One of the most dramatic incidents which ever happened during a session of the Assembly is that which caused the death of Peter Beckford, a former lieutenant-governor of the colony, the president of the Council, and the first custos of Kingston. The incident is thus described by Bridges: During a warm debate in the Assembly on June 8, 1711, on the right of adjournment for a longer period than _de die in diem_, Peter Beckford, the Speaker (son of the President), repeatedly called to order; and was at length compelled to enforce it by adjournment. But irritation had gone so far that, when he rose to quit the chair, the Members drew their swords and held him there, while the obnoxious questions in debate were put and carried. The doors were barred; the uproar was alarming; and the Speaker’s father heard the disturbance in the Council Chamber. He recognised the voice of his son crying aloud for help, and rushed into the Governor’s apartment. Sir Thomas Handasyde seized his sword, ordered the sentinels to follow him, forced the door of the Court House, and dissolved the Assembly in the Queen’s name. But the fray was fatal to the elder Beckford; in his agitation his foot slipped, and he was precipitated down the staircase, and the effects of terror were deadly to his aged frame. From this account we incidentally learn that the Assembly then had no House of its own and met in the court house, which probably stood where the present court house stands, at the south side of the square; the House of Assembly being on the east side, the King’s House on the west, and Rodney’s memorial on the north. In 1679 the church was first used as a House of Assembly, and was so used occasionally, as well as the court house, till its destruction by hurricane in 1712. In “A View of the Proceedings of the Assemblies of Jamaica for some years past,” published in London in 1716, occurs a letter dated from Kingston, December 4, 1715, which begins, “The Grand Court is Sitting, as also the Assembly (who as former Assemblies have done in Court time) Sit in the Great Church [at Spanish Town]....” The speaker alluded to above, Peter Beckford, held that office no less than four times. He will ever be remembered, in Spanish Town at all events, as the founder of Beckford and Smith’s School.