They were debarred from holding any office of trust—were not allowed to act as jurors—and were prevented from serving in the militia, until the year 1793, when, as a great concession, or else because the “great folks” thought it for the public good, they were allowed to serve as pioneers, or drag the heavy artillery. The very churchyard was denied them, and their mortal remains were deposited by the roadside, where only the suicide or the murderer found a grave; while, should a white man be seen to take one of them, even the most respectable among the class, by the hand, in the way of social intimacy, that white man would be scouted from all ranks of society for his indecorous behaviour. In 1798, Mr. Gilbert, (a relation to the Mr. Gilbert, the founder of Methodism in Antigua,) for many years the superintendent of his majesty’s dockyard at English Harbour, was united in the bands of wedlock to a highly respectable and accomplished coloured lady of Antigua. The _iniquity!_ of this action, as they deemed it, was resented by his brother whites; himself and his lady were openly insulted; and some wag of the island, who, with the brains of a calf, fancied himself an Ulysses in wisdom, gave to the world an example of his would-be wit, by painting Mr. Gilbert’s office-door half _black_ and half _white_.[46] Not only were the coloured people refused interment in the churchyard, but so fearful were the whites of profanation, that the very _bell_ which tolled out _their demise_ was prohibited from being used to perform that service for those degraded ones through whose veins flowed the least drop of Afric’s tarnished blood. Accordingly, a smaller bell (which still hangs in the belfry) was obtained from an estate in the island, called “Golden Grove,” and which was regularly kept for the sole use of persons of colour, until within these last few years, when their rights as fellow-creatures have been allowed, and those mean and pitiful distinctions of caste, in great measure, done away with. The first coloured person who was buried in the churchyard at St. John’s was a merchant’s clerk, (whose own blood was tainted, it is said, but who passed as a white man,) the favourite of his master. The merchant ordered the funeral to proceed to the churchyard, and upon the clergyman making his appearance, and no doubt expressing his surprise at such an unprecedented circumstance, he (the merchant) insisted upon his performing the burial service, and dared him to prevent the interment taking place. The rector thought it prudent to comply, and accordingly the coloured man reposed by the side of some white person, who (following the idea of Pollock in his “Course of Time”) will, indeed, feel surprised at the last day, when each one takes again his own body, to find how long his ashes have been polluted by mingling in one common dust with him who perhaps was the offspring of one of his own despised negroes.[47]