CHAP, in.] WEST INDIES. 193 



principles of the times: Having called an assembly, 

 his grace dissolved them abruptly, because one of the 

 members, in a debate, repeated the old adage, salus 

 populi suprema lex. His grace afterwards took the 

 member into custody, and caused him to be fined six 

 hundred pounds for this offence. With his grace came 

 over Father Thomas Churchill, a Romish pastor, sent 

 out by James II. to convert the island to popery; but 

 his grace's death, and the revolution in 1688, blasted 

 the good father's project. The duchess accompanied 

 her husband; a circumstance which the speaker of 

 the assembly, in his first address, expatiated upon in 

 a high strain of eloquence. " It is an honour (said 

 he) which the opulent kingdoms of Mexico and Peru 

 could never arrive at, and even Columbus' s ghost would 

 be appeased for all the indignities he endured of tlie 

 Spaniards, could he but knozo, that his oicn beloved 

 soil was hallowed by such footsteps ! 



Having merrtioned this lady, the reader, I am persuaded, will pardon 

 me for adding the following particulars of her history. On the death of the 

 dake her first husband, his grace's coadjutors in the diving business (many 

 of \vhom had been bucaniers) complained that they had not received their 

 full share of the prize money, and her grace, who had got possession of" 

 the treasure, refusing to part with a shilling, they formed a scheme to 

 seize her person in the king's house in Spanish Town, and carry her oft. 

 Luckily she received some intimation of the plot a day or two before it was 

 to have been carried into execution, and communicated her apprehensions 

 to the house of assembly, who thereupon appointed a formidable committee 

 of their ablest bodied members to guard her person by day and niglit, 

 until she was safely embarked in one of the king's ships. She arrived in 

 England in the Assistance man of war, with ail her treasure, the begin- 

 ning of June 1688, and somr years afterwards fell into a stare of merit il 

 imbecility, in the progress of which she pieced here!f with - 



Vol. I. ;>b 



