Zachary Bayly 1721-1769

Zachary Bayly (1721-1769)

Zachary Bayly was well-known in mid-18th century Jamaica as merchant, planter, attorney, Custos and Chief Justice of St. Mary and St. George. Through astute judgment and ruthless determination, together with the good fortune of living in a period of growing prosperity in the West Indian sugar industry, he amassed great wealth, a major share of which he left to his nephew, the West Indian historian Bryan Edwards (1743-1800).

Bayly was born on 30 May 1721, the eldest son of dissenters, Zachary and Elizabeth Bayly of Westbury, Wiltshire. [1] His education was meagre, according to the diplomatic rhetoric of Bryan Edwards’s epitaph, still visible as an inscription in the Parish Church of St. Andrew, Jamaica,: “He was wise, without the Assistance of recorded Wisdom … He applied not to Books but to Men and drank of Knowledge not from the Stream, but the Source”.[2]

 

His lack of book-learning was probably due to the failure of his father’s business. Zachary Bayly senior (1677-1738), a carrier, was heavily in debt by the mid-1720s and bankrupt when he died in 1738, leaving eight children; after the death of Elizabeth Bayly later in the same year, the children were taken under the protection of their maternal grandfather, Peter Lee of Warminster, who died in 1744, leaving them £40 each.[3] It may have been these bequests that spurred Zachary Bayly junior and his younger brother Nathaniel to seek their fortune in Jamaica: £40 was a significant sum at a time when a transatlantic passage could be bought for less than five pounds. They already had connections with the island through their father’s brother, James Bayly (1681-1723), a planter in Clarendon parish, who left a wife and two sons in Jamaica.[4] There is a strong probability that Zachary Bayly senior himself lived in Jamaica before his marriage to Elizabeth Lee in 1715.

The younger Zachary Bayly first appears in Jamaican records as occupant of a house in Kingston from 1747 to 1754.[5] He was by then engaged in the transatlantic trade between Jamaica and Bristol as merchant and plantation attorney, probably introduced to the sugar industry by Samuel Dicker (died 1760), one of the great merchants in Jamaica in the 1740s, comptroller of customs, and owner of Spring Plantation in Hanover. Dicker returned to England in 1745 but continued trading with the West Indies from Bristol.[6]

Bayly’s first partnership was with another Kingston merchant, Edward Foord (also from Bristol); Bayly, Foord & Co collapsed in 1749 as a result of bad debts, but Foord remained a loyal friend. [7] He left instructions in his will (1777): “If I die in Jamaica, to be buried in the Chancel of Half Way Tree Church near my late friend Zachary Bayley”.[8]  In 1749 Bayly took Dicker’s nephew, William Elworthy, into partnership, at Dicker’s suggestion; Elworthy arrived in Jamaica in 1748 holding a warrant for the profitable office of comptroller of customs, and Dicker appointed Bayly and Elworthy as his attorneys. [9] Bayley, Elworthy & Co (with Nathaniel Bayly as junior member), flourished until Elworthy’s death in about 1756, thereafter doing business as Zachary and Nathaniel Bayly & Co. Bayly kept control of customs by obtaining a warrant for Nathaniel, and eventually secured the office of comptroller for himself in 1764.[10] His principal activity however was plantation management as attorney for absentee owners, with responsibility for their legal interests as well as the shipment of produce from the estates, import of commodities, and purchase of slaves: Bayley, Elworthy & Co appear as slave factors in Bristol shipping lists in 1752-3.[11]

In his early days Bayly was regarded by other Kingston merchants as a reckless entrepreneur. Henry Bright reported to his father-in-law in Bristol in 1750:
“Mr. Baily have shipt a great deal of cotton & mahogany &c … which doubt not but will make a figure in Bristoll and may be the occation of severall people saying why could you not ship those commoditys to us as well as Mr. Bayley. The affair is this, Mr. Bayley has bought to the amount of £2,000 or £3,000 in cotton at 19 to 22 [%] and have given his bills … to raise cash to pay for it and have purchasd to a considerable amount in other commoditys on same footing. I wish he may succeed in his scheme but very much question if he’ll gett anything by it.” [12]

Jeremiah Meyler wrote from Kingston in a similar vein: “Yesterday was sold at vendue 70 tons of logwood at £10 & £10 10s. which was purchased by Mr Bayly who is fond of advancing the markett, but [I] believe he will not gett by the ginger he purchased at 60s. & 65s. per cwt. for which he gave for large quantitys, which was a precident for others.” [13] Traders learned from Bayly’s success to value his judgment, particularly about shipping, a crucial aspect of transatlantic trading: he earned the lasting respect and friendship of Bristol shipowner Thomas Harris (c.1711-1797).[14] Bayly was one of relatively few merchants in the mid-18th century trading with North America, through dealings with Dicker’s cousin, the Philadelphia merchant, John Reynell.[15]

From 1750 onwards Bayly and another merchant, John Morse, were attorneys for Caleb and Ezekiel Dickinson of Bristol, owners of four large plantations in St Elizabeth. Morse was their plantation manager while Bayly represented them in legal disputes against a neighbouring planter, Alexander McFarlane and his heirs. In a letter renewing Zachary’s power of attorney in 1763, Caleb Dickinson wrote:

“I have always been sensible that the Trouble you have had, more or less, almost for these 13 years past, in defending our just right, against the Combined Attacks of McFarlane & his Party, is very Great; and would it have been foreseen is what no man would have undertook, unless activated by a Principle of Friendship – Such I am persuaded have been & are your Motives for Continuing, for which I shall ever Thank You”.[16] Perhaps as a mark of gratitude, a ship used by Dickinson’s agent, William Reynolds for trade with Jamaica was registered in 1764 in the name of Zachary Bayly.[17]

Bayly never married or returned to England, but he remained closely attached to his family in Westbury. When his elder sister Elizabeth was widowed in 1758 he immediately took her and her children under his protection. He took charge of the education of her eldest son, Bryan Edwards, through an agent in Bristol, and afterwards, when the sixteen-year-old Bryan came to live with him in Jamaica, he engaged the Rev. Isaac Teale as resident tutor for him.[18] He also took Bryan’s younger brother, Nathaniel Bayly Edwards (1750-1771), under his wing in Jamaica.

Bayly’s main residence was Greenwich Park, St Andrew, a 163-acre pen west of Kingston (marked “Baily’s” on the 1755 map of Jamaica), on which he kept two “White servants”, forty-one “Negroes”, and thirty-five cattle.[19]

 

 

By 1754 he was a considerable landowner, paying quit rent on properties, totaling more than 5,000 acres, in various parishes: some sole-owned, some in part-ownership with Elworthy and Nathaniel Bayly.[20] His policy later was to concentrate all his own properties except Greenwich Park in the fertile but thinly settled parish of St Mary. By 1760 he owned at least three estates in St Mary: Trinity, Nonsuch, and Tryall. He purchased Tryall from the heirs of John Basnett sometime before 1757.[21] An advertisement he inserted in the Weekly Jamaica Courant on 7 May 1754 suggests that he previously managed the plantation on their behalf:

“Greenwich Park. Run away, from Tryal Plantation in the parish of St. Mary, two Negro men named TOM and JOE, marked on the right breast Z B T [the T below], they formerly belonged to Capt. WILLIAM CHARLES, and are supposed to be harboured in this town. Also run away from me some time past, two Negro men, one named DEVONSHIRE, formerly the property of CHARLES FRASER and used to be employed on his wharf; the other named JOE, a cooper, formerly belonging to Mr. PASEO of Liguanea. ZACHARY BAYLY.” [22]

In 1763 he acquired further properties in different parishes which he must have sold or exchanged for more land in St Mary, for by 1769 all his land-holdings except Greenwich Park were in that parish. [23] An engraving dedicated to “Zachary Bayly” in 1766 shows a picturesque view of Ora Cabeca, one of the chief ports in St Mary (now Oracabessa), which he was presumably using in 1766 for the transport of produce from his plantations and import of timber, machinery, and provisions required for their maintenance and development. He evidently planned to make Port Maria his main outlet, however: his will mentions “a large pile of buildings lately erected [emphasis added] for houses and stores upon Port Maria Bay and a wharfe and crane”.[24]

Bayly’s estates were involved in two slave revolts in St Mary in the 1760s. The first began with a gathering of Coromantees from various plantations at his Trinity estate in the early hours of Easter Monday, April 1760. Bryan Edwards, who had arrived in Jamaica a few weeks earlier but was not with his uncle in St Mary during the revolt, inserted an account of it in his history of the West Indies which he must have heard from Bayly himself:

“Mr. Bayly had himself left the Trinity estate the preceding evening, after having personally inspected into the situation of his newly purchased Africans, and delivered them with his own hands their clothing and knives, little apprehending the bloody business in which these knives were soon afterwards employed. He slept at Ballard’s Valley, a plantation of Mr. Cruikshank, a few miles distant: and was awoke by his servant at day-break, with the information that his Trinity Negroes had revolted. The intelligence was brought by some of his own people, who had fled in search of their master, and reported that the insurgents were close at their heels. No time therefore being to be lost, Mr. Bayly recommended to Mr. Cruikshank, and some other gentlemen who were with him, to proceed forthwith, with such arms as they could collect, to an estate in the neighbourhood, which having a defensible house, was fixed on as a proper place of rendezvous; promising to join them in a few hours. He then mounted his horse, and proceeded himself in search of the rebels, conceiving (as he knew they had no reason to complain of ill treatment) that his presence and persuasions would reduce them to obedience. As he descended the hill on which Mr. Cruikshank’s house was situated, he heard the Koromantyn yell of war, and saw the whole body of rebel Negroes in full march for the habitation of the Overseer; a smaller house situated within half a mile of the other. He approached them notwithstanding, and waving his hat, endeavoured to obtain a hearing, but was answered by a discharge of musquetry, by which his servant’s horse was shot under him, and both himself and the servant very narrowly escaped with life. The savages then proceeded to the massacre of the White people in the Overseer’s house; and Mr. Bayly rode round to all the different plantations in the neighbourhood, giving them notice of their danger, and sending all the Whites to the place of rendezvous. By this measure he had collected before noon about 130 Whites and trusty Blacks, tolerably armed; whom he then led in pursuit of the rebels. They were found at Haywood-Hall, roasting an ox by the flames of the buildings, which they had set on fire. The Whites attacked them with great fury, killed eight or nine on the spot, took several of them prisoners, and drove the rest into the woods, where they acted afterwards wholly on the defensive, and were soon exterminated.” [25]

The revolt was suppressed within two weeks, but it proved to be the first of a series of Coromantee uprisings in different parishes, afterwards known as Tacky’s War, the most successful rebellion in Jamaica in the eighteenth century.[26] In the immediate aftermath of the first uprising, however, Bayly was regarded by his friends and acquaintances as saving the island from widespread revolt by his prompt actions. John Morse wrote on April 24th: “A most violent Rebellion broke out over Easter in St Mary rageing some short time with great Fury & outrage but thank God the Rebels are now all to a trifle killd & taken  Our friend Z Bayly hapend to be there & by his Valor & Intrepidity gave the first check to its rapidity. Otherwise it had in all likelihood been of the most fatall consequence to the whole Island.” [27] Francis Treble wrote on June 2nd: “Mr. Bayly was with Crookshank at the time, & very lucky for the Country he was, for its being so soon suppress’d was undoubtedly owing to his great activity & Dilligence in getting People togeather, he had sev’l Musquets fir’d at him, but he escap’d, & has wrote a very long letter to his Brother giving a full History of this St. Marys affair”.[28]

The “long letter” has not survived, and when Zachary himself wrote to Dickinson on June 1st he talked mainly about the effects of the revolt on his crops:

“I took your letter with me to St. Mary’s at Easter, but a troublesome Insurrection of the Negroes amongst some of the Plantations there kept me six weeks closely employed before we could entirely suppress them — a more dangerous or troublesome Affair I was never engaged in, in all my life – I am a great sufferer by this unlucky accident, but ’tis well its no worse – I will not trouble you with all the particulars as I doubt not you will hear the whole from Natt [Nathaniel Bayly], but just mention the matter as an apology for my not writing you at large as I intended & which I will do when I am so happy as to have one day’s leisure, but when that may be God knows, for the many Affairs which I am engaged in calling continually for my personal attendance & the frequent Alarms of Insurrections & Rebellions of Negroes keeps me continually in action.— About twenty Negroes broke out lately at Manchionells but did little mischief, and before that Insurrection is well quashed I hear of a much worse broke out at Westmoreland. … I should have made a very great Crop at my St. Mary’s Estates, and my Brother’s Estate [Gibraltar] in St. George’s had not the Rebellion of the Negroes & Martial Law interrupted our work for three Weeks in the very prime of the Crop”.[29]

He lost “about a dozen Negroes” in the rebellion.[30] Six months later he was granted compensation for the death of one of them, “a negro slave, named Galbo” (valued at £80) who had been “sent out against the rebels, in the late rebellion in St. Mary’s” and was “shot in one of the engagements with them”; Bayly also claimed reimbursement for “provisions and other necessaries supplied by him, for the use of the parties fitted out against the negroes in rebellion, in the time of martial law”.[31]

The second revolt in St Mary’s came five years later, in November 1765. Once again he was active in organizing defence of his own and his neighbours’ plantations and, as chief magistrate of St Mary, he conducted trials at his Nonsuch estate of some of the conspirators afterwards. His account of the event, sent to Nathaniel in London, was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and his letters to Governor Lyttelton, written during the revolt provide a valuable though one-sided source of information.[32] The uprising itself lasted less than two days but it aroused fears, by no means baseless, of another widespread Coromantee-led insurrection on the scale of Tacky’s War, and had significant political repercussions in 1766.

BAYLY’S POLITICAL CAREER

Bayly was first elected to the House of Assembly as a member for Kingston in April 1750. During sessions of the Assembly he and John Morse stayed in lodgings in Spanish Town.[33] The house belonged to Samuel Dicker’s cousin, Rose Fuller, chief justice of Jamaica (1752-1754), and afterwards a leading spokesman for the Jamaican colonists in the House of Commons.  As member of the Assembly until 1762 and of Council from 1762 to 1768, Bayly was caught up in stormy conflicts over constitutional issues between the colonists and the governor during the administrations of Charles Knowles (1752-1756) and William Henry Lyttelton (1762-1766).[34] But for Bayly himself politics was primarily a means to further the interests of his business or his friends.

In 1753 the Assembly was engaged in a bitter dispute with Governor Knowles concerning control of public finances, in the midst of which a deficit of £20,000 in the public accounts was discovered. The receiver-general, Benjamin Hume, a close friend of Bayly’s, was dismissed from office for embezzlement, and Knowles directed that a writ of extent be issued against Hume (entailing the immediate forfeiture of all his lands and goods) in order to recover the debt to the crown. The Assembly, probably at Bayly’s instigation, resolved on a less punitive measure, whereby Hume’s estates and slaves would be conveyed to a trust empowered to raise the money in gradual stages. Knowles gave way, and four trustees, including Bayly himself, were appointed for the purpose.[35]

At elections held in April 1755 Bayly was returned as a member for St Mary, while his former seat in Kingston was taken by his brother Nathaniel. The Assembly by then was split into bitterly warring factions over a bill to remove the capital from Spanish Town to Kingston: it was opposed by the planters, led by Charles Price, Sr., but strongly supported by Knowles and the merchants, including Bayly.[36] In September 1755, however, a bye-election caused by the death of Alexander McFarlane, member for St Elizabeth, offered Bayly a fortuitous opportunity to gain the upper hand in the lawsuit he was pursuing against McFarlane’s family by changing political sides. As reported by a defender of Knowles, the situation was this:

“Among … Members of the Assembly in the Governor’s Interest, were Mr. Cooke, and Mr. Zachariah Bailey; these two Persons, who though on the same Side in the House, were yet at mortal Enmity against each other, set up two different Persons as Candidates for St. Elizabeth’s; Mr. Cooke set up Mr. Sergeant, the Father of a Lady whom he had married, and Mr. Bailey set up Mr. Elworthy his Partner, who was then in England.” [37]

Francis Cooke was a close associate of McFarlane; Peter Sergeant was his legal counsel; William Elworthy was in London, on business for Bayly, Elworthy & Co.[38] The account continues:

“The Poll was carried on with the utmost Zeal and Bitterness on both Sides, and the Numbers polled were so nearly equal, that each Party was in doubt on which Side the Scale would turn…. Mr. Bailey was indeed more interested in the Event than Mr. Cooke, for he had already a younger Brother [Nathaniel Bayly] in the House, over whom, as well as over his new Candidate [Elworthy], he had an absolute Influence, so that his Success in this Election would give him the turning Weight in the Assembly. This Advantage then he determined at any rate to secure, and therefore made an Offer to several leading Gentlemen who were in the Opposition, that if they would assist him to carry this Election with their Interest, himself, his Brother, and his Partner, should enter into their Party, and concur in the Support of all their Measures.
This Offer inspired the Faction with new Life, … and therefore, tho’ they had no liking for the Man who made it, they accepted it immediately, their Interest was excited on his Behalf, and his Partner Mr. Elworthy … was duly elected.” [39]

A fierce struggle for ascendancy followed in October 1755. The opposition attempted to secure a majority by unseating two members on the government side, one of whom was Cooke. Insolvency being a disqualification, Bayly searched public records and found that Cooke “was not qualified, according to law, to have a seat in this house, there being several mortgages, and writs of execution and venditioni, due and outstanding against him, for very considerable sums of money.” He was suspended for further investigation; but Sergeant, in turn, challenged Elworthy’s election on the grounds of his absence from Jamaica. The opposition tried to halt proceedings by leaving the house en masse to prevent a quorum; fifteen members escaped, but the doors were then locked and the Bayly brothers and another member were forcibly held down in their seats. Zachary Bayly was ordered to produce papers to prove his allegations against Cooke and was expelled when he refused. On 14 November 1755, a petition of protest, signed by Charles Price and nineteen other members including both the Baylys, was addressed to the king; it reached London in January 1756, and Knowles was replaced by Henry Moore as acting governor. [40]

Moore took over in July 1756, and after elections in August, Charles Price’s party held 34 of the 43 seats in the Assembly, Price was elected as Speaker and peace prevailed. But the Council was still dominated by supporters of the former governor, and a fracas in November over the declaration of martial law led to the suspension of Manning and six other councillors, though Manning himself died on the day he was officially suspended.[41] Bayly, writing to Rose Fuller in January 1757, commented:
“Great Changes have happened in Politicks, and publick Affairs since you left us; but I need not repeat any of them, as I know you have had constant and regular Information of what has been done. The great Revolution in the Council has made some Noise. It seems to have been a bold Push to dismiss seven Members at once, and they say without Foundation; indeed Manning died without receiving his Suspension, but ’twas it seems made out for him….
I truly wish if we should have a Govern’r sent over soon, as some expect and wish, he may be a Man of Family and Spirit, tho’ I am in hopes Things will go on pretty well under this Gent’n [Moore]. The putting the Country under Martial Law the other day, and by which we lost two Grand Courts seems to have been an unnecessary and impolitick Measure. It suited some people’s Affairs and Circumstances very well I believe; but by no means with the Interest or Libertys of the People in general and I am persuaded has answer’d no good purpose whatsoever.”[42]

One advantageous result of the “great changes” for Bayly and the Dickinsons was the rout of their legal enemies. Caleb Dickinson visited Jamaica himself in July 1756 and reported to his wife that “Cooke & Sergeant have been divested of all their Power – The former of that of one of the Judges of the Grand Court & Custos or Chief Magistrate of this Parish & the Coll’ of Militia & Justice of the Peace – and the other of being Chief Judge & Justice of the Peace of this Parish. So that I am free from their Power so far”.[43] That particular round of the Dickinson-McFarlane disputes ended in 1757: “A few days ago Mr Dickinson’s Case for the land recover’d by McFarlane was try’d in the Gd. Court and Mr. Dickinson has a Verdict for his Lands again”.[44]

In 1764-1766 an almost united Assembly, led by the speaker, Charles Price, Jr., was locked in battle against Governor Lyttelton in the Jamaican privilege controversy.[45] Bayly by then was a member of the Council (appointed in April 1762) and supported the governor. When elections for the Assembly were held in March 1765 he tried to rally support in the lower house, as Simon Taylor noted: “Zachary Bailly promised to return 20 Members but has been very much disappointed…. Old Price [Charles Price, Sr.] stands for St Mary’s Bayly says he will spend one of his Estates to oppose him [and] talks of quitting his seat [on the Council] to be in the Assembly himself”.[46] He was assured of at least one voice in the Assembly when his nephew Bryan Edwards was elected as a member for St George. Edwards had reached the age of twenty-one in May 1764: it was doubtless then that Bayly settled an annuity of £300 on him, a qualification for membership of the Assembly.[47] Long afterwards, Edwards claimed that he was “one of a small minority in the house of assembly that supported the administration of Mr. Lyttelton, whose abilities and virtues were acknowledged even by his enemies”. [48]

Bayly himself, however, was preoccupied with other matters than the privilege controversy. In July-August 1766 he had to defend himself against a petition  presented in the Assembly by Robert Thombs, whose estate of Rose Castle in St Mary’s had been conveyed to Bayly in repayment of debt. Thombs alleged that he and his wife had been seriously mistreated by the officers responsible for enforcing Bayly’s rights of possession, and that the value of the property was considerably greater than the sum owing to Bayly.[49] He was also giving evidence to the committee inquiring into 1765 revolt in St. Mary, in response to two witnesses who blamed him for recklessly and irresponsibly underestimating the scale and danger of the situation.  The accusations were not repeated in the committee’s report, delivered to the house by Edward Long.[50]

After Lyttelton’s departure in 1766 there was political peace under acting governor Roger Hope Elletson. In 1768 however a clash between Council and Assembly over a minor issue led to the suspension of six councillors, including Bayly. “All our Politics here are turnd upside down”, Simon Taylor commented in March 1768: “Mr. Elletson has suspended Bayly, Pinnock, Scott, Cooke, Sinclair & Kennion from the Councill & all honors Civil & Military.”[51]

Shortly after that, according to Taylor, Bayly was involved in a completely unrelated quarrel with John Kennion (owner of Holland plantation in St. Elizabeth). Taylor  wrote in July: “there has been the Devill to pay between two disbanded Councillors Viz. Bayly & Kennion about the latters having debauched the others Quadroon Girl. Bayly says he is very glad that he did not catch them in Bed together or he would have been under the necessity of putting him to death.”[52]

The suspended councillors were reinstated when Governor William Trelawny arrived in September 1768, but Bayly chose to return to the Assembly instead. He was back in the house in November, and busy throughout the session as leader of a committee of inquiry into “what slaves have run off this island, during five years past, and whether the laws now in force, are sufficient to prevent and suppress such practice in future”. Reporting for the committee, Bayly said that large numbers of slaves had taken refuge in Cuba, and that the governor, acting on instructions from Spain, had ordered that “all negroes” coming from the British islands “should be employed in his Catholic majesty’s service”. He warned that “if a speedy remedy be not applied to so growing an evil, it will soon prove the ruin of a great many planters along the sea-coast of this island, particularly on the north side”; the planters included himself, as manager of Gibraltar plantation during Nathaniel Bayly’s absence. The house was persuaded that further legislation was necessary, and Bayly accordingly presented a bill, finally enacted on 31 December 1768 as “An act for the more effectual preventing negro and other slaves from deserting from their owners, and departing from this island in a clandestine manner, and to punish such persons as shall be aiding, assisting, or abetting, such slaves in their escape.”[53]

The next session of the Assembly began on 24 October 1769, but a week later he was granted leave of absence because of illness.[54] He died on 18 December 1769.

Bayly’s estate was valued at probate as £167,441.51 Jamaican currency (£114,742.51 sterling). [55] His will shows he possessed real estate comprising Greenwich Park pen in St Andrew and two large blocks of land in St Mary: one consisting of four plantations, Trinity, Tryall, Brimmer Hall, and Baylys Vale, together with “sundry penns and provision settlements all contiguous and adjoining to each other”; the other comprising Nonsuch and Unity plantations plus “a penn called the Crawle together with the penns and provision grounds adjoining and contiguous”. He left the great bulk of his fortune to his family: the principal beneficiaries were his brother Nathaniel and nephew Bryan Edwards, but he also left munificent legacies to each of his five sisters, made handsome provision for all his other nephews and nieces, and ensured by means of entails that his wealth stayed within the Bayly bloodline, and that the Bayly name was preserved. His friends were not wholly forgotten however. He instructed his executor (Bryan Edwards) to distribute “fifty mourning rings value two guineas each amongst my most intimate friends”, and made individual bequests to Benjamin Hume, Thomas Harris, and John Morse. He directed Edwards not to distress Hume “on account of the large sum or sums of money due or that may be due to me … at the time of my decease but give reasonable time for the payment and contribute as much as in his power to render the remainder of my said worthy friends life comfortable and happy in all respects.” Bayly’s final instructions were for the manumission of, and payment of £50 currency per annum for life to “my mulatto slave named Tom alias Thomas Brown [who] hath always behaved with great faithfullness and distinguished himself in a particular manner when with me against the rebell negroes in the parish of St. Marys in the year 1760 as also in the insurrection … in the year 1766”. And lastly he directed the payment of £100 currency immediately and £50 currency per annum for life to “Patience Boone a free mulatto woman for her faithfull services”. [56] Patience Boone was probably Bayly’s mistress, but there is no mention or record of any children fathered by him.[57]

[1] His birth-date is known a poem celebrating his 40th birthday: ‘The Compliment of the Day’, written May 30, 1761, by Isaac Teale, Gentleman’s Magazine 41 (Aug 1771), 371.

[2] ‘Inscription in the Parish Church of St, Andrew’: Edwards, Poetical Essays, 35-37.

[3] Chancery suit Lee v Baily, C11/771/41 (2 June 1738); Will of Peter Lee, 24 March 1743, proved 7 Sept 1744, Wiltshire and Swindon Archives P1/h/403.

[4] Will of James Bayly, signed 1716, proved 17 Feb 1723: Jamaica Archives, Wills 16/86.

[5] Kenneth Morgan, ed., The Bright-Meyler Papers (2007), 218, n.163, citing Kingston Poll Tax lists and Kingston Parish Registers.

[6] Bristol Archives AC/WO/16/37; The House of Commons 1754-1790, ed. L. Namier, J. Brooke (1964): www.historyofparliamentonline.org.

[7] Morgan, Bright-Meyler Papers (2007), 217.

[8] Will of Edward Foord, 1777: Oliver, Caribbeana, 3.149-50. His brother, John Foord, who also had business dealings with Bayly, asked in his will (1758) to be buried at Greenwich Park (Bayly’s estate): Oliver, Caribbeana, 3.149, 152.

[9] Testimony by Zachary Bayly to committee of inquiry into fees of customs officers: Journal of the Assembly of Jamaica, 9 Aug 1766 (5.604-606). Attorneys: JAJ,  9 Nov 1752 (4.364); Bayly was still acting for Dicker in 1760: Dicker & Cross vs. Attorney-General of Jamaica: JAJ, 6 Nov 1760 (5.197-199).

[10] See no.9.

[11] David Richardson, ed., Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade to America vol. 3 (1991), 53, 61.

[12] To Richard Meyler, 10 June 1750: Bright-Meyler Papers, 222.

[13] To Richard Meyler, 22 April 1752: Bright-Meyler Papers, 250.

[14] Bright Meyler Papers, 10 Aug 1758 (342-3); 1 Sept 1769 (423); Bayly’s will NA, PROB 11/968/87.

[15] Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles (1956), 9n; Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the eighteenth century (1993), 71n, citing the Coates and Reynell Papers, HSP.

[16] Bristol, 22 June 1763: Dickinson family papers, South West Heritage Trust, DD\DN 4/1/28/18.

[17] Entered in Lloyds Register (1764) as Zach. Baily: Master: Wm. Hodge. 305 tons, 10 guns. Built 1758, Whitehaven. Owner: W. Reynolds. Grateful acknowledgments to Eric Graham.

[18] Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British West Indies, 3rd. edn. (1801), 1. ix-xiv.

[19] Landowners in St. Andrew in 1753, NA, CO 137/28, s.v. ‘Baily, Zach.’

[20] List of landholders in Jamaica, 1754, NA, CO 142/31.

[21] Letter to Rose Fuller, 20 Jan 1757, East Sussex Record Office, SAS-RF 21/92. John Basnett was paying quit rent on 890 acres in St Mary in 1754: NA, CO 142/31.

[22] Runaway Slaves in Jamaica (1): Eighteenth Century, ed. Douglas B. Chambers, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00021144/0001

[23] Conveyance of reversion, under the Will of Alger Pestell, 22 March 1763: Caribbeana 5.171. Southampton City Archives D/Z, 135/38.

[24] Will of Zachary Bayly, 22 Sept 1769, NA, PROB 11/968/87 (typography modernised).

[25] Added in the 2nd edn. of Edwards’s History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies (1794), 2.64-66n.

[26] See Vincent Brown: Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative, www.revolt.axismaps.com accessed 17/02/2018.

[27] Morse, Jamaica, to Caleb Dickinson, 24 April 1760: Dickinson papers, DD\DN 4/1/25/49.

[28] Treble, Kingston, to Caleb Dickinson, 2 June 1760: Dickinson papers, DD\DN 4/1/25/59.

[29] Zachary Bayly to Caleb Dickinson, 1 June 1760: Dickinson papers, DD\DN/4/1/25/57.

[30] Nathaniel Bayly to Caleb Dickinson, 19 July 1760: Dickinson papers, DD\DN 4/1/25/77.

[31] JAJ, 9 Dec 1760 (5.236).

[32] GM 36 (March 1766), 135. William Henry Lyttelton Papers: William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; “Accounts of Slave Risings in the Parish of St. Mary, Jamaica 1765,” Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven. Grateful acknowledgments to James Robertson.

[33] Letter from Mary Rose, Spanish Town, 20 Dec 1756, to Rose Fuller: East Sussex Record Office SAS/RF 21/90: she described them as “very good Lodgers”.

[34] See George Metcalf, Royal Government and Political Conflict in Jamaica 1729-1783 (1965), 108-166; Jack P. Greene, ‘“Of Liberty and the Colonies”: a case study of constitutional conflict in the mid-eighteenth-century British American empire’, in Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century, ed. David Womersley (2006), 21-102.

[35] JAJ, 25-29 Oct 1753 (4.426-431).

[36] Metcalf (1965), 132-4; Greene (2006), 66-80.

[37] An Historical Account of the Sessions of Assembly, for the Island of Jamaica: Which began on Tuesday the 23rd of Sept. 1755 (1757), 6.

[38] Dickinson papers, 3-22 Dec 1755: DD\DN 4/1/17/120, 122, 136.

[39] An Historical Account of the Sessions of Assembly (1757), 6-7.

[40] JAJ, 20 Oct–14 Nov 1755 (4.536-559); An Historical Account (1757), 17-27; Metcalf (1965), 134.

[41] Metcalf (1965), 142-144.

[42] To Rose Fuller, London, 20 Jan 1757: East Sussex Record Office SAS/RF/21/92.

[43] 15 July 1756: Dickinson papers, DD/DN 4/1/19.

[44] Zachary Bayly, Kingston, to Rose Fuller, London, 19 March 1757: East Sussex Record Office SAS-RF/21/100.

[45] Metcalf (1965), 160-165; Jack P. Greene, ‘The Jamaica privilege controversy, 1764–66’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22 (1994), 16-53.

[46] Simon Taylor, Kingston, 11 July 1765, to Chaloner Arcedekne: The Letters of Simon Taylor of Jamaica to Chaloner Arcedekne, 1765-1775, ed. Betty Wood, assisted by T.R. Clayton and W.A. Speck (2002), 20.

[47] See Will of Zachary Bayly, 22 Sept 1769: NA, PROB 11/968/87.

[48] History, 3rd edn. (1801), 2.428n: from paragraph added in this edition.

[49] JAJ, 8 July-13 Aug 1766 (5.546-636). I have not discovered the outcome of the petition.

[50] JAJ, 6 Aug 1766 (5.592-596).

[51] 25 March 1768, Letters (2002), 56-7. Metcalf (1965), 171-2.

[52] 25 July 1768, Letters (2002), 64: no other records of this affair seem to survive.

[53] JAJ, 8-31 Dec 1768 (6.112-170).

[54] JAJ 6.179 (31 Oct 1769).

[55] Trevor Burnard, Database of Jamaican inventories, 1674-1784, cited in ‘Zachary Bayly’, Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146652013, accessed 27th September 2018.

[56] Will of Zachary Bayly, 22 Sept 1769: NA, PROB 11/968/87.

[57] The baptism of William Tucker, b. 15 June 1772, son of Patience Boone, free mulatto, father, Peter Bright, is recorded in Kingston parish registers: www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com