that a charity school should be established in the said parish of St. Ann for maintaining and educating eight poor boys and four poor girls belonging to the said parish as well as for other charitable purposes: And, as an endowment to the said charity, the testator made subject and liable all that his estate in the said parish of St. Ann, called Shelton; and if that estate be found insufficient, his will was, that all his, the testator’s, other estates should be made liable for the deficiency. It appears from the report that William Beckford, the well-known author of “Vathek,” had obtained possession of Drax Hall, the principal property, in a manner “that excited the indignation of every honest man who became acquainted with the transaction.” Protracted legal proceedings resulted in Beckford having to disgorge £5200. A free school, commenced by the vestry of St. Ann in the old court house in that parish in 1795, was in 1802 by an Act of the legislature (43 George 3, c. 32) endowed with the sum obtained from the Drax bequest and called Drax’s Free School; and trustees, consisting of the president of the Council, the speaker of the Assembly, and representatives of St. Ann, were appointed. In 1806 the trustees of this school purchased Walton, the buildings on which had originally been erected as barracks. In 1807 they expressed their willingness to surrender their charge for the public good, and new trustees (embodying many of the old members) were appointed (by 48 George 3, c. 25), and the name of the school was changed to the Jamaica Free School. At its formation the school was thrown open to the island, ten nominations to the school being reserved for the parish of St. Ann in view of the bequest, and thirteen being for the other parishes on the nomination of the Governor, this privilege being transferred by Sir John Peter Grant in later days to the custodes of the thirteen parishes; and on the school being removed and merged into the Jamaica High School, which was opened in the newly constructed buildings at Hope in 1885, after a short sojourn in Barbican great house hard by, the same course was followed, the thirteen open scholarships being awarded by the Jamaica Schools Commission, as the trustees and board of management of the College. The old Jamaica Free School, like other schools in the island at that period, was somewhat overweighted by trustees, consisting as they did of the Governor, the president and members of the Council, the speaker and members of the Assembly, the chief justice, the Attorney-general and others. In the case of the Jamaica Free School their duties were not onerous. The law enforced their meeting only “once in every year, during the annual session of the Legislature of this Island, in the town of Saint Jago de la Vega, for the purpose of examining into the state of the said free-school, &c.” When Bridges wrote his Annals, he said of it: