Colonial Governor in Jamaica
From 1854 Eyre was Governor of several Caribbean island colonies, including Bermudas and La Española.
As Governor of Jamaica, Eyre passed bills to provide punishment on the treadmill for certain offences, and flogging as the penalty for stealing food. George William Gordon, a mixed-race member of the Assembly of Jamaica, criticised Eyre's draconian measures, warning that "If we are to be governed by such a Governor much longer, the people will have to fly to arms and become self-governing."
Baptist preacher and rebel leader Paul Bogle encouraged and led a rebellion, and occasioned the death of 18 militia or officials. Fearful of an island-wide uprising, Eyre suppressed the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. Up to 439 black peasants were killed in the reprisals, some 600 flogged, and about 1000 houses burnt down. General Luke Smythe O'Connor was directly responsible for those who inflicted excessive punishment.
Erroneously convinced that he was one of the leaders of the rebellion, Eyre authorised the execution of Gordon, who was tried for high treason by Lieutenant Herbert Brand in a court-martial. On 23 October, Gordon was hanged two days after his hastily arranged trial, and Bogle followed him on to the gallows two days later, when he was hanged along with 14 others.
The controlling European element of the Jamaican population, those who had the most to lose, regarded Eyre as the hero who had saved Jamaica from disaster. Eyre's influence on the white planters was so strong that he convinced the House of Assembly to pass constitutional reforms that brought the old form of government to an end and allowed Jamaica to become a Crown Colony, with an appointed, rather than an elected, legislature on the basis that stronger legislative control would ward off another act of rebellion. That move ended the growing influence of the elected free people of colour Eyre distrusted, such as Gordon, Edward Jordon and Robert Osborn. Before dissolving itself, the legislature passed legislation to deal with the recent emergency, including an Act that sanctioned martial law and, all importantly for the litigation in Phillips v Eyre, an Act of Indemnity covering all acts done in good faith to suppress the rebellion after the proclamation of martial law.
Those events created great controversy in England and resulted in demands for Eyre to be arrested and tried for murdering Gordon. John Stuart Mill organised the Jamaica Committee, which demanded his prosecution and included some well-known English liberal intellectuals such as John Bright, Charles Darwin, Frederic Harrison, Thomas Hughes, Thomas Henry Huxley, Herbert Spencer and A. V. Dicey. Other notable members of the committee included Charles Buxton, Edmond Beales, Leslie Stephen, James Fitzjames Stephen, Edward Frankland, Thomas Hill Green, Frederick Chesson, Goldwin Smith, Charles Lyell and Henry Fawcett.
The Governor Eyre Defence and Aid Committee was set up by Thomas Carlyle in September 1866 to argue that Eyre had acted decisively to restore order. The committee secretary was Hamilton Hume, a member of the Royal Geographical Society with whom Eyre had explored in New South Wales. His supporters included John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens, Lord Cardigan, Alfred Tennyson and John Tyndall.
Cases against Lieutenant Brand and Brigadier Alexander Nelson were presented to the Central Criminal Court but the grand jury declined to certify either case. Eyre resided in Market Drayton in Shropshire, which was outside the jurisdiction of the court, so the indictment failed on that count. Barrister James Fitzjames Stephen travelled to Market Drayton but failed to convince the Justices to endorse his case against Eyre. The Jamaica Committee next asked the Attorney-General to certify the criminal information against Eyre but was rebuffed. Eyre then moved to London so that he might bring matters to a head and offer himself up to justice. The magistrate at Bow Street Police Court declined to arrest him, due to the failure of the cases against the soldiers, whereupon the imagined prosecutors applied to the Queen's Bench for a writ of mandamus justified by the Criminal Jurisdiction Act 1802 and succeeded. The Queen's Bench grand jury, upon presentation of the case against Eyre, declined to find a true bill of indictment, and Eyre was freed of criminal pursuit.
The case went next to the civil courts. Alexander Phillips charged Eyre with six counts of assault and false imprisonment, in addition to conversion of Phillips's "goods and chattels", and the case was eventually brought to the UK Court of Exchequer as Phillips v Eyre (1870) LR 6 QB 1, Exchequer Chamber. The case was influential in setting a precedent in English and Australian law over the conflict of laws, and choice of law to be applied in international torts cases. Eyre was exonerated in the Queen's Bench, a writ of error was submitted to the Exchequer, whose judgment affirmed the one below, and an important precedent was thus set by Willes J.
