In 1800 the Sierra Leone Company obtained a Charter of Justice from the Crown, authorising the directors to appoint a Governor and Council, and to make laws not repugnant to those of England. During the same year the settlers, roused to wrath by a small ground-rent imposed upon their farms, rose in rebellion. This movement was put down by introducing a third element of 530 Maroons, who arrived in October. They were untamable Coromanti (Gold Coast) negroes who boasted that among blacks they were what the English are among whites, able to fight and thrash all other tribes. They had escaped from their Spanish masters when the British conquered Jamaica in 1655; they took to the mountains, and, joined by desperadoes, they built sundry scattered settlements. [Footnote: In 1738, after regular military operations, the Maroons of Jamaica agreed to act as police and to deliver up runaways. In 1795 the Trelawny men rebelled, and, having inflicted a severe loss upon the troops, were deported to Nova Scotia and Sa Leone.] Introducing these men fostered the ill-feeling which, in the earlier part of the present century, prevented the rival sections from intermarrying. Many of the disaffected Sa Leonites left the colony; some fled to the wilds and the wild ones of the interior, and a few remained loyal. Rumours of native invasions began to prevail. The Governor was loth to believe that King Tom would thus injure his own interests, until one morning, when forty war-canoes, carrying armed Timnis, were descried paddling round the eastern point. Londoners and Nova Scotians fled to the fort, and next day the Timni drum sounded the attack. The Governor, who attempted to parley, was wounded; but the colonists, seeing that life was at stake, armed themselves and beat off the assailants, when the Maroons of Granville Town completed the rout. After this warning a wall with strong watch-towers was built round Freetown. Notwithstanding all precautions, another 'Timni rising' took place in 1803. The assailants paddled down in larger numbers from Porto Loko, landed at Kissy, and assaulted Freetown, headed by a jumping and drumming 'witch-woman.' Divided into three storming parties, they bravely attacked the gates, but they were beaten back without having killed a man. The dead savages lay so thick that the Governor, fearing pestilence, ordered the corpses to be cast into the sea.