Upon the receipt of Elliott’s news the House of Assembly, which was then sitting, was adjourned for one month, a council of war was called together, martial law proclaimed, and every officer ordered to his post. Colonel Beckford (grandfather of the celebrated Lord Mayor of London), who was in command at Port Royal, got Fort Charles into excellent order and fortified the town. A fort also was built in the Parade at Kingston; the pass by Rock Fort to the east of Kingston was guarded, and breastworks were erected at Old Harbour and Carlisle Bay. Beeston, realising that it was hopeless with the forces at command to try to protect all his coast-line, decided to defend the strongest parts, and drew all the forces from the out ports into St. Dorothy (a parish now merged in St. Catherine), St. Catherine, St. Andrew and Port Royal; and “some few” were left to defend the breastwork at Carlisle Bay. The people from St. Thomas and St. David, the most exposed positions, were called into St. Andrew and Kingston. At Fort William and Port Morant the guns were spiked, the shot buried, and the powder brought away. [Illustration: CARLISLE BAY ] The French fleet, consisting of three men-of-war and twenty-three transports, appeared in the offing on June 17. Rollon, the admiral, sailed in the _Téméraire_, of fifty-four guns. Eight ships stayed about Port Morant, but the remainder went into Cow Bay, near Yallahs, where they laid waste the country, plundered the houses, murdered what inhabitants they could find, and generally behaved with barbarity. On July 15 the fleet, having done all the damage it could in the neighbourhood of Port Morant, set sail, and after reconnoitring Port Royal, put into Cow Bay the next day. Fearing an attack on Kingston by land, Beeston sent a hundred men from St. Catherine to reinforce the troops guarding the Windward road; but on the morning of the 18th he saw seventeen ships making, as he rightly judged, for Carlisle Bay, thirty six miles from Spanish Town. He took prompt action. He sent to Carlisle Bay two troops of horse, and parts of the regiments of St. Catherine, Clarendon and St. Elizabeth, the foot to be mounted on what horses they could find. The cavalry and the mounted infantry got there that night, and those on foot “marched so hard” that they arrived by ten the next morning. The enemy had anchored in Carlisle Bay on the afternoon of the 18th. The editor of the earliest edition of the “Laws of Jamaica,” published in 1683, refers to “Carlisle Bay, a safe Road for Shipping, and there is likewise built a pretty Town of that name, of about 100 Houses which has a fine Trade, that also increases, as the Country does in Plantations.”