Having arrived alongside of the admiral’s ship, the cacique entered on
board with all his train. He appeared in full regalia. Around his head
was a band of small stones of various colours, but principally green,
symmetrically arranged, with large white stones at intervals, and
connected in front by a large jewel of gold. Two plates of gold were
suspended to his ears by rings of very small green stones. To a
necklace of white beads, of a kind deemed precious by them, was
suspended a large plate, in the form of a fleur-de-lys, of guanin, an
inferior species of gold; and a girdle of variegated stones, similar
to those around his head, completed his regal decorations. His wife
was adorned in a similar manner, having also a very small apron of
cotton, and bands of the same round her arms and legs. The daughters
were without ornaments, excepting the eldest and handsomest, who had a
girdle of small stones, from which was suspended a tablet, the size of
an ivyleaf, composed of various coloured stones embroidered on network
of cotton.
When the cacique entered on board the ship he distributed presents of
the productions of his island among the officers and men.
Columbus tells us that Old Harbour was inhabited by the most intelligent
and most civilized of all the aborigines that he had met in the
Antilles. Later it was called Esquivel, after the Spanish governor who
established it as a port for ship-building.
The land on which the =Church of St. Dorothy=, commonly called
Tamarind-tree church, at Old Harbour, was built, was given as a free
gift by Colonel Fuller and his wife Catherine Fuller, and also the land
and glebe consisting of about 30 acres of land on which the rectory
house was built. Colonel Fuller was among the foremost of the
Parliamentary officers who came here with Penn and Venables, and
received large grants of land, comprising Fuller’s Pen and Thetford in
St. Dorothy, and Fuller’s Pen in St. John’s. At a Council meeting held
at St. Jago de la Vega, May 9, 1692,
Thomas Scambler Clerke, Minister and Rector of the Parish of St.
Dorothy, being at the Board tendered the oaths appointed by Act of
Parliament to be taken instead of the oaths of Supremacy and
Allegiance, and also to repeat and subscribe the Declaration as by the
said Act is Required Peremtarily refuse to take the same ordered that
he be from henceforth _ipso facto_ deprived of his said benefice as by
the said Act is Directed, and that notice thereof be given to the
Churchwardens of the said parish.
On May 19, at a meeting of the council, it was
ordered that the Provost Marshall forthwith take into custody the body
of Thomas Scambler Clerke, late Minister and Rector of the Parish of
St. Dorothy for refusing to take the oaths ... and that the
Attorney-General prosecute him thereupon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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