Inchiquin welcomed the Prince of Orange in 1688, and in the following year he and his son were attainted by the Irish Parliament of James II, and their estates were sequestrated. He appealed to arms, but was defeated and fled to England. After the Revolution he was appointed governor of Jamaica. On going to take up office he was allowed £500 in lieu of fifty tons of baggage, and also passage and victuals for seventy-five menial servants. It is interesting to note that on his journey he drew half-pay salary (_i.e._ at the rate of £1000 a year). He, after escaping great dangers by sea and a malignant fever brought on board by the soldiers embarked at Plymouth, arrived at Jamaica, accompanied by Lady Inchiquin, on May 31, 1690, in H.M.S. _Swan_, “so bad a sailor that she is little better than nothing”—the same ship that was “forced over the tops of many houses” in the earthquake of two years later. Inchiquin was sworn in as governor on the same day. He met with considerable opposition from a portion of the Assembly, whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner. That, added to troubles arising from incursions by French cruisers on the seaside plantations—the result of the war—plunderings by the runaway slaves, the original maroons, and an outbreak of slaves in Clarendon, undermined his constitution. Nineteen months of worry were terminated by his death, on Saturday, January 16, 1691–2, “after long indisposition through fever and plague which ended in a flux”; he was buried that night in the parish church at St. Jago de la Vega. Until recently no monument marked the spot. A memorial brass has now, however, been erected in the cathedral by Lord Inchiquin with the following inscription: IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM O’BRIEN, 2ND EARL OF INCHIQUIN GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA FROM 31ST MAY, 1690, TILL 16TH JANUARY, 1691–2. _When he died of fever at St. Jago de la Vega_, AND WAS BURIED IN THIS CHURCH ERECTED IN 1912 BY LUCIUS W. XVTH BARON INCHIQUIN. In connection with his governorship of Tangier, Inchiquin has been described as “a well-meaning impulsive man, devoid of discretion,” and this description seems equally applicable to his Jamaica career. By his first wife, Lady Margaret Boyle, daughter of the first Earl of Orrery, he had three sons, of whom the third, James, was a member of the Council of Jamaica, Captain of Fort Charles, and chief of an expedition that destroyed French settlements in Hispaniola. James O’Brien returned to England at his father’s death. For the first thirty-four years of British occupation, the governors of Jamaica lived partly at Spanish Town and partly at Port Royal. In 1675 the Assembly voted £500 to be employed in buying the house Lord Vaughan lived in at Spanish Town “for the Governor’s use for ever.”