The fame of our proceedings in other places had arrived here eight days before us, so that they had time enough to convey all their best household stuff away, leaving nothing behinde them of any value, but onely ye possession of empty houses, with some few chaires, bedsteads, jarres of Mountego, and ye like poore materialls. However, we feasted ourselves this night with Hoggs, Henns, and other good provisions, which wee found in and about ye Towne. This place is called by ye inhabitants Sant Jago de la Vega, being a faire Town, consisting of four or five hundred houses, built for ye most part with canes, overcast with morter and lime, and covered with Tyle. It is beautiful with five or six stately churches and chapples, and one Monastery of Franciscan Fryers, and situated upon descent of a delectable and spacious plaine, on ye North West whereof runneth a pleasant River, whose streame doth empty itself into ye Harbour, distant from hence about four miles Eastward, where our Fleet lay at ankor. The houses, unlesse it bee in ye Markitt Place, stand somewhat separated one from another, by which means it taketh up farr more roome than thrice ye number of our comparted building in Europe. The churches and houses of the Spaniards were for the most part destroyed by the Venables’s soldiery in sheer wantonness. But when they began to settle the island, they repaired those which were worth repairing. It is doubtful, however, if much Spanish work exists to-day. The foundations of St. Jago de la Vega were probably laid by the then viceroy, Diego Columbus, about the year 1523. His son Lewis, created Duke of Veragua, had for a second title Marquis de la Vega, after this town. Hickeringill (writing in 1661) tells us that when the English took the island it contained 2000 houses, sixteen churches and chapels and one abbey, and that of these the English soldiery left but two churches and 500 houses undemolished, but it is thought by Long that this was an exaggeration. In April 1755 when the penkeepers of St. Catherine, St. John, St. Dorothy and St. Thomas-in-the-Vale petitioned the Assembly against the proposed removal of the courts of justice and public offices to Kingston (the assembly itself being then sitting there) they stated that St. Jago de la Vega then consisted of 499 houses, of a rental value of nearly £20,000, and 866 settled white inhabitants exclusive of visitors, and 405 mulattoes and negroes: that there were 472 pens and provision plantations in the neighbourhood, and there were 24,000 inhabitants in the parishes named.