Francis Williams
A Teacher in 18th Century Spanish Town
Francis Williams, born around 1702, was
apparently the youngest of the three sons of
John and Dorothy Williams, free
Blacks,
who, in 1708, with their sons, were granted
by the House of
Assembly the privilege of
not being subject to slave evidence in court,
status reserved for Whites.
About 1716, the Duke of Montague, then
Governor of the Island, proposed an experiment to
solve the problem,
much discussed in Jamaica and elsewhere, as to whether a Black man
could
equal a White man if given the same education and opportunity. He chose
Francis
Williams because of the promise he showed, and sent him to
England, where he studied at
first at a grammar school, and afterwards
entered the University of Cambridge, where he
made considerable progress
in mathematics and other branches of science. He also excelled in the
study of the classics, an essential part of the education of an 18th
century gentleman.
As a result he wrote a considerable quantity of
Latin poetry in the accepted style of the
period and often addressed to
Governors of Jamaica.
Having spent several more years in England,
Williams returned to Jamaica, where the
Duke of Montague offered to give
him a place on the Council which advised the Governor,
but this offer
did not materialise. Under the Governor's patronage he opened a school
in
Spanish Town, the capital of Jamaica. He
taught reading, writing, Latin, and the elements
of mathematics, but
there is no clear indication of who his pupils were. He trained one of
them who was Black to take over the school, so clearly he had Black
pupils. Possibly
Coloured and even poorer White citizens of the capital
may have ignored Williams' colour
and sent their boys to be taught by a
Cambridge educated scholar.
It seems that Williams died around 1770. Unfortunately the teacher he had
trained to
continue to run his school suffered some form of mental
break-down and there is no record of the fate of the school; it was in
fact fairly common in the 18th and 19th century West
Indies, as elsewhere, for schools to disappear with the death of the individuals who had
started them.
Edward
Long, whose History of Jamaica is one of the main sources of
information on
Williams, was not at all flattering about Williams'
character and behaviour. He described
him as 'haughty and opinionated';
accused him of looking down on his fellow Blacks, even
his parents, and
treating his children and his slaves very harshly. Long suggested that
he
adopted an exaggerated style of dress, including a very large wig, a
ruffled shirt and a
sword, in order to secure great deference from those
around him, especially the Blacks.
Some of these characteristics were
undoubtedly copied from the Whites who dominated the
society, and seem
understandable in one who must constantly have had to assert his
position in a society which had not previously had to accommodate an
educated Black
man.
Although
Williams may not have been a particularly attractive character, and may
have
expressed banal and conventional opinions, the following lines,
translated from one of his
Latin poems, express the attitude of all
civilised people, both then and now:
'The bountiful Deity, with a hand powerful and firm,
has given the same soul to men of all races, nothing
standing in His way. Virtue itself and prudence are
free from colour; there is no colour in a honourable
mind, no colour in skill.'
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'Oh, these God-sent teachers . . . . of rural Jamaica, in those opportunity-starved years
of the early nineteen hundreds.'
J. J. Mills - His own account of his life and times. (Kingston, 1969), page 41.