, jun., Robert Bishop, George Barry, John Fercherson, Stephen Thomas, and W. Kirkham, Esq. Their dismissal was not ordered until two years after the offence. The following articles are those which relate to the West Indies, in the treaty between Great Britain and Spain, concluded at Madrid, June the 13th, 1721: "Art. 2. The treaties of peace and commerce, concluded at Utrecht the 13th of July and the 9th December, in the year 1713, wherein are comprehended the treaty made at Madrid in the year 1667, and the cedulas therein mentioned, shall remain confirmed and ratified by the present treaty, except the 3d, 5th, and 8th articles of the said treaty of commerce, commonly called explanatory, which have been annulled by virtue of another subsequent treaty made at Madrid the 14th of the month of December, 1715, between the ministers plenipotentiary named for that purpose by their Britannic and Catholic Majesties, which treaty remains likewise confirmed and ratified; as also the particular contract, commonly called Assiento, for the importation of Negro slaves into the Spanish Indies, which was made the 26th of March of the said year 1713, in consequence of the 12th article of the treaty of commerce at Utrecht, and likewise the treaty of declaration concerning that of the Assiento, made the 26th of May, 1716: all which treaties mentioned in this article, with their declarations, shall remain in their force, virtue, and full vigour, in every thing wherein they shall not be contrary to this: and to the end they may have their entire effect and accomplishment, his Catholic Majesty will cause his circular orders or cedulas to be dispatched to his viceroys, governors, and other ministers to whom it shall belong, of the ports and towns in America, that the ships employed for the traffic of Negroes by the Boyer's Political State of Great Britain, vol. xxxv. p. 214, Royal Company of Great Britain, established at London, may be admitted, without hindrance, to trade freely, and in the same manner as they did before the last rupture between the two crowns; and the above-mentioned cedulas shall be delivered as soon as the ratifications of the present treaty shall have been exchanged: and at the same time his Catholic Majesty will give his orders to the council of the Indies, that the Junta, composed of ministers taken out of council, and appointed for the cognizance (exclusive of all others) of the causes that respect the Assiento, may again have its course, admit of, and consult upon those affairs, according to the rule established at the time of its appointment. And as to what regards the observation of the treaties of peace and commerce, circular orders shall be dispatched to all the governors of Spain, to the end that they may, without any of their interpretations, cause them to be observed and accomplished; as in like manner shall be given, on the part of his Britannic Majesty, the orders which shall be demanded and judged necessary for the accomplishment of every thing that has been stipulated and agreed between the two crowns in the above-mentioned treaties of Utrecht; and particularly as to what may remain unperformed of the points settled by the 8th, 11th, and 15th articles of the treaty of peace, which mention the leaving to the Spaniards the free commerce and navigation to the West Indies, and the maintaining the antient limits of America, as they were in the time of King Charles II.; the free exercise of the Catholic religion in the island of Minorca, and the cod fishing in the seas of Newfoundland, as well as with regard to all other articles which may not hitherto have been put in execution on the part of Great Britain. "3. Forasmuch, as by the several articles of the treaty of commerce of Utrecht, it was agreed, that all the goods confiscated at the beginning of the former war should be restored, in regard the confiscation thereof had been made contrary to the tenor of the 36th article of the treaty of 1667, his Catholic Majesty, in like conformity, will order, that all the goods, merchandizes, money, ships, and other effects, which have been seized, as well in Spain as in the Indies, by virtue of his orders of the month of September, 1718, or of any subsequent orders at the time before the war was declared between the two crowns, or after it was declared, be speedily restored in their same kind, as to those which shall be still in being, or, if they are not, the just and true value of them at the time that they were seized, the valuation whereof, if by omission or neglect it was not then made, shall be adjusted according to the authentic informations that the owners shall pro duce before the ordinary magistrates of the towns and places where the said effects shall have been seized: and as it is certain that the orders of his Catholic Majesty, although they directed that inventories of those goods and effects should be made and drawn up, and accounts and declarations should be kept, have not, however, been executed in that manner in several places, it has been agreed, that if the proprietors make it appear, by legal proofs, informations, and other documents, that any of them have been omitted in the said inventories, his Catholic Majesty will give express orders that the value of those things which shall have been omitted be paid by the treasurer, or other persons through whose neglect such omission shall have been made. "4. It is mutually agreed, that his Britannic Majesty shall give orders to his governors, officers, and other ministers to whom it shall belong, to cause to be restored all the goods and effects of the subjects of his Catholic Majesty, which they shall prove to have been seized and confiscated in the dominions of his Britannic Majesty upon occasion of the last war, in the same manner as it has been settled in the foregoing article in favour of the subjects of his Britannic Majesty." The King of Spain ordered the effects of the South Sea Company to be restored; but the product of what was restored did not exceed £200,000 sterling, and consequently the Company lost full £800,000. The coffee plant was carried from Surinam to Cayenne, and began to be cultivated there. The first commission on record at Jamaica for the Vice-Admiralty Court, to be held "by one person, or a sole judge," was given this year, 1721. Previous to this it was held by two or more commissioners. There was a free-school founded at Walton, in St. Ann's parish, Jamaica: boys grounded in classics were to leave at fourteen years of age. The population of the Bermudas was returned at 4850 Whites, and 3514 slaves. The French King issued an ordinance that "minors, although emancipated, cannot dispose of their Negroes who work on their estates, until they shall have attained the age of twenty-fivethe said slaves, however, still considered as moveables." Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1739, p. 134. Bolinbroke's Voyage to Demerary. Long's Jamaica, vol. i. p. 77. 1722, The Assembly of Barbadoes settled on Governor Worsley £6000 a-year sterling, for the support of his government, and laid a tax of two shillings and sixpence per head on Negroes. The number of inhabitants upon the Bahamas, according to the "lists transmitted in," were Whites, 830; slaves, 310. Upon the 28th of August, the town of Port Royal was overwhelmed by the sea: twenty-six merchant vessels and 400 persons perished in the harbour: Mr. Atkins, purser of his Majesty's ship Weymouth, gives the following description of the hurricane: "The present hurricane was about a week after our arrival -began at eight in the morning, two days before the change of the moon gave at least forty-eight hours notice, by a noisy breaking of the waves upon the Kays', very disproportioned to the breeze, a continued swell without reflux of the water- and the two nights preceding, prodigious lightnings and thunder; which all the old experienced men foretold would be a hurricane, or that one already had happened at no great distance. "I was ashore at Port Royal, and found all the pilots returned from the windward part of the island (where they customarily attend the coming down of ships), and observing upon the unusual intumescence of the water, so great the day before, and beat so high, that our boats could not possibly put on shore at Gun Kays, to take the men off that were set there, to the number of twenty, for trimming up our casks; themselves making signals not to attempt it. Betimes next morning, the wind began in flurries at N.E. and flew quickly round to S.E. and S.S.E., where it continued the stress of the storm, bringing such quantities of water that our little island was overflowed four feet at least: so that, what with the fierce driving of shingles (wooden staves, used instead of tiling upon their houses) about our ears, and the water floating their boats, empty hogsheads, and lumber about the streets, those without doors were every moment in danger of being knocked on the head or carried away by the stream. Within it was worse; for the waters sapping the foundations, gave continual and just apprehensions of the houses falling, as in effect half of them did, and buried Long's Jamaica. Report of the Lords of the Committee, 1789, Supplement. Atkins's Voyage to the West Indies, Lond. 1735, pp. 238. 265. Campbell's Survey, vol. ii. p. 664. Coke's West Indies, vol. i. p. 356. their inhabitants. Nor indeed, after the storm had began, was it safe to open a door, especially such as faced the wind, lest it should carry the roofs off; and escaping thence, there was no place of retreat, we remaining in a very melancholy situation, both from wind and water. The perils of false brethren was nothing to it. "It may be worth notice, what became of the purser in this common danger. I was regardless at first, as suspecting more of timidity in the people-till finding myself left alone proprietor of a shaking old house, the streets full of water and drift, with shingles flying about like arrows, I began to meditate a little more seriously upon my safety, and would have compounded all my credit in the victualling (office), my hoops and bags, for one acre (as Gonzalo says in the Tempest) of barren ground, long heath, or brown furze, to have trod dry upon! "Our neighbours had retreated towards the church, as the strongest building and highest ground, which I was luckily too late to recover; but endeavouring to stem upwards for a safer station, was taken into a house in the lower street, with an old woman wading in the same manner from her ruined habitation. We were no sooner in, but new fears of this also falling, thrust us into the yard (the water then at eleven o'clock breast high), where we helped one another upon a low brick-built out-house, that being more out of the wind, and surrounded by others, kept the waters still. The unhappiness of those who suffered in stronger houses was their facing the wind, which brought the sea upon them with violence. A platform of one and twenty guns and mortars were drove, some of them, to the market place: the two lines of houses next the sea, with the church, were undermined and levelled with the torrent; and in their ruin was our safety; for although we had a greater depth, they were by such a bank made motionless. The whole rise of the water was computed at sixteen or eighteen feet, very admirable, at a place where it is not ordinarily observed to flow above one or two. At five in the evening the waters abated, and with so quick a retreat as to leave the streets dry before six; when every one was congratulating his own safety, in condolencies upon the loss of their friends. "Of fifty sail in this harbour, only four men-of-war and two merchant-ships rid it out, but with all their masts and booms blown away. All the men we left at Gun Kay were washed off and perished, except one Indian that drove into harbour, upon a broken gallows that had been there erected. Wrecks and drowned men were every where seen along shore; general complaints of loss at land (least at St. Jago), which made it a Atkins's Voyage to the West Indies, p. 240. |