Anthony Gambrill | The Blagrove legacy: From Oliver Cromwell to Michael Manley

Precisely when John Blagrove came to Jamaica is unknown, although he was a 'regicide', a supporter of Oliver Cromwell who had designs on Spain's Caribbean and South America possessions.

By 1689, he owned 700 acres in Hanover originally known as Maggotty, named for the river running through his land. It was later renamed Kenilworth. On his death, he also owned plantations in St Ann - Orange Valley, Unity, Pembroke and Cardiff Hall. His will listed properties covering 1,880 acres, he possessed 929 slaves, £54,000 in currency while owing £32,000 of debt.

He was not so fortunate in family matters. His son, Thomas, died at 21, a year after his marriage to Elizabeth Campbell. Their union had produced a single child named John, named after his grandfather. Being a minor, although inheriting from his just-deceased father the plantations his grandfather had acquired, John Jr was to be legally in the care of a guardian for many years.

GRAND TOUR

As was the custom among the male offspring of wealthy proprietors, John went to England to be educated at Eton, then Oxford. He also undertook the 'Grand Tour' of Europe designed to broaden his mind, if not also to let him sow his wild oats. It was during this era that he sat for the renowned Italian portrait painter Pompeo Batoni. His conventional portrait was the necessary finishing touch of the Grand Tour for upper-class gentry. The portrait is in our National Gallery.

In 1777, John married Anne Shakespeare before returning to Jamaica to take up the management of his estates, where he was to spend the next 25 years residing at Cardiff Hall. The couple had four sons - none of whom outlived their father - and four daughters. Three of the children were born between 1780 and 1782, when the Blagroves were in England possibly to avoid the threat of tropical diseases inflicted on newborns. Two of the sons were to get caught up in the Napoleonic Wars in France. Charles died in France in internment, while Peter eventually escaped returning to Jamaica where he died aged 30.

As well as allowing for nine natural children by three different mothers, John Blagrove's will appears to have deliberately failed to include his son, John Williams Blagrove, who, in fact, had been incarcerated for many years in a lunatic asylum favoured by the elite for its 'discretion' in Hackney, London.

Cardiff Hall was John Blagrove Jr's main residence with the plantation typically producing sugar for molasses and rum, as well as pimento, breeding cattle and horses, even growing coffee. He was noted for improving his breeds of cattle by importing stock from Britain. He also brought in race horses to take part in competitions held on race courses in Runaway Bay. He represented St Ann in the House of Assembly, following the tradition of his father who briefly sat for Hanover.

He died in 1824 having returned to Britain in 1805. Here he had bought and rebuilt Ankerwycke House in Wraysbury, Buckinghamshire, later moving to Hampshire. The imposing remains of the Kenilworth, ex-Maggotty sugar factory, can still be seen on the site of the Heart Institute in Hanover.

$1 TO EACH SLAVE

Curiously, the Times of London in a complimentary vein quoted his will:

"And lastly, to my loving people, denominated and recognised by the laws as, and being in fact my slaves, in Jamaica, but more estimated and considered by me and my family as tenants for life, attached to the soil, I bequeath a dollar for every man, woman, and child as a small token of my regard for their faithful and affectionate service and willing labours to myself and my family, being reciprocally bound in one general tie of master and servant in the prosperity of the land, from which we draw our mutual comforts and subsistence in our several relations (a tie and interest not practised on by the hired labourer of the day in the UK), the contrary of which doctrine is held only by the visionists of the puritanical orders against the common feeling of mankind." At the time, he was the owner of 1,500 slaves in Hanover and St Ann.

I am in debt to Friends of the Georgian Society of Jamaica for pointing out that the longest-held Jamaican-Cromwellian patent was held by the Blagrove family in St Ann, which ended in 1974 with the sale of Hopewell, near Discovery Bay.

- Anthony Gambrill is a playwright and historian. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.