12 
ST. HELENA. 
where it remains to this day, though not in such a fair and gaudy 
condition as the newspaper announcement. 
Under the fostering care of the East India Company, this little 
colony continued to grow up and flourish, during the next hundred 
and thirty-years. They lavished large sums of money upon it 
in doing all that could be done to make it prosper ; they fortified it 
in almost every spot where cannon could be placed, so that at the 
present time it is dotted all over with obsolete batteries and guns. 
They viewed it, in fact, as their pet child, and as many another has 
done, it turned out in the end to be their spoilt child. So jealous 
were they of its welfare, that lest it should in any way become con- 
taminated, they punished witchcraft severely, turned Quakers away, 
and would not suffer a lawyer to dwell there, lest unnecessary liti- 
gation should occupy the minds of the people. But with all their 
anxiety, the Company was sadly unfortunate in the selection of its 
clergy ; one after another they served to cause dissension instead of 
union, and to such an extent that, in 1719, Governor Pike deemed 
it necessary to interfere, and very justly “ reprimanded the parson for 
making great alterations and omissions in the Church service ; and 
since then, to make us amends, he had read the prayer for the 
Honble Company, but leaves out their being Lords proprietors of the 
Island ; and whereas, before it was used by all chaplains that has 
been here to insert, immediately after the petition for those in the 
Company’s service abroad, these words ‘More especially the Gov r- and 
Council of this place and since he constantly omitts that sentence, 
and has given out by his brother that he don’t think them worth 
praying for, the Governor says there is an old Proverb ‘ No penny 
no paternoster/ so we say, no paternoster, no penny, and are very 
well contented because we think the prayers of such a fellow can do 
us but little good.” What effect the withholding of the parson’s 
salary had is not recorded, but there is reason to think it only 
hardened him in the pursuit of his refractory course, because soon 
after he was “locked up and confined for persisting in reading the 
collect, epistle, and gospel for the 1st Sunday in Advent after the 
Governor call’d to him, in a very mild manner, saying ‘ Doctor, you 
are wrong, this is the second Sunday in Advent.’ ” 
Neither was the Company always successful in obtaining very 
high-class men to rule their Island people, for, during the temporary 
succession of Governors Poirier and Goodwin, a period of disorder, 
