ABSTRACT
Returning to the Belize settlement itself, and to the opening years of the nineteenth century, this chapter shows how it made use of the new freedom and security won in the Battle of S. George’s Cay. The victory of 1798 was only the beginning of a still more exacting struggle on the part of the settlers to reap the full fruits of victory and to make it worth England’s while to gather them into the Imperial fold—to promote the settlement, in fact, to the status of a fully integrated Colony within the British Commonwealth. The Anglican and Presbyterian churches were accordingly disendowed and finally disestablished in 1872. In 1884 the final maturity of the Colony was proclaimed by Letters Patent conferring the title of Excellency, Governor, and Commanderin-Chief upon the Crown’s representative in Belize, and so freeing it completely from the last traces of dependence upon Jamaica.
