The Earl and Countess of Effingham arrived at Port Royal on March 17,
1790, in the ship _Catherine Countess of Effingham_. During his short
period of governorship the condition of Jamaica was the cause of some
anxiety owing to the nearness of the republican movement in San Domingo;
so much so, that during the Christmas holidays of 1791 two ships of war
patrolled round the island. The National Assembly of France passed a
decree of thanks to the King of Great Britain, to the English nation,
and to Lord Effingham, governor of Jamaica, for his generous conduct in
relieving the planters of St. Domingo from the horrors of famine, and in
furnishing them with arms and military stores against the rebel negroes.
It was during Effingham’s governorship that the bread-fruit and other
trees were imported from the south seas, and a collection of Jamaica
plants was sent home to Kew Gardens.
The House of Assembly addressed the governor on the subject of proposed
additional duties by England on sugar and rum, but to their
representations the governor made a diplomatic reply.
The Earl’s mother was daughter of Peter Beckford, speaker of the
Assembly, and sister to the celebrated lord mayor of London. His wife,
whom he married in 1765, was the daughter of Metcalfe Proctor, of
Thorpe, near Leeds. They had no children.
Next to the Effingham monument that to the =Countess of Elgin= is the
most interesting from an art point of view.
In April 1841, Elizabeth Mary, the twenty-year-old daughter of Charles
Lennox Cumming Bruce, was married to Lord Bruce, the son of the earl of
“Elgin Marbles” fame. He had the year before become heir to the earldom
through the death of his elder half-brother; and in the July following
he was elected member of Parliament for Southampton, and succeeded to
the title in the November of the same year (1841), becoming a peer of
Scotland without a seat in the House of Lords. In the April of the
following year he was made governor of Jamaica at the early age of
thirty-one years, and there served his apprenticeship to his greater
work as governor-general of Canada and viceroy of India. He experienced
a period of depression, owing to the effects of emancipation, and of
storms and floods; but in spite of difficulties he endeavoured, not
without success, to improve the social conditions and develop the
industrial resources of the island. The Royal Agricultural Society of
Jamaica (later merged into the Royal Society of Arts and Agriculture of
Jamaica) and several parochial agricultural associations were
established by him; the first batch of coolies arrived from India in
1845, and the railway was opened for traffic in the same year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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