year. The maroons helped the British to put down a rebellion by the Black Nova Scotians, after which they received the best land and houses. In the first two months at Sierra Leone, 22 maroons died, mainly from disease, and over 150 took ill. Maroons in Sierra Leone At Trelawny Town, and throughout their exile to first Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone, Montague James continued to command the Trelawny Maroons. In 1809, Sierra Leone Governor Thomas Perronet Thompson officially nominated Montague James as the head of the maroons in Sierra Leone. Montague James died three years later. Once they became settled, and they started to flourish, their numbers grew to the point that they numbered in the mid-600s in 1826. They gained good jobs in the civil service and the military. However, the situation soured for the Maroons in the 1830s, when they objected to the use of corporal punishment in the military, and a new governor dismissed many Maroons from civil service jobs and gave them to Nova Scotians and Liberated Africans. Many Maroons were traders, but they could not compete with the Liberated Africans who came to the colony in large numbers, and took over the internal trade. European visitors observed that the Maroons were disliked by the other ethnic groups in the colony. With the passing years, more Maroons requested a return to Jamaica. After the Second Maroon War, the Jamaican Assembly had passed a law making it a felony punishable by death for any Trelawny Maroon to return to Jamaica. Two petitions sent by the Maroons in Sierra Leone to the British Crown requesting the right to return were rejected. However, in 1831, another petition was presented by 224 Sierra Leone Maroons to the British government, and this time the Jamaican authorities relented. They responded by saying they would place no obstacle in the way of Maroons returning to Jamaica, but would not pay any passage or the purchase of lands in the island. The final tipping point occurred in 1839, when a Liberated African apprentice, an Ibo named Martin, murdered his elderly Maroon employer, John Jarrett. A group of Maroons caught Martin, and they tortured him, and then burnt him to death to avenge Major Jarrett. The Ibo in the colony demanded vengeance, and attacked Maroons in Freetown, forcing a number of them to flee for safety in the interior. After this incident, large