Places of Worship

The Presbyterians or Nonconformists certainly had a meetinghouse, but it does not appear to be identifiable; perhaps they met on the premises of Colonel Samuel Bach, one of the leading members of their community. (p.130)

One of the greater merchants who did not adhere to the established church [Anglican] was Samuel Bach. He had carried on ‘his public exercise at Port Royal for many years with good success’, probably preaching in what Taylor called the ‘Presbyterian meeting house’. After 1686 his efforts were supplemented (and he may have been supplanted) by those of Francis Crow, whose interesting letter of 7 March 1687 from Port Royal has often been reprinted. Crow claims that ‘the better sort of merchants and mechanics adhere to us’, but he offers no figures to substantiate his this claim.

Certainly the Catholics had a room set aside for them in the house of James Castillo, agent for the asiento; this was a chapel ‘capable of holding 300 persons’, but all trace of it has vanished. (p.130)

There must have been many Catholics among the early French buccaneers, just as there were many among the various visitors from the Spanish territories. When, in 1684, James Castillo came to Port Royal as agent for the asiento, he established a chapel in his house, big enough to hold 300 persons, where his chaplain said Mass. We do not know how many attended this chapel, but we may suspect that the number was not very large; 50 at most. When Albemarle came to Jamaica in December 1687 he brought with him Father Thomas Churchill, nominated by James II to be chief chaplain to His Majesty’s Catholic subjects. An unseemly quarrel ensued between Castillo and Churchill; Albemarle naturally took the latter’s side, and Castillo was forced to leave Jamaica until 1692, when the new regime in England made it possible for him to return. (p.158)

The leading Quakers were altogether less prominent men, and the site of their meeting-house is completely unknown. (p.130)

[Francis Crow]… also mentions the abundance of Quakers, ‘both here and in the country parts’. Several members of this sect had reached the island as early as 1658, driven out of Barbados; Governor D’Oyley welcomed them and they reciprocated by giving out godly books among the soldiery. No doubt what Taylor calls the ‘Quacker’s meeting house’ was established in the 1660s, and it probably had a following of between 50 and 100 persons. Certainly the community corresponded yearly with the Friends in London between 1686 and 1708, but its members do not seem to have been very prominent in public or economic life; indeed, of the 60 or so Friends known by name to us, only two can be positively identified among the notarial records, and these are Thomas Hillyard the shopkeeper and John Pike the joiner.
The Quakers shared with the Jews certain disabilities though the latter at least were able and permitted to bear arms, which the Quakers could not. (p.158-159)

D’Oyley’s oak church or ‘market house’, completed towards the end of 1658, was no doubt small but adequate for the needs of the embryonic town. It must surely be to this church that the patent acquired by Mr. John Loving on 16 October 1661 refers: his plot bounded ‘north to the High Street, 74 feet, west 66 feet on land now or late of Henry Tryon, and of High Street, not far from King’s House – a likely spot. (p.221)

[1664] At Port Royal, D’Oyley’s old church was probably becoming inadequate for the growing town, and in any case it stood on unpatented land. (p.221)

As we shall see in Chapter 8, there were several varieties of religious belief represented at Port Royal, but the places of worship of their adherents are singularly hard to identify, except for the Jewish synagogue. The site of this is precisely given by a deed of 29 January 1677, in which John Peeke sold for 57 Pounds a plot of land 63 feet in length and 36 feet in breadth to the Jewish community of Port Royal represented by Abraham David Gabay, Moses Jesurum Cordosa, Arpenasus, and a further Gabay. The plot bounded south on Cannon Street, north on New Street, east on George Pattinson, and west on Michael Marriott, and the synagogue was constructed some time between January 1677 and March 1686. (p.129)

The Jews at Port Royal were said by Francis Crow to be ‘a multitude’, and there were complaints from various Gentiles that they ‘eat us and all our children out of all our trade’. However, these assertions seem to be the normal exaggerations. Although groups of Jews reached Jamaica in 1661 (from Brazil), in 1663 (from London), in 1664 (from Cayenne), and in 1667 (from Surinam), and although many of them surely remained in Port Royal, they do not seem to have played a very prominent part in the economic life of the town. The historian of Jamaica’s Jews could find only seven land-patents to them at Port Royal between 1664 and 1681, and of the 125 or so merchants listed in appendix 4, only about 15 have Jewish names. The synagogue, which in 1686 had as its overseers Jacob Rodriguez de Leon and Jacob Lopes Torres, probably had a congregation of about the same size as the Quaker meeting house, between 50 and 100 persons.

The original parish church was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1692. It was situated not far from the present entrance breach in the old town wall and had an 80-foot frontage on the High Street, as shown by a survey of 10th June 1672 still to be seen in the Jamaica Archives. A second church commenced shortly after was destroyed by the 1703 fire.
A plaque outside the vestry of St. Peter’s records that it was rebuilt in 1725-26 when James Clark and Lewis Galdy were church wardens. The latter’s tombstone with the account of his remarkable escape at the time of the great earthquake may now be seen in the small churchyard. It was moved to its present place in recent years from Green Bay, together with those of Captain Robert Shorting Commander of H.M.S. Deale Castle, and Captain William Wakelin of H.M.S. Suffolk whose epitaph reminds us that,
‘…Seas may be kind, and Earth may Riches lend to Searching man, but cannot give a Friend.’
The building has suffered two restorations and the brick walls are now faced with cement marked to simulate stone blocks, but the original black and white paving may still be seen in the aisles.
In addition to the monuments, there are many features of interest within the church, notably the remarkable organ loft, erected (says an inlaid panel) by th edirection of John Woodruff and William Chisholm, church wardens, in 1743. It is of considerable interest as an example of mid-eighteenth century Jamaican craftsmanship and is striking because of its heavy capitals carved with palm motif and its elaborate mouldings.
The attractive altar railings are worthy of note, as well as the altar table dating probably from the 1740’s; so too is the charming brass candelabrum presented to the church in 1743 by Christopr Terrey of this place. The mahogany reredos was erected by officers of various units stationed at Port Royal in 1925 in memory of servicemen “who lie in countless unknown graves” in or around Port Royal or who were drowned while serving there during the two centuries from 1725.
The interesting silver communion plate, kept in the vestry, is popularly supposed to have been a gift from Henry Morgan, but the style of the work (unfortunately it bears no hall marks) suggests an early eighteenth-century date.
Of the monuments, the most important, artistically, is that to Lieutenant William Stapleton of H.M.S. Sphinx by the famous sculptor Louis Francois Roubiliac, perhaps the greatest sculptor working in England in the eighteenth century. In a sunken oval medallion at the foot of the memorial are depicted dramatically the circumstances of Stapleton’s death,
‘who, in attempting to fire off a Cannon in the Fort at Port Morant Was so terribly wounded with its bursting That he expir’d a few Hours afterwards, On the eighth Day of May 1754 In the 28th Year of his Age.’
The work is delicate and graceful in treatment and exhibits all Roubiliac’s French theatrical effect.
Another monument of interest is that to Captain de Crespigny, third son of Sir William de Crespigny, who died on board HMS Scylla on 24th October 1825. He went to sea under the patronage of Earl St. Vincent, was with Lord Nelson at Trafalgar and later served under Lord Collingwood. He saved no less than sixteen lives during his naval career, for which he earned the Royal Humane Society’s medal, and was also presented with a service of plate from his ship’s crew.
The memorials furnish striking evidence of the hazards of life in these parts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here are recorded deaths on active service, by accident, drowning and, most of all, from the dreaded yellow fever. From a succession of such ills, HMS Leopard lost in a matter of months a naval cadet (from a fall followed by fever), an A.B. (from drowning), a boy, two midshipmen, an ordinary seaman, a clerk, a musician, a gunner, a seaman, a schoolmaster and a caulker. Many of the memorials are to young men and often to mere boys, like that to three midshipmen of HMS Sapphire – aged 13 to 16, who died of yellow fever in June 1820 – touchingly erected “as a Tribute of Affection by their Captain.”

Appendix 6 sets out the sequence of ministers and churchwardens of the established church; it will be noticed that Reginald Wilson is prominent, in yet another capacity. We should probably visualize the Anglican congregation as comprehending the greater part of the free populace as well as the most powerful merchants; at Port Royal as in England, its great strength – and eventual weakness – lay in its power of accommodation to the status quo, in the breadth of opinions which it could contain.

Ministers
1661-4: George Johns (‘an old army preacher’)
1668-71: John Maxwell (‘a Scotchman’)
1674-5: Jacob Hane (or Hayne or Haine)
1681-4: John Longworth
1688: Dr. More (‘an ancient man’)
1692: Dr. Emmanuel Heath

Churchwardens
1667: Caesar Carter and Samuel Stretton
1669: John Davenport and Dennis McCragh
1674: Henry Ward and John Waite
1681: Charles Penhallow and Reginald Wilson
1684: Reginald Wilson and John White
1685: Henry Ward and Joseph Jennings